Taboo Sucks, To You...

I see that Chip Dale is back and has blogged for two days straight! Why did nobody tell me? And how long will those pineapple-scented thighs keep up in the current blogging climate?

Things have changed since he last graced us with his innocent optimism and questionable quips. Of course, it would be churlish to remind people of the poorly written posts that characterised much of his blog output, so, instead, I simply welcome him back like a long-lost relative from the side of the family that nobody cares to talk about because they live on Merseyside and drive taxi cabs for a living.

Despite my initial wariness of Chip – I’m still not convinced that it’s healthy to be so obsessed with thongs – I have been slowly developing a soft spot for the man who has overcome so many obvious physical difficulties to succeed in the emotionally demanding world of male stripping. Admittedly, I have a similar attitude towards Gordon Brown and politics, though there’s also a nail gun fetish somewhere in that mix. Chip, however, just brings out the best in me and I’m glad to have him around so long as we’re separated by a few hundred miles.

It’s one of the drawbacks of being famous that people often stop me in the street and demand to know what I think about stripping as a career. ‘I lack the flexibility,’ I reply, though in truth, I encourage all men to take off their clothes for money unless they suffer some obvious physical defect such as good looks or a perfect body. It’s why I could never make a career as ‘Big Dick Madeley’. The Great Sculptor damned me by using clay free of blemishes. There’s not a wart on my body; just shapely legs, firm buttocks, and a thin waste angling nicely into armpits to die for. And as Chip proves, to be a male stripper, you have to put all your obvious flaws on show. It’s what makes for a rowdy evening and Judy return home at four thirty in the morning threatening me with a thong slingshot.

The world of female strippers is, of course, something quite different. It’s all about darkened booths heavy with a sordid musk and fetid bodily odours reminiscent of Clapham Common on New Year’s Eve. By contrast, is there anything funnier than seeing a man strip for a living? I remember thinking it strange when there was an outcry about the stripping postmen on our final Channel 4 show. People complained that it was wrong if me to enjoy Judy’s obvious embarrassment and that she could laugh at another person’s anatomy.

In these days of ‘right thinking’, we’re not meant to express an opinion about (or find humour in) anything out of the ordinary – though as the great S.J. Perelman once said, ‘humour, in its simplest form, is the unexpected [...] the sudden disruption of thought, the conjoining of unlikely elements’. It’s why we can laugh at a funeral, in the middle of a battle, or during Bruce Forsyth’s act. Stripping provides instantaneous access (or exposure) to the unexpected and though Chip would probably disagree: his success probably has more to do with embarrassed laughter than it has anything to do with his sex appeal.

After all, some of the oldest jokes in our culture are directed to people with large noses or enormous bottoms. What is the Venus of Willendorf if it isn’t a series of Benny Hill reduced to fit your hand? Unlike our primitive ancestors, we’ve simply moved on to laugh at oddly placed tattoos and tricks involving novelty sailor hats.

I suppose all forms of stripping appeal to the prurient part of our nature, where the infantile taboos lurk. Yet men like Chip seems particularly good at demonstrating that taboo and humour are reverse sides of the same screwed-up coin. Just ask the greatest stand-up of all time, Sigmund Freud, who often shocked audiences with his jokes about Dora, a plate of spinach and the baboon called Ferdinand. Comedy trails after taboo and skirts around the acceptable.

Political correctness may currently define what is acceptable but its strictures will never abide. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve been told off for using the word ‘midget’ recently but my mind naturally reaches for it when looking for a shorthand way of expressing the unexpected. Midget. Earlobe. Lubricated. Onion. Stripper. Owl. I know that three of these words might offend people below four feet but I have never heard either Ant or Dec complain. And is there anything funnier than a midget stripper? A lubricated onion? A heavily earlobed Owl? Unless, of course, you’re the producers at Channel 4 who wouldn’t allow the talent to book the acts for the final show of a successful series.

So, welcome back Chip. It’s just a shame you’re so tall and not an owl.

Sunday

The past few days have witnessed the closing ceremonies to two significant World events, spectacular in their conception, stunning in the execution, and with far-reaching consequences for the people who will now try to follow them. I can’t speak for the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics but I pity anybody trying to fill the gap in the TV schedules left by ‘The Richard&Judy Show’ which ended so triumphantly on Friday. I won’t say that our last show will never be bettered but I do believe that Judy will never be happier than when those five pasty fat men wearing thongs dropped their hats and wiggled for her.

