Morrissey’s Moral Hierarchy: 2013 Edition

Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey. Those who love the zing of an incoming soundbyte have long learned to wait until he has something to promote. In 2011, Morrissey compared the Breivik murders in Norway unfavourably to what happens every day in your local branches of McDonald's and KFC. This was not the first time Boz Boorer's singer has displayed an inverse, perverse, or even-verse sense of moral judgement. If he's not relegating the Chinese to a sub-species, he's imagining Damien Hirst's severed head in a bag, his moral compass seems to spin faster than a paedo-detecting device at a Radio Caroline reunion party.

Moz's moral ledger is something we've already been cataloguing for a while. But in the light of his new assaults on the Beckhams and others, we faxed over a request to his people for a quick update on Morrissey’s Moral Hierarchy.

Most recent additions: Nigel Farage, Jacintha Saldanah, Paul McCartney, the London Olympic Games, The "Peckhams"; 09/01/13.

TOP: ANIMALS

Animals, it is often supposed, appear to me as tiny people in fur coats. I feel I must rebut this idea here and now, as it is egregious. No animal would ever wear fur. They have too much dignity, too great a heft of moral virtue in their hearts, to sully themselves with such unethical and vulgar dressings. Why, I spoke to a swan the other day in Hertfordshire who would potentially make a better moral leader than Nelson Mandela. Animals would never do the things that we weak and venal humans do – kill each other, have intercourse indiscriminately, leave the aged members of their community to die, eat their newborn babies, and so on.

WORKING CLASS THUGS

Oh, whisper to me softly of working class thugs. I tell you solemnly, there is nothing so beautiful as the sight of a sweet hooligan doing irreparable damage to the knees of an ageing shopkeeper with a homemade cosh, fashioned rudely from spare lead piping found in the back of Darren’s transit van. So free. So spirited. They know not how beautiful they are, these youths, and so it has been up to me to hymn them in song. I confess: I regularly trawl the aisles of Deptford ASDA of a Saturday, cunningly disguised as Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, in order to eavesdrop on their conversations to generate material for my next album. They do say the most fascinating things. “Aren’t eggs next to the baking aisle?” “Here, get that, those are two for one.” “Sorry, mate, is this on Rollback?” It is a richly bejewelled argot all of its own. But one, I fear, that is being swept away by the ceaseless immigrant tide.

NAZIS

Many people will tell you bad things about Nazis. That they weren’t as neat as they were made out to be. That the colours on their flags clashed. That they did not always only obey orders. However, I feel it is time to take a fresh look at Nazis. Hitler, as is widely known, loved dogs. Indeed, it was out of deep compassion that Hitler gave Blondi the first cyanide capsule inside the bunker, so that this German Shepherd would not be put through the trauma of watching his master and mistress take their own lives. If only more pet owners would spare their animals this unbridled horror when they make the selfish decision to poison themselves out of existence, the world would be so much the better.

NIGEL FARAGE

A true English gentleman. I like him enormously. Indeed, if, perhaps, owing to an imminent terrorist threat, the army could be inveilged upon to violently take over the running of the state, with Farage as its chosen leader, suspending parliament until further notice, I for one would certainly not object. I have every confidence he would immediately set about restoring Britain to its former glory by banning all talk of hideous "kilogrammes", restoring "The UK Theme" to the Today Programme, bringing back the Robertson's Marmalade golly as a thumb in the eye to cowardly political correctness and ensuring that all real ales were served in proper, handled jugs. Then I for one would be happy to salute his banner forevermore.

ALAN BENNETT

A beautiful man. We have spent many happy hours over the past few decades discussing the works of 1950s comedian Jimmy Clitheroe, which is the only topic of conversation I will countenance. I visit him for tea most Tuesdays. He has begun playing a superbly wry game with me, which involves him hiding behind the curtains for six hours while I ring the bell over and over. The man is lord not only of the arch witticism, but of suitably dry physical comedy, too.

JACINTHA SALDANAH

A warriorwoman for justice.

PAUL MCCARTNEY

The "Pipes Of Peace" hitmaker is not a man any of us can take seriously any longer. He has taken the Royal shilling with his knighthood, and so he is nothing but a lickspittle lackey of those blue-blood toads. We all know I would never do such a thing. And if I did, it would only be so that I could go to Buckingham Palace and run Ms Elizabeth Windsor through with the sword before she could blink, and stand there, as she oozed the last of her vital essences onto the red carpet, crowing: “Ha ha ha. Morrissey's had you, dearie. You didn't see that coming, did you sweetie?”

