The Adventures of Baz Mad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Baz Mad?’ she spluttered.

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

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

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

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

‘Your novel?’ asked Judy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at the front page.

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

‘Catchy, isn’t it?’

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

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

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

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

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

Judy sat there in silence for nearly a minute.

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

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

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

A Day On The River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read My Peas

It has always been my wife’s biggest fear that success of any kind would go to my head. This explains the look of disgust that Judy gave me as she closed the newspaper and looked up at all the mashed potato balanced above my immaculate and crease-free brow.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit much?’ she asked.

I moved myself a slightly more casual angle, hoping to soften the effect of the potato which I’d sculpted into the shape of a hat with the words ‘top blogger’ inscribed in peas. Only Judy wasn’t quite seeing the point of my new mash sombrero.

‘You have an ego bigger than Herefordshire,’ she said, heading over to the fridge where she recovered a bottle of plonk. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been satisfied with being one of the sexiest men on TV, a veritable living god among presenters, without taking this kind of praise to heart.’

‘Ah,’ I said, wiping aside some errant punctuation that had slid to my eyebrow, ‘this is success independent of my work with you, Jude. I might have become a publishing sensation with my book, “Fathers & Sons”, but that’s now so heavily discounted that they’re giving them away with every bottle of Ambre Solaire. But this is my blog. This is my life’s work! This is my attempt to prove to the world that Richard Algernon Madeley is a cut above the normal TV fare. This is a demonstration that my talent is more than skin deep and that those of us lucky enough to call ourselves “celebrity” are really something quite special.’

Judy wiped the neck of the bottle before she sank a mouthful.

‘So you’re still plan to go ahead with your little exhibition?’ she asked but the look had softened in her eyes. I knew it was the closest she would come to giving me her blessing.

It was enough for me. I stood up and grabbed the walking cane that Stephen Fry had presented to me on my thirty seventh birthday last year and I walked to the door where I gave my evening suit a final brush down, my tails a flick, before I headed out.

‘Have fun!’ said Judy, mildly scolding but proud, nevertheless.

For a Monday morning, the road in this undisclosed part of North London was surprisingly busy. I’d forgotten that it’s the school holidays so, when I began to walk up the street, a line of children were soon trailing behind me. Some were only there to pick up the odd pea. Others clearly had high hopes of getting a taste of some Smash. But a few cheered me along, applauding me as I strolled with my head held high.

‘Ah!’ said Michael Palin as I found him unloading exotic foodstuffs from his car. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it Dick?’

I pointed to my hat, careful not to tip it.

‘The Sunday Times? Jolly well done!’

I smiled as I passed along.

I had almost walked past Jeremy Paxman’s house before I noticed him. He was up a ladder and cleaning out his gutters.

‘See my show last night?’ he cried. ‘I explored Victorian sewers.’

I couldn’t look up. ‘Very good,’ I replied and then pointed to my hat.

Jeremy’s getting on a bit and his eyesight isn’t what it was. ‘Oh,’ he snarled. ‘Top dogger! Well I suppose congratulations are in order.’

I hadn’t time to waste explaining. My mash was beginning to run and I had only a few minutes to achieve my intended goal.

At the Dickinson residence, I could tell that people were home by the glow of a slightly irradiated light coming from the upper bedroom window.

‘Oy! Dickinson!’ I cried.

There was a movement of curtains and then the naked torso of TV’s top antique appeared, black goggles sitting in the recessed pits of his eyes.

‘Get a load of this, Duck,’ I cried.

‘Pah! Bloody hell, Madeley,’ replied David ‘The Duck’ Dickinson. ‘You’ve got nothing better do with your bloody time?’

I pointed to the peas.

Even in his tanning goggles, David’s eyesight is still as sharp as it was when he was a seventy year old. He nodded. ‘That bloody sums you up, Madeley,’ he said. ‘A “loo logger”.’ And with that, he shut the window.

I was crestfallen. I gazed at my reflection in the windscreen of Dickinson’s bright orange Bentley and I could see that I was far too late. Peas had slipped and the effect of my mash coronet was ruined. ‘Top blogger’ had become ‘loo logger’ and was already on its way to ‘lo goer’. Judy was right. Pride does come before a fall. Humiliation is but a slipped pea away.

Trombones and Hot Tubs

It was last Sunday evening and in the heat of a passionate trombone recital, Judy was splendidly radiant. Her cheeks were twin meltdowns, hot spots of densely packed atoms beyond which many atmospheres of pressure were being forced through the mouthpiece to produce the most wonderful brass version of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.

Brrrrp... brrrp... brrr... brrr... brrrrp... brrrrp... went that familiar melody but, for me, a man in the middle of his winter blues, it was more than an enticing charm; it was a promise of spring mornings and dry days when I’ll be able to go jogging around the neighbourhood in my Lycra shorts and no court orders keeping me two hundred metres from David Dickinson’s solarium. Others clearly felt the same way. I looked around the church hall and saw many of our friends and neighbours spellbound by this great rarity: Judy playing her trombone for a paying public. I was captivated by the music and my wife’s talents, and I suppose it was a pang of pride that made me tear up at the end and miss the arrival of the lumbering giant at my side.

‘That was ****ing awesome,’ said Vinne Jones who had made a surprise appearance at the event and an even more unexpected appearance inches from my face.

‘Well, thank you,’ I said.

‘Not heard a ****ing noise like that since I ****ing stuck my ****ing studs into Robbie Fowler’s j*****w.’

‘Right,’ I replied, looking around for somebody large to hide behind. I don’t know about you but I tend to feel uncomfortable hearing that word used in polite company.

‘Listen,’ said Vinne, ‘you ever need somebody to stuck his ****ing studs into somebody’s j*****w, you just give me a call, yea?’ And with that he slid his business card into my upper breast pocket.

‘I’ll do just that,’ I promised.

‘Chipper!’ said Vinnie and slapped me playfully across the jaw.

I was still trying to work a detached retina back into place when Judy came down from the stage. Her lips were slightly puffed and numb from an hour of strenuous blowing.

‘Shoo wash thasht,’ she said.

‘Vinnie Jones,’ I whispered. ‘He was offering to stand on the j*****w of any man who incurs our displeasure.’

Judy blushed at the word, which I don’t think I have ever before uttered in the presence of my wife.

‘Wash a lovelsh geshshshure,’ she replied, though clearly a little disturbed by what she had heard.

‘That’s the beauty of being a celebrity,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Good people are always willing to go out of their way to please us with kind offers.’

I thought no more about this kind offer until Wednesday, a momentous day in the Madeley home. It was the day that I was to have my new spa delivered.

As you all probably know, I’ve always been a man who takes his ‘wellness’ seriously. The spa was a newer luxury model with extra spouts installed across the base to provide a more vigorous flow of water across the user’s posterior quarter. The makers say that the force of water alone can keep an eighteen stone man buoyant and I was eager to test their claims in a pair of specially adapted swimming trunks which I’d rigged to carry extra ballast in a reinforced gusset.

