The Unionist Times has been awishy wash with Gallows Humour of late.

Which is possibly on account, by its own dismal prognostications, that it is soon known as (gulp) the late Unionst Times.

Who was it first said – was it Rudyard Doyle, pechance? –

–If you can keep your bleedin’ head

When all around you are losing theirs

And blaming it on bleedin’ you, head….

If you can meet with Triumph and bleedin’ Disaster

And treat them two chancers just the same….

Well, TUT is abiding by those priceless taglines by the bagload.

Re-spect (1).

Gallows humor has been described as a witticism in response to a hopeless situation. It arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations, often in circumstances which are such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable.

TUT, in fact, is on course for a hammering: at the hands of the, erm, Autcioneer’s Hammer.

This might well have influenced their decision, in keeping with their glorious wallow in Gallows Humour, to hold a mini-Hammer Fillum Festival. For those with the great good fortunate to live through the Fabulous Fifites the horror fillum genre was dominated by Hammer Fillums.

(S)he could have enjoyed such life-enhancing and spirit-uplifting fillums from The Curse of Frankenstein to the Mummy via The Abominable Snowman, The Hound of the Baskervilles, the Brides of Dracula to, of course, The Camp on Blood Island.

With the untoward Sword of g-damn Damocles now, sadly, hanging over its headlines and (gasp) deadlines, TUT brought us back to those red letter days the weekend before last by augmenting the Horror Fillum Festival with thoughtful backstories in the grisly shape of a plethora of Useful Victim Features (UVF).

Re-spect (2).

Depraved hearts, history and hope: the IRA ceasefire, 20 years on

Peter Sheridan, once the highest ranking Catholic police officer in the North, looks back at a long and troubled road and how the IRA tried to kill him three times

On first glancing at the subheading, one thought immediately of another Peter Sheridan, brother of Jim Sheridan, Oscar-winning fillum director of ‘My Left Foot’, both knee deep in the theatrics, wherever the motley is worn.

On second glance, it turned out to be a different PS altogehter, a Right Footer who kicked on well in a career in the higher echelons normally associated in Norneverland with erm, Left Footers.

-The Po-lice.

There might well have been an inevitabllity to this profile of a po-liceman by Gerry Mor the Nor Cor of TUT. The old DNA, don’t you know:

I’m a well known bobby of the stalwart squad
I belong to the D.M.P.
And the girls all cry as I pass by
Are you there, MORIAR–I–T–Y ?

The DMP of course was the Dublin Metropolitan Po-lice, a resourceful Horse-Protestant Force which enjoyed the remorseless backing of The Unionist Times .Till they were cackhandedly disbanded as a result of the Risible Rising by a wonky rabble of cowardly oppurtunists, during the Great Donkey Derby 14-18) .

The Force of the Free Southern Stateen has since, worryingly, degenerated into the current Farce known as the Garda Siochána. (Come back, Paddy Royally ! Ballyjamesduff says, wryly; Enough is Enough !).

First one liner of Gallows Humour goes to the interviewee, and a real regular RUC rib-tickler it is too:

“I used to say that I spent longer in Martin McGuinness’s house than he did,” says Sheridan, who was a chief superintendent in Derry.

But Very Merry Sherry comes across almost as a straight man beside his interrogator, oops, his interviewer, Mor-i-ar-t-ee who trumps this rib-tickler with a tremendous thigh-slapper of his own:

-Sheridan is a relaxed and easy man to chat to but there is no doubting he has a fixed moral code.

Here be, indubitably, buck-lepping of the highest order as Mor-i-ar-i-tee goes into full Skippy the Bush Kangaroo mode and adopts the comical mask of the Morsupial. The subliminal message being, erm, Auctineer Hammered home here is, as follows:

-We – Yunes in the Northern Teriritory or Yunes in South Ireland – are The. Morally. Superior. Ones.

Thus, is TUT droll to the last, even as it makes its last sorrowful stroll to the trapdoor-shaped hole.

-Re-spect (3).

These two gags are craftily tossed in to this UVF (Useful Victim Feature) as leaven for the lengthy heaven-sent litany of hellish crimes perpetrated by the T.A.L.iban, west of the Bann in Londonderry.

-Tiocfaidh Ár Lá-iban.

Being out-looking, open-minded, generous-hearted and global in philosphy, TUT, even in extremis, and in a brave, ice-breaking move has turned its back this time on the Eastie Beasties of Hammer Fillums and instead, have looked to the Blood-curdling Best of the West:

-Chuckie.

