A Day On The River

The farcical nature of the lurid headlines that accompany any development in the Richard & Judy saga are perhaps more apparent to me than anybody else. Judy is far too engrossed in the affairs at her Snooker and Billiard Club for any of the headlines to really affect her, whereas I’m a man with his eyes fixed on the here and now, measuring the temperature of the cultural waters with my smooth and (some might say) debonair elbows.

‘How did they hear about our taking part in Strictly Come Dancing?’ I asked, as I drew Judy’s eye to the newspaper headlines from earlier last week. Her back was creaking with the strain of rowing us up the long stretch of river towards the start line of the pro-celebrity boat race they hold in our undisclosed part of rural North London each year. We were a little late on account of my forgetting to pack my parasol and Judy was rowing furiously to get us there on time.

Judy puffed out her cheeks as the boat rolled into a stretch of turbulent current. ‘I guess... they found out... because... you’ve been flapping... your yap... on Twitter again,’ she gasped.

‘I’m quite discreet whenever I tweet,’ I said in my defence as I stretched out with a loud yarn that ended with my hand dipping lazily into the water. ‘In fact, if it weren't such hard work, I would have brought my laptop with me now. I’d quite like to tweet about the pleasures of boating.’

One of Judy’s oars got snagged in a bit of weed and she cursed as she dragged it in. A fisherman’s line had got wrapped around the coxswiddle (forgive me if I don’t know the exact technical terms), binding the weeds to the oar along with a newly dead swan. I turned away as Judy set about cutting them away with her teeth.

‘Yes,’ I mused, ‘the pleasures of boating...’

Once we were back under way and Judy was into her 72 strokes per minute rhythm, she returned to the topic of our previous discussion. ‘You might think you’re discreet, Richard,’ she replied, spitting out a swan feather and a fragment of beak, ‘but you’ve already let slip about your nocturnal wanderings.’

‘I’m cursed with an unrealistically small bladder,’ I explained, lifting my hand from the water as I realised that it was likely to set me off. ‘It's not my fault I have to visit the bathroom five times a night.’

‘Well,’ sniffed Jude, ‘I suppose you can’t defy physics. A man either has svelte hips or a generous capacity for liquid retention.’

That, I couldn’t deny. The Madeleys have always been of a slender cast; our hips 24% narrower than the girth of the average ‘A’ list celebrity (discounting, of course, Phil Jupitus and Johnny Vegas). It accounts for my natural abilities to move easily around on a sofa. Many have been the times that people have asked me how I move from one position to another within the fraction of a second it takes a camera to change angle. I put it down to my whip-like hips. I can go from open-thighed casual banter to knee-tight penetrative questioning in the blink of an eye. Next time you meet me, ask me to show you my ‘hip crack’. There are not many people who are able to break the sound barrier with their pelvis. As far as I know, it’s just me, Tom Jones, and Katie Price, although I have been told that her hips are now mostly made from rubber so it doesn’t count if it came to World Records.

‘I should really get Dennis to put out a press release denying this,’ I said, picking up the newspaper again. ‘I know you’re eager for this Strictly Come Dancing gig, Jude, but I worry that it wouldn’t sit well with my new younger audience. I don’t want to alienate my Twitter followers by being seen doing the cha-cha-cha with Bruce Forsyth. No offence, Jude, but what would my followers think of their favourite Uncle Dick if he portrayed himself as part of “the older generation”? Oh no. I can’t just think about us now, Jude. I have to think about the likes of @lurethesea and @Boltonwanderer who are begging for me to teach them the banjo. And then there’s @LaChatNoir and @alangoodenough, good people and talented in their own special ways. There’s my good friend @trevward who is currently learning judo so he can become by bodyguard. And what about @Drolgerg? It’s a public service to keep a man like that off the streets. @midfieldgeneral too, with his unwholesome interest in “On the Buses”, or @rebeccaholder who is just finishing drawing my adventures in comic strip form. And that’s not even mentioning @red1hols (and his blog), @Rasberrysmile, @zebedeejane, @BigDaws, @weenick, @stormyjoolz, @PAFoster, @Jellybabycakes, @over40something (who also has a blog), @Cigleris, @2legs, @ladyliz, @MandyPandy32 (whose cause, Jude, I keep saying deserves promoting), @oleuanna, @Footbacon in Sheffield, @HomoAsbo (he scares me, Jude, he scares me), @RealMissyBlues, @Tori_Da (with her unfortunale Harry Potter obsession), @TrippyPip, @fuzzilu, @welshracer, @martinpickering, @lightnet1, @Catvamp, @maxine_c, @diskgrinder, @lauramcguire83, @kandysays and @debsa. Who is to look after them? Especially @debsa...’

