Beckham, Titchmarsh, and Me

Disappointment howls today like the wind that keeps shifting the rafters as it tries to break the backbone of this old house. It is not a good day to be either a Madeley or a Beckham. I heard through the celebrity grapevine that Titchmarsh was out around town last night, celebrating his new job. I’ve still not had official confirmation but I can only assume that this silence means that the Madeley charm failed yet again to win over important people. I won’t get my second cap as captain of ‘Eye of the Storm’. My search for a job will have to continue and I still cannot assure you about the future of this blog. There is only a very small chance of my finding another part time vacancy as suitable as the one I’ve just missed out on.

If there are positives in this, I fail to see them. My lassitude has begun to spread around the house. Judy has fled to the local shopping centre to escape it. And when Stephen Fry appeared for breakfast this morning, even a man known for his resilient spirit looked chagrined once he heard the news.

‘As long as I’m quizmaster, Mr. Titchmarsh will never be welcomed on QI, I can assure you of that,’ he said as he watched me butter his English muffins.

‘It’s bad enough that he keeps getting all the plumb jobs and that he produces novels that take up shelf space that might have gone to new unknown writers.’ I stopped spreading butter and looked up. ‘But what disappoints me more than anything is that I thought I’d got the job. I left that interview so sure that I’d connected with people. I thought they understood the easy going nature of a man who refuses to abide by the law of underpants. They should have seen that they had a special opportunity of getting “A” list recruitment material for a knock down price.’

‘I feel your pain as though it were my own,’ said Stephen, clutching his arm and giving a dramatic wince. ‘I thought I had a natural affinity with the manatee. Little did I know that they had plans to knock me from a log and laugh about it later.’

He had a point.

‘Are you up for some writing today?’ asked Stephen after I’d finished soaking his muffins in my tears.

‘I don’t know if I am,’ I said, wiping my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to spend the day transcribing another man’s genius to the page.

‘Come, come, Richard. You should do something productive today. You need to rage against the storm that so cruelly batters you. Cry out that you’re not for being beaten.’

‘Oh, I intend to rage,’ I promised him. ‘In fact, I’ve been giving some thought to having a tattoo.’

‘A tattoo?’

I shoved the newspaper across the table. ‘David Beckham has had an angel tattooed on his arm,’ I explained. ‘It has the face of his wife, Victoria. I thought I might have the same but with the face of that real angel called Judy. I thought a tattoo might prove to people that I’m not the nice guy they can treat so unfairly.’

‘I would suggest that you think again and make no hasty decisions when feeling glum,’ replied Stephen. ‘Have a day or two to think about it. I regret very much the tattoo of Hugh Laurie I had etched on my… Well, let’s not dwell on that. Let us instead consider written English. Let me help you on your own magnum opus. Let’s see if we can raise your spirits by setting you back on track with that novel I know you’ve been writing about the Australian outback where a young boy is raised by the koala.’

‘You’d do that for me?’ I asked. ‘I mean, you’d really help me finish “Tamazepam: King of the Eucalyptus”?’

Stephen’s smile hung like a cloud beneath that great crescent moon of a nose. ‘Of course I would,’ he chuckled. ‘Not everybody is a Titchmarsh man. Some of us are on the side of Madeley and you should never forget that fact, Richard. Never forget that some of us want you to win and win you most certainly will.’

And Now I Wait...

I'm exhausted. We recorded today's show earlier than normal in order to fit my job interview into a gap in my schedule. It means that I've had a hectic day and now need a couple of hours of shut-eye before I drive Stephen to a poetry recital in aid of the Leslie Phillips Cravat Foundation.

I think the interview went reasonably well. By the time I'd finished arguing my case, the title of the show had changed from 'Eye of the Storm 2: Mild and Slightly Damp' to 'Eye of the Storm 2: Slightly Damp But Mild'. It was a small concession on the producer's behalf but I didn't want to have my name associated with a show whose title didn't scan right. I also have yet to hear the outcome as I understand that Alan Titchmarsh was due in this afternoon to outline his plans.

I still don't know how to feel about this development. To know that I'm going head-to-head with the nation's favourite item of knitwear is enough to dent my confidence, or, at least, unravel an extra yard of wool. Yet should I get the job, this blog may yet survive. I'll be working two days a week in the city, leaving me time to finish my novel set in the world of men who go commando. At the moment, I can only assure you that 'Bravo Size Two Zero' will be in bookshops by the late summer.

Sleuth 2007

Not much time to write. I have to get to bed. I’m up early in the morning to attend an interview for the job of host on the new series 'Eye of the Storm 2: Mild and Slightly Damp'.

Given that I've only got a few minutes to write this, I should explain the deep furrow on my brow. It wasn’t there three hours ago and I hope sleep will erase it. Tonight I had the misfortune of sitting through a remake of one of my favourite films. Kenneth Branagh’s Sleuth is as enjoyable as having a mallet swung at your kneecaps by a malicious dwarf. It left me hobbling for an explanation as to how it could have all gone so wrong.

Michael Caine is just about my favourite actor. Even when he went through a period of making any old rubbish during the eighties, I never lost my faith in him. He could still do great work. His films include some of I'd take to my desert island: the Harry Palmer films, Hannah and Her Sisters, Get Carter, The Man Who Would Be King… And even here, in Sleuth 2007, he does well playing the Laurence Olivier role. Yet he is let down by nearly every aspect of this disappointing production. Jude Law plays Caine’s old role and proves that he’s not the new Caine. The small details of casting a film really do matter. For instance, if you know the original Sleuth, you’d assume that the Milo Tindle role would be given to an actor who can sustain a regional accent. Law’s accent began in Devon, jumped into Yorkshire, skirted around Lancashire, and finally settling down somewhere in the East End. As for the script, by Harold Pinter, it had moments of brilliance but was undermined by a third act that deviated from the original and was consequently muddled, ineffective, and, at times, tedious. I don't think it was Pinter's fault. I'd like to blame on the director.

Branagh is not a subtle director. He may be comfortable when staging Shakespeare but I tend to think that it would take a director of staggering incompetence to make a hash of that. When it comes to bringing his own flair to an original project, Branagh too often fails. His film version of ‘Frankenstein’ remains one of the very few films I’ve walked out of, midway through (actually, I ran), and demanded my money back from the ticket office.

Here, he replaces the theatrical vibrancy of the original with bleak technology that rarely fits the scene or the script. The sets are minimal, filmed under blue lights that ensure that the film has a different feel to the warmth evoked by the old country house. Shaffer’s screenplay was dark and comic, occasionally frivolous, often sardonic, and questioning the nature of the mystery genre. Pinter’s is sharp, edgy, confused, sometimes rambling, and ultimately disappointing.

Anthony Shaffer wrote at least three great movies: Frenzy, The Wicker Man, and Sleuth. I would hope that Branagh doesn’t think of trying his hand at ‘Frenzy’, the only one of the three yet to have been remade. If he’s no Joseph L. Mankiewicz, then he’s certainly no Hitchcock.

You see what this has done to me? If tomorrow's interview goes poorly, I'll blame only one man.

And it won't be Michael Caine.

It's Not Easy Being Green

Once the phone had cracked open my dreams this morning, it was the smell of fresh bacon that kept me awake. That’s not to say I didn’t want to bury my nose deeper into my pillow, but I could not stop myself drooling over the smell of fried porker rising from the kitchen. My loyalties were split. My pillow damp. My dreams still tangible. I knew I could return to them if only the noise and smell would recede. I could be back in the lesser reality where I’d been wearing a loincloth and wresting a cobra in some faraway place where men with the Madeley surname are normally christened Conan. In the greater reality of everyday life, however, those same men enjoy ripping into bacon, their dentures be damned! This was the only reassurance I had. Dreams or reality: I knew I’d be doing something manly.

I was still chewing on the hard gristle of this dilemma when the bedroom door opened and Judy set the floorboards loose with her heavy tread.

‘It’s somebody called Tarbuck for you,’ she said, pulling back the duvet and exposing my naked flanks to the sunlight.

I shrivelled like Christopher Lee naked on a sunbed. On second thoughts, scrub that bit about Christopher Lee naked on a sunbed. It’s an image with which we’d be unwise to start the week. I suggest you replace it with a picture of uncurled mimosa under drops of spring rain. It has the advantage of added freshness and significantly less droop.

‘Tell them I’ll call them back,’ I muttered as I rolled over and sought dragons to smite.

Judy just took my hand and wrapped it around the handset.

‘Talk to the man,’ she hissed. She sounded quite cobra-like and was lucky I didn’t swing a keen edged blade at her head. Decisive action tends to be the way of all men called Conan or Madeley.

‘Speak mortal,’ I said, and by this you might guess that I was still a bit befuddled by sleep.

‘Hello? Richard?’ said a voice. ‘It’s Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy?’ I repeated. My mind grabbed the two names I’d been handed and shoved them manfully together. I was surprised by the result. ‘Jimmy Tarbuck?’

‘The very same. Now listen here, my old mucker. Those of us still up here in lovely Liverpool miss you and Judy enormously. We still drink to your health at the Dog and Duck near the Albert Dock, and your picture still hangs on the wall of the snug.’

‘Does it really?’

‘It does,’ he replied. ‘Though, to be honest, Richard, your mugshot got a bit shabby since Stan Boardman bought himself a new set of darts. He never misses now. But listen… We were talking about giving you and your good lady wife a very special opportunity on this fine day in January.’

I rolled over onto my back. I find it’s the best place to take advantage of very special opportunities on fine days in January. It’s also the best position from which to pick fluff from your navel. ‘And what opportunity would that be?’ I said as I flicked a small bail of cotton from between my fingertips.

‘A chance to do some good,’ said Tarby. ‘Listen, I can’t talk about it on the phone. Hush-hush and all that but we’re on our way to London and we could easily drop in to see you.’

‘Sure, sure,’ I said and my hand also moved south to put a parting in my hair down there to match the one upstairs. ‘You know you’re always welcome, Jimmy.’

Judy wasn’t so sure when I mentioned it to her over breakfast. ‘I thought I recognised that voice,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think gap-toothed Scouse comedian.’

‘That’s probably because you’ve forgotten your roots, my girl,’ I replied. ‘You also wanted to move away from the north. You never liked it in Liverpool, whereas I still wear my love for the city on my sleeve.’

‘That’s not actually true, is it, Richard?’ she scolded. ‘You were the one who said that London would be better for our careers. You were also the one who scuttled Fred Talbot in our back garden because you said he’d defile the Thames.’

‘As well you know, Judy, that’s not been proved. But I was right about London being good for our careers. And I’m right about this too. Men like Tarbuck know a thing or two about bank balances. If he’s got an opportunity for us, I expect we’ll double our fortune in weeks.’

She looked at me and shook her head. ‘Well if we’re going to have guests, I suggest you do up your fly or comb your hair.’

I did both, numerous times, during the anxious wait before the taxi arrived at half past one. The three figures that piled out the back were all familiar in one way or another. The rotund guy in a blazer was known to us all as Tarbuck, though behind him was a thinner man in a suit that didn’t quite fit.

‘Look who that is behind Tarby,’ said Judy, peering through a gap in the curtains.

I looked again. ‘Dear lord!’ I gasped, recognising the jacket thick with shimmering sequins. ‘Is it Doddy? And if I’m not mistaken, isn’t that Cilla behind them?’

Judy let out a squeal of delight. ‘Oh, it is!’ she said and rushed to the front door to greet the three most famous Liverpudlians who aren’t called Ringo or suffer an allergy to wooden shanks.

‘Surprise, surprise,’ screamed Cilla as soon as she saw me in the hall.

‘Hello Cilla,’ I said and bent low to kiss her cheek. ‘I hope you’re well.’

‘Course I am, chuck,’ she replied but became distracted by a commotion coming from upstairs.

‘Save my manuscripts before you save yourselves!’ cried Stephen Fry, suddenly appearing on the landing. His face was white with fright, though he flushed slightly as soon as he saw five of the nation’s top celebrities staring up at him. ‘Somebody did shout fire, didn’t they?’ he asked.

‘Calm yourself, Stephen. It’s just Cilla,’ I said as Liverpool’s favourite daughter began to wipe her lipstick from my cheek. I couldn’t blame him for his reaction. Fleeing to fire escapes is how most people react when experiencing a visit from Cilla without adequate warning.

‘Ah,’ said Stephen, giving a dark look towards the woman he’s still not forgiven for her behaviour at our last Christmas party. ‘Well, if you want me,’ he said, retreating a step, ‘I’ll be in my room teaching myself Urdu.’

I had to smile at the poor man’s cameo in this tale. Urdu indeed!

‘Hello Dick,’ said Jimmy Tarbuck, suddenly with his arm around my shoulder. ‘You’re looking fitter than a Korean’s whippet. You know Ken, don’t you?’

‘I think we’ve met a few times,’ I replied, shaking the King of the Diddymen by his tickling stick.

‘And it is a quite splendiferous moment to be meeting you, Sir Dick,’ said Doddy. ‘Very exciting. Very exciting indeed. In fact, it makes me want to shove a bag of flour down my pants and say “how’s this for self raising?” By George! Do you know how tickled I am? I’m so tickled that my chuckle muscle’s got lodged behind my joke junction. That’s half a titter above my mirth mound.’

‘I won’t ask about that,’ I replied as Judy began to lead us all into the main room. She and Cilla immediately broke away, leaving me to talk with the two funniest men in Liverpool.

‘So,’ I said, ‘can you finally tell me about this opportunity you’re so excited about?’

Tarbuck grinned, the gap in his teeth such a happy reminder of the harbour gates at Albert Dock.

‘Do you like ventriloquism, Richard?’ he asked.

‘Who doesn’t?’ I said in reply. And, indeed: who doesn’t?

‘Who indeed,’ smiled Doddy who waved his feather duster in delight. ‘How lucky we are! How lucky we are, ladies and gentlemen! I always say a good ventriloquist is like a good wife. You don’t see the best ones moving their lips.’

I gave Ken a questioning on your behalf before I thought to take the conversation into a twenty first century free of comic misogynism.

‘But this is so strange that you ask me about this,’ I said. ‘Only last night I watched a film set in the world of ventriloquism. It was called “Dead Silence” and was about old ventriloquist came back from the dead to haunt her killers with her reanimated puppets.’

‘Well, this has got nothing to do with reanimated corpses entertaining us with magic,’ said Jimmy. ‘We’re here to meet Paul Daniels.’

‘Not Paul Daniels, famous assistant to the lovely Debbie McGee?’

‘The very same. He’s organising the Variety Club’s 2008 appeal.’

‘Charity?’ I said, my hopes taking a slump.

‘Ah, but this year it’s not just charity for the children,’ said Doddy. ‘Heavens no! This year we’re helping one of our own. Keith Harris needs our help.’

‘It isn’t easy being green,’ I muttered, giving a shiver.

For those of you not in the know, Keith Harris would be the UK’s most respected ventriloquist had he not allied himself with the world’s most irritating puppet. His career is based around the pitiful sight of a small green bird, of indistinct gender and breed, who wears a large nappy and talks in an irritating voice.

‘That’s right,’ said Jimmy. ‘We’ve asked Keith to lead this year’s campaign and we were hoping to give him career a bit of a boost while we’re at it.’

‘And that,’ added Ken, ‘is the reason we have come south. We want you and Mrs. Madeley to have Keith on your show next week.’

‘I doubt if we could do that,’ I said. ‘Channel 4 audiences are quite sophisticated. Besides, we’re running the Richard&Judy Puppies in Woollens competition.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Tarby.

It didn’t take me a moment to reconsider. If I’d learned any lesson from ‘Dead Silence’, it was that ventriloquists are a breed of men and women who take offence at the slightest thing and are more than capable of launching a killing spree from beyond the grave. ‘Hypothetically speaking,’ I replied, ‘do you think Keith Harris would ever come back and haunt the people who’ve mocked Orville over the years?’

‘I’m sure that he would,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’s suffered a lifetime of abuse from audiences, which is why we want to set things right. I’m sure there’s not a ventriloquist alive that would be as justified if he sought out his bloody revenge on his tormentors.’

‘Then count us in,’ I said. ‘Like I’ve always said, Judy and I are proud to call ourselves two of the biggest Keith Harris and Orville fans in the country.’

‘How tittyfalarious!’ cried Dodd. ‘I’m over the moon with nincombobulation. I’m like the blind midget in the lady’s sauna. It’s not how I look like but how I feel…’

‘Smashing,’ said Jimmy.

‘You’ve what?’ asked Judy in the kitchen ten minutes later.

I explained about my fears of being haunted by the ghost of Orville.

‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘Who better to judge dogs in woollens than a man whose made his career with a green duck in a nappy? And it saves me the trouble of writing to all the viewers who complain that I chose the wrong dog.’

‘You’ve lost it this time,’ said Judy. ‘I thought you’d hit bottom when you stopped wearing underpants. But this…’

‘Surprise! Surprise!’ said Cilla, barging her way into the kitchen. ‘Everything alright, chucks?’

I put on my best smile and carried two coffees into the front room. Things, I knew, would indeed be alright…

The Truth About My Underpants

Thanks to Bertas, I’m made aware of more anti-Madeley slander doing the rounds. Only, this time, the newspapers are making a mountain out of a molehill. Or a mountain out of my crotch, which, I’ll let you know, is completely free from moles and looks nothing like a hill.

It defies reason that journalists should rehash old news where there are so many interesting stories breaking in the world. I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions that I don’t wear underpants and I’ve always been quite open when it comes to admitting that I go commando whenever and wherever I can. It’s not as though I hide the fact. I often leave my flies down at home, though, naturally, not when we have guests. Judy has long since grown accustomed to my flaps being open and the aircraft nosing its way from the hangar. Which, again, leaves me bemused that the newspapers are making such a fuss.

I wouldn’t mind but I’m not the only one who practises the mildest form of naturism. Among the many celebrities I’ve tried brought into the fold, so to speak, are Jimmy Savile and David Walliams. They both took leaflets from me and, I would hope, saved on their laundry bills. It is, I repeat, the best way you can all save the planet. If you were all to abandon underwear, you would help reduce the nation’s energy costs by around 14% per year. We would use less water and fewer detergents, while, for we gentlemen, providing adequate ventilation in vital regions where tight underwear stifles our most basic functions, such as producing seed, scratching ourselves, and playing the bassoon.

So, again, I beg you to ignore the anti-Madeley spin the media give this non-story. You heard the truth from me. Now I suggest you do the sensible thing: pants off, undies in the bin, and feel the breeze down below. I swear that you’ll thank me for it later.

Back Soon...

I’ve been delayed today so my regular update will be a little later than usual. Life as an ‘A’ list celebrity is so busy that sometimes I wish that I could slide down to the ‘B’ list, just to catch a breather. In the meantime, here’s a quick precis of the search terms of some of my latest blog visitors arriving via Google.

For the person asking if Fred Talbot is married, I’d suggest that we find him first...

For my reader in York: at the moment, Monty Don is six feet and five inches tall but we cut him back to five feet eleven in the winter to encourage new growth in the spring.

The person asking me to ‘rate Kerry Katona’: I’d give her 1 out of 20.

The person searching for ‘interesting facts about garden gnomes’: there are no interesting facts about garden gnomes, which is itself, an interesting fact.

The person searching for ‘swearing at babies’: it doesn’t have much effect but it is enormous fun.

The person who came here asking if ‘guys rub balls for comfort’: I can assure you that they rub them to get a bit of shine in the hope of creating a bit of reverse swing.

And finally, for the person who wants to know ‘what happened to Mickey Rooney’s ears?’: Andi Peters accidentally trod on them while Mickey was doing panto in Swansea.

The Richard&Judy Film Club

With the new season of The Richard&Judy Show now down the slipway and making rather large waves in that fast flowing river known as TV, I’ve had time to notice that my dear wife has been looking drawn these past few days. I hesitate to say she’s been looking ‘rough’ because, to be fair, there’s not a woman alive who deserves the term less. She’s merely been missing that little bit of natural effervescence that normally marks her out as a right bottle of fizz.

As you know, being a considerate husband, I always try to do my bit to ease my dear wife’s nerves. Taking her out for a nice evening would, I thought, help calm her down. A good meal, a few bottle of wine, followed by a film at the local multiplex: could there be a better tonic? I thought not so, this afternoon, I set to making all the arrangements .

The only problem is Judy's delicate nature. It takes a measured eye to pick out a film suitable for her unique temperament. Remember: this is the only woman to walk out of the film adaptation of Pride & Prejudice complaining that it was too loud. Casino Royale had ‘too many filthy innuendos’. As for The Simpson’s Movie: she got dizzy once Spiderpig began crawling across the ceiling.

So tonight, I knew I had to choose carefully. I spent a good hour deliberating over the twenty seven films currently showing at the local Odeon and then I booked ahead of our arriving at the cinema. A few of the films were clearly not the sort of thing you’d want to introduce to a nervous woman in her early forties. Last week, I’d been forced to go alone to see the Coen Brother’s rather excellent No Country For Old Men, which would have been much too visceral for Judy. Beowolf was too macho and the less we say about Death Sentence, based on the original Death Wish novel, the better. I also knew that American Gangster was out, while Saw IV and Aliens vs. Predator 2 were really as far from Judy material as modern cinema can go without invoking the name 'Paul Verhoeven'.

In the end, my decision was influenced by factors not exactly related to my good lady wife. Truth to tell, I've always suffered this odd emotional reaction whenever I see Helena Bonham Carter. I tend to blub through any film she's in and pen sonnets during the closing credits. Not that I’d like to ‘covert a neighbour’s wife’ or anything as Biblical as that – they are indeed neighbours of ours – but I’ve just always thought her as beautiful as she is talented. No man leapt as high as me when hearing that she’d parted company with that blowbroth Brannagh. Nobody, perhaps, except Tim Burton. Not that I begrudge him the perfect woman. Well-worn men with a handle on scruffy are men after my own heart and it’s good to see woman of beauty and wit attracted to our kind. In other words, Judy loves a good musical and I wouldn’t be averse to looking at Helena B.C. for a couple of hours. That's why I booked us two premium row seats to Sweeney Todd on one of the largest screens in the South West.

And might I commend myself at this point by saying it was the perfect choice. Judy was soon happily holding my arm and eating from her tub of popcorn. As we settled into the murk of the Victorian gothic, I eased down into my chair, listening to my wife humming gently beside me as she began to sing along with each song. Helena was looking more stunning than I've seen her in a while, while Johnny Depp confirmed my suspicion that he's become the most intelligent and interesting actors of his generation.

Like I said: it was the perfect choice. That is: perfect until the first throat was cut...