It was my idea to leave our viewers with a thong routine. Some weeks ago, I first mentioned to Judy that we might ask my old friend Chip Dale to do the honours and dance for us. My agent rang Chip’s agent only to discover that The Thonglateer is currently out of the country, performing nightly at the only Russian oil rig run by all-female staff. ‘Would love to, Dick,’ came Chip’s emailed reply, ‘but my thong is heavy with the stench of vodka and a sudden move to a warmer climate would put too much stress on my loins. Appreciate the thought. Gabby sends her love.’

Now the show is over and the Channel 4 contract a memory of better days, I’ve been thinking some more about my immediate future. I'm rather tired today so I’ve done nothing today but sit and watch the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, pondering the inevitable questions that need answering before we lend our support to the London Olympics. I think my answers show how the London Olympic organisers would be wise to seek my input.

How, for example, will the world to cope with the sudden glut of cheap Chinese grins that will now flood the market? Beijing has been a sporting success but at what price to the world valuation of the smile? I’ve never seen so many unhappy people grin incessantly for the cameras as though their lives depended on it. It was heartbreaking to see the youth of China forced to be so happy. I think that their rigid grins said everything there is to say about modern China.

The Madeley Suggestion: In 2012, let’s celebrate our freedom. I want to see London’s youth looking sullen and surely. We’ll do for the frown what the Chinese have done for the grin.

As Plácido Domingo was being hoisted into the air, I wondered if the same spectacle might be organised for London. What price the hire of a pneumatic lift for a day and what’s there maximum capacity? Would a Ginger Spice and a Will Young be too much? As soon as I’d put my mind to this question, I asked myself another. Why must the Olympics always life performers above the crowd? It’s become a rather tired cliché.

The Madeley Suggestion: Let’s make depth the new height. I want to see Tom Jones singing from a deep pit dug into our Olympic stadium.

I worry too that we won’t be able to man the Olympics. The only solution is forced labour camps or at least some nefarious scheme involving Polish workers and the promise of a better life. Of course, we might simply bring in the Beijing performers to do the same jobs over here for a couple of pounds per hundred feet they’re asked to climb on top of some unstable temporary structure symbolic of something or other.

The Madeley Suggestion: We should offer free passports to anybody willing to sign away their human rights and be worked like a mule for the next four years. In a way, it will be an extension to the current YTS and the New Deals Scheme for the long-term unemployed.

The BBC commentators might need extra training. They’ve enjoyed the spectacle of Beijing so much that it might be difficult for them to commentate on any ceremony that’s lacking similar organisational skills.

The Madeley Suggestion: We should send Huw Edwards to North Korea for the next four years to train in the art of political propaganda and to realise that not every spectacle is an innocent display of a people’s passion.

Which leads me to my final thought. Even though it’s four years away, we should begin to think about the closing ceremony. Shouldn’t it be our main goal to close the London Olympics with something that will leave the world amazed?

The Madeley Suggestion: We could do worse than hiring five pale and chubby male strippers in thongs. It worked for Judy. It worked for me. It could work for London too.

Sans Titre

Writing begins with writing.

It's a rather obvious observation for a Friday morning but I always find it surprising how accurate it can be. I often sit here for a while, wondering if I really want to write anything for the blog, but then the simple act of putting fingers on keys inspires me and I find a few words and I'm off...

The week has been another I've had to abandon (despite the fact that I've enhanced my reputation as the nation's sexiest male [Hattip to Graham]). I haven't seen Bill Oddie in days and the messages coming from the Fry wagon-train have dried up. The problem is that I've also become rather preoccupied by annoyances in the office in which we're editing 'Eye of the Storm 2'. As you know, I'm a man of many dislikes but few are as deep as my loathing for bad art.

My recent lack of energy, my mood swings, and my general inability to function have had one identifiable cause: the art that's used to fill the blank spaces in the nation's office blocks. I spend my days staring at a ghastly picture by Wassily Kandinsky. It's all Modernist angst, twisted shapes and distorted lines, mass produced by some firm who clearly believe that a bit of nice typography beneath the print makes 'Sans Titre' a somehow more meaningful. I'm considering making a legal challenge to the building's management about the print, except I'd find it embarrassing to explain why I dislike it so much. How do you politely tell people that a set of male genitals I can see in the upper half of the picture put me off my lunch? The fact that Chip Dale is apparently back and wriggling his way around North Wales suggests to me that I'm one of the few men with a sense of propriety left in the world. I'm telling you that you're all mad!