After a couple of hours, the installation engineers came out of my shed (I call it a shed but it’s really a large complex outside the main house where I spend most of my time) to declare that the installation was complete. I quickly grabbed my shorts and a large bag of lead pellets and headed out to give it a trial run.

‘Don’t soak too long,’ shouted Judy from the kitchen. ‘You know how your j*****w turn in cold water...’

Since she’d heard me say that word, she had grown an unfortunate habit of using it. I suppose I should have said something about it but I was too excited to answer. Instead, I ran for my first look at my new spa.

Five minutes later, I was sitting in the large tub (big enough for eight healthy men, if you’re into that sort of thing – and I’m not), waist high in nicely warmed water and with a gentle stream of bubbles ticking the inside of my thighs. It was but the beginning. I had the remote control in my hand and I slowly moved the dial from ‘1’ up to ‘2’ and then beyond.

Soon the water was rushing past at a vigorous ‘6’ and I could feel that I was about to lift off. With great anticipation, I moved the dial to ‘7’ and...

Nothing.

‘7’ felt exactly the same as ‘6’. I turned it to ‘8’ and then ‘9’ and still nothing, no noticeable increase in the water’s force and no sign that my buttocks were about to lift off from the bottom of the spa.

Two minutes later, I was on the phone to the installation engineers.

‘Oh, we’re aware of your flow problem,’ they said. ‘In fact, we’re looking into it at this very moment.’

‘Then why didn’t you mention it earlier, before I stripped off?’ I asked.

‘Well, we didn’t want to disappoint you,’ they said.

‘Disappoint me? I’ve bought a top of the line spa and I expect top of the line performance. I don’t want to be left to discover that my water disappoints me at a mildly vigorous “6”. At the very least, I want my every cavity cleansed by a forceful “10”.’

‘We’ll look into it,’ they promised.

An hour later, I was in my dressing gown and sitting in the kitchen when the phone rang.

‘Bad news, Mr. M.,’ they said. ‘It’s an issue of water pressure. Normally, a house such as yours in a well supplied area will have enough pressure to run a spa at its optimum setting. However, in this case, you have a slight problem. It seems that one of your neighbours is using too much water. The pressure of the local water main has dropped by the time it reaches your house.’

‘And do you know who is doing this?’ I asked.

‘We’re looking into it at the moment,’ they said. ‘We’ll ring back when we have news.’

Another hour passes, by which time my j*****w are dry and I’m back into my civilian clothes, sitting in the living room where I’m giving my Scrabble pieces a polish before the big weekend match with Stephen Fry and Sir Clive James.

‘Richard?’ said the ever-more casual engineer. ‘We’ve isolated the problem. The water flow is being disrupted at number 43.’

’43?’ My mind did a quick run down the street until it came to a familiar driveway. ‘David Dickinson!’ I spat.

‘That’s the chap. He’s the funny thing. He’s running an Aqualine 2400 whirlpool and spa with a colonic nozzle.’

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ I said. ‘That’s at least half as powerful as my new hot tub.’

‘Ah,’ they replied. ‘That wouldn’t be a problem except he’s also got forty-two computer controlled ornamental Greek nymphs urinating around the side of his pool in carefully choreographed patterns. It’s quite the impressive sight but I’m surprised you get even a sniff of water when their bladders are on full power.’

I knew there was no point in asking David to control his forty two bladders. Since me and Michael Palin scorched David’s crotch, my relationship with David has been somewhat strained. It meant that I’d wasted money on a spa rendered incapable because a neighbour with a passion for kitsch. Which brings me back to the card in the breast pocket of my Sunday suit.

‘Vinnie,’ I said on the telephone yesterday morning. ‘What do you think about ornamental Greek nymphs that urinate around a rich man’s hot tub?’
Vinnie growled. ‘Makes me want to stick my f*****g boots into some rich guy’s j*****ws,’ he said.

And like the delicate notes of Judy trombone, that was music to my ears.

Too Many Glass Chins

I woke up feeling a little more smug than is usual for a Sunday. I’ve always said that Amir Khan hits canvas quicker than Rolf Harris on a watercolour binge and last night he proved it. Judy was all tears at the breakfast table. Being a fan of British boxing, she’d been shocked to see her favourite fighter counted out within a minute of her pressing the red button on Sky Box Office.

‘Another Frank Warren masterstroke,’ I said as I laid into my toast with a left uppercut loaded with marmalade. ‘And well worth fifteen quid of anybody’s money.’

‘I can’t believe the lad’s got a glass jaw,’ she replied.

‘Not just a glass jaw, Jude. I’d guess he’s got a glass upper lip, a glass ear and probably a couple of glass knees. About the only thing of substance is his bank account. I’ve been telling your for years that he’s been promoted beyond his talent. But that’s what comes of turning boxing into a popularity contest. It’s fine promoting these young fighters but, at some stage, they have to get into the ring with men who can punch.’

‘It wasn’t like that in my day,’ sighed Judy.

Which was true. There were no easy fights when Judy helped establish female amateur boxing by becoming Manchester’s Amateur Middleweight Champion. I suppose that’s what made the defeat so hard for her to bear, so I left Judy ‘Firestorm’ Finnigan stirring her coffee and I went to catch some Sunday morning TV.

Or I would have had I not been disturbed by an unexpected repercussion of yesterday’s blog post. No sooner had I turned on ‘Mythbusters’ than a delegation of neighbours led by Graham Norton arrived demanding action about local security. Though they weren’t waving pitchforks and holding aloft burning torches, they were still as close to a rabid mob as a celebrity-rich neighbourhood gets in these image conscious days.

I was in no mood for their petition. Sundays are observed religiously in the Madeley home. I rise late, wear a thigh-high dressing gown all day, and do nothing more strenuous than watch the football or, when it’s in season, sit down with ‘Top Gear’ and plan my revenge on Clarkson. Sunday is a day of rest and definitely the one day of the week when I’m in no mood for David Dickinson talking about tripwires.

‘These bloody prowling buggers are everywhere,’ said David, fifteen minutes later as he sat there in the living room with one of Judy’s best china cups in his hands. ‘We need to organise a Neighbourhood Watch or the bloody yobs will rob us bloody blind. I say booby trap our bloody patios so the buggers will lose a leg if they come sniffing about my Chipendale.’

‘Ha! That’s right,’ said Ronnie Corbett, who was also in on this appeal, speaking on behalf people below five feet. ‘Just the other day I had to tell off my wife for leaving the house wide open. I came home at midnight and walked through an unlocked back door. I told her she should have locked it but she didn’t think Mr. Tiddles would know how to use the key to his cat flap.”’

‘So, you see,’ said Graham, as indifferent as the rest of us to Ronnie’s latest monologue. ‘I’m not the only one worried about prowlers.’

