The Dance of the Mesopotamian Fire Goat

I’d been limbering up for something close to an hour before I heard my name called. Not one to shun the limelight, I gathered up the loose lamé frills of my outfit, threw a few more silks over my arm, before I shuffled out onto stage, wondering if this would be last time that Judy’s enthusiasm for volunteer work would leave me in the full glare of public humiliation.

As soon as they saw me, the crowd went wild. Yet their ovation wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t hear laughter mixed with their gasps of surprise as I took my proper place in the middle of the stage. That is the difficult moment for any professional entertainer: those empty few seconds when you don’t have the familiarity of your act to make you feel secure. Back when we had our show on ITV, I would often feel nerves during the first few seconds after a commercial break. My mouth was never dryer than when I’d be saying words like: ‘And welcome back. Have you or your partner ever confessed to having an affair with a member of the Belgian royal family?’ Or: ‘Just before the break, we saw Alice here inflate her own intestines with a foot pump to impress Leo Sawyer...’

On this occasion, I ran a finger down to probe my tantric centre, to make certain that my ruby hadn’t been worked loose during my warm-up. Just the touch of that stone helped me focus, as it also made me think back to the moment, 24 hours earlier, when I’d been told that I’d be performing, semi-naked, to a crowd of local leisure tourism consultants in the town hall...

‘I’ve been reading your Twitter account,’ Judy had announced sometime after we’d settled down in front of the TV for the evening. Like most Friday night’s, her knife had already whittled a block of walnut into shavings piled on an old copy of ‘The News of the World’ spread out across her lap. ‘It makes me realise how little I really know you, Richard.’

Instinctively, I looked towards the door. I have no objection to Judy spending her spare time hand-carving mythic woodland creatures which she donates to charity but I do wish she wouldn’t look to start arguments when she’s holding eight inches of Bowie knife.

‘Does it?’ I asked, trying to concentrate on my copy of Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ which I’ve been annotating ahead of my plans to transfer it to documentary form later in the year. ‘And what have you discovered that you didn’t already know?’

‘Oh, just about the free belly dancing classes you’ve been giving people on a Friday afternoon.’

I lowered the book and peered nervously at the newly retired right side of the R&J ampersand. I had managed to keep my Friday afternoon dance classes a secret from Judy, who takes as dim view of my Twittering as she does the male belly dance, which she first saw performed by Russell Grant in the early eighties. However, I could see that were was no use denying it, though the calm look on her face did suggest that she didn’t know I’d been wearing her favourite broach in my navel.

‘Oh Richard!’ she laughed as she no doubt saw me edging away from her. ‘Come back! And don’t look so frightened! I’m not angry. I’m delighted that you’ve found yourself a hobby. It’s certainly more practical than that idea you’ve had about farming organic molluscs in the garden pond.’

That was a typical Judy remark: one part gentle praise, another part deep insult backed up with cold steel. The plans for the mollusc farm had still not been presented to the council but Judy was already there with her objections. And she was wrong to call it my idea when the proposal was originally put to me by Bill Oddie, who happens to be looking to get all his friends involved in the organic shellfish movement.

‘So, my belly dancing doesn’t make you angry?’ I asked, hoping to keep the mollusc debate for another day.

‘Of course not,’ she laughed and sliced away at the haunches of her barely formed faun.

‘So you don’t think it strange that a man approaching forty should instruct strangers in the art of the belly dance via the medium of social networking? I know you had qualms about my playing my banjo on MySpace and my posing for live art classes via Facebook...’

‘If you enjoy belly dancing, Richard, I’m not going to stop you,’ she said.

‘Only, I find it has helped with my back spasms...’

‘I’m sure that it would strengthen your pelvic floor considerably,’ she agreed.

I thought it best to mention that I wasn’t born with a pelvic floor, just an abnormally high anal ceiling.

‘And my abs have tightened up since I’ve started to shake them regularly,’ I added.

‘They would have no other choice,’ she smiled.

I relieved myself of a sigh and picked up my book. I was settling myself back into Kant’s solution to the knotty problems of existence and being German when Judy cleared her throat.

‘Of course, Richard,’ she said, ‘I might have mentioned your belly dancing to Judith. She’ll probably ring you about it later...’

‘Judith? Judith?’ I repeated. Then my heart did one of those strange things it does which makes you think it’s suddenly escaped your body and is already thumbing for a lift somewhere near Watford services. ‘Not Judith Chalmers?’

There was evil in Judy’s smile. I felt like I’d been picked up by a trucker with ‘Hate’ tattooed across one set of knuckles and ‘Hate’ across the other.

And that’s when the phone rang.

‘Judith!’ I cried, moments later as I nestling the phone under my chin. ‘Judy said you might be in touch.’

Admit it: I did a good job of hiding my displeasure. It’s always been one of my better qualities, praised by the head of ITV no less. I remember, back in the eighties, we had Robert Mugabe on ‘This Morning’ showing us how to mix his favourite fruit cocktails. The man actually thought I liked his pineapple punch so much that he wrote me out the recipe.

‘Oh , I need your help,’ said Judith Chalmers with the hushed ease of a woman who knows how to manipulate men to her will. I confess that I have something of a weak spot when it comes to Judith, who originally introduced me to the way of the commando. You might say that I owe her a lot and you’d be right. She saved me from underwear and I would be happy to save her from any equally tight or poorly ventilated spot.

‘You are my last hope,’ she said. ‘We’ve organised a Festival of Britain at the town hall tomorrow night and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has dropped out. He was going to demonstrate hen thatching but now he says his pigs have developed trenchsnout. I was hoping that you could fill in with some of your dancing. We’ve got a hundred leisure tourism consultants coming and I won’t be happy if we can’t provide entertainment worthy of the great good they do for the country.’

‘I’m honoured that you thought of me but my dancing is a very private thing known only to a few people,’ I explained.

‘Oh, that’s alright,’ replied Judith. ‘I’ve taken care of that.’

‘Taken care of what?’

‘I’ve put up posters...’

‘Posters?’

‘The posters announcing your hitherto hidden talent.’

If my heart wasn’t already being propositioned by a trucker stuck in a lay-by somewhere north of Watford services, it would have sank to its knees – had it knees, of course. I slouched against the wall and let my forehead to crack against the doorframe. The game was up. I was backed into a corner, taken out at the ankles, without a leg to stand on. In other words: I was arse naked to the shagpile without a stump to call my own.

‘Okay,’ I sighed, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Oh good,’ said Judith. ‘I’m sure we’ll all have a simply smashing time!’

Time is a strange thing. It’s taken me half an hour to type these reminiscences but I recollected them all in the time it took me to click a pair of thumb cymbals.

The noise focussed my attention back on the audience. I could feel the hot lights over my body; the thin fabric of the veils and sashes doing nothing to keep me cool. Yet centred in my navel was the large lump of Judy’s best jewellery, a cool reminder that the belly dance begins in the karmic centre of our being and ends at the tips of our fingers or Ipswich, depending on which school of belly dance you follow. I placed my hands above my head and looked to Judy, standing at the side of the stage, waiting for the signal.

I could put it off no longer. I nodded and she raised her trombone to her lips and began to play the old familiar seductive melody as my body began to writhe in the hypnotic fashion of The Dance of the Mesopotamian Fire Goat.

The Forgotten Man

The state of media intrusion in the this county is enough to turn a lesser man grey! I’ve just had to sedate Judy with an episode of 'Midsomer Murders' and a packet of Co-op Jaffa Cakes. The poor woman had suffered a shock which would have levelled even me had I not studied Buddhist mediation techniques during my time working for Radio Cumbria in the Far East all those years ago.

The shock came out of the blue. I checked my mobile phone about an hour ago and discovered eleven messages on the voicemail. Now, I don’t mean to boast but any one of seven messages would have added a few million onto the sales of tomorrow’s newspapers. A couple might have even raised questions in parliament and caused not one but three governments to fall.

Yet, apparently, while every celebrity in London has had their phone tapped, the Madeley mobile remains ignored. How difficult was it to guess that my pin-number was my inside leg measurement followed by my waist size: 3836?

