Well, Listen To My Story About A Man Named Dick

I’m constantly at the mercy of people demanding to know how I do it.

‘Richard,’ they’ll say, ‘how did you manage to update your blog last night when satellite images prove that you were busy in the Lakes helping stricken motorists push their cars to the side of the road?’

‘Richard, how did you manage to Twitter today when Sky News said that you were in a clinic having your nostrils scraped?’

‘Richard, you couldn’t possibly have blogged a week last Sunday when there was a picture of you in Hello Magazine that showed the clock on your kitchen wall to be the same time as when you posted your piece about David Dickinson’s spa.’

And so it goes...

‘Richard, there’s a definitely incongruity between your blogging activities and the membership records of your health club where you were definitely receiving a Korean ear massage at the time you claimed to be making a tapioca pudding with Bill Oddie.’

Despite this, I’m also asked to update my blog more and people often demand that I spend more time Twittering to them.

‘Richard, where are you today, love?’ will come the echoing cry through the corridors of cyberspace. ‘Coo eee! Richard? Are you in today? Where’s your witty banter?’

I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. And to be perfectly honest: my blog earns me no income and takes a good amount of effort and time to write. I have other projects which demand my attention. There are my many novels that need finishing, scripts that need polishing, as well as the banjo lessons I’ve taken up.

Yes, that’s right. You heard me correctly. I said ‘banjo lessons’.

It was Judy’s idea, nearly two months ago now. We’ve often talked about my love of music but my inability to play any instrument but it was listening to the Verdi’s Requiem played on the trombone that was the genesis of the whole affair.

‘I really do admire the way you’ve put your heart and soul into the trombone, Jude,’ I said to her one night. She was in the process of packing her instrument away for evening after her usual ritual of calming herself down before sleep by playing the trombone in bed. I’d been sitting by her, trying to get through Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ – a novel that thwarts me even when I’m not distracted by the delicate strains of the Requiem filling the spacious Madeley boudoir.

‘There’s nothing to stop you from learning to play an instrument,’ replied Judy, emptying out her spit valve into the bucket she keeps next to the bed. ‘God knows but you’ve got enough time.’

I closed my book. It seems that the damn thing was never going to get cheerful and I wanted to consider Judy’s suggestion.

‘You promise you won’t laugh,’ I said.

‘Laugh? What at?’

‘What I’m about to tell you.’

Judy laughed. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve always wanted to play the banjo. You know... Like they do at the beginning of The Beverley Hillbillies.’

Judy laughed again. I shrank down into my pillow. ‘Well, if that’s what you want, Richard,’ she said, turning over and turning out the light. She fell asleep chucking to herself, occasionally muttering about ‘Texas gold’.

The seed was sewn. It was about a week later that I was attending a bash in honour of some fairly forgettable cause when I bumped into an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. Dame Maggie Smith and I go back years; in fact, back to when I first trod the boards and played Laertes to her Gertrude in Ken Dodd’s one and only performance as Hamlet.

‘Maggie!’ I cried, going over to plant a wet one on her cheek. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘Well, Dick, I’m keeping busy,’ said Maggie. ‘You know what they say about an active mind.’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said. ‘I keep myself busy on my blog.’

‘Hmmm,’ she replied. ‘Do you ever think of doing something more productive with your time? I always thought it was sad that you gave up acting.’

‘One has to specialise at some point,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Maggie, ‘it’s still not too late. You might have refused the world your Hamlet but we might still get to see one of the great Lears.’

I frowned. Maggie’s a dear and that kind of talk is a bit below the belt. I still think I could carry of a Hamlet, or one of the young lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To talk of King Lear was... Well, I could see that Hollywood had changed her.

‘To be honest, Maggie,’ I said, ‘I have been thinking of taking up an instrument. I want to be more musical as I approach my middle age.’

‘Middle age!’ she laughed. Then her face straightened. ‘What instrument were you thinking of, Dicky dear?’

‘The banjo.’

Well, if I’d said that I was making a return to the stage playing the back end of a pantomime cow, the effect on Maggie’s face wouldn’t have been as strong.

‘The banjo!’ she cried. ‘Dicky, Dicky, Dicky! My dear boy! I play the banjo!’

‘You do?’

‘I’ve been playing the banjo for nearly fifteen years.’

‘How amazing,’ I said. ‘Well perhaps you can give me some advice. I wouldn’t know how to go and buy a banjo...’

She tutted and placed her hand on my arm. ‘Dicky, for you, I’ll give you a banjo. I have dozens.’

I was moved. So moved that I probably donated so much to the quite forgettable cause that I had to hide the bank statement from Jude at the end of the month.
True to her word, not twenty four hours passed before a taxi arrived at my door and Dame Maggie Smith brought me a banjo.

Judy is over the moon, of course. Mr. Shawcross my new banjo teacher comes around once a week. He says that I have a knack because of my natural clawhammer. Judy has even started to call me The Claw, though my repertoire is limited. But I have mastered the classic bluegrass tune, ‘Dipple Doo Me Chicken Hoo’ and Judy has the trombone version coming via mail order any day now. I can’t see us performing it live for some time but who knows... It all depends if I can get the practice. And if people give me chance to be myself beyond my blog.

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.

Simon Cowell's Chilly Trowel

Hi guys! Far too busy to blog today. Judy is helping Simon Cowell lay a new patio and I'm on trowel duty. It's also my job to ensure that his waistband never drops lower than his hips, which have a low tolerance for chills. I blame his new artificial joints. The human body is not meant to contain so much titanium. They act as a real heat-sink. No wonder he complains so much about having a frozen colon.

I’m also rehearsing for my stint on the radio. I’m having my teeth re-bleached this afternoon so I look my best for the occasion. Thanks for all the recommendations for tunes I might play. The idea of devoting the whole evening to the Peruvian nose flute really did inspire me. I’m going to see if I can get James Galway into the studio and ask him to play ‘Greensleeves’ with just one nostril.

In the meantime, if you have a moment spare, you can read the blog of my one-time friend and blogging associate who has now decided to spread some foul rumours about me. I can't believe that I've promised to promote his blog. Judy is, quite naturally, heartbroken that a friend could betray us in this vulgar fashion. If you do go over there, I ask that you don’t believe a word that he says. The man is a known liar and I swear that he once asked me for an inventory of Judy’s sock drawer. Do not, I beg of you, go over there. Stay here with me. It’s your choice.

My Piece About Blogging, Written Last Week When I Was Moody And Thinking Too Much About Carrots

I have to ask you to indulge me with the following post. I scribbled it last week in a blatant attempt to pen myself out of a bad mood brought about by an unpleasant incident in Manchester whereby I was reduced to tears by a lactose intolerant leisure consultant and the work of proto-impressionist painter Adolphe Valette. You will find me, at the beginning of last week, doubting the value of blogging, though by Wednesday, I had moved on to doubt the value of dogging. By Friday, I was taking pot shots at logging and then the whole timber industry. Happily, I can now report that I’ve now changed my mind about all these things, except dogging, which still seems like a reasonable way to make new friends but I’m not so sure that it’s the most fuel efficient way of having a good time up a country lane late at night.

Change the sheets and polish that porcelain! I’ve decided that old Madeley is coming to stay with you.

But I don’t want you to worry or prepare anything special. I’ll only be with you for two weeks and I expect you to work me until I collapse. You want a pool digging? Just tell me how deep. Want the house repainting? A man hasn’t been born that can beat me around a Dulux colour chart. Work me hard, pay me nothing: that’ s how I like to be treated. It will feel just like being back at Channel 4. Damn their devious, back-stabbing, ‘O’Grady is more popular among the post-menopausal demographic than you’ hides.

But by now, you’re probably wondered if I’ve finally lost it. I too sometimes suspect that I’m walking east when my sanity is going west. Only, in this case, I don’t really think that I'm losing it is in the sense of walking though crowded markets whilst combing the hair of a heavily rouged coconut I like to call Molly. I just mean: how much longer can I go on like this?

Browsing the web, I stumbled across a group of my fellow bloggers talking about their monthly hits. Now, I know that you think you know what I’m about to say before I say it: that I’m about to wail on about how some other blog has forty times the hits that I have and that the most interesting thing they’ve ever written is the word ‘chiaroscuro’. And if you thought that’s what I was going to say, then you just take a merit badge and go stand at the front of the class. Bless the inordinate amount of soft fibrous fluff on your lovely cottony socks, for you are indeed right.

