Keith Chegwin's Sparrow

The new banner and associated desktop need some explaining. What began as an exercise in decorating the bedroom ended up as a philosophical enquiry into how nature invidiously includes Rory McGrath in every significant event. The man is perennial and I don’t mean the year long sprouting of his body hair. He just gets everywhere.

You see, during my absence from your computer screens, I took the opportunity to enroll at the local community college where I thought a course of Home Improvement classes would inspire me to greater things in the bedroom. The ceiling has needed Duluxing for some time but I thought it high time that I put something up there that would be an improvement over woodchip and a slap of white emulsion.

Mr. Ketterick was the teacher who welcomed me to the ‘Beginners Painting and Decorating’ class three weeks ago and it was eight o’clock in the evening when I sat myself in the room filled with other men middle aged looking for leadership in the act of hanging wallpaper.

‘The key to success with home decorating is patience,’ declared Mr. Ketterick from the front of the class. He was wearing white overalls and a poor quality toupee. More than patience, I thought a tab of wallpaper paste was clearly the key to the latter remaining on his sloping brow. 'Yes gentlemen, it's patience that you will learn in this class. Patience which will help you hang wallpaper the right way. Patience that will help you apply a coat of paint in the correct manner...'

I looked at my watch and realised that at the pace he was setting, it would be months before we’d get to the nitty gritty of mixing crushed horse bones in large plastic buckets. I decided it was time for some of the inquisitorial skills that have made me millions.

‘But don’t you have any tips that you can pass on in a minute or two?’ I shouted from the back of the room.

‘Ah, Mr. Madeley,’ said Mr. Ketterick. ‘Gentlemen, we have a real life celebrity with us tonight.’

‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘but to hurry you on... Any tips?’

‘Tips?’

‘For painting a ceiling? It’s just I want to get cracking with it, you see.’

He thought for a moment longer than I’d normally allow on the show but this was real life and there weren’t any ad breaks coming up in my rearview mirrors.

‘Tips...’ He pondered for a moment longer. ‘I’d say don’t stand directly under the brush and never load it with too much paint.’

I jotted down these two gems in my notebook. ‘Excellent,’ I said, as I stood up and headed for the door.

‘You’re not staying?’

‘It’s something I’ve learned from years of meeting men and women who achieved greatness,’ I replied. ‘They don’t wait around learning the detail. We’re people of broad brushstrokes and that’s especially true when it comes to making brush strokes. You’ve given me all the help I needed. I’m sure I can pick up the rest as I’m going...’

And with that, I walked out of the classroom.

The next day I was armed with my two tips along with a set of step ladders and a wife nervously looking into the bedroom from the landing.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing Richard?’

Judy normally does all the DIY jobs in Madeley Mansions but when it comes to anything requiring finesse, it’s left to the only person in the house that doesn’t wear underpants.

‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ I replied. ‘You forget that I’ve taken a college course. And with what I've learned, I’m going to decorate our ceiling in a way that’s sympathetic to the bedding but also a little more inspiring when you lay down for sleep at night.’

Judy frowned in that we she has when she’s not sure that I’m totally right but she ten minutes later she appeared at the door with her outdoors coat on. ‘I’m going to see Cilla,’ she announced. ‘The poor thing has got a problem with her gas central heating and I want to be there when the man from the gas board comes around.’

I waved her away. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be busy most of the day.’

She left me but I didn’t hear her drive away. I was too busy with a paint brush clamped between my teeth as I used a thumb dipped in ‘Harvest Tint’ to outline figures on the ceiling.

Now, to cut a long blog post short, I have to ask you to fast forward the action by seven or eight hours. In the dying light of the day, I was putting the finishing touches to my masterpiece. I’d just dotted a spot of light in the last eye when Judy walked in the room.

‘How was Cilla’s gas?’ I asked and thought immediately of a funny quip. Only, one look at Judy told me to store the quip for a better day when we can all laugh at Cilla’s gas. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Who the bloody hell is that?’ asked my darling wife, the art critic.

I looked up at the manly figure stretched across the ceiling.

‘That’s a neo-classical Bill Oddie,’ I replied.

‘Neo-classical? It looks more like Rory McGrath!’

And here, you see, we have the point of this little narrative of mine. I looked again and, sure enough, I could see that Judy was right.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘How on earth did that happen?’