I turned to Judy and patted her hand. ‘Can’t be too much of this, love,’ I said as the spray of arterial blood filled the screen and rained down around us in 7.1 Dolby Digital sound. 'There can't be too much of this at all. It might be rated 18 but it is a musical...'

After four or five more throats were cut, each one bloodier than the last, Judy was no longer humming along to Stephen Sondheim’s score but dry retching into her popcorn bucket. During a particularly bright scene on a beach, I turned to find her looking more ashen than a Tim Burton heroine. Her face was drained of colour and if it weren’t for her eyes, which were open (though, oddly, not blinking), I’d have thought she had passed out.

When another hour had passed and the credits began to roll, I was grateful to discover that one of the usherettes was a strapping youth. I had to call him across to help me get Judy from her chair. We then struggled to carry her to the car, much to the amusement of the cinema’s customers.

‘Oy, Madeley!’ shouted one. ‘Finally bored her to death have you?

Another, equally as witty, suggested that ‘Madeley’s got to drug his women to get them on a date’.

It was all most amusing and nearly as pleasant as the silent twenty minutes I spent driving home.

As soon as we were through the front gates, I hit the switch and sealed us in for the night. Sure that nobody could see from the road, I grabbed Judy by the ankles and dragged her into the house. Once I got her settled in a chair in the living room, I poured her a big glass of brandy and an even bigger one for me.

‘Deary me,’ said Stephen Fry, appearing in the doorway. He was dressed in a purple gown and carrying a copy of Caesar’s Commentaries in his good hand. ‘Is that Judy I see looking a bit the worse for wear?’

‘Just shock,’ I explained. ‘We’ve just sat through a Stephen Sondheim musical.’

‘Ah!,’ he trilled. ‘The pleasures of the contrapuntal world!’ His smile broadened as if it were inflating on spirits warming to a favourite subject. He came and sat down in an armchair. ‘You should have said and I might have come with you. I’m a great fan of Mr. Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the film version of which has a cameo by my favourite of the great silent comedians, Mr. Buster Keaton. Unfortunately, the film, though praiseworthy for the performances of, among others, the equally great Phil Silvers and Zero Mostel, also gave the world our first glimpse of the somewhat less than great Michael Crawford. The scene in which he attempts to scrape sweat from a horse’s hindquarters is not one of my most favourite in the history of American cinema. The very thought of drinking an animal’s sweat makes me feel quite nauseous…’

I looked at him, a steady gaze of whimsy and wonder. ‘I think we’ve had enough of that this evening, don’t you?’

He nodded to Judy. ‘Yet shock is such a wonderfully enigmatic reaction. One never knows whether to cure it or simply observe the patient’s response. Was it caused by the linguistic dexterity of the Sondheim libretti? They have been known to strain many a professional singer’s warble.’

‘No, it was blood,’ I replied. ‘Gallons and gallons of blood. Never seen a film like it. I shouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t have trouble sleeping tonight. It will be months before I’ll even contemplate eating a meat pie again…’

‘Well, should you suffer wakefulness, you need only come tapping on my door and we can play Scrabble til dawn.’ He smiled as Judy’s head lolled onto her chest. ‘The poor thing,’ he said, standing up and taking two long strides across the room. ‘There, there,’ he hushed, laying a hand on Judy’s head. ‘Rest yourself in the knowledge that it wasn’t blood at all. I should imagine it merely a combination of corn syrup and food colouring.’

Miraculously, Judy looked up at him. It was the first movement she’d made since the second act’s little ditty involving a straight edged razor.

‘Oh, Stephen, is that right?’ she asked.

‘Of course it is, you silly thing,’ smiled the Great Man. ‘Now, you drink up your brandy and I’ll sing you something soothing to help you take your mind off it.’

And with that, he took another strode that carried him to the fireplace where he threw another log onto the grate before lifting his and lifted his plaster cast and resting it on the mantelpiece. And there he stood for the next hour as sang a selection of light operetta to us in his deliriously sonorous voice. At the end, Judy was feeling well enough to applaud and I was relieved enough to stand up and go shake him by the hand.

‘Stephen Sondheim, eat your heart out,’ I said.

I would have clapped him about the back but Judy chose that moment to faint.

‘Under the circumstances,’ said Stephen, ‘it probably not wise to talk of men eating their own hearts.’

And I suppose, under the circumstances, it wasn’t.

The Carr Crash

You might know that I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan of Alan Carr since the moment I first heard him speak. He’d just shunted me from behind on Hamstead Heath and his voice reminded me of the howl of a Barbary monkey undergoing hormone replacement therapy. It's why I was so adamant in my refusal when Judy put his name forward as a guest on the new series of The Richard&Judy Show.

‘If he appears then you can find yourself another sofa partner,’ I said yesterday lunchtime as I poured hot water over a leak and onion cup-a-soup.

Judy was scrubbing down the sink at the time and the name had come to her after a rush of others that had included Liza Minnelli, Paul Ross, John Updike, Roger Moore, and David Bellamy.

‘You have to come up with more interesting names, Richard,’ she said, treating me as harshly as the mildew around the taps. ‘You can’t keep suggesting the same old guests.’

‘Same old guests?’ I replied. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Whenever we ask you for suggestions you only ever say Bill Oddie, Stephen Fry, and Jeremy Clarkson.’

‘But they’re my kind of people. Why should I go out of my way chumming up to the likes of Monty Don when we’ve got Bill Oddie? And what can David Bellamy tell us about a subject that Stephen hasn’t already researched?’

‘It’s not the point,’ said Judy. ‘People want a bit of variety in their lives. When we introduce guests, we don’t want to be seen introducing the same faces, week after week.’

I took Judy’s words on board and contemplated them over the course of yesterday when I withdrew slightly from the public eye. Judy probably has a point. I’m just too loyal to my friends and when Stephen breathes an utterance, I want to report it to you without delay. The fact that we’ve begun working writing next year’s ITV hit series, Bunion, gives me even more reason to talk about the Great Man. As, indeed, the coming Spring will see Bill Oddie come out of hibernation and I’ll have many more things to tell you about The Bearded One.

Yet, if Judy is right, I should also bring you news about other people.

Which brings me back to Alan Carr. Was I right to hold a grudge against the man just because he once shunted me from behind on Hamstead Heath?

‘Oooooooohhh, look what you’ve done!’ I remember him saying as he climbed out of his enormous jet black 4x4 with glittered trim.

Back then, I was driving my Jag and I was not best pleased to discover the bumper twisted to hell and back.

‘What I’ve done?’ I laughed, squaring up to the man who’s bigger than you’d expect. ‘You’re the one who wasn’t looking where he was going.’

‘Oh, I can’t be held responsible for that!’ he replied. ‘I can’t be held responsible for that! You just put on your brakes like you wanted me to come up your behind.’

‘If you weren’t tailgating me, it wouldn’t have happened.’

‘Tailgating?’ he hissed, if indeed you can hiss a word made up of ‘t’s and ‘g’s. ‘Is that meant to be some kind of homophobic joke?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Now it was my turn to sound insulted. ‘Homophobic? Don’t you know that you’re speaking to one of the nation’s gay icons? I’ve been voted pin-up of the year by the Pink Paper for seven out of the last ten years.’

‘Don’t give me a laugh. It’s Judy we all love. Not you. I mean, who’d lust after you?’

And with that, he’d climbed back into his monster truck and drove off without even leaving me his insurance details. Since then, I’ve gone cold whenever his name is mentioned. Or, indeed, whenever I’ve heard a Barbary monkey scream.

These memories were rattling around in my mind last night, until finally, around eight o’clock, I decided that life would be better if I didn’t hold on to my grudges. I rang my agent who soon came back with the number to Alan’s mobile phone.

‘Hello Alan,’ I said, trying to sound upbeat. ‘It’s me. Richard Madeley.’

‘Oh, pin up of the year,’ he said, knowing, no doubt, that since our little argument, I’d lost my pin-up of the year status to the moustached Chuckle Brother. ‘What you ringing me at eight o’clock on a Friday for?’

‘I’m ringing to say I’m sorry about that incident last year and to invite you on the show.’

‘Sorry dear, I don’t do afternoons.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If it’s alright with you,’ he said, ‘I prefer to keep my brand of slightly indecent humour for the evening audiences which will appreciate such things.’

‘This was meant to be an attempt at reconciliation,’ I said.

‘Reconciliation!’ he squealed. ‘l’m sure it is for you but those of use whose stars are rising do not need help from those whose stars are fading.’

‘Now you just listen,’ I began but at that moment Judy and Stephen walked in the room. ‘Listen,’ I hissed. ‘You’ll know what that’s like sooner than you think... I’ve got two words for you, mate. Julian Clary. Julian Clary!’

And with that, I hung up the phone.

‘Did I hear Julian Clary’s name being used as a not-too idle threat?’ asked Stephen, taking his seat next to Judy as they prepared to watch Gardener’s World.

‘Alan Carr doesn’t want to be on the show,’ I said to Judy.

‘Well at least you did the friendly thing and asked.’

‘I did that,’ I said, darkly. ‘I most certainly did that.’

The Dull Vista

I’ve spent the morning sitting nursing a laptop through its first experience of Windows Vista. I’m not technically minded so it has been a frustrating few hours trying to understand ‘drivers’ and ‘authentication’. The annoying thing is that it’s my own fault. Before I sent it back for repair, I applied a scorched earth policy to the laptop. I deleted all my work files, software, and personal details in case the laptop didn’t come back. You probably smile ruefully at my foolishness but you’re not a celebrity. I didn’t want my emails and unfinished novels doing the rounds on internet gossip boards. Only now, a week after it arrived back from repair, do I see that I probably went a bit over the top in deleting things.

All of this means that I’m behind on my work. It’s also Friday and for the last couple of days I’ve dipping below the enthusiasm horizon. We’re chatting to Monty Don this afternoon, which is never a prospect sure to fill me with much excitement. He’s a good enough bloke but he’ll be going on about all the exotic places he’s been.

I might write something longer for later on. I might not. I’m in one of my occasional moods when I need inspiration, encouragement, or a slight whiff of something that tells me that all my efforts aren’t futile…

Bunion

After the drama of yesterday morning, it was good to escape the house for a few hours last night and spend the evening with the rest of the TV industry celebrating the fifth year since Paul O’Grady stopped wearing high heels. The event was a huge success, with lots of money raised for Paul’s charity that finds work for unwanted lap dogs sniffing out landmines on the border between North and South Korea. My mood had still risen considerably by the time I was driving home around eleven o’clock, which is probably why my instincts were sharp enough to react when I turned into the drive and saw something scamper from the beams of the headlights. It was no more than a shadow that flit across my attention but enough of a shock to make me pull up. Before I could get out, the creature – I was sure, at least, of that – had scampered into the bushes that block the lawn on one side and hide the view of our tennis court from the public road.

Intrigued, I ran for the spot in the bushes where the animal had disappeared. A tuxedo with purple cummerbund may not be the best outfit for crawling in vegetation but it did protect me from the branches that clawed at me like so many desperate fans. I have enough experience of celebrity to know how to push, elbow, kick and bite my way through a crowd and with a little effort I soon emerged on the other side to find myself in a slight clearing at the side of the house. The sight to greet me was not what I had expected to find. A bundle of plastic sheeting had been set up like a tent over the outlet to the central heating and more sheets covered the ground that was scattered with empty tubes of Pringles. More disturbing still was the figure that sat in the lea of the shelter, glaring at me as it shivered in black bin bags and tattered clothes.

‘Dick?’ croaked a voice I thought I recognised. ‘Is that you Dick?’

‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said, leaning down to see if I could recognise the face behind the mud, straw, and what smelled like unrefined effluent of cow.

A smile broke through the dirt. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Dick?’ whispered the voice. ‘It’s me. It’s your old friend Griff.’

‘Griff?’ It all came together: the face, the voice, the smell, and the name. ‘Not Griff!’

‘The very same,’ he said, his voice now recognisably that of my old judo partner, Griff Rhys Jones.

‘But Griff,’ I replied, ‘what are you doing here? And what’s happened to you? A man of your celebrity shouldn’t be eating Pringles in a tent made of plastic bags.’

‘Ah,’ he said, looking not even a bit ashamed. ‘It’s not what you think. I’m doing research.’

‘About Pringles? Here in my garden?’

‘About beggary,’ he replied. ‘It’s for a new TV drama in which I’ll be playing a much loved tramp in a small Shropshire village. It’s a light comedy for the winter evenings. I think it could be my path back to prime time.’

‘And what’s the name of this show?’ I asked, a little intrigued since I too have often seen myself moving into drama. I have asked the people at Cactus TV to find me an suitable role and a tramp in a Shropshire village sounded just my thing.

‘His name,’ said Griff, ‘is Bunion.’

‘As in the corn?’

‘Actually it’s more like the inflammation of the first joint of the big toe.’

‘Right,’ I replied, still feeling a bit disappointed that I wasn’t playing what sounded like a meaty role. ‘That sounds like good TV. The audiences are sure to flock to see you.’

‘Oh, they are,’ said Griff. ‘Or at least they will once I’ve finished writing it.’

‘Ah, so this Bunion is self penned?’

‘It is,’ he admitted. ‘And that’s why I’m here. I’ve been waiting for you to get home. I need some help putting the finishing touches to my script.’

My laugh was like a branch snapping or a can of Pringles opening. ‘You can’t fix your Bunion?’

Griff looked sadly to his feet, wrapped in bundles of cloth. ‘No, no, I can’t,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, Dick, I haven’t actually started it. All I have at the moment is the name and the setting. But I do think it’s the perfect for Sunday night on ITV.’

The news that the series had yet to be penned set my mind duelling with the facts. Here, I thought, was an opportunity to get in on a good thing right from the beginning. I still regret turning Jasper Carrot down when he offered me the ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ gig. I’d could have been Chris Tarrant if only I’d been blessed with the killer instinct and an inverted laugh.

‘Bunion? A very good name for Sunday night,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that Bunion will complete the triumviate of the nation’s favourite tramps that currently stands at only Compo and Cheggars. There’s nothing a middle class audience enjoys more than the reassurance that the destitute live a happy carefree life.’

‘I think so,’ said Griff, adjusting his plastic bag overcoat.

I grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. ‘Don’t you fret, Griff. Come on into the house and clean yourself up. I’m quite a talent when it comes to scripts. I’ll soon be able to sort out Bunion’s problems. We can then be described as the series’ joint creators…’

‘Oh,’ said Griff. ‘I didn’t mean for… I mean… That’s very good of you to offer, Dick. It’s just that…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I heard that Stephen’s staying with you.’

‘Ah,’ I said, the clouds parting and moonlight illuminating the real lie of the bushes. ‘You don’t want me to touch your Bunion?’

‘I had rather hoped that Stephen would help. He has such a way with words.’

‘As have I, Griff. As have I. But I’ll see what I can do but you might find that this will be a Fry / Madeley co-production. You see, I’m doing all his typing since he’s broken his arm.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Griff. ‘I’m a very good typist.’

Two handfuls of black polythene bin bags and a few chest hairs later, I had Griff pinned against the wall. ‘Listen Griff. If you come into my house, asking Stephen Fry to lend you a hand with your script, then you obey my rules. Okay?’

Griff looked suitably subdued. ‘Okay, you do the typing. As long as Stephen’s involved, I can live with that.’

I lowered him to the ground. ‘I knew you’d see it my way,’ I said. ‘You must remember that the scriptwriter is always right.’

The Strange Case of the Greater Lobed Winkle Picker

Look up the name ‘Richard Bartholomew Madeley’ in Who’s Who and you’ll notice that, in their great wisdom, the editors have added the word ‘sharp’ after my list of distinguishing characteristics. It’s there for a reason, less to do with the fact that I’m a pretty natty dresser than the renown of my vastly superior mind. Very few things escape my notice. Such as when Judy waddled past me this morning making the sound of a duck.

Straight away I thought that here was something a touch unusual. Normally when I appear around ten thirty, Judy welcomes me with some chirpy comment about my choice of multi-hued shirt sure to strobe for the cameras. There may be small talk about on the morning’s big news events or gossip she’s heard while chatting through the back fence with Mrs. Ronnie Corbett. I’d go so far as to say that it’s a rare morning when she waddles past me, and doing so while making the sound of a duck has never been part of our morning routine.

Sharp though he undoubtedly is, Madeley has not won Elle Magazine’s ‘Top Husband’ award for five years running without good cause. There was no way I was going to question my lady wife’s behaviour. One of the first things you learn when marrying strong minded, intelligent women is never to question their actions. What might look like ‘A’ list Channel 4 talent acting like a duck could well be a yogic meditation technique for giving up butter pastries. It’s why, conscientious if not slightly bemused, I followed Judy as she made a circuit of the living room, walked through into the dining room, and followed a path through the house that ended by the swimming pool. Only then did I intervene. I became concerned that she was about to throw herself in a dive for freshwater mullet so I grabbed her by the shoulders and marched her back into the dining room.

‘Come on Judy,’ I said giving her a mild shake as I sat her on a chair. ‘What’s wrong girl? Talk to Madeley. Tell him what’s wrong.’

She stared at me, glassy eyed. I’d never seen her like that. Well, perhaps once when we were interviewing Les Dennis but, quite frankly, that’s because he can’t go five minutes without mentioning his love of Blackpool.

‘Is it something I’ve done or said?’ I asked as Judy failed to respond. ‘Have I forgotten an anniversary? It’s not your birthday? It’s your birthday, isn’t it? I knew that… And you know that I’ve left your present at the studio...’

‘Quack,’ replied Judy. It clearly wasn’t her birthday.

Confused, I sat myself on the next dining chair and held her hand as I began to consider what could have caused such strange behaviour in a normally well adjusted woman in her early forties. That’s when the neurons controlling my raging paranoid gave both barrels to my frontal lobe.

‘Beadle’, I muttered darkly and I was straight down onto my hands and knees as I began to search for hidden cameras and microphones.

Judy and I have had a long standing agreement that we’d only invite Jeremy Beadle into our home if he were destitute and the cold winds of a frozen Hell were making it hard for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to find their way to Armageddon. However, I did wonder if the end of the Channel 4 contract had encouraged my darling wife to do something rash. TV talent reduced to duck-form would be precisely the sort of thing that a practical joker would find funny. That’s why I promised myself that I would soon share my own joke with Beadle, swinging a length of lead piping at his kneecaps. Unfortunately, a five minute search proved that there were no cameras and no Beadle. When I got to the front door, there wasn’t even sign of either one of his kneecaps parked in a van and wearing a fake perm and sunglasses and ready to pounce

Forlorn and still confused, I walked back to the dining room.

Judy had disappeared again.

I caught her by the swimming pool. This time she was preparing to wade; flapping her wings and giving full throat to a duck call. I had to forcibly drag her back into the dining room and got a wing around the ear for my trouble.

‘Now isn’t that better?’ I asked her a few minutes later as I stood up and examined the neat way I’d knotted my belt around the arm of the chair and Judy’s wrist. It would prevent Judy’s unseasonable migration while I went and hunted down some help.

A few dozen steps and a landing or two later led me to the sound of Wagner breaking down the door to the spare bedroom. I didn’t bother knocking.

‘Stephen,’ I said bursting in on Fry who was lying on his bed and waving his good arm to the music. ‘I need your help. It’s Judy. She seems to think that she’s a duck.’

The Great Man put aside his pipe which he’d been using as a baton and eased himself to his feet before he turned off the iPod connected to a pair of 2500W speakers.

‘Show me where she is,’ he said, his voice as rigid with concern as his arm with thick with plaster. ‘A duck you say? That doesn’t sound like Judy at all.’

Judy was still sitting glassy eyed in the dining room when I returned.

‘How long has the poor woman been like this?’ asked Stephen, kneeling by her side. He did what all medical professionals do when faced with a woman in a trance: he waved his hand before her eyes and began to make slight ‘whooping’ noises.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She walked past me in the hall and said “quack”. It’s been more of the same since then…’

‘Think carefully, Dick. Did she make any other signs that would indicate that she thought herself a duck and not a goose, a swan, or some other migratory water fowl?’

‘I really can’t say,’ I said. ‘Should I ring Bill Oddie? He might be able to communicate with her.’

Stephen sat back. ‘I think you should,’ he said, now sounding just as bemused as I by the mystery.

The ping of Bill’s bicycle bell eased our worries a few minutes later. The situation had calmed somewhat after we’d untied Judy and helped her into the living room. There, we’d placed her on a chair beside the sky blue curtains. That seemed to relax her and she’d begun to make guttural sounds in a low voice as she pecked at the green spots on the curtain. Leaving Stephen to look after her, I went to greet Bill at the front door.

‘A very odd thing,’ said Bill as he stepped into the hall. ‘I was locking my bike to your drainpipe when I head the unmistakable cry of the Greater Lobed Winkle Picker.’

‘And what’s odd about that?’ I asked.

A noise like a deflating crisp packet emerged from his lips. ‘They’re migratory! They shouldn’t be back from North Africa until early May.’

That’s when I did the sums and produced 4 from a nifty combination of 2s. In other words, I walked him into the living room and introduced him to the only Greater Lobed Winkle Picker not to be sporting a winter tan.

‘How long’s she been like this?’ asked Bill as he took a seat by her side.

‘Perhaps an hour. Stephen thinks you might be able to communicate with her.’

He laughed as he adjusted his glasses. He then bent down and checked Judy’s ankles.

‘My dear man,’ said Stephen. ‘What on earth do you think you are doing?’

‘Checking to see if she’d been ringed,’ explained Bill. ‘First page of the RSPB guide to wild birds: always check to see if they’ve been ringed…’

I was speechless.

‘I fear that she’s beyond Bill’s help,’ said Stephen, looking at me gravely. ‘I believe that our only hope of solving this mystery is if we now retrace Judy’s steps.’

‘She was in the hall when I first saw her,’ I said, hoping that might mean something.

‘Then to the hall we must go.’

This time I left Judy in the care of Bill, who had begun his attempts to communicate by making throaty clucks of his own. Stephen and I began to search the other rooms leading to the hall.

‘Ah ha!’ said Stephen, a few minutes later. He was kneeling on the kitchen floor and was retrieving a small CD player that had been lying beneath the kitchen table with a pair of headphones still attached. ‘The plot thickens!’ He handed the player to me and I ejected the disk which I was surprised to find had no label.

‘What CD could do that to a woman?’ mused Stephen as he took it from me and began to turn it over in his hands.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps James Blunt. I’ve always said that he could cause serious brain trauma.’

‘Oh, the dear woman,’ muttered Stephen as he examined the CD in an angled light. ‘I believe this isn’t James Blunt at all. In fact, I think she has been the victim of a terrible practical joke. If I’m not mistaken, this CD has exactly the same arrangement of pits as an unlicensed audio disc that I thought had been destroyed many years ago.’