By the time I’d finished with this quite spontaneous roll call from off the top of my head, we were about two miles further up the river and Judy had apparently forgotten that I’d asked her a question. We turned a final bend in the river and the start line came into view. The other boats were already ready and the race officials were soon waving us to get into line.

‘Better bend your back, love,’ I said. ‘Don’t want to annoy Trevor MacDonald. Not after he disqualified us last year after my urine tested positive for ambrosia.’

As Judy moved us into the outside line, a shout went up from a familiar and not-too-welcome source.

‘You took your bloody time,’ shouted David Dickinson from his canoe. He was already down to his vest and his muscles glistened in the morning sun like hand crafted walnut knobs on a Queen Anne commode.

‘Ah, belt up Dickinson,’ I cried, swatting in his direction with my rolled up parasol. ‘You should just get ready to suck at our wake.’

‘You cheeky bloody bugger,’ he cried back but I dismissed him with a two fingered wave.

‘Come on,’ I muttered to Jude, ‘let’s give him a run for his money.’

Were I a latter day Patrick O'Brian, I would describe how I, as both master and commander of my vessel, had tightened the rigging, lay aside my cucumber sandwich and given Judy a speech worthy of Trafalgar. I would describe how her sinews tightened like rope, taught in the stiffening nor-easterly, as, from the embankment, the cry went up and Ronnie Corbett’s voice echoed across the lake.

‘Ah, ha! Now then... Well! Ha! As the bishop said to the nudist... Oh my goodness! Go!’

Judy’s arms worked those oars like she was back skinning otters on our holiday in the Faeroe Isles. She has an upper body strength that belies her size and femininity. Many times we’ve had big name Hollywood actors on the show and, in the green room later, I’ve suggested they try arm wrestling with Judy. They look at me as though I’m mad but it’s only when Jude has rolled up a sleeve that they’ve realised I was serious. She beat Sylvester Stallone four times about five when we were back on ITV and he was in his Rambo prime.

Say what you like about Dickinson, he’s got some stamina. He stayed with us up to the mile mark but then caught some of our wash and lost ground rapidly.

‘You hear me Madeley? The next time you won’t be so bloody lucky!’

‘Well next time, perhaps you shouldn’t use a mahogany canoe!’

Judy liked that. Or I think she did. It was hard to tell the woman’s emotions when she’s as red as a beetroot and sweating like Lee Evan’s in a microwave.

As we crossed the finishing line, she fell back and I cracked open a bottle of champagne I’d brought with me to celebrate our -- or, I suppose, more correctly, I should say ‘my’ -- victory.

‘Well,’ I said, standing up and waving to the crowd. ‘Today, Richard & Judy have conquered the Thames. Who knows what other victories lie ahead?’

At those words, the right side of the ampersand sat up, her brow beaded with sweat. ‘So, does that mean we’re entering “Strictly Come Dancing”?’

I pulled my lips from the bottle and wiped the fizz from my lips. ‘We’ll see, Jude,’ I said, ‘we’ll see...’

Stephen Fry's Honey Drizzler

Don’t you long for those days when a man could be caught strangling a ferret without having people judging him about it? I know that I do. It came to mind, earlier this morning, when I was caught manhandling a live rodent in the privacy of my own garden shed. Judy had assumed the worst: that I’d gone there with the intention of wringing some rattish neck. She just wouldn’t listen to reason and had even threatened to inform the RSPCA via their local representative.

‘What will Bill Oddie say?’ she asked, her panic only constrained by the shed doorway. ‘You’re getting a reputation as a serial rodent abuser, Richard. First it was house mice and then you killed poor Colin, John Cleese’s sweet lemur...’