The paintings in the corridor are no better. Blotchy monstrosities like a yeast infection has suddenly covered the canvas. Yet they match the carpet and that is the only reason why abstract art is chosen for offices. It doesn't require any thought to hang it on a wall. I'm reminded of the scene in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' when Max Von Sydow's character complains that he doesn't produce his art simply to match the sofas (I'm paraphrasing). Unfortunately, that's how modern art is treated and it's not good for the soul.

Speaking of things that aren't good for the soul: my attention for the rest of the week will be taken with writing a sitcom for the BBC's new College of Comedy competition.* I have a month to write 10 pages of dazzling stuff. My record in these competitions is quite striking. I've never got past the first round. This, however, is the first time I'll be entering the competition under my own name. It's now just a matter of finding some interesting idea for a show. My idea is to call the show 'Twitchers' and get Oddie in to help me co-write it.

* Update: Well, that optimism didn't last long. I would have spent the next few weeks writing something for the competition had I not just noticed the small print on the Press Release. 'The scheme [...] is designed for people who have already begun their careers, and can demonstrate some achievement, such as broadcast material, a script commission, or performance of their work.'

Well, that rules me out! Again.

I really need to write about this at some length but, for now, let me simply say that this is a perfect example of what's happening to the media in this country. I've heard that it's pointless sending scripts into the BBC because they don't read them. Commissions go out to people they already know, which saves them the time and money otherwise spent wading through the slush piles. To compensate and to give the impression that they are open to new writers, they have these occasional competitions. However, even this route is sealed off. I ask you: what is the point? What is the bloody point?

Chip Dale's Back and Armed With Memes!

The heavily oiled mass of manically depressed Welsh thongdom has been roused from his winter slumber and he has tagged me with a meme. I’m a little humbled to see myself listed in his hopes for 2008, so I’ll happily include him in my own. Those of us who go through life misunderstood by the wider world need to stay together, even if it means getting a cheap hustler’s body oil on my best casual slacks.

There are some reassuringly similar themes in our two lists. Chip is clearly a deep thinker. As, I believe, a I. His musical choices are not as suspect as I’d have imagined given that he spends his life wiggling his hips to bad disco music. All I can do is entreat him to give Serge Gainsbourg a listen.

So, my hopes for 2008 are these:

1. I manage to start earning a living with my writing, so I can begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest living author of our age, Mr. Fry.
2. I continue to blog, despite all my labours in the real world involving cleaning products, discounted tins of baked beans, or labelling guns.
3. People stop asking me to quit blogging. We can all enjoy a good laugh about it but on cold mornings and late evenings, it actually makes me pause before I put finger to key.
4. My collected volume of essays and shorter pieces, ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’, wins me the Samuel Johnson Prize, presented to me by a woman called Selena dressed in ocelot, with all my fine blog readers in attendance in the cheap seats at the back.
5. I finally master French so I can more fully devote myself to my current obsession with Serge Gainsbourg.
6. Chip also manages earn a living doing what he most enjoys doing. Not by stripping but by writing. I miss his blog.
7. My big project is a huge success bringing me yet more fame and fortune. I don’t mean ‘Dick Justice’, which will be as successful as these ITV documentaries can be, but the project I’m calling Richard Madeley’s Secret Summer Project 2008.
8. I am elected to become the new Lord Mayor for London.

I don’t normally tag other people but I’ll use this to promote some new and relatively unknown bloggers. It’s only natural that I tag my good friend Stephen Fry (but he’s so busy, I don’t expect him to even acknowledge this), my new favourite social commentator Mr. Jerry Caesar, the difficult-to-type AxyxZ, and to Bertas who is much too busy to be a couchslob.

The Shirt Off My Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Update]

What do you mean you’re working for Judy?

The Message And The Massage

Just when you think your week is heading for an insignificant end, something unexpected happens. Yesterday morning, fresh from my shave, though still feeling slightly light-headed from the wound my Mach-3 had inflicted on my jugular, I received a nice email of support from a totally unique quarter. And there were some wise words too. It was from my friend and fellow blogger, Chip Dale, who had written to suggest that half of my problems might be attributed to tension.

‘Come on Dick,’ wrote Chip, ‘why don’t you get yourself a massage, slip on a thong and sip champagne from Judy’s slipper?’