Blogging is an activity that most of us take up for purely narcissistic reasons. Those of us that don’t work professionally as journalists, will probably be writing in the vague hope that we can find work as journalists or writers or cartoonists or porn magnates. (I originally wrote ‘porn magnets’ but Judy won’t allow me to keep them on the fridge door. [Originally, I typed ‘porn midgets’ but that’s a story I’ve promised to keep under my hat. (I originally wrote ‘under my cat’ but that’s where I’m hiding the gloriously ribald account of my affair with a one-eyed Bulgarian vegetable seller called Molly who also happened to sell coconuts)]).

Anyway, to get back to my point: there can’t be many people who don’t open up their first Blogger account without thinking that they’re going to make a difference. The truth is that very few of us make a difference. There are ways to blog successfully and I consistently refuse to take those routes. I won’t post any videos of tap dancing dogs. I shirk porn (I originally typed ‘shake porn’ but... Oh, never mind...) I also won’t repost gags ripped from 'The Onion'. This blog is all me and is undoubtedly weaker for that. And, in a sense, every blog is about ‘me’. And ‘me’ isn’t very interesting. Have you read Iain Dale this week? Me, me, me, me, me. And Tories. Shudder, as Fry would say. Shudder.

The unhappy truth is that blogging is the poor relative to other social networking schemes that require far less effort and bring far more in terms of reward. Blogging also requires effort when a service like Twitter asks that you only write 120 characters a post. Facebook doesn’t even require that you write at all. You just send your friends vampiric bites to acknowledge their existence. ‘Dick Madeley has poked you with a carrot. Do you want to poke him back? Choose you vegetable of choice...’ Hardly the best advertisement for 'user created content'. After all: who likes being poked with a carrot? Not me. Not even Bill Oddie and I should know. I've poked him with plenty of carrots in my time.

Which brings all the way back to my offer. I’ve worked out the figures and I’ve calculated that the effort it takes me to do all my blogging is as profitable as if I came to work for each of you, my regular readers, for a fortnight every year. So long as you’ll pay my travel expenses, I won’t be out of pocket. For that, you’ll get at least forty hours of work out of me. Laying paths, decorating, fixing computer problems, teaching, or general administration: I can do the lot, possibly concurrently. And yes, if you want to, I’ll even let you poke me with a carrot.

Which reminds me of this story I keep under my cat...

On The Other Side

A strange thing happened on the other side of everything that’s gone before.

I was walking in Manchester when a stranger approached me and asked me why I wasn’t still writing my Appreciation Society.

‘It’s simple,’ I replied. ‘A close personal friend of mine suffered a difficult few months and I gave him room on my blog to detail his personal suffering. In light of that, I thought it poor taste to continue to be so frivolous or go on about how unendingly successful I am. There’s a time for being humble, you know. All great men recognise that at some point in their lives.’

‘Bah!’ said the stranger so forcibly that he melted the waxed tip of his moustache. ‘Nonsense, Dick! Your blog is a gift to the world. It gives great joy to the lesser millions. I’m sure that even a man who has suffered some personal tragedy in his life would see that eventually an enterprise as great as the Richard Madeley Appreciation Society should continue. Dare I say that it should flourish? Heavens!’

I gave the stranger another look as he towered over me by a good twelve inches. Being, myself, a rather sexually sublime six feet two, I estimated that the man’s height topped out around the seventh imperial foot and all of that height seemed faintly familiar to me.

‘I’ll give it some thought,’ I said as I tried to disengage myself from the man’s grip and move off in the direction of the junction between Chinatown and the Gay Village where oriental men wear florid shirts. I had an appointment to keep with a producer who had contacted me about doing the voiceover for his line in budgerigar breeding DVDs. I knew from personal experience that it’s not good to keep a budgerigar handlers waiting. Geoff Capes once turned me upside and rectally fed me millet for being just ten minutes late to an interview with the World’s Strongest Fat Man.

‘Look here,’ said the stranger, not allowing me to go. ‘You must take up the reigns of your much missed blog. You owe it to your public, you owe it to Judy and you owe it to your friends.’

‘My friends!’ I scoffed. ‘Since when do they miss my blog?’

It was a good question. Bill Oddie received the news of my blog’s closing with a faint smile and a comment about it being ‘good for the owls’. Clarkson had scoffed somewhat before making a rather distasteful crack about taxi drivers and sped off in his jet car. As for Judy, she had be relieved that I had abandoned my passion for detailing her private life in such a public way. She had celebrated the end of the blog by burning my private papers in the back garden.

‘Not all your friends are so cruel,’ announced the stranger after I’d explained this to him.

‘Oh, you fool!’ I snapped. ‘You don’t know the celebrity mind.’

At once, I regretted being so rude and risk losing my disguise of the comedy pimple and large orange wig fashioned in a fetching combover.

‘Oh but Richard, I do understand them,’ said the stranger. He looked up the street one way and then up the street the other before he raised his black eye patch and peeled back one half of his Hercules Poirot moustache.

‘Fry!’ I cried, stumped to the tips of my shanks by the man’s presence. Suddenly the seven feet all made sense.

‘Ah, indeed, ’tis I, Fry,’ said Stephen Fry. ‘Here in Manchester dressed like a piratical Belgian problem solver. I have travelled all this way by black London taxi cab to say that you’re missing. Set aside all this talk of tragedy. Return to what you do best.’

‘You mean presenting the TV version of the perennial family favourite board game, Cluedo?’

‘I mean writing your blog,’ said Stephen as he readopted his disguise.

I left him standing beside the art gallery, adjusting the poppy on his purple cape, and I was soon in the heart of Chinatown, sharing noodles with the budgerigar man. But Stephen’s words lingered long after the taste of soya sauce and fried eel had faded. On reflection, I did allow my friend’s sadness to get the better of me. Much as I appreciate what he went through, how can I live without my blog? I have missed writing it and cannot leave it on such a sad note. It’s too dramatic to say that I’m back since I never really went away. But I will say that I’m stepping out from my disguise, casting aside the comedy pimple, and doing what Stephen Fry would want me to do: telling the world about the life of a ‘A’ list celebrity, revealing the contents of Judy’s dresser, and being the web’s foremost expert on just about anything and everything.

I’m back but now I’m sexier than ever...

Self Analysis

‘By Ricky Gervais’ glorious buttocks!’ I cried as I sat and watched ‘The One Show’ on BBC1 tonight. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing!’

Judy looked up from her Dick Francis and I’m sure I felt the BBC shiver. It was like the Eye of Sauron looking towards the West.

‘He’s selling a book,’ she said before she calmly licked a finger and turned a page. ‘He needs to say those things to get attention.’

I wasn’t so sure. A man desperate for people to offload cash into his bank account is liable to make all kinds of trouble for a man of my celebrity. More to the point: I’m meant to be attending a RSPB bash this weekend and Bill Oddie will be there to name an owl after me. This kind of bad publicity plays right into the hands of a man like Michael Aspel who has been angling for the owl honours for some time.

I’ve been on thin ice ever since I made that unguarded remark about Phillip Schofield’s interest in mallards. Yet the sad part of this whole debacle is that I don’t honestly know what I’ve done to deserve such trouble. What began on the radio had moved over to prime-time BBC where a guy – undoubtedly handsome, charming, and sporting a natty line in jackets – was bad mouthing ‘The Appreciation Society’ to Adrian Chiles.

‘It’s a sad day when Adrian Chiles tuts disapprovingly at your life’s work,’ I told Judy.

Only Judy didn’t respond and I was forced to sit there listening as the undeniably handsome fellow went on to tell Chiles that there are malign forces at work. As far as I could tell, he was implying that there were men loitering behind bathroom curtains with notebooks in their hands, jotting down his activities and then writing them up in some kind of informal weblog. The whole thing sounded as shady as it did vulgar, and without even a dash of élan or educated wit. It got worse when Chiles did a bit more tutting.

I rewound the Sky+ and watched the interview a second time from the beginning, just to get my bearings and to count up the number of tuts. If I could prove that he’d tutted more times than is allowed by the BBC Charter, I’d have something to hold over Chiles...