It’s Judy I feel sorry for. I almost felt bad sending her up the telephone pole at the bottom of our drive to check that the line was tapped. Seeing the poor woman grip on with her thighs in this humid weather brought a lump to my throat. At first I thought it was pride but it was merely a touch of phlegm from shouting ‘squeeze your knees tighter, old girl!’

The outcome of all that effort – and the reason that Judy’s now in bed with John Nettles and a box of Jaffa cakes – was nothing less sinister than a deserted sparrow’s nest. Not a single bug, wiretap, or evidence of illegal surveillance.

I ask you: what is the world coming to when a man of my standing isn’t being monitored by the tabloids?

Well, Barry Madeley will not stand for it. I intend to write a letter of complaint to the ‘News of the World’ in the morning. I have a new career to fund and £700,000 pounds would have come in useful. Just think of how many boxes of Jaffa Cakes that would buy and double it since it’s ‘buy one get one free’ at the moment. However, even that is little solace at a difficult time like this.

Uncle Dick's Film Quiz

Can you name the film?

The Jesus Suit

My new braces (teeth, not trouser) got caught in my best cufflinks this morning. I won’t say what I was doing to get them trapped – it certainly had nothing to do with licking my own wrists, despite the evidence of the CCTV that Judy’s installed in the bathroom – but I will say that it shows you the lengths I’ll go to look both handsome and fashionable for my new solo career.

‘Are you sure you want to go to church, Richard?’ asked Judy as she manned my elbow and tried to part me from myself.

‘Barry,’ I replied, my voice muffled by six inches of quality cuff in a tapioca brown silk. ‘Will you please call me Barry?’

Judy gave my arm a tug and the cuff came clear but almost at the expense of an upper left incisor.

‘How many times have I told you that I’m not going to call you Barry?’ she replied. ‘It’s just ridiculous!’

‘And how many times have I got to show you the official documents proving that my name is now officially changed to Barry Madeley and that by...’

‘Oh, rubbish!’

‘... by not calling me Barry, you are denying me my rights as a human, a celebrity and as a Barry.’

My wife sat down on the edge of the bed and kicked off her pink frilled slippers. ‘You’ve changed, Richard,’ she said before she slipped to the floor in search of the black shoes she usually only wears on BAFTA nights. After a moment or two of activity under the bed and one sonorous ring against the chamber pot, she appeared again. ‘I mean, this new look just isn’t you. What on earth do you think you’re doing? A man your age getting his teeth straightened! And what do you think you’re wearing? You look like Des O’Connor having one of his senior moments.’

I had no need to defend myself. I could recognise the envy of a woman who had been left behind by the changing times. Judy has never been a fan of my crushed velvet jackets, my flared trousers with strips of silk running from hip to ankle. Judy is resistant to the eternal cycles of fashion and she won’t accept that my body has exactly the same ratio of body fat to exquisitely cut shank as it had when this fashion first came around in 1973.

‘Don’t worry, Judy,’ I said, straightening the bow tie given to me by Mickie Most. ‘Just because I’m dressed like this doesn’t change the way I feel about you. You are my one constant in an ever-changing world. You’re like the rock of Gibraltar.’

She glared at me.

‘But, obviously, without the baboons...’

That seemed to do the trick. ‘Do you really mean that, Richard?’ she asked, a sweet smile developing as she reached out for my hand.

I gave her hand a firm shake. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, introducing myself with a raffish charm, ‘the name’s Barry...’

How her face changed! She stuck a foot into a shoe wish enough force to cause a slight fold to develop in the carpet. I’ve always suspected that our carpet fitters used substandard carpet grips and this was the proof.

‘Barry! Barry! They say that insanity strikes men earlier than woman... And now he wants us to go to church! I don’t see why we need to go to church.’ She muttered this last bit but not so far under her breath that I couldn’t make it out.

‘We’re attending the house of the Lord because I believe that this new start is more than just a reconfiguration of the Richard&Judy partnership,’ I explained. ‘I think it’s a calling.’

‘A calling?’

‘You just can’t accept it, can you Jude, that I’ve been called. You know? Like that guy in the Bible who was told to pursue a solo career out in the desert.’

Judy frowned. ‘You mean Jesus?’

‘I’ll be facing my own demons. And who knows what temptations await me in the wilderness of light entertainment? The devil has many guises. Well, perhaps one less since Natasha Kaplinsky went to Channel 5.’

‘So, you are comparing yourself to the son of God?’

‘But not in any way that makes it blasphemous,’ I replied. ‘I’m just noting the similarities between my life and that of another handsome man who had the common touch and was widely misunderstood by an ignorant public too busy worshipping false gods, such as Richard Hammond.’

‘I knew there was a reason you’ve been wearing a lot of sandals lately,’ said Judy before she stood up and disappeared out on the landing.

Well, no more was said on the matter. We sat in silence as I drove the Ranger Rover at a Christian’s pace all the way to the local C of E. We would have been there much sooner if the Christian had moved out of the way but the fool didn’t seem to care how much bumper I applied to his tail lights.

At the church, a small crowd gathered to welcome us. They cheered Judy as she climbed out of the car, though I think there were a little surprised to see me given the things I’d said the last time I visited. However, they have a new vicar and I gave her my winning smile before I paused by a young woman parked in a wheelchair by the door.

‘God bless you, Uncle Barry!’ she said but I just smiled and lay my hand on her head. I’m not saying it would help her. I mean, I wasn’t about to restore to her the use of her legs. Or, at least, not immediately...

The Adventures of Baz Mad

The party lasted long into the night at Madeley HQ, here in our undisclosed part of North Londonshire. The great and good of showbiz had come to mark the end of the Richard&Judy partnership and Bruce Forsyth was there, too, entertaining us all with his soft shoe shuffles and his famous anecdote about a golf umbrella, Jimmy Tarbuck’s 9 iron, and a sticky eighteenth hole.

The night was a success worthy of our long career in television but, eventually, around 2am, I saw Judy tap her nose and fiddle with an earlobe and I knew it was time to ease our guests casually towards the front door. Or, if that didn’t work, drag them by whatever surgical enhancement provided a firm enough grip.

‘Have you seen the genuine Tudor buttress on the end of the house?’ I asked David Dickinson, who had spent most of the evening on his hands and knees, looking for maker’s marks beneath the IKEA coffee table.

‘Genuine Tudor!’ he cried. ‘This I’ve got to bloody see!’

He didn’t, of course, ‘see anything’. But once I’d got him to the front door he did feel the creped underside of my right boot placed in the small of his kidneys. Similar tricks worked on Alan Titchmarsh, Natasha Kaplinsky, and Dame Kelly Holmes, each of whom I’d managed to lure away from the buffet table with the promise of a drooping plumb tree, a photo opportunity, or the challenge of a sprint up the drive in aid of Cystic Fibrosis. In the process, I’d also managed to get Forsyth out the front door by tying a five pound note to a thread attached to Dame Kelly’s dress. I know she prides herself a running a good middle distance race but I’m sure even she was flagging when she turned the end of the road chased by Brucie out to top up his income.

Back in the house, the party continued to shed talent like the BBC during a pay review. A pair of recognisable sandals were sticking out from beneath Vanessa Feltz so I grabbed them by their heels and gave a yank. There was a loud squeak and a ‘pop’ noise, much like a cork coming from giggly bottle, before the yank produced a Yank. An anglicised Yank, to be specific, dressed in quality tweeds to go with his Jesus boots and horn-rimmed spectacles.

‘Oy! What did you do that for?’ cried Vanessa and made a move to drag Johnny Depp back towards her.

‘Where am I again? What am I here to promote?’ asked Johnny, probably confused due to the usual high build-up of CO2 in Vanessa’s cleavage.

‘I think it’s time to let Johnny go,’ I said, quietly pleased with myself for rescuing my favourite Hollywood ‘A’ list star from my second favourite member of the triple D brigade.