‘I’m not lying in bed looking up at Rory McGrath,’ she declared. I was sure she meant it.

‘It’s uncanny,’ I agreed.

‘It’s enough to give me nightmares.’

Judy’s eyes went around the ceiling to where Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Keith Chegwin, and Alan Titchmarsh all looked down at us in their naked glory.

‘And I’m not happy with what you’ve done with Keith Chegwin’s winkle,’ she said. ‘And why have you made it point to my side of the bed?’

‘I know what it needs,’ I said. ‘An owl sitting on the end of it.’

Judy looked at me. ‘An owl doing what?’

‘If I put an owl on Bill Oddie’s finger, you’ll no longer think of Rory McGrath. It’s the lack of an owl that’s causing all the problem. With an owl, there’d be no mistaking Bill Oddie.’

‘Richard, I was talking about Keith Chegwin’s winkle. What are you going to do about that?’

‘Perhaps another owl?’ I suggested.

Judy looked up to the ceiling. ‘Perhaps a sparrow,’ she said. It was the last helpful contribution she made to the debate. I was left to work late into the evening, rendering sparrows on the ceiling.

And there you have it. In all its glory and ready for your desktop: the story of how a sparrow came to sit on the end of Keith Chegwin’s winkle. I know it was a bit of a lengthy explanation but I think I owe you the full story for when somebody peers over your shoulder and asks why there’s a picture of a naked Keith Chegwin with a sparrow sitting on his winkle. And then perhap's you'll explain why my own manhood is obscured by an American Bald Eagle.

The Right Sort of Juice

(Judy recommends that you click on the picture.
She says that it looks better enlarged.)

‘Richard!’ screamed Judy. ‘Moles!’

Slippers be damned, I thought. Underwear too. I jumped out of bed and grabbed the mallet that I’d hung from my tie rack the night before. Moles had dug their last hole in the lawn of Richard Percival Madeley or my name wasn’t Richard Percival Madeley.

Sprinting like a serious case of the steroids, I ran down the stairs, out through the kitchen, and my bare feet hit the lawn by the time I’d taken my third lungful of the fresh morning air. Then it was all me and my mallet. I swung it to every point of the compass and then a few more for good measure. Each time a mole stuck his head out of a hole... WHACK... The wooden head smashed a good six inches into the lawn and, I hoped, the sweet-spot of another of the blind little buggers that have been making Judy’s life such a misery and ripping up our quality turf.

After half an hour, I fell back on the decimated lawn. Sweat coursed over my naked body and I was flecked with mole but otherwise feeling pretty good about myself.

‘I’ll have myself a mole-skin hat out of this,’ I promised my wife who had been watching nervously from the patio.

‘Do you think you got them all?’ asked Judy.

I didn’t doubt that I had. ‘Every mole this side of the Corbetts,’ I promised her and gave a wave up to the rear window the next door house. Ronnie was standing there, his spectacles peering over the window ledge, his sleeping hat still on his head. I knew he wouldn’t be happy, what with him being a mole-loving man, but these moles had strayed into our garden and were hostage to fortune, to speak nothing of a very large wooden mallet.

Judy helped me up and I stumbled back into the house for a quick debrief. Half an hour later, I was recovered enough to return to the scene of my latest victory. Showered and fully dressed, I took my morning glass of fresh orange juice out onto the lawn where I walked the battlefield and examined the many hundred holes that I’d made.

‘You know, Judy. Some might say that I’ve done more damage to this lawn than an army of Iraqi moles could make in a lifetime but I say it’s the principal that counts. Ronnie can breed them if he likes but I’m going to smash them if they come onto my land.’

Only Judy wasn’t listening. I watched her as she lifted a bag of cement onto her shoulder, carried it across the garden, and then dumped it into the mixer that was churning away next to the hole she’d already dug for our new ornamental pond. I’ve lost count of the number of Sundays that Judy has spent building rockeries, laying paths, or making her life-sized concrete statues of our celebrity friends. Our arboretum on the northern edge of the Madeley estate is now a no-go area on account of the Ainsley Harriott statue that Judy cast from the man’s actual body. It’s not his naked body that I find particularly gruesome but the fact that it has nearly taken my eye out on more than a couple of occasions. I’ve asked her to file a few inches from his tongue but Judy won’t listen to reason.