I looked around the room at the lot of them. I expected this sort of behaviour from Norton but not Felicity Kendal, Nigel Havers, or Michael Parkinson. Graham had clearly been round the neighbourhood hammering on the doors to rouse these local luminaries from their private lives.

‘Look here,’ I replied to the lot of them. ‘Can’t you see that this is just Graham’s personal vendetta against Bill Oddie? And I’m not going to be involved in anything that puts that man in any harm. Bill’s still traumatised after spending so long under Graham’s buttocks. I don’t think he’ll ever recover.’

‘Oh, that’s bloody it then!’ piped up Dickinson. ‘The bloody vandals have bloody won!’

‘No they haven’t,’ replied Ronnie. ‘Richard might still lead us. Come on, Dick. We need a man of courage and conviction.’ He turned to Graham. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ replied Norton but I think he was still sniffy about my buttock remark.

I just couldn’t believe my ears. ‘A neighbourhood watch scheme is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,’ I explained. ‘You don’t really think I’m going to spend my nights walking outside your houses with a torch and a flask. You all need to learn to stand up for yourselves. Get a chin and stop being cowards. Isn’t that right Judy?’

Judy just shrugged. ‘If you say so, Richard.’

It wasn’t the affirmation I’d hoped for but it was enough to dismiss the gathering. I saw Norton off the premises and returned to my normal scheduled activities until around two o’clock when the doorbell rang. This time I approached it less cautiously. Two shadows were loitering on the other side but one of them looked distinctly familiar around the nose.

‘Ah! ’Tis I, Fry,’ said the undervalued Stephen, ‘and I am here with the latest in home security devices, as reviewed in my next Dork Talk featurette for The Guardian on a Saturday.’

He was also there with another figure who smiled at me somewhat embarrassingly.

‘Hello, Dick,’ said Sir Clive James. ‘I heard about your trouble with thieving rats, so I’ve come to help Stephen Fry lay some deadly traps.’

As you know, I worship the ground that Sir Clive inhabits but there are times when I find it hard to listen to a man who speaks entirely in rhyme. Nor, if I’m honest, was I much of a mood for Stephen, whose intentions can be good but whose enthusiasms lend themselves to excess.

‘But I don’t want any traps,’ I said. ‘We didn’t have a thief. We had a prowler. And it wasn't a prowler. It was just Bill Oddie.’

Clive held up a finger. ‘Ah, Bill Oddie’s a man who loiters in shrubs, where he watches sparrows feed on beetles and grubs.’

‘Dear god!’ I muttered before I gave in to a sigh. ‘Look you two. I don’t know why you think we need security but...’

Just then, Judy arrived.

‘Ah, Stephen!’ she said, running up to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘So glad you could come. You too, Clive. Brought the stuff?’

‘All here,’ said Stephen, depositing a large duffle bag on the hall rug.

Judy clapped her hands with excitement. ‘Excellent. I’ll just go and get changed into my overalls and then I’ll help you install them.’

By now, I felt like I’d gone fifty four seconds with a Columbian lightweight bruiser. ‘What exactly is going on, Jude?’

My wife looked at me as though confusion is her usual habit for a weekend. ‘I thought we’d agreed to beef up the security.’

There had been no such agreement and I’m sure that she knew it. ‘I might have said that we need something to keep Graham Norton away,’ I answered, ‘but I was thinking more about a pipe smoking scarecrow dressed in tweed and holding something by Alistair MacLean while we play the Dambusters March. Can’t get anything more anti-Graham Norton than that.’

Judy shrugged. ‘Well, a few extra alarms wouldn’t do any harm.’

‘I agree,’ said Sir Clive.

We all looked at him, waiting for him to finish the rhyme.

His brows closed ranks. ‘With Judy?’ he added.

‘Shabby,’ I replied.

Sir Clive just shrugged. ‘It’s a terrible affliction, this rhyming addiction...’

What more is there to say? I just left them to get on with it. By four o’clock, the house was brimming with security devices and personalised alarms.

‘Remember: three hoots and it’s Oddie,’ said Stephen as he packed away his tools, ‘anything else you can shoot first and ask questions later.’

‘What about Norton?’ I asked, thinking it important to establish the real threat alerts.

Sir Clive bristled up, proudly. ‘When the cymbals clash, there’s something brash, loitering outside your room. But when a trumpet call, echoes down your hall, then Dickinson is your doom.’

I gave a cold shiver. ‘Clive,’ I said, ‘now that is real poetry. Keats never said anything prettier.’

Sir Clive beamed, Stephen looked on proudly, and Judy punched the air. The air was out for the count.

Don't Go Dickinson With My Wonnacott

If I were to offer you a three hundred year old Wormwood buttering rack for ten pounds, you’d tell me to clear off and never besmirch your late Edwardian rat-hair doormat again. If, however, I offered you a three hundred year old Wormwood buttering rack for the better part of a thousand pounds, you’d break the bank and a few shins to get the bloody thing into your front room. It wouldn’t matter that Wormwood buttering racks went out with the ferreting needles that Queen Victoria used to pop her pubescent pimples. Nor, for that matter, would you care that European laws outlawed ‘buttering’ in the 1973 Milkmaid’s Charter and that the last man to be hung for the offence was actually incapable of committing the crime because he was lactose intolerant and deficient by two critical glands and a suitable buttering rack.

Of course, none of this enters into your squalid little thought processes when you think that there’s money to be made. You just see my three hundred year old Wormwood buttering rack and think it a bargain. And do you know what? I don’t blame you. Having just endured half an hour of the BBC’s afternoon output, I now realise that antiques are as sexy as an oiled midget and twice as exciting as Barbara Winsor with a cinnamon topping.

I’m constantly amazed by the success of shows that get misty eyed over common-or-garden tat. They encourage us to buy cheap and sell high and then demonstrate the futility of capitalism by awarding their contestants less than their bus fare back to Toffington-on-the-Snuff, Hampshire. I can’t deny that it’s absorbing to watch a middle-class account manager squander two hundred pounds of the BBC’s money on an ivory-handled tonsil scraper. It’s far more entertaining than any number of execs wasting millions trying to modernise the latest TV snore of Charles Dickens’ ‘Dumbledore House’ or ‘Dobby & Son’. It’s just a shame is that there aren’t more of these shows and that the BBC has already used up next year’s quota of men cursed by gypsies at birth who might host them.

First there was ‘Antiques Roadshow’ with Hugh Scully, who always reminded me of a badger that had voluntarily tried to euthanize itself by repeatedly running into a spade. Then came ‘Bargain Hunt’ which did more for the dandy population of Brighton than any show since ‘The Danny La Rue Extravaganza’ took the south coast from behind. We e must also never forget that ‘This Morning’ was the show that first introduced the world to David Dickinson, and David Dickinson to the world, even if ‘Bargain Hunt’ made him famous. Not only can he smell woodworm in French fluting from the cliffs of Dover but he has handled more wooden knobs than men called Elton with a thing for walnut dressers.