‘Well, would you like me to take him home?’ she asked.

I know her games and I couldn’t do that to the poor lad. I tucked a ten pound note into his breast pocket and whispered into his ear the directions for the local bus stop. That’s the thing you can sure about with Johnny Depp: he’s a true professional. You only need to direct him once and he’ll give you a performance worthy of the Number 14 to Kensington.

By this time, Judy had managed to get rid of most of the minor celebs, working her charm to great effect. Whenever they threatened to stay, she’d sob on their shoulders, breath tales of woe in their face and ask if they could help revive her career. There’s nothing more certain to upset an ambitious young celebrity than the taint of failure or retirement. And any that prove particularly resilient to tears will eventually scarper if you offer to put them in touch with Les Dennis’ agent.
Soon, we were down to one old favourite who would be stubborn to shift given that early in evening she’d disappeared with a bottle of Drambuie. Thankfully, Vanessa stayed long enough to help us in our search.

Eventually, I found Cilla Black down in the cellar, blowing tunes over the empty end of the empty whisky bottle.

‘Surprise surprise!’ she’d cried as I opened the door of an old wardrobe in which Judy used to keep her spigot collection.

‘Come on, Cilla,’ I said as I lifted her from the wardrobe and threw her over Vanessa’s shoulder.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Vanessa, ‘I’ll take her from here.’

‘I used to sing with the Beatles!’ cried Cilla.

‘Of course you did,’ I replied. ‘There had to be a good reason they broke up.’

The last I saw of the two of them was Vanessa walking down the drive with Cilla over her shoulder, trying to pat out the rhythm of ‘Obla Dee Obla Da’ on Vanessa’s bottom.
With the last farewell made, Judy put out the milk bottles before I turned the lock on the front door and we both breathed a sigh, or, more accurately, two sighs divided by the familiar ampersand that has served us so well.

‘So, that’s that for Richard & Judy,’ I said.

‘We’ve had a good run but I think we’re making the right decision to retire before you hit your mid-life crisis,’ she replied moving in for a cuddle.

‘Indeed we have,’ I replied, my arm draping around Judy’s shoulders. ‘I just wonder what the future has in store for Barry Madeley...’

‘Who’s Barry Madeley?’ asked his wife.

‘Barry is my new name,’ I said, already cursing myself for having spoken my thoughts aloud. These were plans to which I had failed to make my wife privy. It was time for some firm explanations. ‘You see: I don’t want people expecting to hear “& Judy” whenever my name is mentioned during my solo career. That’s why I’ve changed my name to Barry. I’ve been meaning to tell you ever since it became official two months ago.’

‘Two months! But I don’t understand why you’d change it. Richard goes so well with Judy.’

‘Well the name’s now Barry,’ I said, ‘but if you want to be informal, you can call me Baz.’

‘But I don’t want to be married to a Baz,’ she replied.

‘So call me Bazzer or even Bazroid if you prefer the exotic.’

But Judy just fell silent and realising that our hug had gone cold, I gave a shrug and climbed the stairs to bed. I was already fluffing my pillows by the time Judy joined me.

‘I don’t understand why you won’t let me call you Richard,’ she said.

‘Look, Jude,’ I replied, ‘I know you’re attached to that name but I’m seeking a new audience that is beyond your reach. I want to appeal to dynamic go getters in my own age range. If they’re older than 35, they’re ancient in my book, Daddio. Baz Mad doesn’t do fossils.’

Judy’s face turned a shade of beetroot high in the Betanin, which as you’ll know, is the chemical that makes Judy red.

‘Baz Mad?’ she spluttered.

I’d done it again. I hadn’t meant to let Judy in on my plans so early on in my separate career but the cat was out of the bag, as they say. So far out that it was probably thinking of bringing a dead rat back in through the back door.

‘I thought I’d abbreviate my surname as well,’ I explained. ‘“Baz Mad” has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? Sounds a bit like Gaz Top and do remember how successful he was?’

‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Judy, sourly folding down the sheets on her side of the marital mattress.

‘Abbreviations work in this increasingly fast culture of ours. Twitter has taught me a lot about being brief, Jude, and “Baz Mad” will look great on the cover of my novel...’

‘Your novel?’ asked Judy.

That’s when I realised that I’d done it again. As you know, Judy sees herself as a writer of some potential.

‘That’s right. I’ve decided that I want to write fiction,’ I said. ‘And I know what you’re going to say. We agreed that you would be the one writing erotic fiction and I’m not going to step on your toes, Jude. I won’t touch your eighteenth century courtesan, Jemima Flirt. Oh no! Baz Mad’s erotic fiction will be of a different tone altogether.’

Judy sank onto the edge of the bed without even bothering to fluff her pillows.

‘Erotic fiction? But that means you’ve stolen my dream!’

‘Not stolen, Jude. I merely took an interest and found I had a natural flair for soft-core eroticism. I’ve been writing my book for many months. It shouldn’t bother you. It will have been published months before you get yours in the bookshops.’

‘Oh Richard! It was my dream to publish a book of erotic tales.’‘And your dream is still your dream, Jude. However, Barry just got there before you. Here,’ I said, sliding my four hundred page manuscript from beneath the bed. ‘Cast your eyes over that. But take care. Some of this is so juicy it will drip off your chin. It’s a story set in a Lancashire town about a tyre fitter and his mature lover.

She looked at the front page.

‘Mrs Chatterley’s Rover: A Tale of Six Strokes?'

‘Catchy, isn’t it?’

She snorted or perhaps just cleared her throat before she began to read aloud from one of the more sexually explicit parts of the book, when the tyre fitter first meets Mrs. Chatterley on the A573 outside Golborne, Lancashire.

As he jacked up her rear, her marigolds squeaked seductively on his bald crown like two rubberised otters in a frisky dance. His passion overwhelmed her; her frigidity falling away like the rust on a large lug nut, oiled with WD40 and tapped with his spanner.

‘I feel so hot and dirty,’ she said but he just whistled and kicked her knees. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to rebore you cylinders,’ he replied.

Ten minutes later, her foot was suspended by the elasticated cord of her pine air freshener as she felt her fan belt snap and her hot exhaust splutter his name. ‘Ronald’.

‘My Rover’s a coupe!’ she cried. ‘It doesn’t have four doors!’ But he knew different as he packed her generous luggage space and ran a masterful finger over her vulcanised tread, every stroke of his foot pump engorging her inner tube, her being swollen to eternity!

Judy sat there in silence for nearly a minute.

‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Did that make you feel better? Did you like that bit at the end. Thought it made it sound a bit like D.H. Lawrence.’

She handed the manuscript to me and slid her legs under the sheets before leaning over and putting a kiss on my upper right cheek.

‘Richard,’ she said, ‘I should have known I had nothing to worry about.’
And with that, she reached over, turned off the bedside lights, and left me listening to her snoring that may have trembled the bed but they also made Baz Mad feel very contented with the world.

If You're Buying A CD This Christmas...

Click the photo for the track listing

The room echoed to the dying notes of the Nigerian National Anthem as I wiped a beady drop from my brow. The Madeley ridge may be thought as handsome as some Alpine peak but it too has been scarred by business as bad as Julie Andrews hammering on about songs they’ve sung for ten centuries or more. Today’s bad business was clearly up there: a frown as heavy as Dame Julie dressed like a nun. A big nun with pockets weighed down with sodden puppies.

I opened my eyes, hoping to ease the anxiety, but the bright glare of expectation made me wince and the frown pinch the bridge of my nose.

‘Well?’ asked my wife, wide eyed, her lower lip chewed almost down to the gum. ‘What did you think?’

‘That was remarkable,’ I replied. ‘If I hadn’t known better, Jude, I would have thought you a professionally trained trombonist.’

Judy flushed with pride. ‘There’s nothing wrong with amateurism if it brings passion to the job at hand.’

‘Or the job at lip,’ I quipped.

