All Aboard!

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

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

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

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

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

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