Like me, I’m sure you remember the Remainers’ reasonable warnings about the coming unavailability of European sewage treatment chemicals being dismissed as “project scares”. like me, I’m sure you remember how Michael Gove snorted with haughty delight as he promised us that leaving the EU would allow us to enjoy even tighter environmental protection, rather than being inundated with raw sewage. Another no-Brexit bonus. Like me, I’m sure you were worried that EU fines for water pollution by privatized water companies were all that saved us from capitalism climbing every culvert as big business kleptocrats stripped water infrastructure and treated the earnings abroad. like me, I’m sure you realized that the Conservatives’ decision in October 2021 to vote down an amendment that would stop dumping raw sewage into seas and rivers would mean their friends who own the water companies would be free to choke waterways us and coastlines; And like me, I’m sure you were more than a little baffled to discover that the most consistent voice of reason in this crisis is former Undertones frontman and keen fly fisherman Feargal Sharkey. Who can forget the prophetic single, Here Comes the Summer, with the classic couplet: “Keep looking for the girls with their bodies so fit, lying on the beaches covered in shit”? To be fair, Sharkey is just one of a long line of Northern Irish punk musicians currently engaged in specific water-related political activism. Former Stiff Little Fingers guitarist Henry Cluney is particularly concerned about the effects of climate change on the breeding cycle of the corixa punctata. Ronnie Matthews, of Big Time hitmakers Rudi, is donating a rare pelican eel to Belfast Zoo. while former Moondogs bassist Jackie Hamilton tried to raise awareness of the depletion of the gasterosteidae family’s habitat by living as a sidekick in Fermanagh’s mysterious Loch Erne for a year. Still, Sharkey’s pop career switch is only the second most impressive in rock, beaten by that of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who left the hammock of bassist for 1960s Boston acid rockers Ultimate Spinach and then the comfortable leather armchair of the same seat in Steely. Dan, to jointly develop the Pentagon’s Son of Star Wars weapon system. Dark Channel surface could be hardened, allowing migrants to simply walk to Brexit Britain As the water chiefs’ handouts increase, our rivers are suddenly more polluted than ever and our beaches are polluted by sewage in a way not seen since the 1970s, when I vividly remember seeing human lanes circling the face of Bobby Ball as he bathed happily. the Blackpool Brine between shows. Back then we were known as the dirty man of Europe. Today, Europe’s dirty man is Iain Duncan Smith, whose preferred pastime of picking his nose and gobbling crusty mucus in the Commons has become a hit ‘Try not to gag’ meme among continental teenagers. But dirty Britain can become Europe’s dirty man again. Ironically, clogging the seas around Britain with raw excrement is already threatening the core values of Brexit. Right now, I’m in Edinburgh playing two sold-out shows on the day of the ‘so-called’ ‘comedy’ ‘revival’. Between the Middle Ages and the 19th century, the site now occupied by Princes Street Gardens was home to Nor’ Loch, a man-made lake that became so clogged with human filth that flowed down from the crowded houses on the north slope of the Royal . Mile that in hot summers a crust of excrement will harden along it strong enough to bear the weight of a man. Indeed, in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), James Boswell recalls Samuel Johnson betting him a hundred guineas that he could not carry him on his back over the encrusted lake of sewage. Boswell tried his best, but the crème brûlée streak of human waste broke around where Ann Summers’ store now stands, and both Johnson and Boswell fell to their feet in the dirt, and great rejoicing ensued. The problem for the Brexit government is that on a calm day, with hot sun, the very surface of the dark English Channel could harden similarly, allowing migrants in their millions to simply walk into Brexit Britain, a spectacular Brexit own goal . fire regulations. Well, swim at your peril, middle-class wild river swimmers, unless you want to confine yourself to your rustic ersatz Airbnb traveler wagon with sickness, diarrhea, and your kids. But remember Brexit Britain as you crawl out of the sea covered head to toe in human excrement, it’s what you voted for! Freedom from their bureaucracy! We may be swimming in shit, but at least it’s British shit not bowing to the yoke of Brussels! Where will this post-Brexit deregulation bonus take us next? Stewart Lee performs in a show to raise money for the David Johnson Emerging Talent Award on August 28, 6pm, at the Gordon Aikman Theatre, Edinburgh. Snowflake is on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer at 10.30pm on Sunday 4 September, followed by Tornado on Sunday 11 September
