Petersfield's music critics hit back

A coachload of Daniel O’Donnell fans got "just the wake-up call they needed" after they had a brick thrown at them on their return to Petersfield.

Fans of the schmaltzy Irish crooner – a sort of poor man’s Gaelic Cliff Richard – were returning from a trip to Brighton aboard a Graze coach, when it was hit by a brick while heading down The Causeway.

The manager of Graze Travel, Graham Travel, said: “A group of middle-aged louts were standing by the side of the road yelling things like “He’s just a Val Doonican for the 21st century!” and “His music is highly derivative!”. One even claimed the brick was a physical representation of the didactic leanings of O’Donnell’s religious overtones.

“It was shocking. I’m afraid now even to buy the BBC’s Classical Music magazine for fear of reprisals.”

This banner outside Tesco, in The Causeway,

stated firmly the protesters' feelings

Petersfield resident Rory Batter, a former arts and entertainments editor with Portsmouth’s daily newspaper The Snooze, insists such incidents are, thankfully, becoming commonplace.

He said: “People are no longer prepared to accept that this kind of bland excuse for entertainment should go unchallenged. This is just the wake-up call they needed.

“In the old days when people bothered to read newspapers and magazines, if they didn’t like a band, they’d write a letter of ill-informed complaint to the editor and it would help to fill the letters’ page.

“But the advent of Scrooge-like media corporations cutting their publications to the bone, plus blogging and social media has opened up music criticism to the whole world – and this kind of direct action is a natural result.

“Real music fans have had to watch while talentless bollocks masquerading as prime-time entertainment has flooded the TV and tabloids via X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – oh the irony! – and they have decided to take radical action.”

It seems the fightback by people with taste is not restricted to Petersfield. In an ironic twist, Chris de Burgh was thrown overboard from a cross-channel ferry somewhere between Portsmouth and Le Havre and the perpetrator was heard to yell after him “No need to worry about who pays now!”.

Also, Phil Collins was recently forced to retire after having a Molotov cocktail launched at him while somebody yelled “Look out Phil, it’s coming in the air tonight!” – and when he collapsed with a scorched baldy head, onlookers smirked “Just another day in paradise eh, you smug twat?”

However, sometimes this kind of critic vigilantism backfires badly. Last week world-renowned art critic Brian Sewell threw a pot of paint over Tracey Emin’s Volkswagen Beetle in protest at her latest work. But the added colour then forced him to carry out a reappraisal of the work…and he promptly hailed the splattered Beetle as frontrunner for this year’s Turner prize.

Wikileaks reveals Petersfield's ‘Bourbon war’

Nobody is quite sure how the information was leaked

Petersfield councillors came close to declaring war this year, it has been revealed by the Wikileaks organisation.

Hundreds of secret documents have been unveiled on the website, including a particularly nasty exchange over which type of biscuits should be provided for refreshment at council meetings.

The leaks reveal a simmering feud between lovers of Bourbon and enthusiasts of Rich Tea – with one rebel fighting the corner for Custard Creams.

The biscuit battle was finally won by the Rich Tea brigade (mainly because they’re cheaper) but a series of leaked emails show just how close the council came to raised voices.

Among the previously secret documents is an email from Tory councillor Freddie Ponsonby-Ponce saying: “I must declare my support for Rich Tea – to spend taxpayers’ money on a foreign Frog-Eyetie hybrid biscuit like the Bourbon is beyond the pale.”

But fellow Conservative Mrs Hilda Blenkinsop disagreed, as revealed in an email dated June 11. “How could we possibly opt for the Rich Tea?” she wrote. “It is fundamentally a working-class biscuit and, so I am told, is even dunked into tea by some of the uneducated masses. It’s simply not right for Petersfield.”

The solitary campaigner for the Custard Cream was Lib-Dem councillor Mr Arthur Uturn who sent in a video of himself signing a formal pledge in support of his favoured biscuit. However, it is understood he has since switched his vote in favour of the Rich Tea and says he “should have been more careful” before backing the Custard Cream.

“If I had really thought anyone would take any notice of anything I said, obviously I would have thought before I promised councillors the earth…well, a custard cream.”

Other Petersfield revelations on Wikileaks include:

• a series of quotes for a new squeedgy-mop at the Taro Leisure Centre

• a debate on whether to buy screw-in Christmas lights or the traditional bayonet kind for the council’s festive tree

• details of an expenses claim for 57p for a small carton milk for an unspecified purpose

• the fact that Arthur Uturn was referred to as “a bloody idiot” during a viewing of his Custard Cream signing video at a council committee meeting in May

• details of a bugged conversation between a member of one of the town’s leading amateur dramatic groups and a suspected crime boss over the possibility of reducing prices for the 1994 run of Kiss Me Kate to an affordable level

• how a diplomatic incident was narrowly avoided after the deputy mayor accused the mayor of Barentin of ‘smelling of garlic’ during an exchange visit; and

• plans to build an underground coffee bar and charity shop in Butser Hill in case of nuclear war