A Response to the Scurrilous Newspaper Reports Regarding 'Strictly Come Dancing'

01/09/09:12.02PM. Press Release on behalf of Uncle Dick:

"I’m asking people to stop sending me abusive emails about ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. The news that I have ‘snubbed’ the show is overstated, as is my reported wage demand. I asked for a paltry half a million and not a penny more.

On the whole, discussions were friendly and I always felt it certain that the BBC would eventually allow me to wear my spats with a sequined cummerbund. In the end, negotiations broke down when could not agree to my reasonable demand that a duck should be waiting for me in my dressing room at the start of each show. Nor would they allow me to partner Melinda Messenger in the naked Bolivian Tango. Suggestions that I wanted a rigged phone vote are as scurrilous and unfounded as the suggestions in some print media that negotiations ended when I made a joke about a toupee. I didn’t say toupee but tepee, Polish not polish, and Dusty Lee not Brucie.

Finally, I would like to make it clear that this does not close the door on my future participation in the show. I wish them well in the coming series, even though I’ll be watching Bill Oddie’s new ‘Owl Odyssey’ on BBC2."

Uncle Dick Madeley,
North London

The Adventures of Baz Mad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Baz Mad?’ she spluttered.

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

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

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

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

‘Your novel?’ asked Judy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at the front page.

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

‘Catchy, isn’t it?’

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

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

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

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

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

Judy sat there in silence for nearly a minute.

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

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

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

Strictly Dreamy

(Left to right: Bill, Judy, Myself, Selena, Stephen.)
Click picture to see Judy's legs in more detail

Barely had the glue begun to dry on Crown Prince Willem Hendrik’s elbow than the phone suffered a harmonic seizure. In my panic, the poor man’s arm fell off and attached itself to my thumb which I then had to shake manically in order to free it from the monarch’s grasp, heavy as it was with plastic cement. Only then could I reach for the receiver.

‘Yes,’ I snapped.

‘Oh, hi… Richard? This is Clare at the BBC. I’ve not caught you at a bad moment have I?’

‘You had,’ I replied. ‘I was enjoying a quiet five minutes in my office, putting the finishing touches to my latest Airfix model from the Great Dutch Potentates Collection.’

‘Well, if you’ve got time, I need a word. I’m afraid we’ve made a bit of a botch with your booking.’

I groaned as I deposed an armless Crown Prince by sticking him beneath my desk. There were more important matters at hand, if not to elbow. Judy and I had been asked to make a guest appearance on the BBC’s hit show, Pro-Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing At Christmas. Our booking has been long standing and we’d already devoted weeks of preparation to our dance routine. With only hours left before the big night, complications were the last thing I needed.

‘Could you be a dear?’ asked the producer. ‘I need you to check your contract. Did we say that your team should have “three men and one woman”?’

My hand reached for the file we use of future bookings and extracted the contract embossed with the BBC crest, a unflappable gannet with gremlin passant.

‘You did,’ I confirmed. ‘And we wrote back to say that our team will comprise Bill Oddie, Stephen Fry, Judy and myself. So that’s two men, one woman, and an Oddie.’

‘That’s just it,’ said the producer. ‘It should have been two women.’

‘So you’re saying that our team is a woman short?’ I bit my lip. This was not the first time I’ve been left to rue the inefficiency of the BBC. They once promised me a James May but delivered a Keith Chegwin.

‘We can provide an extra dancer without a problem,’ said Clare the Producer. ‘We’ve had Kerry Katona training in case of an emergency like this. She can join up with you at a moment’s notice.’

‘I’m sure she can,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t think that sounds very safe.’

‘Safe?’ asked the producer.

‘Well, isn’t it dangerous asking four people to dance over my dead body?’ I snapped.

‘I see,’ came the reply. ‘So am I to take it that you have a problem with Kerry?’