But Judy was beyond jokes. She was in that realm of pretension where all musicians dwell. She slid the CD from the Bang and Olufsen before snapping it back into its case. ‘But do you think the album worked as a concept?’ She was speaking in a tone that made her sound not unlike a Pet Shop Boy talking Wittgenstein. I knew I had to take care.

‘Without a doubt it does,’ I replied but thought it better say something else before she tried to draw me into explaining the album’s concept. I’ve never been any good at spotting concepts. If I had to describe the album in one intelligently argued statement, it would go something like: ‘prrrrp’ with an undercurrent of ‘paarrrp’. It’s hardly the music criticism of Tony Parsons. It’s not that bad. But it would still be lower than level Judy would expect of me.

‘I couldn’t hear much of Cilla’s backing vocals,’ I offered.

Judy latched onto the subject like I knew she would. It was like watching a Gecko gumming a tourist’s big toe. ‘I made sure we buried Cilla in the mix,’ she explained. ‘She’s a lovely woman but she will drown out a trombone solo.’

‘Well, you deserve all the success that I’m sure will come your way,’ I said and stood up. ‘You are without doubt a wonderfully gifted woman.’ And with that, I planted a kiss on her brow cheek before encouraging my slippers to make a quick exit to the garden shed from where I’m now writing this despatch.

To be fair to Judy, the album is a masterpiece of the solo trombone. She’s been squirreled away in different recording studios for months working on it. It’s a relief to be finally able to talk openly about her achievement of getting the sixty seven recorded tracks down to a more manageable fourteen.

It’s also a miracle that the Press still haven’t had wind of the album. It’s going to press next week and will hopefully be charting by Christmas. Though it might not be a ‘Sgt Pepper’ as a concept, each track is a crafted by Judy’s lips, lungs, and larynx. It’s like having Beatles without Ringo. And what she does to that classic morality tale, ‘Cake or Biscuit’, is nothing short of genius.

It’s why I’ve broken my blogging sabbatical to do the husbandly thing and give it a little promotion. Recommend it to your friends. It might only be a novelty for Christmas or perhaps an ideal present for a family member who’s infirm or can’t quite know how to use a CD player, but this album is one I recommend you go out and buy. Don’t download it from Bitorrent. And don’t go applying for tickets to your local lending library with no intention of borrowing books but to rip off their entire CD collection. ‘Wine, Music & Trombone’ will be worth a fortune in years to come but priceless the moment you put it in your CD player. Go out and buy it now. Or next week, when it should be available from all good music stockists.

A Day On The River

The farcical nature of the lurid headlines that accompany any development in the Richard & Judy saga are perhaps more apparent to me than anybody else. Judy is far too engrossed in the affairs at her Snooker and Billiard Club for any of the headlines to really affect her, whereas I’m a man with his eyes fixed on the here and now, measuring the temperature of the cultural waters with my smooth and (some might say) debonair elbows.

‘How did they hear about our taking part in Strictly Come Dancing?’ I asked, as I drew Judy’s eye to the newspaper headlines from earlier last week. Her back was creaking with the strain of rowing us up the long stretch of river towards the start line of the pro-celebrity boat race they hold in our undisclosed part of rural North London each year. We were a little late on account of my forgetting to pack my parasol and Judy was rowing furiously to get us there on time.

Judy puffed out her cheeks as the boat rolled into a stretch of turbulent current. ‘I guess... they found out... because... you’ve been flapping... your yap... on Twitter again,’ she gasped.

‘I’m quite discreet whenever I tweet,’ I said in my defence as I stretched out with a loud yarn that ended with my hand dipping lazily into the water. ‘In fact, if it weren't such hard work, I would have brought my laptop with me now. I’d quite like to tweet about the pleasures of boating.’

One of Judy’s oars got snagged in a bit of weed and she cursed as she dragged it in. A fisherman’s line had got wrapped around the coxswiddle (forgive me if I don’t know the exact technical terms), binding the weeds to the oar along with a newly dead swan. I turned away as Judy set about cutting them away with her teeth.

‘Yes,’ I mused, ‘the pleasures of boating...’

Once we were back under way and Judy was into her 72 strokes per minute rhythm, she returned to the topic of our previous discussion. ‘You might think you’re discreet, Richard,’ she replied, spitting out a swan feather and a fragment of beak, ‘but you’ve already let slip about your nocturnal wanderings.’

‘I’m cursed with an unrealistically small bladder,’ I explained, lifting my hand from the water as I realised that it was likely to set me off. ‘It's not my fault I have to visit the bathroom five times a night.’

‘Well,’ sniffed Jude, ‘I suppose you can’t defy physics. A man either has svelte hips or a generous capacity for liquid retention.’

That, I couldn’t deny. The Madeleys have always been of a slender cast; our hips 24% narrower than the girth of the average ‘A’ list celebrity (discounting, of course, Phil Jupitus and Johnny Vegas). It accounts for my natural abilities to move easily around on a sofa. Many have been the times that people have asked me how I move from one position to another within the fraction of a second it takes a camera to change angle. I put it down to my whip-like hips. I can go from open-thighed casual banter to knee-tight penetrative questioning in the blink of an eye. Next time you meet me, ask me to show you my ‘hip crack’. There are not many people who are able to break the sound barrier with their pelvis. As far as I know, it’s just me, Tom Jones, and Katie Price, although I have been told that her hips are now mostly made from rubber so it doesn’t count if it came to World Records.

‘I should really get Dennis to put out a press release denying this,’ I said, picking up the newspaper again. ‘I know you’re eager for this Strictly Come Dancing gig, Jude, but I worry that it wouldn’t sit well with my new younger audience. I don’t want to alienate my Twitter followers by being seen doing the cha-cha-cha with Bruce Forsyth. No offence, Jude, but what would my followers think of their favourite Uncle Dick if he portrayed himself as part of “the older generation”? Oh no. I can’t just think about us now, Jude. I have to think about the likes of @lurethesea and @Boltonwanderer who are begging for me to teach them the banjo. And then there’s @LaChatNoir and @alangoodenough, good people and talented in their own special ways. There’s my good friend @trevward who is currently learning judo so he can become by bodyguard. And what about @Drolgerg? It’s a public service to keep a man like that off the streets. @midfieldgeneral too, with his unwholesome interest in “On the Buses”, or @rebeccaholder who is just finishing drawing my adventures in comic strip form. And that’s not even mentioning @red1hols (and his blog), @Rasberrysmile, @zebedeejane, @BigDaws, @weenick, @stormyjoolz, @PAFoster, @Jellybabycakes, @over40something (who also has a blog), @Cigleris, @2legs, @ladyliz, @MandyPandy32 (whose cause, Jude, I keep saying deserves promoting), @oleuanna, @Footbacon in Sheffield, @HomoAsbo (he scares me, Jude, he scares me), @RealMissyBlues, @Tori_Da (with her unfortunale Harry Potter obsession), @TrippyPip, @fuzzilu, @welshracer, @martinpickering, @lightnet1, @Catvamp, @maxine_c, @diskgrinder, @lauramcguire83, @kandysays and @debsa. Who is to look after them? Especially @debsa...’

By the time I’d finished with this quite spontaneous roll call from off the top of my head, we were about two miles further up the river and Judy had apparently forgotten that I’d asked her a question. We turned a final bend in the river and the start line came into view. The other boats were already ready and the race officials were soon waving us to get into line.

‘Better bend your back, love,’ I said. ‘Don’t want to annoy Trevor MacDonald. Not after he disqualified us last year after my urine tested positive for ambrosia.’

As Judy moved us into the outside line, a shout went up from a familiar and not-too-welcome source.

‘You took your bloody time,’ shouted David Dickinson from his canoe. He was already down to his vest and his muscles glistened in the morning sun like hand crafted walnut knobs on a Queen Anne commode.

‘Ah, belt up Dickinson,’ I cried, swatting in his direction with my rolled up parasol. ‘You should just get ready to suck at our wake.’

‘You cheeky bloody bugger,’ he cried back but I dismissed him with a two fingered wave.

‘Come on,’ I muttered to Jude, ‘let’s give him a run for his money.’

