Pissing on a picture of Thatcher: the initiation ceremony for Tories defecting to Labour

SO many Tories have defected to Labour over the years they have an initiation ritual modelled on the Hell’s Angels. This is what Dr Dan Poulter will have to endure: 

Pissing on a picture of Thatcher

To prove they’ve renounced their allegiance, defectors must urinate on a portrait of their Holy of Holies while constituents and and family look on. If they get stage fright and can’t muster a steady stream, they’re out. Once they’ve done the deed Rachel Reeves will explain that actually she was fiscally very sound.

Hug an asylum seeker

Hazing ceremonies are all about degradation. And nothing could be more humiliating for a former Tory than expressing compassion to a refugee fleeing warfare. Nor will a quick one-armed hug suffice; he’ll be expected to do a full minute with back-patting. For a Conservative, this is the equivalent of Cameron’s pig-f**king.

Spending a night in an NHS hospital

A true test of grit and determination. Tories are terrified of hospitals because they’re haunted by the doomed souls of the dead and the underpaid, all clamouring to tear the flesh from Dan Poulter’s bones and to let him die, forgotten, in a corridor. But current waiting lists mean he’ll have 18 weeks to prepare and the election might happen first.

Walking through the Red Wall naked

Winning the Red Wall back means throwing them meat. Parading Poulter through Sedgefield and Workington while they pelt him with dung, a notion stolen from Jeremy Clarkson’s wank bank, should win votes. And, given he’s a Tory, he’s likely to be able to get off on it.

Drinking a bottle of Thames water

No initiation ceremony is complete without a drinking challenge. So if the member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich really has changed sides, he’ll have to neck an entire bottle of river water cloudy with human waste. ‘What’s the matter, profiteering of private water companies too strong for you?’ Labour MPs will laugh while he pukes his ring.

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Blackstar, and other albums the artist cleverly promoted by dying

DYING is the ultimate music marketing tool, sending sales soaring at the negligible cost of a single life. These artists made out like posthumous bandits: 

Blackstar by David Bowie, 2016

Impeccable timing; released on the Friday, deceased on the Monday. And the album’s focus on death is synergistic marketing at its best, making it seems as if Bowie was writing from profound personal experience with magnificent artistic integrity when really he just wanted to shift units. You don’t get a career like his without that dedication to capitalism.

Grace by Jeff Buckley, 1994

An underappreciated cult classic until Buckley accidentally drowned in the Mississippi, after which sales have never stopped rising. Without that tragedy the public would still think Hallelujah was an Alexandra Burke song. Buckley had it all: A four-octave vocal range, dazzling good looks, and an innate genius for marketing.

MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana, 1994

Live acoustic sets are generally curios sought out only by hardcore fans. Not so for this collection, which went straight to the top of the charts thanks to forward-thinking frontman Kurt Cobain’s well-timed suicide. Not the first rocker to kill himself, but then grunge was rather derivative.

Songbird by Eva Cassidy, 1998

Radio 2 listeners love a good voice and a sad story. Eva Cassidy had both. Unknown until she kicked her career into overdrive by kicking the bucket, Terry Wogan played a couple of her covers on his breakfast show and, three years after release, the middle-aged bought into her tragic tale and made it a chart topper. They never listen to it now.

Lioness: Hidden Treasures by Amy Winehouse, 2011

A posthumous compilation of unreleased songs, covers and demos; in other words, studio sweepings which Winehouse wouldn’t have countenanced releasing had she lived. But the public was hungry for more from the Camden Nightingale, as she was never known, and lapped up alternate versions of songs they already owned and a Nas track.

Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980

Lennon’s post-Beatles period alternated between albums his fans liked, without Yoko Ono, and albums they tolerated, with Yoko Ono. This one, about their reuniting and domestic bliss, was the latter. Unpopular and low in the charts, he showed the world how it’s done by being killed by a fan and scoring a worldwide hit. Six months later Ono’s Season of Glass, featuring John’s bloodied glasses on the cover, charted at a lowly 49.