When David announced that he was quitting our screens, the BBC afternoon schedule could have creaked to an arthritic halt with ‘Quincy: QI’ and ‘Diagnosis Dick van Dyke’. Having achieved superstardom and with Stephen Spielberg knocking at his door, David Dickinson could have easily allowed his old show to be sold off without even meeting its reserve price. However, Dickinson was forward thinking and handed his auctioneer’s gavel to his equally gifted cousin, Tim Wonnacott.

Wonnacott is the sort of man to breeze through the heats of the Terry Thomas Lookalike Competition only to blow it in the final because he couldn’t play the cad with as much evil as he has panache. He’s so genial that fluffy hamsters called Mr. Squiggles have been known to find him twee and have penned scathing odes about him. Wonnacott was in charge this afternoon when I sat down to watch the red team outwit the blue in a closely fought contest that went to the wire and a set of wooden birthing stirrups. Luckily for the red team, there was somebody in Shipton Mallet who required a set of wooden birthing stirrups and the two pound profit on the initial ninety pound outlay carried them to victory. They beat the blue team by all of one pound, having only lost a meagre £187 on a suitcase full of worthless brick-a-brac.

Not that we should hold the blue team to account for their profligate losses. When all the lots are gone and the money counted, the people really to blame are the experts who are clearly nothing of the sort. They come in two sizes. The sad little men have delicate 1960s comb-overs and frayed cuffs where signs of repair will decrease their price at auction. The other team is usually assisted by a flirty young female, fashionably blonde, and definitely an ‘antique of the future’. They won’t get ‘all of their money’ today but you know that Timmy would be quite happy to turn them over and check for distinguishing marks on their bottoms. And as for Tim himself. He turns and pouts to camera. ‘Imagine!’ he says.

And it’s a take!

Another classic show goes into the BBC vault. And what’s more, it’s future proof. Ageless and never to be labelled an antique.

Oh... Before I go, I’d like to buy back that Wormwood buttering rack even if it means I have to throw in a mid-century sparrow mangle to clinch the deal.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Gnats

There must be something in the water that occasionally grants me what I like to call 'The Vision'. No sooner had I posted that trivial bit of nonsense about gnats yesterday than the whole neighbourhood was invaded by bugs the size of house bricks. These were mean creatures and attracted to anything that was shiny, brightly coloured, or giving off a strong aroma. Naturally, David Dickinson stood no chance.

All that glistening, orange sweat heavily scented with French cologne: it was manna to the giant gnats. As Judy and I watched from the safety of our air conditioned front room, Dickinson went running down the street, waving his arms about his King Louis XIV perm.

‘Get away, you bloody fools!’ he cried. ‘Gnats! It’s the bloody gnats!’

‘Oh Richard, you must do something,’ said Judy as I stood there chuckling to myself.

‘I am doing something,’ I replied. ‘I’m standing here chuckling. I swear there’s a show in this. I should go and get my video camera.’

‘I mean you should go out and save him. You know that you’re immune to all wounds except that of a Vorpal blade.’

I hated to admit that Judy had a point since this was also a matter of principle.

‘You want me to save the man who has had nothing but bad things to say to me since the Michael Palin incident?’ I looked at my darling wife’s face, illuminated by virtuous concern for a man it is really quite hard to like. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, turning for the front door. ‘I'll play the hero for once. Be ready to let us in. And if he says something cutting about the sofa, don’t say I didn’t warn you. He once made Stephen Fry cry just with the word "mahogany".'

I dashed for the Range Rover and made it untouched by the giant gnats. From there it was simply a matter of following the screams of ‘beware the bloody gnats!’ all the way to Ronnie Corbett’s front garden where I found Dickinson fighting his way through deep foliage.

‘I’m here to save you,’ I said.

‘Richard? Is that you?’ cried David. ‘They’ll bloody follow you, you know? Gnats! Bloody big gnats!’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get you to a safe place.’

‘You’re so bloody kind,’ said David, pointing to me.

‘I know I am,’ I answered, choosing that moment to snap the above picture with my camera phone. I thought a picture of the man’s humiliation would be a good thing to own. I could always use it to remind him of the great debt he was about to owe me. (It looks even better if you click on it and see it in full resolution. You get a real sense of the gratitude in the David's eyes.)

However, his thanks were short lived. As we ran for the car, David began to rant about the bugs being a message for the neighbourhood.

‘The bloody bugs are all Madeley's fault!’ he cried, wide eyed, slack jawed, and senseless. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time but he was only wide-eyed, slack jawed and senseless because he’s allergic to gnat bites. That was left to Judy to spot, which she quickly did once I got him back to the house.

‘I don’t think his bottom lip should be that big,’ said Judy.

‘Ob corb ib nob subbbobed bo be bis blooby bib!’ replied Dickinson.

To be fair, I hadn’t noticed the inordinate size of his bottom lip because the whole of his face had swollen to something like twice its normal size. By the time we got him to the hospital, he was looking less like David Dickinson and more like Clarissa Dickson Wight.

And that’s where we left him being pumped full of antihistamines.

The last I heard was his telling a nurse that it was ‘like a blooby blague of bocusts senb dowb by Gob!’

‘Do you think that’s right?’ asked Judy. 'Why would God send a plague of gnats after David?'

‘Why?’ I laughed. ‘Because God has a bloody good sense of humour! That's why.’

It's A Bumper Search Saturday

It's been a particularly profitable week in the world of odd search terms. Google have been sending people my way looking for everything from haemorrhoid creams to naked historians. As is my habit on a Saturday, I'll try to explain why I think people search for these phrases or I'll give you such a learned commentary that you'll feel obliged to take an evening class at your local college where you'll become involved in a mad passionate affair with your tutor, leading you to a mad flight to Brazil where you'll find yourself alone and penniless and picking up tricks in downtown São Paulo. Eventually you'll meet a eye-patch wearing German doctor who offers you sanctuary in exchange for strange sexual favours involving a Peruvian midget called Hector. After months in the heat, listening to Edith Piaf on a scratchy gramophone while having treacle licked off your knees, you will eventually earn enough to pay for a flight home, an older, wiser, and sticker person. But you'll thank me for it in the end. Enjoy.

Tips to get a good tan

After you've covered yourself in sun cream, smear yourself with real butter. David Dickinson taught me this one so you can imagine it's as top a tanning tip as tanning tips can get.

Is Louie Walsh rich?

Yes. He's the richest man in Ireland. In fact, he's so rich he doesn't keep all his money in the bank. He plants little bags of coin beneath mushroom rings across the county of Tipperary.

Richard Madeley impressionist

I'd sue if there ever was one. Not that I don't see the appeal of pretending to be me. You would be loved by woman and feared by children and old people.

Dennies Richards nude [sic]

The spelling mistake makes this a tough one to call. There was a time when any red-blooded man would search for Dennise Richards before retiring to bed every night. Then she married Charlie Sheen and she lost her sexy. However, if you were searching for Denis Richards nude, that's a different matter. There was a historian called Denis Richards but I don't think he ever posed in the nude except for the cover photo of his 1945 biography of Thoreau.