‘That sweet lemur was trying to rip out your throat,’ I reminded her. ‘If I hadn’t smacked Colin with a copy of my hugely popular book (which is no misery memoir), you’d be without a larynx.’

‘Oh, a likely story, Richard,’ replied Judy. ‘Just like you told everybody that Stephen Fry had his arm broken by the flipper of an enraged manatee. Why can’t you just be a man and admit that you brought that ferret in here to have your evil ways with it? What is it you like about beating up these poor animals? It has to be something more than comic effect. Do you like to hear their little bones break? Is that what it is, Richard? Is that what excites you? Is that how you get your kicks?’

By now, I had managed to subdue the ferret my kneeling on its tail and I delayed explaining myself until I had carried the animal to the shed door where I cast it out onto the lawn. It bounced once and then made a dash for the fence and the safety of Ronnie Corbett’s vegetable patch.

‘Judy, if you’ll only listen. I’ll tell you how this happened.’

I then proceeded to tell her about the events of my morning which had begun quite innocently with the optimistic hope of drizzling some honey.

I woke up around eight, feeling nipped in the places where my toes had escaped the duvet. Judy was sound asleep, snoring in that baritone that is now so familiar and perfectly tuned to a low B flat. Rather than waking her, I slipped into my slippers (you might say, made for that very purpose), and went down to the kitchen to address breakfast. Because I was cold, I thought I’d make myself my favourite morning tipple: some hot water dosed with honey. The kettle was soon boiled and I poured a good amount into my favourite Monty Python Toby Jug, fashioned into a faithful facsimile of Terry Jones’ best grin. Now it was time for the honey. And that’s when disaster struck. I took Judy's favourite honey drizzler from the drawer and dipped it into a new jar of organic honey (a gift from a friend). I then gave the drizzler a twist and withdrew it sharply. It emerged handle only. The end had come detached and had sank in the depths of finest honey ever transmitted by the bottoms of Felicity Kendal’s bumble bees.

But you know that I’m not the sort of man to wail about a honey drizzler failing. If nothing else, I am a man of action. I immediately went upstairs and dressed myself for my workshop. Then I took the damaged honey drizzler into the shed intending to repair it.

Now, I have one of the best outfitted workshops in North London and it’s in that shed where I’ve made many of the inventions that have made my name in the world of science and technology. It’s there that I built Paul Merton’s pogo stick, added the rockets to Clarkson’s rocket car. It was there that I invented yeast free yeast and gave birth to the iCod, the world’s first genetically altered flat fish. Yet after my initial inspection of the drizzer, I knew that I’d need expert help. This was no ordinary break but wood that had been heavily fatigued by years of constant drizzling. I reached for the phone and the number of the only man I can call on in these emergencies.

Three rings later and there was a noise like an armed riot in a Columbian kindergarten followed by a familiar voice. ‘Ah, ’tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, though I fear my Nokia noise cancelling headset will struggle to overcome the ambient sounds of my location.’

‘Where on earth are you?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like you’re on a war front.’

‘A war front, indeed, Dicky. I am currently doing a bit of Christmas shopping. I’m in Hameley’s toy store where I am in the process of scoping out a BattleTech War Mage with World Destructor Kneecaps and Nipple Mounted Lasers.’

‘Cut the dorktalk, Stephen,’ I snapped. ‘Listen, it’s about this honey drizzler you bought me for Christmas seven years ago. I don’t know what reviews you read before buying it but the ruddy thing has already broken.’

‘I hope you’re not asking me for the receipt,’ mumbled the Great Man. ‘I fear that I keep them for only six years before I destroy them.’

‘Stuff the receipt. I want your help repairing it.’

Stephen chuckled. ‘But I honestly don’t see what I can do...’

‘It’s a spiral fracture,’ I said.

He fell silent, no doubt overcome by the manatee episode and his own spiral injury. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ he said.

I opened my door nearly an hour later and ducked as nipple mounted lasers took aim.

‘You’re late,’ I said.

‘I know,’ said Fry. ‘It was a long line to the tills and I lacked the triple A batteries to power my nipples.’

‘So you bought it then?’ I said, nodding towards the robot.

‘Oh, tush. Indeed: gripes. How could I not buy such a sweet little droid? There will be much fun to be had over Christmas programming this to annihilate many a C list celebrity. But enough about my plans to destroy the talentless portion of our world. Show me the drizzer!’

