Monday 31 December 2018

Roll out the red carpet, it’s the DV AWARDS 2018!




Dwarlinks, Luvees, Lords and Ladies, adults and babies, busy and lazies, all are welcome to the award show that’s better than all the other award shows you’ve already forgotten.
 

Live from Galway, here come the DV Awards 2018!

As ever we start on the international stage. First DV of the night is the much-coveted ‘Bertie’s Tears Were Really Real DV’ for absurd interpretations of media events, which this year goes to the conspiratorial nutcases who suggested that actors were playing the parts of those exceptional Floridian teenagers, who made inspirational and astonishing speeches against gun ownership, after their schoolfriends had been slaughtered in that week’s mass shooting.

The ‘Ronald Reagan smiling and appearing stupid while threatening apocalypse DV’ is shared this year between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, for terrifying the world by threatening to annihilate each other, and then managing to make the end of the world seem boring, by planning a summit that was on and off, on and off, until we didn't care anymore.

The ‘Camden Is Just Like Crossmaglen DV’ for dangerous nonsense that costs lives goes to all of us, for being shocked by Assad’s gas attacks in Syria, while accepting the use of conventional weapons.

If your family were blasted to smithereens by a cruise missile you would not appreciate that they were blown apart, rather than gassed. The rules of warfare become meaningless when you end up punishing politicians for killing innocent civilians in the wrong way.

Well gosh and phew, didn’t someone promise a good night out?

Indeed, so moving rapidly into the facile and glittery world of Celebrity, the ‘Princess Diana I Hate Being In The Headlines So Put That In Your Paper DV’ for services to red top tabloid trivia goes to Girls Aloud superstar Cheryl, for crowing about keeping her son Bear’s image out of social media.

She claimed to want “to give him a chance of a childhood.” but well, sorry Cheryl, if you really cared about that you wouldn’t have called the poor wee bollix Bear at all, would you? First day of school, the teachers are going to put one and one together and come up with today’s Sun Fun To Play quiz: Guess Which Father Is Pop Star’s Son?

This year’s ‘We Blindly Obey Because We Lived Under The English Cosh For 800 Years DV’ goes to the government’s reaction to Storm Emma. Snowpocalypse was threatened. We were told we all had to be inside our homes by 4pm and wait for flakevasion.

At the time it felt wonderful to be forced to do nothing, yet it was one hell of a nanny state reaction.

This year we’re delighted to introduce the inaugural ‘#metoo #Ibelieveher DV’ for womens’ bravery in the face of the patriarchy, which goes to everyone who voted to repeal the 8th, while special recognition is awarded to all the Irish women presently facing obscene sexism in rape trials.

Next up, the ‘Is This Ireland or Iraq DV’ for global warming goes to the imposition of a hosepipe ban on a nation which from the air looks like a few green bits sticking out of vast puddles.

The ‘Thank God Blasphemy is Gone DV’ for crushingly inappropriate assumptions goes to the world press, for the number of times they refer to Ireland as a progressive republic purely because we’ve got a gay Indian Taoiseach.

Who cares that he’s the son of an immigrant? Who gives a phooey he’s gay? 


Doesn’t a republic become modern when we all stop noticing those criteria and concentrate on the way Leo is singularly focused on dragging Ireland’s economy back into the Thatcherite 1980s?

Hopefully for the last time, this year’s ‘Be DUP Careful Who You Have Brexit In Bed With DV’ for avoiding noxious political partners goes to Fianna Fáil, for rejecting Peter Casey’s divisive bigotry.

For a while your colyoomist felt so disturbed by Casey’s burgeoning popularity I actually started to long for the old Ireland where, if faced with a new and threatening phenomenon, politicians would set up a Tribunal to investigate and after nine months come up with a draft report that would be considered by a group of disparate people with a variety of vested interests, who would return for a final report to a Dáil Committee, who would put it in a prescribed fallow field, lay upon it 3 lumps of horse dung and see which way the wind blew.

At last we arrive at that part of the awards ceremony where DVs become local, so reliable as the tide, this year’s winner of ‘Best Place To Live DV’ goes once again, as it always will, to Connacht, where the friendliest of people, both artistic self-starters and stubborn local survivors gather to live among breath-suckingly beautiful landscapes.

Finally, and most personally, the ‘Apart From That Mrs. Lincoln, Did You Enjoy the Play? DV’ for the most important double use of the letter ’N’ goes to my annus horriblis: 2018. Early in the year I lost a friend of over 40 years, then my marriage, my dog and my home.

At times such as this my much-missed late father used to say “Onwards and upwards, Addles!” so that is where I’m going, feeling sure of only one thing.

2019 will be a better year for me, as I hope it is for all of you, my loyal colyoomistas. As we sign off from our glittering award ceremony, all at DV wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

©Charlie Adley
31.12.2018.

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