The Holy Underpant War

It has been suggested in certain quarters that I’m delusional. Some would go further and claim they make insightful comments when questioning my mental heath, my abilities as a diarist, and my friendship with some of the greatest minds of our age. Well I’m here to rebuff these remarks and to again state that I’m merely the chronicler of reality. If our American cousins don’t understand the world of London celebrity, then it really isn’t my concern. I suggest they go take a long jog along an abbreviated pier. I am quite comfortable with the life I lead and the friends that surround me. It doesn’t surprise me when fans of the man I know simply as ‘Fry’ question my relationship with their hero. Take the incident that greeted me this morning. It is not the stuff of celebrity magazines and red carpets. It’s just the stuff of my grim everyday life.

Newly hatched from beneath my duvet, I had been heading in a south westerly direction, negotiating a run of stairs with the intention of heading towards the kitchen and seeking out a woman called Judy. Toast was on my mind when I heard a rather strange outburst coming from the front room.

‘Hurrah!’ came the martial cry followed shortly after by the sound of wood cracking lampshade.

I might have ignored it but, when another ‘hurrah!’ was followed by a ‘have that!’, I stepped into the living room to see what the commotion was about.

The stuff of merry old England was never like this. There was Stephen Fry, with his plastercast arm in a sling, hopping around the living room, jousting with a mop resting on his good elbow. It was an odd sight but odder still for the large pair of gentleman’s Y fronts that were hanging from his lance.

‘Ah, Sir Richard! How good of you to rise before noon,’ said he. ‘Methinks you have too much ale last night and a good time with yon buxom wench.’

‘I hope Judy doesn’t hear you calling her that,’ I warned. ‘Yon wench packs a buxom punch.’

‘Pah!’ he laughed. ‘Fry frets not. You must hurry up and sate your appetite. We attend a tourney at noon and there we might be spending the night in the Sheriff’s dark dungeon.’

It’s funny how a statement like that can press for attention despite the other things that are going on in the world. You would think that the next words out of my mouth would have been: ‘why are you waving your underpants on the end of a stick, Stephen?’ But instead I merely asked: ‘What sheriff?’

‘Sheriff Plod of the London constabulary who will arrest us for causing a public affray. That’s if it all goes to plan…’

‘Plan? What plan?’

He toed the day’s Guardian across to me and dropped the knightly patois. ‘Ah, Dick! Were we both smaller men, we might think it a trivial concern. However, blessed as we both are by marvellously manlike hips and loins, I thought it only right that we both attend a demonstration at the Oxford Road branch of Marks & Spencers. We’re due there at twelve.’

‘Are we?’ I replied. ‘And why “we”?’

‘Because I thought you’d be there as a favour to one of your oldest friends,’ said a voice from over my right shoulder.

I turned around and saw a man who has been welcomed too infrequently in the Madeley home.

‘Paxo!’ I said, rushing up to shake Jeremy Paxman by his hand. ‘What you doing here?’

He sneered. ‘I’m here to organise a protest to stop the insufferable creep of cheap quality gussets,’ he said and sneered again. He means nothing by it, the poor man. It’s just the way that God connected his face to his chin.

‘That’s right,’ explained Stephen. ‘Jeremy has taken it upon himself to protect all us who like underpants with the luxury of extra supportive gussets. We are to be the vanguard of the campaign. When the world sees Richard Madeley being dragged screaming into the back of a police van, they’ll know that we feel strongly about quality underpants that can carry a couple of large sized bowling balls.’

‘That’s all well and good,’ I replied, ‘but what has this got to do with me? I don’t wear underpants. Everybody knows that. I refuse to become a martyr to the visible panty line.’

‘Tsk,’ said Stephen. ‘In fact, double tsk. Where’s the man who wrote the two hundred like mock heroic epistle about Jeremy’s sock drawer? You do know that this protest is about socks as well?’

That did perk my interest. ‘Socks? What’s this got to do with socks?’

With that, Jeremy kicked off his shoe. ‘Look at that,’ he said, gesturing to his big toe. ‘I’ve not had these socks for a week and already they’ve gone through.’

Sure enough. The Paxman toe was there for all to see. Pink, well clipped, and full of sneer.

Something gave way and my resolve collapsed. With an audible twang, my shoulders sank all the way to the sofa where I lay my head against a cushion.