‘You can see that just by looking at it?’ I asked.

‘Can’t you?’

I didn’t want to argue eyesight. ‘So what does it mean?’

‘It means, my dear Richard, that your wife has been hypnotized.’

‘That’s not possible!’ I scoffed.

He held out the CD player. ‘If you doubt me, return the disc from whence it came and put on the headphones.’

No Madeley has ever let a challenge go unmet. I did exactly as Stephen told me and he pressed the play button.

Even now, it’s hard to remember what happened. I recollect soothing music and a voice I thought I could recognise. Then my eyes felt heavy as I began to imagine myself swimming on a pond, the cool water lapping at my belly and the fish dipping beneath my webbed toes. And then I was falling. At this point I believe Stephen slapped me across the face. I wouldn’t have minded except he used his arm that was in plaster.

I picked myself up from the other side of the room.

‘That didn’t go as planned,’ he said as he came to my side. ‘But at least you didn’t go under.’

‘Under?’ I repeated, as I straightened my jaw. ‘What kind of magic was that?’

‘That,’ said Stephen, removing the CD, ‘is the work of Dr. Paul McKenna, Ph,D.’

‘Not the man world famous for being a quick and successful litigant in many trials involving people making slanderous remarks against his trade of hypnotist and his professional qualifications?’

‘The very same. You should take great care when mentioning Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D.’s name. Even the wildest example of hastily written satire found on the internet might cause Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D to sue.’

‘But what does this mean for Judy?’

He smiled and placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘Fret not, Dick. I can explain all. You see, these recordings were made in the 1980s at the height of stage hypnotism. They were party favourites among a certain media set. I attended many parties where the fabled Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D. tapes were played to unsuspecting victims. They were outlawed in the 1990s and Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D. has rightly condemned their use. Many claim that these tapes weren’t even recorded by Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D. but some other man called Paul McKenna. Others just say that this is a story put out by sad, tired old men who fear prosecution by the King of Litigation himself.’

‘The King of Litigation? You mean Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D.?’

‘The very same…’

‘And what kind of men would spread rumours like that?’ I asked.

‘Sad men,’ said Stephen. ‘The sort of men who sit at their computers late at night and Google their own name.’

‘But what of Judy? Can we stop her from thinking she a duck.’

‘Of course,’ promised Stephen. ‘I can deprogramme her now that I know the cause for her behaviour.’

We returned to the living room where we found Bill flushing. ‘I think I’ve done it,’ he said. ‘I’ve managed to communicate with Judy.’

‘Wonderful,’ I said, patting him on his back. ‘And what did she say?’

He blushed a deeper shade of Oddie. ‘Well, it might have made the mating call of the male Greater Lobed Winker Picker. I don’t think she was interested.’

Not long after, the sound of Bill’s bicycle bell was heard pinging down the drive as he legs peddled furiously away with a warning in his ear about chatting up a man's wife. Stephen, meanwhile, began his hour long vigil with Judy, slowly whispering to her, until finally, just before noon, her eyes cleared and she looked between the two of us.

‘Richard,’ she said with a human blink. ‘I hope you don’t think you’re wearing that shirt on the show today. You know it will strobe.’

‘Good morning, Judy,’ I said and gave her a kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ll go and change.’

‘You better,’ she said. ‘Quack.’

I looked at Stephen.

He shrugged. ‘Nobody will notice,’ he promised.

Tune in at five to see if that’s true.

Stephen Fry Reviews The Harrison Tweed P7200 Magnetic Flies

Bless you and your little pumping hearts for trying, but I beg you to trouble me no more with manatee related gifts. I can assure you that the manatee novelty does not last. A man has only so much room in his life for stuffed manatees, manatee towels, tea cosies, or, indeed, t-shirts on manatee related themes. The Post Office have informed me that they’ll impose a manatee tax on deliveries to Fry Towers should the flow of this manatee merchandise not abate. So, please, my dear sweet and sometimes insufferable friends: no more. Send your manatees elsewhere. Anywhere but send them not to me.

Now I have stated my position on my manatee problem, I would like to take this opportunity to also appeal for calm on another issue. My arm has indeed been cracked asunder but take not your worries out on the one man who has promised to set it right. Richard Madeley is a generous man. Much misunderstood by the British public he may be, but in private he is a man blessed with healing fingers and thumbs to match. If my knowledge of obscure authorities in the Catholic church isn’t to fail me, I believe it was Saint Francis de Sales who advised us to make ourselves ‘familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you.’ Well, make myself familiar with angels I have certainly done. His name is Dick and I would happily swear on the infernal suffrage of all tweed-loving Englishmen that I don’t not understand why you should continue to vilify him.

To underline my devotion to the man whose spare room I now call my home, your favourite Uncle Stephen has gone buttock to seat to prepare something for this blog. He creased a brow to consider the many subjects ripe for the Fry treatment. Should he give you a primer on writing lyrics of light English operetta? No, you have that already. A field manual for fixing battle wounds? Perhaps next week. Needlecraft for the crafty? Edible toe fungi? Effluent disposal in the Kenyan National Park? No, no and no. Instead, I looked down and saw the subject of today’s article staring right at me. I would review my flies! But, fear not for Stephen. There are not any old flies. I should say “Strewth” and compound my surprise with one of these “!” if it were so. These flies are made by the good people at Harrison Tweed. They are the Harrison Tweed P7200 Magnetic Flies no less. They are flies to savour. Pat one’s belly and say “Yum!” after me. Yum!

Restricted to the use of my left hand, I decided this week was the right time to upgrade the Fry flies. I am currently putting the P7200 Magnetic Flies through their trials and flying through the trials the new Fry flies most certain are. They come pre-installed on any Harrison Tweed trousers but can be fitted to any pants that have either zip or button fastening. The compact design, weighing less than two grammes, ensures that there is no unsightly sagging about the crotch, while the prototypes’ notorious faults have also been fixed so there’s no need to worry about your groin spontaneously igniting. Nor, indeed, your eyebrows. Shudder.

One armed men among you will find the magnetic flies’ voice operated mechanism a boon. With a simple to set top secret code word, I can have my flies open with no trouble. The only drawback I can see is the number of occasions when my flies have opened when in conversation with a friend. My advice: choose you secret word carefully. Setting it to ‘I like you hat, Mrs. Wogan’ caused your friend Fry no end of embarrassment at a recent drinks party at the BBC.

Many of you will find the WIFI feature of the Harrison flies a deal breaker. Remotely operated via a suitably equipped laptop, you will always have up to the date minute report on the state of your flies while on the move. The position is tracked to the closest millimetre via GPS so you should have peace of mind about the security of your loins. Indeed, remote sensing is not the end of the Harrison flies tricks. We’re talking about remote operation too. The flies can automatically open in a class leading 0.2 seconds. Lordy, lordy, zip! That’s nearly half a second over its competitors and nearly a second faster than on their manual setting.

The flies are compatible with European protocols, though be warned: there may be a few moments of delay while the flies enter into prolonged handshaking with foreign models. Quel surprise! With integrated alarm, the flies are also protected against intrusion. The manufacturers also assure us that recent reports of East European gangs accidentally hacking into the flies have overstated the problem. All flies now come with a flywall installed, to stop those virtual gropists having access to all your important data, and, indeed, fleshy goods.

When friends next ask me to recommend a set of flies to them, I will not hesitate to point a finger to my Harrison P7200 magnetic flies with WIFI functionality and declare them the best on the market. For the man on the move, or the man with only one arm, they are the best magnetic flies on the market. With the next firmware update promising extending functionality including scrotum detection to prevent those painful bathroom snags, the future of the Harrison flies leaves your Uncle Stephen quivering with excitement. Quiver. Quiver. Quiver.

Dreamy Words

Because of the media’s strictly enforced rules against nepotism, I rarely promote the work of those people I consider to be as much family as friends. I’ve made it my lot in life to always sneak in a link to Stephen Fry’s blog, whatever the topic of the day’s post, but that is merely a professional courtesy towards the man who helped save Ronnie Corbett’s golf swing from his shattered walnuts.

However, it’s not nepotism but humility that prevents me from directing your attention to the newest blog on my blogroll. Not only because I had a small hand in the blog’s design but because long-time reader Selena Dreamy says good things about me. Far be it for me to encourage you to make Selena’s blog a regular drive by on your circuit around the neighbourhood.

Fly, my pretties… Fly!

The Holy Underpant War

It has been suggested in certain quarters that I’m delusional. Some would go further and claim they make insightful comments when questioning my mental heath, my abilities as a diarist, and my friendship with some of the greatest minds of our age. Well I’m here to rebuff these remarks and to again state that I’m merely the chronicler of reality. If our American cousins don’t understand the world of London celebrity, then it really isn’t my concern. I suggest they go take a long jog along an abbreviated pier. I am quite comfortable with the life I lead and the friends that surround me. It doesn’t surprise me when fans of the man I know simply as ‘Fry’ question my relationship with their hero. Take the incident that greeted me this morning. It is not the stuff of celebrity magazines and red carpets. It’s just the stuff of my grim everyday life.

Newly hatched from beneath my duvet, I had been heading in a south westerly direction, negotiating a run of stairs with the intention of heading towards the kitchen and seeking out a woman called Judy. Toast was on my mind when I heard a rather strange outburst coming from the front room.

‘Hurrah!’ came the martial cry followed shortly after by the sound of wood cracking lampshade.

I might have ignored it but, when another ‘hurrah!’ was followed by a ‘have that!’, I stepped into the living room to see what the commotion was about.

The stuff of merry old England was never like this. There was Stephen Fry, with his plastercast arm in a sling, hopping around the living room, jousting with a mop resting on his good elbow. It was an odd sight but odder still for the large pair of gentleman’s Y fronts that were hanging from his lance.

‘Ah, Sir Richard! How good of you to rise before noon,’ said he. ‘Methinks you have too much ale last night and a good time with yon buxom wench.’

‘I hope Judy doesn’t hear you calling her that,’ I warned. ‘Yon wench packs a buxom punch.’

‘Pah!’ he laughed. ‘Fry frets not. You must hurry up and sate your appetite. We attend a tourney at noon and there we might be spending the night in the Sheriff’s dark dungeon.’

It’s funny how a statement like that can press for attention despite the other things that are going on in the world. You would think that the next words out of my mouth would have been: ‘why are you waving your underpants on the end of a stick, Stephen?’ But instead I merely asked: ‘What sheriff?’

‘Sheriff Plod of the London constabulary who will arrest us for causing a public affray. That’s if it all goes to plan…’

‘Plan? What plan?’

He toed the day’s Guardian across to me and dropped the knightly patois. ‘Ah, Dick! Were we both smaller men, we might think it a trivial concern. However, blessed as we both are by marvellously manlike hips and loins, I thought it only right that we both attend a demonstration at the Oxford Road branch of Marks & Spencers. We’re due there at twelve.’

‘Are we?’ I replied. ‘And why “we”?’

‘Because I thought you’d be there as a favour to one of your oldest friends,’ said a voice from over my right shoulder.

I turned around and saw a man who has been welcomed too infrequently in the Madeley home.

‘Paxo!’ I said, rushing up to shake Jeremy Paxman by his hand. ‘What you doing here?’

He sneered. ‘I’m here to organise a protest to stop the insufferable creep of cheap quality gussets,’ he said and sneered again. He means nothing by it, the poor man. It’s just the way that God connected his face to his chin.

‘That’s right,’ explained Stephen. ‘Jeremy has taken it upon himself to protect all us who like underpants with the luxury of extra supportive gussets. We are to be the vanguard of the campaign. When the world sees Richard Madeley being dragged screaming into the back of a police van, they’ll know that we feel strongly about quality underpants that can carry a couple of large sized bowling balls.’

‘That’s all well and good,’ I replied, ‘but what has this got to do with me? I don’t wear underpants. Everybody knows that. I refuse to become a martyr to the visible panty line.’

‘Tsk,’ said Stephen. ‘In fact, double tsk. Where’s the man who wrote the two hundred like mock heroic epistle about Jeremy’s sock drawer? You do know that this protest is about socks as well?’

That did perk my interest. ‘Socks? What’s this got to do with socks?’

With that, Jeremy kicked off his shoe. ‘Look at that,’ he said, gesturing to his big toe. ‘I’ve not had these socks for a week and already they’ve gone through.’

Sure enough. The Paxman toe was there for all to see. Pink, well clipped, and full of sneer.

Something gave way and my resolve collapsed. With an audible twang, my shoulders sank all the way to the sofa where I lay my head against a cushion.

‘Come, come,’ said Stephen. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Turn that frown upside down,’ said Jeremy; rather ironically, I felt.

In fact, it was a foolish remark given that Stephen does like to take some things very literally. ‘I don’t know the full procedure of removing a mouth but I imagine it fairly tricky to turn a frown upside down. You’d probably have to cut into fairly complicated facial muscle. I’d be surprised if you didn’t end up with some paralysis in the cheeks and jaw.’

Jeremy sneered again, proving that there’s no paralysis in either his cheek or jaw.

‘Come on,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Give me five minutes while I go and put on a pair of underpants. If I’m going to do this, I might as well do it properly.’

‘White Marks & Spencers only,’ sneered Paxman as though I needed the warning.

It was Stephen who insisted that we take his taxi. It meant that I had to do the driving. It’s an odd business negotiating London’s traffic when people try to flag you down every few hundred yards. I imagine that’s why Stephen loves it so much. It gives a man a sense of being enormously popular and ‘in demand’.

We rolled up before Marks & Spencers just on the stroke of noon. Jeremy and Stephen climbed out the taxi and I drove round the corner to park in a loading bay. When I got back to the front of the building, the protest had grown quite considerably. John Humphrys was there, as was the complete news reading crew of the BBC. It would seem that Marks & Spencers underpants are the underwear of choice for the BBC newsroom. John Simpson and Huw Edwards were holding up placards demanding a rethink on sock policy while Stephen walked up and down waving Judy’s old kitchen mop in the air with a pair of his underpants flying proudly from the top.

‘Ah!’ he cried in his loudest thespianised voice. ‘’Tis, I, Fry, walking up and down outside Marks & Spencers waving my underpants around on the stop of a stick made from Judy Finnigan’s mop.’

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable sensation of underpants on my hips or the sight of unfriendly policemen gathering at the edge of the scene but I couldn’t step forward. Call me a coward or the consummate TV professional, but I knew I couldn’t be arrested. Not today. Not when I’m due at the studios to interview Colin Corfield who has lost 44 stone after having a gastric bypass operation. How would Judy cope without me once “Dancing on Ice” stars, Tim Vincent and Aggie MacKenzie, landed on the sofa? Say what you want about Marks & Spencers underpants but this fight wasn’t mine. With the sound of Stephen’s protests fading as I went, I walked back into the crowd and at the next corner waved down a taxi. Gussets be damned! Ed Saunders would be coming into the studio to talk about Tim Burton’s ‘Sweeney Todd’.

A Sunday Morning Manatee

‘Richard.’

‘Richard.’

‘Richard!’

‘Richard.’

‘Richard?’

‘Richard.’

‘Richard…’

‘Riiichaaard!’

‘Richard.’

‘Richard. Richard.’

‘Richardddddd...’

‘Richard.’

‘Dick?’

There was a sudden rustle of duvet and a figure loomed snapping at my side. ‘For God’s sake, Richard! Why don’t you go and see what he wants?’

‘Isn’t it your turn?’ I asked Judy but she just groaned and rolled onto her side. ‘That’s very unfair,’ I added. ‘You know I went last time.’

‘Oh, no,’ she muttered, heading dreamwards. ‘He’s your friend. You go and see to him.’

I gave breath to a sigh. Lying on my back, my eyes open, I’d found myself in a deeply meditative zone and I didn’t want to move. From there, I had begun to make some sense of my life, my career, and my future. It would take something very special to move me…

‘Richard?’ went the voice again, this time with a note of mild distress.

Unquestioning, I slid out of bed and into my slippers. I winced as I stood up. Judy always forces me to wear pyjamas when we have visitors and I have an unnatural habit of getting the cord of my pyjama bottoms wrapped around my tenderest parts.

I hobbled out to the landing and paused at the door to the spare room before I knocked.

‘Richard?’ said a voice on the other side.

I went on in. The room was in semi darkness; the only light coming from a slight chink in the curtain. It was enough to illuminate the man lying on the extra long bed.

‘Yes, Stephen? What do you want this time?’

Stephen Fry peered out from beneath his sleeping hat, his broken arm held up by makeshift rigging that Judy had strung from the ceiling.

‘I’d like a glass of water,’ he said.

‘Water?’

‘Well, I, Fry, would be shamefaced were I to ask you to make me a hot chocolate made with organic goats milk and with a touch of cinnamon sprinkled on the top.’

I looked to the man to whom I owe so much. ‘And I,’ I replied, ‘would be shamefaced if I didn’t make you a hot chocolate made with organic goats milk and with a touch of cinnamon sprinkled on the top.’

I turned for the door.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ he asked.

‘No, not at all,’ I replied. ‘It’s hard to sleep when your intellectual world has been thrown into chaos...’

‘Chaos’ might have been too strong a word for what I’d experienced earlier in the day. ‘Turmoil’ was a better way of describing it. Working as Stephen’s scribe, I’d been introduced to new ideas and shown the way a gifted imagination works. We’d written an opera together, followed by essays, poems, and an intense hour writing out a future Dork Talk article about the exploits of Mozilla browsers. The whole experience had taught me that writers aren’t born but fashioned from tweed and green cape. Writing isn’t a craft. It’s a gift possessed by a few rare intelligences of true and natural genius raised at the twin comedic teats of Cambridge University and the BBC. It was just the sort of thing to make a lowborn man bitter about his more talented friends.

Some might even say that I’d have been justified were I less tolerant of the Great Man’s peculiar demands. But I am, if I’m anything, a patient acolyte of the Priory of Fry. I can’t forget that I owe him many debts. He’s saved me and my friends on so many occasions, he could spend a month with us and I’d bow to his every request. I was more than happy to wander down to the kitchen and put a pan on the hob for the man who had bravely plucked shattered walnut shell from Ronnie Corbett’s groin.

The heat had barely begun to rise from the milk when the kitchen door opened and Stephen wandered in. He was dressed in a bathrobe with the official Fry crest on the pocket; two hippos cavorting around a quill errant.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ said Stephen, cradling the heavy cast on his broken arm. ‘I was wondering how you’re getting on with the hot chocolate.’

‘It’s warming nicely,’ I replied.

He walked to the breakfast bar and threw a leg over a stool. His arm made heavy contact with the worktop and he winced slightly.

‘I never did ask you how you broke it?’ I said.

‘Ah, now there is a story to be told in the glow of a hob busy boiling goats milk,’ said Stephen. He smiled and slowly brushed his hair from his eyes. There was a definite whir in some mental mechanism as his mind switched modes from observation and to composition. ‘After I, Fry, Scrabble Champion, left you the other day, I took a plane to Brazil.’

‘Brazil?’

‘Indeed. It was going to be a week long jaunt around the nation that brought us the G string and the maraca. I was there to film a new documentary about the animals of South America. My destination was the city of Tefe on the bank of the River Solimões. It was there that I met the BBC crew and the subject of the first programme. A family of manatee.’

‘Manatee?’

‘Sea cows,’ he explained. ‘A strange creature that is best described as having the athleticism of Christopher Biggins and the personality of Jo Brand. Not the world’s most loveable beast and, in truth, Richard, probably harbouring a desire to exterminate mankind. Think of them as the aquatic version of the North Koreans. Fortunately, like the North Koreans – and, for that matter, Christopher Biggins – they lack the equipment to do us any serious harm. Except, that is, when mankind happens to be called Fry. Ah, Richard. I didn’t see it coming. One moment, I was in a pool of water talking to camera and the next and I’m being mauled by a sea cow. It didn’t even have the decency to say “moo”.’

‘It mauled you?’

‘Slowly but it caught unawares.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘And that’s how I came to be injured. To avoid serious sea cow mauling, I jumped back and tripped over a submerged log. Fortunately, my landing was cushioned by the female manatee. You might say it was a swings and roundabouts situation. My injury would have been much worse if I hadn’t landed on the creature.’

‘Lucky for you.’

‘But, alas, not for Mrs. Manatee. In saving me, she suffered a mortal wound. A very contradictory beast, the manatee. Some are prone to do great violence and others equally great kindnesses.’

‘Oh, Stephen,’ I said, wiping an honest tear from my eye. ‘Don’t tell me any more. You didn’t warn me this story would end so sadly.’

‘Not as sadly as for the family of little manatees. As the ambulance drove me away, I could hear them crying out for their mama. “Mama. Mama. Mama.” A sad sound, indeed. Their mother crushed by a falling Fry and their father condemned as a Fry mauler. The world can be so cruel.’

I turned around just in time to catch the milk before it boiled over. I quickly poured it into a cup, stirred in the chocolate and shook out a bit of cinnamon.

‘Ah, wonderful,’ said Stephen, taking it from my hands. ‘And you had cinnamon. I’ll sleep well after this.’

I smiled but I doubted if I would sleep at all.

The cries of the baby manatee would keep me awake until dawn.

Have A Break, Stephen Fry Style!

Heavens! Crikes! Shudder and Drool! Throw the word ‘calamity’ full force into a room crowded with ‘disaster’, ‘shock’, ‘outrage’, and ‘catastrophe’ and you might experience a fraction of the concern I had felt by the time I came to button up my fly at ten o’clock this morning.

At first, it began with a touch of mild annoyance when I was awoken by Judy hammering away in the spare bedroom. Groggily, I slipped out of bed and fed my feet to the slippers. Bones cracked, ligaments creaked, but His Madeley’s Slippers Brown and Orthopedic held up well as I set off to see what the old girl was up to.

‘I won’t be long,’ said she from the top of a wobbling stepladder. The curtain rail was hanging down across the windows. ‘As soon as I’ve fixed this, you can help me carry the new bed up the stairs.’

Daylight bankrupted my sleepiness but not my sense. ‘New bed?’ I asked. ‘What new bed?’

Judy wobbled again on the ladder and I thought for a moment she might actually fall through the window. She grabbed the wall just in time. ‘The new extra long bed and mattress I had delivered this morning.’

‘Extra long?’ I too felt a bit unsteady. The world wasn’t making much sense to me. ‘What’s going on Judy? Why do we need an extra bed?’

She turned and looked at me as she slipped her claw hammer into her workbelt. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve not heard the news!’

‘I’ve been asleep and in a fairly deep one at that. I was combing the knots out of Katie Denhem’s hair.’