I led Stephen to the shed and we began the long process of repairing the handle. The spiral fracture meant that we had to be careful as we applied wood glue and set the whole thing up in clamps. When it was time for Stephen to leave, he was exhausted and he had taxied off before he’d remembered the Battlemech Droid he’d left in the hall. Naturally, when I tried to ring him, his iPhone battery must have gone dead. Unable to reach him, I realised that I couldn’t leave his droid in the hall. Judy has few rules but I knew that she’d take poorly to the World Destrouctor Kneecaps.

I carried the droid to the shed where I made room for it behind my prototype for a Kranky firing Cannon. And that’s when I discovered the hole. It wasn’t a big hole but it was a significant breech in a shed that contains so many state secrets. The corner of the shed was now missing a good six inch circle of wood. I kneeled down and peered into the hole and found that I could see right through to the Corbetts’ side of the fence. If I’d known the layout of their garden, I might not have reached my hand into the hole, nor grabbed so tightly onto the first thing I felt.

At first, I thought it might have been one of Mrs. Corbett’s old stoles. Then I thought I’d put my hand into a crate of costumes from Ronnie’s cross-dressing days on the Two Ronnies. I thought perhaps that it might even have been the famous fur coat that he wore when he sang that song about the farmer judging the Women’s Institute’s sponge pudding competition. The whole thing was really a vulgar euphemism for something else and the thought of holding onto that coat encouraged me to try to pull it through the hole.

‘I hardly expect it to bite me,,’ I explained to Judy. ‘How was I to know that I’d put my hand into the cage where Ronnie keeps his prize ferret?’

Judy looked at me with a renewed look of love in her eyes. ‘If only you’d told me about Stephen’s robot earlier,’ she said. ‘All this would have made complete sense.’

‘So I’m forgiven?’ I asked.

‘Of course you’re forgiven,’ said Judy, wiping the trickle of blood from my cheek where the ferret had nearly taken out my eye. ‘Unlike the time you battered John Cleese’s lemur, this time you had good reason to attack that rodent. If only I had known, Richard, I might even have helped you beat it unconscious.’

The smile came easily to my lips. ‘Jude,’ I replied, ‘it’s thoughtfulness like that which has made you such a much loved public figure, a veritable mother to our nation.’

Too Many Glass Chins

I woke up feeling a little more smug than is usual for a Sunday. I’ve always said that Amir Khan hits canvas quicker than Rolf Harris on a watercolour binge and last night he proved it. Judy was all tears at the breakfast table. Being a fan of British boxing, she’d been shocked to see her favourite fighter counted out within a minute of her pressing the red button on Sky Box Office.

‘Another Frank Warren masterstroke,’ I said as I laid into my toast with a left uppercut loaded with marmalade. ‘And well worth fifteen quid of anybody’s money.’

‘I can’t believe the lad’s got a glass jaw,’ she replied.

‘Not just a glass jaw, Jude. I’d guess he’s got a glass upper lip, a glass ear and probably a couple of glass knees. About the only thing of substance is his bank account. I’ve been telling your for years that he’s been promoted beyond his talent. But that’s what comes of turning boxing into a popularity contest. It’s fine promoting these young fighters but, at some stage, they have to get into the ring with men who can punch.’

‘It wasn’t like that in my day,’ sighed Judy.

Which was true. There were no easy fights when Judy helped establish female amateur boxing by becoming Manchester’s Amateur Middleweight Champion. I suppose that’s what made the defeat so hard for her to bear, so I left Judy ‘Firestorm’ Finnigan stirring her coffee and I went to catch some Sunday morning TV.

Or I would have had I not been disturbed by an unexpected repercussion of yesterday’s blog post. No sooner had I turned on ‘Mythbusters’ than a delegation of neighbours led by Graham Norton arrived demanding action about local security. Though they weren’t waving pitchforks and holding aloft burning torches, they were still as close to a rabid mob as a celebrity-rich neighbourhood gets in these image conscious days.

I was in no mood for their petition. Sundays are observed religiously in the Madeley home. I rise late, wear a thigh-high dressing gown all day, and do nothing more strenuous than watch the football or, when it’s in season, sit down with ‘Top Gear’ and plan my revenge on Clarkson. Sunday is a day of rest and definitely the one day of the week when I’m in no mood for David Dickinson talking about tripwires.