Only, as I reached the early teens, I was suddenly caught off guard by something the handsome blighter said.

‘Did he just say that the blog is a bit rude?’ I asked.

Judy sighed and lowed her Dick Francis for a second time. ‘He did,’ she answered, ‘and I think he’s absolutely right to do so. That adorable and simply divine young man is talking a lot of sense, Dick, and the sooner you hear what he says, the sooner you might stop wasting your time being filthy for strangers.’

‘Rude! Filthy!’ If I hadn’t had them surgically hosed clean of wax last week, I wouldn’t have believed my ears. ‘My Appreciation Society is the most tasteful blog on the web! It was commended in “The Guardian”.’

‘The Guardian,’ muttered Judy as the Dick Francis came down for a third time and felt the weight of her elbow as she broke its spine over the arm of her chair. ‘Dick, I think it’s time that you faced a few facts. You have a very juvenile attitude towards the human body and an unnatural obsession with Vanessa Feltz’s cleavage. Over the last year, I’ve watched you write 300,000 words of witty but unpublishable prose, poems to Stephen Fry and Jeremy Paxman, limericks and letters to Sir Clive James, and a few dubious tales about David Dickinson’s crotch. You have discussed chafing in sensitive areas, mentioned your nipples on countless occasions, and also insist on telling strangers about every instance when you’ve been hit in the genitals.’

‘It was once and it was a golfing umbrella!’ I protested. ‘I think I have a right to make valid points about the abundance of dangerous sports related accessories on our city streets.’

‘And what about all the things you said about midgets?’

‘What can I say? I love the little fellows.’

Her eyebrows arched but she had to allow me that point. I chalked one up to the left-hand side of the ampersand and felt more determined than ever that I wouldn’t give way on any of her demands.

‘But what about the post you wrote about bulldog clips?’ she asked. ‘I thought that was in very dubious taste.’

‘But it was a factual account of something that happened to me last week.’

‘And the time you blamed mimes for damaging your knee?’

‘Another true episode in my glittering life.’

‘And the time you fell asleep in the bath?’

‘Absolutely true. My buttocks did inflate and I was rescued by Ronnie Corbett.’

‘But that story was hardly suitably for public consumption, was it?’ She removed her glasses and began to rub her eyes, unbelieving like the time she first saw the feral form of Fred The Weather swinging through the trees in our garden. ‘Dick, you can’t go around blaming mimes for your failure. You have to learn that Bill Oddie is not the greatest comedian that has ever lived and Stephen Fry does not know the meaning of life. If you want my opinion, this is the time to quit writing your blog and close your Appreciation Society. You are a failed novelist. Why can’t you face the truth? You’re a failed blogger too...’

I scoffed at the very notion. ‘Quit? Never! Dick Madeley is immortal! Dick Madeley never ages! He is hung from history’s peg, a casual archetype of all that’s brave, witty, and manly. He’s the Alpha Male dressed in loose fitting slacks, sauntering through life sans underwear. You could erase his identity as easily as you could remove Galileo from the annals of the past, deny Newton his rightful place at Fame’s table, or cast aside the names Churchill, Henry the Fifth, or Nicholas Parsons.’
Judy replaced her glasses and returned to her book.

‘Well, you asked for my advice and I gave it,’ she said as simple and elegant as one of her characteristic links into a commercial break.

It wasn’t long before she retired to bed and left me rewinding the show and watching it again from the beginning.

‘Immortal,’ I whispered as, for a third time, Chiles introduced the lightly whiskered chap, glittering like TV gold on the end of ‘The One Show’ sofa. ‘Immortal...’

From Durham To Edinburgh

The moustache leered at me from beneath the dripping edge of a sou'wester.

‘Could you make it out to Denise?’ it wheezed. ‘And can you write that she looked better as a man?’

The pen made a staggered leap across the page leaving an awkward ‘Madeley’ in its wake. I would have thought it had got used to the odd requests I’ve been receiving during my book signing tour of the country’s bookshops. In Durham, a man carrying a shih tzu in a pink tutu had asked me to make the book out to ‘Bill’. I was happy to oblige. ‘Oh, wonderful!’ he exclaimed, holding his copy at arm’s length and showing my signature off to the dog. ‘Can you see this, Bill? The kind Mr. Madeley has signed a book for you. And after all the horrible things you’ve said about him.’

In Birmingham, I’d been asked to sign a book for a man’s mother. ‘Her name is Beryl,’ he explained. ‘And it would be great if you added something about her pickled onions.’

‘Pickled onions?’ I repeated. ‘What on earth am I supposed to say about her pickled onions?’

The man looked at me as though I were the one wearing the hand knitted cardigan portraying the Life of Judy in a dozen types of stitch.

‘Don’t tell me you didn’t get them!’ he screamed, his face reddening before it headed towards the blue end of the Dulux colour chart. ‘We sent those onions by first class mail! First class mail!’

My pen hesitated over the page. It’s always difficult when a fan has sent me a gift that the production office failed to pass on. It’s even more difficult when the fan has a tattoo on his neck that resembles your own wife. I cast a look to the right arm of his cardigan where Judy was also reading the news in her Granada Reports glory. I had been worn down to a hole which revealed a series of biceps you wouldn’t want to annoy.

‘To Beryl,’ I wrote. ‘Your pickled onions were the finest we’ve ever tasted.’

He took the book from me and slowly scanned my penmanship, which isn’t just easy on the eye but has been praised by Rolf Harris as an model of calligraphy. Finally, the man turned to look at me, a tear taking a slow route down his cheek. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ he said, beaming proudly. ‘Mother will be so happy. She’ll be the proudest girl on E Wing!’ The last I saw of him was a shape running off across a Birmingham car park, sequins forming a large ampersand fading into the night.

This book tour has left me with so little time to write that all these examples crowd for space in this hurried post as I make my way to Rotherham. There was the man in Liverpool who told me he was channelling the spirit of the late Russell Harty.

‘Could you sign it for Russell?’ he asked. ‘He’s your biggest fan on the other side.’

‘I have a wide appeal,’ I said, trying my best to humour him.

‘There’s no need to be smug,’ he replied. ‘Otto von Bismarck thinks you’re a git.’

I fixed him with a stare. ‘But that’s only because we never did agree about the outcome of the Austro-Prussian War,’ I replied as I scribbled my name on his copy of the book and moved on to the next person in the line.

Things were no more normal north of the Border. In Edinburgh’s Waterstones, I met a man who claimed to be the modern Pétomane and told me that he’d be perfect for the show. I didn’t know what he meant until the tune of ‘Scotland the Brave’ began to emanate from beneath his kilt. The first few bars were fine but they were followed by the aroma of partially digested haggis. I quickly scribbled my name on his copy of the book and took a break from signing while the room was ventilated. When I got back, I was entertained by a woman who could play her dentures like castanets whilst her husband danced the flamenco. Both of them bought copies so I was forced to sit through the complete routine. I said nothing when an incisor came loose and bounced from my forehead.

I arrived home tonight. The slight bruising above my right eye has almost disappeared and only the faintest outline of a tooth remains. I found my blog silent, a few emails from outraged fans demanding that I explain my gaff on the Chris Moyles show, and a few are from non-fans who want me to disappear forever.

‘Blog no more, you filthy imposter!’ say some.

‘Write another book!’ say others.

‘Do you want us to send more pickled onions?’ asks one odd man from the Midlands.

God Gave Me A Banana

God gave me a banana. Of course, I don’t mean that he gave me bananas, per se, though if you swing your hips to that whole creationist rap, you might well believe it. In which case, he gave us bees, birds, bananas, and that Billy Blanks character who’s to blame for Judy’s slipped disk. Today, however, God was also the reason why I found myself possessing a banana. I emerged from Picadilly Station to find a member of His lot doling out free fruit to commuters. You might wonder why they were giving them to people in full time employment, rather than the poor, but as they say: God works in mysterious ways, which is this case also involved a little brown paper bag containing an apple and cranberry Fusseli bar (didn't he paint 'The Nightmare'?), a teabag, a sachet of sugar, and a badly written pamphlet which asked me, among other things, for ‘an indication of age’. Judy said that I should list my liking for Johnny Mathis and the general state of my teeth.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this except I’m falling asleep at my keyboard tonight. The truth is that there’s nobody out there reading this. In the past four days, I’ve recieved one hundred and ninety two emails. Of those, one hundred and eighty eight were SPAM. Bigger testicles, more efficient shafts, things to do with ping pong balls: the usual quality communications from the heart of Russia. Two messages were from two separate people expressing their hope that I die because of some joke I once made about Harry Potter. One more email was a more general insult concerning my masculinity because of something I’d once written about Frank Lampard. How my masculinity and Lampard are linked I’m really not sure but there you have the way of the web. Nothing makes sense. The final email was a note from a casual blogging acquaintance, which made up for the one hundred and eighty eight SPAM emails, two death threats, and the more general insult about my masculinity.

