Tony Parsons on Cyclists

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"I HAVE always thought that it should be cyclists that are chained to lamp-posts, and not their bikes.... Bicycles are like masturbation - something you should grow out of......There is something seriously sick and stunted about grown men who want to ride a bike.....These poor, confused souls need professional help - not a law granting them immunity from blame."

Has Parsons always been such a pompous, infantile, reactionary sh*t?

stevo, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Julie Burchill to thread?

Archel, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Give us a link! This sounds cool.

dave q, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Daily Mirror: Tony Parsons - I just don't Lycra these cycle yobs

stevo, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

oh fer chrissake. is he just trying to out-stupid his ex wife or what?

katie, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Daily Mirro sub-editor needs shooting for crimes against punnage.

RickyT, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

People who make typos should not criticise sub-editors.

RickyT, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

parsons and burchill think people see them as brady and hindley meets bonnie and clyde, but really people see them as the print madeley and finnigan.

gareth, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

except richard and judy do work that i think deserves monetary rewards.

Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

PPl who ride their bikes on pavements = big dud, tho'.

Andrew L, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

naturally. but car drivers who cut up cyclists, don't use indicators, don't let pedestrians cross, drive above 30 in built up areas, park in bus lanes etc = far bigger duds, and far more common and dangerous

michael, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

"I HAVE always thought that it should be car drivers that are towed away, and not their cars.... Cars are like masturbation - something you should grow out of......There is something seriously sick and stunted about grown men who need to travel everywhere in big metal boxes on wheels.....These poor, confused souls need professional help."

And excuse me, but since when did men 'grow out of' masturbation??

Archel, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

What a Parshole. Just goes to show you can't change the system from within. Hip young gunslinger becomes "Woodrow Wyatt The Voice of Reason".

Winkelmann, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

new portuguese wine exploring answers!!

mark s, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Forgive the peculiarly American slant to my comparison, but this essay is Andy Rooney thinking he's H.L. Mencken.

To misquote Doug Henning: IT'S A WORLD OF DELUSION!

Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

they are new portuguese wine explorers = they are arsebastards

RickyT, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Car drivers and cyclists both = big old dud.

Car drivers do more harm,certainly, but cyclists infuriatingly take the moral high ground for no good reason.

Pedestrians = put upon victims of this piece.

Tim, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

hopkins you are a BICYCLIST oh wait...

mark s, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I remembered it's Jean Christophe Novelli of Maison Novelli!

(I feel satisfied now)

Anna, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

And Karen Brady (MD of Birmingham City)?

RickyT, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, but I think I remembered Karen Brady, it was Masion Novelli bloke I forgot.

Anna, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Archel and Tim, I'll just expand your answers with The Simple Statistics: Road Traffic Accidents kill ten people a day (Ecstasy kills ten people a year).I suspect that more of these are due to cars than bicycles.

The Other Tim

Tim Bateman, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

i used to admire parsons (& burchill!) so much! i was like 15 at the time tho, i "grew out of it"...these days of course i would kick him in the balls before he even got to say hello

unknown or illegal user, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Portuguese wine = Big Baga = big bag o' shite.

Tony Parsons is a nephew of Nicholas Parsons - this should be in Antony's thread I guess.

Pete, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Dear grief. My dad would just laugh in bemused outrage (him having just come back from the Tour de France and all, said it was fantastic!).

Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 6 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Say what one likes abt Julie B, I doubt she'd ever write anything quite as lame as this (or other recent tony p diatriben, now that I think about it) Toe-Knee-Par-sunz -> k-lame.

Norman Phay Posting from W3rk, Saturday, 10 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The piece might be somewhat lame but the central point is fair. Cyclists are always keen to emphasise their vulnerability to cars & trucks but prefer to ignore the issue of pedestrians being endangered by *their* actions. A bike might not be as lethal as a car but it can still kill or badly injure someone when travelling at top speed.

David, Saturday, 10 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmmm.....

An excerpt:
Well, in accidents involving motor vehicles and cyclists, the motor vehicle is to blame in two thirds of cases - but the cyclist is, unsurprisingly, 37 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than the motorist. Yet the cyclist has to "prove" negligence to a police officer, often without witnesses. Unfortunately, most road traffic accident cases are in magistrates courts where in 95% of heard cases involving a fatality the driver is charged with "driving without due care and attention". The maximum penalty is a £2,000 fine and a discretionary ban. In fact the typical sentence for a driver who kills is a £250 fine and a few penalty points. One pedestrian a year is killed by a cyclist on the pavement, while 3,500 people die on the roads.

Norman Phay p0st!ng from h0m3, Saturday, 10 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven years pass...

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/16/tony-parsons-daily-mirror-sun

Has Parsons always been such a pompous, infantile, reactionary sh*t?

yup.

mark e, Monday, 16 September 2013 17:16 (eleven years ago)

four years pass...

some extraordinary phil space material from the boy parsons here, just exemplary

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeNKK1GW0AAJQU9.jpg

HOW did the country that produced Mick Jagger ever come to have an obesity crisis?

Jamie Oliver is usually wheeled out for some well-intentioned finger-wagging whenever there is another bout of hand-wringing about our nation’s ever-expanding waistline.

But Mick, 74, has a 28in waistline.

And Jamie Oliver has not had a 28in waistline since he was 12.

Government ministers should be begging Jagger to come to Downing Street to learn all he knows about nutrition and exercise.

The media should be quizzing Mick for his reflections on current levels of sugar in biscuits and chocolate.

And all of us should be looking at Mick and marvelling at how fit an elderly gent can be.

I saw the Rolling Stones perform twice this week at the London Stadium and Jagger was a leaping, bounding, skipping, run-ning, jumping, jaw-dropping revelation.

