The Church of the Sacred Richard

Having been woken by a neighbour drilling into a concrete patio at 8.55 this morning, I’m still not fully back with the world. Yesterday's Christmas shopping took it out of me more than I like to admit, so you’ll have to excuse me if this is another of my shorter posts. They might be the norm for the next few days. Of course, there’s every chance that they won’t be the norm and I’ll be writing at length on Christmas Day, as if to prove what a sad time we celebrities really have when away from your screens. I think I’m just allergic to tinsel, while Judy can’t get enough of the stuff.

I don’t know an easy way of escaping Christmas beyond becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. It seems to me an odd paradox that the best way to avoid the festivities is to become a Christian. You rarely, if ever, hear an atheist or agnostic say that since they don’t believe in/doubt the existence of God, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Yet if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, you can get away with it every single year. People will, in fact, go out of their way not to offend your sensibilities.

Perhaps I should form my own sect, The Church of the Sacred Richard. It would attract a huge membership. Although it’s no longer a novelty to say that Christmas is the great feast of consumerism, everybody walks around muttering darkly about how much they hate it. The obligation to go into debt amazes me each year, even as I’m handing over my credit cards buying things for friends, family and Oddie. We go through the motions as if there’s no other choice. Well, TCotSR is that choice.

There’s another side of Christmas which I’m completely in tune with and which TCotSR would help promote: the need to spend a week away from work and worries. It’s just a shame that I’ll be spending January trying to make amends for the previous month’s excesses, both in terms of my finances and the time I’ve wasted sitting in front of the TV and watching a full season of Carry On films. For me, writing and blogging, I find that I need consistency. Christmas is coming at a bad time for me this year. Sometimes it comes at the wrong timde for us. That’s why, in The Church of the Sacred Richard, we celebrate Christmas when we want it.

If you’re interested in joining, sign in the comments and I’ll have your vestments made measure. Bishop Fry or Archdeacon Oddie will be leading this week's service in The Dog & Duck, Lewisham. Book early to reserve your seat.

Preparing To Do Some Serious Elf Harm

It’s now late Friday night and I’m sitting here feeling quite perplexed as to why Cactus TV have failed to send me their Christmas greetings. At the very least, I thought I’d be invited to their Christmas party tonight. They forget me each year, yet here I’ve sat, all night, dressed as a Christmas elf packing a bottle of Blue Nun. I suppose their party is now drawing to an inebriated close with Dr. Raj’s doing his Britney Spears impression with a couple of finger rolls.

I'm also perplexed by the first results of the new poll. Only two votes are encouraging me to write my autobiography, nobody has requested more of my celebrated poetry, and one of you have suggested that I should give up blogging. The only consolation is that the majority of you feel that 2008 will be a year of celebrity nuptials.

Such disappointments perhaps accounts for why I’m posting something brief tonight. But it’s not the only reason. ‘Operation Elbow ’goes into operation at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Judy and I are already girding ourselves for a lighting raid on London’s shops to finalise the Christmas gifts. We’ll be first through the doors when the stores open at nine and we should hopefully be home before the crowds descend. It leaves me with this brief window of opportunity to ask you all what you want. Get your requests in now and I’ll see what we can do. There aren’t many of you, so I’m looking to spend no more than a couple of hundred pounds on each of you.

If you're lost for ideas, why not ask me for an electronic toothbrush or the new Charlie Brown DVD?

Zorg the Destroyer

By eleven o’clock, Madeley was one of those happily contented figure you typically read about at Christmas. A small glass of port had spread warmth through these tired old bones of mine and A.A. Gill’s gently paced sojourn through the English psychology had weakened my resolve to linger a moment longer in my armchair. Already drifting across that boundary between wakefulness and sleep, I had turned off the Christmas tree lights before I slowly climbed the stairs to bed, only stopping off at the bathroom to change into my pyjamas and dressing gown and to fill myself a glass of water in which I would soon leave my million pound smile to soak.

I was about to pull the master switch that turns off the outdoor floodlights and arms the infra red turrets on the battlements, when there was a fretful hammering on the front door. Such was the indecency of the hour and the panicked nature of the knocking, I was immediately awake and my old army training kicked in. I was down the stairs in three leaps and had the front door opened and the intruder wrestled to the ground in the time it has taken you to read about it in a line of my immaculately written prose.

