That Frank Sidebottom Thing

I bought myself one of those ultrasonic rat traps this morning. Only it doesn’t trap rats. It merely plays tricks with their mind and keeps them away from the house. It works in the same way that Kayne West at full volume keeps friends from your doorstep and annoys the neighbour’s dog.

The trap hadn’t been turned on for more than half an hour when Judy started to act strange. I thought she was happily unloading bags of cement from the boot of the car, so I’d gone to the conservatory, settled myself in a chair with a drink, and was reading some rubbish they'd printed about me in the entertainment section of The Sun. All of a sudden, Judy appears around the side of the house waving her arms in the air and shrieking something about it being free fitting at Safestyle UK.

There was no way I could know it was a problem with the rat trap. I mean how could I? Judy’s nerves have never been right since she interviewed Frank Sidebottom for This Morning about ten years ago. Some people say she looks a bit fragile when she’s on TV, but I put it all down to the moment Sidebottom gave her a hard time and wouldn’t stop asking her about felt tip pens. Put paper mache in front of her now and Judy visibly pales. It’s why we’ve never done any Blue Peter style items on our shows. Anyway, I’d noticed that Sidebottom is now plugging Safestyle windows and patio doors and, putting two and two together I came up with five. I thought it accounted for Judy's erratic behavour. Only when she’d dug a hole in the garden and began to gnaw through the cable to the pond’s fountain did I realise what was going on.

Being a thoughtful husband, I didn’t immediately turn the rat gizmo off. I let the old girl run around for five minutes, thinking it might calm her down and help give her a good sleep tonight. It also gave me a bit of time to remember a few of the rat factoids I know you'd be interested in hearing. Such as the fact that rats technically fall under the dairy policy of the EU since they have milk glands, six nipples, and the finest tasting cream outside Belgium. Rats can eat through a human thigh in less than ten minutes, through plate steel in sixty minutes, and through the crust of a Tesco Value meat and potato pie in less than two hours. They are also very adept climbers and are the only animals known to have made it to the top of Mount Everest without oxygen. Rat whiskers are also valued by Mississippi bluesmen who believe they have a better tone than the reeds traditionally used in harmonicas.