THE LONDON OLYMPIC GAMES

Morally, these Olympics, sponsored as they were by the Heifer Holocaust Corporation, aka McDonald's, and Coca-Cola, the fizzy-pop bottlers responsible for turning British children into the rotund little puddings that infest our streets, were the equivalent of Berlin 1932. Imagine if Jesse Owens were a horse, and you have the horror – the barbarity – of the dressage competition. Imagine – just imagine for one moment – carrying Zara Philips upon your back for several hours as she whips you over a range of jumps, her heels digging into your flanks, her firm buttocks pinched against your back. It is not a punishment I would wish upon my worst enemies. And as for Clare Balding – she and her screwed-up, leathery little fizzog are beneath contempt. I hope this jester for the toff sportsman drowns in her own pus.

THE EDITOR OF MORRISSEY-SOLO.COM

He has failed to control his forums on his web-site on the digital wire-press, resulting in negative commentary on my new songs, which is why I was forced to expel him from my Danish show, and impose a lifetime ban. Yes, so this man [above, right] has devoted himself to compiling long lists of articles about me. Is that enough for a reprieve? It cannot be. He reminds me of the limpid parasite Paul Morley, who wrote kindly of me in the NME during that lamentable decade the 1980s, then traitorously failed to prevent the publication of McNicholas’s scurrilous lies some 20 years later. Worse still – this man was working on the digital wire-press, yet in my two incursions onto the digital wire-press via my electronic computing machine, I have run across many digital wire-press pieces which do not portray me well, and so it is surely up to him to police the digital wire-press properly. I gather there are now more than ten billion pages thereon, but as a paltry penance he ought, at least, to make a start.

THE DRUMMING OAF MIKE JOYCE

This session musician, whom I vaguely recall clinging to my coattails throughout much of that lamentable decade, the 1980s, had the gumption to stick his beaky nose above the parapet and attempt to rob me of my paltry 40 percent share in the profits of The Smiths. As I recall it, the judge damned his claims as devious, truculent and unreliable, and sentenced him to jail for crimes against Morrissey. Morrissey was once again vindicated. As I stood on the steps of the courthouse, I must confess, I wept. I wept for Mike Joyce and for his outlandish delusions. This poor pitiful fool had assumed he was on a par with Morrissey. But justice had prevailed. "Justitia omnibus Morrisseyus," I whispered. Sorrow will come to him in the end.

THE POISONOUS FOOL ANDY ROURKE

A bass guitarist of ill repute. I had limited interaction with him, but biographers tell me Rourke was a heroin user, another sort of person I cannot countenance. He had limited intelligence at the best of times, was patently of no benefit to society, and while it pains me to say this, perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if this profoundly ordinary Mancunian had succumbed to his affliction like the capricious fret-mangler Hendrix.

THE ROYAL FAMILY

Elizabeth Windsor, a housewife from Berkshire, does not represent a Britain in which I wish to live. Yet her face is everywhere. Every time I open my pocketbook – there, her diseased Germanic features leer back at me. Which is why I am beginning a concerted campaign of money burning. I have so far managed to burn over £500,000 with that vinegar-visaged hag’s face on it. I call upon my fans to, likewise, burn every bill in the land. Only in this way can we bring an end to their Cromwell-saluting royal line.

JOSEF FRITZL

Fritzl was a monster. There are no two ways about that. This simpering sub-human wretch committed the greatest crime anyone is capable of. He fed his child meat. The thought – why, it sends chills to the core of my marrow.

THE CHINESE

A subspecies. And not even a nice one at that.

CONOR MCNICHOLAS

Reader, this man plotted against me for nearly 20 years – taking on a career as a journalist, working his weasel way up the hierarchy, encouraging me to return from my American sojourn, giving me lots of free publicity, then, once the moment was precisely right, detonating his payload by tricking me into stating my opinions in his grubby rag. What a bastard.

RACISTS

Terrible people who are lower than vermin – obviously, because most vermin are exquisitely lovely. The conversations I have had with field mice, voles, rats and weasels, outrank in their depth, eloquence and perceptiveness, those I have had with most any heads of state or latter-day poet. Don’t get me wrong – some of my best friends are racists, but they are far, far down the hierarchy. It is difficult for me to believe that, in this day and age, discrimination still goes on. For instance, the other day, I learned that there are certain pubs throughout this land that allow dogs in, but seemingly have no room at their inns for jackals, foxes, wolves, or any other member of the canis family. It pains me to say, but on this evidence our war against irrational prejudice is far from won.

BOTTOM: THE "PECKHAMS"

This family of gutless, spineless, meaningless oafs make their living simply out of being in the public eye, often being deliberately provocative, delighting in greasing the wheels of the fame machine. Quite unlike yours truly. As you have no doubt observed, I myself continue to lead a humble and often solitary life, wherever possible avoiding publicity for its own sake, and never once saying things to interviewers while imagining them as pull-quotes or banner headlines in tomorrow's broadsheets.

And the children. Have you seen the children?

AS RELAYED BY MORRISSEY TO THE PREVARICATOR GAVIN HAYNES

Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes

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