The French they are a curious race

France is full of some of my favourite people, though many of them lost their sexy after they married Charlie Sheen.

Tunisian word for 'whore'

The word you're looking for is 'qattous', which, roughly translated, means 'everybody loses their sexy after marrying Charlie Sheen'.

Richard and Judy cushion

You wouldn't believe the number of times I've been asked if we have any cushions in our range of Richard&Judy merchandise. It's easy to see why some of you would only feel happy sitting on my face.

Richard Madeley is annoying

Guilty as charged but I like to think of it as a nice version of 'annoying', easy to warm to like my slight eccentricities like keeping a wild Bill Oddie in the house and my incessant need to promote the blog of a man much greater than myself.

Sexy Vanessa Feltz

Well, that's it then. The End of the World as predicted in The Book of Richard. When those three words comes together to form a complex statement like that, Doomsday can't be far behind. It's been nice knowing you. Do you think they have blogs in heaven? And do you think everybody will still read Iain Dale? And if so, why so?

Potted history of custard

Ah, the delights of a Daily Mail-type pun! What do you want to know about custard? Invented by the Romans, it was not until the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus that custard was flavoured with vanilla. In 2007 it finally eclipsed rice, becoming the world's most consumed food.

Robert Madeley Appreciation Society

One thing you can't deny about Robert Madeley is that he's not humble. Imagine creating an appreciation society to honour yourself!

Haemorrhoid Cream Sandra Bullock

Are we to read into this that Sandra Bullock has haemarrhoids as well as a comical last name? Are we to believe that this complaint might run throughout all the Bullocks? And might there not be a Bullock cream to alleviate the suffering? I would like to know.

Vintage Lawnmower Appreciation Society

Appreciate those vintage lawnmowers, appreciate them!

When are weekends in Tunisia?

Bloody good question. I rang the embassy and they tell me it's all day Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons after 2.

A.A. Gill Starbucks Cappuccino

Mr. Gill's annual report into the Starbucks' Cappuccinos is one of the most eagerly awaited reviews of the gastronomic year. 'Bloody awful' he declared in 2006. 'Somewhat milky' was his opinion a year later. This year's lucid commentary is 'frothy'. I can hardly wait until 2009.

Was Dennis Wilson circumsized?

I imagine at least one man called Dennis Wilson was.

Are prunes good for singing?

Yes. They increase your vocal range by doubling the number of orifices through which you can produce notes.

Why is Chuck Norris always happy?

Because he's one kick happy guy!

Parky's chocolate

It's true. To mark his retirement, Michael Parkinson is launching his own range of chocolate, specially designed for people who can't chew sticky foods.

Jamie Oliver black eye

Poetry. Pure poetry.

Eric Clapton dentures

Sure you're not confusing him with Chuck Norris?

Is a man wearing a skirt wrong?

I should say it bloody well is!

Dave Dickinson paint jobs

This was news to me so I went down the road to ask him. I can now confirm it. David Dickinson has started his open painting and decorating services. His rates are reasonable so I've asked him to do our dining room. If you ring him, mention my name. He'll do you a 10% discount.

Nude Harold Wilson.... Sorry!

If you're wondering: I asked Dennis to add a rabbit to save Mr. Wilson's modesty. I want this point to be clear before I go on. Saturday is the day I usually take for a long earned rest and I'm in no mood for answering questions about why Harold Wilson has got genitals in the shape of a red rabbit. Instead I want to spend my time reading. I've bought a few new books which are now sitting by my favourite armchair and intend to get at least one of them finished before sundown.

As usual, I'm posting cheap filler material in the form of the best search terms that have brought readers to the blog this week. As is my custom, I'll try to figure out what they were searching for and I'll do my best to answer their queries.

Nude sorry Harold Wilson

This has to be the week's oddest search term. Luckily, I have a picture of one of the many times that our late Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was caught in the nude. He was always very apologetic and I think that the rabbit proves my point.

Is Richard Madeley Jewish?

Depends what you're really asking. If you're asking if I'm circumcised then I'd have to ask you: does an accident involving a set of sheers count? If you're asking if I read the Torah regularly, then no, I'm not Jewish. I'm CofE with mildly orthodox Catholic leanings that have to do with my love of baroque church architecture and the writings of Pope Julius II.

Richard Madeley is an idiot

Depends what you mean by 'idiot'. Am I flawed? I would say so. Am I wiser and more knowledgeable than 99.9% of the British public: absolutely.

Richard and Judy baldness

And not for much longer! My hair is growing at a remarkable rate. I think taking some of Judy's old HRT medication has helped too. The early indications were that I was growing breasts but that, thankfully, is no longer the case. I remain a manly B cup.

Judy's tits at the Brits

Hard to know what to say to this one. She took them with her, if that's what you mean.

Which cartoon animal whistled through its teeth?

Easy: Dangermouse.

Richard Madeley's qualifications

Eight 'O' levels, a clutch of 'A' levels, a couple of degrees, and an honorary Ph.D. in Advanced Biomolecular Engineering.

Terry Nutkins with a beard

I have a photograph of this too.

Prunella Scales topless

Unfortunately I don't have this picture.

Pointless Stephen Fry links

You mean like this one?

How tall is David Dickinson?

This old chestnut? Little Miss Sunshine is 5' 11” tall, which you would know if you keep refreshing this page to go through my bestiary.

Richard Madeley is a twat – sorry the only way I could find your blog

That's okay, stranger. Whoever typed this in to Google gave me the biggest laugh of my week. And, when you think about that, you'll see why I'm having a day off. It has been a bad week for Madeley.

The Shirt Off My Back

On most mornings, I wake up fearing criminal prosecution. On what charge, I’m really not sure. But I do know the source of these cold sweats. It’s the same thing that causes my heart to murmur and my intestines to sing baritone. The worry comes from my statistics. I’ve noticed that lawyers are now keeping an eye on this blog.

Why Stephen Fry might have hired lawyers in St. Louis, Missouri, I have reason to wonder. Perhaps it’s Oddie. More likely Paxman, despite his having a 200 hundred line mock heroic epistle dedicated to him. How many journalists can say the same?

Then again, my homeless friends have not posted in a while. Has The Homeless Chicken taken offence and decided to have the shirt off my back? Perhaps it’s J.W.H. Madeley, the famous herring magnate. He too has been out of contact for a while, despite my authoring his official biography. Has he set his lawyers the task of reclaiming the Madeley fortune in order to fund another plundering of the Icelandic herring stock?

Closer to home, one must wonder about my fellow bloggers. Has Ms. Baroque decided to prosecute for the sake of all true poets? Did Chip Dale come out of his gloom and decided to make his fortune by suing me? Have I upset Nige by revealing to the world that he’s really Bill Oddie? Then again, I went and told you all about Elberry’s troublesome digestion and his need for stool softener. After spilling the beans about his beans (excuse the image), might he have decided to come after me for deformation of character?

