The Week Ahead

As you might have noticed: it's Sunday and I'm still in a sombre mood after a tiring week behind the scenes of both the blog and TV show. You'll just have to excuse my lack of fizz today in the knowledge that I've got something a little special to post tomorrow when another of my regular guests will take over for the day with a feature article. I can't say too much about it as the man has yet to submit the final piece, but I'm sure it will live up to the usual high journalistic standards I expect for contributors to this blog. I've also decided that Dennis will have another attempt at writing for the blog towards the end of the week and I can promise that there will be no mentions of either darts or Peter Manley. I can also state with confidence that this week, The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society will be a stump free zone, so, please, no more letters of complaint...

If there are any other celebrity friends you think I should ask to write for me, you should really suggest them in the comments and I'll see what I can do. Not all agents are willing to put my requests through to their clients, but I know a few celebrities personally and might be able to offer them ten minutes on the show in exchange for a couple of thousand words.

Which reminds me to tell you to watch out for the announcement this week that we've got a few big guests coming on the Channel 4 show. He's not yet been confirmed by we're hopefully getting Oscar hopeful, Daniel Day Lewis, into the studio to give us some cobbling tips, while later in the week Johnny Depp will be in to teach Judy the Hollywood secrets of how to clean mildew from between bathroom tiles.

As you can see, guys, it's going to be an exciting few days.

A Dennis Update

This morning's early rise had done nothing for my mood and I had hoped to catch a bit of shut eye this afternoon before I recorded tonight's show. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my time pondering whether on not to give Dennis his notice. Of course, he did the usual craven things to stay in my employ. He fell on his knees and begged me to let him keep his job. His one hand clawed ineffectually at my trouser leg as I walked away but I was not going to be swayed. If there's one subject in the world that is sure to get my temper up it's the subject of Castro and Cuba. Second to that is darts. It's a pernicious evil that threatens to reintroduce bad shirts and jewellery for fat men.

Now that I'm home and I've read your appeals on Dennis's behalf, I've changed my mind. I'll ask Dr. Raj to have a word with him and disillusion him about Peter 'The Hedgehog' Manley and Phil 'The Power' Taylor. After all, the unfortunate introduction of darts into this blog was partly my fault. Richard 'The Master' Madeley shouldn't have promoted Dennis so rapidly through the ranks. There were others who could have filled in for me today. I could have called in a favour from Jeremy 'The Rocket' Clarkson and had him write me something. I could even have pressed Martin 'The Professor' Amis into producing a small piece to make up for spelling Lola's name wrong in the interview I published earlier this week.

So, those of you who supported Dennis can rest easy tonight knowing that you've saved a one-armed man from the unemployment queue. Naturally, I would have replaced him with somebody with two hands, so, in terms of limbs, you've stood in the way of a real world decrease in the number of idle hands. You might want to think about that the next time you take the side of a man who whispers whenever he mentions Jockie Wilson's name.

Disgusted

I've just got back home from my meeting with the people at the production company . We decided that since it was Friday we'd have an early finish to the day. My mood was upbeat until, quite frankly, I saw what Dennis has posted to my blog. I'm now off to get a spot of late lunch but I'll be back to put this right.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd employed somebody so cretinous as to write about darts. And I told him not to mention his stump but he seems to have done so on nearly every line.

They Call Me Dennis

Mr. Madeley rang me a few minutes ago. It was well after midnight and he sounded very anxious and, in my opinion, somewhat intoxicated.

'Dennis,' he said. 'I'm worried about tomorrow. I hope you're not going to write about your disability.'

I told him that I had intended to write about the last five years working as his assistant. 'You might call it a disability,' I said. 'I prefer to call it a wage trap.'

'Oh, no,' he replied. 'I don't want you writing about your life with me. You know all of my secrets.'

'Not all of them,' I said. 'Just the ones that involve lubricants.'

Now before you get any funny ideas, that bit about lubricants was one of my little jokes. I have lots of them. Well, you have to, working for a man like Mr. Madeley. Life is not easy. I can tell you that. Besides... even if I do know most of Mr. M's secrets, I wouldn't dream of writing about them here. Not when I could get good money for the serialisation rights.

'That's not funny, Dennis,' said my employer. 'You must remember to be discreet. You're writing for a public audience. This blog goes out under my name so don't go offending anybody.'

'Don't worry, Mr. Madeley,' I told him. 'If people want to know about heat rash from polyester or a certain person settling out of court when nuns accused him of indecent exposure, they'll have to go elsewhere. They won't get any of that from me.'

'That's good to hear, Dennis,' replied Mr. Madeley. 'But I want to give you some advice. If you have to write about... you know... your hand... then don't go mentioning your stump. It's not appealing.'

'It's not meant to be appealing,' I told him. 'It's just who I am.'

He sighed. 'Well if you must talk about it, can't you make it sound positive?'

'Positive?' I asked.

'Give it some human interest.'

'Righty-o,' I said. 'Perhaps I could give it a name...'

He thought for a few moments. 'I can't see how that would help.'

'It would make it more human. It would have a personality of its own. I could even drape a puppet over it. Of course, I wouldn't be able to make it talk or move and it would have to sit somewhat moribund on the end of my arm...'

'Disguising an amputee's stump with a paraplegic puppet doesn't sound the way to go to make your first blog post light and breezy, Dennis.'