Judy gave me one of her narrowing stares that warn me against mentioning Katie’s name too often. It’s the reason why I’ve held off including her picture in my bestiary.

‘You claim to be the man’s closest friend yet you haven’t heard the news?’ She gave me the full force of a tut which couldn’t have sounded more dismissive if she’d driven it through my forehead with her hammer. ‘Stephen’s broken his arm.’

That news shocked me into wakefulness. ‘Is he okay? Is he conscious? Did he mention my name?’

‘It’s only a broken arm but I’ve told him that we think it only right that he comes and stays with us for a few days while he recovers.’

Words are an unnecessary luxury when men of action are in their slippers before noon on a Saturday. I rushed to the window and lifted the rail into place. ‘Hammer away, Judy. Hammer like you’ve never hammered before…’

As Judy began to hammer and my arms began to rebel against the weight of the heavy curtain pole, I looked down and out the window and saw the postman walking up the drive. I smiled to him as he approached but he didn’t smile back. I suppose that’s the problem with sleeping in the nude. One quickly discovered the limitations of a pair of slippers when you’re holding up a curtain rail before a low silled bedroom window.

Stephen arrived an hour later when I was dressed, shaved, and buoyed by cornflakes.

‘How bad is it, old boy?’ I asked as I helped him into the hall.

‘Alas,’ said Fry, his arm in sling and plaster. ‘’Tis I, Fry, with the cruellest break of all. It’s my writing hand. I fear that the good people of The Guardian will have to do without Dork Talk for the foreseeable future. And my iPhone has been ringing all morning but I’ve been unable to answer it.’

‘Don’t you worry yourself about that,’ said Judy, fluffing a cushion on the sofa. ‘You come and sit down. You poor thing. And if you need somebody to do your typing for you, I’m sure Richard would only be too happy to help. It might even do him some good and show him that a real writer doesn’t just sit there and make things up off the top of his head.’

‘Indeed,’ said Fry, though I noticed, failing to meet her gaze.

‘I’m happy to do that,’ I said, flopping into my arm chair. ‘You need anything in the meantime? Something to eat? Entertainment? I could ring Oddie and ask him to bring his musical spoons?’

‘No, no,’ smiled Stephen as Judy perched herself next to him. ‘I just want to rest a few moments before we get to work.’

I looked at him. ‘Work? On a Saturday?’

‘I have noticed this in your before, Dick. You have a distinct reluctance to grasp life with both hands and shake it free of every drop of its possibility.’

An odd thing to say when your wrist is encased in plaster. He’d be grasping little in both hands for the foreseeable future. However, Stephen was right. I do complain about not having the time to write, yet in a few weeks I might be burdened with additional duties to make these days feel like protracted holidays.

‘Okay, I’ll help you,’ I said. ‘What do you need?’

He smiled as he used his good hand to retrieve his pipe from a pocket. Judy was soon shoving shag in his bowel and helping him to light it.

‘Bring my laptop in from the car and we’ll begin,’ said Stephen after a couple of mild puffs. ‘I was hoping to finish my libretto for my new opera based around the legend of Grunhilda, the one armed Bavarian bandit and truffle hunter. Wagner left his score unfinished when he began to find it too much for him. Luckily, I have the genius of Andrew Lloyd Webber to finish the music and give an extra the polish and layer it with my lyrics.’ He cleared his voice and began to sing in that occasionally fragile voice of his…

‘’Tis I, Grunhilda, speaking to you on my Alpine horn.
Where are you my band of flaxen haired lovelies,
We need to ascent again up yon Matterhorn,
Where grow the finest of Baverian trufflies…’

He gave an almost embarrassed smile as his voice finished echoing through the rooms.

‘Okay…’ I said.

‘Then I’d like us to write a couple of chapters of my new novel, “Bullocks in Tow”, my tale of farming life set against the backdrop of genetic mutations and cattle haulage.’

‘Right…’

‘And we’ll finish by writing a couple of essays on Tamil nationalism and security exploits in Mozilla based browsers. I thought after some dinner, we might spend the rest of the night writing poems and end with a game of Scrabble.’

‘I can see that you’re going to be busy,’ said Judy rising and adjusted her cuffs in a way that evoked just a touch of envy.

‘Indeed I am,’ I smiled, though I didn’t quite know how I should feel. ‘Give me five minutes, Stephen, while I just go and update my blog and I’ll be with you and Grunhilda.’

And now that job is done it’s time for me to learn how to write like the Master and learn the history of Grunhilda and her trufflies.

Saturday's Search Term Bonanza

It’s the weekend and I’ve had little chance to rest, even though I’m worn out after the first week back in the five o’clock slot on Channel 4. I’m rushing to write up the latest bit of gossip regarding Stephen’s accident but, in the meantime, here is something to make you smile: my favourite search terms from the past week's visitors from Google.

People often ask me if I make these up and I swear that they are genuine. As usual, I’ll try to explain/answer them to the best of my ability.


‘Venessa Feltz cleavage’

The old favourite is still going strong. It is a somewhat disturbing fact that this phrase alone accounts for more visitors to this blog than any other. I doubt if Venessa Feltz even knows that her cleavage is this popular.

‘How did the pencil help society when it was invented?’

Well we finally had a single instrument which could be used to both stir our tea and remove troublesome ear wax.

‘Perfect marker beard’

I think small Jimmy Hill style beards are the perfect way to mark the end of your chin. Some men swear by them. With a well trimmed Jimmy Hill beard, you’ll never lost the end of your chin again.

‘Uses for hemorrhoid cream’

Cleaning out an ants nest, smoothing wrinkles, making an Eskimo frown.

‘How to electrocute a squirrel’

It is a known scientific fact that you cannot actually electrocute a squirrel. They have such a high level of salt in their bodies that they are a natural conductor of electricity. Some people say that squirrels might even hold the key to our energy problems.

‘Jeremy Paxman pants’

The details are these: inside leg 38”, waist 41”, and made from the best squashed worsted by Mr. Patel of High Street, Whickham.

‘Water Sport transvestites’

This one confuses the hell out of me. Why anybody would want to see transvestites surfing and wind sailing is a mystery. From a distance, I’d doubt if you’d even know that they’re transvestites. Could they perhaps mean water polo?

‘Prunella Scales topless photo’

Understandable. I’ve always had a slight thing for Mrs. Fawlty.

‘Usherette tray manufacturer’

You can’t beat Peels of Norwich. They make the finest usherette trays.

‘Fart appreciation society’

The mind boggles. Where do they hold their meetings? What do they do at their meetings? And who would want to attend their meetings?

‘The rubber duck appreciation society’

Much more my cup of tea. Quack.

‘Kirsty Wark newsreader marital status’

Married and mean. You don’t want to go there, boyfriend.

‘Richard Madeley funny things he says’

See above and below. I’m here until Easter.

‘Who is Marti Pellow's wife?’

Mrs. Pellow. I’ve met her on many occasions and she’s a lovely woman. Oddly, she has a total aversion to the records of Wet Wet Wet. It marks her out as a connoisseur of good music.

When Beavers Attack

The mystery of Fred Talbot's disappearance deepens.

Judy was hanging out her newly-washed triple-trussed safety brassieres this morning when she saw something grinning at her from the bushes that run alongside the rear patio. Naturally, she gave a scream and fainted there on the spot. When I ran out to see what was wrong, I found our beaver lurking in close proximity to her left leg, a morbid grin fixed across its wet, salacious lips. I saw immediately what had happened. From somewhere, the poor creature had unearthed an object that looked remarkably like a human jawbone. The object had become stuck on the beaver’s oversized teeth and were preventing the beaver from going about its normal business of making a documentary for the BBC down at the lake.

Still feeling a little cautious about how I handle an animal owned by TV license payers, I immediately rang Bill Oddie who jumped on his bicycle and peddled around. Together we managed to lure the beaver back down to the lake where we penned him against the bank for a closer inspection.

‘This isn’t a jawbone,’ squealed a delighted Oddie once he’d prised the grin from the beaver’s mouth. ‘It’s the upper half of a set of dentures.’

‘Dentures?’ I said, reaching for them. ‘And what would a beaver be doing with dentures?’

Oddie looked to the still, dark waters of the lake. ‘And you’re yet to be convinced that Fred Talbot’s not down there?’

‘Impossible,’ I replied and looked at the smile in my hand. Could this really be the same grin that had welcomed in many a warm front and warned of overnight ground frost from a floating map moored to the Albert Dock? There was only one way to find out.

‘We need to get these dentures checked out by an expert orthodontist,’ I said as Bill began to frolic in the mud with the beaver. ‘We need somebody to confirm that these teeth match Fred the Weatherman’s smile.’

There is, of course, only one person we know who has the medical training to make such a identification.

‘I got here as fast a human legs and diesel engine could carry me,’ said Stephen Fry, jogging down to the lake. He was wearing his Oscar Wilde had and favourite green cape, while in his hand he carried a shooting stick with the large handle in the shape of H.G. Well’s naked buttocks. ‘Might I enquire, Dick, why your lady wife is currently lying on the patio?’

‘Ah,’ I said, no doubt blushing a touch. ‘That’s because I completely forgot about her in all the excitement. She fainted when the beaver reared its grinning head.’

‘The same beaver with the teeth you want me to inspect?’

‘The very same,’ I said, handing him the dentures.

‘You are indeed fortunate,’ he said, inspecting the teeth. ‘I spent my last Whit holiday taking all the qualifications required to work as an orthodontist. Do you know I fixed Jade Goody’s underbite last year?’

I gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Working for the enemy, Stephen? That’s not like you.’

‘It’s hard to say no when one has the chance to wire that woman’s mouth shut.’ He turned the teeth over in his hands. ‘These dentures are well worn and have the distinctive bite characteristics of a man who speaks with his mouth full and gets overexcited at moments of even mild stress.’

‘That could easily be Fred,’ I said, remembering many a meal when his enthusiasm for a cloud would get the better of him.

‘I need to compare it with pictures of the man.’

‘I’m sure we have a few of those tucked away,’ I said and gestured up to the house.

On the way back, I got Stephen to help me lift Judy from the cold patio and into the conservatory where she’d be warm as she slept off her shock. I then took Fry and Oddie into my study where I keep the chest containing all my old souvenirs of my days on This Morning.

‘Inconclusive,’ said Fry half an hour later. He sat back and let the magnifying glass fall to his knees. ‘These teeth could easily have belonged to Fred but they could have also belonged to one of a number of men with strong jaws and slightly erratic natures.’ He looked toward Bill who was curled up asleep on the rug. ‘For instance, these teeth could easily have belonged to Bill.’

Bill gave a quite mutter, no doubt dreaming about chasing owls through a semi-deciduous forest.

‘Well that means that mystery only deepens,’ I said as I lay the teeth on my desk next to my unfinished Airfix model of Crown Prince Willem Hendrik.

‘Indeed it does,’ said Stephen. ‘If only you could find the bottom set, we might be able to make a positive match. Until then, there’s little more I can do.’

‘Thanks,’ I replied, patting the Great Man on the knee. ‘Fancy a game of Scrabble while the babes are asleep?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Stephen as I stepped lightly over my little bearded friend.

‘I’m afraid the excitement of the morning had come too early in the year for him,’ I explained to Stephen as we softly closed the study door on the sleeping Oddie. ‘If he doesn’t get a good four mouths of winter hibernation, he can be so irritable come the spring.’

The Madeley Bestiary

Excuse me if I keep burping. I’m feeling a mite bilious this morning. I think it must be something I ate in the last couple of days. However, I intend to crack on and have something posted for you before I scoot off to the studios to film this afternoon’s show.

I’ve also been delayed by working late into the evening on a new feature for my blog. You might have noticed the new ‘Madeley Bestiary’ in the column to your right. I’ll be adding to this excellent resource over the coming days, so both new and old readers alike will be able to reference the dramatis personae of my life. What’s more, if you print them out, they’ll form a set of cards that can be used to play a wide range of interesting games or used as a replacement tarot deck. Turn over two Ronnie Corbetts in a row and you’ll be in for ten years of good luck.

A Meaty Meal

Forgive me if I parse a few ugly phrases this morning. I’m suffering a hangover so acute that it has already penned its own agenda for the destruction of the human race. Last night was something of a special occasion. To mark the first job interview I’ve attended in over twenty years, I was treated to a meal by my excellent friends, Stephen Fry and Jeremy Clarkson, at one of the West End’s finest restaurants. The place came with a good reputation for having the widest menu in the city. A.A. Gill had described it as an ‘omnivore’s paradise’, which in Clarkson’s version had become ‘tasty grub’. In practical terms, the menu offered speciality cuts of meat for those of us who enjoy the finer side of the mammal and vegetable divide.

As if to prove the point, I’d been tucking into my main course when I must have hit an artery somewhere in the midst of the raw steak. The plate was soon awash with bovine claret. I didn’t know what to do: mop it up with a bread roll or fashion a tourniquet out of my napkin. In the end, I asked Clarkson to lean over and lend me his finger. With a bit of pressure applied to the steak’s wound, I piled mashed potato over the meat and the problem was solved. It’s the sort of quick thinking that I’m known for.

I’m telling you this in order to make a point about my diet. To argue that I’m a man who has never taken the vegetarian shilling is to understate my love for meat. If I had the teeth for it, I’d rip it straight from the hoof. Many a time have Judy and I holidayed abroad and I’ve gone for the most meaty dish on the menu. There’s not a animal on this green earth I’ve not dreamed about chewing through and that would include some fairly rare beasts. It’s why I don’t take Jamie Oliver’s arguments all that seriously. If God hadn’t intended us to eat meat, he’d have never given us the cattle gun.

‘It’s the little baby chickens,’ I explained to Clarkson as he began to hack into his own side of beef. ‘He gets all gooey eyed when he sees their cute little beaks.’

‘I love beak,’ sighed Jeremy. ‘Newly fried with a squeeze of lemon juice. Absolutely terrific.’

At this point, Stephen Fry returned from the wine cellar. He’d insisted that the waiter took him there to choose a bottle of the red that would match not just our meal but his new vermilion cape.

‘Do I return at the end or the beginning of an interesting topic of conversation?’ asked Stephen, resuming his seat.

‘We’re discussing meat and why Jamie Oliver is fussy about what he cooks,’ explained Jeremy.

‘Oh, I know something he’d never cook,’ said Stephen. ‘Panda.’

‘Panda?’ said Jeremy, wiping his mouth with his napkin and then giving me one of those looks. ‘Do you believe this, Dick? Stephen claims to have eaten panda.’

‘I didn’t much care for it, myself,’ said Fry. ‘A rather tough meat with an excess of gristle.’

‘And when did you eat panda?’

‘In China,’ said Stephen. ‘Some of the larger zoos have quite a collection of panda. I happened to be guest of honour on the day one of them died. The poor thing fell from its tyre swing. Everybody was quite distraught but then common sense took over. They quickly dressed the meat and popped it in the pot. It was quite the experience.’

‘I’ve eaten raccoon,’ I admitted, which didn’t sound half as interesting as panda.

‘I bet neither of you have eaten chaffinch,’ said Jeremy, with a gleam in his eye. ‘I love chaffinch.’

Now it was my turn to look pleased with myself. ‘You certain have,’ I said. ‘Your love for them is the stuff of legend. That’s why Judy has made you so many chaffinch pies over the years. It’s become her speciality.’

‘I bet Mr. Oliver wouldn’t know what to do with a chaffinch,’ said Stephen. ‘It reminds me of a meal I had on a tour of Japan. It was the days of Jeeves and Wooster and Hugh Laurie had taken me to a little traditional restaurant in the heart of Tokyo. You would not believe what was on the menu.’ He looked at us and sipped his wine in order to delay the moment. ‘Zebra.’

‘Oh, I’ve had that too,’ said Jeremy. ‘A tough meat but has a strong flavour. It reminds me of porcupine.’

‘Australian porcupine is the best,’ agreed Stephen. ‘It’s best when it still has the spines.’

‘Another good meat,’ returned Jeremy, clearly getting excited by the topic, ‘is llama. It’s tastier than camel yet just as juicy.’

‘Yet camel is one of my favourites,’ said Stephen. ‘Put the snout under a hot grill at gas mark 4 and it is the perfect meal for a cold night.’

I listened as these two great men began to run down the meats they’ve eaten, all of which put to shame even my own carnivorous ways. Between them they’d eaten pretty much everything: otters, lizards, ponies, dogs, cats, spiders, and even Arctic mice.

The conversation lapsed as we scraped the last of our meal from the plate and prepared for the dessert.

‘So,’ I asked Stephen. ‘What shall we have for pudding? Sparrow, gnu, or cougar?’

‘I fancy something light,’ he replied. ‘I suggest a spot of ice cream?’

‘Excellent choice,’ agreed Clarkson.

‘Okay,’ I said, waving over the waiter. ‘Three ice creams.’

At which point, Jeremy leaned back and took on his favourite look of unqualified smugness. ‘This reminds me of my time in Louisiana when we have alligator pie and ice cream flavoured with a wombat’s ears.’

‘Amateur hour,’ replied Stephen. ‘I once ate ice cream sprinkled with the crushed loins of the silver backed sand monkey of Papua New Guinea.’

And so they went on. For another hour, I listened to some of the most mouth watering recipes imaginable. I began to jot them down but soon gave up for the same reasons as I’m now going to close this post: I’m beginning to feel hungry. And I happen to know there are some ham sausages in the fridge. I’m not going to eat them, of course. But I might be able to lure the neighbour’s dog into the back garden…

Wednesday's Logic Puzzle

1. Despite all I've ever said about Apple computers (and their shockingly woeful power supplies and customer support), I'm now lusting after the new Apple MacBook Air.

2. However, it's pointless my lusting after the new Apple MacBook Air since I can't actually afford one.

3. I'll be away for most of Wednesday morning attending a job interview. I anticipate intelligence tests followed by questions such as 'where do you see yourself in five years time?'

4. I don't know where the hell I'll be in five years time and I'm liable to punch anybody who dares ask me that question.

5. Yet should I answer the question well and get the job, I will be able to afford a new Apple MacBook Air.

6. If I get the job, I won't have any time to use my new Apple MacBook Air.

7. But if I don't get the job, I'll have all the time I want to write on a new Apple MacBook Air. However, I still won't be able to afford a new Apple MacBook Air.

Questions:

Should I actually try to get the job?
Should I punch anybody who dares ask me the fateful question?
Is the Apple MacBook Air as sexy as it appears?

Stephen Fry Finds The Perfect Permanent Marker Pen

It is a fundamental predisposition of friendship that a tall man in a green cape should leap to fill the void vacated by a man wearing casual slacks and with a heart as open as his wallet or crotch. Heavens! It is I, Fry, loyally standing in for your good friend Richard Madeley, today indisposed on account of a visit to The Richard&Judy Studios by Ms. Davina McCall. However, let us not dwell on this unfortunate event, except to say: shudder. If, indeed, shudder is enough when discussing a woman with the tattoo of the Tai Huen Chai Triads on her wrist. We can only wish Richard well and hope that neither he nor Judy is sold into the Far East flesh trade.

Somewhat cowardly, I have remained at the rear to fill in for this blog’s unfortunate author. ‘Fill in’. Such a common term for a lofty ambition. Were I a humbler man, I might well have forgone my duty and left his blog to run wild today, capering about like some council estate scamp. Unlike the constant flow of traffic at my website, poor Richard struggles to attract visitors. I intend to affect change. After all is said and, indeed, done: your Great Uncle Stephen has a knack for taking up the reigns and doing a splendid job. I will spend my time most wisely and review a remarkable piece of kit that has come my way.

The Sharpie Jumbo Sized Fine Point Permanent Marker Pen is a class leader in ergonomic design. The model provided to me for review was a shade of red that has pretensions towards the crimson. Styled after the fashion of a liquorice torpedo, the pen immediately sat proudly in my gifted hand and I was soon taken with the desire to write a sonnet. Fourteen lines soon followed, with the Shakespearean sestet terminating in a deliciously rhymed couplet; something that failed to happen when I reviewed the Papermate Expo Grip Pen earlier in the year. As the words began to flow, the Sharpie’s aroma began to cloud this reviewer’s mind and reality dulled like a bleak Whitsunday afternoon in Formby. This was not the heady brew of cheaper marker pens! Oh no! I recognised the slight infusion of an aroma not unlike that of lightly toasted coffee beans. That, at least, is what I told the large purple pixie who sat swinging his legs idly on the top of my monitor as I put down my pipe and began to type up this review.

Both Mr. Pixie and I believe the pen to be a leap forward in permanent markers designed for the family home. The Sharpie forgoes the clumsy design of the standard W.H. Smith Permanent Markers, without the expense of the BIC XL400 series. We regret the lack of rubberised barrel and there was no opportunity to extend the life of the pen through upgrades or refills. Remarkably, the Sharpie’s nib more than made up for this deficiency. A cleverly fashioned point, it provides fingertip control for those small annotations one might wish to make in perpetuity. Again, it is a marked (pun most craftily intended) improvement on the chisel tips of its class competitors. In the twenty four hours since I’ve been road driving this model, I have scribbled the Fry moniker on a dozen lamp posts in the West End region, signed my autograph on three breasts, two kneecaps, and a most tricky septuagenarian elbow covered by a copious amount of hard skin. The Sharpie handled all with remarkable (another deliciously inserted pun) ease. The nib remains as pert as ever; a fact that causes your reviewer to blush quite considerably.

(I have been since reminded that the Sharpie should be used on neither human nor animal flesh. Should you find my hastily scribbled signature on your breast, kneecap, or, indeed, pet, I advise you to wash it off immediately. In my excitement to mark you with my name, I might have inadvertently caused you severe kidney failure. Deary me! Since we have no guidance on inanimate flesh, we can safely assume that the Sharpie is perfectly suitable for marking up any cadavers, zombies, or other undead creatures you may have lying around the house.)

Indeed, the only flaw that I can see in the Sharpie is one that Mr. Pixie pointed out to me as we amused ourselves by dialling numbers randomly into the telephone. That is: longevity. One struggles to imagine how many lethal doses of kidney busting ink the good people at Sharpie have squeezed into such a handsomely profiled barrel. Were I to begin to pen a long poem consisting of nothing but Alexandrines rhymed incongruously with the occasional word of Latin or French, would the Sharpie last the distance? I think not. Nor does Mr. Pixie to whom the Alexandrines is the most perfectly formed line for epic verse.

For this reason, both your Uncle Stephen and Auntie Pix must withhold their full recommendation until our poem is writ. Were you to use it as the manufacturer recommends, inscribing your initials on lunch boxes, frisbees, and beneath the eyelids of your family pets, then the Sharpie might last a good deal longer than we have estimated. Then it would indeed warrant your purchase and this reviewer would be left to feel a rather foolish old chap. Lordy!