It was only when the red mist began to clear that I recognised the small figure trapped beneath my knee. It was Mrs. Ronnie Corbett, dressed in her night gown and wearing a look of absolute terror on her face.

‘My poor woman,’ I said, moving the sharp edge of my tube of denture cleaner from her jugular. ‘What must you think of me, throwing you over my shoulder like that?’

‘Richard, you have to come,’ she said as I helped her to her feet. She was clearly shivering, obviously with the cold, so I moved her into the living room and sat her in a chair before draped my dressing gown around her shoulders. ‘Ronnie’s had a terrible accident,’ she explained, ‘and they said an ambulance can’t come for a good two hours.’

‘Don’t you worry yourself, Mrs. C.,’ I said. ‘You were right to come here. There are few people in this street that are more used to dealing with emergencies than Judy and me.’

As if to prove the point, I promptly nipped upstairs, grabbed my car keys, and told Judy about our visitor. Then I came running back downstairs and rushed out to the car. I was at the front door of Corbett Manor in less than three minutes. That’s when I realised I was still in my pyjamas and that I’d left Mrs. Ronnie Corbett sitting on the chair in our front room.

I was about to get back in the car when headlights flooded the drive. It was Judy in her little Suzuki Swift bringing Mrs. Corbett and keys to the house.

‘We thought we’d better come along,’ said Judy, who had somehow managed to waste three minutes dressing herself, applying full make-up, and picking out a suit for Mrs. Ronnie Corbett. I told her that I had more important matters on my mind.

We found Ronnie in an armchair, a huge log fire burning beside him, and the poor man writhing in agony. Blood speckled his tartan trousers. His lime green intarsia golfing sweater offended the eye.

‘It was the walnut,’ explained Ronnie as I kneeled at his side. ‘It shattered in my lap.’

‘That is only too clear,’ I said. A pair of nutcrackers lay on the floor, alongside a spilled bowl of Tesco’s finest selection of Yuletide nuts. The poor man had obviously become one of only three people who, on average each year, are injured when an abnormally pressurised walnut explodes with the force of a hand grenade. Razor sharp shards of walnut shell had penetrated his trousers and caused extensive damage to his lower regions.

‘We can’t move him like this,’ I said, examining the site of the injury. ‘Some of these pieces of walnut could be lodged in vital regions.’ I stood up and looked for the nearest phone. ‘We need help immediately or he might never play golf again.’

‘Is it that bad?’ asked Ronnie.

‘Sit tight, little fellow,’ I said, laying a reassuring hand on his head. ‘Stay still and don’t, for god’s sake, tell any anecdotes involving the letter P.’

‘Ah, no… Indeed…’ he said. ‘Which reminds me… Ha! Did I tell you the one about the Polish postman?’ His face winced with pain as he mouthed those lethal syllables.

‘I told you not to,’ I said as I began to dial the number I’ve learned to memorise for moments such as this.

As you know, Judy’s a woman unable to restrain her curiosity. And we know what that did the cat, though forensic evidence was lacking.

‘What about the Polish postman?’ she asked, to my utter dismay.

Ronnie, ever the hero, let out a trademark ‘ah ha!’ and then delivered his punch line with his usual immaculate timing.

‘He delivered the mail on time,’ he said before he pushed his glasses up his nose and passed out.

I shook my head. I could hear a phone ringing. A moment later, there was a click.

‘’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently engaged in an online game of Halo3 under my XBox gamer tag of Zorg the Destroyer.’

‘Hello, Zorg,’ I said, ‘’tis I, Madeley, on Ronnie Corbett’s telephone. We need your help.’

‘Oh, hush!’ said Stephen. ‘Were it that I could lay aside my railgun and come to your aid, but I fear that my gaming reputation would suffer enormously were I do abandon this festive firefight while Zorg the Destroyer currently tops the frag leaderboard and pwns the arse of the Lapwing of Death’

‘Pwns the arse of the Lapwing of Death?’ I asked before I could help myself.

