Wednesday 25th April

Got up had breakfast, banana, yoghurt and muesli or as my mother said "muelsie". Its Yeltsin's funeral. I wrote to him once, years ago when there was some argument in the Kremlin about what to do with Lenin's embalmed body. I suggested that he could sell it to me if he wanted to for £500 so I could enter it for the Turner Prize. I got no reply. Now he's dead the Kremlin won't have to pickle him, he's pickled enough!

Time to go to Wollaton leafleting, I wish Mandelson was around to give me a hand with my campaign in repayment for what I did for him back in 1997. (double click the letter above) My friends are most upset, they're blaming me for having a hand in Blair's 1997 victory.

Monday 23th April

Had bread and jam for breakfast. It’s St George’s Day, I didn’t do much campaigning at the weekend. It was my 63rd birthday on Saturday, another milestone passed on the trudge to Wilford Hill. Printed some “Corporal Cowan” and “Soft Dick” flyers then went out Saturday night and got drunk. I wonder if the Queen did, she was 81. Stayed at home for most of Sunday and thought about a press release for this week’s campaign. There’s a St George’s Day quiz on tonight at the Admiral Rodney, the Militant Elvis party are thinking of going. Watch this space!

Press Release – Local Elections – Church of the Militant Elvis Party
Church of the Militant Elvis Party Campaign in Wollaton set to hot up.
Artist and poet Lord Biro to start leafleting controversial flyers about Tory candidates Dick Benson and Michael Cowan. www.theplace4.co.uk/elvisseeninbaghdad Email: lordbiro58@hotmail.com)

Artist and Political CV
( a selection of quotes from the many received over the years)

“If Bishop was a 23 year old arts graduate he probably be hailed as a cutting edge Neo-Dadaist” – Wayne Burrows, Metro

“Sick” - Tory Councillor Ted Hickey, Daily Sport

“Impressed me” – Jean Rooke, Daily Express

“Isn’t quite right for Cosmopolitan” – Kate Figes, Lit Editor

“Useless” – Pandora, Independent

“I really like the poems”* - Julie Christie, Actress (‘Land of Rope and Tory’, 1992)

“David says things we only dare think” David Soul, Actor “Starsky and Hutch”, Martin Bells campaign team – Epping Guardian 2001

“Sinister Foresight” Maev Kennedy, Guardian Diary

“The slogans and campaigning ideas you suggest are very interesting. I will certainly bear them in mind when drawing up General Election campaigning plans”. Peter Mandelson MP, House of Commons letter, March 3rd 1997 (see www.theplace4.co.uk/elvisseeninbaghdad/cv.htm)

“Who is he anyway?” – Tony Blair, Derby Evening Telegraph

“Loony” Neil Hamilton, The Times

“He doesn’t need any acting lessons from me” – Tony Blair, Nottm. Evening Post
Press release ends.

Friday 20th April

Get up and have breakfast, muesli and banana. Its Hitler’s Birthday, he would have enjoyed it too. I buy the Guardian and the Daily Star. The Star is full of the new Belles of St Trinians, a charmless looking bunch. Loads of stuff about the student killer from South Korea. The media love it, if he’d gone on the rampage at Baghdad University they wouldn’t have given a toss. I pray no one goes on a shooting spree at Trent Poly or Ian C. Gray’s ghastly elegies will swamp the Evening Post for months.

I read the SUN files on Dick Benson again. Apparently he’s a hunting enthusiast Hmmm, Elvis wasn’t very keen on hunting and neither am I. Only if you’re a pigmy in the Belgium Congo. Those poor little sods won’t be hunting for much longer. The rainforest’s “old hat”, our vibrant corporate masters are going to ‘modernise’ it and turn it into palm-oil plantations plus golf courses, gorilla theme parks and swish hotels for the likes of Kate Moss’s sugar daddy and tax-dodging Top Shop billionaire Philip Green to hold his groovy parties in. Wow! The Daily Star will just love that!

I clear off to Wollaton in a bad mood and go leafleting around the Wheelhouse pub. Everywhere is as dead as a doornail except for a few old ladies pottering about and little dogs barking. A notice on one door makes me smile “ No Topper here, no Recorder here”. My leaflets run out and so does my patience. I go to the Admiral Rodney for a pint, the front bar is closed. There’s a funeral wake on, everybody looks cheerful, I wonder if Ian C. Gray is dead, he’s not in the Evening Post today. I drink up, go home and design a new flyer. Hunting Enthusiast “Soft Dick – Loves Hunting – Sez the SUN – Stuff the Perverts - Save our Ducks”. I wonder what the Wollaton Hunt will make of that. Tally Ho!

Thursday afternoon, April 19th

It's 2:30pm, I make a cup of tea and read the Evening Post. Ian C. Gray, the Wollaton poet is in again. Surprise, surprise. I design a new flier featuring Corporal Cowan. Traffic Violator Abuses City Bus Lane. That evening me and my treasurer go and see the Al Gore film 'An Inconvenient Truth', it's on at the Methodist Church in Wollaton.

I take some fliers to give out 'Save Oil – Bonk Locally' with a picture of Boris Johnson. When I see the worthy looking congregation, I decide to 'bottle out'. By the look of them their bonking days are long gone!

The films very good but depressing. If we don't stop the ice caps melting we're all going to drown, basically. I try to imagine Wollaton under water and picture Ian C. Gray clad in a diving suit sitting at his desk, typing a poem. Nothings going to stop that bloody nuisances 'creative' outpourings.