Richard Reviews: The Richard&Judy Show (14/1/08)

There is no way of diminishing the disappointment one feels when watching oneself on television. Things you wish you’d done better, questions you should have asked, intimacies that were probably best left private: they all hasten a man’s hand as it reaches for the remote control as he reviews his day's work around midnight. Yet an occasional glance at the handsome chap chatting on the TV can also be liberating. As the ancient Greeks advised: know thyself! To judge Madeley as though he were a famously gifted contemporary can be quite a revelation if your name also happens to be Madeley. It also stays the hand when all it wants to do is to switch over to Busty Babes UK.

Up to this afternoon, I’d been living in the swampland known as denial. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I had to return to Channel 4. Even as late as this morning, I was more concerned by my life beyond the contract than I was in the guests we’d had booked for the first show of our new series. Judy had only reminded me at lunchtime that the limo would be picking us up at two o’clock. I had planned on spending the afternoon with Clarkson, stalking A.A. Gill around some of London’s choicest restaurants, flicking peas at him as he tried write up his notes on the grub. Instead, I was stuck sobbing in the back of a limo as we made our slow way to the studios down in Kennington.

The Richard&Judy Show may still be the jewel in the Channel 4 crown but the studios had the same unmistakable smell of menopausal pickled onions. The faces were all the same and so were the bodies, despite the constant chatter about diets and New Years resolutions that greeted my arrival. Being the only man working on the show can sometimes make conversation limited. I think it explains the number of male friends I have outside the Richard&Judy phenomenon and why all of them appreciate what it means to shoot black powder long bore rifles whenever we can at the weekend.

As for the actual recording of the show: I thought it went remarkably well. Only watching it now on the Sky+ box do I see how we failed in our stated objective to begin the series on a subdued note. It will hard to maintain this quality over the run of the whole series. All I can guess is that the adrenaline took over. After half an hour, I was in blisteringly good form.

We began with an interview with Janet Street Porter. As soon as I saw her in the green room, I knew she was going to clash with the sofa. Before we went on air, I even asked her if she’d slip out of her horrendous green tights but Janet just responded by calling me ‘a misogynous prig’. You might have read about our long history of mutual dislike going back to our well publicised falling out over the matter of Lebanese butter. It was back in the days of ‘This Morning’ up in Liverpool. I’d made an offhand remark about Janet’s taste for low fat spreads and she’d told me off for being uncultured. That had led me to make an offhand joke about her love for butter made from camel milk. I still don’t know what she has against me but the feud has simmered for all these years and I can't see there ever being peace. Either in the Middle East or between Madeley and Porter.

Despite this, when the cameras are on her, Janet remains the consummate professional. She chatted away through the segment without once mentioning camel butter. I managed to avoid commenting on the gangrenous colour of her legs. That’s not to say that the first ad break wasn’t tense. Janet had me pinned against the wall and threatened to remove my feet at the ankles. Judy had to beat her off me with a cushion and things were barely settled by the time we all came back from the commercials. We chatted about her new book and then I had security escort her from the building as Judy and I moved on to chat with the nation’s chirpiest toff, Ben Fogle.

I hadn’t seen Ben since the incident at Ainsley Harriott’s house when one of my least sociable gastric discharges had re-stained the Italian marble in the bathroom. Ben was on the show to plug his new series in which he’s been helping people overcome the problems in their lives through adventure. I was so sure he was going to mention my tricky gut and recommend that I try canoing up the Nile to teach it a lesson. He didn’t, which shows what a good sport he is. But I was still a bit worried about him spreading malicious gossip about me so he too was soon being led from the building by security.

To be honest, after the next break, the show became pure Judy. I had to sit there in the presence of some of the ghastliest paintings produced by the wit of man. It was, quite frankly, embarrassing as I listened to Judy turn poetic as she described pictures made from vegetables and raw fish. My poor wife has so little taste you’d think her a custodian of the Tate. I’d wouldn’t mind if she’d allowed me to give the segment a bit of class by asking Carl Warner if he compared his studies of foodstuffs with vanitas paintings of that period of counter Reformation in Europe of the seventeenth century. I wanted to know if his garish landscapes were a comment on the artificiality of food and by extension, human life, at the beginning of the twenty first century, in a similar way to those Protestant artists who depicted decaying fruit as symbolising the mortality of the flesh and an ethic of worldly suffering. Judy just thought it better to ask him if he enjoyed working with vegetables. I was relieved when we’d made it to another break and that’s when I told the artist what I really thought of his work and had the security guard escort him from the building. For the life of me, I still don’t know why we couldn’t have used that time to help some talented unknown artist find a market.

I’m similarly dubious about our video clips segment which is another of Judy’s babies. This week’s selection distinguished the brain dead from the truly moronic: a dancing parrot, a whistling belly button, the ubiquitous accident involving a caravan, and a comically frowning baby. My favourite remains the German juggling hammers, which gives me endless delight to know that we’re promoting dangerous stunts on national television without any warnings about ‘trying this at home’. Mark my words: this year will be known as the year when accidents with claw hammers shot through the roof. Or, more accurately, got stuck in the roof before coming back down and embedding themselves in the skull of some inept juggler.

The last segment was our interview with Martin Freeman. By this point, I was completely out of it. I can barely remember what I said. As usual, I hadn’t read the notes before the interview and had expected Martin to be my favourite black actor from America. I was hugely disappointed that I couldn’t ask the questions I’d prepared about ‘Seven’ and ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. Instead, I had this pasty-faced English Joe blathering on about some film he’s made with an unknown filmmaker, who just happens to be Gwyneth Paltrow’s brother. There is no man working in show business who takes a dimmer view of nepotism in the arts. If Paltrow had been on the show, you can be sure that I’d have had an security escort him from the building.

And that, as they say, was a wrap. Despite all my prevaricating about going back on TV, I can’t recall ever being in such good form at the beginning of a series. I won’t be re-watching any future episodes, so I won’t be boring you any more of these behind the scenes anecdotes. I know you all love the show but, to be honest, it’s not for me. It helps pay the bills but what man in his right mind wants to spend his day admiring luminous landscapes made from potatoes and peas?

Now, I have to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day for Madeley, the unpublished writer. We’re interviewing Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle from Father Ted) about her sixth novel. That’s right. Her sixth! I have some interesting anecdotes about Norman Mailer I want to run past her.

Monday's Top Searches

For once, the day's top search terms speak for themselves. My own commentary would only take something away from such an accurate account of life in modern Britain:

1. Russell Brand in his garden
2. Celebrity webbed toes
3. Vanessa Feltz cleavage
4. Phillip Schofield skiing
5. Richard Madeley is a twat!
6. Can bees sting in the winter?
7. Richard and Judy funny five dancing parrot
8. Liposuction pubic mound
9. Duel rectum syndrome
10. Two rectums
11. What does Jeremy Clarkson's wife look like?
12. Richard and Judy and the whistling belly button on there [sic] show
13. Richard Madeley nude
14. H.G. Wells nude
15. For sale genuine usherette tray

We're Home...

We've just got in after tonight's show. I'm so tired but after a quick bath, I hope to post something later on. In the meantime, I just wanted to drop and thank you all for the emails we've had congratulating us on our return to your screens. I thought I was in blistering form. The whistling belly button was my pick of the show, but, if I'm honest, I wasn't too impressed with the paintings made from vegetables. I'm afraid that segment was pure Judy...

My Monday Moaning

I woke up this morning, gave a loud sigh, and began to gaze at the ceiling. I remained like that for nearly an hour before Judy came upstairs to see what was wrong.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, tearful beneath the duvet. ‘Call it the Monday morning blues or the new week syndrome but I’m suffering from a general malaise. I don’t recollect my outlook on life ever being this bleak.’ With another sigh, poetry came to my lips. I had memorised the lines a few days ago in anticipation of this very moment. ‘“I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space…”’

‘Oh, not another of your moods,’ replied Judy, carrying a pile of washing to the drawers. ‘I thought you’d be up early to feed your beaver.’

‘On days like this, not even a beaver’s the answer,’ I said.

‘Come on, Richard! What have you got to feel glum about?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I sighed. ‘Were I broke, unemployed, horrendously overqualified for every single job, living far from the nation’s media capital, and clueless about my future, then I might have a reason to feel down. As it is, I’m not Fred Talbot. But I do worry that my body of work is not being appreciated by the people that really matter.’

She began to consider my underpants before she folded them and tucked them away in the drawer. She was thoughtful for a moment or two longer than I expected.

‘Since you brought it up, Richard, I did want to ask you about how your job hunt is going.’

I groaned and buried my head under the pillow. ‘Don’t talk to me about that. I’m due in town today to revisit the job agency. They might have news for me.’

‘Well, isn’t that good? They might have found you some work.’

‘But that’s just it, Judy. I don’t actually want a job. I have enough work to do here, writing twelve hours a day for no financial gain and no exposure but knowing that I’ll be a latter day John Kennedy Toole whose work is recognised only after I leave Channel 4.’

To this, Judy gave one of her most meaningful huffs before she went downstairs. Five minutes later, I heard her car spluttering down the drive.

When I did get up, my email box was no great consolation. Five emails questioning the size of my manhood, three from unknown Kenyans offering me obscure financial opportunities, one from a writer hoping that I’d be able to further his career and his novel, and another enquiring about a job at Channel 4. As a generously proportioned man of some financial means yet unable to find himself a literary agent and soon to be out of a job at Channel 4, the emails could not have found a more inappropriate recipient. However, I quickly fired off replied to all ten and then got down to my day’s work.

Which is where you now find me, scribbling this note before I begin on another day’s labour at the keyboard. The problem with writing a blog is that it’s such a small part of my day, a fraction of my output. This is what people fail to see when they send me emails. I have a beaver to feed, a novel to complete, inventions to patent, scripts to polish, ad libs to write, a man called Oddie to polish, and then letters to write and post.

I have a full day ahead of me but little energy to commit to the cause.

In Katie Derham's Shoes

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I’ll not hear a bad word said against Katie Derham. Like many this day and age, she may lack a certain professionalism but she completely wins me over by her beauty. Had I not already found my soul mate in Judy, then Katie would be the woman for me. Or that, pretty much, was the conclusion I reached when chatting to Bill Oddie when he came over yesterday.

I was on my way back from a lazy Saturday morning jog around the neighbourhood when I met Bill at the bottom of the drive. He was wearing his favourite RSPB deerstalker and carrying a large inflatable carrot.

‘Good news,’ he said, ‘there’s a major crisis at the Beeb.’

‘An invasion of large PVC rabbits?’ I suggested with a nod towards his carrot.

‘Oh, this?’ he waved the orange inflatable in the air. ‘This is for Judy.’

‘Ah,’ I said, as though it made complete sense that Judy would want a large inflatable carrot.

‘I mentioned that I had one and she asked if could have it when I was finished with it.’

‘Stop right there, Bill,’ I said, wiping the sweat from my brow. ‘I don’t need to know any more. Tell me instead about this crisis at the BBC. Am I right to assume that they’ve discovered that the large red button on the National Lottery draw isn’t actually connected to the Random Ball Juggling machines?’

‘Not at all,’ said Bill looking a touch bewildered. ‘The natural history team have been called in for an emergency meeting. Poor old Katie Derham was due to take delivery of the star of a new reality TV show for next autumn’s schedule. Unfortunately, she’s had to drop out because she never mentioned that her house is in the middle of London and lacks a lake-sized pond.’

‘An odd thing to forget to mention,’ I replied. ‘The fact that this house has a lake-sized pond is usually the first thing out of my mouth whenever I walk into a production meeting. But tell me, Bill. Does this have anything to do with me?’

‘Only that I’ve put a good work in for you and your pond.’

‘You mean they want me for a show?’

‘Couldn’t do without you,’ he smiled. ‘Though, to be honest, Dick, you were the only port and this a pretty ferocious storm. The whole series had been thrown into doubt. Production schedules were being rewritten and if it hadn’t been for my last minute suggestion, they were going to defrost David Attenborough from his cryogenic chamber. They’ve been saving him for the day when the icecaps head south.’

All fascinating details, I’m sure you’ll agree, but to cut a short story even shorter: it turns out that Bill had been so impressed with the natural organic taste of my right areola that he had suggested that I might be the ideal man to fill Katie’s shoes. Not that I normally go in for wearing women’s shoes, you understand, but on this occasion I could and would.

After arrangements had been made, agents contacts, contracts signed, Bill and I sat down for lunch and waited for the men from the BBC arrived with the crate. It arrived shortly after one o’clock and contained not women’s shoes but my co-star.

'A beaver!' said Judy when I told her the good news.

I corrected her. 'A reality TV beaver. They've trained him to avoid looking at the cameras. We'll be keeping him in the lake, so you don't have to worry about him coming up to the house.'

In actual fact, the lake sits at the furthest corner of our enormous plot of land. It is fed by a fresh water river that flows in from the Corbett estate and drains off into our neighbour’s land. An hour after the crate arrived, I was standing on the banks of the lake as I watched Bill and Stephen Fry wade through the grey waters. Stephen had responded to my plea for help with his usual display of selfless loyalty. They had been working tirelessly to remove the large map of the UK I’d scuttled there back in the nineties.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ said Judy after a few moment's thought. She was standing at my elbow and wrapped for winter. Her pessimistic view of the whole beaver situation was, I think, a result of being reminded about the map. It never puts her in the best frame of mind. There has always been a touch of guilt about the way we left Fred up in Liverpool when we came to make out fortune beside the Thames. Judy had thought it particularly cruel of me to sink our weatherman’s favourite prop but I thought it was the kindest thing to do in the circumstances. A man like Fred Talbot would never have escaped that map and at some point he’d have done something foolish, like try to sail it around the coast. Scuttling had been an act of great kindness.

‘You’re only being negative because it’s not your career that you’re thinking about,’ I told her. ‘Come Autumn, you’ll be penning your best-selling novels. But what about me? I need to be seen on TV. This beaver could be the break I’ve been talking about. I could become the new face of BBC wildlife. Can you imagine Alan Titchmarsh with a beaver?’

‘Unfortunately I can,’ said Judy, not without menace.

‘Look here,’ I said, kicking the crate. ‘This beaver won’t bother us. I’ll come down here and feed him in the morning, say my bit to camera, and then come back and make us breakfast. You won’t even know he’s here.’

‘So you promise me that I won’t become part of this?’

‘I wouldn’t want you to,’ I said. ‘This is my beaver. Not yours.’

She crossed her arms and turned back for the house. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on. Ask Stephen and Bill if they want a drink. It must be freezing in that water.’

I shuffled down to the edge of the lake and watched a muddied Stephen Fry drag a chunk of East Anglia from the water.

‘My, my,’ he said as he dumped it on the bank. ‘What on earth are we going to do with a one tenth scale model of Lincoln Cathedral?’

‘If you don’t know, Stephen, I’m sure I don’t have the answer,’ I said. ‘Where’s Bill?’

Stephen didn’t need to reply. Bill surfaced from beneath the weeds. A waterlogged piece of knitting trailed behind him like a net as he made for the shore.

‘Isn’t that one of Fred the Weather’s old jumpers?’ asked Stephen.

‘It might be,’ I said, somewhat surprised to see it. ‘I wonder what it was doing down there…’

‘There’s so much rubbish,’ said Bill, sitting down on the bank and wringing the moisture from his beard. ‘The map’s hollow and there’s plenty of space inside. I managed to dive quite a way down and I’m sure I spotted an old gas cooker and a sleeping bag.’

Stephen pulled off one of his yellow marigolds in order to scratch his head. ‘Think back, Richard. When you dumped this map in the lake, did you check it to make sure that Fred wasn’t living in it at the time?’

‘I can’t say that I did,’ I confessed. ‘It’s not something you look for: minor celebrities living inside large floating maps. I do remember than it took a while for it to sink. I recollect saying to Judy that it was like it had a life of its own, the way it kept making muffled hammering sounds as I pushed it under with a stick.’

Stephen winced. ‘You don’t think those muffled hammering noises could have been Fred?’

‘I thought it mere buoyancy.’

Bill sucked his teeth and shook his head. ‘You should probably get on to his agent. See if anybody has seen him in the last ten years.’

That I would certainly do. Only, at that moment, there was a squeal from the crate.

‘You beaver’s hungry,’ said Bill.

‘Bless him,’ said Fry. ‘Were I a man with a large freshwater lake in my rear yard, I too might indulge myself with the purchase of the castor canadensis or North American beaver.’

‘These are European beavers,’ said Bill.

‘Ah,’ said Fry. ‘Then it is castor fiber.’

‘What’s the difference between a European and American beaver?’ I asked.

‘One is hairier,’ said Bill with an inexplicable smirk.

‘Oh dear,’ said Fry, pulling on his rubber glove. ‘Come on Bill. Let us return to our aquatic toils lest Richard asks us any more questions and you are tempted to more vulgarity.’

It was an odd note on which to end a conversation and, somewhat confused, I wandered back up to the house, thinking it best to leave them to their private jokes.

A couple of hours later, Judy woke me. She was standing at the living room door.

‘Stephen says that they’ve finished,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ I replied, sitting up in my recliner and setting aside the newspaper beneath which I had been so solidly snoozing. ‘Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.’

When I got back to the lake, I discovered that Bill had stripped out of his wet clothes and was wearing a dry one-piece undergarment in a faded colour of ruby. He resembled an old gold prospector while Stephen resembled the old prospector’s offended mule. He was looking at Bill with a disgust it is hard to describe as mild.

‘So are we ready to release the beaver?’ I asked.

‘You are a few minutes too late for that,’ said Stephen, giving Bill another funny look. ‘I have already bore witness to its hairiness. Most certainly European.’

‘Oh, ignore him,’ said Bill. ‘We’ve done no such thing. Your beaver is still in his cage.’

‘Well, there’s no time like the present,’ I said as I went over to the crate and unlatched the hatch. The beaver was bigger than I expect and he needed no encouragement. He came lumbering out like an obese rat and hit the water with barely a splash. He swam out to the middle of the lake where he turned and looked back at us.

‘The good thing about your garden is that you’ve got plenty of trees,’ said Bill, wiping a tear from his cheek.

‘Oh, Judy takes great pride in our woodland,’ I said, myself distracted by a slightly moisture about my own eyes. The beaver looked so happy as it splashed in the water. ‘No doubt our little friend will enjoy rummaging around them looking for nuts and berries.’

‘Nuts and berries?’ repeated Bill. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was looking shifty.

‘Have you thought of giving him a name?’ asked Stephen. ‘I find it preferable to name an animal to whom one is expected to grow attached.’

‘Of course I’m going to give him a name,’ I said. ‘And being a bit of a literary man, I thought I’d name him after my favourite literary beaver. Tarka. I used to love that book when I was a child. Bill doesn’t know this but it’s why I’ve been so quick to agree to make this documentary. I’m looking forward to our months together. I love to watch them lying on their backs as they float in the water…’

‘Richard,’ said Stephen, placing his arm around my shoulder, ‘I really hate to be the one to inform you of this but I believe that Tarka was a…’

‘A lovely little fellow!’ squealed Bill, rushing up to us and giving the two of us a squeeze. ‘That’s what Stephen was going to say. Tarka the Beaver was one of my favourite books too as a lad up there in Lancashire. Such a nice chap, Tarka the Beaver… Come on, Stephen. I think we better be going. Let’s leave Dick alone. He needs to get to know Tarka and Tarka the Beaver must get to know Dick...’

Stephen shrugged as Bill began to drag him towards the house. ‘I should think of another name if I were you,’ he shouted back as he went. ‘In fact, I’d ask advice from members of your blog. I don’t know…’ He wriggled free of Bill’s grip, stopped, and looked at me with a meaningful stare I couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Tarka the Beaver just doesn’t sound quite right to me…’

I waved him away and turned my attention to my newest friend, giving himself a good scrub in the middle of the lake. Beavers are clearly one of the few subjects about which Stephen knows little. I just knew that Tarka and I were going to be friends.

‘Isn’t that right, little fellow?’ I shouted to the lake.

As if in agreement, Tarka bobbed down in the water and I smiled with delight when he resurfaced, a shining piece of wood in his mouth. I turned my back on the lake and began the long walk back to the house. I would have to ask Judy about the tree that grows in our garden and produces branches that are so white that it almost resembled a thigh bone.

The Sting of Winter

Today I was stung by a winter bee.

What’s that? Did I hear you say there's no such thing? Nonsense. I swear it was a bee, though one well lagged against the winter chill, which here in the South West is a rather balmy twelve degrees measured by the Madeley elbow. There was also an air of premeditation about the attack. The bee had been hiding among the grow bags in the garden shed, readying itself for the right moment to strike. And strike it most certainly did, at ten thirty this morning; lancing its mortal barb straight through my shirt, between the weave of my string vest, and deep into my chest.

Given the intense pain – I am, you should note, mildly allergic to bee stings – I ran into the kitchen to inform Judy that poison was pumping its way into my system and I might pass out at any moment.

‘You can’t have been stung,’ she said, applying pastry topping to a pie. ‘It’s winter. Bees don’t come out in the winter.’

I proceeded to demonstrate that they most certainly do come out in winter and they can sting a man by collapsing on the kitchen floor.

The next thing I remember was feeling a pleasurably erotic sensation about my right nipple.

‘Stephen?’ I muttered as I opened my eyes and saw a grey head bent over me.

‘Got it just in time,’ said Bill Oddie, sitting up and wiping spittle from his lips. ‘I’ve got all the poison out. He should be fine now.’

‘Bill,’ I said, reaching for those soft downy cheeks of his. ‘You’ve saved my life… And… And you’ve been suckling at my right teat.’

‘Lucky for you I was on my way around,’ said Bill. ‘I've had expert medical training so I always know what to do with a sting. It is a bit early in the year for bees. I’ll have to make a note of this for our annual Springwatch survey. You’re probably the first person to see a bee this year. Global warming is clearly having an effect and I’ll be saying as much in my letter to the UN Climate Commission. I hope I can get a quick picture of your right nipple for the report. This might be the evidence we need to prove that the world is indeed warming up.’

‘Snap away, Bill,’ I said pulling open my shirt and turning my wounded areola towards my saviour. Oddie played with his Nokia, snaps were taken, and then we all retired to the living room for coffee and some chat.

‘You know,’ said Bill, after we had all calmed down, ‘your nipple has give me an idea.’

‘Has it Bill?’ I asked. ‘And what idea might that be?’

‘Well,’ he said, gently stroking his beard as he does when thoughtful, ‘you know that I have my own line in bird feed? I was wondering if there might be a market in bees.’