‘Alas, our friend Oddie is new to the fragfest which is Halo3. He has yet to acquaint himself with the tactics of finding himself a high vantage point and a sniper rifle. Some players frown on it, but I, Zorg the Destroyer, says it’s a true Englishman’s calling and the only reliable means of dispatching these alien scum.’

‘Stephen, we need your help immediately,’ I said, hearing a groan from the armchair as Ronnie regained consciousness. ‘A walnut has shattered in Ronnie’s lap. I think he’s suffering from severe shell lacerations, with what I can only describe as potential trauma to his hazelnuts.’ I looked at Mrs. Corbett and Judy, neither of whom seemed to understand my euphemism. Ronnie obviously did. He groaned and again passed out.

‘Ah,’ said Fry. ‘Walnuts are pwning little Ronnie’s hazelnuts? Then Zorg the Destroyer will be there immediately. I advise you to move neither the patient nor his nuts.’

Sound advice. Instead, I got Ronnie a glass of whiskey and poured it down him as soon as he came around. Judy had found a large rug to keep him warm, and we all sat around, taking turns to stroke Ronnie’s brow as he grew increasingly feverish. After fifteen minutes, I was beginning to fear for him. The poor man had begun to recite old scripts to ‘Sorry’, which I thought had been unhealthy enough the first time.

Eventually, I saw lights flicker beyond the window and the sound of a diesel engine pull up outside.

‘That’s Stephen,’ I said.

Judy jumped up and was at the door before the Great Man could knock.

‘Ah! The lacerations of the festive walnut,’ said Stephen, appearing in the doorway. He cast his cape to one side and came to loom over Ronnie. ‘So, might I see the sight of the explosion?’

I pulled back the rug and Stephen winced. ‘Tartan and lime green. A combination that the BBC has happily outlawed.’ He gazed at the spread of the wound. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to remove the trousers. Ladies, could you please leave the room? This will not be pretty.’ He opened his medical bag and removed a pair of scissors with which he proceeded to cut away Ronnie’s tartan britches.

The operation was slow and extremely gory. Ronnie was fitful throughout, though brave and screaming only once as Stephen dug a large chunk of walnut from his groin.

‘Ah, the walnut is indeed a terrible weapon,’ said Stephen, swabbing the wound. ‘Were it only a landmine.’

Around three o’clock in the morning, the last stitch had been sewn and a good colour had returned to Ronnie’s face.

‘There,’ said Stephen standing up. ‘All done. And a pretty little job I’ve done of it. You were damn lucky, young Corbett, that I spend a few months last Autumn training to be a surgeon.’

‘I’m so grateful,’ whispered Ronnie. ‘I’m grateful to the two of you.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Stephen. ‘What are friends for if it’s not for coming to dig fragments of walnut from your unmentionables.’ He turned to look at me. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I have spent the last hour trying my best not to mention that large gap in Richard’s pyjama bottoms exposing his lack of underwear and the coldness of the evening.’

Ronnie smiled. ‘Nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times,’ he said as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I closed the gap in my pyjamas but Stephen just patted my shoulder. ‘My advice to you sir, is fear not the walnut! Were one to explode in your lap, it could only correct the deficit that nature so cruelly intended.’

Playing God

That oaf Clarkson rang me, Sunday afternoon, when I had my heels set to the horizontal and a bowl of cornflakes dancing in my lap. I hadn’t got up late as much as transferred my slumber from the bed to my favoured armchair. You know the one… with the large vibrating cushion? On a medium massage, the chair can turn a bowl of milk into butter before you’ve finished spooning flakes of cereal to your mouth. I was certainly in no fit mood to be taking telephone calls from men with points to prove.

‘Dick? Jeremy,’ said Clarkson. ‘Listen. You know Top Gear’s not on tonight because of the billiards? Well, I want you to come over. I need your help.’

A large flake of vitamins and goodness hung from my chin, held there by a dribbling of the local dairy’s finest. ‘Want? Need?’ I repeated. ‘These aren’t words a man likes to hear on a Sunday.’

Clarkson sounded shocked. ‘And since when have I not been allowed to ask you to return me a favour on a Sunday?’

‘But it’s a day for cornflakes and football,’ I protested. ‘How can I come and help you when I’m wearing only my dressing gown?’