And fuelled by nothing stronger than a bowl of pasta, he kept it up for two hours.

We learned this week that half the country will be dangerously overweight by 2045. Only half? Sounds optimistic to me.

But leading the band which once epitomised sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll — and the debauched history of the Stones is etched deeply into the corrugated faces of Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood — is the man who can teach us all we need to know about staying fit.

Unlike Mick, we don’t have to take up yoga, ballet and kickboxing — but like him, we do have to think about getting our blood pumping every day of our lives.

And unlike Jagger, we do not have to start every day with a smoothie — but we do have to think more about what we are putting into our bodies.

Few of us could ever hope to follow Jagger’s punishing fitness regime, working out for hours most days of the week under the watchful eye of personal trainer Torje Eike.

We don’t have the time, money or indeed fitness levels to keep up with this great-grandfather.

But by having Mick Jagger as a role model, every one of us can be healthier than we are — slimmer, fitter and ready to rock ’n’ roll.

The key to Jagger’s fitness is that everything counts.

If you put good food into your body or if you eat rubbish.

If you make regular demands on your body or just reach for the TV remote.

Jagger gets mocked for his action-packed love life (at 73, he had a son with 29-year-old ballerina Melanie Hamrick) and for his laughter lines — nothing is that funny, Mick!

But if you saw Jagger bouncing about like a 19-year-old this week, then you could not help but take him seriously.

And want a slice of whatever he is having.

So the next time the nation has a panic attack about how fat we are becoming, we need to get Jagger on the case.

For — at the risk of being impolite — when did you ever see Jamie Oliver looking even remotely slim?

But Mick Jagger is still dancing like it is 1969.

And you never see a fat Rolling Stone.

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 11:11 (seven years ago)

is he paid per carriage return?

lana del boy (ledge), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 11:33 (seven years ago)

classic phil space tactic innit - more paragraph breaks mean you don't have to write as much

he also uses the word 'mick' eight times and 'jagger' 11 times in a 512-word article

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 12:04 (seven years ago)

How much for the hyphen in run-ning I wonder?

Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 12:14 (seven years ago)

at least £50 i'd reckon

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 12:17 (seven years ago)

it's always a thrill to see a master at work

Karius whisper (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 12:43 (seven years ago)

that's not even the entirety of that day's column, which goes on to

- tongue-bathe the royal wedding (including the startling sentence “Proof again that GB is an infantilised, escapist nation,” sneered Ugandan-born, Oxford-educated commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, 68)
- reassure jada pinkett-smith that tony would still fuck her even though she's living with alopecia
- admire 'buck-toothed brazilian footballer' ronaldinho's still-functioning penis
- whine about the contempt that the eu has for britain
- reheat the 'isis would behead emily thornberry' controversy
- welcome harry kane to the position of england captain but in the eternal spirit of 'two world wars and one world cup' remind the lad that bobby moore fought tesicular cancer before lofting the jules rimet, actually
- berate historian dan snow for lying to his kids about female spitfire pilots and offer the counterexample of resistance fighter violette szabo, who was, er, famously not a spitfire pilot
- and finally somehow link the failure of solo to katy perry wearing a c3po-inspired dress onstage

it's a tour-de-force, it really is

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 12:59 (seven years ago)

whatever they're paying him, i can guarantee i would drunk type the same word count for half his money with no loss of controversy

Karius whisper (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 13:03 (seven years ago)

let's not make this a race to the bottom, your half-baked ramblings are worth just as much of rupert murdoch's money as his are

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 13:06 (seven years ago)

ticking all the boxes with the added bonus of reviving old ILE talking point, the Ronaldinho bottle opener

Neil S, Wednesday, 30 May 2018 13:08 (seven years ago)

Government ministers should be begging Jagger to come to Downing Street

imago, Wednesday, 30 May 2018 13:09 (seven years ago)

this thread has parsons being actively hostile to people riding bicycles and then moaning that we're not very fit as a nation

Toto Cuomo (NickB), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 13:48 (seven years ago)

yeah but when was the last time you saw mick jagger on a bike

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 14:01 (seven years ago)

Mick Jagger strikes me as someone who is probably lucky not to be on the sex offenders register, yeah but Parson says at least he isn't fat and is very "active" for his age, brilliant. Aye, Jimmy Savile, that cunt was as fit as a butcher's dog and wasn't in a rush to die either!

calzino, Wednesday, 30 May 2018 17:28 (seven years ago)

And you never see a fat Rolling Stone.

Heroin and paedophilia keep you young.

Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 17:30 (seven years ago)

i reread "the boy looked at johnny" a while back and it is kinda amazing how parsons writes about being fit in exactly the tone he + burchill used to write about taking amphetamines

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 17:41 (seven years ago)

i reread "the boy looked at johnny" a while back


y tho

i am fast and full of teeth. i willl die in a barn fire (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 17:45 (seven years ago)

Parsons in '78: Tom Robinson is the future, deal with it.
Parsons in '18: Brexit is the future, deal with it.

everything, Wednesday, 30 May 2018 19:22 (seven years ago)

glad to be gammony

Toto Cuomo (NickB), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 19:25 (seven years ago)

Came to this thread looking for the Tony Parsehole columns from Viz, was disappointed, let's fix that

http://viz.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2014-11-07-at-17.50.04.png

http://viz.co.uk/category/tony-parsehole/

mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 20:53 (seven years ago)

paragraphs too chunky to be the real parsehole imo

capybaras are friend shaped (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 May 2018 21:04 (seven years ago)

I prefer my type of braindead morons to just grunt, when they start doing short paragraphs in a bullet point tabloid style, that convey nothing but hackneyed Tory doctrine. I have to have them put down, alas :p

calzino, Wednesday, 30 May 2018 21:32 (seven years ago)


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