‘Bees?’

‘They are our natural pollinators. H.G. Wells once said that if the bees die out, so does mankind.’

‘Did he?’ asked Judy, balancing her cup on her knee. ‘We’ll have to see if we can get this Wells on the show. He sounds like he'd make an interesting guest. Don't you think so, Richard? Has he written any books?’

I gave Bill the look to tell him to just smile.

‘He did,’ said Bill who moved on with an admirable deftness. ‘Now, the problem with bees is that it’s very difficult to attract them to the average garden. They are put off by all sorts of things like the signals from computers, household chemicals, and the general artificiality of modern living. And that’s where I think your nipple comes in. There can be no coincidence that the bee was attracted to your nipple.’

‘So much so that it stung me and died in the process,’ I pointed out.

Bill waved aside my argument. ‘Nonsense. You tried to brush it away. A bee will always sting when attacked. They’ve got the personality of Gordon Ramsay. Sting first and ask questions later.’

‘With all due respect,’ interrupted Judy. ‘Gordon Ramsay does not leave his back end sticking in his victim.’

She had a point, if only one devoid of all sense.

‘Look,’ said Bill, ‘all I’m saying is that Richard’s right nipple might hold the answer to the nation’s bee problem. I could get some scientist friends of mine to have a look at it. See if we can’t extract whatever chemicals Richard produces that attracts bees.’

‘He does attract lots of bees,’ agreed Judy.

Which is true. I’m something of a bee magnet in the summer. I once fell asleep on one of our touring holidays in France and woke up with a full beard of bees. It took two days before I was rid of them. Two long and lonely days...

‘I suppose if it’s for the good the country’s bees,’ I relented, ‘I’d be happy for scientists to look at my breast. But I warn you now, Bill Oddie: if there are profits to be made from this venture, I’d like a fair share of them.’

‘Of course,’ smiled Bill, draining his coffee. ‘In fact, I think this could “bee” a very profitable buzzness indeed.’

Friday's Search Terms

Some days are particularly fruitful in the world of the internet search engines. In the last twenty four hours, I’ve had visitors searching for the following terms, which I shall now attempt to address to the best of my considerable ability.

"Who is Mrs Jeremy Clarkson?"

Mrs Jeremy Clarkson is the wife of Jeremy Clarkson, TV host, the nation’s favourite baiter of badgers, and professional strongman. Her name is Frances and she holds the female land speed record which she set at 655mph in Jeremy’s rocket car.

"Do women fancy trannies?"

Tough question. I would say that it depends on the tranny. Generally woman prefer MP3 players as the sound quality on even the most modern transistor radio isn’t as good as you can get from a basic MP3 player. Whereas MP3 players now come with touch screen controls, trannies are generally stuck with knobs which can be fiddly and hard to use when your fingers are cold.

"Tell me about midgets in orange jackets"

Good question. Simply put: it is the law. Since 2004, all European midgets have been forced to wear luminous orange jackets to make them visible in crowds. This rule was brought into effect after a spate of high profile accidents involving taller people tripping over midgets in public places.

"Stephen Fry taxi blog"

Stephen does write a blog from his taxi. The address of the ‘Stephen Fry Taxi Blog’ is known to only a few close friends and I couldn’t possibly publish it here. It is, I can assure you, one of the best blogs out there and even wittier than his public blog. No, honestly, I wish you could read it. It is genius. Pure genius.

"Richard Madeley penis model"

So what if I did? I was young and needed the money. The pictures were all tastefully shot in black and white and though I was nude there was nothing wrong with that. It was the 1970s. We were all nude back then. Except for Harold Wilson, who you wouldn’t want to see nude. Even with his pipe. You would want to see me nude, though. Prints are available at a reasonable price. Email me if you’re interested.

"Technically a midget in UK"

To be a midget in the UK you have to be less that four feet nine inches tall. The most surprising aspect of this fact isn’t that Ronnie Corbett is classed as a midget but that Noel Edmonds is too. It’s something of an in-joke within the media, just don’t mention it to Noel’s face… the next time you’re down there.

"Midget riding a donkey pic"

Officially this is Google’s most popular search term. There are many images of midgets riding donkeys, but the most famous resource is probably www.midgetsridingadonkey.com.

"Does Chuck Norris wear dentures?"

Yes. As I've explained on many previous occasions, he has two pairs. One for everyday use and another for films when he wants to sneer. His sneering dentures are slightly larger and ride higher on the gum.

"How did Eric Church meet his wife"

What an interesting question! I’m glad somebody has finally asked me that. Many of you won’t know who Eric Church is, which is odd given that he’s the UK’s top fiddle-playing gynaecologist. He’s played the fiddle between the thighs of some of the country’s most famous women and the odd man too. He met his wife, Sandra, at a banjo and fiddle convention in Stockport. Sandra is an expert banjo player as well as being an ear, nose and throat expert with a Middlesex Hospital Trust.

"Richard Madeley bog"

This happened only three minutes ago and I had to include it since it’s such an odd thing to ask me about. There only interesting fact I can tell you about this is that there are no locks in the Madeley home. Digestion is a normal function of the human body so why should we be ashamed and hide it away? I’ve lost count of the number of times that Judy has walked in on me mid-movement. In fact, some of the best conversations we’ve ever had took place while I was elbow to kneecap. I recommend it to all married couples. Unmarried too. If it doesn’t break you, it will bring you closer together.

[Update: Judy has just pointed out that 'bog' might be a mistyped 'blog' and I needn't have gone into all this detail. However, I think it's interesting and helpful advice, so I'll let it stay.]

"Does Chuck Norris have any hobbies?"

I can barely keep up this afternoon with all the queries coming into the blog. Now a visitor from Dallas asks if Chuck Norris has any hobbies. I’ve had to ring Stephen for an answer to this one and he’s quite certain that Chuck does have hobbies. Apparently, Chuck’s hobbies are breeding horses, sculpting decorative mullions, oriental cooking, and Subbuteo. I'm glad we could help.

Why the BBC Needs Stephen Fry to Electrocute Alan Dedicoat Every Saturday Night

Just before the National Lottery draw was made two nights ago, an attack of peptic reflux had forced me from my study and into the living room, where I found Judy perched on the edge of the sofa. The light of the television was reflected in her eyes, big like polished soup bowls, and illuminating the lottery ticket in her trembling hands.

‘Shush,’ she said when I took a breath to speak.

Chastened, I slid into my armchair with my glass of Andrews and I waited to see if the numbers 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 and 6 would come rolling out of the machine and make us richer than an Oddie.

‘“Amethyst” is my lucky machine,’ explained Judy.

The comment did not warrant a reply. Why they give the machines names is beyond me. I don’t know what’s wrong with calling it ‘Ball Juggling Machine Number 4’ for the difference it would make to the outcome. Or perhaps it would make a difference: chaos theory and all that... Which is why I don’t waste my money on these foolish games. How is a man to make an informed gamble about something that might be decided by which side Dale Winton’s wearing his underpants? It’s why I’ve not actually watched a National Lottery draw since the days when Winton was a sprightly 68 year old. It made it quite the education to catch up on the world of randomly selected numbers.

Stood next to BJMN4 was the presenter, a young Adonis photocopied straight from GQ magazine and buffed to a high sheen with Turtlewax and Botox. He was wearing the ubiquitous BBC single breasted suit and had a crest of hair like a plastic newt basking on his head. From a professional viewpoint, he did a competent job. He wasn’t Stephen Fry competent but he was certainly mid-to-high Noel Edmonds good. He knew where the camera was and when to smile, and then, when the big moment came, he knew exactly how to put both of his hands on the big red button in front of him.

‘Okay everybody,’ went the sparkle on his teeth, ‘good luck!’

And as we enjoyed this moment of great theatre brought to us by the people at Colgate, he pressed the button…

There was then a pause for a fraction of a second before he did something that’s had me puzzled for days. He turned to the two men operating and he said: ‘Gentlemen, could you start the draw?’

At this point, one of the men, wearing white cotton gloves as if to prove that he was in no way shifty, walked to the machine and flicked a small switch on the side. With that balls started to pop from the slot like some Bangkok novelty act and somebody somewhere became a millionaire.

All of which raised an obvious question: what the hell was the red button for?

After two days, I’ve come to the conclusion that the red button wasn’t actually connected to the lottery machine. I know it's hard to believe but bear with me. Might it be possible that whenever these celebrities start the lottery draw, they are only pressing a bit of shiny red plastic connected to nothing but the podium?

I know what you’re thinking and I agree. It is shocking. I remember an agent friend of mine once telling me that the majority of ceremonies involving star names turning on Christmas lights make use of fake levers and switches. The actual ‘lighting up’ operation is being run from behind the scenes by some council worker, no doubt with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and effectively ‘turning them on at the wall’ with a muttered curse about it being ‘about bloody time’. But this surely can’t be the case with the National Lottery draw. That red button must do something.

Mustn’t it?

Well I fear that it doesn’t and it’s merely another sign that we’ve passed out of an age of myth, legend, and ritual. There was a time when esoteric ceremonies meant something. The Queen would regularly have her earlobes tickled with an eagle’s feather, leading Richard Dimbleby to whisper that the feather represented the Isle of Skye and this gesture was that of an eagle, riding a current of Hebridean air, bowing its head in solemn reverence to the awe of Her Majesty who took great pleasure in the bird’s show of deference. It might have been a bit of Victorian hokum but it was an engaging bit of hokum. And we never doubted that it symbolised something worth symbolising, even if it was the oppression of the Scots by the English. The same was always true of launching a ship. When the bottle of champagne smashed against the hull of the latest cruise liner, we didn’t actually believe that the momentum of the bottle caused the ship to start sliding down the dock's ramp, but we did all share a deep cultural flashback to those old pagan sacrifices our ancestors made to the Gods, asking them to bless our crafts before Clan Chieftain Madeley went off to pillage foreign shores.

But have we now gone beyond that? Is it so very wrong of me to want a world in which big red buttons are linked to machines that actually do something? And might there still time for us to put things right?

The BBC Special Effects and Props department has always been feted as the best in the world. Or, at least, that’s the valuable lesson taught to us by Blue Peter. Surely, there must still be men who know how to wire up a big red button so it lights up to signify the beginning of ‘the ball dropping process’. Better still, can’t they rig it so it gives mild electric shocks to Alan Dedicoat up in the gallery. The man sounds far too cheerful for a man working on a weekend. A few scrotum-tightening volts passed across his reproductive lobes would do him the world of good and BBC One on a Saturday night would become exciting again. Get Stephen Fry involved and there won't be a man, woman, or child who doesn't tune in to see how high he came make the nation’s favourite announcer leap from his chair. Damn it. Couldn’t we all lay wagers on how far Dedicoat will fly, with proceeds going to good causes?

Not only would it make the big red button mean something again, we would take the random factor out of the lottery. We could introduce an element of skill into the life of the nation’s gamblers. We would return to the days of ‘Spot the Ball’ and the Football Coupon but with the added entertainment value that comes with a pair of well polished electrodes.

So, if anybody is reading this from the BBC, please get in contact. You know my email address. I’m full of good ideas like this and, lucky for you, I’m looking for a job.

The Shetland Midgets

Animals and Dick Madeley hold an uneasy truce, born out of years of conflict, often bloody, and usually resulting in me with underpants to ankles and a tetanus shot stuck in my behind. It’s the principal reason why I rarely talk about Judy’s passion for Shetland ponies, despite her being, in the sad and often disturbed circles that rate such things, one of the nation’s top show breeders. She has won awards for her miniature horses that surpass her many achievements in television. I think I’m even safe in saying that only George Lucas has done more to further the cause of midgets worldwide.

Yet as much as I avoid having anything to do with them, there are certain times when I can only bite my lip, give a snort, and become a bit horsey. Yesterday was one such day. The annual Richard&Judy Horse of the Year Show is organised by Judy’s stables and held at a large converted aerodrome in Norfolk. Unlike that other horse festival with a similar title, our show celebrates the country’s equestrians in the only way that’s right and proper: by attracting the country’s top celebrities and getting them drunk before sunset.

This year was a special year because it was the tenth show and Judy was going to be showing Raymond and Percy, her two prize Shetland ponies. Now, running around a ring leading a midget horse is not something I normally look forward to, but this year there were a few compensations. For one, Jeremy Clarkson was going to be on hand with his donkey. He’d promised to bring old Flossy along for the children to ride for a pound a go, with all proceeds going to his Donkey Sanctuary and Meat Processing Charity / Investment Opportunity. The other reason for my optimism was the fact that we’d persuaded Stephen Fry to be our master of ceremonies. This had been one of my better ideas and I knew things would go well once I heard the familiar voice echoing around the show ring.

‘Ah, ’tis I, Fry, on the Tannoy, welcoming you all the twenty second Richard&Judy Horse of the Year Show. Indeed. Were I to say what kind of show we have for you today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I would be doing you all a great disservice. For I simply cannot anticipate the soft warm bundles of frilly goodness you’ll see here today. My! I can merely ask you all to put your hands together, if they are not already thus, and welcome out our first act: Ms. Sandi Toksvig and her celebration of the beauty of bareback!’

The audience cheered and we were away with a the usual display of bareback riding that Sandi does each year to open the show. I’ve seen it all before so I made my way backstage where I found Judy, that paragon of professionalism, demonstrating why she’s often called the Queen of the Midget Mounts.

‘Get that ****ing comb and ****ing-well brush it a-****ing-gain!’ she screamed at one of the young grooms. ‘I want that tail ****ing silky. ****ing silky!’

I decided to walk right through the paddock – as I believe it’s called – and head off to see how all the other celebrity acts were getting on with their preparations. Or I would have if I hasn’t spotted Clarkson smoking his pipe at one of the side doors. He was admiring some big bunkers on the other side of the old runway.

‘Do you ever stop to consider the engineering that goes into something like that?’ he asked. ‘Staggering. Simply staggering.’ He used the end of his pipe to point out a detail. ‘That concrete must be twelve feet thick. They were probably once home to battlefield nukes.’

‘Strong stuff,’ I agreed. ‘That would even protect you against a blast from a battle hardened Cilla Black.’

‘She’s not here is she?’ asked Jeremy. With hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Cilla’s name. Jeremy was clearly still worried about that drunken argument they’d had at our Christmas party. I know for a fact that she’s still very upset that Jeremy considers ELO superior to the Beatles.

‘I’m afraid she couldn’t make it,’ I said, to reassure him.

‘Couldn’t she? Oh damn,’ he said, returning to his pipe. ‘Perhaps that explains the good turn out.’

‘No, that’s just the Lily Allen effect,’ I explained. ‘She’s brought her publicity machine with her. We have half of London’s PR staff out in the crowd. I don’t know what sounds louder: the applause for Toksvig on an Arabian or the sound of fingers on blackberries.’

Jeremy puffed away, seemingly quite content gazing across at the hardened bunkers.

‘How are the donkey rides going?’ I asked to shake him from his dreams of low yield battlefield nukes.

‘All sold out,’ he said. ‘I’ve done so well that I’ve now got the rest of the day to myself.’

‘How on earth can you sell out a day’s donkey’s rides?’

He winked. ‘That’s where you lack my genius. You might have noticed that there is now a donkey walking around backstage, carrying a crate of babycham and enough cheese nibbles to feed Cambodia. I strapped a tray to Flossy’s back and hired her out to Christopher Biggins for the day.’

A roar from the audience suggested that Toksvig’s bareback routine had finally come to an end. ‘Sounds like we’re up next,’ I said as I heard Fry announce a moment’s break. ‘Midget horses next,’ I said, unable to restrain a groan.

‘I don’t think they’re technically called midget horses,’ said Jeremy, who can be politically correct when it suits him. ‘The correct term is midget ponies.’

‘Well whatever they are, I’m up next. Are you coming to watch?’

He tapped out his pipe on his heel before he tucked it into his pocket. ‘It should be good for a laugh,’ he said.

We reached the edge of the ring in time to find Judy pacing nervously around. She has such a passion for the midget ponies that even her husband has to tread cautiously when he’s around her. Actually, that’s not a bad bit of advice. It’s all too easy to step on one of the bloody things and mess up your heels with blood and flaxen mane.

‘Where have you been?’ she snapped.

‘Admiring twelve feet of concrete on some Cilla-proof bunkers,’ said Jeremy; a touch foolhardy, I thought.

Judy’s face darkened, as it always does when Jeremy mocks one of her closest friends.

‘Don’t worry, I’m here now,’ I said to calm her. ‘Which one of these do you want me to take. Pinky or Perky?’

‘As well you know, Richard, they’re called Raymond and Percy. You can take Percy. He’s slightly lest skittish.’

‘I can’t see why we couldn’t hire midgets to ride these things around the ring,’ I said as I took the reigns to the little trotter. I felt mildly foolish with Jeremy watching me, his face big with a drayhorse grin.

There was a brief cough over the Tannoy before Stephen’s voice shushed the crowd.

‘Ah, shush,’ said he, ‘for, now, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’m delighted to welcome to the ring, the couple of the hour… Were I am man given to long and rambling introductions, I would say that we feel the deepest love and affection for the people who made this event possible. Luckily, I’m not a man given to long and rambling introductions, so I will simply say, with no little humility and a touch of love that one might call “squishy”, that it does our hearts proud to welcome into the ring, Richard and Judy and their simply stunning Shetland ponies.’

To the March of the Bumblebee, we ran out into the ring. I was following Judy every step of the way as she bounced along with Raymond beside her. Percy was pretty indifferent to the whole thing, as was I, and we were soon losing a little distance from the lead.

‘Keep up,’ shouted Judy as she ran out ahead, waving to the crowd.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ I called back, having managed to get the reigns wrapped around Percy’s throat. From a distance, I imagine it looked like I wasn’t leading him as much as trying to strangle the life out of him.

I was thankful that after a single circuit of the ring, we stopped in the middle. I say this but I guess I wasn’t as thankful as little Percy who I’d had to drag around for the last few feet.

‘What do we do now?’ I gasped, though, again, not as much as little Percy who was sucking in plenty of air now he had the chance.

‘Oh, Richard, you know exactly what’s next. It was on the piece of paper I gave you. We stand here while the girls perform.’

I didn’t want to say that I hadn’t bothered with piece of paper. Never do. I ad lib my life and this was going to be no exception.

A fanfare heralded ‘the girls’ into the ring. In a synchronised canter, out came Jordan, Jodi Marsh, Jade Goody and Kerry Katona, all bouncing high and happily on their four mounts.

‘Apocalyse!’ I cried, unable to restrain myself.

‘What?’ asked Judy, holding Raymond’s reigns. The two midgets had become uneasy and were pulling at their restraints, as, indeed, was I.

‘Apocalypse!’ I cried again. ‘It’s the four riders. This is the end, Judy! Judgement day. And I’ve not had chance to do enough good in the world.’

‘Oh Richard, behave,’ she said, while maintaining her grin for the crowd.

The next few minutes were a nightmare to me. The four riders from the Book of Revelation circled me, their devilish orange faces shining in the spotlights. And lo, I looked, and beheld, an ashen horse; and she who sat on it had the name Jade; and Kerry Katona rode behind her. The number of the breasts was eight and hell followed with them.

‘They’ll end up with heavily bruised chins if this goes on for much longer,’ I said to Judy.

‘I’m warning you Richard. Cut it out.’

But I couldn’t. Round and round they bounced, cantered, twirled, and, indeed, bounced again. Just as I thought it couldn’t go on much longer, they wheeled around and trotted slowly towards us and the crowd rose in applause as their four mounts gracefully kneeled down and bowed to Judy, Raymond, Percy, and me.

‘That was really, really moving,’ said Clarkson, wiping tears from his eyes as I came off the ring and out of the spotlights. ‘That was really quite something. Never have I seen a man get on his knees and pray with such conviction. Did you really mean it when you asked God to take Judy first?’

‘Shut it Clarkson,’ I warned. ‘I’m in no mood to be mocked.’

‘Mock? I wouldn’t dare. I’d have paid good money to see that.’

I strode out to the back.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted after me.

‘To find twelve feet of blast proof concrete. I have some things to say I think it better the world didn’t hear.’

Bad Luck 3

I began by setting the laptop up, carefully arranging the lighting just right so I cut out the reflections, and turning off my digital camera’s flash. Only then did I begin taking picture after picture of ‘the cracks’ in laptop’s screen, just to be sure that I’d got a good shot of the damage. I then shut down my laptop, put it carefully back in its protective case, and carried it to the other side of the room where it would be safe. Then I’m back to my desktop PC, power it on, log in, wait an eternity for my virus protection to load, and then finally boot up my image editing software. It was finally time to find a perfect picture of the cracks, post it here and write a few words before I crawl thankfully to bed with a handful of the red pills Dr. Raj prescribed for Judy’s hot flushes.

Only, when I opened the camera, I realised that there was no memory in it…

It was so typical of my day.

I start again. Fifteen minutes later we have our grainy result. And it’s a beaut, isn’t it? It doesn’t do justice to the size and vibrancy of the cracks. These are cracks designed by Faberge and made by Swarovski.

There’s a moral in this: what you reap, you eventually sow. About a year ago, I reaped myself a new laptop. I’ve always used Sony laptops. It’s not just a style thing. In fact, it’s never really has been a style thing. It’s been about having a good working environment. I’m big into getting the perfect set up. I have to use my favourite word processor (Atlantis Word – small, quick to load, almost crash proof), with a dark background and bright text to make it easier on the eyes to write for long periods. My previous laptop was extremely small, with a ten inch screen and a titanium shell. It lasted me for about five years of travelling around and throwing it carelessly in my bag. I must have written a good few million words on it. Eventually, a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry fell on it from about twelve feet and the hard disk developed a high pitched whine. It drove me crazy when I tried to write with it so I attempted to change the hard disk. The laptop died in the operation.

Last year, I bought its replacement. I should have spent more money.

I’d intended on buying an exact replacement for my previous machine; something I could lug around the house, into coffee shops, parks, and libraries, and always be able to write. Trouble was: the smaller the laptop, the more you pay for the laptop.

Sony have a TZ range of ultra portable laptops. A man could die of dehydration just drooling over them. I know I did last year when it came to choosing a new machine. Only the ultra portable laptops with either the titanium or carbon fibre shells were nearly two thousand pounds. Judy told me to damn the expense and get myself one. But that’s nearly Mac PowerBook territory. Of course, I’d never buy a PowerBook after having bad experiences buying countless replacement power supplies for a machine that had a habit of burning off your knees (yet falling outside their battery replacement scheme). Still, it was more than I could afford, even with the money from Channel 4.