Were I a latter day Patrick O'Brian, I would describe how I, as both master and commander of my vessel, had tightened the rigging, lay aside my cucumber sandwich and given Judy a speech worthy of Trafalgar. I would describe how her sinews tightened like rope, taught in the stiffening nor-easterly, as, from the embankment, the cry went up and Ronnie Corbett’s voice echoed across the lake.

‘Ah, ha! Now then... Well! Ha! As the bishop said to the nudist... Oh my goodness! Go!’

Judy’s arms worked those oars like she was back skinning otters on our holiday in the Faeroe Isles. She has an upper body strength that belies her size and femininity. Many times we’ve had big name Hollywood actors on the show and, in the green room later, I’ve suggested they try arm wrestling with Judy. They look at me as though I’m mad but it’s only when Jude has rolled up a sleeve that they’ve realised I was serious. She beat Sylvester Stallone four times about five when we were back on ITV and he was in his Rambo prime.

Say what you like about Dickinson, he’s got some stamina. He stayed with us up to the mile mark but then caught some of our wash and lost ground rapidly.

‘You hear me Madeley? The next time you won’t be so bloody lucky!’

‘Well next time, perhaps you shouldn’t use a mahogany canoe!’

Judy liked that. Or I think she did. It was hard to tell the woman’s emotions when she’s as red as a beetroot and sweating like Lee Evan’s in a microwave.

As we crossed the finishing line, she fell back and I cracked open a bottle of champagne I’d brought with me to celebrate our -- or, I suppose, more correctly, I should say ‘my’ -- victory.

‘Well,’ I said, standing up and waving to the crowd. ‘Today, Richard & Judy have conquered the Thames. Who knows what other victories lie ahead?’

At those words, the right side of the ampersand sat up, her brow beaded with sweat. ‘So, does that mean we’re entering “Strictly Come Dancing”?’

I pulled my lips from the bottle and wiped the fizz from my lips. ‘We’ll see, Jude,’ I said, ‘we’ll see...’

The Real Story Behind Yesterday's Richard&Judy Announcement

Stretched out on her La-z-Boy recliner about a month ago, my dear wife, Judy, switched off the vibrating headrest for a moment and turned to me with a quizzical look chevroned between her brows.

'You know,' she said, gesturing with her bar of the dark yet milky towards her favourite film playing on our 72 inch plasma widescreen, 'how on earth are we meant to compete with this?'

I looked up over my book and dragged my spectacles to the end of my slender and twin nostrilled Julius Caesar.

'Compete?' I asked, following the aim of her Whispa bar to the sight of Bruce Willis' first and best bloody vest staining the screen red. 'What makes you think we need to compete?'

Judy shrugged. 'Look at the time, Richard. It's on at the same hour as our show would be playing on Watch.'

'So?' I asked softly, never one to take Judy's worries too seriously.

'They work by different rules on satellite TV,' she replied. 'Unless you're going to start wearing vests and shooting terrorists in your bare feet, we're never going to attract a big enough audience on Watch.'

I could see her point. With bloody violence oozing out of Sky Movies pre-watershed, why would anybody choose to sit down and watch Judy and myself interviewing Simon Le Bon about his new apple orchard in Herefordshire?

'You worry too much,' I said, bringing the conversation to premature close. Judy shrugged and pressed the big red button the recliner's arm. The room was quickly filled with the sound of electric motors and chattering teeth, and I went back to my monograph on sub-atomic physics.

I thought no more about Judy's fears until last week when she was out leading her brass band in a spot of light regimental parading around the neighbourhood.

I'd come in after a hard day covering for Sarah Kennedy down at the BBC. I had the house to myself so I naturally slipped off my trousers and fed myself into my favourite dressing gown. Not only did the silk feel good against my skin but the ermine trim tickled my thighs in a manner both pleasant and relaxing.

It was around eight o'clock and I had punched in the code for Sky Movies. Alien3 was just coming on and, being a huge admirer of Sigourney Weaver, I decided to spend the rest of the night in her company. Soon I was sitting with a tub of Ben & Jerry's pistachio ice cream in my lap and was I tutting at the bit where the late dear Brian Glover disappears through the ceiling in the spray of an arterial fountain. That's when the phone rang.

I picked it up, slipped it beneath my chin and carried on scooping the cold stuff.

'Madeley,' I said.

'Dickie!' cried a voice.

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with either Ben or Jerry wedged between my thighs. It was The Agent.

'I'm a bit busy,' I explained. 'Sigourney's down to just her underwear and a flame thrower.'

'I'm ringing with some bad news,' he said. 'Watch are having second thoughts about your Twittering.'

'My Twittering?'

'They think you're doing too much of it and you're being far too interesting.'

'Pah!' I spat. A pistachio arced across the room and stuck to the end of Charles Dance's proboscis.

'I know,' said The Agent. 'Rather foolish of them but they feel it might look a bit odd if your followers on Twitter got any bigger than the average audience watching you on Watch.'

'I see,' I said. 'So, you want me to quit?'

'Not quit,' said The Agent. 'They just want you to be a little less entertaining. You know… Take a leaf out of Philip Schofield's book. Make lots of meaningless statements like: "oh, that sounds interesting" and "I haven't thought of that but is it purple?"'

'Is it purple?'

'That's the sort of the thing they're after,' he said. 'Listen, I've emailed you a few suggestions. Give it some thought and tell me what you think. But you've got to change your ways Dickie. The people at Watch won't stand for any more of your nonsense.'

Well, after this conversation, my mind couldn't rest. With Sigourney still battling men in latex suits, I dragged my new laptop to my lap and powered it up.

It's Dell XPS Studio 13, which meant that my lap went from about -5% to something in the high scorching. Frankly, I was glad that my thighs didn't shatter like a red-hot alien under a sudden shower of cold water.

Date: Thu, 29 April 2009 21:29:11 +0000

From: ************** <*******@**********.co.uk>

To: dickmadeley@yahoo.co.uk

Message-Id: <4a065b155c354b3f9d41453f@*****.co.uk>

Subject: Your bloody Twittering

Mime-Version: 1.0

Dear Dick,

When are you going to learn? I've just come off the phone with the people from Watch. They are very displeased with you, Dickie, dear boy. They've been reading your Twitter account and think it's most inappropriate. They want to know why you can't be this entertaining on the show! Can't you at least get a few of your Twitter followers to 'follow' you onto Watch?

So, we've been banging a few ideas around and we think it's best if you stop being so damn interesting on Twitter. It looks bad for the show. Look at how Schofield does it. Can't you Twitter like him? He never once outdoes his show. Remember, Dickie, that banality is the key. That's why we want you to try a few of these @Schofe-like 'tweets'.

'Interesting. I like pudding.'
'I think that's currently unlikely.'
'Chicken? LOL. I'd rather have feathers.'
'I don't. Judy has the bigger thumb.'
'Yes but sometimes no. Other times: maybe.'
'I had one. I fell off and I couldn't glue it back on.'
'Ditto.'
'Perhaps.'
'Too soon.'

The list went on for page after page of this tedious stuff and, when Judy got home at ten, she found me blubbering in front of the TV, a bucket of melted ice cream at my side and the large shaved head of Ms. Sigourney Weaver looking down on my from the TV.

'When will you learn that she only ever goes as far as her knickers in these films?' Judy mocked as she dropped her trombone case by the door.

'It's not that,' I said and explained about The Agent's phone call and Watch's concern at my Twittering.

Judy's face hardened like she was trying to blow the high C at the end of 'The Thunderbird's March'.

'Well, that's it,' she said, coming to put a consoling arm around my shoulder. 'If it's a choice between your Twittering and our show on an obscure satellite channel, I choose your Twittering.'

I wiped away a tear or possibly even two.

'Really?' I gasped. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Judy has often expressed how she frowns upon my involvement with social networking, comparing it with the time I took an interest in amateur operatics in order to wear lederhosen.

'Richard. You have to do what your heart tells you. If you really want to waste your time and talent making glib comments to thousands of strangers, then that's what you should do. I will not stand in your way.'