‘I have more than a single problem with Kerry. She’s epitomises what’s wrong with this country. Publishers sell her novels though she doesn’t write them, supermarkets use her to promote a healthy lifestyle she doesn’t herself follow, and her personal life is like some rogue state that’s just gone nuclear. To say that I don’t fancy flinging my hips around a dance floor with her would be something of an understatement. I’d prefer to dance the cha-cha-cha with North Korea.’ I rubbed a hand across my immaculate brow. ‘Look, leave it with me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I can find some able bodied woman with an immaculate sense of rhythm.’

‘Well, if you say so, Richard, but in my experience, ballroom dancers are hard to find.’

I came off the phone and uttered Clarkson’s favourite expletive. This was the last thing I needed. The Christmas work has begun to come in thick and fast and I could see that I wouldn’t even get chance to watch myself on Have I Got New For You? I went to find Judy who was busy swimming lengths in our indoor heated pool.

‘Cock up on the Pro-Celebrity Stricture Come Dancing Christmas Special front,’ I said. ‘We’re a woman light.’

Judy trod water as she cleared out an ear that had become waterlogged. ‘Did you just say we’re a Norman light?’

‘I said a woman. And not just any woman. A woman who knows the foxtrot inside out.’

‘We’ve been taking months of secret lessons to get us up to speed,’ said Judy. ‘Who could we possibly ask? We don’t even know anybody called Norman.’

Poor Judy. Her inner ear is such a weakness. She has large earholes, you see, and her lobes also have a natural tendency to attract water. When she’s been swimming, we’re lucky if her hearing is back to normal within a week of her drying out. I went back to the office and rang Oddie.

‘Simple,’ said Bill. ‘Katie will do it.’

‘Katie?’

‘Kate Humble. We present "Autumnwatch" together. Lovely girl. She has an eye for a fine badger.’

‘That’s well and good,’ I replied, ‘but can she dance?’

‘Not a step,’ laughed Bill, ‘but there’s no better woman when you need to identify the call of the screech owl.’

I hung up, leaving Oddie with a promise to ask Katie if we couldn’t find a better alternative. All things considered, if it got that bad, I’d have even consider a screech owl.

‘Stephen?’ I said moments later after the speed dial had finished speeding through his forty seven digit phone number. He’s not so much ex-directory as triple-ex directory. There’s nothing that Stephen appreciates more than his privacy.

‘Ay, ’tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently practising my foxtrot for Pro-Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing’s Christmas Special.’

‘Odd that you should mention it,’ I said. ‘’Tis I, Richard, one Norman light for our team.’

‘Did you say a “Norman”?’

‘A woman. A woman,’ I cried. ‘What’s wrong with people today?’

‘A woman. I see… And is that just one woman we're short?’ he asked, apparently unfazed by the problem.

‘You make it sound like it’s a triviality. We need a woman with immaculate timing and an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary ballroom dancing. This is a woman who has to dance on national TV with Bill Oddie. She has to be good.’

‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Ask Selena Dreamy.’

I was astonished at how the man’s mind works. I’ve said it before but it’s just not connected like those of normal human beings. He’s definitely got the full spec at Mankind 2.0 standards.

‘Of course,’ he continued. ‘When she came to see the mango tree growing in my conservatory, Selena demonstrated a quite admirable set of pins on her. Never has a woman been more blessed by the gods of the rhumba, if not the paso doble, cotillion, two step, and the bunny hug.’

‘Do you know her number?’ I asked, having long ago concluded that the astonishing blog phenomenon known as Selena was really a pipe smoking taxidermist from Slough. That she existed in female form was astonishing news.

‘Naturally, I do,’ replied the Great Fry. ‘What is the point of owning an iPhone if one doesn’t have the telephone numbers of the nation at one’s fingertips?’

‘Why indeed?’ I asked as the phone went silent and I heard Stephen’s fingers begin to stroke his iPhone.

An hour later, I returned to the pool. Judy was practising back flips from the diving board. I waited for her to surface before I told her the good news.

‘We’ve got our woman.’

‘I knew you would,’ she smiled. ‘I got thinking about it too. Norman Collier. He’s always good for a laugh.’