‘Is this the very same Dick Madeley who needed my help only last week?’ asked Clarkson, adopting that voice designed to mock a man within an inch of his life. ‘Wasn’t it you who said: “Don’t worry, Jeremy. If you ever need help, you know you can call on me”?’

‘But that was a weekday promise,’ I explained. ‘When you do a favour for somebody on a weekday, you expect to pay it back on a weekday.’

‘What?’

I moved the phone from my ear as Clarkson detonated a barrel full of bluster. I turned my attention to a large cornflake which I kidnapped from the bowl before cruelly breaking it on my teeth. When the hectoring noise from the telephone ended, I put it back to my ear.

‘It stands to reason,’ I said. ‘A weekday favour cannot be called in between midnight on Friday and midnight Sunday. That makes it a weekend favour, which are worth far more. You’d then be in my debt and by a considerable amount. If fact, more than I’d be happy to loan you.’

‘I’ve never heard such rubbish,’ spluttered Jeremy.

‘You say it’s rubbish but I say it’s common knowledge. Everybody knows that a weekend favour weighs more than a weekday favour.’

At that moment Judy came in, her face flushed from a morning down at the stables with her show ponies. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ll put you on speaker phone and let’s see what Judy has to say.’

I pressed the button and the red light came on the phone. ‘Are you there Jeremy?’

‘I’m here,’ sighed Clarkson.

‘Now, Judy, let me ask you since you’re impartial…’ Jeremy sniffed his distain at that one. ‘If a man does another man a favour on a weekday, can that other man expect to call his friend to do them a favour on a weekend? Doesn’t this other favour have to weigh the same?’

‘There’s no such thing as the weight of a favour,’ answered Judy, much to my surprise. ‘When you do a favour for a friend, it doesn’t matter what day of the week it is.’

‘See!’ cried the phone. ‘Good old Judy. Well done my dear. Now get your lazy husband out of his chair and get him down to my place. I need his help.’

With the argument lost, the appeal of my bowl of cornflakes faded. Even my vibrating cushion seemed to mock me. I dumped breakfast in the waste disposal, threw my dressing gown on the living room floor, and marched myself naked back to my bedroom where I dressed myself as though it were a weekday. Forty minutes later, I was in light casuals, open necked shirt, sunglasses hooked coquettishly in the V, and pulling up at the gates to Clarkson’s place. I was surprised to see that they were already open and even more surprised when a donkey came trotting out, Clarkson trailing behind it.

‘You took your damn time,’ he said, dragging a reign on the donkey and bringing it to a stop.

‘What’s with the mule?’ I asked.

‘This is Florence,’ he said, a bit dopy, and grabbed the donkey by an ear. ‘Lovely creatures, donkeys. Very docile.’

‘And this is what I’m here for? A donkey related problem? Why didn’t you call Oddie? You know he loves this sort of thing.’

‘You don’t even know what this sort of thing is,’ said Jeremy. ‘You see a donkey and assume it’s some woolly eared job involving cardigans. Well it isn’t. I’ve got you here for a totally different reason. I want you to play God.’

‘God?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you think I grow tired of being typecast?’

‘I’m sure you do but the local sect of Christian types have asked to borrow my donkey for their nativity. They’ve also asked me to play the voice of God.’

‘There’s a terrifying thought,’ I muttered.

‘I’ve agreed but I’ve got cold feet or, at least, a slightly chilled larynx. That’s why I rang you. I want you to do it in my place. There’s not much to it. Lots of proclaiming. You get to say “thee” and “thou” a lot. And the occasional roar.’

‘You didn’t think of ringing Fry? The man’s a born actor.’

‘I did but he said he thought the role beneath him,’ explained Jeremy. ‘Oddie agreed to do it only so long as he could leave the earth not to the meek but the meerkats.’

I could see Jeremy’s problem. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, resigned to do the man a favour, ‘but you’ll have to pay me back. This is worth at least a few hundred words for my blog.’

‘Anything,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ll even let you ride Florence down to the village hall if you like.’

‘I’ll leave that to you, Jeremy,’ I said, backing towards the Range Rover. ‘I’ll meet you down there. These days, God prefers to travel in his four by four listening to Chris de Burgh’s greatest hits.’

Clarkson visibly paled. ‘Oh my merciful heaven! Chris de Burgh?’