Bryan Appleyard is a busy man but is he too busy to sue? Then there’s the mysterious Selena Dreamy. Could she be a Mata Hari, meant to entice me with her peerless wit before revealing herself to be the legal representative of Jordan’s left nipple, about which I have had only bad things to say?

David Dickinson’s groin has become something of a joke in these parts but when you’ve got parts like David Dickinson, you wouldn't think it a joking matter. Lawyers must be informed. But lawyers in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States? It makes me wonder who I can have offended of such international acclaim. Could it be one of my many wives from my polygamous marriages? Could it be PETA out to get me for promoting the wearing of ocelot hats?

Whatever the reason, the lawyers in St. Louis, Missouri are apparently keeping close tabs on me. I make this appeal directly to them: please don’t sue me! I’m a poor man with only the clothes on my back. Would you really want to leave Judy without a home?

[Update]

What do you mean you’re working for Judy?

On The Transvestites and Squirrels of Toddington's Service Station

‘Lean, muscular and brawny!’

Four words and an outdoor life beckoned.

‘I don’t mind you gently nudging me awake,’ said Judy, pushing me towards the back door, ‘but I refuse to have the rest of your blogging friends applauding your misogynism. Let’s see how lean, muscular and brawny you feel after a night in the garden shed.’

‘I didn’t so much kick,’ I said, holding onto the sleeping bag she’d forced into my hands. ‘I toed! I toed! There’s a huge difference between a leg and a toe.’

‘A difference?’

‘At least a shin,’ I said. ‘Perhaps even a knee if you measure these things in Imperial units.’

‘I don’t take well to being laughed at,’ she sniffed.

I looked out to the garden where it was blowing a gale. I swear I saw David Dickinson’s groin go flying across the lawn before it leapt the fence and took out Ronnie Corbett’s greenhouse a few houses down.

‘I’ll put it right,’ I promised. ‘Let me get back online and I’ll make it all right.’

‘But I don’t want you to respond,’ said Judy. ‘I don’t want you going online ever again. From now on, Richard Madeley, you're no longer a blogger!’

‘Oh but Judy,’ I said. ‘I have to answer. Do you think I could ignore a woman of Selena’s obvious class and breeding?’

Judy’s flush went white. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she replied, cooly. ‘You always ignore Cilla.’

And there you have it, friends. Female wit boiled down, put into a small bottle, given a good shake, and then hurled with the might of the tender elbow to shatter at the bottom of the hole you’ve dug yourself. The aroma of cat has rarely been so strong.

Regular readers will know that it has been a long held wish of mine that visitors to this blog would ask me questions. I began my Appreciation Society in order to answer the many queries I know the world longs to ask a man of my experience. That's why, when Selena posted her list of questions, I knew it was of the utmost importance that I answer them immediately. It’s the reason that Judy discovered me hiding in the airing cupboard, this evening, when I was meant to be sitting in the front room as she talked me through a replay of last night’s boxing match. I’d naturally tried to hide what I was doing but she’d snatched away my laptop and discovered how we'd all been discussing my method of waking her up. It was the reason why I found myself on my way to a night with a man called Innes No. 3.

‘Okay,’ sighed Judy. ‘I’ll forget about this if you tell everybody the truth. You can go on there and blog but only if you tell them the complete truth and you must show contrition about your treatment of me.’

‘I will!’ I promised, as I dropped the sleeping bag and ran back into the house. And I swear that I will answer Selena’s questions with such honesty, it will rock the very foundations of light entertainment in this country. This, I swear, will be a proper reason for Gordon Brown to hold a COBRA meeting.

Selena’s Five Questions:

1.) are Bryan Appleyard and Bill Oddie about to get engaged?

Ah, I see we are to begin with a syllogism. All cats are myopic, my wife is myopic, therefore my wife is a cat... Well, given that I was the first person to reveal to the world that Nige is really Bill Oddie, it makes my job much easier: Nige is really Bill Oddie; Nige and Bryan are already engaged; therefore, Bryan and Bill are to be wed in the spring. I’m sure I speak for everybody and wish them great happiness. We are all eagerly awaiting photos of the church’s interior architecture.

2.) What exactly did you mean when you were overheard saying to Elberry: “I get plenty of it and can supply it for you?”

Stool softener. Nothing more than good old fashioned stool softener. Dr. Raj came on the Richard&Judy show about a year ago to discuss the psychological impact of constipation. He put a word in with the manufacturers of stool softener and, since then, boxes of the stuff have been arriving at the house on the first of every month. Elberry, as you will know if you read his blog, is a man greatly troubled in that department. He often boasts about travelling the country and squatting on the great Civil War battlefields, knowing that his little ‘Elberries’ will appear in auction houses under the label ‘genuine Roundhead musketballs’. I thought it only reasonable to help the poor man out, as indeed I’ll be helping out the nation’s collectors of antique musketballs.

3.) Have you ever been convicted for stalking The Honourable Nigel Havers?

Convicted: no. Caught: yes. It was at the Toddington service station and it was back in the early eighties. I’d followed The Honourable Havers there from the London BBC studios where he’d been filming Blankety Blank. It was years before This Morning and I was working on a documentary for Granada TV about shipments of Bulgarian squirrels being delivered to celebrity flats late at night. The show’s main target was Anthony Andrews but we suspected that Havers was acting as a middleman. I was hot on the trail of this illicit squirrel smuggling operation, hiding behind a rack of fan belts, when the shop assistant caught me. Nigel was attracted to the commotion. He got straight on the blower to Andrews and blew the whole gaff. That very night, Andrews released all the squirrels. Many people in the security services still blame him for causing South Kensington’s ongoing problem with squirrels with a taste for nibbling quality woollen worsted.

4.) Have you ever heard voices urging you to run for post of Vollsachverständiger für Konspirazionstheorie?

A day rarely passes without my hearing them. Luckily, the voices speak a language that my conscious mind doesn’t understand. It’s the reason why I fear learning German. I don’t know what kind of man I might become.

5.) Is it true, to the best of your knowledge, that Jeremy Clarkson was seen out dining with a man wearing a skirt while claiming he was AA Gill. Or that the Daily Mail thought it was so good they wanted it done again? And what do you imagine Stephen Fry thinks about that? I certainly do not trust the manhood of either. In fact, I rang Jeremy and tried to hide my disappointment, but he suggested, against my better knowledge, that he might just appear on this blog. What good is the word of a man with a predilection for skirts?

Good question. It takes me back. AA Gill once made a remark in his Sunday Times column about Charlie Dimmock’s breasts which I thought at the time to be the funniest thing I’d read. I rang him to congratulate him on the fact and I suggested that we meet. He was somewhat reluctant but eventually agreed to join me for a coffee, oddly enough, at the same service station at Toddington where I had been caught stalking Nigel Havers a few years earlier. To get a long story to its nub, Gill arrived wearing a tight blue business jacket and skirt, and I was again caught behind a rack of fan belts, by the same assistant, only this time trying desperately hard to avoid the heavily rouged Gill. The upshot of this is that yes: I do believe that Clarkson was seen dining with a man dressed in a skirt. Not only did The Daily Mail love it, they also hold it responsible for South Kensington’s ongoing problem with squirrels with a taste for nibbling quality woollen worsted.