The dear man. Whenever heaven breaths a hush, I’m sure his name is mentioned. Consider. Here is a man handicapped by a terrible affliction. He bears more than a passing resemblance to Liberal Democrat M.P. Lembit Opik. He also makes his livelihood in the seedy world of Welsh stripping and lives for his thong collection and his slightly psychotic Romanian Cheeky Girl. Yet he can still take time out of his busy day to send me advice. It’s a shame that I had to email him back in order to tell him that two of his suggestions were out of the question from the off.

I just don’t wear thongs. If the truth be told, I actually wear very little. I hate the thought of being caught with VPL (or ‘visible panty line’ as it’s known in TV land) so I always ‘go commando’ unless it’s really cold and then I wear my long-johns. As for drinking from Judy’s slippers, they’re a bit ragged and have a hole where her big toe sticks through. I wouldn’t advise anybody to put them within arm’s length of their nose unless their arm is the length of the M11. I often tell her that she needs to buy a new pair but she says that Barry Manilow bought them for her before ‘he turned weird’ and that makes them ‘lucky’.

I suppose Chip would have good advice on that subject too. He was certainly right about my needing a massage. For the first time, I’m beginning to understand why some people still think that I’m Chip and that Chip is me. To Chip’s credit, he writes a good blog but it would take a staggering intellect to write both of them each day. After all, it takes a towering intellect to write mine alone.

‘Chip Dale says I need a massage,’ I told Judy as we sat down for breakfast.

‘Chip who?’ she asked.

‘Dale,’ I said, mopping up a sudden spurt of blood from my neck. ‘He’s a blogger.’

‘Oh,’ replied Judy, absent with her toast and the Radio Times. ‘I thought I recognised his name.’

‘Funny,’ I said, pressing a slice of white to my wound. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned him to you before.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the name just rings a bell.’

I looked at her with the Madeley brows in attack formation. ‘He’s a male stripper from Wales,’ I said.

Her masticating ceased. A crumb on her lip seem to pause, consider the canyon of her cleavage, and then jump into it head first. What a way to go!

‘A stripper?’ she asked.

I thought I detected a slight blush.

‘You surely don’t know him professionally?’ I asked, preparing to take careful note of her reply.

She returned to her toast and dipped it into her egg. ‘Perhaps I do,’ she said, apparently indifferent to the thought of being caught ogling men who reveal themselves for money. ‘Does he smell of pineapples?’

That was all the clues I needed. I’ve read Chip’s Diary enough to know that he does indeed smell of pineapples. Sometimes I think he smells of nothing else.

‘That’s it!’ I said, casting aside my bread bandage and snatching up the car keys.

‘That’s what?’

‘You’ve been looking at naked men.’

‘I’ve seen you naked enough times,’ sniffed Judy.

‘That’s hardly significant.’

A look of hard undiluted spite narrowed in her eyes. ‘That’s what I thought too.’

If you know me at all, you know that I don’t take kindly to that sort of remark. It’s like the time she was always bringing up the subject of my vasectomy at the most inappropriate times. We once had a boy scout on the show, taking about his merit badge for knots, and asked him if he could tie a sheepshank in a short piece of string. Everybody knew what she meant except the poor boy who boasted that he thought a clove hitch would be better.

‘I’m going before I say something I regret,’ I told her. Already I was at the front door which I intended to slam. ‘I’m going for a massage and I don’t know when I’ll be back!’

Slam duly completed, I took the Range Rover and headed straight into the city, my mood gradually lightened by the CD of brass band music I always keep in the car for moments like that. As the miles passed by, the bounce of Colonel Bogey played by the Household Cavalry Band was beginning to work its magic on me. I knew that a massage would put an end to my worries and that I would return to Judy a much more tolerant man.

If you are wondering if I felt any shame about visiting a massage parlour, I should explain that massage parlours are much misunderstood. I happen know a well run little establishment which give full authentic Korean massages and is nothing like those other sorts of establishment you have to be so bloody careful to avoid when picking out a place for a good back rub. I’ve known friends to go in to those places to have their tennis elbows massaged only to come out with a Polish bride and a .45 slug in their kneecap.

‘Ah, Mr. Madeley,’ said Hector, who sits behind the counter at Hungs.

‘How are things, Hector?’ I asked. ‘Business good?’

‘Business is excellent,’ he said as he came around the desk to greet me. ‘We’re doing quite well.’

‘So I suppose that makes you quite well Hungs,’ I replied.

He looked at me like I was a vacant parking lot. He never laughs. ‘You want massage, Mr. Madeley?’

‘I do indeed, Hector. I want the most bruising back rub you have to offer. The tension in my shoulders is enough to make a walnut crack.’