'Jude,' I said, pulling her towards me. 'You've made the happiest man in the mid-five thousand followers.'

And that's why, yesterday, we made the announcement that the show will be ending on Watch. To be honest, it's something of a relief. I won't have to endure constant questions about viewing figures and I will have time to explore new avenues. Watch will miss us more than we will miss Watch and our future is now an open book of our own writing. In Judy's case, it's an erotic novel based around her heroine, the buxom eighteen-century courtesan, Jemima Flirt.

I, on the other hand, will continue to Twitter, continue to update this occasional blog, and continue to explore the vastness of this island Earth, cloaked in the moonlight of opportunity, the heat of circumstance, and the twilight of accomplishment.

Or, as I put it so eloquently in my official statement, 'We will be doing stuff together and stuff apart'. And I hope you will continue to be with me as I do that stuff.

God bless you. God bless Richard & Judy. And God bless all who sail in us.

All Aboard!

I know that, for many of you, it’s hard not to envy me. After all, I’m a man whose glands have been probed by medical science for an answer to that age old riddle: why some of us have hugely successful careers in the media while others are mere Keith Chegwins bobbing along the evolutionary stream that heads towards the tar pit of late night Channel 5. However, as my increasing reluctance to update my blog demonstrates, I’m also a man who has to occasionally keep his glands close to his chest.

Ever since I finished my last book (yet to find a publisher but still destined to be 'the next big thing') I have hesitantly toyed with various ideas. How should the world see Uncle Dick Madeley next? In what guise would he appear unto you? As a novelist? Faith-healer? President? Saviour? In the end, I settled for all four.

My next project will be the biggest yet, involving a few hundred tons of iron and a tight construction schedule in a Belfast dockyard. The Richard & Judy Marine Fleet is my own brainchild. I intend it to help solve many of the world’s problems. Not only will we provide an armed presence off the coast of Somalia, we will help create new trade routes thereby stimulating the world in the depths of recession. What’s more, our floating palaces will become havens for anybody wanting to escape swine flu.

Heading the fleet with be the 150,000 tonne ‘Dicktanic’, in which we hope to carry thousands of our loyal viewers on a six month cruise around the waters of light chat and topical frivolity, with only the occasional tear along the way. I’ll be your captain and my first mate is called Judy, in charge of life rafts, catering, heavy machinery, and the brig.

There are some suggestions that I’m mad. ‘What do you know about cruise liners?’ I’ve heard people say. I reply that I think it’s important for ‘talent’ to take the middle-men out of the business of communicating with an audience. As publishers stand in the way of writers, TV executives stand in the way of talent such as Judy and myself, who should always be in touch with our natural audience. Why take any mountain to an unnamed religious deity when you can bring unnamed religious deities to the mountain? Only, in this case, the unnamed religious deity’s is named Dick and smells faintly of peppermint. You, by the way, are the mountain.

So, that’s where I’ve been. That’s what I’ve been up to. And that’s what I’ll be doing in the near future when I hope to see you all sailing on the Dicktanic. Don’t forget that the evening cabaret starts at eight and we have acts that are only legal in international waters.

From The Pool

Another Chinese SPAM attack today. They seem to be bypassing the word verification, so I've now enabled full comment moderation. Not that I'm allowing it to annoy me. I've enjoyed a day in the pool and will continue to enjoy subsequent days being hot, wrinkled, and sexier than ever. The Chinese will never defeat me so long as I'm smeared in Ambre Solaire body lotion and have Cheggers to distract the summer gnats.

Spammers from China.

You write a blog, take care to craft its words, its pictures. You care about your readers. You try to put the least number of obstacles before them to prevent them reading.

And the minute you turn your back, some individuals (perhaps it’s best if I just refer to them as ‘scum’) deface your blog with hundred (yes hundreds) of spam comments. In Chinese. And what’s even better is that there’s no way to delete all these comments in one or two simple operations. I have to now begin going through every single comment, clicking half a dozen times to get rid of each one.

Thank you.

[I've counted them. 923 comments to be deleted. I might as well just shut this bloody blog... It's not worth the *many* hours it will take me to clean this mess up. Two years of work ruined by people who create nothing but want to make easy money by detroying other people's work. Scum. Absolute scum.]

Piers Morgan's Life Stories

When I agreed to be interviewed by Piers Morgan, I didn’t realise that I’d get the full hour-long treatment. Tonight’s show is as in-depth a profile about the Madeley phenomenon as you could ever hope to see, record to the Sky+ box, burn to recordable DVD, or have tattooed across your belly like some postmodern version of the Bayeux Tapestry. It also marks the beginning of twelve months of celebrations around the country ending, early next year, with the burning of effigies of Richard Hammond (or Madeley-lite, as Judy calls him) and then the unveiling of my statue in Trafalgar Square. My thighs cast twelve feel wide in bronze promise to become a new gathering point for tourists everywhere and, we hope, help stimulate this flagging economy if not your deepest longings as sexual beings.

On tonight’s show I also talk openly about my relationship with Judy, my charity work on behalf of the disappearing Norfolk chipmunk, and my long-standing feud with Jeremy Paxman over the correct pronunciation of the phrase ‘vulcanised rubber’. Piers reveals himself to be a sensitive interviewer and I open up more than I’d wanted to about my personal life, Judy’s screwdriver collection, and the tribulations of being the nation’s most potent example of the male gene.

I’ve seen the final edit of the show and, unfortunately, most of my two and a half-hour rant about Twitter, blogging, and rival internet personalities has been left out. Also missing is the first public announcement of my starring role in Charlie Kaufmann’s reworking of the David Lean classic ‘Brief Encounter’. I had spoken quite eloquently about how excited I am by the script, which transforms Celia Johnson’s role into that of Natasha Kaplinsky’s disembodied head which my character falls in love with as he carries it in a travel suitcase on a publicity trip to Manchester. However, Piers has, perhaps wisely, chosen to leave these moments out of a show which is more of a celebration of my past accomplishments rather than my impending rise to Hollywood, world celebrity, and Godhead.

So, if you want to catch up with the Richard Madeley omnibus, you’d be well advised to tune in tonight. 10PM. ITV. It will make you remember why your TV remote control has a button labelled ‘3’.

Hungarian Goulash

If I’ve been silent these past few weeks, I’ve had good reason. In fact, I’ve had more than one good reason. My lap has been heavy with good reasons, my pockets full to overflowing with good reasons. I’ve even had good reasons coming out of my nostrils, good reasons coming out of my ears. There hasn’t been an orifice that hasn’t been excreting good reasons. And all for a good reason.

‘Richard, I’m worried about you,’ said Mrs. Madeley one morning about a month ago.

‘Me?’ I said, looking up at her standing at the top of her step ladders. Judy was applying a coat of green emulsion in the shape of giant fig leaf to the new mural we’d had painted on the dining room ceiling. The naked figure of a recumbent Jonathan Ross was the product of some misguided artistic licence on behalf of our decorator. The resulting eight feet run of Jonathan’s limp manhood had been far too lifelike for Judy’s tastes and she’s been unable to overcome the feeling that it was going to crush her whenever she sat down for dinner.

Judy’s elbow worked the roller as she spoke. ‘I worry about how you’ll survive on TV once I go down to Cornwall to write my erotic novels based around my heroine, the buxom eighteen-century courtesan, Jemima Flirt.’

‘I’m glad you ask,’ I replied, putting my glass of brandy to one side and folding my newspaper. ‘I’ve been giving some thought to the adventures of Miss Flirt and have come up with some jolly romps that I’d like to run past you. Now close your eyes, Jude... Well, perhaps not close them completely, given you’re atop that ladder, but imagine, if you will, that it’s late in the evening of 1734 and the local poetaster, Sir Clive Jameson, has just finished composing his latest dirty limerick in his rooms, when who should come to his door with a newly cleansed spittoon but the buxom Miss Flirt... “Come hither with my snot bucket, wench!” says he...’

