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Five cool celebrities from your youth who are old and shit now

BACK then they were iconoclastic counter-culture heroes. Now they’re decrepit and embarrassing. These five are sad testaments to your vanished youth: 

Bono

He was always earnest, but from about 1987-1993 Bono fronted the biggest band in the world, backed all manner of righteous causes and was passably cool. Now he’s a pious prick who writes shite, cringey poems about St Patrick? Getting older is inevitable. Becoming what Bono’s become isn’t.

Morrissey

Speaking of 80s heroes who thoroughly f**ked it, Morrissey’s all-downward trajectory has been devastating for Smiths fans and vegetarians alike. If having a preferred UKIP leadership candidate isn’t a sign that your mid-life crisis has seen you come out the other end a twat, what is?

Johnny Depp

Johnny was an icon of cool, starring in indie flicks and dating the most gorgeous women in the world. Until, clearly exhausted by his own coolness, he started doing shit big-budget films, smuggling dogs into Australia and being kind of a sad drunk dickhead.

Madonna

Another win for the mononyms, Madonna was a scandalous and unapologetic starlet who inspired a generation of women to break the rules. Unafraid of media mockery, she proved that you can still do cool pop music in your late 40s. And now she’s Botoxed to her ears and spends her days spouting bollocks on social media.

Ben Elton

Impeccably left-wing in glittery suits, Ben stuck it to the motherf**king man every Friday night in the late 80s, tearing the Thatcher government a new one and convincing a whole generation they’d be the ones to change things. Today he churns out novels and does Queen musicals and half his old fans vote Tory.

The EU-boat's torpedoes sped toward me as I cast my vote for Leave: a Real War story for freedom-fighting Brexiters

THAT morning in 2016 will stay with me for the rest of my life. Strafed by Brussels’s Stukas, I weaved desperately down the country lines to the polling station. 

My fellow commandos – my wife Heather, her sister Geraldine, their great-aunt Esther – were packed into my military-issue Rover 75 with me. Crack troops all of them, willing to lay down their lives for their country.

We lost the Stuka behind a particularly tall hedgerow and breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon. Up ahead loomed an EUSSR roadblock staffed by multilingual fascists armed and ready to make us swap our pens for easily-amended pencils.

‘Gun it,’ screamed Esther, and I jammed down the accelerator as she provided covering fire through the rear passenger window. A Spaniard was thrown into a hedge and I heard the gurgle of ‘Ach, Britisher svinehund,’ as a German died.

But at the next roadblock, they were ready for us. Machine-gun fire raked the car, tearing the hell out its sandstone leather interior and Esther’s throat. ‘Leave me,’ she croaked, as I slipped her a grenade so she could take some with her. She would not die in vain.

From then on we were on foot, avoiding Remainer patrols. I saw a man executed on the spot for carrying a photo of Farage in his wallet. I saw a family dragged off to life internment in Luxembourg for referring to Project Fear.

Finally we reached the polling station. Nothing stood between us and the referendum. Until the EU-boat surfaced in the playground.

‘VOTE!’ I screamed, and we frantically made our crosses as the torpedoes streaked toward us. We barely threw ourselves clear in time. But we’d done it. We’d defied the dictators and voted Leave.

‘I hope Boris remembers this, and uses it as a lesson for other nations fighting for freedom in years to come,’ I remember remarking. ‘Yes,’ said my wife, loyally. And he has.

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