‘These bloody prowling buggers are everywhere,’ said David, fifteen minutes later as he sat there in the living room with one of Judy’s best china cups in his hands. ‘We need to organise a Neighbourhood Watch or the bloody yobs will rob us bloody blind. I say booby trap our bloody patios so the buggers will lose a leg if they come sniffing about my Chipendale.’

‘Ha! That’s right,’ said Ronnie Corbett, who was also in on this appeal, speaking on behalf people below five feet. ‘Just the other day I had to tell off my wife for leaving the house wide open. I came home at midnight and walked through an unlocked back door. I told her she should have locked it but she didn’t think Mr. Tiddles would know how to use the key to his cat flap.”’

‘So, you see,’ said Graham, as indifferent as the rest of us to Ronnie’s latest monologue. ‘I’m not the only one worried about prowlers.’

I looked around the room at the lot of them. I expected this sort of behaviour from Norton but not Felicity Kendal, Nigel Havers, or Michael Parkinson. Graham had clearly been round the neighbourhood hammering on the doors to rouse these local luminaries from their private lives.

‘Look here,’ I replied to the lot of them. ‘Can’t you see that this is just Graham’s personal vendetta against Bill Oddie? And I’m not going to be involved in anything that puts that man in any harm. Bill’s still traumatised after spending so long under Graham’s buttocks. I don’t think he’ll ever recover.’

‘Oh, that’s bloody it then!’ piped up Dickinson. ‘The bloody vandals have bloody won!’

‘No they haven’t,’ replied Ronnie. ‘Richard might still lead us. Come on, Dick. We need a man of courage and conviction.’ He turned to Graham. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ replied Norton but I think he was still sniffy about my buttock remark.

I just couldn’t believe my ears. ‘A neighbourhood watch scheme is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,’ I explained. ‘You don’t really think I’m going to spend my nights walking outside your houses with a torch and a flask. You all need to learn to stand up for yourselves. Get a chin and stop being cowards. Isn’t that right Judy?’

Judy just shrugged. ‘If you say so, Richard.’

It wasn’t the affirmation I’d hoped for but it was enough to dismiss the gathering. I saw Norton off the premises and returned to my normal scheduled activities until around two o’clock when the doorbell rang. This time I approached it less cautiously. Two shadows were loitering on the other side but one of them looked distinctly familiar around the nose.

‘Ah! ’Tis I, Fry,’ said the undervalued Stephen, ‘and I am here with the latest in home security devices, as reviewed in my next Dork Talk featurette for The Guardian on a Saturday.’

He was also there with another figure who smiled at me somewhat embarrassingly.

‘Hello, Dick,’ said Sir Clive James. ‘I heard about your trouble with thieving rats, so I’ve come to help Stephen Fry lay some deadly traps.’

As you know, I worship the ground that Sir Clive inhabits but there are times when I find it hard to listen to a man who speaks entirely in rhyme. Nor, if I’m honest, was I much of a mood for Stephen, whose intentions can be good but whose enthusiasms lend themselves to excess.

‘But I don’t want any traps,’ I said. ‘We didn’t have a thief. We had a prowler. And it wasn't a prowler. It was just Bill Oddie.’

Clive held up a finger. ‘Ah, Bill Oddie’s a man who loiters in shrubs, where he watches sparrows feed on beetles and grubs.’

‘Dear god!’ I muttered before I gave in to a sigh. ‘Look you two. I don’t know why you think we need security but...’

Just then, Judy arrived.

‘Ah, Stephen!’ she said, running up to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘So glad you could come. You too, Clive. Brought the stuff?’

‘All here,’ said Stephen, depositing a large duffle bag on the hall rug.

Judy clapped her hands with excitement. ‘Excellent. I’ll just go and get changed into my overalls and then I’ll help you install them.’

By now, I felt like I’d gone fifty four seconds with a Columbian lightweight bruiser. ‘What exactly is going on, Jude?’

My wife looked at me as though confusion is her usual habit for a weekend. ‘I thought we’d agreed to beef up the security.’

