Old Possum's Book of Practical Gnats

There must be something in the water that occasionally grants me what I like to call 'The Vision'. No sooner had I posted that trivial bit of nonsense about gnats yesterday than the whole neighbourhood was invaded by bugs the size of house bricks. These were mean creatures and attracted to anything that was shiny, brightly coloured, or giving off a strong aroma. Naturally, David Dickinson stood no chance.

All that glistening, orange sweat heavily scented with French cologne: it was manna to the giant gnats. As Judy and I watched from the safety of our air conditioned front room, Dickinson went running down the street, waving his arms about his King Louis XIV perm.

‘Get away, you bloody fools!’ he cried. ‘Gnats! It’s the bloody gnats!’

‘Oh Richard, you must do something,’ said Judy as I stood there chuckling to myself.

‘I am doing something,’ I replied. ‘I’m standing here chuckling. I swear there’s a show in this. I should go and get my video camera.’

‘I mean you should go out and save him. You know that you’re immune to all wounds except that of a Vorpal blade.’

I hated to admit that Judy had a point since this was also a matter of principle.

‘You want me to save the man who has had nothing but bad things to say to me since the Michael Palin incident?’ I looked at my darling wife’s face, illuminated by virtuous concern for a man it is really quite hard to like. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, turning for the front door. ‘I'll play the hero for once. Be ready to let us in. And if he says something cutting about the sofa, don’t say I didn’t warn you. He once made Stephen Fry cry just with the word "mahogany".'

I dashed for the Range Rover and made it untouched by the giant gnats. From there it was simply a matter of following the screams of ‘beware the bloody gnats!’ all the way to Ronnie Corbett’s front garden where I found Dickinson fighting his way through deep foliage.

‘I’m here to save you,’ I said.

‘Richard? Is that you?’ cried David. ‘They’ll bloody follow you, you know? Gnats! Bloody big gnats!’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get you to a safe place.’

‘You’re so bloody kind,’ said David, pointing to me.

‘I know I am,’ I answered, choosing that moment to snap the above picture with my camera phone. I thought a picture of the man’s humiliation would be a good thing to own. I could always use it to remind him of the great debt he was about to owe me. (It looks even better if you click on it and see it in full resolution. You get a real sense of the gratitude in the David's eyes.)

However, his thanks were short lived. As we ran for the car, David began to rant about the bugs being a message for the neighbourhood.

‘The bloody bugs are all Madeley's fault!’ he cried, wide eyed, slack jawed, and senseless. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time but he was only wide-eyed, slack jawed and senseless because he’s allergic to gnat bites. That was left to Judy to spot, which she quickly did once I got him back to the house.

‘I don’t think his bottom lip should be that big,’ said Judy.

‘Ob corb ib nob subbbobed bo be bis blooby bib!’ replied Dickinson.

To be fair, I hadn’t noticed the inordinate size of his bottom lip because the whole of his face had swollen to something like twice its normal size. By the time we got him to the hospital, he was looking less like David Dickinson and more like Clarissa Dickson Wight.

And that’s where we left him being pumped full of antihistamines.

The last I heard was his telling a nurse that it was ‘like a blooby blague of bocusts senb dowb by Gob!’

‘Do you think that’s right?’ asked Judy. 'Why would God send a plague of gnats after David?'

‘Why?’ I laughed. ‘Because God has a bloody good sense of humour! That's why.’

Richard Madeley’s Top 10 Things That Gnats Are Good For

I’m busy writing my memoir today (I’ll reach 20,000 words by the evening or my name’s not Madeley) so it's only a small update this afternoon, which, I suppose, is only fitting given that I want to answer the many people coming here wanting to know ‘what are gnats good for?’

It’s strange how my blog attracts sudden waves of visitors searching for the same thing. The ‘John Noakes riding naked’ epidemic has thankfully passed, though 'Vanessa Feltz's cleavage' seems to be a stayer. At the moment, however, Google is bringing me nothing but questions about ‘custard creams’ and ‘gnats’. Well, I’ve dealt with custard creams on many previous occasions and I think it’s only right that I turned my attention to the humble gnat.

So, I'm proud to present you with:

Richard Madeley’s Top 10 Things That Gnats Are Good For

1. Scrabble. I’ve annoyed Stephen Fry on many an occasion when I’ve used that odd ‘GN’ combination to get my ‘genuflect’ on a triple word score.

2. Gnats are nature’s irritants. If it weren’t for gnats, we’d pick on the Welsh.

3. If it weren’t for the gnats that get stuck to cyclists’ teeth, many vegetarians would get no meat in their diets. Being naturally low on carbohydrates, they are also an excellent addition to any low-carb diet. Eat nothing but gnats and I guarantee that you won't feel bloated in the morning.

4. ‘Gnats’ rhymes with ‘spats’ which means we have one of my favourite self-penned verses:

If a gnat wore spats
And a bowler hat
Would they let him dine
At Michael Caines?

5. Picking a gnat from your ear can be one of the most pleasurable things you can do with your little finger. The relief when you squash the little bugger against your eardrum is quite exquisite.

6. Gnats cheer me up when Judy holds one of her insufferable garden parties each summer. There’s much fun to be had watching Vanessa Feltz trying to swat gnats away from her blancmange.

7. Simon Cowell fears all gnats, which is why I always keep a bag of them in the glove compartment.

8. Gnats don’t eat caterpillars. Which means that we have Grizzled Skipper, the Green-veined White, the Painted Lady and the Greater Unspotted Nigel.

