When I returned from evensong last night, after I had ironed five shirts and read a bedtime story to my loving (but strangely uncommunicative) teddy bears, I sat down with a hot cup of Horlicks to enjoy two hours of high quality Sunday night viewing.
I don’t know why but I have always had an interest in ‘conspiracy theories’. When I was a lad, I was convinced that
- Marilyn Monroe was killed by the Kennedy brothers.
- Ashley Grimes was a undercover Manchester City spy.
- JFK was assassinated by Norma Jeane Mortenson from the grassy knoll.
- UFO’s had landed at Roswell and probably deposited Ashley Grimes.
Of course, that was then. This is now. Back then I was a boy. Now I am a man (sort of). With the passing years, I have matured and changed my beliefs accordingly.
- 9/11 was instigated by the US government in order to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Lady Diana (Princess Of Our Hearts) was assassinated by an Italian Pizza chef, driving a white Fiat Punto on the orders of Prince Phillip (The Greek).
- Kurt Cobain’s death was directly or indirectly arranged by Courtney Love.
Imagine my horror, when last night’s BBC Conspiracy Files tells me that 9/11 was the work of Al Qaeda terrorist cells coupled with failings by the US intelligence services.
This revelation shocked me. I was stunned. I was struggling to assimilate this bombshell which opened to question so many of my dearly held beliefs. To ease the pain, I poured the Horlicks down the sink and cracked open a Grolsch.
I quickly switched channels to FA Cup Match of The Day in an effort to restore a sense of normality. Another conspiracy - Manchester City had avoided an FA Cup giant-killing and beaten Preston.
That’s it. I can’t take any more. I am going to bed. Only I couldn’t. I had to stay up to watch another deep, probing, investigative BBC program to finally which would surely prove that I am not clinically insane and confirm (or at least keep faintly alive) just one of my conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately,‘The last 48 hours of Kurt Cobain’ proposed the ridiculous assertion that Kurt Cobain was a manic depressive, heroin addict in denial with wild mood swings, depressed at his sought after fame and cult status, desperate to escape an unhappy marriage but simultaneously petrified of being denied access to his two year old daughter.
After another brief and unsuccessful attempt in rehab, Cobain embarked on yet another drug binge in Seattle before penning a suicide note and shooting himself in the head with a shotgun.
So the fact that Cobain’s body had massive amounts of heroin that would have rendered him incapable of pulling the trigger, the fact that another hand wrote the closing line ‘Please keep going Courtney, for Frances’ and the curious fact that Cobain carefully tidied away his drug paraphernalia when dead are all just examples of yet another conspiracy theory.