So, strapped for cash but needing something to write on, I settled on not-quite-dirt-cheap model with a fifteen inch screen and a plastic case. One year and half a million words later and this is the result. Something has pushed against the flimsy plastic lid and caused the ‘cracks’ to develop inside the screen. It works but it’s hardly work friendly.

Some days I wonder why I write this blog. The main answer is usually to make myself laugh and in the process hope to make you smile. I’ve failed today, unless you’ve got one of those healthily warped black humours and find calamity funny (I have and I do, despite tonight’s tears). Less edifying is to see fate again conspiring against me and I’m reminded that the answer to all my problems begins with a ‘j’, ends in a ‘b’, and has a crudely formed ‘o’ in the middle.

So please: go vote in my poll. I might not stand by the result but it might help me choose one among equal evils.

Me. I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough of today. I only wait to see what tortures lie in store for me tomorrow. I do know that Judy mentioned something about Cilla coming around.

Bad Luck 2

... and as if to prove what a bad day I'm having, I've just turned on my laptop to do some writing and I've discovered the the screen is smashed. I don't know how it's happened, but there is a big cobweb of smashed LCD.

Bad Luck Wednesday

If the Gods of Insanely Bad Luck decided to descend on you for twenty four hours, they could not conspire to produce the kind of day as I’m currently living. There is not a thing I’ve done today that hasn’t turned out for the bad. Not one. In fact, I’m deliberately putting a speelling mistake into this post, just to avoid a more embarrassing one creeping in where I don’t intend to put one.

It has got so bad that I was driving back from a last minute trip to the supermarket (don’t ask) when I contemplated how easily it would be for me to get to an airport and fly away, out of this life. How long would credit cards last me before I’d be stuck on the streets?

I can’t wait for today to be over.

Behind

I despise getting behind with my work. The midnight crisis in which I deleted posts, dumped the old poll, and then went outside naked and howled at the moon was only going to delay me today. Yet there are so many things I have to write about. That’s the problem when a man of huge ambitions has a small crisis of confidence. It’s an ocean liner coming adrift on a grain of sand. Well, your comments have helped shift the grain and the propellers are turning once again on HMS Madeley. Give me an hour or two to get up a head of steam and then we’ll head into some tropical waters.

Before I go and turn out some serious verbiage, let me answer four questions that appeared in my blog statistics yesterday.

‘Which city is host to the only UK chapter of the Christmas Pudding Appreciation Society?’

Birmingham.

‘Where can I see transvestites in tight skirts?’

Birmingham.

‘How tall is Steven Fry?’

On a good day he’s six feet nine inches tall.

‘Judith Chalmers how old is she?’

She’s 87 but doesn’t look a day over 86.

The Poll

I’ve put shackles around the poll’s ankles and dumped it into the Thames. There was one bloody stupid idea: asking people if I should quit blogging. Stronger men might have laughed off the answer but not me. It has made me unduly bitter and I’ve found myself being cruel to minor celebrities, just to see them cry.

You might have also noticed that I’ve roped yesterday’s 2500 word post to the chain as it sank beneath the water. There is another 3000 words of the story that will be going with it. The whole thing was getting far too big. Nobody was going to read it, did read it, or would want to read any more. I’ve written 130,000 of this blog since it began a few months ago. There was an element of blind panic in my starting out on a story that would take another 130,000 to finish. Judy spotted this immediately and told me to calm down.

The thought of hunting for a job had me thinking that just a couple of weeks I could write a book. I just ask that you bear with me while I go through this transition. These are hard times. Even harder, I should imagine, that having two rectums or working for the BBC.

The Scrabble Champion

Among the many remarkable properties possessed by half quarts of cheap spirits left over from Christmas is the ease with which they manage to sneak their way into the garden shed at some point during the New Year. Some might describe it as uncanny, the way they always seem to find men more than willing to loosen sobriety’s belt buckle.

One such man had spent his Sunday morning replacing the garage’s automatic door mechanism with the engine he’d stripped out of an old hover mower. It was a job I’d been intending to do for weeks. As it turned out, the space of a lunchtime was all it took for things to go horribly wrong.

Judy arrived back from the hairdressers around noon and, as normal, drove her car right up the garage door. The moment her front wheel broke the infra red beam the door snapped open in rather brisk 0.1 seconds. Truth to tell: it was probably a bit too brisk. It proceeded to rise a further meter before it met resistance in the form of the garage roof. In less than the time it takes me to write ‘bent metal’, twenty four square feet of corrugated roofing had been peeled back before the electric motor had freed itself explosively from its bearing and gone sailing off in the direction of Dale Winton’s bungalow. It was about this time that I had retired to the workshop I maintain in the garden shed and this is where the liquor sought me out not long after.

It only takes the sound of fire engines rushing to the scene of a blaze in a camp celebrity’s bungalow for a man to appreciate what it means to share a bottle with Ronnie Corbett’s cat. Mr. Brucie often comes and sits in the shed for a little warmth. And so it was yesterday. We shared a few sad stories, Corbett’s cat and me, and then we each promised undying friendship to the other before one of us passed out.

I awoke at four o’clock to find that I’d emptied the bottle to within half-an-inch of its life and that Mr. Brucie had already broken our pledge of loyalty. Alone, I stumbled back to the house and plagued by the thoughts of my Monday interview at the local job agency, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I retrieved a box of matches and the manuscript to ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’ from my office, and then proceeded back outside where I dumped the pages in the barbecue pit. Swaying slightly in the cold air, I stood over it as I doused the whole lot with the last of the spirits.

‘This is it,’ I said, looking at my collected outpourings of the last few months. ‘It’s been fun while it lasted old friend but we knew it we could never go on like this. Goodbye cruel world! Tomorrow, I becomes a normal man.’

And with that, I struck a match and leapt back to protect my eyebrows as five hundred pages of my closely typed wit and wisdom began to blaze where summer bangers usually sizzle. I imagine this is how many of the great unpublished books met their end: with pages flipping and turning in a drunken heat. The force of inebriated flames pulled the manuscript apart, wantonly ripping off the odd page to send it hot and flighty into the sky.

As tears began to trail down my face, there was a movement in the shadows of my attention and I felt somebody come to stand next to me.

‘Is there a sight more likely to make a grown adult weep than watching a melancholic talk show host consummate his passion for wretchedness?’ asked the familiar voice.

‘Stephen?’ I said, wiping a few sooty tears from my eyes.

‘Ay,’ said the Great Man, brushing back a veil of that floppy hair some of us love so much. ‘’Tis I, Fry, with you at the end.’ He put his great paw on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as we both gazed at the blackening pages, rolling in the flames like my tortured dreams. ‘You intend to go through with it then?’

‘Bill’s coming with me tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘It’s always good to have an Oddie on hand.’

‘He’s the perfect man for the occasion,’ said Fry. ‘Were I just a little less famous, I might have accompanied you to your interview.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ I smiled. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. I’ll be wearing a bad suit.’

He seemed to understand the gravity of the moment for the first time.

‘You mean it won’t be bespoke?’

‘As unbespoke as they come,’ I said.

‘And am I to assume that it won’t be in some shade of gaudy showbiz orange?’

‘It will be very grey. It even came with a small plastic bag containing the spare buttons.’

‘Not buttons for you to stitch on yourself?’

‘The very same,’ I replied. ‘There’s not even room for a cape.’

To that he gave an audible shudder. ‘Shudder,’ said Fry.

‘Oh, don’t be down, Stephen. I’ve had a good career.’ I said this reassure myself as much as him. ‘These next few months will be bitter but at least I’m taking steps to get myself a proper job.’

But now I turned to see tears streaming down Stephen’s face. ‘Oh, forgive me, Dicky,’ he spluttered. ‘To think that you’ll be one of the hoi polloi in a matter of hours… It’s almost too much to bear. What will become of us?’

‘Not to worry,’ I said, taking his hand in mine. ‘Why don’t we go back into the house and have ourselves a jolly game of Scrabble? I’ll give you a ten tile lead.’

‘Include a blank and you’re on,’ he smiled through his tears.

That I certainly did. Half an hour later, I had just overcome Stephen’s ten tile and a blank lead with a cunning use of a ‘Q’ on a double word score. I was about to follow it up when the doorbell rang.

‘I’m not expecting anybody,’ I said as I stood and headed for the front door but Stephen just waved me away. Now recovered from his emotional outburst, he was clearly preparing to run me through with a ‘X’ he was eying for a triple letter.

It was a threat I would have to postpone for later because standing on the welcome mat was Sir Clive James. We’ve not been on speaking terms since he kicked me out of his house during an interview. It didn’t appear that he had recovered. He was red faced and he was waving a singed sheet of paper.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, pushing the page into my face. ‘Comes flying through my window. Is this your name on the top?’

I took a look at paper. ‘Ah, my story about Terry Nutkins and the squirrels!’ I said, recognising the style. ‘Made it all the way to your place, did it? That’s miles away. It couldn’t have got there quicker than if I had tied it to a squirrel and a blazing one at that.’

‘Bad prose travels quickly,’ was all that Sir Clive said, displaying the sort of wit that earned him few friends inside the BBC.

‘I thought it one of my better efforts,’ I answered.

‘Better efforts?’ laughed Clive. ‘Only such a stunningly crass effort could destroy the manuscript to the new book of poetry it has taken me ten months to get right! Every single verse had been rhymed to perfection before this came through the window.’

‘Pftttt,’ said a voice high above my shoulder. It was Stephen. I’d thought him anxious to get on with his triples but there was poetry to discuss and that rarely keeps him out of a fight.


‘What the bloody hell did that mean?’ asked Clive.

‘It meant, my dear squat friend, that there’s a new polymath in town and you are certainly not he.’

‘You think not?’

‘Look you two,’ I said, standing between two of the greatest minds of our age. ‘Can’t we calm down?’ I turned to Clive. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught us at a bad moment. We’re in the middle of a game of Scrabble.’

His face changed. ‘Scrabble? You play Scrabble?’

‘We both play,’ said Stephen. ‘Care for a game? We could fight for the title of the “Nation’s Favourite Intellectual”.’

Clive stuffed the sheet of paper back into my hands and brushed me aside. ‘Out of the way, Madeley,’ he said. ‘Sir Clive James never says no to a challenge.’

And that was it. The last evening of my showbiz career was taken up with serving drink and food to a pair of insatiable Scrabble addicts fighting for the right to call Radio 4 their own. The night was abound with rare words, with scatterings of ‘x’s and ‘z’s. ‘Zouave’ matched ‘nuzzler’, ‘zonk’ with ‘zoom’. I could only gaze on the scene as one o’clock struck. Such a happy scene, yet mixed with he certain dread that it might be the last. Could I really give up my friends? Could I change the life I knew so well? Would I print out a new copy of my manuscript?

I closed the study door on a friendship newly found and I made my way to bed. Stephen would play until the early hours given a man foolish enough to encourage him. Sir Clive James was clearly that man. To the sound of their mutual laughter, sharing a joke in Spanish, I climbed the stairs. Perhaps I’d see them again before I left for town in the morning. Perhaps I wouldn’t. The only thing that matter was that peace reigned and I would soon be asleep, eased their by the gentle orange glow from the still smoldering ruin of Dale Winton’s bungalow.

The Martin Scriblerus Alliance

Judy had been massaging my neck all morning, trying to get rid of the tension.

‘You don’t have to decide now,’ she said as she poured a little more oil onto her hands and began to knead it into my non-responsive muscles. ‘Give it the rest of the day. Nothing is going to happen on a Sunday.’

‘But isn’t it only right that I join them?’ I asked her for what must have been the ninth or tenth time. ‘It just seems to have my name written all over it.’

Judy tutted. ‘Is it really what you want?’

And there she had me. Was it really what I wanted?

The whole thing began some months ago after I wrote the first entry on this blog. One visitor who passed himself off as a member of the German aristocracy started to leave comments and I was intrigued enough to track him down to his homepage. The man also travelled under the name Higham and he was part of a group of bloggers who had the word ‘Blogpower’ tattooed on their foreheads. For all of ten seconds, I had thought about asking to join them, but being an independent spirit, wary of grown adults who form themselves into societies, I decided that it wasn’t for me. I would cut a lone furrow and plant in it what I liked.

And I was happy with this arrangement until this morning when I saw a new outfit getting together in the blogosphere. It made me feel rather like James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. I wanted to be one of the first at Higham’s side, armed with my throwing knives, six shooter, and a small bearded helper called Oddie.

I suppose it was the name that attracted me: The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. ‘The Dunciad’, as you know, is one of my favourite poems and heavily influenced my own much maligned ‘Mock Heroic Epistle on the State of Jeremy Paxman’s Sock Drawer’. I remain one of the few men to consider himself a Scriblerian, carrying on the work of the greatest English writers of the eighteenth century. The Scriblerian Club was a small group of like minded men of huge wit who produced some of the most biting satire of their day. Whenever they gathered it was like an episode of QI but without the third-rate standups. Their whole habit of mind was that of parody. Their humour was ripe with caustic epigrams and extravagantly pointless footnotes, all of which bewailed the leaden fools of London society. The peerless Swift wrote ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which over the centuries has become something of a children’s story, yet in the unabridged version is a joyously vile and scatological rant against people in general. That a new Scriblerian Club should be forming close to me on the web made my heart beat a little faster. All of which I explained to Judy this morning.

‘Well you should clearly join it,’ she said as she finished on my neck and set to work on my shoulders. ‘If there’s a group of satirists out to undermine the fabric of society with their cleverly written parodies of modern manners and life, then you should be there leading them Richard.’

‘Parody?’ I asked. ‘Who said that this has got anything to do with parody? The Martin Scriberlus Alliance is about bloggers gathering together under a label to signify good quality blogging.’

Judy’s hands slipped from my back. I thought it was because there was too much oil but then I felt them grab me around my neck.

‘Quality blogging? Quality blogging?’ She screamed as she shook me. When she let go, the tempest had passed. ‘If there’s really such a thing as quality blogging, you certainly shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of it. Not when fourteen percent of your readership think you should quit!’

And there was nothing I could say to that.

I pulled on my shirt and came sloping in here to type this up. Any other bloggers out there who think they write a good blog, I recommend that you head over and check out The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. Unfortunately, because of issues to do with quality control, I’ll be unable to join in with what is sure to be an excellently run project.

Two Rectums Spotted

And by that I don't mean 'spotted' as in 'heavily pimpled'. Though, who knows? A person with three buttocks would surely suffer more 'anal acne' than a person with the normal two.

What I meant to say is that the last hour has seen Yahoo! hit hard by searches for 'two rectums'.

(To my very many new readers, I should explain that, for some unknown reason, this blog has become the world authority of 'duel rectum syndrome'. I currently top both Google and sit in second place on Yahoo! for the phrase 'two rectums'.)

In the morning, I intend to get my team of researchers trying to contact the person from Huntington Beach, California who got here with the search term: 'I have two rectums'. There has to be a medical explanation.

Chip Dale's Back and Armed With Memes!

The heavily oiled mass of manically depressed Welsh thongdom has been roused from his winter slumber and he has tagged me with a meme. I’m a little humbled to see myself listed in his hopes for 2008, so I’ll happily include him in my own. Those of us who go through life misunderstood by the wider world need to stay together, even if it means getting a cheap hustler’s body oil on my best casual slacks.

There are some reassuringly similar themes in our two lists. Chip is clearly a deep thinker. As, I believe, a I. His musical choices are not as suspect as I’d have imagined given that he spends his life wiggling his hips to bad disco music. All I can do is entreat him to give Serge Gainsbourg a listen.

So, my hopes for 2008 are these:

1. I manage to start earning a living with my writing, so I can begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest living author of our age, Mr. Fry.
2. I continue to blog, despite all my labours in the real world involving cleaning products, discounted tins of baked beans, or labelling guns.
3. People stop asking me to quit blogging. We can all enjoy a good laugh about it but on cold mornings and late evenings, it actually makes me pause before I put finger to key.
4. My collected volume of essays and shorter pieces, ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’, wins me the Samuel Johnson Prize, presented to me by a woman called Selena dressed in ocelot, with all my fine blog readers in attendance in the cheap seats at the back.
5. I finally master French so I can more fully devote myself to my current obsession with Serge Gainsbourg.
6. Chip also manages earn a living doing what he most enjoys doing. Not by stripping but by writing. I miss his blog.
7. My big project is a huge success bringing me yet more fame and fortune. I don’t mean ‘Dick Justice’, which will be as successful as these ITV documentaries can be, but the project I’m calling Richard Madeley’s Secret Summer Project 2008.
8. I am elected to become the new Lord Mayor for London.

I don’t normally tag other people but I’ll use this to promote some new and relatively unknown bloggers. It’s only natural that I tag my good friend Stephen Fry (but he’s so busy, I don’t expect him to even acknowledge this), my new favourite social commentator Mr. Jerry Caesar, the difficult-to-type AxyxZ, and to Bertas who is much too busy to be a couchslob.

Monday

I have an appointment at a local job agency on Monday morning. Because of my celebrity, I’ve been putting this off for too long. It was only Bill Oddie promising to come with me and provide modal support that convinced me to ring them and make the appointment.

This depressing thought (the appointment, not Oddie’s involvement) means that I can’t be bothered writing today. Instead I thought I’d canvass you for job ideas for a man of my unique qualities. You must bear in mind that I have a low boredom threshold and would like a job involving high levels of creativity. I can work unbelievably hard when motivated to do so, and I’m very prolific in my ideas. I don’t want to deal with the general public and routine ‘office work’ would lead me to take a jump off the end of a knotted rope within the month. Money doesn't motivate me in except insofar as if I'm going to be giving up my writing career (something that even more of you seem keen on, judging by the current poll), I want to be paid well to do so. I quite like the idea of getting into advertising but wouldn’t know where to begin.

The Touch of Nepotism

An old farmer friend of mine, who shall remain nameless other than to say he’s big in diary cows, rang me on the landline late last night. He caught me with a Cadbury’s chocolate finger stuck up one nostril as I tried to bite off its other end without using my hands. You might call my behaviour ‘odd’ but these are the challenges I sometimes set myself just to keep myself sane.

‘Madeley?’ I said, stuffing the remaining finger into my mouth.

‘Richard,’ said my farmer friend, ’I need a big favour.’

I sank back into my chair but not before taking the 500 page manuscript from the desk and putting it on the floor. As I set it down, it struck me, not for the first time, that the title, ‘Fry, Oddie, & Me’ sounds pretty convincing as a collection of my shorter essays and shorter writings, mainly culled from this blog. My agent has been onto me for weeks to get it printed out so she can begin hawking it around the bigger London publishers and procure me a bit of loose shilling for my pocket that had become increasingly prone to muttering to itself and sitting lonely in the corner.

‘Fire away, Desmond,’ I said, though Desmond is not his real name. ‘You know I owe you plenty of favours. What is it now? Want me to come and help you like last time and rub butter into your cows’ udders?’

‘No, no,’ said Demond. ‘Nothing like that. It’s to do with my youngest, Samantha. She’s just turned twenty three.’

‘You want me to come and rub butter into her udders then?’ I asked as I wiped chocolate from my nose.

I don’t think Desmond was too impressed with the light way I verbally fondled his daughter. However, he was obviously trying to keep on the good side of me and let my comment slip by like a well margarined teat.

‘Sam’s always wanted to get into journalism,’ he began. ‘She’s done her qualifications. Got her 2.2 from the University of Luton and she now fancies working for one of the big broadsheets. You know… Like The Guardian, or The Times. To be honest, Dick, if it came down to it she’d probably give The Telegraph a try. But that’s just it. I was wondering if you could pull a few strings and get her an “in”.’

‘An in?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t know what an “in” would look like. If I did have an “‘in”, I’d used the “in” myself to get myself “in”. I’m more prolific than Clarkson and with more opinions that Gill. I’m perfectly placed to attract a huge readership but even I can’t get in the front door.’

He sounded disappointed. ‘You can’t tell me that you haven’t got some strings you could pull. She’s pretty good at writing. Spells well, good punctuation, the lot. And she has a lively mind. Not the other day she noticed have few black umbrellas there are in the world. How observant is that?’

‘It’s clearly Pulitzer material,’ I agreed, ‘but print journalism is not a business for familiar favours. You don’t get into print just because you’re the son or daughter of an established name. You have to learn your craft by spending years if not decades working in local newspapers. Tell your daughter to start out at the bottom and by the time she’s fifty, she might earn her chance to flex her writing muscles with the big boys.’

You can tell when a chap’s disappointed but doesn’t want to show it. It’s all in the verbal ticks he displays when finding a reason to get off the line.

‘Oh, well, if that’s the way it is, mate,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I bothered asking… Thanks for nothing.’

After I hung up, I surprised myself to discover that a pretty rotten mood had made itself at home in the room. Putting a flea into a fellow’s ear is not the Madeley way. Not when he considers the fellow a good friend. However the assumption that some people have about me just rubs me up the wrong way. Just because I’m famous, it doesn’t mean that I should be obliged to do every rum Harry a favour. Doors that are closed to me shouldn’t be opened for others just because I say so. Might as well hang a bloody sign around my neck reading: ‘“A” list media careers here, form an orderly queue at my right elbow’.

Anyway, I turned off the light to my office, with one small smile directed towards my finished manuscript, and I hopped it up the stairs towards warm bed and an even warmer Judy.

The warmer Judy was already sitting up in the warm bed, a notebook on her lap.

‘Shopping list?’ I asked as I dropped my trousers.

‘Synopsis,’ she replied.

‘For the shopping list? Surely it’s not that long, even for a New Year order.’

‘For my novel,’ she said.

I tried to give her one of my dignified stares. Hard to do when you’re standing in the middle of the room with your trousers around your ankles. However, I think I did a fine job of it. She seemed to shrink in the bed and pull the notebook towards her.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she snapped. ‘You’re just angry because you can’t get anybody to read your stuff.’

‘It is not stuff,’ I told her. ‘It’s clever social commentary disguised as lightweight comedy. Besides, what makes you think you’ll be any different?’

‘Of come on, Richard,’ she laughed. ‘We haven’t been running the country’s biggest book club without knowing something about books. I’ve already got a plot and plenty of characters. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to sit down at the computer and write my first chapter. How difficult can it be?’

I stepped out of my trousers and picked them up. A snap of the wrists and they were folded and draped over the back of the chair and I set to unbuttoning my shirt.

‘Give me the outline,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what you have.’

She cleared her throat and looked at her pad.

‘Justine Pontleby is the 22 year old daughter of well known celebrity chef Gordon Pontleby. Trading on her father’s fame, she lands a top job in the world of afternoon TV.’

‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Could never happen. A young sniff of a girl like that would never get a break in TV. She’d have to work years in regional TV or radio before she’d even get a chance of the big time.’