‘What can I say, Jeremy? God does like to move in mysterious ways...’

Wind Up The Willows

The moment Ronnie Corbett refused to don the frog suit, I knew we were in trouble.

The usual suspects had gathered around my kitchen table, but even to the older heads among us, the night had been a sobering lesson, teaching us that the human spirit is never so foolish than when it’s soaped up on coffee. Clarkson had not stopped pouring the Nicaraguan blend all afternoon. By the time we’d cranked the hours forward to six o’clock, the caffeine fizzed whenever it met serotonin in our systems. You have to believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing so excitable as Bill Oddie when he’s tapped up on the roasted beans of Central America.

‘It will be a blast!’ said Clarkson. His bottom was perched on the kitchen work surface, allowing the rest of us an unrestricted view of the fist tight crotch with enlarged knuckles. ‘Come on, guys. What do you say? Where’s that British spirit? Where’s that resilience to see a good job done?’

‘If he mentions Brunel one more time I believe I’ll try to swallow my tongue,’ muttered Stephen.

‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel wouldn’t have sat around waiting to make a decision. He’d have had this job done hours ago. Come on? Who’s with me?’

There then followed much furrowing of brows as we began to comprehend the scale of J.C’s proposal.

In the end, Fry had been the first to declare his willingness to go along with the plan. ‘If only to hasten myself on to my doom,’ he said. Palin had deliberated long and hard before announcing that he too was in. Oddie had already volunteered an hour earlier. Once he’s on coffee, he’s up for anything. He’d announced his decision with a dozen toots on his plastic duck call.

The only real doubt among us was Corbett. I could see that I would need to set him a good example.

‘As for me,’ I said, placing my hand on Ronnie’s shoulder, ‘I’m always happy to put my weight behind the Clarkson bandwagon. After all, it is for charity. Charity makes big men out of us all.’

As soon as I said that, Ronnie piped up.

‘You’re so right, Dick…’ he began. ‘I can call you Dick? Ha! Wouldn’t want to be putting my Dickies where they’re not wanted… As the snooker player said the ballerina. No! Actually, the snooker player never said that at all. I was lying for the sake of the joke, you see…’

‘Ronnie?’ asked Jeremy. ‘Are you in?’

‘I’m in! I’m in!’ he said, cradling his own cup of coffee high against his chest. ‘Which reminds me of something I said to my wife on my wedding night…’

Clarkson groaned. ‘Look, guys. I can’t say how good it is that you’ve all agreed to do this. I owe you all one.’

‘I would never say no to a cause so worthy,’ replied Ronnie.

We all stared at him for a few moments longer, waiting for him to continue as we knew he must.

‘No, that’s it,’ he said. ‘I can see when my rambling monologues are not wanted…’ He ran his tongue around his teeth, looked up to the ceiling, and then down at his cup. ‘But, of course, that does remind me of a joke about a one legged man and a mule. No, it does! He generally coped well with his disability but he found it difficult to find his ass. Ha!’

‘Okay,’ said Clarkson with a withering look directed to the smallest man in the room. ‘I’ve got the gear in the back of the car. Unfortunately, I can only take one of you with me and that will have to be Ronnie.’

‘I can always squeeze into the glovebox,’ said Ronnie as though it needed explaining.

‘Quite,’ said Jeremy. ‘Dick? Can you, Mike, and Bill go with Stephen?’

‘It will be a pleasure to drive such men of enviable talent,’ said Fry. ‘And Richard is always welcome too.’

Now it was my turn to groan.

The race up to Biggleswade was surprisingly tight for most of the trip up the A1. While Jeremy had to refuel his jet car every fifteen minutes, Stephen’s encyclopedic knowledge of the roads of Southern England allowed us to keep a steady pace. At the finish line, Clarkson probably nipped in ahead of us because Stephen had slowed to twenty through the tight streets. Jeremy had clearly interpreted this as a sign of weakness and exploited it to the full. He’d made up two miles to come roaring down the street, the wake from a sonic boom busting many a gusset in the window of Dorothy Perkins.

‘That journey might have cost be seven and a half thousand pounds in fuel, but it just shows you that you can’t beat the power of the jet,’ said Clarkson once the rest of us had bundled out of Stephen’s cab.