There had been no such agreement and I’m sure that she knew it. ‘I might have said that we need something to keep Graham Norton away,’ I answered, ‘but I was thinking more about a pipe smoking scarecrow dressed in tweed and holding something by Alistair MacLean while we play the Dambusters March. Can’t get anything more anti-Graham Norton than that.’

Judy shrugged. ‘Well, a few extra alarms wouldn’t do any harm.’

‘I agree,’ said Sir Clive.

We all looked at him, waiting for him to finish the rhyme.

His brows closed ranks. ‘With Judy?’ he added.

‘Shabby,’ I replied.

Sir Clive just shrugged. ‘It’s a terrible affliction, this rhyming addiction...’

What more is there to say? I just left them to get on with it. By four o’clock, the house was brimming with security devices and personalised alarms.

‘Remember: three hoots and it’s Oddie,’ said Stephen as he packed away his tools, ‘anything else you can shoot first and ask questions later.’

‘What about Norton?’ I asked, thinking it important to establish the real threat alerts.

Sir Clive bristled up, proudly. ‘When the cymbals clash, there’s something brash, loitering outside your room. But when a trumpet call, echoes down your hall, then Dickinson is your doom.’

I gave a cold shiver. ‘Clive,’ I said, ‘now that is real poetry. Keats never said anything prettier.’

Sir Clive beamed, Stephen looked on proudly, and Judy punched the air. The air was out for the count.

A Quiet Monday Morning

It’s a new week down on Madeley Farm and things aren’t looking good for the livestock. All the web traffic has dried up and the blog is like a dry watering hole with the carcases of my last two posts lying there, teeth exposed in a rictus grin and their prime meat worthless now that it sits dead on the bone. What’s apparent is that many of you are either on holiday or out enjoying this unseasonably warm weather, which is good if you’ve got the caravan perched a five minute walk from the beach but not so good when you’re indoors with a woman with knee ligament damage.

The weekend has been exhausting. When I’ve not been waving a fan over Judy to keep her cool, I’ve been running to the kitchen to swap frozen vegetables for those that have defrosted on her knee. There there’s been the constant guests coming to see how Judy is doing. Cilla Black came by yesterday afternoon and the two of them sang a few of their old favourite songs as I tried to provide accompaniment on the Casio. That’s hard to do when you’re ears are plugged with three inches of tightly packed cotton wadding. I was glad to see her go.

Then there was a visit by the Corbetts and Ronnie’s ill-advised comment that I’m surprised hasn’t been picked up by the media.

‘I don’t suppose... Ha! Oh dear...’ he said as he readjusted his glasses in that way he does. ‘I don’t suppose, Judy, that there’s any chance of you bouncing me on your knee?’

Judy’s face flushed the colour of her knee. Ronnie should have known better since there’s a chance that his weight on Judy’s knee is exactly what’s aggravated the problem in the first place. Again, it came down to Yours Truly to save the day. Once I’d bounced Ronnie on my knee for fifteen minutes he seemed happy. Visits by Judith Chalmers (she prophesised ‘good news in knees’) and Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee went without a hitch and Paul amused Judy by pulling a packet of ice cold baby carrots from behind her ear.

As for Judy, after nearly a week’s rest, cure, and frozen veg, she is feeling much better and is now beginning to get movement in the joint. Another seven days and she’ll be back working on the crazy paving, playing snooker at her local association, and sitting beside me on the Richard&Judy sofa. And for me: that’s when I might feel like writing something uplifting on a Monday morning.

The Right Sort of Juice

(Judy recommends that you click on the picture.
She says that it looks better enlarged.)

‘Richard!’ screamed Judy. ‘Moles!’

Slippers be damned, I thought. Underwear too. I jumped out of bed and grabbed the mallet that I’d hung from my tie rack the night before. Moles had dug their last hole in the lawn of Richard Percival Madeley or my name wasn’t Richard Percival Madeley.

Sprinting like a serious case of the steroids, I ran down the stairs, out through the kitchen, and my bare feet hit the lawn by the time I’d taken my third lungful of the fresh morning air. Then it was all me and my mallet. I swung it to every point of the compass and then a few more for good measure. Each time a mole stuck his head out of a hole... WHACK... The wooden head smashed a good six inches into the lawn and, I hoped, the sweet-spot of another of the blind little buggers that have been making Judy’s life such a misery and ripping up our quality turf.