I shook my head and returned to Crown Prince Willem Hendrik’s elbow, the one constant in an often confusing world.

And Now The End Is Near...

Reality struck me hard yesterday. Real hard. Hard like Judy’s elbow on a cold Monday morning. It left me so that I couldn’t cope. Couldn’t post. Couldn’t even function as the normal warm caring human being you’ve come to know and, I hope, love. Then it got worse. Dr. Raj wouldn’t answer my calls. He’s apparently still upset about my change of heart about paying for the psychotherapy sessions for all our mice. He’d planned to use the millions in fees to open his own private hospital. Judy wasn’t interested either. She thinks I’ve been a fool right from the beginning. Whisky was the only thing that could ease the pain on a Wednesday morning.

Having been in the public eye for so long, I’m somewhat use to having my own way. The best seats in restaurants, tickets for all the new West End shows, speeding tickets disappearing like an Amazonian’s leafy back garden. There’s not been a thing in my life at which I’ve failed. Until now.

What is this terrible failure, do I hear you ask? I did a foolish thing yesterday morning. I looked at the statistics for this blog.

I don’t know what made me do it. I imagine it was boredom. It’s always been my great nemesis. Nor do I know what I expected to see. I thought my readers might be in the thousands. Perhaps even tens of thousands once I took into account all the millions of housewives we get watching the Channel 4 show. I just wasn’t prepared for what I did see. It wasn’t tens of thousands. Wasn’t even thousands. It wasn’t even hundreds. It was fifty three. Fifty three people bothered to read this blog on Tuesday! We employ more people to produce the trailers for our show.

Things got worse when I looked at the statistics in detail. Seventeen of those people had arrived here from Google after searching for the phrase ‘Richard Madeley is a tw*t’. Hard to believe, I know, but true. Nineteen people came from other blogs where I’ve left some of my typically forthright comments. When I came down to counting the repeat visitors who clearly didn’t hate me, I counted seven. Think about it. That’s seven people who actually enjoy… Hang on, let’s not get carried away. That’s seven people who read this blog every day. And I know that one of them is Judy and another is me. In other words: I have five regular readers.

Once the tears began to flow, the bottle ran dry. I had no option but to ring up my old friend Phillip Schofield. Between you and me, Phil’s an unacknowledged expert on the web. If you can do it virtually, you can bet your bottom dollar that Schofield’s tried it. Hair extensions, penile products, Thai brides, commando holidays in North Korea…

‘Fifty three readers?’ he repeated. Then he laughed, a braying laughter like somebody had just inserted a red hot poker up the non-carrot eating end of a donkey. ‘You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? Gordon the Gopher’s website has ten times that number of hits each day and he’s been dead for ten years. You must be doing something to put people off!’

‘I’m just being myself,’ I said.

The phone went silent.

‘Well I think we can see your problem, Dick,’ he said.

‘I don’t have a problem dick, thank you very much,’ I said, indignant. That kind of loose talk was how the rumours began about Forsyth.

‘No, no, your website. You shouldn’t be yourself. You’ll be telling me that you’re as abrasive on there as you are in real life.’

‘Sod off,’ I said, perhaps a bit abrasively. ‘If telling the truth is abrasive, then I’m abrasive. I admit that I seem to offend a few people here or there. I can’t stick a mouse down a garbage disposal unit without somebody thinking I’ve killed their childhood pet. As for my problem with polygamists, I think it’s only reasonable to upset them. And as for the homeless…’

He gasped. ‘The homeless?’

‘Well, not technically the homeless, per se,’ I explained. ‘There are apparently many different types of vagrant in the city, many different levels. Some with homes, some without. It caused a bit of a stink when I lumped them all together. Though, if you ask me, lumping homeless men together has to be a recipe for something a bit pungent.’

‘There you go again, Dick,’ said Phil. ‘You open your mouth before you realise what you’re saying. That’s why people don’t read your blog. You are incapable of speaking without being deeply offensive.’