‘Is this it?’ asked Bill, looking at the rather drab stage set in the middle of the town square.

‘This is, as you say, “it”,’ said Jeremy. ‘Come on. The kids will be here soon.’

‘Where’s Ronnie?’ I asked, realising that our numbers were light by one Corbett.

‘Oh hell,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ve left him in the luggage compartment.’

‘I saw my life flash before my eyes,’ said Ronnie as he emerged from the car a minute later. ‘And I never realised I was so short!’

The plan was elegant in its simplicity. Because of her involvement in high level diplomacy between the UK and Russian governments, Kelly Osbourne had been forced to cancel her plans to light Biggleswade’s Christmas lights. Jeremy had stepped in and promised that we’d all be on hand to put on a scene from his favourite book, The Wind in the Willows. Children from the local behavioural treatment centre were due to come along at eight and we would entertain them until nine o’clock when the town’s Christmas lights would be lit, accompanied by a firework display. The fact that we hadn’t rehearsed a thing didn’t seem to discourage Jeremy.

‘Grab your costumes,’ he said, ‘and just remember that this is for children who won’t actually have read the book. It means we don’t have to be word perfect with the original source material.’

‘You want us to make it up as we go along?’ I asked.

‘That’s generally the idea,’ he smiled. ‘Now Stephen, it’s probably best if you play Mole. Dick, of course you’re Ratty. Bill, sorry to typecast you like this, but could you be Mr. Badger? Ronnie, you are born to play Mr. Toad. That just leaves Michael and myself who are going to be weasels.’

‘Typical,’ said Michael. ‘I came all this way to play a weasel. This is “A Fish Called Wanda” all over again.’

‘You’re comparing this great collection of British talent to a small budget film?’ scolded Oddie and he helped Jeremy pull the basket of costumes from the back of the rocket car.

Michael flipped the lid and dragged out the first costume.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said as he examined something green and rubbery. ‘We did have a budget on “Wanda”.’

‘That’s Mr. Toad’s frog suit,’ said Jeremy, snatching the rubbers from Palin’s hands and holding them up.

‘I’m not wearing that,’ said Ronnie. ‘Where are my tweeds? He’s the lord of the manor for goodness sake. Mr. Toad always wears tweeds!’

‘Not in this production he doesn’t,’ said Jeremy. ‘And I don’t think the kids will notice. A green frog suit is as good as I could come up with at short notice. And you’ll look the part once you put the snorkel on.’

‘A snorkel?’

‘It was the best I could do for goggles. Look, Ronnie, this is for charity.’

Ronnie fell silent, as did we all except Bill who was wrapped in a large fur coat and was getting into his role by sniffing around a nearby hedge.

‘Look, Jeremy,’ I said, ‘can’t Ronnie be a weasel? You could play Mr. Toad.’

‘He looks nothing like a weasel. He’s too short.’

‘That is a fair observation,’ said Stephen, who had been silent throughout the disagreement. ‘In which case, I could play a weasel, Ronnie could play Mr. Mole, and Michael would then play Mr. Toad. It would, I believe, solve all our problems.’

As ever, Stephen had done it. The man has a brain the size of a subcontinent. And one of the bigger ones at that.

Soon, suits were on, places on the stage were taken, and we ran through a quick rehearsal before the children arrived. Although ours was one of the oddest stage adaptations of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, I thought it had some charm. Stephen managed to ad lib his way through the entire thing, improving on the original in everything he did. Oddie paused at the half-way point to lecture the children on the reproductive habits of badgers, complete with mime. Michael played Mr. Toad admirably and his inclusion of some fish slapping seemed to delight the kids. As for my Ratty, it probably stole the show. I managed to get Stephen’s weasel to sit down for five minutes and we discussed the problems in his personal life and I recounted the time I’d had my vasectomy. The whole thing was wrapped up perfectly by Ronnie who ended the night with a long rambling story about his life with Mrs. Mole and a particularly funny story about his wedding night whose punchline was ‘I won’t mind but you better ask the stoat.’

What more is there to say? Christmas lights were lit and then fireworks played their part. The children were herded back to their behavioural unit and we packed up for the evening.