I look at Al Gores bald spot. I hope mines not as big as his. I feel even more depressed. The films finished, thank God, stuff the discussion, we're off to the pub. My treasurer heads for 'The Gladstone', it's quiz night. I end up in one of Gun City's premier shooting galleries, 'The Elm Tree'. A pint of draught Valium will go down very nicely thank you. Cheers!

Thursday morning April 19th

Bread and bloody cheese again for breakfast. The 'Blair flu' seems to have abated? I read the Michael Cowan files. Apparently he did national service and rose to become "Corporal Cowan".Blimey, just like Adolf, this man is more dangerous than I thought.! I read on, in 1973 he was fined £20.00 "for driving a car along a bus lane in the city centre". I feel deflated, this ain't Tatton and Neil Hamilton with brown envelopes stuffed with cash. Those heady days are over mate, your political muck-raking career has hit the pits in this Thatcherite property owning paradise.

The post arrives, it's some junk mail from Littlewoods, offering me a free set of dining plates or something. Seeing as my gas ovens been out of order for months, they won't be much use will they, you bloody capitalist morons. I rip up the "offer" and sling it in the fireplace.

I must do some campaigning, I've only got one vote so far and he's a bloody nutter. Another fiasco like Sherwood (36 votes 2003) and I'll be demoted even further. The Shadow Spokesman on Sport, probably. What a ghastly thought. These days if anybody scores a goal, you'd think they'd won the Battle of Waterloo, the melodramatic over-paid fools.

I go to Wollaton and do some leafleting. "Don't push a leaflet through that letterbox" shouts an old bloke, "He's dead". "Thank you very much" I say. He looks at my rosette "We're the Elvis Party" I inform him. "So" he sniffs. They're a bunch of arrogant sods in this place. Just because they live in big posh houses and I rot in a terraced one, they think they can talk to me just how they like. Vote for "Soft Dick" see if I care, I'd rather be a councillor in Top "Yerself " Vallley, thankyou!

I leaflet the Old Coach Road. A woman refuses to take one, “I'm not into politics, I'm waiting for God's Kingdom to arrive”. Lawdy Miss Clawdy, a religious nutter, that's all I need, our Party's bad enough. “Well he won't pay your Council Tax. Why don't you vote for me while your waiting.” She looks at me with pity and gives me a pamphlet 'Will this World Survive?'. Well I won't if I don't get out of Corporal Cowan's Kingdom sharpish, I call it a day and head for home.

Wednesday 18th April
Porridge for breakfast, a mysterious brown envelope comes through the post plus a letter about some woman who likes sex in dungeons. Pity she doesn't live in Wollaton or I could go round to her place for coffee and whipped cream!

The large brown envelope is full of negative stuff about Michael Cowan, another Tory candidate for Wollaton West, all photocopied from Evening Post articles, not a popular chap it seems in some quarters.

Also a piece about "Soft Dick" off the SUN newspaper website. The "cemetary" is starting to liven up. Unfortunately I'm not, 'Blair flu' is still bugging me. No action today. I think I'll go to the Elm Tree for a pint of John Smiths. Lets hope there are no shooting incidents today or all the money I've spent on leaflets will be wasted.

Tuesday 17th April
Cheese on toast for breakfast, I feel a bit rough, the bug that's been stalking me all winter re-surfaces. It hangs around and you can't get rid of it. The health centre nurse says there isn't a name for it. My suggestion would be "Blair Flu".

The post arrives, just one letter, a woman from the Civil Service asks my opinion on the closure of Chalfont Drive, job losses and the selling off of ministry land for housing. Apparently, there's an old bomb shelter on the site, a listed building riddled with asbestos. I'll have to think about this one.

I decide not to do any leafleting today, but go up to Sherwood instead and print some more manifesto pamphets. Come back home, my German friend turns up and dyes my hair, sooty, greyey black. I don't think Elvis would be impressed but it will have to do.

Pick up the Evening Post and look at poets corner. Ian C. Gray the Wollaton poet is in again, he's in nearly every day. If I get elected I'll try and get an Asbo slapped on him for trying to bore me to death.

Go to bed and listen to the radio. The student who shot 32 dead in Virginia was South Korean. Thank god, he wasn't North Korean or it might have been World War Three. I start to think about the bomb shelter again, stay outside and get radiation poisioning, go inside and get asbestosis. Some choice, I'm bloggering off to sleep, good night.

Monday 16th April

Get up, have some bread and jam and start sorting out some leaflets. The phone goes, it's the "Proud of Nottingham Party" (that's local Labour). "Did you know Dick Benson, Tory Candidate for Wollaton West is an Ex-Judge whose soft on paedophiles" rasps a rough voice. "No I didn't". "We've got some newspaper clippings on him". " Send me them in the post and I'll have a look".

I wonder what "Soft Dick" would have made of Elvis's relationship with Priscilla which started when she was 14. The SUN would have had a field day, thank god it didn't exist in 1958.

I go to Wollaton and do some leafleting in an old peoples home. The warden laughs at me when I say I'm the Militant Elvis Party. "Lots of Elvis fans in here" she says. I give her the leaflet of Elvis and the dog.

Go back to Nottingham and get some more hair dye, my roots are showing. Dive in the 'Dog and Partridge' for a pint, there's a disco on, its too noisy for me, I'm off. Go round to my friends for tea and watch a documentary on BBC2 about 'Jersalem Elvis', an Israeli Elvis impersonator. Apparently the King sends him messages on crumpled bits of paper scattered around his house. That never happens to me, life is so unfair.