‘Ah,’ he said, nodding. ‘Then you want to see Madam Hwang. She’s new in the country. Just arrived from Korea.’

‘That sounds excellent,’ I said. ‘I’m in the mood for the authentic massage techniques of the Republic of South Korea.’

He handed me my towel and guided me into the changing room. ‘Not South Korea,’ he said as I stepped inside. ‘North Korea. Madam Hwang is from the north.’ With that he closed the door and left me to the sound of my heartbeat.

I don’t know how long it should take for a man to change into a towel but it took me longer. Much longer. When I came out of the cubicle, Hector looked up at me as though he’d forgotten all about me.

‘Ah, Madam Hwang!’ he said, as if in reminder. He pointed to the stairs. ‘First door.’

The steps creaked, my bones cracked, and the sound of something sinewy being wrenched came from one of the other rooms. I looked back at Hwang. ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘That only man with tennis elbow. First room.’

I heard somebody laugh. It sounded faintly Polish. I didn’t wait around to hear if the elbow was going to be followed by a kneecapping. I tapped on the door.

It opened and I found myself facing a chest that could suckle a gorilla. Madam Hwang was not your average North Korean, who tend to be small people, of very delicate ways and a wonderfully warm demeanour despite the years of brutal hardship they’ve suffered under the bastard Kim Yong-il. Nor did she look like she’d suffered from years of oppressive anything. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if her escape to the West hadn’t been arranged at the highest level of the North Korean military keep to protect the rice harvest. I’ve known smaller sumo.

‘Richard!’ she gasped and slapped her hands together. ‘I know you! I see show! Come in, come in. You lie down. I will make you well. You got bad back? I can tell. Madam Hwang always can tell. You lie down. I fix you.’

I shivered in a way I haven’t shivered since a child about to undergo a school medical. I don’t know what it was; a failure of nerve or a sudden awareness of the distance from Judy and home. I just froze, standing there in the middle of the room wearing nothing but my towel.

Madam Hwang tutted. ‘Come on. No shy,’ she said. And with that, she grabbed the end of the towel and ripped it from me. I must have done a dozen turns before I stopped spinning. Dizzy, I didn’t know where I was until a pair of hands grabbed me by my thighs, turned me upside down and threw me onto the massage table.

How do I describe agony? Let me count the ways… Madame Hwang’s elbow did something to my spine that robbed the feeling from my legs. She then did something to my legs which robbed the feeling from my head. When she grabbed my neck, the light bulbs flickered. This went on for nearly an hour. There were oils rubbed into bones, fingers drilling into tissue. You’ve heard of bamboo shoots placed up men’s fingernails as a means of torture? Well this was worse. When I was in the most compromising position possible, she pulls out a proper length of bamboo, hollowed out into a tube.

‘What’s that,’ I said, through numb lips and with an even number tongue.

‘Colonic,’ she grinned, ‘the old fashioned way!’

I really find it hard to go on describing this. The woman had lungs on her that, I swear, could suck mud up a trombone. The whole thing lasted nearly two hours and by the time she’d finished, I must have been half a stone lighter and a considerable number of inches taller. I had to bow my head when going out of the room just to get through the door I’d early walked through with inches to spare.

When I got home, Judy looked up from her rowing machine and winced.

‘What happened to you?’ she asked, soft, warm, unsophisticated. Just like the Judy I love and cherish.

‘Chip Dale said I should have massage so I had a massage,’ I said as I slumped down in a chair. ‘North Korean masseur. Big hands. Bigger fingers.’

‘But you look so different,’ she said. ‘You seem taller. And much thinner. And what did she do to your hair?’

‘She did nothing to my hair,’ I said, running fingers through my pristine locks.

Her lips pursed in that way she has when she thinks she knows better.

I struggled to my feet and looked at myself in one of the many mirrors I keep dotted around the place in case of I need to do an emergency brush of my fringe.

‘My god,’ I wept as I saw myself. ‘What’s happened to my hair? It’s white.’

Judy just grabbed her oars and started to row. ‘It was only a matter of time, Richard,’ she said, as cruel as some barbarian slave at the oars of a Roman galleon. ‘You can’t keep living in the fast with your Korean massages and dreams of owning your own midget football team. I’ll get you some Grecian 2000 this afternoon and you might remember this the next time you accuse me of looking at other men.’ She tutted. ‘Chip Dale. He might be bigger, stronger, smoother, oilier, and Welsh, but you, my dear Richard, have him beat in other ways.’

‘And what are those?’ I asked, finally defeated.