Later that night, after I’d got home, I was stood looking out over the garden when Judy came up behind me.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she offered.

‘I was just thinking how lucky I am not to be a rat,’ I said. ‘Could you imagine what it’s like, living and foraging among rubbish. It makes me so very glad to be human.’

‘I thought that would be obvious,’ she said.

‘Not to all of us,’ I said and put my arm around her as we stood and watched a large grey badger frolicking on the back lawn and only occasionally standing on his hind legs and looking remotely like Oddie, that dear and charming man.

That Oddie Time Of Year

Christmas!

I swear, if Jesus were alive today, he’d be rolling in his grave. What with all the present buying, the inevitable present wrapping, and then the present giving: the whole thing makes me wish that I didn’t have to be present. I’d got up a little late today, only to discover that the tree was already up. A sharp stab of pain in my heel informed that it was already dropping needles on the carpet. Judy arrived home before lunch, her arms full of Christmas wrapping paper, tinsel, and other relics of an afternoon disposing of disposable income.

‘I do love this time of year,’ she opined after she’d changed into her grey cotton tracksuit and laid out all her purchases before the fireplace. ‘We must decide what we’re doing on Christmas day,’ she added. ‘There’s nothing like being prepared.’

‘Why do we need to decide now?’ I asked. ‘It’s weeks away. You know me, Judy. I don’t make plans until I can actually visualise the day on my mental calendar.’

‘That’s right, Richard. There’s today and then there’s tomorrow. The rest of time is merely labelled “future”.’

Put a little harshly, I thought, but Judy was right. ‘I just don’t believe in planning too far ahead,’ I explained. ‘You never know what’s going to happen before then.’

‘That’s how we end up in trouble like last year when you’d told Billy Connolly that we’d go and stay with him.’

‘And I still swear we made the wrong choice,’ I replied, sourly remembering the miserable time we’d endured on a cruise-ship stuck with Leo Sayer. It had meant to be a break from our troubles and not a prison sentence with Satan’s curlier haired brother.

‘This year,’ said Judy, ‘we’re going to let people know what we’re doing for Christmas. I’ve been thinking that we should invite people over. You can ask Stephen and Michael if they’d like to spend the day with us and I’ll invite my friends. Judith says she’s not doing much over the holidays…’

‘Good idea,’ I said, ‘only the Oddies have invited us to spend the day with them.’

Judy pulled her face at either side of her mouth as though it were a cracker. I waited a moment but nothing fell out. Not even an old joke about making Eskimos roll.

‘Did that grimace mean something?’ I asked.

She grimaced again. ‘Can you imagine Christmas Day spent with Bill Oddie?’

‘I can indeed,’ I said. ‘And that’s why I’m up for it! There can be no family in the United Kingdom who’ll be more festive than the Oddies. Bill dressed up as Santa. Plenty of wildfowl roasting on open fires. And when he’s done doing an autopsy on the turkey, we’ll all sit around and sing carols as Bill serenades us on the spoons. If that’s not a great Christmas, you don’t know the meaning of “good cheer”.’

Judy looked at me as though I were one already on the spoons.

‘I am not spending Christmas Day with Bill Oddie in charge of the turkey,’ she said. ‘There’s something to be said about not letting that man loose with sharp knives. He’s much too excitable, waving his arms around like he does. I don’t think my nerves could stand it. You know it’s sure to end in bloodshed…’

‘Oh, and I suppose you’ve got a better suggestion?’

‘Actually, I have,’ she said. ‘Sharon rang me up and…’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Never. Not on your life. I’d rather spend Christmas with Dr. Raj and his sugar tits.’

‘You don’t even know what I was going to say.’

‘It going to involve the word Osbourne and I’m not having anything to do with it. You know how I feel about that family. Do you honestly think they’d welcome in their home after the things I’ve said about them?’

‘It is the season of goodwill to all men,’ she reminded me.

‘But not to them. They don’t count. The Good Book doesn’t say anything about my having to spend Christmas on a state of high alert. I honestly believe that if I took them out with a high powered rifle, I’d be doing the Lord’s work.’

Judy’s face clouded. ‘You cannot mean something as horrible as that, Richard!’