This is TUT’s pitch-perfect take on the Chuckie Horror Movie Franchise, which is different in essence to the normal, erm, Edgar Allan Po-faced style favoured by this gory genre. Infused, as the franchise is, with one-liners of wit amid the all-inclusive litany of TALiban victims, hereby rendering the menance all the more menacing. TUT does not spare us in its Useful Victim Features (UVF) neither and spills names and pack drills till its loyal readereship is up to his Morsupial gills..

Chuckie, of course, began life as plain old ‘Tiocfaidh Ár Lá’ . And as he learned ‘Prey for Us’ at his genocidal mammy’s knee on the Fall’s Road he duly became, with the back-passage of time, an OTR. Compelling him to head west of the Wild Atlantic Way before making landfall on Ellis Island where his name was civilised to:

-Chuckie R. Law.

Which brand-name change prompted Chuckie to double up first as both as a bar-stool lawyer and liar to boot. Before making the ineviatble switch to the Chuckie Horror Fillums. In this blood-flooding Franchise, a single mother gives her son a much sought after doll for his birthday, only to discover that it is possessed by the soul of a serial killer.

And not just any common or garden serial killer neither but rather THE serial killer who unites all that is most Denis the Menacing in a (very) cross-section of the top three s.k. vivisectionists in the Land of Aunt Samantha:

-Charles Lee Ray.

Which neatly manages to reference, as cognoscenti of the Kellogs Killers, of course, need no reminding:

-Manson, Harvey Oswald and James Earl.

(James Earl Ray – for he is the last namechecked of the three ! – expressed his last wish before he became toast in chokey for assassinating Martin Luther King, to be buried in the land of his ancestry, the Emerald Isle. Emphasising, as if it needed that, the Oirish angle of the Chuckie Horror Fillum Franchise).

The loyal corgi dogs on the streets of Liffeyside are already barking that The Unionist Times is planning to hold as its (sob) valedictory competition for a similar named equivalent on the Island of Ireland.

(Beguiler alert: the winning initials are……G.A.M.).

The one-liner from the original Chuckie movie whcih has won the most fulsome thumbs-up from cinéastes of the horror caste is of course, the following unforgettable exchange:

Lady in Elevator: Ugly doll!

Chucky: [as the elevator rises up] Fake you !

Which segues us neatly, on a number of counts, to the second UVF (Useful Victim Feature) from TUT is this inspiring death-bed series before it (gulp) expries, is:

Fake Birmingham apology is part of the IRA’s twisting of history

Brazen lie underpins republican evasions about 1974 bombings that killed 21

This is another Erse-eschewing chapter and verse microdetailing of victims of the Chukiesheads from the (gasp) current European Commentator of the Year.

Eure-spect.

Who happens to be a Left FOT-er trapped in a Right FOT-er torso, and who , in his mad scramble to escape this cursed incarceration, tramples truthiness into the dirt with all the zeal of a Ruth-come-lately-to-Justice. Thus, he is at his teeth-gnashing best in this, his latest imperious sortie into the low down and dirty realm of Gnat-sized Gnationalism-bashing. It is all part of his on-going dream ‘Cash for Gnash’ scheme.

Curiously, the first fillum in the Chuckie Horror Fillum Franchise in 1988 was titled:

-Chidl’s Play.

PC is CP to FOT. Which, translated, comes out, of course, as:

-Political Correctness is Child’s Play to Fintan O’Toole (for it is he !).

Curiously, too, as the European Numero Uno looks north across the Liffey to La Rive Gauche from the condemned halls of Tara House where the Harpies that once will soon no longer, one finds FOT gazing longingly at the prize-winning Liberty Hall. The prize, which it has effortlessly won year on year since its erection in 1965, being:

-European Sore-Thumb Architectural Award.

For the Euro Souper Star daily fantasies that he will tansfer to the top storey of the former soup kitchen and to the crow’s nest of the 17 storey Shoe Box, which will be desingnated :

-The Carry-on Toole Suite.

To which he will have sole access via the elevator on account of his, erm, elevated status. And to which any would-be trespasser will be summarily repulsed by a resounding recording of:

-FAKE YOU !

There, from this Matterhorn height Fintan O Toole will make full use of his salutary surname to Mún down upon and to scatter copious new UVFs (Useful Victim Features on those UDA (Ugly Dolls A-list), the Chuckieheads who will – inevitably – rake him with roars upward towards the top of Gliberty Hall :

-Féach under your own srón, Fakeface Hack and look in microdetail at the Dub Mon Bombs and litanise the names and pack drills of the Arms Dealers of the charming Glennane Farmers and the last wills and testaments of their willing Khaki backers !

Disre-spect.

To conclude, once more in terse, non-Erse verse;

We Serve neither K nor K

Southern Yunes have no truck with Chuckie

Who has only ever to be but once,erm, lucky

Neither King nor Kaiser

Make us then the wiser

Raise us once more from the muck, Liz, duckie.