‘Come, come,’ said Stephen. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Turn that frown upside down,’ said Jeremy; rather ironically, I felt.

In fact, it was a foolish remark given that Stephen does like to take some things very literally. ‘I don’t know the full procedure of removing a mouth but I imagine it fairly tricky to turn a frown upside down. You’d probably have to cut into fairly complicated facial muscle. I’d be surprised if you didn’t end up with some paralysis in the cheeks and jaw.’

Jeremy sneered again, proving that there’s no paralysis in either his cheek or jaw.

‘Come on,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Give me five minutes while I go and put on a pair of underpants. If I’m going to do this, I might as well do it properly.’

‘White Marks & Spencers only,’ sneered Paxman as though I needed the warning.

It was Stephen who insisted that we take his taxi. It meant that I had to do the driving. It’s an odd business negotiating London’s traffic when people try to flag you down every few hundred yards. I imagine that’s why Stephen loves it so much. It gives a man a sense of being enormously popular and ‘in demand’.

We rolled up before Marks & Spencers just on the stroke of noon. Jeremy and Stephen climbed out the taxi and I drove round the corner to park in a loading bay. When I got back to the front of the building, the protest had grown quite considerably. John Humphrys was there, as was the complete news reading crew of the BBC. It would seem that Marks & Spencers underpants are the underwear of choice for the BBC newsroom. John Simpson and Huw Edwards were holding up placards demanding a rethink on sock policy while Stephen walked up and down waving Judy’s old kitchen mop in the air with a pair of his underpants flying proudly from the top.

‘Ah!’ he cried in his loudest thespianised voice. ‘’Tis, I, Fry, walking up and down outside Marks & Spencers waving my underpants around on the stop of a stick made from Judy Finnigan’s mop.’

Perhaps it was the uncomfortable sensation of underpants on my hips or the sight of unfriendly policemen gathering at the edge of the scene but I couldn’t step forward. Call me a coward or the consummate TV professional, but I knew I couldn’t be arrested. Not today. Not when I’m due at the studios to interview Colin Corfield who has lost 44 stone after having a gastric bypass operation. How would Judy cope without me once “Dancing on Ice” stars, Tim Vincent and Aggie MacKenzie, landed on the sofa? Say what you want about Marks & Spencers underpants but this fight wasn’t mine. With the sound of Stephen’s protests fading as I went, I walked back into the crowd and at the next corner waved down a taxi. Gussets be damned! Ed Saunders would be coming into the studio to talk about Tim Burton’s ‘Sweeney Todd’.

Epistle to Jeremy Paxman On the State of His Sock Drawer

Preface

My feud with Jeremy Paxman is now history and never again will I resort to making crude remarks about either him or his toenail collection. Such is my admiration for the man, I have been working hard to write him something special. After my widely applauded poem to Stephen Fry comes my latest flight with my muse. It is my longest poem yet and, as you can see, deals with an issue that has barely been discussed by the British media.

Ladies, gentlemen, fellow poets, after many promises and many more false starts, I finally give you my one hundred and seventy line 'Epistle to Jeremy Paxman On the State of His Sock Drawer'. Monumental and epic in its scope, it stands as a worthy tribute to our favourite 'Newsnight' presenter and, in my humble opinion, it is one of this century’s finest poems written in English. And it even made Judy cry.

My dear old Paxo, you inspired my muse to soar
On the trouble that lately grew from your sock drawer.
How did you get them into such a pitiful state?
Did your socks rebel? What left them so irate?
Could it be that you have no love for your noble socks
That stop your feet from turning into twin icy blocks,
As cold as the frost sitting on Kirsty Wark’s smile
Which is as pleasing as a night in a Glasgow jail?
Ah, now I see how this condition came to pass,
You are such a foolish and somewhat foppish old ass!
You mixed coloured silks with your hoses made of cotton
And holes you let grow in every poor sock’s bottom.
Your big toes poke out of your official BBC pair
And look how the heel is worn through right there!
So let us, Paxo, mucker, mate, and jesty pal of mine,
Embark on a worthy tale that’s so sure to entertain.
On the nature of sockdom, drawers, and blessed Newsnight,
This note will answer, better than any show put on late,
And without all the signing, that so annoys my muse,
Who really prefers it when Huw Edwards reads the news.