‘Perhaps I don’t,’ I replied. ‘But it’s bad enough that you ruin my mood by getting to me talk about Christmas when it’s still weeks away, but now you’re provoking me with the Osbournes. How you can prefer those people over Bill Oddie, I’ll never know. It would be like spending Christmas in a ward full of patients with severe brain trauma.’

‘Well, Bill just makes me feel nervous,’ Judy replied. ‘And you know I don’t like wool. You’d never get Sharon wearing cardigans. She’s a silk and polyester woman.’

‘So that’s what it comes down to? Wool! It doesn’t matter than Sharon’s got the mouth of a fishwife and her husband has all the social grace of squid.’

Judy threw down the wrapping paper and climbed to her feet. ‘You need to give this some thought, Richard Madeley. I’m not going to spend Christmas with Bill Oddie and his horrendous Hawaiian shirts. That’s my final word on the matter.’ And with a final vulgar comment on my taste in friends, Judy stormed from the room.

This whole argument took place this morning. I’m writing this at two o’clock in the afternoon when the house is quiet and the issue has finally been settled for some hours.

I was pouring out the wine for our lunch when Judy offered me the olive branch.

‘We could invite the Oddies here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got more than enough room for Bill when he gets excited and starts swinging his arms around.’

‘And Bill’s woolly Hawaiian shirts?’

She smiled. ‘Those too.’

‘Okay but this doesn’t mean I’m having an Osbourne in my house,’ I warned.

‘No, I wouldn’t expect you to. You can invite the Clarksons and I’ll invite Cilla.’

It’s a dark day when Cilla Black is considered a compromise. However, if it meant an end to our disagreement, I was happy to agree to the peace terms.

‘I’ll see if Stephen’s busy,’ I said, handing Judy the wine bottle. ‘We’d need somebody to dress as Santa and I know he loves the beard.’

‘You’re ringing him right now?’

I paused at the door. ‘You don’t think I’m agreeing to a Christmas day with Cilla Black unless I’m sure Stephen’s going to be there? You know they cancel each other. He’s like a healthy dose of anti-matter to her high pitched matter.’

Unusually, the phone rang an five times before he picked it up.

‘’Tis I Fry, on my iPhone, bewailing the lack of quality tinsel in my bargain box of Tesco decorations.’

‘Putting up your tree, Stephen?’

‘No, I’m decorating my ironing board. It is you, Richard? There are few men who can do justice to such a ridiculous question.’ He paused to take a breath. When he spoke again, he sounded calmer. ‘I am indeed engaged in erecting a mighty spruce tree in my chambers here at Fry Towers. My slight irritation marks, as it were, my singular lack of enthusiasm with this year’s arrangements. Jack Dee has cancelled our yearly carol singing and dear old Hugh is across the pond celebrating Christmas the American way. It involves children.’

‘Bad times ahead,’ I agreed. ‘And that’s why I’m ringing. Judy wants to know if you’d like to spend Christmas day with us? We’re thinking of having friends over but I’d want your official nod before I commit.’

‘Then consider this fine brow of mine as having duly nodded,’ said Stephen. ‘I would be most delighted to celebrate the season the Yule with you. Would you be interested in my playing the role of Santa? You know, I wrote the book on how to play the role.’

Which is true. His latest book, “How to Play Santa The Stephen Fry Way” is out at all good bookshops. Highly recommended it is too.

‘Interested?’ I said. ‘We’d be disappointed if you didn’t come dressed as Saint Nick.’

His voice cracked with emotion. ‘I believe I know where I’ve put some of last year’s tinsel,’ he said, tears surely dripping off his cheek. ‘Tell Judy that she needn’t worry about a thing. I won’t let her down. ’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, hanging up.’

‘It’s done,’ I said to Judy as I returned to the dining table. ‘Fry’s confirmed. Now I’ll ring Bill.’

‘You could wait until you’ve finished lunch,’ she said.

‘Lunch! With Christmas only three weeks away? We’ve got plans to make. Decorations to buy. Illuminated reindeer to fox on the roof. This is going to be the best Christmas ever,’ I promised her. ‘You see, my dear Judy, you just have to get into the Christmas sprit. Now, before you go up the ladder, don’t you think you should wear something a bit warmer. I imagine it can get a bit chilly up there…’