Judy just peered over her half-glasses before she continued.

‘She meets debonair Richard Smiley, a charming if slightly psychotic host of a popular TV talk show. Smiley has dark secrets involving an addiction to sniffing Toilet Duck. When he is involved in the accidental maiming of the show’s weatherwoman, Justine is forced to help cover up the crime…’

I shook my head as my shirt fell away. Just before it hit the floor, I flicked my leg and the shirt came flying back over my head. I caught it and folded it in a single move before I turned my attention to my socks.

‘The thing is, Judy,’ I said as I bounced on the edge of the bed. ‘You have a plot but it’s unbelievable. A man as crazy as this Smiley character would never get his own show.’

‘He hosts it with his sister,’ said Judy.

‘Again, that’s very unlikely,’ I replied as I rolled up my socks and threw them on the chair.

Down to my underpants, I jumped up and strode out to the mirror to run through my five minute Tai Chi exercise I do before bed every night. I like to be centred before I sleep.

‘Don’t you want to hear the rest?’ asked Judy as I began to fight imaginary foes in slow motion.

‘To be honest, Judy, I don’t. It seems to be yet another of these unbelievable stories about the corrupt world of the London based media. I just wish you could tell it how it really is, with the honourable people who work long hours on quality programming before returning home at night feeling totally rewarded with their lives. Instead, I suppose it will be nothing but tales of sex, drugs, and stale bread rolls in the Green Room.’

She closed her notes.

‘I already have an agent who is interested in representing me,’ she said.

I was in the deep squat of the tiger stance as she said this. I felt my muscles tighten. ‘An agent?’

‘Felicity R––,’ she replied.

I looked at her blankly.

‘You know. She’s the daughter of old Reggie.’

‘Little Felicity? She’s a literary agent now?’

‘Oh, come on Richard. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Reggie asking us to put a word in.’

‘Did he?’

‘He did.’

‘I don’t remember putting any words in anywhere,’ I replied, feeling so small squatting there in my red and yellow underpants.

‘Of course you didn’t. But I did.’

‘You did?’ I stood up and heard a bone in my back go acoustic. ‘You can do that? You can put words in?’

Judy stretched a hand towards the light. ‘Not for anybody,’ she said with a smile. The room went dark. ‘Goodnight Richard.’

The Richard Madeley Award For Headline of the Week

The first recipient of my highly prized 'Headline of the Week' award is to be found over at the United Nations Population Fund website. I love a good prosaic headline and the United Nations do them better than anybody.

Delivering Hope in Nigeria: Natalie Imbruglia Visits Newly Launched Fistula Project

I think what makes it work so well is the internal rhyme. Which has led me to launch The Official Richard Madeley Rhyming Couplet Competition. You've got the rhyme, now I want you give me a couplet.

For example:

There once a pretty singer called Imbruglia
Who did charitable things for the fistula.

How Big is Vanessa Feltz's Cleavage?

For the person in London currently searching Google for 'How big is Vanessa Feltz's cleavage', I can end your quest right here.

It's big. Bigger than even your 1280x1024 desktop resolution could handle. I mean it's really, really big.

I wish you well and hope I answered your question. I now feel that my afternoon, spent fruitlessly looking for a post-Channel 4 job, has not been totally wasted.

How Did Chuck Norris and His Wife Meet?

To the person in Oklahoma who came here after asking Google 'how did Chuck Norris and his wife meet', I have your answer...

It was 1993 and Chuck was fighting Henry 'Buster' Davenport in an exhibition match in Toronto, Canada. Half way through the fight, Chuck caught a roundhouse kick to his face which caused him to bite his tongue due to loose fitting dentures. The fight was immediately stopped while medics attended to Chuck. The young nurse who treated him was his future wife. They have been inseparable ever since and Chuck always jokes that finding his wife was well worth losing the last quarter of an inch of his tongue.

I'm always happy to help my friends across the sea. Happy New Year.

Love At First Sight

I love you. No, no. Don't say a word, stranger. I know you feel the same way too. You've been looking at my blog for the last couple of hours. Savouring everything I've written. Let's meet. I'll bring chocolates. Who knows. A little wine. A comfortable room...

Lets make babies together.

In Flames With Ronnie Corbett

I’m hardly a pendant when it comes to choosing my words. Nor am I the most dexterous wielder of the English language you’re find in the Land of Blog. But I do take an exception to those lexical mistakes and grammatical ambiguities that can be easily avoided. I direct your attention to an email I received from a certain Mrs. Dolore Mullis on Thursday morning. In it she asks me if I’ve ‘always wanted a penis the size of an elephant’. It annoyed me the moment it popped up in my iPhone’s inbox.

‘Look at this,’ I said to Ronnie Corbett as he drove our golf cart up the ninth fairway. ‘Surely she doesn’t actually mean to ask me if I want a penis the size of an elephant! Can you imagine that? Twelve feet long and eleven tonnes including trunk and tail?’

A glazed look descended over Ronnie’s face. I can only assume it had to do with the medication he’s still taking after his recent accident when a pressurised walnut exploding in his lap. All I know is that no sooner had I mentioned the elephant sized penis than he lost control of the buggy which veered into the light rough and ran smack into a tree. I’m blessed by excellent reflexes so I managed to leap out of my seat before Ronnie’s flask of whisky exploded in his bag of clubs. Soon there were flames everywhere. I was bloody lucky when a 3 wood narrowly missed my head.

As smoke began to billow above the course and golf balls began to explode in the intense heat, I ran back to the wreckage and pulled Ronnie from the driver’s chair. With the sound of concussions echoing across the greens, I dragged him into a nearby bunker were we could lie low until help arrived.

When he came around, Ronnie gazed up at me and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘have you heard the joke about the ambulance driver who arrived at the scene of an accident involving a hot dog stand and a bus full of male strippers?’

‘Not now, Ronnie,’ I said as I fingered my iPhone. ‘We’re in a tight spot. You might be wondering how you came to be impaled by your sand wedge. Well, fear not. It’s missed your vital organs and we can deal with that when the time’s right. In the meantime, I need to contact a man whose knowledge of English is greater than that of any other living soul.’

This time, the phone only rang once before I heard the voice that is a comforting warmth in a world of cold fury.

‘’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently stacking shelves in Waitrose for my new television series, joyfully titled, “Stephen Fry Stacks Shelves in Waitrose”. What do you want Richard?’

‘I certainly don’t want a twelve foot penis,’ I told him.

‘Well that’s a most reassuring thing to know,’ he replied. ‘Rarely have I greeted news with such an expansive of relief. Now that’s settled, might I inquire how big a penis you would like?’

‘Well that’s really not the issue,’ I said. ‘I’m ringing you to discuss the nature of poor writing in emails. When a stranger sends you message asking if you want a penis the size of an elephant, they surely don’t mean the whole animal, do they? Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask if you wanted a hung like an elephant?’

‘Ah,’ he chuckled, gently. ‘Herein you strike upon the very subject of a future Dork Talk column that deals with elephant genitalia in some detail.’

‘Does it? Well I’d love to have a look at that piece before it goes to print.’

‘I’ll email it to you immediately,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished it yet but I think it makes a few worthwhile points.’

‘And if you don’t mind, Stephen, can I post it on my blog? I’m sure my readers would like to see an early draft of Fry marginalia.’

‘Publish it as if it were your own,’ replied The Great Man. ‘Now I must dash. I’ve been called to do a clean up in aisle two… Yes, Mr. Forbes. I’m bringing my bucket and disinfectant this very moment!’

Fifteen minutes later, as Ronnie was being airlifted to safety, my iPhone beeped and Stephen’s article came through. It’s not quite as good as advertised but it is a first draft and is probably the most comprehensive article ever written on the relationship between an elephant’s penis and junk emails.

Enjoy.

–––

Dork Talk with Stephen Fry
The Spammers of Bad Grammars

Bless you all for stopping by again. Dork Talk is becoming a genuine bundle of like-minded bed fellows, all Firefox users, cheek to cheek under my large duvet made from a Sea Monkey. Fret you not a jot. I have nothing for you to ‘install’ today. I just wish to bend your ear on a matter of the utmost importance.

In the recent weeks, I have done my best to improve you lives by introducing you all to the joys of the iPhone and the electric toothbrush. What next, I hear you wonder, if indeed, I could hear you wonder. And what a world that would be were it true. Stephen psychic and holding you all to ransom. Mighty!

Well today’s article gives me a chance to warn you about some of the less eddifying technologies out there. Oh, I don’t mean non-Java complient handsets, though they are bad enough. Gor! No, I’m talking about elephants penises, goat glands, and the other terrifying promises being made in the world of web communications. None of us are free of those infernal emails and the false gratifications they promise. The problem with the people who write SPAM is that they lack the education to get the small details right. Take this little gem from the Fry inbox:

‘I gorgeous Russian girl with much love for you.’

Dear me, kind readers. What on earth can she mean? The she loves me as a man might love a vintage motor car or his mother? Or does this little Russian minx send me a veiled promise to give me pleasure that’s long, hot, and not a little moist? How is a man to respond, were he given to responding to the Russian mafia. I think silence is warranted on this occasion.

If you’re not shocked by the friendliness of Russian ladies, then you might be a little disturbed by the promises of some emails. Many are the times I’ve been asked if I wanted to have ‘a penis the size of an elephant’. Gulp. What a thing to behold, though, I relieved to say, not from close range.

I chuckled myself to sleep one night after receiving this communication from a dear lady called Alana:

‘oh my godness.. yourPenis is BELOW average size’

From a theological standpoint, this is troublesome to say the least. It assumes a phallocentric universe and that God in his greatness would overlook his single defining quality as a man. Then we have the use of the word ‘below’. An odd choice of word, to be sure. Many a well equipped man with short legs will be ‘below’ the average sized penis on a matter of altitude, though neither length nor girth, if you see what I mean and I’m sure that you do.

My advice to you is to set up some general mailbox rules. You should have a least one rule that deals with every message before you see it. It should contain the rule:

IF [message_from] != “Fry” THEN MOVETO [trash]
ELSE MOVETO [inbox] AND MARK [important] AND BOIL [twinings_earl_grey] WITH [two lumps] AND [milk=a drop] AND THEN GOTO [put_feet_up] WITH [stephen’s_latest_masterpiece]

You will find your life is much easier if you follow my advice. Consider: what indeed would you do with a penis the size of an elephant? Deary me. There is a question I think we will keep for a future Dork Talk. I really haven’t given it much thought. Shudder and, indeed, tremble.

How Tall Is Jeremy Paxman?

To the person currently searching Google to ascertain the correct vertical dimension of the nation's favourite surely current affairs presented, I can confirm that Jeremy Paxman is 5 feet and 7 inches tall, though his inside leg measurement is still a somewhat impressive 32 inches.

It was a pleasure to be of service.

What are Jane Seymour's hobbies?

To the person from Birmingham searching Google for the answer to ‘what are Jane Seymour’s hobbies’, I’m delighted to inform you that they are:

1. Photographing rare forms of underwater coral;
2. Researching her book on Mexican drug cartels, 1970-75;
3. Decorating plaster-cast elves;
4. And visiting her health club where she relaxes in mud by wrestling naked with midgets.

It was a pleasure to help you.

Ainsley Harriot's Italian Marble

Call it devilry if you must but part of me was actually glad that it had happened.

Ainsley Harriott has been something of a byword for upward mobility since he rose to stardom a few years ago. He’s an unusual beast in the world of celebrity and one from whom you would be wise to keep a measured distance. That distance is usually measured inches longer than the reach of his tongue, which he is more likely to use when greeting you than he is likely to shake you by the hand. It has worked remarkably well for him. From stirring noodles on BBC2, he moved on to conquer America before he came back home last year and returned to Ready Steady Cook where he can be found, five days a week, leering towards cameras and sticking out his twenty seven inch tongue for ‘the ladies’.

This deep background is my way of introducing the fact that he moved into the area just before Christmas. Yesterday was the first time we’d had chance to set foot inside his house.

‘Come on, Richard,’ said Judy after she’d found me at noon sitting in the middle of the living room zapping aliens on the XBox 360 that Stephen Fry bought me for Christmas. ‘You’ll become a vegetable if you play those games much longer.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said as I slipped out from behind a docking crate and hit a bug between the eyes with my sniper rifle.

‘Ainsley’s having a few friends over to his new house,’ she said. ‘He’s invited us around for a New Year’s drink.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, most eloquently, I thought, as a laser blast seared a hole in my virtual spacesuit.

‘Well? Are you coming?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, dropping the controller as Fry’s onscreen presence began to dance over my dead corpse, his cape, emblazoned with the Fry crest, flapping in the solar wind. ‘You know, I’m not over this cold and Stephen has just pwned my arse…’

She raised her fists and set them on her hips. ‘Must you do everything that Stephen says? Get changed this minute, Richard Madeley. For once, you can actually do something for your wife. And the fresh air will do you some good. I’m sick of hearing you sniffing.’

I was not in a fit enough state to argue. I got changed, shaved off two weeks of beard, and met Judy at the car. This isn’t to say I was feeling well. In fact, by the time we were pulling up at Ainsley’s house, I was feeling pretty nauseous. A bright pink mansion with yellow decoration will tend to do that to a man, especially when it’s also been covered with bright blue Christmas lights to spell ‘Alright ladies?’

‘Richard! Judy! How lovely of you to come,’ said Ainsley, meeting us at the door. He stuck a kiss on Judy’s cheek before he the turned and licked me across the brow. ‘Hello Richard,’ he drawled before he smacked his lips together as considered the flavour. ‘You’re a mite tasty. But you’ve not been getting plenty of greens over Christmas, you naughty man! Your iron is low.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I explained.

‘A mild cold,’ muttered Judy.

‘Oh,’ said Ainsley, ‘a marital dispute! Well don’t let me stop you two from arguing.’ He wiped a fleck of something from my shoulder before he gestured us into an adjacent room. ‘Come on in and meet my friends. They’re just dying to meet you.’

Walking into the room felt like I’d been slipped into BBC2’s afternoon schedule. Anne Robinson was holding a competition with a walnut cabinet to see who could maintain the tautest frown. Watching the two of them with professional delight was the David Dickinson wannabe, Tim Wonnacott. You probably don’t know the man as he’s one of the BBC’s cult stars. I always think he has a look of Terry Thomas had the great man been hit across the chin with a frying pan. Also in the mix was the face of upper-crust wildlife, Ben Fogle, and the face of pretty much everything else, Cheryl Baker.

‘Hello Judy,’ chirped Cheryl (you’ll find she always chirps). ‘Richard. You’re looking well.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I said.

‘A mild cold,’ said Judy.

‘I was once a big star in America,’ said Robinson, who has the peculiar habit of starting every conversation with this disputed fact. ‘There’s a horrible bug going around. We had to cancel the Christmas Weakest Link because of it.’

‘Well at least it’s good to know that it’s not all bad,’ I muttered as I settled myself in a chair next to Tim and Ben.

And that was pretty much it from me. I listened to the group chatter about the business. Ainsley couldn’t stop telling us about the famous people he had licked. He could describe them down to their fat content and how must salt they have in their diet. I confess, he was doing a pretty good job at getting on my bad side and my mood went from petulant to glowering at the half-hour point when he turned to me, put his hand on my knee (I hate it when people do that), and said ‘oh, Richard, you look gloomier than when I told Robert de Niro that he tasted of fish’.

‘Not gloomy,’ I said to him. ‘Just a touch of indigestion.’

Which was the truth. As tired as I was of listening Ainsley’s tongue talk, I was more worried by the increasingly sharp pains grumbling in my left side. They were the warning signs that experience had taught me to heed.

‘Ainsley, could I use your bathroom?’

‘Of course, Richard,’ he said, stroking my knee. ‘Up the stairs. First on the right.’

He set me on my way with a pat on my bottom. I can’t be sure that he didn’t do so with his tongue. I didn’t stop to check. Even heeling it all the way to the bathroom, I barely made it in time.

The flu left my body in a spectacular display that the BBC should have filmed in high definition and shown on the stroke of midnight on New Year. After fifteen minutes of stomach cramping agony, I was done and feeling unbelievably well. I really can’t describe how a good purge revitalises the Madeley system, though what it had done to the atmosphere in Ainsley Harriott’s bathroom I really can’t describe. A pig farm on a warm summer day would be a picnic site by comparison.

I brushed myself down, wiped the hair from my face, which I splashed with some cold water, before I returned to the living room. I found Tim Wonnacott sitting by himself reading a copy of ‘Which Cooker & Hob’ magazine.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Tim.

‘Much,’ I said. ‘It’s been a bad virus.’

‘I hear it’s going around,’ he said.

I looked at the empty chairs once occupied by a Robinson, a Fogel, a Baker, and a Judy. Not to mention a man called Harriott with a twenty seven inch tongue.

‘Where’s Judy?’ I asked.

‘She’s with the rest of them,’ said Tim. ‘Ainsley wanted to show them the improvements they’ve had done to the house.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well I suppose it is an impressive pile.’

‘Bit too modern for me,’ said Tim. ‘Though I hear that the new bathroom suite is something to behold. Specially imported Italian marble.’

‘It is,’ I assured him. Having spent fifteen minutes with my ears stuck between my knees there had been plenty of opportunity to examine the quality bathroom suite. ‘I should bet it cost him a fortune.’

‘Oh, well, don’t let Judy bully you into buying some,’ joked Tim.

‘Hopefully she won’t see it,’ I smiled.

He lowered his magazine. ‘No chance of that,’ he replied. ‘You don’t think Ainsley wouldn’t be off showing them that? They were looking at his new bedroom first and then they were going to the bathroom.’

Normal legs would have taken the steps one or two at a time. A newly purged Madeley did it by the threes and fours. And yet I was still too late. I met the group coming back from the bathroom. The upstairs landing was crowded by looks of mortification. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a look of disgust on Judy’s face quite like the one I saw when she lowered the handkerchief from her mouth.

What could I say?

The four of them brushed past me and left me standing there. A moment later, Judy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her handbag hung ominously over her shoulder. She pointed to the front door.

‘Are we going then?’ I asked.

She just pointed.

She only broke her silence five minutes later in the car.

‘You could have opened the window,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t work the latch,’ I explained. ‘I swear he’s had them specially made to open with his tongue. You can’t hold me responsible for that.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘I’ve been ill.’

‘I’m sure that excuses everything.’

‘Well it’s not as though you don’t already know that this happens. It always happens when I’ve had a bad cold. Does it not matter that I’m feeling better?’

‘Feeling better has nothing to do with it,’ said Judy. ‘Ben Fogle said it reminded him of an incontinent camel he once rode across Libya.’

‘And what did Ainsley say?’

‘Pickled onions.’

‘Pardon?’

Judy flicked me a look. ‘That’s all he said. He licked his lips and said “pickled onions”.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, nodding. ‘Well, I happen to like pickled onions.’

‘And do you know what Italian marble costs?’

I remembered Tim’s warning. ‘Don’t get any ideas, Judy.’ I said. ‘We can’t afford a new bathroom suite. Not with the Channel 4 contract coming to an end this year.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she moaned. ‘We’re not having Italian marble if it can be discoloured so easily. He says he’s going to have it steam cleaned but I don’t think it will make a difference. Honestly, Richard, I know that you’re a man on many unique and enviable skills, but I never thought you’d be able to turn Italian marble brown.’

The First Horseman Wears A Bright Orange Jacket

Late last night, or more accurately, early this morning, I was at something of a loose end but not yet quite ready for bed. The New Year had come in with me home alone but I was also in one of my rare moods of mild optimism. Judy had left me with five party poppers to pull once Big Ben struck midnight, while she’d gone off to celebrate with her friends. I had missed out, being, as you know, still full of a cold. Forced to forgo the revelry, I’d counted down to the New Year on my own, popped my poppers, and then sat beneath the trails of crepe paper that came raining down on me. It was bliss. You just can’t know what a relief it is to a man to know that he’s avoided for another year having to kiss Cilla Black as she screams ‘Happy New Year everybody!’ I was beginning 2008 with that rare luxury of full hearing and I decided to use it profitably by doing a bit of channel surfing just to see how the year’s television was shaping up.

I quickly turned off the usual celebrations on BBC1 and ITV. There are few things guaranteed to lower the spirits than watching drunk celebs getting maudlin about ‘the people who can’t be with us tonight’. The truth is so very different. They don’t give a Brylcreemed fig about other people, just where the next drink is coming from and whose keys they’ll be picking out of the ashtray at the end of the evening. Instead, I loitered on Trains, Planes, and Automobiles on Channel 4 which remains one of my favourite comedies of the eighties. But, since I’d come in halfway through it, I didn’t want to spoil it for myself and I flicked over to BBC2.

That’s when my blood froze the flesh to my bone. There on the screen was a horror so great that should I have heard the dolorous chants of the undead coming from the kitchen, I would have ran to them with a joyful trip to my step. The sight that greeted me on BBC2 was the perfect embodiment of New Year and why I’ve learned to hate it so much.

The show was ‘Jules Holland's Hootenanny’ but the screen was all Lenny Henry. His big round bald head was pushed right into the camera’s lens and he was pulling a face like a demented lunatic, mouth wide open, eyes squeezed together. Every blocked pore on his thickly made up chin was visible among the stubble, his nostrils and mouth three gaping holes hiding the unknown horrors of the year ahead. I’m just thankful that I get through most years without coming into close contact with the man. That he should be there, front and centre, within minutes of the start of a new year is a bad sign. In 1987 I remember turning on the TV and seeing Bill Oddie playing the spoons. That year turned out to be a very good one.

Having a tipsy Cilla Black bearing down on you is nothing compared with Lenny Henry forcing his ‘craziness’ on the nation. In fact, there are very few sights that can guarantee to turn my stomach so quickly. There are people inside the business who think that Lenny is a comic genius. They are the very same people who are doing so much to make me prematurely grey by promoting Alan Carr as though he’s the best cure for constipation.

The character of the self-appointed ‘funny man’ is more odorous than any. They share in those same mistaken principals that lie behind the vividly coloured jackets that too many TV presenters wear in the belief that it gives them personality. Lenny has made a career by making loud noises and grinning like a village idiot. The gulf between his act and his real life are more obvious than we find with most comedians, which makes his act all the more onerous. I want to tell him to calm down, to assure him that he doesn’t need to be ‘on’ all the time. He needn’t be ‘funny’ in order to be funny.

I’ll be writing at this at more length later in the year when I’ll be giving The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, with a paper titled ‘Comedy for the Credulous: An Argument Against Lenny Henry’.

In the meantime, I just have to say that I fear for 2008.

Watch this space.