As I walked around the garden, I realised how little I get to spend with nature. I examined a few of the shrubs and then wandered away from the beaten lawn, so to speak, and found myself taking the path down to Lake Talbot. Perhaps I was feeling in a generous mood but it came to my mind that I’d go and see if I could coax Fred from out of his tree.

Since Rory McGrath made the discovery that Fred the Weather had gone feral in the trees bordering the lake, putting an end to the myth that he’d gone down with the ‘This Morning’ map which I had scuttled many summers ago, we have been doing our best to get Fred to return to civilisation. I’d had a shed put in under the branches, complete with dry clothes, a camp bed, and some of Fred’s favourite dark chocolate digestives. So far, he’s failed to abandon his feral life for something more fitting for the nation’s favourite weatherman.

‘Fred?’ I shouted as I walked into the small copse of woodland. ‘Fred?’

Silence.

I shrugged and walked down to the shed whose door was open but the bed untouched.

Even Fred’s favourite digestives were still in their packet. It didn’t even look like the poor man had even come to sit in the shed.

The cot squeaked as I sat down on it and sipped my orange juice. After an unusually busy week, I’ve been sleeping longer hours than normal but still felt somewhat tired. I put my drink to one side and thought I’d have a lie down, just to lie there listening to the sound of the wind through the trees. I don’t know how it happened but I was soon in a deep sleep.

The dream was more vivid than any ITV quiz show you could imagine. I was stood on Blackpool Beach, directing Eric Sykes as he drove an earth mover constructing tidal defences. Each time we got the sand stacked high enough, Eric would drive a hole right through the wall and we would have to start again. I was berating him for the third time when I noticed that the digger had dug up something that glistened under the hot Blackpool sun. On closer inspection, they were golden doubloons struck with the face of Lenny Bennett. I woke up not knowing where I was but obsessed with the idea of not letting Bennett in on the booty.

You might say I was confused. I didn’t even think it odd when I sat up and saw Fred standing in the doorway.

‘Fred!’ I whispered.

He gave a snort and turned his head as though examining me. His nostrils flared as he took in my musk, which was half man and half mole. How he had changed! His muscles stood out like nylon cords against his small TV friendly frame, built exactly to the same scale as all the other models on the ‘This Morning’ map. His glasses were still balanced on his nose but they were caked with filth, as was the rest of his body. The only shed of clothing was the last of a once-brightly coloured knitted jumper that was now a tangle of knitting around his neck and upper right arm.

‘Don’t you know me, Fred? It’s Richard. Richard Madeley. You know... The guy who first suggested that you fall in the Albert Dock...’

Fred bared his teeth and pawed out into the space between us. I knew I had to take care. Men of Fred’s delicate character go feral more often than not when they leave showbiz. Noel Edmonds once had a shin bitten clean through by an employee who had gone savage after spending a year in the Mr. Blobby outfit.

I reached slowly out and picked up the pack of digestives. My hands were shaking but I managed to open the wrapping at one end. I held the biscuits out to Fred and gave the packet a shake until a couple of digestives fell out onto the floor. Fred dropped to his knees and began to sniff the chocolate. It was a start, I thought, so I picked up my glass of orange juice and tried to push it towards him.

It was a mistake any beginner might make when trying to tame a feral weatherman. He lashed out and his teeth took a chunk from my elbow.

I screamed in agony. It was pain like I hadn't known since I was once kneed in the testicles on live TV by a hyperactive Shakin' Stevens.

‘Richard?’ came a voice in reply. It was Judy.

‘Don’t move!’ I shouted as Judy appeared in the doorway. Fred was standing again and looking menacingly towards the woman who had so often handed over to him from the studios.

‘He’s just bitten my elbow,’ I explained as I examined the wound. His teeth had gone clean through to the bone.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Judy.

‘I’m okay but you mustn’t come any closer. Run down the street and bring Palin. And ring Stephen. Ask him to bring his tranquillizer gun.’

‘Does he have one?’

‘Of course he has one,’ I snapped. ‘How on earth do you think he manages to get so many guests on QI? Half of them are out of their brains on tranquilizer darts. You don’t honestly think that Bill Bailey always looks like that?’

There are rare moments when Judy doesn’t do as I suggest and she goes on to surprise me. This was one of those moments.