I never did get an answer. I don’t know how she did it, but Judy began to row a little faster and she started to pull away. Soon she had turned the corner in the hallway and, with a final wave, she disappeared towards the back of the house where the kitchen meets open water.

The Pencil in Your Pocket

The Welsh Stripper writes another of his increasingly haphazard posts today and amazingly stumbles across an interesting question which I find myself in rather the unique position of being able to answer. He asks if pitbulls can be forced to open their jaws with a finger/pencil inserted into the hole beneath their tails. An interesting question, though one I believe he has unwittingly stolen from Jasper Carrot who used to talk about the same thing in one of his acts. I happen to remember this tip so well because I have used it on more than one occasion.

You’d be surprised by the number of pitbull terriers that attacked me during my days as a reporter. I’d often go looking to interview some member of criminal classes and found myself staring down the business end of a Doberman. That’s where I honed the skills to render this threat neutral, finding that a good quality HB pencil slots into the hole quite nicely, making it the perfect instrument for dealing with dangerous dogs.

Since I’ve moved into celebrity interviews, I find I don’t need to use the pencil as much as used to, though I always carry one around in my pocket just in case.

It was lucky I did when we interviewed Russell Crowe just after his success on Gladiator back in 2004. He turned up at the studio looking to pick a fight with somebody and I obliged him by getting him confused with TV impressionist Jon Culshaw. It was hardly my fault. I only saw him across the set so I waved and said ‘how you doing Jon?’

Russell was on me in a second and sank his teeth deep into my left thigh. Judy did what Judy does best. She fainted on the spot but I had didn’t have chance to help her. I was too busy reaching for my pencil.

After a few minutes calm was restored and we even managed to film a two minute interview with Russell. When it was all done, we got him to film a few lines to camera to advertise his interview and then we said our goodbyes. Russell was charm personified, signing autographs for everybody in the studio. And then I removed the pencil and he was back to his snarling ways. But it just goes to prove what the Welsh Stripper was asking: yes, the pencil trick does work.

If that fact wasn’t good enough for you, I’ve got some other useful tricks you can use a pencil for. Did you know that if you push it into a shark’s eye socket, you can disarm them? A pencil can be a lethal weapon in the hands of a master. The Japanese martial art of Hapika teaches its devotees to protect themselves with nothing but a pencil. It’s the rarest of the martial arts and doesn’t have coloured belts, having ranks based on a pencil’s hardness. Finally, did you know that the modern pencil was invented in Iceland and remains that country’s major contribution to civilisation?

A Measured Response to Prune Juice

The advantage of having my own weekday show on Channel 4 is that I can put it to good use. I can help people find organ donors, promote a cause, or help expand literacy in the nation’s school. I can also use it to destroy a man. I only mention this in passing. Make of it what you will, Chip Dale.

I also mention in passing that I’ve always hated prunes. I don’t know how Dale knew this as it wasn’t even in my authorised biography but I want him to bring a halt to this prune juice offensive of his. Let’s not put prune juice in the wrong hands. There’s no room in blogging for these terrible weapons of mass disruption. This morning I sent him a message, warning him to bring hostilities to an end by 6pm tonight. So far, I’ve had no response* and I’m taking measures to launch waves of ‘taffy pulling’ on his blog.

On tonight’s show we’ll be doing a feature on people who look ten years older than their real age and we’ll have make up artist Sue Potter in the studio making Flora Smythe, who looks about 93, look more like her real age of 83. It promises to be an exciting show as Professor Raj Persaud (he’s a professor now?) takes Peter Hitchens through some moves in our continuing feature on celebrity Greek wrestling.

Some prune facts which everyone should know before they start spreading the juice around. Did you know that in some parts of South America the stones from prunes are placed in the ears to enhance the effects of cannabis? Prunes are also high in vitamin D and can help you tan more easily. The downside of this is you’ll spend more time on the toilet and, all things being equal, the prune / sunbathing ratio cancels each other out. You might even look paler, though not down the backs of your legs. Prunes are a natural laxative and are good for the digestion, unless you swallow the stones which contain toxins which produce a effect similar to LSD, including a strange psychosis in which you believe your stools are singing light Italian opera.

* 4PM UPDATE: Dale's now given up, citing humanitarian grounds and the peace-making skills of Graf von Straf Hindenburg. I think we all know he was worried that Judy would mock his manhood on tonight's show. The first Prunic War has come to an end with a victory for Madeley and the forces of good. Now let the church bells ring.