Judy paused, her hand inches from Jonathan’s glossy spheres. ‘You don’t honestly think you’ll be helping me write my books, do you Richard?’ She pointed a fig-leaf-green finger my way. ‘Stop thinking that you can write. You’re staying on TV where your smouldering good looks might still earn us a few quid.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, my enthusiasm didn’t lie in erotic novels and never has done. Not only do I find their prose rather flat but I also find that the pages tend to be stuck together wherever the action has hotted up.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s always those wildlife documentaries I’ve always been keen on making...’

‘Wildlife?’ asked Judy, wobbling on her ladder. ‘What kind of wildlife?’
It was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. Rarely does my wife take a real and active interest in my ambitions, so over the course of the next fifteen minutes, I outlined my plans to make a documentary about my second favourite mammal.

‘And that’s why I want to go and be the first man to film the Giant Hungarian Ferret,’ I said in conclusion.

Judy had climbed down from her ladder and was now sitting at the head of the table examining the brochure I’d had professionally printed for occasions such as this. It covered the whole proposal for any potential investor, including the kind of funding I’d need to complete the documentary and the estimated audience who’d enjoy watching it. Judy seemed impressed by the figures. She mumbled a few questions and I did my best to answer them until, eventually, she closed the brochure and looked out at me from beneath a relaxed brow thick with green paint.

‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ she said.

‘You do?’

‘If it means that you won’t be hanging around the cottage telling me how to write my book, then I’m all for it. In fact, the sooner I get you over to Hungary, the better it will be for all of us.’ And with that she whipped out her chequebook and scribbled out a figure well in excess of the amount I needed to get my project started.

Well, that truly excited me. To have Judy’s support in an endeavour this big: is there any wonder why I haven’t had time to write this blog? Not forty eight hours passed before I had packed my bags and I was meeting a documentary team at Heathrow for the flight to Budapest.

Now, I realise that I should have blogged from my travels through the heart of Hungary. It’s what Fry would recommend, probably dressed in Tweed and Twittering all the way. But I got so caught up in the events that I only had time to jot down a few notes in my diary at the end of each day. Until the documentary is finished, this will have to do. I have withheld most of the geographical details in order to protect the location of the ferrets. I have since returned to Hungary twice but this is the account of my first painful visit. Other episodes might follow depending on how the British public takes to the ferret, which remains one of nature’s greatest wonders, to rank alongside the blue whale, the Yellowstone National Park, the continued popularity of Phillip Schofield among women of a certain age.


Extracts Taken from The Madeley Diary. March 2009.

Wednesday.

We’re in Hungary. Not so keen on the food (I swear the goulash is made from real ghouls, ho ho!) and we’ve already lost our cameraman to one of the local bordellos. The director sent the sound recordist in to bring him back but neither of them have returned. I am now stuck in my hotel room, minding the equipment, while the director goes to bring the two of them back. I wish he hadn’t taken the researcher with him. I’m alone and the hotel owner keeps knocking on my door and making kissing noised through the keyhole. I wouldn’t mind but he’s not a day younger than eighty.

Thursday.

The giant ferret hunt begins! We’ve been told there have been many sightings of the giant ferret in the woods of Eastern Hungary, so that’s where we’ll begin our search. This morning the director, researcher, cameraman, and sound recordist all returned from the bordello looking refreshed by their adventures. I, on the other hand, spent the day irritable after having locked myself in the bathroom all night. The hotel owner returned after midnight with the key to my room and proceeded to spend the next eight hours lying in my bed. I suspect he wanted to make more than kissing noised through my keyhole. Today I still have the impression of a communist-period hot water tap in the small of my back and the ring of a World War 2 plughole pressed into my right buttock. It’s like that scene out of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Should you be able to read Russian, you could make a replica of that plug just from the details on my behind.

Friday.

We’re now in Eastern Hungary, close to the border with Romania. Striking camp tonight, we were approached by a local who claimed to know of one of the ancient ferret herders. He has offered to take us to see an old man who apparently has a way with the animals. I asked if the old man is bearded and can communicate with owls. Surprisingly, the answer was yes. I’m excited by the prospect of tracing Bill Oddie’s heritage this far east. I’ve always suspected that there’s a bit of Greek Orthodox in the Oddie mix.

Saturday.

Tonight I saw my first giant ferret! We’d all retired for the night when, around 1AM, I made my usual visit to the bushes. I had scraped a shallow hole in the ground but, unfortunately, the darkness prevented me from seeing some thistles upon which I proceeded to park myself. No sooner had I yelled out in pain when, from the depths of the woods, there was an urgent reply. One or the other scream woke the camp and after I’d explained what had happened, our guide told us that my cry had been identical to the distress call of the giant ferret. The echoed cry of alarm had come from a nearby animal. It was indeed fortunate for the advancement of science and the prospects for our documentary. I tried to repeat the cry but with no luck. Finally, after much persuading and a few threats, I was encouraged to sit on another thistle. My scream was genuine and effected an immediate response from the woods. The hunt was on!

After an hour, we managed to track down the ferret in a clearing about a mile from camp. We saw him for only a fleeting moment before he disappeared into the deeper wood but it was enough for me. This morning I’m sore and somewhat red and irritated down below but I am happy to have seen such a rare and magnificent beast.

I am about to have more ointment applied by the sound recordist who has the longest fingers in the team. Those thistles dig deep.

Sunday.

We met our ferret herder and told him about our experiences of the previous day. He seemed impressed and had a novel cure for those parts of mine which have become greatly swollen. You might well laugh but he has smeared goulash over my wounds! The soothing is remarkable but there’ll be no more calling ferrets for me, I’m afraid! Luckily, the old herder showed me how to make a similar noise with the horn of the native Hungarian yak. (Our herder does bear a striking resemblance to Bill Oddie, though when I pressed him on the subject, he became somewhat reluctant to talk about it.)


Monday

What a day! Thanks to the herder, I rode my first wild ferret! I’m still sore and all that bouncing on the ferret’s back did little to help my swelling but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Beat that, Stephen Fry! I rode a ferret or, as they say here in Hungary, the ferret rode me. They are easier to ride than horses but far more skittish. Thankfully, I’ve spend years handling Judy’s miniature show ponies so I knew the ropes. The seemed drawn to me and I suspect it’s because I was rich with the smell of goulash. I think the old ferret herder knew what he was doing when he smeared me with that stuff. (The herder’s name, Billish Oddeski, furthers my suspicions and I must look into this on a later visit.)

Tuesday

We’re back in Budapest. Sad to be going home in the morning, despite the old hotel keeper already having been back to my keyhole twice this evening. I will leave with many good memories and some BAFTA award winning footage in the can. There’s even some footage of me in the can, though I doubt if it would be BAFTA award winning. Or who knows? If Alan Carr can be nominated, I’m certain there’s room for a man with goulash smeared around his privates. I’m just excited that the first part of filming is over. I rang Judy and she says that the BBC are already sniffing around the project. Again, I suspect that the goulash has something to do with it but it bodes well for the future of this project.

When I do come back, I think I’ll choose a different hotel.

Coming Next Year to ITV...

The Fry-Day Fallout

My brain had not loosened up from my two days in a Manchester studio but waking in my bed this morning, it was so reassuring to smell a fried breakfast. Delirious was my happiness as I rolled over and found Judy lying beside me, the morning paper in one hand, some kipper in the other.

‘I always think of home when I smell kipper,’ I said, moving the bottle of HP sauce my wife had wedged for safety between my buttocks. ‘Ah, Judy! It’s so good to be back in familiar surroundings... You’ve got tomato sauce on your chin, love.’

Judy did her duty by the errant sauce and then nodded to her newspaper. ‘You made a proper fool of yourself yesterday,’ she said. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’
She handed me the newspaper, a local rag distributed only in our undisclosed area of North London. ‘Madeley’s Record Attempt Humiliation!’ read the banner headline.