‘Oh Richard,’ she said. ‘This is ridiculous. It’s Fred. Our old weatherman. Fred Talbot. He’s not going to harm me.’ And with that she took a step towards Fred who backed away, worryingly towards my other elbow. ‘Come on Fred,’ she soothed. ‘You’re not going to harm old Judy, are you?’

What happened next was remarkable. Fred’s body began to shake and a sob broke from his throat.

‘Juuu,’ he managed to say.

‘Oh, Fred,’ said Judy still coming forward. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

Judy knelt down and picked up the glass of juice I’d set on the floor. She took a sip and then held it out for Fred who paused and then moved towards her. It was a sight to see Fred begin to lap orange from the glass as Judy began to stroke his head. His whole body seemed to wilt and the creature of the wilderness become a man once again. Judy shed a tear.

‘There, there,’ she said, ever so kindly as Fred began to nuzzle against her waist, sipping from the glass.

What could I say? In my wife's hands, orange was suddenly the right sort of juice. I gave Judy a wink as if to say well done. She could be sure that I knew how to handle things from here.

Fred didn’t know what had hit him. I had landed hard on his back and had him down on the floor before he could turn his teeth on us. He gave a groan as I twisted his arms behind his back and pinned him down but I was determined that I'd show no mercy.

‘Grab my belt and tie up his feet,’ I said to Judy who was standing there holding juice and digestives and looking quite shocked.

‘Oh Richard, what are you doing? Get off Fred at once.’

‘No time for your empathy now, Jude,’ I said. ‘This isn’t some tea-time chat with weight-watchers sitting on our cosy sofa. This is a feral ‘C’ list celebrity and he’s already bitten off my elbow. This is the only way we can be certain. Now, go and find a large rock and we’ll see about knocking him out. And if you can’t find a rock, bring Ainsley Harriott’s concrete tongue.’

‘You’ll kill him with that,’ said Judy.

‘That’s a risk I’m willing to take, Jude,’ I replied. ‘Now go and fetch me that tongue!’

The Greater Bearded Tit and Me

I was sitting there on live TV, staring at Rory McGrath and listening to him talk about the bearded tit, both the bird and the book he was there to plug. My mind must have drifted off because I’m suddenly thinking about the woodpecker we’ve got in our back garden and how it’s always making these throaty warbling sounds. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m bouncing up on the sofa making like woodland.

‘Soospeeeell, shoo, shoo, aff ,at, at, oon!’ I cry.

Judy flinched and Rory looked a bit surprised before a mischievous grin spread through his undergrowth. He made nothing of it at the time but I suppose he was staggered by how accurate my bird calls can be. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I’ve been trained by Oddie and I can seduce a female owl over half-a-mile away. If you watched last night’s show, you too were probably looking around your own living room wondering how a woodpecker had got into the house.

When we’d finished for the evening, I was surprised to see Rory hanging out around the back where the limos come to pick up all the guests.

‘Lost, Rory?’ I asked.

‘No, just waiting,’ he said. ‘I was waiting to have a word with you.’

‘With me? What on earth do want with me?’

‘It was your story about your pecker,’ he said.

I nodded. People are always asking about my vasectomy and I’m happy to tell them the full tale in its unedited glory.

‘Well, the doctor took what looked like a pair of pliers and he ripped open my...’

‘No, no,’ said Rory. ‘Your woodpecker. You know? The one you’ve got in your back garden.’

‘Ah, that one,’ I said, a bit disappointed, to be honest, that I could get to tell my story about the surgeon and his pliers. It has such a funny punch-line.

‘The thing is, Richard,’ he said, ‘I was really hoping that I could come around and do a spot of filming. I’m doing this programme for the BBC about birds but I’ve had a slight falling out with Bill Oddie who thinks I’m trying edge into his niche area.’

‘Birdwatchers can be very territorial,’ I admitted. ‘You really shouldn’t edge into Bill’s niche.’

‘But he won’t let us use any of the BBC’s footage of woodpeckers. He’s locked it all away but we need it if we’re to finish the programme on time. That’s why I’m asking. I thought we could come and film your pecker.’

‘Of course, come on round and film my pecker,’ I said. ‘And if you’ve got any film left in the can when you’re finished, I’ll let you film my woodpecker too.’

That, I should add, was a Madeley Joke, certified to the highest standards of Channel 4 comedy.

‘Lovelyjubly,’ said Rory rubbing his hands together.

Before he got too excited, I thought I better issue the standard proviso.

