Julian Assange Saves Christmas… !

SAINT NICHOLAS

He’s been doing this for like, seven or eight months now.  I thought I would get him out of the house.  His room is kind of starting to smell like feet, you know?

JULIAN ASSANGE

I get out plenty!  That Nick is just kidding around.  He’s only teasing when he says I’m hopeless.  Calls me his favourite first-world refugee when we’re shooting snooker.  He’s a big fan of brandy, him.  Yeah, but it was his idea to do the break in across the street.

SAINT NICHOLAS

I’ve been doing this Santa shit for ages – always pro bono, of course, eh, for over like, five or six hundred years, whatever.  First in the hinterlands, then ‘old Europe,’ and then Western culture swallowed the world and now me and the golden arches are the two most well-recognised symbols of the sacrificial calf.  So my territory has expanded, my labour costs are gigantic, and so on; obviously, no government believes in me, so I don’t have to pay taxes, but I do need to generate income to make the machine work.  We used to sell drugs, really early on we were trading spices, gold; but the last forty years, we’ve been producing pornography.

it’s all about the red felt uniform…

JULIAN ASSANGE

The US last year spent more on adult entertainment than they did on sport.  Like, all of it put together.  Nick is in the safest sector ever.  He’s always going to be able to do what he wants, because he’s invested in a guaranteed return; and luckily for children everywhere, what he wants to do is hand out presents once a year.  It’s a triple-win situation, really.

SAINT NICHOLAS

So, we were asked over by some of Julie’s people, and we thought, why not, hardly ever get lay-over time in London anymore… went in through the back door, and wouldn’t you know the kitchen and dining area were just choc-a-block with well-wishers!  We didn’t mind it at the time, everybody was well happy to see us, but later on we were wondering how many people are actually out on Christmas day itself, battling rails of coke, pumping their fists in the air to dance and house and grime and grinding against strangers?  I don’t want to sound like a stick in the mud, but I had no idea.

JULIAN ASSANGE

The old man fucking loved it, don’t let him act modest around you.  He is a dirty old puss, he is!

SAINT NICHOLAS

Yeah, I was the one who said, let’s go break in to the Harrods and shoot a porn scene in “Santa’s Grotto.”  We carry the film equipment all the time, you know it doesn’t take up as much space as it used to say, twenty, even five years ago.  Mainly just use it for podcasting really.  Anyway, I was out of my head on the blow, so much of that flying about, all these fucking Ecuadorans, man!  The ideas were coming at ninety miles an hour and I thought, let’s take some of these Latina girls across and make some fucking art tonight?!  Don’t let that Julie try and snow you, he was practically clapping like a seal and barking when he heard the idea, he was roaring out in front of the pack to get across the street!

JULIAN ASSANGE

We snuck over to Harrods with some pry-bars and slid in without much fuss.  Of course Nick would be adept at breaking and entering, what was I thinking… my old friend Monalina was having loads of fun with the mission, having gone so far as to smear on some face paint, ‘ziss is my war paint!’ she kept telling everyone in her provincial Swiss accent.  We were all pretty high.  We hunted around in the emergency lighting and found the Santa’s Grotto.  To be fair, it looked just like one you might find in any mall in middle America.  PVC pipe frames holding up scenes printed on backdrops, foil wrapped cubes to add depth and, hanging over everything, that semi-sheer cottony sheet that could be snow or cobwebs.  Nothing special.  One of the elves or production crewmember or whoever he was kept raving about the height of the plastic reindeer.  After a while, Nick’s phone rang, and he directed two girls in to the grotto, which he was calling ‘the set.’  He called these girls ‘the talent’  I remember Mona saying they had a contagious enthusiasm.

SAINT NICHOLAS

We filmed the scene, no problems, the lighting had a bit of a spotty, home-made feel to it, but everything went without incident.  We wiped the reindeer down and retrieved panties and whatever else had been flinged around the grotto.  Spirits were high and Julie was skinning up a blunt on the way out when it happened.  Someone was feeling a bit too gangster, got a bit larcenous and broke the window in front of a jewellers, which set off all the alarms in the whole fucking world from the sound of it.  Some asshole kid.

JULIAN ASSANGE

Could have been, I was completely fucked.  Knicked.  Processed.  Hanged in Guantanamo.  All because some asshole kid from the Embassy detail got a bit too full of wind.  After the half second of shock and paralysis brought on by the helplessness of the scene, I grabbed the cunt by his hair and held him down, screaming at him.  Monalina reminded me this wouldn’t solve anything, so I let him go.  These milk-teeth staffers, wet behind the ears, straight out of some graduate uptake scheme; these whelps can’t handle their vodka redbull at all.  Once again, Nick knew what to do and took charge.

SAINT NICHOLAS

We went right out the front doors.  Pretended to be a band of wino street musicians out much too late.  Nevermind we had only a harmonica and someone’s key ring between the lot of us; the cops blew past without too much scrutiny.  We were fucking wrecked, and the combination of appearing well-heeled and smelling like a brewery is a powerful suggestion in this part of town.  We limped off in the opposite direction of the blockade’s flickering blue lights.  A few blocks down, there was an off-license near Sloane Square where we got some more Courvoisier and a bag of ginger snaps.  Finally remembered to fire up the blunt Julie had rolled up.  When we got back up near the embassy, we realised the Metropolitan Police had knicked the sleigh while we were out tramping around waiting for them to clear off so we could get Julie back inside.  The missus just kept swearing at me on the phone when I told her.

JULIAN ASSANGE

I felt horrible, of course.  I was the one who had told him just put it on the pay-and-display parking ticket.  I had said, it’s Christmas, what fucking parking warden is out looking to bang-up a big rusty sled at this time of night.  How wrong I was.  It was only right that we take off across the rainy streets of London to rescue her from the impound; as it happened, Monalina had put some of her face-paint on me by this point, the yah-yeh was doing funny things to my head and she was calling me Caesar instead of my real name; I was consumed by the dramatic need to get “Santa,” and his leggy “Helpers,” home safely and soundly.

SAINT NICHOLAS

Helpers, they’re adult models for chrissakes!  Anyway, Julie was going on like it was some kind of heroic effort, but I think all the drugs had stilted his sense of self-importance; all he did was pay for the black cab and offer to cover half of the impound fee.  The important thing was, we managed to get him to agree to let us use the introduction scene we shot outside the Grotto.  He’s announcing the names of the talent one by one, the kids from the embassy are clapping and hollering.  It was just a joke at the time, but now it seems only fitting we take advantage of the participation of such a celebrity.  That should cover a bit of expenses, selling that content around!  Thanks, Julie!  Best of luck to you in the new year, and we’re never hanging around with your friends ever again!