All of which explains why, tonight, I’m in no mood to do my usual. Ratting on about showbiz is such a long way from where I am at the moment; worn down by commuting to Manchester. I didn’t get a seat on the train all week, suffered mild claustrophobia (or, let’s be honest, they were really panic attacks) wedged among commuters in the end of the two coach special, packed to the luggage racks with passengers normally cramped in three. This morning, the nausea was particularly strong. My headphones ran out of juice half way through Serge Gainbourg’s ‘Melody Nelson’ album and I ended up listening to the guard chatting to the guy who waves the trains off from the platform. I was still a stop two away from Piccadilly. I had no way to escape.

Perhaps somebody out there can explain duties of the chap with the paddle who waves trains away from the platform. Perhaps you are one of those souls blessed with a paddle whose job it is to wave away trains and you can explain the following snippet of conversation.

Guard: Working this weekend?

Chap With Paddle Who Waves Away The Trains: No, had a good month. £1200 after tax... Then I’ve been promoted to RO4. That’s an extra £300 quid, and it’s been backdated six months. Then there’s our usual 5.4% coming in, so I’m doing alright.

I forget the rest. I was dizzy and sweating like a fat man’s armpit. Depending on your point of view, I either have millions in the bank or £14 to last me to the end of the month. I need to get myself a better job. I need to abandon this futile idea of writing for a living (you know I'm not funny but, bless, you haven't the heart to tell me), change careers, perhaps fleece the uninformed working as a computer programmer. I build blogs. I know code. I know my SQL and PHP. I could earn a fortune in that spiritually vacant life where you fool those people that don’t understand computers by making them think you’re working some kind of tonic. That’s my fault. I don’t see it as magic. I always give my knowledge away for nothing. I’m an utter fool.

I’m rambling again because I’m tired. So tired. No structure to my thought. I’m talking to myself tonight. Nobody’s out there. Not even Nige whose owls I’ve been missing this week, Selena whose legs I think of when I’m lonely on the train, or Elberry whose brain scares me with the thought that it might get bigger and destroy the universe. I've not even been reading Bryan's blog. Much too tired for that. Much too busy eating bad food; 79p cheese and onion pasties from Greggs the Bakers.

And then there's this post. Such a sad, limp way to the end the week. I’ve not written enough, though I launched another blog earlier this week. It gives me a break, something to do. You know where it is or, if you don’t, email me and I’ll tell you where to find it. It might not last – they never do – but I’m not advertising it here. It’s somewhere where I wear a different pair of pants and don’t comb my hair.

God gave me a banana tonight. Judy says I shouldn’t eat it. She says it might be injected with something.

Comes to something when you can’t trust free fresh fruit given to you by God...

The Faux Intellectual

An anguished wail went up in the Madeley household last night. It wasn’t a typical cry of pain or even the scream one would associate with an inquisitive man playing with Judy’s nail gun and putting a tack through his thumb. No, this was a howl of protest able to sear flesh over a quarter of a mile. This was a splintering of a soul; as though a shard of man’s being had been torn from his body and sent skidding across the room before disappearing up the chimney.

‘Richard? What’s wrong?’ asked Judy a moment or two later as she came hobbling to my office door.

‘Faux intellectual!’ I cried. ‘Faux intellectual! I’ve been called a faux intellectual!’

‘Ridiculous,’ said Judy coming into the room and perching herself on a chair next to my desk. ‘Who on earth would call you faux? There’s no man alive whose less faux than you.’

‘Some American,’ I said. ‘You know that post I wrote about coffee shops last week? It was the piece I wrote in an attempt to cheer myself after one of the most traumatic weeks of my life. Only, now some chap has read it and says “NOTHING however is more suburban, and faux intellectual, than clever prose construction, the substance of which is a mere complaint.”’ My brow creased an inch below my laughter lines. ‘I’ll show him,’ I said and hammered out a curt reply.

‘You’ll regret that in the morning,’ said Judy.

I didn’t care. I hit the publish button and then turned off my computer.

‘Blogging!’ I spat. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I even bother. I just don’t understand it, Judy. What possesses a person to leave an comment that will only hurt a stranger? Never in my life have I done that and I don’t intend to start now, even if this is the perfect opportunity. Why are some bloggers so rude? It can’t just be because they’re American can it?’

‘It’s because they are real people living in the real world,’ replied Judy, ‘and the real world is full of people who look to do more harm than good.’

Despite the wisdom of Judy’s words, I slept an uneasy sleep last night. Judy woke me around four to ask me to stop muttering ‘faux intellectual’ under my breath. I really only dozed after that and I dragged myself up at seven this morning to catch Fry before he began his morning yoga routine.

‘Ah, ’tis I Fry,’ said Stephen on the third thing. ‘I’m currently holding the pose known as the lotus of the dipping moon.’

‘And this is Dick Madeley,’ I said, leaning back in my office chair, ‘currently holding the pose known as the suburban faux intellectual.’ I then proceeded to tell him about my recent attempt to write myself out of a bad mood, my general thoughts about blogging, and then about this most recent comment which had created such a deep fracture in my normally impenetrable confidence.

‘Oh dear,’ said Stephen. ‘There really is nothing so condescending than being called a faux intellectual by an American. And for a man with your background there can be nothing as galling. It is a shame that more people haven’t read your quite breathtaking metrical analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnets.’

‘You know me, Stephen. I don’t like to boast about the mere idle puff I write in my spare time. When I’m done putting the finishing touches to my collection of essays about Nabokov, let’s see what they say then.’

‘Indeed,’ replied Fry. ‘But I’m afraid that this is another example of that constant battle we men of wit must wage with those of sullen demeanours. Any fool can write a miserable little story about metaphysical angst but it takes a man of real character to mine the veins to those deep places where humour is to be found. You have to remember, Dick, that the pose of intelligence is really quite different to the genuine article.’

I understood what he was saying. I’ve come across many fine intellects in my time but the finest have always understood that true intelligence resides in something more than convoluted prose, tortured angst, and an obsessive pursuit of difficulty. God knows that the world is a troubled place, full of petty egos squabbling over petty disputes. The last thing it needs is another intellectual.

‘I think you’re right, Stephen,’ I said, feeling the irritation of the night before finally slip from my body. ‘I’m quite happy to be called a faux intellectual if it means that my writing gives a few people a little pleasure in their lives.’

‘It’s your moral calling,’ said Stephen before he gave a wince. ‘Now, if you don’t mind Dick, I’m going to hang up. The lotus of the dipping moon has just become the lotus of the inflamed sciatica. Heavens, shudder, and marmalade!’

And with that the phone went dead. I hung up the phone and immediately switched on the PC. I had a long day of being a faux intellectual ahead of me and I was relishing the prospect.

Getting Back To Business

Being the man who gave this blog it’s name, I’m so glad to be back and I would like to begin by thanking everybody for bearing my absence with such good grace. It’s been a difficult time in the life of this blog but I hope we can now find our smiles again. This is especially true given that the world beyond the Real goes on. Celebrity life rarely wilts, never ceases to amaze, and is always prone to a surprise or two; a fact which wasn’t lost on me when Bill Oddie attacked me with the serrated edge of his stuffed pelican last week. A disagreement about the feeding habits of the puffin led to the fight but it was a relief when it was settled. I am wiser for the experience, less likely to confuse sprats and sardines. Life, I suppose, has a way of surprising us and helping us; strengthening us even when it looks like it’s trying to bring us down. These last seven days have helped me to discover many things about myself and I intend to work even harder and promote my cause more widely. No longer will I write in obscurity. Literary agencies across London will soon have to check their foundations after they suffer the impact of my latest manuscript landing on their doorsteps. Producers will soon feel the force of my ideas. Politicians will quake at the very mention of my name.