9. Gnats never voted for New Labour.

10. Gnats give talented TV types the chance to make exciting new documentaries such as ‘When Gnats Swarm! Narrated by Richard Madeley’.

Claire's Balding Nipples

Because of my ongoing struggle coping with sanity, commuting to Manchester, and the most recent unfortunate development with Clarkson and his facelift, I’ve not been giving proper attention to my blogging duties. It’s all well and good that I’ve written some lengthy posts recently but I recognise that many of you have neither the time nor the inclination to read them. You’re here for the cheap laughs and pictures of the smooth-jowled Clarkson. I know that. And knowing that, I thought you are probably missing the only part of this blog not written by me. I mean, of course, the Google Search Terms.

It seems like months since I last gazed on my stats, having decided that if I am going to blog, I’ll blog for my own amusement. Now that I look, however, I find that in the last month, there have been some genuinely disturbed people visiting this blog. Hats off to you, ladies and gentlemen. I couldn't have done better myself. I suggest you look no further than the first search term for proof.

“claire balding nipples”

I don't even know how to parse this, let alone answer it. Is there a woman called Claire who happens to have hairy nipples which are now balding? Is there an equivalent to an Afghan merkin for the nipple that’s going a little thin? Perhaps a form of nipple toupee? Alternatively, do they mean ‘Claire Balding’, she of the biceps and horses? That she has nipples is as certain as she's got a small Willie Carson. I’d even hazard a guess and say that they’re probably two in number. To say more, however, would be conjecture. If there are pictures, I really don’t want to see them. After all, she’s no Vanessa Feltz!

“Verses for birthday for your deceased mother”

This one struck me as odd. I don’t mean to be heartless about it, but I would think that verses written for somebody’s dead mother on her birthday will probably go unread. There are probably better things you can do with your time.

“Will gnats bother an African grey parrot?”

Now we get down to the serious business and why many people come here. They want to call on my expertise on most matters and my friendship with Oddie for anything I don’t know about our flighty feathered friends. Gnats will indeed bother African grey parrots. In turn, African grey parrots will bother the Peruvian Snow Gibbon, who have been known to pester the rare Arctic kangaroo which is now almost extinct in the Northern hemisphere due to many of them missing their footing while jumping between icebergs.

“Does prune juice act as stool softner?”

The old favourite and I again call on personal experience to answer this one. Yes, prune just does a fine job in softening stools. And speaking of which, the prune giveaway is proving a success but I’ve still got a sizable supply left. You need only send me postal address and you’ll get a signed tin of prunes ASAP.*

“Recipe for frog froth”

Dare I suggest: a frog and an electric whisk?

“Are pistachios combustible?”

Bloody good question. Pistachios are indeed combustible. In fact, Italian fighters during World War 2 would pack grenades with pistachios for use as a makeshift incendiary device. The so called ‘Pistatchio Partisans' were also famous for discovering that you could cripple a Tiger tank with a handful of beer nuts.

“Shaved head twitch”

I’ve not seen the Twitch around the blog latterly. Perhaps he has indeed shaved his head and we don’t recognise him.

“Sir Richard Madeley”

A little bit premature but certain bound to happen.

“Is Charlie Sheen circumsized?”

Circumcised? I should say he should be bloody castrated.

* Offer limited to the UK and only while stocks last. I reserve the right to change my mind about going to the post office should it be raining when I put my shoes on.

Gnat Facts

Clare from Keeper of the Snails asks three questions I had been intending to address for a long time. Thank you Clare. You catch me sunbathing on the patio and, while Judy prepares my Sunday lunch, I'm in a perfect state of mind to tell you all you need to know.

Clare asks:

1. What can I do with the fluff that comes out of a tumble drier?

2. Why do gnats fly in spirals and never hit each other?

3. Will the gentleman's tie ever truly go out of fashion?

You’d be surprised at the numer of times I’m asked these questions, especially number 1.

I always say that the fluff from a tumble drier is best collected, dried, and then donated to the Worldwide Duvet Fund, which uses the fluff to stuff third-world mattresses. Fluff conservation is close to my heart, and close to Judy’s too, and we’re proud to be spokespersons for the cause. If you work out how much fluff is produced in the industrialised West, you’d realise that many of the world’s lagging problems could be solved at a stroke. Remember: your fluff can help a family combat a Ugandan winter.

Gnats fly in spirals but, despite what you read in pro-gnat propaganda, they do often collide. It’s just they don’t complain about it and rarely demand compensation. Gnats are remarkably free living creatures.

Gentleman’s ties are slowly going out of fashion. This is mainly because I don’t wear them myself, preferring to go about open necked, so you can see as much as me as possible. Neckties have been linked to 92% of all accidents involving threshing machines and mangles. Kipper ties have also been identified as a leading cause of male infertility due to their reducing blood flow around the body. This hypothesis can't been proved, however, due to a lack of data casued by the inability of men who wear kipper ties to find mates.

I have a couple of gnat related facts for you today. Gnats are poisonous if ingested in large numbers. Many cyclists will be taken to hospital each year with gnat poisoning and it is believed that many of the positive drug tests coming in from this year’s Tour de France are the result of cyclists swallowing larger number of insects than in previous years. The gnat is also the national insect of Sardinia, and is immortalised on the Sardinian flag in the form of a small black stitch in the lower left corner.