As to the Great Fry's opinion, I rang Stephen and he was as astute as ever. ‘Ah, ’tis I, Fry, on my iPhone being asked about transvestites in service stations,' he said. 'Luckily, I’m on first name terms with AA Gill, or A as I like to call him, and I can explain the reasons for his occasional cross dressing. He adopts the guise of the female of the species when meeting people he’s too embarrassed to be seen with. You are, Richard, I know, insufferable when it comes to the high esteem in which you hold Jeremy Clarkson, but many men would adopt camouflage made to the highest standards of concealment. Had I the legs for it, I too would adopt the natural cover of the lady. A word to the wise, Richard: when forced to meet Clarkson, dress as a woman. Unless you are a woman, of course, in which case just keep you car engine running. You're not a woman are you Dick? Bless my soul if you are. In fact, bless all our souls...’

There you have it. It only leaves me to comment on men who like to wear skirts, though I have to be very cautious in what I say. I’ve had emailed complaints about describing them as 'whackos' and 'nutjobs'. So, I say, what’s wrong with them that a Bic razor can’t fix?

Speaking of which, Clarkson has yet to forward the piece he’s writing for me. I’ve informed him that we require none of that dross he gives The Sun. I want nothing less than his Sunday Times material. You know, the stuff he writes with the occasional comma. I’ve asked him to give me 1200 words on why men should never ever toe their wives awake.

I think he’s just the man for the job.

David Dickinson's Mildly Singed Crotch: Part 2

Let’s open the windows, heel the cat out the door, and clear the air in here. I need to be honest with you.

Too many bloggers do nothing but lie to their readers and consistently mislead them. I’m not like that. I’m known as ‘Honest’ Richard for a reason; I’m ‘Madeley’ with a capitalised ‘Truth’ and with the British Standard Mark for Veracity branded on my behind. Which is why I’m so blunt when it comes to admitting that I’m one of the most disliked men in the country. Oh, there’s no use in denying it. I’ve seen all the skits and cartoons. I’ve heard all the things that people say about me. And it’s all water off a drake’s rear-facing manifold, as it were. None of it fazes me. Besides, unpopularity has many rewards. I don’t get troubled by people wanting me to endorse their products and I’m rarely chased by the paparazzi. Children fear me, pensioners jeer me, and I’m unwelcome in twelve different countries, two UK holiday resorts, and the BBC.

There are times, however, when you want the press on your side, a few people to cheer you up when you’re feeling down, or somebody with a bit of muscle to aid you in your times of trouble. I needed all three only last night when I was faced with a man alleging that I’d scorched his crotch with a blazing wheelbarrow of rubbish.

‘Listen here, matey,’ said David Dickinson, thrusting a golden finger into my chest, ‘you can’t put a blazing wheelbarrow full of rubbish between my thighs and think you can get away with it.’

We were standing in the hallway and he had technically trespassed his way from the porch and onto the Axeminster.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, David,’ I said in my most reassuring voice. ‘But if you get any of that tan on my shirt, I’ll hit you with the laundry bill.’

‘Oh, you cheeky bloody bugger!’ he wailed. ‘This tan is pure Far East, mate! None of your Ambre Solaire nonsense with me.’

‘Be that as it may, David,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know anything about your scorched crotch.’

‘You don’t know anything about it? You admitted to doing it on that bloody rubbish blog of yours.’

‘Rubbish blog!’ Now it was my turn to stretch for the decibels. ‘Rubbish blog! Don’t you know that Stephen Fry writes for The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society? I’m the talk of Tunisia and Australia!’

‘It’s a rubbish blog… A child could do better. Bloody nonsense you write about on there. You’d think a man of your years would bloody grow up and do something more productive with his time. All this obsessing about Bill Oddie. You’re bloody mad, man! You don’t really think Bill Oddie and Stephen Fry got where they are today by writing such bloody stupid rubbish do you?’

I gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Depends on your definition of bloody stupid rubbish.’

‘Oh, a smart Alec! I see. Now I’m beginning to get the full picture. You and that Michael Palin both think you can outsmart the Duke Dickinson. Well, I’ll tell you something now, my friend, and I hope you’ll take this on board: the Duke bows down for no man!’

‘Or woman,’ shouted Judy from the kitchen.

Dickinson smiled. It was a dreadful conjunction of ‘pearly’ with ‘white’. ‘Thank you, my dear. I was about to add “woman”.’ He pointed towards the door. ‘You should listen to your good lady wife. She knows the Duke and knows what happens when you scorch his thighs.’

‘Mildly scorch,’ I said. The truth was, despite the explosion and the flames, Michael Palin’s rocket powered wheelbarrow has done a poor job of demolishing the giant hoarding that Dickinson had erected on his front lawn. His towering presence was still casting an orange glow over the whole suburb.

‘Listen, are you going to do the right thing, apologise and fix the damage?’ he asked. ‘If you do, then we’ll say no more about it.’

‘And what about Palin?’ It seemed to me to be the most obvious and fair question. ‘Don’t you think he’s more to blame than I?’

David tutted and readjusted the knot of his tie. It was the size of a fist holding a coconut. ‘My poor boy. Michael works for the BBC. I work for the BBC. You work for Channel 4. You get my drift?’

‘Damn the BBC handshake,’ I cursed as Judy emerged carrying a tray of finger sandwiches.

‘Like to try a pawn nibble, David?’

‘Love to, my dear. And then I’m going to get this bloody idiot of a husband of yours to come and scrub down my crotch.’

I waved Judy’s bemusement away and grabbed my jacket.

‘This might take all evening,’ I said.

9PM. David Dickinson’s lawn. I’m up a ladder chipping away the scorched paint from a three foot wooden crotch.

‘He got you then?’ said a voice below me.

I look down to see Michael Palin standing with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a cocktail. He’s a bit of a show off when it comes to his elaborate drinks. Since he came back from his first world tour, Michael’s won’t touch alcohol unless it’s mixed with Cobra venom.

‘I’m supposed to call you “The Lovely One”,’ I said. ‘A poster on my blog told me that’s your real name. Only, from up here, I can think of at least a dozen alternatives that are more appropriate.’

‘BBC immunity,’ he said as though that were apology enough.

‘And to think, Mike, we had spent the afternoon slapping each other with fish. How could our friendship founder on David Dickinson’s crotch?’

‘Many have,’ he said and sipped his snake juice as I continued to scrub. ‘The thing we must remember, Dick, is that our friendship is bigger than this. We must look beyond Dickinson’s crotch and think of our next great adventure together.’

‘You’ve got plans?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘Oh, I can’t say too much and this might be more than a two man operation. We’ll need to bring in specialists.’