*

It is a misty morning, in London South West Four,
When Paxo hears knocking from inside his sock drawer.
He says ‘Hello, by wonder! What makes this lively din?’
And up he gets, gown on tight, and he dives right on in,
To investigate the nuisance, coming from across the room,
He shuffles over, ear on wood, hears a mighty boom.
The drawer he opens slowly, and what a sight he sees,
A battlefield of underwear, of fighting lingerie.
Wave on wave of socks, advancing in their finery,
Chasing packs of garters, and warring demon hosiery.
‘Stop that at once,’ cried our confused man of Pax,
But socks heeded not his call; oh woe and, indeed, alas!
He grabbed a toe, he thought he’d won, but it was his mistake.
It pulled him in, just like that! He could not believe he was awake.
‘Get back!’ came the cry. ‘I assure you this is quite real’,
Said a battle-scarred comrade sock with well worn heel.
‘Do you come to aid us now, in our hour of need?
Or are you here to scoff, while good socks bleed?
Look at yon mighty thermal pair, see how they fight,
Do you care to mock such spirit with your typical spite?’
Paxo looked on, never believing what he saw,
A epic warzone, it certainly was, in his own sock drawer!
‘Grab a sword, choose a spear, fight at my side!’
The voice it was of a martial sock and on a glove it did ride.
‘You are the man who made us thus, hardened by your feet
And now this war, of your own design, battle we must meet.’
‘This is not mine,’ said Paxo sure, he did not plan this fight.
‘I’m a man of peace, for goodness sake! And I present Newsnight!’
‘Then that’s your sin,’ said a sock, with a well-sewn frown,
‘You never cared for all the good socks you have cruelly trod down.’
Alas, this sock never finished his worthy little speech,
The defensive line across the drawer, the foes they did breech.
Paxman watched as the field was filled with new attackers
And cowered as towards him ran a fierce pair of undercrackers!
‘Retreat,’ came the cry, ‘to the shoebox, we all must flee!’
And Paxman fled, like many socks as far as his eye could see.
A last stand was stood in the box that was quite spacious
Where Paxo kept all the things he considered the most precious.
It was there he saw, for the first time, the man most ready,
The chief of socks, the Caesar of his age: Grand Marshall Oddie.
He was the oldest of all of Paxman’s old odd socks,
Years had passed since its pair had been somewhere, somehow lost.
He stood nearly half a foot, greying at the muzzle,
With a slack elasticated rim, and a larger, slacker middle.
‘Come gather you brave socks, this field can still be ours,
We will make these walls a fortress, these knickknacks our towers.’
‘Hang on,’ said Paxo, ‘what on earth do you mean by “knickknacks”,
These things are awards for journalism and aren’t given to hacks!’
There was widespread laughter, which broke the dreadful mood,
As socks mocked Paxman, who thought it all quite rude.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘mock not my place in this nation’s heart.’
To which an old garter snapped, as if answering with a fart.
‘Listen friend,’ said Oddie, ‘you are now in a sock-run world.
We care not for Newsnight and all the abuse that you hurled.
This is a time for spirit, for socks with a steadfast seam.
Are you with us, man, or do you choose bat for the other team?’
‘I’m with you, ay,’ said Paxman sure, ‘I’m always with my socks,
But respect I want from every garter snapping in this box.’
A roar went up, as all the socks made ‘Paxman!’ their cheer,
Before Oddie with careful voice, issued orders loud and clear.
‘We attack at once, lest the underwear get wind of our few numbers
Paxman will lead the charge, but beware of his unwashed chunders!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ cried the Pax who was feeling quite abused,
‘Everything here is very clean, I wouldn’t return a pair I’d used.’
‘Steady there, good fellow,’ said Oddie, now with calm,
‘Save your complaint for the battle, I meant you no harm.’
So out they rushed, in hectic flight, with Paxo screaming louder,
Charging the lines of Y-fronts swelled with antifungal powder.
If you never thought it in him, you should have seen him fly there,
Paxo the warrior! Paxman the mighty! Pax the long john slayer!
With his bare hands he choked the life out of an old string vest,
And tore asunder a pair of boxers long past their best.
Oh, how he grappled with nylon and how he wrestled with briefs,
Till, he came at a pair of undies made in the old Far East.
‘You cannot win,’ said the large white pair, ‘I’m sure I’ll best ya!
Can’t you see that I’ll defy your strength since I’m 10% polyester!’