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere: Richard Madeley is back. And this time it's personal.

Hung Over

The Limburger nibbles grated against the backs of my eyeballs have brought out the mice again. They are now frantically chewing at my temporal lobes from where this painful hangover seems to originate. It really is too much to type this morning but I expect most of you are feeling pretty much the same after last night’s party to mark the one year anniversary of this blog’s launch. How Judy kept it all a secret from me I don’t know, but I have to thank so many of you for making the long trip to see us. The evening was a gala of bacchanalian fun with the occasional comic moment. Bill Oddie says he won’t sit down for a week while Stephen Fry is promising a fifty pound reward to the person who returns his favourite green cape. It was good to see a few of you take time to go and say hello to Fred Talbot who has featured so regularly in this blog, as he has featured in my life, over the last twelve months. He is no longer feral and, as many you discovered, he can now converse quite happily about the weather without trying to bite you.

Friendships were made last night that may never be broken.

The only thing I believe I have to apologise about is that Jeremy Clarkson thought it appropriate to show a picture of his recent eye infection to people as they were eating. Judy took him to one side and, as you can see, confiscated the photograph so there should be no repeat performances of that grotesque sideshow. The main event, as you know, was as much fun as you can get when living near to David Dickinson. That he complained half a dozen times about the noise was no fault of mine and I hope you appreciated the efforts we made to keep the party going until four in the morning.

Today is a matter of recovering before I go off to film this afternoon’s show. Judy is in a fine mood and even seems relaxed about the Dennis situation. For my part, I have decided to take more of a hand’s on role with the captions. They will be written by me, so any mistakes are my own.

I’m sure you come for lots of exciting tales today but I’m really too hung over to type for too long. Each keystroke is like a particularly hungry rodent sinking its teeth into my brain.

Perhaps later...

A Year On

For a year, I’ve been sitting here sat at my keyboard, fashioning my thoughts into meaningful posts. Only today the words have dried up. Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the Richard Madeley Appreciation Society and I still haven’t had a single card.

A year older and 365 days wiser, I now look back on a year of wasted opportunities and failed ambitions. I intended to write the finest blog around but have failed miserably. The world may now have an official resource for people with two rectums and I have become a quoted authority on the history of custard creams, my own dreams remain unfulfilled. However, I don't want you to feel sorry for me. Instead, I want you all to do at least one thing tomorrow to make the day special. Whether that’s breaking out the bunting, wrapping yourself in the Union Jack, or having an underwear free day, please make the statement to the world that ‘Richard Madeley is a vital part of this nation’s culture and it would be wrong to send him off into the backwaters of satellite TV’.

After a year, I hope you’ve come to know me a little better. You’ve seen me on good days and bad. I’ve not hidden my occasional moods from you, nor the disappointments that have dogged me all year. You have come to know the real me. And the blog is also become a sizable chunk of prose. 250,000 words on, I feel like my job isn’t anywhere near complete. The Madeley name is not yet synonymous with wit and subtlety. My novel remains unpublished (technically, the term is ‘cancelled’) and my autobiography still isn’t complete. At 30,000 words, ‘Madeley: Summoned To Greatness’ is the publishing sensation yet to be finished, published, or a sensation. However, The Richard&Judy Foundation’s official publication of ‘Fathers&Sons’ will come out in the Autumn, written by a talented guy on the Richard&Judy payroll but not, unfortunately, by these fingers. I doubt if there are many laughs in it but I hope it does well.

Tomorrow is a new day and a new year on this blog. We'll have to do something special to celebrate.

A Brief Diatribe About Art

I am at my most human when it’s late at night and I begin to feel sorry for myself. Which is why I have to beg your forgiveness for my last pitiful excuse for a post. As somebody recently told me, I simply have to try harder. Even a year into this blogging exercise, my fingers still haven’t found the pulse of you, my deeply intelligent and selective audience. I’ve failed to understand what makes any of you come back. Clearly, Hughie Green is far from the top of that list.

Judy often tells me that I should abandon my light-hearted attempts at biography. In her opinion, I should join in with the greater fraternity of bloggers dealing with the important issues of the day.

Gordon Brown arrived at the G8 summit with some hard words for world leaders. Robert Mugabe remains in power in Zimbabwe and it’s clear that South African president Thabo Mbeki is not providing the kind of leadership that Africa needs at this present moment. Clearly Brown is... is...

Nope. Sorry. Can’t keep that going. It’s a ‘will to live’ thing. I keep losing it.

But that’s exactly what’s wrong with me. I can be horrendously temperamental when I’m writing and my mood was made doubly bad last night because I had spent a couple of hours browsing the web to research a book I’m trying to finish.

As you know, I’m a man of many talents. There may be books coming out from the Richard&Judy stable written by real writers, but I like to keep plodding along doing my own unprofitable thing. My autobiography is coming along well and I also have a novel which is very slowly amassing chapters. A theme of that novel is contemporary art and my recent browsing habits have been restricted to sites dedicated to promoting the arts in the UK.

It was while I was going through an Arts Council website last night, that I found footage of some nameless old colleagues of mine who happen to work in a field tangential to my own. Neither of them are particularly creative but they are both fanatical about commentating on the work of others. You might describe them as ‘critics’. Different national bodies seem to always send funds their way from for projects they initiate. They are both themselves in charge of some additional funds, or know the people who control those funds, which they can also ‘tap into’ to help promote their cockeyed schemes, meant to promote the arts but only really functioning as a rather squalid form of social work.

The footage was part of a current scheme they are running and was advertised as a celebration of the work of a well known artist. Basically, it was a five minute video of my friends enjoying themselves on a recent holiday in Spain. They looked out over the Med, made a few comments about the artist, and then shared a bottle of wine. While I’m pretty sure that the holiday would have been paid for out of their own pockets, those pockets are filled by their work promoting the arts.

I couldn’t help but feel a little piqued.

Maybe it was always so but we seem to be living at a point in our cultural development when we have some very fundamental problems with art. Government policy is generally to throw money at projects that are either sickeningly contemporary or involve the regeneration of our inner cities. Money goes into youth projects in urban settings. Graffiti is encouraged while the fine arts are diminished.

Naturally, I have a vested interest as I know friends who are comic novelists on the breadline while ‘socially aware’ poets get funds to travel around to schools and talk to children about ‘issues’. A recent visitor to a local school charged £500 for the day. I don’t begrudge any writer money, from whatever the source, but I do find it frustrating that the only people to really succeed in the current climate seem to be social workers and critics. And I suppose that’s why I was feeling so utterly dispirited last night and this morning. My two friends, the critics, sit enjoying their sangria on the beach while I’m still facing another long day at the keyboard.

I’m off to write something more uplifting to cheer us all up.

Back soon.

Raj, Raj, Raj, Raj, Raj, Raj, Raj, Raj, and Raj

It was Sunday and I was deep in that zone where all my best writing gets done; ears closed off to the world, eyes wide, nose flared with excitement as I hammered my fingers at the keyboard. The only discomfort was a slight rawness between my thighs caused by the friction of my constant swaying as I typed. Chapter 11 of my autobiography was turning out to be the most challenging yet; detailing, as it does, the struggles we faced establishing ‘This Morning’ as the UK’s premium show for bored housewives, melancholic students and the mentally impaired. My work frenzy was all the more intense because Judy had promised to stay away for most of the day. She was overseeing the installation of new baize at her Snooker and Pool Association’s clubhouse. I wanted to make the most of the time by taking my 30,000 words up to the wonderful milestone of 40,000. AKA: the Half Way Point.

After a couple of hours of typing, I finally sank back in my chair and stared at the latest paragraph of memoir. There on the page sat the following fifty three gloriously flowing words, hewn from the tree of memory, rich with the scent of happier days and the knowledge that my children and my children’s children would one day read these words and perhaps pay me tribute in the form of a tear or two.

"We were living in rented accommodation out on the Wirral while all this was happening. We were settling down to married life, coping with each other’s peculiarities. Judy had a terrible habit of leaving the toilet seat up. She, in turn, accused me of leaving my spare toupees soaking in the kitchen sink."