I sank back into my pillow and groaned. ‘It was a brave attempt,’ I protested, ‘but the world of Twitter hasn’t quite taken to my own particular form of genius. Up to about midday I was roaring away. People thought I really was Stephen Fry and my following was soaring. Then at some point, I began to feel hungry. It reminded me than I’m a man, not a deity. My self-confidence crumbled and instead of the pithy one-liners of a God, I was just a man insulting people and making gratuitous remarks about bodily parts.’ I frowned. ‘It was not hubris, Jude. Hubris! And it was far from pretty...’

Judy wiped the kipper grease from her mouth and turned her attention to her eggs, which she scooped up and polished off in a couple of moves. She was clearly choosing her words carefully and I had to wait until she’d had gulped down a lashing of hot coffee before she spoke.

‘Richard, I don’t know why you bother with the internet. Your blog is doing nothing for your career and Twitter is as pointless an interest as you’ve ever had. You need to do something to help promote yourself among the people that matter.’

‘My blog is doing nothing for me?’ I had to laugh. ‘Only through my blog do people see me for what I am: a witty, articulate man who is capable of a myriad of TV and radio assignments. My career is going to go stellar before long, Jude! I came close to landing that job on Countdown and you know how I’m going to apply for a job on Soccer AM at the end of the football season. Helen Chamberlain has a something, Judy. I’m telling you that my chemistry could work with hers.’

Judy scowled. ‘I’m sure it would, Richard,’ she said, squeezing her morning banger between a round of toast. ‘And all I’m saying is that before you start trying to impersonate Stephen Fry on Twitter, you might think about the consequences. Stephen has a loyal fans.’

I hummed myself a indignant hum. ‘Or, as I like to think of them: acolytes, zealots, or old fashioned obsessivers knitting Stephen Fry balaclavas. I was lucky to get away with my trousers and just a few bruises. I don’t know how Stephen can countenance such behaviour.’

‘The problem with Stephen is that he’s too busy swimming with sealions to think about the feelings of one of his oldest friends,’ said Judy.

I couldn’t disagree with her so I slid back under the sheets and closed my eyes. It felt so good to be home, in my own bed, with my wife lying beside me as she slid the bottle of sauce back between my cheeks where it would keep warm as I slept another couple of hours.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Gone With The Pigeons

Totally incapable of blogging today. I was up with the larks. Or is it crows? Could well be pigeons, the number of the damn things sitting on the house this morning. Bad omens indeed; or at least it was for the state of our double glazing. Thankfully, I won’t be around when Judy gets the ladders out later this morning and shinnies up them to Mr. Sheen the glass.

I’m away from home for a couple of days, in the great city of Manchester where I’m doing some voiceover work on an exciting new TV series that charts the fortunes of Bolivia’s nose flutists. ‘Richard Madeley and the Bolivian Nose Flutists’ (provisional title) should go out on ITV in the Autumn. I’m also taking this time to shut myself away in my hotel room and get some writing done. The novel is coming well, thank you, those of you who’ve been asking. I’ve managed to get past the difficult part where my hero, Rex Spanner, was stuck in the regimental barracks of the Iranian National Guard with only half a lemon and quart of baby oil. Things are now building to a pleasing climax.

All of which means, if I fall silent, at least you’ll know where to find me.
Room 721. Knock three times and whisper ‘Uncle Dick’ three times through the keyhole.

Uncle Dick’s Guide to Becoming A Good Twitterer And Making Your Life Complete

People have started to come up to me on the street and ask me about Twitter. Just like that. As bold as the brass stuff and without any consideration for Judy, who as you know, is allergic to strangers, dogs, and the colour yellow.

To solve the problem, I thought I’d write down an introduction to Twitter which I can print out and thrust into the faces of anybody who approaches me with a Tweet glinting in their eye. I call it ‘Uncle Dick’s Guide to Becoming A Good Twitterer And Making Your Life Complete’. It doesn’t promise you the earth, but it does promise to make you a better person.

1. Create your account at www.twitter.com

2. Immediately follow @stephenfry. I can’t stress this enough. If you Twitter, you must follow @stephenfry. You will immediately discover that he’s off in some remote part of the world, examining the underside of some rare form of parrot. This will make you unhappy with your life at the office/bakery/school/home. Congratulations! You’ve achieved your first feeling of self-loathing. You’re a real Twitterer!

3. Immediately follow @wossy. Although not quite as important as rule number 2, it is still required by UK law that you follow @wossy. Not only will you be entertained with stories of his celebrity friends dropping by (that Ricky Gervais... What a card!), you’ll learn more about Japanese manga and the lifestyles of adults who collect toys. This is better than spending a mornings hanging around Toys R Us. And since hanging around Toys R Us is not recommended, @wossy fills a void in all our lives.

4. You should next try to follow as many celebrities as possible starting with your favourite Uncle Dick. Following celebrities is the reason that Twitter exists. It’s the reason you live. The reason you have children is so that they can follow celebrities. Celebrities bring meaning to your lives and you should not ignore them. It is astonishing how even minor celebrities can bring so much peace and happiness. There’s no feeling as great as learning that Phillip Schofield spent the morning waiting to have new carpets fitted in his billiards room or that Richard Bacon collects used postage. Want to know that Maggie Philbin’s toaster’s gone on the fritz? Then Twitter is the place for you.

5. If you want to be a success on Twitter, you might have to adopt some radical – if not downright unhealthy – practices. You might have to follow ‘normal’ people.

6.

7. I left a space to let you regain your composure. I know it was a shock and it’s not something you want to think about when you’ve just eaten. But you should quickly follow as many ‘normal’ people as you can. Bite your lip and go click crazy. Get it over with because being ‘followed’ is the measure of your success on Twitter. Celebrities will not follow you (and, let’s face it, why should they?). You have to make up for this by following people you might normally cross the street to avoid.

8. You will quickly realise that it’s bloody hard to get followed unless you’re a celebrity name. You will have the urge to quit but you must fight this urge. If you persevere, you will get followers. You might even be up to 20 within a few months.

9. Listen to your Uncle Dick: follow everybody who is good enough to follow you. But if they stop following you, then you should cull them without mercy. Unfollow them with extreme prejudice. Unfollow them with a vengeance.

10. When writing ‘tweets’ (Twitter messages are called ‘tweets’ after Stephen Fry’s pet canary), you should avoid posting anything of interest. You will quickly establish a pattern of posting the same thing, day after day. Some of the most popular forms of Tweet are listed below.

11. Take a picture of your lunch and post a picture of that. People don’t know what food looks like. They’ve rarely come into contact with a meal.

12. Another popular tweet is to complain about how many tax forms you’ve had to fill out and how many more tax forms your looking forward to zzzzzzzzzzz...

13. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. Popular tweets.

14. Tweet news which people will have already learned about from other sources. If possible, alter the facts very slightly. E.g. Original: Britney Spears today gave birth to a baby boy called Sam. Your version: Britney Spears today gave birth to a two headed dragon she has named Raglock the Destroyer.

15. Tweet about other tweeters. My advice is hurl as much abuse around as you can. It livens things up, keeps things fresh.

16. One of the most popular form of tweeting is that of the celebrity verifiers. These people form loose associations known as ‘rabbles’ and ‘mobs’, who scour the Twitterverse for people pretending to be celebrities. When they find them, they hack at them with their pitchforks and then burn down their houses. They then salt the land so nothing will grow there for a thousand years... Their actions save all of us the indignity of following a fake Russell Grant when we should be following the real thing. You should therefore join a mob immediately after complying with rule number 3. Remember, in the Twitterverse, you’re nobody if you’re not in a mob.

17. The final rule of Twitter is to leap off when the next great social networking innovation comes along. To be honest, you’ll probably find that 140 characters take a little too much effort. In the coming months, Judy and I hope to launch our own Gruntverse, where you’ll be able to follow the grunts, sighs, and assorted gasps of celebrities. Want to hear Hugh Grant go ‘arrrrrrr’ three times a day? Well, watch this space. Gruntverse will be here soon.

18. Trust your Uncle Dick. It’s the next big thing.

Pancakes

I'll be very busy today so I suggest you go make pancakes.