Paxo stood tall, to the height of nearly six inches,
‘I never wore you! Don’t you know that artificial fibre itches?’
‘You lie,’ roared the Y-fronts, and swung a mighty kind of blow
Which Paxman avoided like all journos do, by ducking very low.
He responded with a fist, right into the fiend’s gusset,
‘Take that,’ he cried, as if with one blow he hoped he had bust it.
But the pants were strong, they hardly felt his tiny mortal hand
And Paxman fled knowing that a deadly blow he couldn’t land.
‘That beast may yet win the day,’ said Oddie looming nearer,
‘We need a weapon to defeat it, but I know of nothing keener
Than the old mystical tie pin you used to keep at the other end
Of this drawer, but of that journey, I wouldn’t know who to send…’
With not a word, Paxman bent his back and walked away
To march to Drawer’s End and to reach it by the end of day.
He roamed for a while, across the drawer’s landscape out laid,
Until the sound of battle dimmed and he began to feel afraid.
He travelled long, he travelled fast, until he came to a little nook,
And there with welcome eyes he spied his old notebook.
And from it’s end, he could see an old pencil with sharpened tip
He took it and then on he went with it hanging from his hip.
At last he reached the darkened end of his sock drawer,
Where what little jewellery he owned lay spread across the floor.
‘Where is the tie pin I need,’ cried Paxman, now quite scared,
‘It is the weapon to defeat that beast in Hong Kong manufactured.’
He fell and cried, bewailed his luck, and why things never happen
To that other bloke, who reads the news… the one who’s not called Paxman.
‘Is this what you seek?’ said a simple voice, whispering with a waver
From an old discarded metal case, containing his spare electric shaver.
Out came a glove in fine silk dress, from an interview long forgotten,
With Meryl Streep who had playfully touched Paxo on his bottom.
The glove advanced and in its fingers, nestled rather tightly,
Was the old tie pin, the finest steel, still shining very brightly.
‘You may take this lance, Paxo dear, if you cross my palm with silver,
Or failing that, if you would do me just a very simple favour.’
‘Whatever you wish,’ said Paxman, now even more determined
To have the weapon that once ensured his ties were well pinned.
‘Beyond this nook there lies a shade in which you hid a Christmas tie
You rightly saw it, learned to hate, and left it to fester here and die.
It is a thing of ugliness, orange with a picture of a baboon,
You destroy it now and this pin I promise will be your boon.
‘I won’t be long,’ said Paxman fair, ‘I’ll kill that funky gibbon!’
‘Oy! Watch it!’ shouted Oddie’s voice, though the reason remains well hidden.
So Paxman went to kill the tie using his short pencil sword,
The tie fought valiantly but Paxo dispatched it without a word.
Christmas ties are wicked, the kind of present we should rue,
So fret you not that Paxman ran this monkey tie through.
‘You’ve done a great deed in this,’ said Meryl Streep’s glove,
‘You may take this tie pin back, and have it with my love.’
Paxman took the sword and raised it to the light,
This was the weapon, he knew to win an underwear fight.
So back he raced, not sparing heel, to the sock battlefront,
Where the underpants stood cruel and tall, and so very arrogant.
Up he ran and to the sockish hoards raised the sword and shouted
‘This is for every hose and heel I have so cruelly mistreated!’
And to the pants did Paxman plunge the fierce blade in deep,
Until the gussets did wail and the elasticated waist did weep.
‘Hurrah!’ cried the all socks to see their enemy outfoxed,
By Jeremy the Paxman, standing proud on the vanquished crotch.

*

The rest of this epic tale, I think you’re well aware,
Of Paxman triumphant and vowing to never again wear
A sock he did not name or treat with utmost care
Or cast aside on the floor or lose down the side of a chair.
To him a sock was a thing revered, that made his eyes go misty,
Like Fiona Bruce, Anna Ford, though never the Kaplinsky.
You know the socks, themselves, lived happily every after,
Treated well, with wounds repaired, and with extra fabric softer.
And once bigger than his sock drawer, Paxo to his room returned,
He went to work that day with martial honours earned,
And told his tale to a man much bemused called Clarkson,
Who later described him ‘a loon’ to the readers of ‘The Sun’.
And how the Dimbleby (the David) listened to this story
Before snootily declaring it must be a toenail allegory.
Oh, my dear Paxman, I think I have reached the end,
Where I declare that you really are the oddest of my friends.

© Richard Madeley, 2007