I was about to put fingers to keyboard and produce more of the same when the phone rang. I would have ignored it but for the recognisable tune I have it programmed to play whenever a call comes in from Stephen Fry. Since Stephen has come back from America, he’s also come back into my life and I always feel immensely comforted by that thought.

‘Heads up, Richard,’ said Stephen. ‘’Tis I, Fry, with troubling news involving the misappliance of science.’

‘You’re interrupting the writing of an autobiography that’s sure to establish my name in the world of literature,’ I said, not wanting to sound rude but irritated nonetheless. ‘It better be trouble. What is it this time? I’ve warned you about smoking your pipe in bed? Set fire to your cape again, haven't you?’

‘Nothing so minor,’ he answered. ‘I fear, Dick, that you are about to be overrun by a most virulent pest.’

‘Not mice again!’ I cried. ‘The last time I had mice, I got into the most awful trouble with my blog’s readers when I confessed to giving the mice mind-altering drugs and then sticking them down the garbage disposal.’

‘Were I a man with better news I might indeed utter the word “mice”,’ said Stephen. ‘However, ’tis I, Fry, uttering the phrase: “cloned versions of that famous TV psychiatrist, Professor Raj Persaud”.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You are about to overrun by many cloned Dr. Rajs, if that is indeed the correct plural.’

‘Is there no end to this madness?’ I sobbed. ‘How much more of this tired joke do I have to take? You do realise that he’s launched his own blog in which he is basically copying all my best material.’

‘Perhaps he’s making a point about intertextuality within a postmodern culture,’ suggested Stephen.

‘Are you sure he’s that bright?’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure of it. Were you a more gifted writer, Dick, you too could play postmodern games with the notion of fame and the integrity of the first person narrative.’

‘I think he’s gone bonkers,’ I said, though quietly quite pleased to hear Stephen on such good form. Now do you see what I mean about it being good to have him back? It’s just quality advice at a level far higher than anything you get from the likes of Bill Oddie or that man Clarkson.

‘I can only pass on what I’ve heard,’ carried on Stephen and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I have it from friends in high places that there has been a sudden increase in the number of people claiming to be Dr. Raj Persaud. Bandwagons are being jumped, Dick. Bandwagons are being jumped. Mercy me!’

‘But why would people do such a thing?’

‘Why indeed except to create what we computer experts call “a denial of service attack” on your blog. I will write about it on a future “Dork Talk” but a précis of that piece would be the warning that in the coming day, many people will post comments in which they claim to be Dr. Raj. You have been told, Dick. End of communication. Fry out. Heavens!’

Could any sensible man ignore such a warning? I couldn’t work after news like that. What is the world coming to when people are hiding behind a psychiatrist in order to play some foolish charade? This, in my opinion, is the biggest problem with the Internet. Given that there are no rules or mechanisms in play to verify a person’s your identity, we have all kind of lunatics running around under pseudonyms like ‘ElephantBoy’ or ‘GrimReaper’. Even now, there are at least six ‘Richard Madeley’s on Facebook and only one of them is me. Then there’s ‘The Twitch’, ‘Elberry’, ‘Lola’, ‘Bertas’, ‘Nige’, ‘Okbye’: all of you are pseudonyms and don’t really exist. The only ones out there with real knees I could touch are ‘Richard Havers’ and ‘Selena Dreamy’. I’m liable to do something about this in the near future and might use my remaining shows on Channel 4 to demand that the government moves to outlaw this kind of behaviour.

These were all the thoughts going through my mind after Stephen’s phone call yesterday afternoon. After I had calmed myself down with a stiff drink, I returned to my desk armed for an onslaught and closed my autobiography for another day, the milestone still not reached. Literature would suffer because of these fools. Literature would suffer...

Voice From My Past

‘Hello, Richard,’ said the voice I recognised but hadn’t heard in an age. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Raj?’ I said, struggling to recall the last time my old sparring partner from ‘This Morning’ had rang me. ‘Is that you? How’s life as a professor going?’

‘Quite well,’ he said. ‘In fact, very well. I’ve just launched a new blog.’

You can imagine who this news filled me with delight. ‘A blog! How fantastic, Raj,’ I said. ‘You might know that I’m something of a blogger, myself. One of the least read but widely admired blogger in the country. Only the other night a wonderful lady viewer emailed me for the recipe for my tuna plait.’

Dr. Raj didn’t sound too impressed.

‘You still have those inferiority issues, don’t you Richard?’

‘How should I know? I’m not Dr. Smarty Pants Professor of Psychology...’ I took a long deep breath and waited a moment. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your blog...’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s just a place where I want to connect with an audience. Chat about important matters in my life and generally break down all barriers that prevent people from getting to know a super talented man of letters.’

‘Pretty much what I do with my blog,’ I said. ‘I hope you’ve got a good name for this project.’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘I call it “The Raj Persaud Appreciation Society”.’

‘You cheeky bugger,’ I replied.

There must have been something in the way I said this. It was more of a scream than your average, common-or-garden ‘cheeky bugger’. Judy came running in from the kitchen.

‘Listen to this, Jude,’ I said. ‘You won’t believe it but Raj had gone and launched his own blog and bloody called it “The Raj Persaud Appreciation Society.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Judy.

‘What’s wrong? Well, for one, there’s not many people who want to appreciate him. And don’t you think it sounds a little too like a certain highly popular blog read by 3.2 million people a week?’

‘It sounds nothing like Thought Experiments,’ said Judy as she retired back to the kitchen.

I just hung up the phone and locked myself behind my office door. There are only so many insults a man can take after another hard day split between Manchester and London.

The Real Blogger

It's eight in the morning and a blogger sits down at his keyboard and begins to type:

Jeez Louise! I got up late and nearly fed the dog to the kids. Oh the kids! What trouble! And me at that time in the month and Him getting ready for work! Sometimes I could just hug the love out of the little blighters. I really could. Can't say the same about Him. And then the dog threw up on Nigel’s shoes. He wasn’t happy about it. Who would be! They’re suede. I blame Pedigree Chum for having those big lumpy bits of meat. Why can’t they chop it up, I don’t know! It’s not as though horse meat is that hard to get right. Right?

So, I got the kids to school before the bell and then it was My Time. I got home, poured myself a nice big steaming cup of coffee, climbed beneath the duvet and watched Quincy on UK Gold. I love that Jack Klugman. He’s such a wrinkle faced doll!

Before I know it, I’m looking at the clock and I realise that I have to pick up the kids again. But then I think to myself: why not leave them at school? They’re warm and have lots of things to do with the cleaners and that strange man who they hire as a caretaker down there.

But, of course, you conscience begins to prick. I eventually reach for the car keys and I’m off to pick up the kids. And ain’t that the thing about having them? They might get on your nerves but you wouldn’t want to leave them with a stranger who has named his mop George and calls his bucket Mildred. Not even for a million Quincies!!!!!!

Thirty seven seconds later, this bad and bitter old man sits back, chuckling with spite. His blog is written for the day and now he waits to receive 59 comments before lunch and to know that he truly is the voice of the people.

Life is that simple.

In Which I Feel Loved And Take Everything Back

Flattery will get you everywhere, especially when it's directed towards my toes. I awoke this morning to find Judy massaging my feet.

'I thought it would help you relax,' she said as she used her elbow to work the tension from my heel. 'I have to say, Richard, that you have the sexiest hard skin I think I've ever seen.'

'It is unusual to see scales like that,' I admitted as I tried to sit up in bed. Judy just kept a firm hand on my ankle and wouldn't let me shift. I couldn't for the life of me presume to understand her behaviour, though had I known that Judy had such a gift for the foot massage, I wouldn't have to go into London every month to get my rub down by my Korean shiatsu master, Madame Ping Shu Nut.

'I thought you were a little highly strung yesterday,' said Judy after another five minutes of blissful hand-on-bunion action.

'Highly strung?' I reflected on her words. 'I suppose I was a little.'

'A little?' She snorted a laugh. 'I thought Bill Oddie was going to cry when you vowed to hunt down and kill every goshawk in Kent. The poor man... I've never seen him run so fast. I bet him and Nige are still out, catching every bird of prey in order to give them sanctuary.'