'I'm not technically an amputee,' I replied. 'It was...'

'Yes, yes, I know,' he interrupted. 'It was ripped off by a basking shark off the coast of Cornwall. Look, Dennis. This is your chance to shine but don't get too comfortable. You're only filling in for one day while I'm earning a few shillings. Next week, I'll get one of my celebrity friends to write something longer. You know, something with a bit more meat on the bone... In the meantime, just write something interesting. Something that the educated people who read my blog would enjoy.'

'I know just the thing,' I told him. 'Just you wait until tomorrow, Mr. Madeley! I'll have your readers eating out of the palm of my hand...'

Introducing Dennis

It will come as no surprise to many of you to learn that I'm not always me. Sometimes I'm Dennis.

Dennis is my P.A., or, as he likes to describe himself, my Personal 'Attendant'. He attends to all the jobs I have neither the time nor the patience to do myself. Sometimes it's Dennis who types up my posts and publishes them when I'm busy with the show. You might say, therefore, that Dennis is my extra set of legs. He's also my third arm, but, I hasten to add, he's not my fourth. Dennis has only one arm. In fact, he's one of the few one-armed P.A.s in the country, which makes him half a P.A., or an 'A' as he likes to joke.

Dennis has a unique sense of humour about his disability, which is the way he says you have to be. Not many men have had a limb bitten off by a basking shark off the coast of Cornwall and I doubt if there's another man who can laugh about it as much as Dennis. It's what makes me feel so certain that you'll like him. However, a word to the wise: Dennis' involvement in my blog explains why there are often so many spelling mistakes and typos in my posts. You may think you're correcting my poor spelling but you're really making a one armed man feel bad about his disability.

I've decided to introduce you to Dennis because tomorrow I'll be going to meet the team who will be working with me on 'Eye of the Storm 2'. There's already talk of 'Eye of the Storm 3' and 'Eye of the Storm 4', so this job will be consuming two days of my week from now on. Should I disappear for 48 hours, I'm hoping that Dennis will help keep this blog going. Being a one armed man, he will probably be writing posts that are considerably shorter than my usual pieces. I hope that Dennis will become to this blog what Nige is to Bryan over at Thought Experiments. Or that's how I explained it to my little one-armed helper this morning.

'Dennis, would you relish the opportunity of doing some extra typing each week?' I asked him as he began to clear up after the first production meeting of the day.

He looked at me from under his heavy brow and grunted.

'Is that a good grunt or a bad grunt?' I asked.

He put his one, lonely, solitary hand in his pocket and adopted the look of a suitably unimpressed one-armed man.

'I take it that you don't want to hear what I want you to do?'

'I'm not writing your blog, if that's what you're asking,' he said, forgetting for the moment which handsome Channel 4 type pays his wages.

'You've done it before,' I said. 'There are many times you've transcribed pieces from my Dictaphone.'

'But you get all the credit.'

'As it should be, Dennis. As it should be. You can't honestly believe that people should credit you for transcribing the words of a man with the full compliment of limbs?' I rubbed my face, which was aching at the cheek of it all. I could see that I would have to compromise if I wanted my plan to go ahead. 'So, would you do it if I told people of your existence? Perhaps I could give you a regular column in which you'd get to talk about life from a one-armed point of view.'

He shrugged but his face couldn't conceal a fleeting look of excitement.

'That's better,' I said, 'but if you're going to have a more visible presence on my blog, we have to make some ground rules. Take a note, Dennis. Head the list: Things That I, Dennis, Should and Should Not Do When Writing on Richard's Blog.'

'Fair enough,' he said, his hand coming out of his pocket and taking a pad and pencil from his desk.

The list took half the morning to compile but I present it to you as a way of filling the blog while I now go and practise my documentary voice.

Dennis's List of Things He Should and Should Not Do When Writing on Richard's Blog

1. Don't annoy the punters. Americans don't like too many references to Stephen Fry or obesity.
2. Don't provoke the visitors to any online forums dedicated to 'The House'. They will hunt you down, Dennis. The last time, I was lucky to get away with only three crank phone calls and a jiffy bag full of rabbit excrement.
3. Try to promote Jerry Caesar's blog whenever you can. I'm tired of being the only person to leave comments over there.
4. No posts about disability rights.
5. No posts about Esther Rantzen. I don't care how wonderful you think she is, Dennis.
6. Don't flirt with Selena Dreamy. If you had three arms you still wouldn't have enough.
7. Don't mention Finland to Ax unless you speak the language.
8. Don't provoke Mutleythedog. He is not a dog and probably isn't called Mutley.
9. Do not disillusion Bertas. She still thinks that Norwich is a good holiday destination.
10. Remind The Twitch to keep taking his mood medicine.
11. No name dropping. People cannot stand it when a blogger casually drops the names of famous people they have met into their blogs. Stephen Fry doesn't do it so neither should we.
12. News about Stephen Fry takes precedence over any other. Then it's Bill Oddie followed by That Man Clarkson. News about Jeremy Paxman can be posted if there's nothing better to do.
13. Respect Judy at all times. Remember: she pays our wages.
14. No jokes about one-armed bandits or any other kind of bandit.
15. No pictures of naked one-armed women.
16. Remember that people are here to read about me. I, Richard Madeley, should appear in every one of your blog posts. As should a completely superfluous link to Stephen Fry's blog.
17. Never mention your stump. People aren't interested.