‘I can’t see there being any harm in it,’ I said, ‘but if Bill Oddie does turn up and catches you filming a woodpecker in our garden, I’m denying all knowledge and I’m coming at you with the garden spade.’

‘Understood,’ said Rory. ‘But you should know that if you do come at me with the garden spade, I’ll be forced to defend myself with my soundman who knows judo.’

‘And I’ll counter with Judy who has a second dan in Karate.’

Rory nodded. It was a typical business deal for those of us in light entertainment and he seemed happy to agree to the terms.

True to his word, Rory arrived just after dawn this morning. He was with his film crew who quickly set themselves up in a hide in our back garden. Judy watched them as she sipped her coffee by the sink.

‘He is a hairy man,’ she said.

‘Who is?’

‘Rory.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, shuffling across the room in my slippers and turquoise dragon-head dressing gown in silk. ‘He’s not as hairy as Bill though.’

‘Oh, I’d say hairier. Have you seen his arms?’

‘They are hirsute,’ I agreed. ‘I should imagine he has problems keeping cool in the summer.’

‘Wax,’ said Judy. ‘Though I suppose that might be dangerous for a man like that. Try to pull too much hair away in one go and it might take off a limb.’

I shrugged. Not being a hairy man myself, the issue doesn’t really concern me and my mind had already turned to more important matters. I retreated back to my den where I would spend the next hour reading over the manuscript of my autobiography and the notes that Stephen Fry had written in the margins, suggesting ways I can improve its already considerable genius. I was only disturbed around eight o’clock by Judy calling me. I found her still in the kitchen, on now standing with Rory who was chewing his lip nervously.

‘I’m afraid there’s a slight problem with your woodpecker,’ he said.

‘Really? It was fine earlier on. I heard it singing just after dawn. Sounded like it had extremely healthy lungs.’

‘Yes, well, it’s not technically a woodpecker,’ said Rory.

‘Isn’t it? What is it then? Some close relative of the woodpecker? Another of the piciform family? A barbet? A jacamar? A tufted greave? A purple kisset? A knock-kneed mud wrangler?’

‘Actually, Dick. It’s a man.’

You can imagine my surprise. ‘A man?’

‘I know,’ said Rory. ‘Hard to believe but we’ve caught him on camera. There’s a man living in the dense canopy of the trees at the bottom of your garden.’

This was footage I demanded to see and we were soon gathered in the living room as Rory’s team connected a camera to our eighty six inch plasma TV. Soon the screen filled with indistinct shapes as shadows and hues merged in the high definition picture of trees and who knows what else.

It was Judy who spotted it first. I know this because she gave a scream.

‘There!’ she said and grabbed my arm. ‘What is that? Look at it. It’s like some form of primitive ape man.’

I couldn’t see a thing.

‘Amazing footage,’ agreed Rory, who was clearly thinking ‘TV series’. I know the look. I see it every morning in my shaving mirror.

Suddenly the screen filled with a human form that emerged from the foliage. I was struck dumb. The small face, brown hair, sun-ripened body: it was definitely a man.

‘And do you know what’s really amazing?’ asked Rory. ‘It’s the call. He’s not shouting “soospeeeell, shoo, shoo, aff ,at, at, oon”, at all.’

‘Isn’t he?’ I asked.

‘If you listen, you’ll hear that he’s actually shouting “sunny spells, showers later in the afternoon”.’

Judy pushed me away from the screen and kneeled before the monitor, examining the figure in the shadows. Her fingers traced the shape of the profile as the figure stood out on a bough, licked a finger and held it up to the air.

‘It’s Fred,’ she said.

‘Rubbish,’ I replied. ‘I scuttled him with the This Morning map years ago.’

‘No, no,’ said Judy, sounding most certain. ‘It’s Fred. It’s our old lovable weatherman. It’s Fred the Weather!’

I looked again and realised that there was no denying it. It was indeed the long-lost Fred Talbot, turned feral. Clearly he had escaped the wreckage of the sunken ‘This Morning’ map and, perhaps dazed or clouded by amnesia, had taken to the trees where he had lived a primitive existence all these years. I was, I confess, moved and I had to wipe a tear or two from my eyes.

‘We’re coming Fred,’ I sobbed. ‘We’re coming...’

I knew that this strange relief was only the first of many emotions that I would feel as I began the long operation to lure Fred Talbot down from the trees.