‘Yes, well,’ I mumbled. ‘It won’t be a problem for much longer.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked in that sycophantic tone he has whenever somebody rings up This Morning and sounds a bit suicidal. I don’t know why he can’t just be more like me. I'd cut straight to a break so I could tell them to pull themselves together and do a jigsaw or go read the Guardian.

‘I’m thinking of closing down my Appreciation Society,’ I explained. ‘Do I really want to waste thirty minutes of my day writing a thousand words to an almost non-existent audience of five people? I might as well go work on the BBC if I wanted that kind of exposure.’

I shouldn’t have mentioned the BBC in Phil’s company, not after the way they treated Gordon the Gopher’s funeral. It took six flushes before they could get rid of his corpse. It was no surprise when Phil made an excuse to hang up, though he hadn’t had any useful suggestions other than I should let Judy write the blog and I should be happy nicking suitable photos from other websites like every other blogger does. Only, I’m not happy being like every other blogger. I want to be a shining star among blogs. I want every post to have ninety comments, watch small rivalries develop between groups of readers all vying for my attention. And if I can’t have that, I’m not going to play. I’m thinking of giving up unless somebody can come along and give me a good reason to stay. Any reason. Any reason whatsoever.

Please.

Black Eye Dick

If I don’t seem in a good mood this morning, it’s because, as you can see, I’m nursing a black eye. I had a terrible evening at a dinner celebrating the best in British Comedy organised by the Red Cross. The award I was supposed to be presenting was for best standup, which I was more than pleased to do. When I worked as a standup commedian in the late 1970s, I discovered that there’s nothing harder than making people laugh. I wasn’t up until near the end of the evening, which had been going quite well. Brucie had received his usual Lifetime Achievement Award with his typical self-deprecating humour and all the hosts had been in good form, particularly Des O’Connor who told a rather funny anecdote about Fred Dinenage and a wheelbarrow.

After such a build up, I’m afraid I let the side down. I made a slight slip up when I opened the envelope. Instead of Bobby Davro’s name, I announced that the winner was Joe Pasquale, whose name was written at the bottom of the card as a way of reminding me that I was meant to introduce him to present the next award. Before the organisers could point out my mistake, Joe was half-way through his thank-you speech. That’s when I got the message in my ear telling me that I’d made a mistake.

I did the best I could in the circumstances. I stepped forward, tapped Joe on his shoulder, and explained my mistake. Davro was ecstatic, of course, and came bouncing up on stage. Only Joe wouldn’t listen to reason. I tried to be polite but, when he wouldn’t hand the statuette back, I tried to snatch it from his hands. That was my fatal mistake. They’re like lemurs, these commedians. They have a gang instinct. Seeing one of their own being manhandled, I had four minor jokesters come lunging at me from the crowd. I managed to punch Alan Carr, kick Alan Davies, and completely avoid the lumbering bulk that was Justin Lee Collins. But that bloody Dave Gorman caught me with a right hook that sent me flying. Can you believe I was floored by Dave Gorman? The bloody guy seems to get everywhere.

While all this was happening, Davro and Pasquale were grappling for the award. It seems it’s okay for them to fight among themselves. In the end, Davro won, leaving Pasquale in tears.

What all this means is that the Union of Television Hosts and the British Comedy Federation are now not officially speaking to one another. Whether this will have an impact on TV shows is yet to be seen. There might be a lack of comedians on 'Have I Got News For You?', though to be frank, with the quality of their guests lately, that can’t be a bad thing. And the less that’s said about Trevor McDonald’s show the better.

While I nurse my black eye, here are some facts about Bobby Davro to keep you going. Did you know that he trained to be monk? He is also a great reader of the gnostic gospels and has written three books on them. After a slight decline in his fortunes, he’s once again one of the most popular commedians in the UK. He has been asked to play Davros in the new Dr. Who and will be appearing in a three hour long Christmas special. As an in joke, the Doctor will actually refer to Bobby Davros. It will be the first time that viewers will get to know the first name of the man behind the Darleks.