'I suppose I should ring him to apologise,' I said. 'But I just couldn't listen to yet another boast about how he's BBC2's most popular presenter. Not when everything has been going pear shaped for me lately...'

'And what's wrong with pear-shaped?' asked Judy, suddenly stopping mid-massage to stroke her blouse down over her ample hips.

'I didn't mean it that way,' I said, knowing how my dear wife is proud of her full figure, as indeed, she should be. 'I just think that life is not treating me all that fairly and I've been in no mood to write. I would much rather go out and heckle people. You know how I accidentally kicked a dwarf in Manchester last week? Well, I never told you but it made me feel so happy.'

'It's that autobiography you're writing that's doing it,' she said. 'You're reliving painful experiences from the days before you were a celebrity. It can't be good for you, Richard. It's making you bitter. I don't even know why you're doing it. You've already been told that there's not a publisher in the country who would want to read it.'

I had to admit that she was partly right. The whole exercise was futile, no matter how well I was progressing in writing my life story. I've already reached 1977 and the time I spent working to overthrow Fidel Castro. 'I suppose thirteen thousand words feels such a long way from finishing the damn thing,' I said. 'By threatening to abandon blogging, I was merely admitting that blogging might be the only thing I'm cut out for. I enjoy doing it but it makes me feel bad about myself.'

'Perhaps you should go back to masturbation,' she said. 'At least it was something you did in private.'

'Now you see,' I said, looking down the bed. 'That's the sort of remark I can't repeat on my blog. Do you really want me to get a reputation as a sex blogger?'

'It was just an idea,' shrugged Judy. 'Denise said that she thought it might cheer you up.'

The thought of Denise Richardson giving me advise about self-abuse was enough to make my toes curl.

'Yes, well, today will be different, Judy. I swear it. I'm going to be much more upbeat.'

After another twenty minutes, Judy finally managed to straighten out the curl in my toes which had wrapped themselves around my heels. I then showered and covered myself in talc before dressing myself in my favourite Afghan gown. I cleaned out my office and even wiped the bird muck from the window (it had been sitting there all week and I'd seen no good luck to speak of). Finally, I gave Stephen Fry a call and asked if he was in the mood for a Scrabble marathon.

'Scrabble? Ah, Dick. Were you to see me now, relaxed on my chaise longue, you would think I were a man content with the world. But, alas, 'tis not so. I yearn for the chance to increase the value of a “zumbooruk” on a triple word score. I'll be around in ten minutes.'

Sure enough, the man is as exact as he is tall and wise. Ten minutes later, the front door opened and Stephen Fry backed into the hall, dragging his suitcases behind him.

'I suggest we play normal rules for the first twenty four hours,' he said, 'and then we'll move over to the far more challenging game, which I devised while touring America. Every vowel scores double and there must be at least three in every word.'

'Sounds intriguing,' I admitted.

He puffed himself up in that way he has when feeling most proud of himself. 'I once had a game against myself that lasted a full ninety three hours,' he said. 'Quite the challenge.'

It was during our first game (Stephen was losing and therefore in the mood to chat) that I mentioned my off-the-cuff threat to abandon my Appreciation Society.

'You should consider changing to the form of the blessay,' he said as he sucked on his pipe. 'A long twenty-seven-thousand-word post twice a month is enough to keep the punters happy. It also leaves you plenty of time to do what you want. Write your novels or launch new projects even more intriguing than your Nut Club.'

'I do have ideas in that direction,' I admitted. 'I would quite like to adopt a pseudonym and launch a blog that's sure to offend everybody who reads it. That's my problem, you see, Stephen. I'm much too polite for the modern world. I need to find my edge.'

Stephen pulled the pipe from his lips. 'Then I make this promise to you now, Richard. We'll do it together! You keep on writing you Appreciation Society and I'll help you in any new venture that takes your fancy. Have you thought of writing a blog about wallpaper?'

'I don't know,' I smiled. 'Wallpaper isn't really my cup of tea. I was thinking of some pretty extreme subjects. They might make you feel uncomfortable to be uninvolved in something so puerile.'

'The more offensive the better,' smiled he, the man who has yet to let me down. 'And I'm sure there will be room for a little something on the nature of decorative wall covering.'

'Then that's a deal. The Appreciation Society continues but I'll get to work on a new blog that will remain anonymous but frisky, well written but depraved, Oddie free but round enough to roll down Blogger's Hill. People won't know what has hit them!'

'Excellent,' said Stephen as he learned forward and set out a word across a triple word score. 'There... “zumbooruk” which I believe is a small cannon that sits on a swiveled rest on the back of a camel.'

Herring Nipples

While Judy hogs the living room and watches the FA Cup final with Dame Shirley Bassey, I’m spending my afternoon here in my office, catching up with blog business, buffing my elbows, clipping nostril hair, and generally doing that important spot of grooming I’ve put off for so long. One of the problems with the Madeley gene is that the males of the line have the quickest growing nose hair to ever grace a chin. Judy has often suggested that we turn it into high quality matting that I might sell via this blog. It’s a fine idea except I can’t promise a supply a single shade of fibre. An everlasting ‘Welcome Home’ mat is one thing but would you really buy one that’s got flecks of grey in it?

I don’t know why I’m asking you this except I want to also take this opportunity to clear up any outstanding business on this blog. I have a love/hate relationship with my statistics, as indeed, I have with reality, and my posts recently dried up while I came to grips with my new job in Manchester. I even stopped looking to see how many people continued to visit me and never had chance to see who has linked to me, included me in their memes, or generally badmouthing the finest looking man in an electric-violet cummerbund.

First of all to Elberry, who really moved me with his post, ‘The Knights of Madeley’. The thought of being sponsored by my readers touches me deeper than my expert Korean masseur, Hwan Long Finger. However, I’m not a man to take charity. I just ask you to gather at Trafalgar Square next Friday at noon and march on the offices of Random House or Macmillan. I’ve got a firm undertaking from Selena Dreamy that she’ll do the dance of the seven veils before any publishing executive or literary agent willing to put me on their books. (And I would like to take this opportunity of publicly thanking Selena for this kind gesture and for filling in after Vanessa Feltz slipped dropped out during rehearsals. I’d also like to thank The Twitch for handling that situation so well.)

Speaking of heavy matters, I’d like to thank the people at the BBC’s College of Comedy competition for their gracious response to the ten pages of sitcom I submitted to them last month. By not contacting me, they have chosen to preserve my dignity and respect my privacy. I’d like to also thank them for not dragging me into London for the final round of interviews, nor loading my schedule with the onerous duty, as winner, of having to write them a complete sitcom. My loss will ensure that the BBC’s next generation of sitcoms will be of the same standard as the last. Hurrah!

Finally, I would like to send my thanks to 'Maureen Chlorine' for the admirable attempt to render my handsome profile in finger paints but I wonder if she really needed to include my plastic bag in the same picture.

Onto meme business: I’ve been listed in a meme on Monscooch, where I’ve been asked to describe myself in six words. Hard to do. Do they want the ‘real’ Richard or the public Richard? I think I’ll cheat and give them both. So, the public Richard is:

Brash
Bouncy
Affluent
Fertile
Tanned
Gregarious

As for the private Richard, you might say that he’s almost a totally different man. The Richard you get to see on this blog is:

Complicated
Optimistic
Moody
Gullible
Generous
Nige

Which leads me on to Nige’s brief-but-much-appreciated post, to which I was forced to add my own three replies. The problem of being both Nige and myself, writing two blogs a day, is that I sometimes get a little confused as to which persona I’m inhabiting. Am I the wren loving twitcher with a love of English poets or am I Nige? Only time will tell.

Finally, I must mention search terms. It’s always a pleasure to look to see what people have put into Google. Not having examined my statistics in months, I have missed some real gems. The following three caught my attention:

‘Herring nipples’

What more can I say about my favourite brine-flavoured snack? They’re the juicy North Sea chews that you can tickle in your pocket.

‘What’s wrong with Richard Madeley’s left knee?’

I sprained it when I fell over after ogling a mime. It is still giving me a little pain, though I’m glad to report that the last few days has finally seen a small improvement.

‘Who is Richard Madeley?’