After half an hour, I fell back on the decimated lawn. Sweat coursed over my naked body and I was flecked with mole but otherwise feeling pretty good about myself.

‘I’ll have myself a mole-skin hat out of this,’ I promised my wife who had been watching nervously from the patio.

‘Do you think you got them all?’ asked Judy.

I didn’t doubt that I had. ‘Every mole this side of the Corbetts,’ I promised her and gave a wave up to the rear window the next door house. Ronnie was standing there, his spectacles peering over the window ledge, his sleeping hat still on his head. I knew he wouldn’t be happy, what with him being a mole-loving man, but these moles had strayed into our garden and were hostage to fortune, to speak nothing of a very large wooden mallet.

Judy helped me up and I stumbled back into the house for a quick debrief. Half an hour later, I was recovered enough to return to the scene of my latest victory. Showered and fully dressed, I took my morning glass of fresh orange juice out onto the lawn where I walked the battlefield and examined the many hundred holes that I’d made.

‘You know, Judy. Some might say that I’ve done more damage to this lawn than an army of Iraqi moles could make in a lifetime but I say it’s the principal that counts. Ronnie can breed them if he likes but I’m going to smash them if they come onto my land.’

Only Judy wasn’t listening. I watched her as she lifted a bag of cement onto her shoulder, carried it across the garden, and then dumped it into the mixer that was churning away next to the hole she’d already dug for our new ornamental pond. I’ve lost count of the number of Sundays that Judy has spent building rockeries, laying paths, or making her life-sized concrete statues of our celebrity friends. Our arboretum on the northern edge of the Madeley estate is now a no-go area on account of the Ainsley Harriott statue that Judy cast from the man’s actual body. It’s not his naked body that I find particularly gruesome but the fact that it has nearly taken my eye out on more than a couple of occasions. I’ve asked her to file a few inches from his tongue but Judy won’t listen to reason.

As I walked around the garden, I realised how little I get to spend with nature. I examined a few of the shrubs and then wandered away from the beaten lawn, so to speak, and found myself taking the path down to Lake Talbot. Perhaps I was feeling in a generous mood but it came to my mind that I’d go and see if I could coax Fred from out of his tree.

Since Rory McGrath made the discovery that Fred the Weather had gone feral in the trees bordering the lake, putting an end to the myth that he’d gone down with the ‘This Morning’ map which I had scuttled many summers ago, we have been doing our best to get Fred to return to civilisation. I’d had a shed put in under the branches, complete with dry clothes, a camp bed, and some of Fred’s favourite dark chocolate digestives. So far, he’s failed to abandon his feral life for something more fitting for the nation’s favourite weatherman.

‘Fred?’ I shouted as I walked into the small copse of woodland. ‘Fred?’

Silence.

I shrugged and walked down to the shed whose door was open but the bed untouched.

Even Fred’s favourite digestives were still in their packet. It didn’t even look like the poor man had even come to sit in the shed.

The cot squeaked as I sat down on it and sipped my orange juice. After an unusually busy week, I’ve been sleeping longer hours than normal but still felt somewhat tired. I put my drink to one side and thought I’d have a lie down, just to lie there listening to the sound of the wind through the trees. I don’t know how it happened but I was soon in a deep sleep.

The dream was more vivid than any ITV quiz show you could imagine. I was stood on Blackpool Beach, directing Eric Sykes as he drove an earth mover constructing tidal defences. Each time we got the sand stacked high enough, Eric would drive a hole right through the wall and we would have to start again. I was berating him for the third time when I noticed that the digger had dug up something that glistened under the hot Blackpool sun. On closer inspection, they were golden doubloons struck with the face of Lenny Bennett. I woke up not knowing where I was but obsessed with the idea of not letting Bennett in on the booty.

You might say I was confused. I didn’t even think it odd when I sat up and saw Fred standing in the doorway.

‘Fred!’ I whispered.