‘What kind of specialists?’

‘Well we’ll need a man who understands technology and somebody who can mimic the call of a duck.’

I turned back to my hand which had continued to scrub. I was suddenly excited again. ‘I might know two men who fit that profile,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you going to tell me more?’

He raised his glass and turned back to his house. ‘In time, Richard, in time,’ he said as he fell into the shadows, whistling the tune to the ‘A Team’, as though an omen of better times ahead.

Between David Dickinson's Thighs

As you probably know, Michael Palin lives not six doors up the street from me. Of course, given the size of the houses and their gardens, that’s nearly three quarters of a mile away, but it still makes him, in my mind at least, ‘one of the neighbours’. We also have quite a history together. When we first moved in, Michael was one of the first neighbours to come and greet us. We struck up an unlikely friendship, only compromised by his occasional habit of disappearing for six months and then coming back smelling faintly of camel.

‘Hello Maddo,’ he said this morning, his head popping around the corner of the living room door.

‘Mike!’ I cried. ‘Who let you in?’

‘Judy, of course,’ he said, coming into the room and dropping onto the sofa.

‘This is such a coincidence. I was only talking about you yesterday. I’ve not see you in ages. Where have you been?’

‘Oh, you know, here and there. I’ve just finished filming a show for the BBC. I spent six months driving around America in a taxi cab.’

‘How odd,’ I laughed. ‘You know that Stephen Fry is doing exactly the same thing right now?’

‘Black cab?’

‘Of course.’

‘And would he be going anti-clockwise around America or clockwise?’

‘Clockwise.’

He clicked his teeth. ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘I did it anti-clockwise which is a different thing altogether. Much more difficult journey when you do it anti-clockwise.’

‘How so? I would have thought that they both were equal.’

‘Well there you go, Dick. It proves yet again that you often don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you know that America is totally uphill if you travel around it in a roughly anti-clockwise direction? If Stephen is doing it clockwise, he’ll save on petrol and will find it a much easier proposition altogether.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No, I’m afraid that if he expects to make good television with this ill conceived premise of a clockwise journey around America, he’ll be in for many disappointments along the way.’

You see? The man had only been in the room for a minute yet he had taught me something about the geography of America that I’d never learned from any other source. Can you now see why we get on so well?

‘So what brings you to see me on such a fine November morning, Mike?’ I asked.

‘I’m here to ask you a favour. You know that the house across the way has been bought by David Dickinson?’

I didn’t. ‘Not that dandy from those antiques shows?’

Michael nodded slowly. ‘The very same. Odd chap. Highly tanned and with a yen for purple suits. Not endearing himself to the locals.’

‘How’s that? He’s not made disparaging remarks about your legs has he, Mike?’

‘Worse than that. He’s erected a large wooden billboard in his front garden.’

‘A billboard?’

‘Advertising his new show. First thing I see when I wake up in the morning is his grinning face looking at me through the window. It’s even worse at night. It glows.’

‘Glows?’

‘Glows a mysterious orange. I can see it through the curtains. That’s why I want your help.’

‘Anything I can do,’ I promised, though my not being one of David Dickinson’s biggest fans had nothing to do with it. I’m a friend of Palin and I’m not one to stand back when the man needs my help. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Get dressed and come with me,’ he said.

Ten minutes later, we’d were walking up the driveway to Palin’s house. His home is something else: small, comfortable, eccentric. In my opinion, his shed is the most wonderful place on the Earth. It’s full of the old props from all the TV and films he’s done. Every corner is full of bric-a-brak sure to evoke happy memories of fish slapping, SPAM, and all the rest. Only this morning, he didn’t give me chance to go inside and examine his relics. He stopped me at the door.

‘This is it,’ he said, gesturing to a wheelbarrow sitting before the shed.

‘It’s a wheelbarrow,’ I said.

‘A fully-loaded wheelbarrow,’ said Michael and tapped the side of his nose.

‘Okay, it’s a fully loaded wheelbarrow. Why do you need my help?’

‘You’ve not examine it carefully enough,’ smiled Michael.

I bent down and made a careful inventory of the wheelbarrow loaded, as it was, with assorted house bricks, an old canister half-filled with petrol, four long plastic tubes and other assorted debris.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I can see I was wrong when I said it was just a wheelbarrow. It’s a wheelbarrow full of assorted house bricks, an old canister half-filled with petrol, four long plastic tubes and other assorted debris.’

‘Not just any old tubes,’ hinted Michael.

I bent down again and, sure enough, I saw that they weren’t any old tubes. They were tubes filled with a strange smelling paste. I shook my head, not knowing what to make of them.

Michael sighed. ‘You remember when we tried to build our own rocket? You remember that I was researching fuel compounds? Well, that’s what I have here. Plastic tubes filled with solid fuel.’

I was glad it was a penny that dropped and not a spark striking. ‘You’ve built a rocket powered wheelbarrow!’

‘I like to think of it as a flaming wheelbarrow full of rubbish,’ he said. ‘But rocket powered does have a ring to it. That’s why I want your help. I want you to aim the wheelbarrow while I set off the rockets.’

‘Aim it at what?’ I asked.

He nodded down the drive to the house across the road where a twenty five foot wooden David Dickinson was grinning like an orange tree high on dope.

‘Aim it at that bloody thing,’ he said.

‘How illegal is this, Michael?’

‘Not illegal at all,’ he assured me. ‘Has the government ever outlawed rocket powered wheelbarrows filled with flaming rubbish? Have they ever said that large wooden Dickinsons are protected monuments? I don’t think so.’

When he put it like that, I didn’t see how I couldn’t help him.

I grabbed the handles firmly as Michael lit the rockets. At first they only smoked but after a few moments, they caught and I could feel the wheelbarrow straining to be free.

‘That’s it, right between his legs!’ shouted Michael as I ran a few steps to steer it on its way.

I let go and the wheelbarrow shot down the drive, across the road, and caught a slight incline that launched it straight into Dickinson’s estate where it became lodged between his thighs. That's when the rubbish and a flame rushed up to lick his groin. It was only a split second before the explosion knocked me off my feet.

‘That was the blasting caps I put under the rubbish,’ explained Michael, ever the perfectionist, as he picked himself off the floor and dusted himself down.

I did the same as the door to Dickinson’s house opened and out came the Duke, pink bathrobe and a plastic shower cap on his head.

‘Who did this?’ he screamed. ‘Who did this?’

‘Excellent morning’s work, Dick,’ said Michael, shaking me by my hand. ‘Fancy a drink to celebrate our success?’

‘Why not, Michael,’ I replied. ‘And perhaps you could do me a favour?’

‘Anything. Anything at all.’

I looked towards his shed. ‘Fancy a bit of fish slapping?’

He smiled, those wonderfully kind eyes twinkling with boyish charm.

‘Haddock or bream?’ he asked.

‘Your choice, Michael,’ I said. ‘Your choice...’