A perfect moment to post the description of myself I wrote for my entry on Wikipedia:

Richard Madeley, TV host, writer, blogger, fertility god, and inventor, is the immensely popular and influential host of his own talk show on Channel 4. His wife, Judy, often appears as his special guest. Richard also writes a blog which is even more popular that his TV show. An estimated 4.5 million readers a month read about his adventures with celebrity friends Bill Oddie and Stephen Fry. He has been sued by ex-pat Tunisians, members of the deaf, blind, midget, and homeless societies, and David Dickinson, though he has settled out of court a record number of times. He is currently writing a epic poem based around the lives of his blogging friends.

My Friend The Blogger

Tonight I've had cause to reflect that some of us are simply too nice. A horrid little word this 'nice'. I hate being nice. Let me be arrogant, deceitful, ambitious and only in business for the quick profit. I despise my own affability, my easy going nature, my reluctance to do harm. Let me make money and damn the consequences. I normally try to see only the best in others. From now on, I want to see lies. I believe everything that people tell me. Let me begin to doubt them. I also believe in the old myths about hard work being rewarded in the long run. I see that it's all folly.

It's not easy to write this evening. The tenses all feel wrong. The first person is far too remote.

You see, this all begins with my friend, another generally affable sort who also writes a blog, putting the finishing touches to a novel. A publisher asks to see his manuscript. Compliments are exchanged. An offer to publish the book is made. A contract arrives. It's far from a generous contract. People who know about these things advise him to send his manuscript elsewhere. I advise him to look for a better publisher. I tell him that the contract is not right right for him. But the writer is an affable sort. He wouldn't do that to the only people who have shown any faith in him. He's loyal, you see. He lives by certain old fashioned principals. I keep telling him are going to ruin him. Yet he's never been adept at putting a price on his own skills. He accepts whatever terms other people offer him. He often works for nothing. So he signs this contract despite the fact that he won't see any money for at least a year. Even then it might not be very much.

All this happens some months ago.

My affable friend finishes writing the book and spends weeks working on the final proofs which he duly sends to the publisher. All this time, he's struggling on very little money, falling deeper into debt. Then it all goes quiet. He hears the occasional bit of news about the book. He learns that an illustrator has been paid to produce a picture for the front cover. The artist earns money from the book. My friend, the writer, doesn't. But he's affable so he doesn't complain.

It all goes quiet again but this affable guy notices that his book is listed on Amazon and that makes him very happy. He rings me. 'It's going to happen,' he tells me. 'Soon.'

Today, my affable friend had a long and not particularly enjoyable day at work. He explained to me that the job is tough because it's mundane. It's slowly destroying the guy's spirit. I share his pain. I know what it's like. As you know, I am in a similar position. Yet he also tells me that he wants so desperately to escape the trap of debt. He's only working to keep up the repayments on the debts he's amassed after a long time studying and writing, neither of which have made him rich. Quite the reverse. He should just take a job, five days a week, and earn £20,000 a year. He's a bright guy. He has good qualifications. Probably better than 99% of the people in the country. But he just wants to write. He wants to make people smile because he truly believes that it is a moral way of living.

But it's still a struggle. He's only getting through the days because he knows that he's got a book coming out. He's not in the 8 to 5 rut because he thinks that he is really a writer. He believes in his own talent. He refuses to become the suit they force him to wear.

Only, tonight, he arrived home to be informed that his book is now not being published. 'It's complicated,' he tells me.

I reply that I should hope that it bloody-well is complicated.

But now he's angry. He's also in tears. Yet he's still affable. He says that he can't hold any of this against the publisher. He argues they were in a difficult position. I agree. I tell him that their business didn't have a sensible business model. I say that I didn't believe in the books they published. He admits that he too had doubts: that if they could publish 'those' books, was his own any better? That's as much conversation as he can take. I come off the phone having shared his agony and having felt his pain. I too shed a few tears before I sit down to write.

Now I am left wondering what he really feels. Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. Despair. Perhaps even relief? I suspect that he is beginning to think what he's always feared: that his book wasn't that good, that he's not that talented a writer, and that he's fooled himself for so many years. I should imagine that he feels embarrassed given that he has told people that he was having a book published.

If I were him, I'd try to stay calm and to use his anger to spur him on. He should write to the publisher and explain how he feels like he's been used. He should tell them that they took his dreams and did the worst thing possible: they made them 'almost' come true.

Tonight I've only managed to write because my friend has fallen silent. How I wish it were so very different.

Towing Caravans With Elberry

I should tell you that I once met Elberry. I have pressed the man's flesh. I have looked into his eyes over a table littered with coffee cups, Thornton's fudge, and unsheathed knives.

It was a strange day when I'd made the long journey up to Manchester to meet that keg of pressurised intellect I'd come to know via the comments he'd left at Thought Experiments. I'd wanted to introduce him to the nation via the teatime show but I soon realised that Elberry is not for a family audience. I was frightened of the man as soon as he approached me outside W.H. Smiths' booth on Victoria Station and asked me if I knew if the trains running to Nottingham stopped at Crewe. It had slipped my mind that this was meant to my coded way of recognising him. Instead, I had tried to get away from this apparent madman and began to make frantic signals to the nearest policeman. However, once the confusion was resolved and handcuffs removed from Elberry's wrists, I headed off into the city with a man whose self-professed aim of the day was to buy himself a new copy of Dante. He explained to me that his old edition had fallen to pieces through overuse.

I ask you now: Is there any way to put a man more on edge than by admitting that you've worn out your copy of The Divine Comedy? Pretty soon it became apparent that Elberry was the most impressive example of what he, himself, describes as the condition of so many office temps: the man or woman of genius 'being used to tow caravans'. He could quote poetry that I'd read and long-since forgotten. He knew foreign languages, which have always been my weakness and the source of much of my own envy. More impressive was the fact that he was unapologetically Elberry. He lacked fear whereas I am nothing but fear. His blog provokes others with his strong viewpoints and pictures of naked flesh, there as bait to those people who are simply not Elberry. In the living flesh, he is no different.

My most embarrassing moment was when I mentioned how I questioned my devotion to a certain brand of notebook. Not having ever had this conversation with a human being before, I mispronounced the name. I still don't know why I thought it was 'moleskin' but Elberry was the first person to put me right. 'I believe it's Moleskine,' he said in what I can only presume was the syllable perfect pronunciation for whatever language it was he was speaking. Ever since that moment, a few hundred yards outside the main city branch of Waterstones and on the corner of the square dominated by The Royal Exchange Theatre, I've thought of Elberry whenever I pick up my 'moleskin' notebook. That one little event has become evidence to me of the distance that lies between my ambitions and my failures, the kind of brain I've always wanted and the sort of brain I actually have.

After a couple of exhausting hours in which my meagre intellect retreated before his seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of literature, I began the long trip home, wondering what to make of the man who had variously left me feeling full of admiration, confusion, despair, and just a little fear. Elberry remained something of a mirror to me. Only, more recently, I have become more of a mirror to Elberry.

I too have moved into the world of the office temp, though I lack the genius to move even a caravan. Without the powers to both write and work, I have been forced to be far too casual with this blog, a project that has always given me great satisfaction. Not only that, I have produced next to nothing. A few pages of a woeful sit-com and a few blog posts are the product of six weeks writing. I had previously written a novel in that time. Yet it has proved to me that the writer's life sits at odds with those of the office worker. To me, the two things are mutually exclusive.

Bloggers exist on the border between the professional and the amateur. A rare few make a living doing what others aspire towards. The majority of us make less than nothing and are lucky to make even that. Yet a cherished few symbolise the woeful gulf that exists between productivity and reward. Despite mundane office chores, they still live a live that isn't compromised by mental exhaustion, commuting, or the drudge of earning a wage. Whatever their achievement, whether it is being deep, difficult, intractable, witty, wise, gentle, or homely, they remain loyal to themselves.

This brief ramble was prompted by an email from Elberry this morning. It made me realise that I'm finally beginning to understand the forces that have moulded the man. He thinks in terms of epochs but lives in a world of Formica and open plan workspaces. In private, he sends the most supportive emails, devoid of all the blood, mucus, and bile. He communicates with me when I'm feeling down and for this I just wanted to thank him. It's as if he fully understands how the prolonged silence of another man who lives to write is really a cry for help.