He gave a snort and turned his head as though examining me. His nostrils flared as he took in my musk, which was half man and half mole. How he had changed! His muscles stood out like nylon cords against his small TV friendly frame, built exactly to the same scale as all the other models on the ‘This Morning’ map. His glasses were still balanced on his nose but they were caked with filth, as was the rest of his body. The only shed of clothing was the last of a once-brightly coloured knitted jumper that was now a tangle of knitting around his neck and upper right arm.

‘Don’t you know me, Fred? It’s Richard. Richard Madeley. You know... The guy who first suggested that you fall in the Albert Dock...’

Fred bared his teeth and pawed out into the space between us. I knew I had to take care. Men of Fred’s delicate character go feral more often than not when they leave showbiz. Noel Edmonds once had a shin bitten clean through by an employee who had gone savage after spending a year in the Mr. Blobby outfit.

I reached slowly out and picked up the pack of digestives. My hands were shaking but I managed to open the wrapping at one end. I held the biscuits out to Fred and gave the packet a shake until a couple of digestives fell out onto the floor. Fred dropped to his knees and began to sniff the chocolate. It was a start, I thought, so I picked up my glass of orange juice and tried to push it towards him.

It was a mistake any beginner might make when trying to tame a feral weatherman. He lashed out and his teeth took a chunk from my elbow.

I screamed in agony. It was pain like I hadn't known since I was once kneed in the testicles on live TV by a hyperactive Shakin' Stevens.

‘Richard?’ came a voice in reply. It was Judy.

‘Don’t move!’ I shouted as Judy appeared in the doorway. Fred was standing again and looking menacingly towards the woman who had so often handed over to him from the studios.

‘He’s just bitten my elbow,’ I explained as I examined the wound. His teeth had gone clean through to the bone.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Judy.

‘I’m okay but you mustn’t come any closer. Run down the street and bring Palin. And ring Stephen. Ask him to bring his tranquillizer gun.’

‘Does he have one?’

‘Of course he has one,’ I snapped. ‘How on earth do you think he manages to get so many guests on QI? Half of them are out of their brains on tranquilizer darts. You don’t honestly think that Bill Bailey always looks like that?’

There are rare moments when Judy doesn’t do as I suggest and she goes on to surprise me. This was one of those moments.

‘Oh Richard,’ she said. ‘This is ridiculous. It’s Fred. Our old weatherman. Fred Talbot. He’s not going to harm me.’ And with that she took a step towards Fred who backed away, worryingly towards my other elbow. ‘Come on Fred,’ she soothed. ‘You’re not going to harm old Judy, are you?’

What happened next was remarkable. Fred’s body began to shake and a sob broke from his throat.

‘Juuu,’ he managed to say.

‘Oh, Fred,’ said Judy still coming forward. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

Judy knelt down and picked up the glass of juice I’d set on the floor. She took a sip and then held it out for Fred who paused and then moved towards her. It was a sight to see Fred begin to lap orange from the glass as Judy began to stroke his head. His whole body seemed to wilt and the creature of the wilderness become a man once again. Judy shed a tear.

‘There, there,’ she said, ever so kindly as Fred began to nuzzle against her waist, sipping from the glass.

What could I say? In my wife's hands, orange was suddenly the right sort of juice. I gave Judy a wink as if to say well done. She could be sure that I knew how to handle things from here.

Fred didn’t know what had hit him. I had landed hard on his back and had him down on the floor before he could turn his teeth on us. He gave a groan as I twisted his arms behind his back and pinned him down but I was determined that I'd show no mercy.

‘Grab my belt and tie up his feet,’ I said to Judy who was standing there holding juice and digestives and looking quite shocked.

‘Oh Richard, what are you doing? Get off Fred at once.’

‘No time for your empathy now, Jude,’ I said. ‘This isn’t some tea-time chat with weight-watchers sitting on our cosy sofa. This is a feral ‘C’ list celebrity and he’s already bitten off my elbow. This is the only way we can be certain. Now, go and find a large rock and we’ll see about knocking him out. And if you can’t find a rock, bring Ainsley Harriott’s concrete tongue.’

‘You’ll kill him with that,’ said Judy.

‘That’s a risk I’m willing to take, Jude,’ I replied. ‘Now go and fetch me that tongue!’

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.’

Dr. Oddzo's Shotgun Therapy

Maybe Jesus knows where Bill Oddie found a Remington pump action shotgun. It would be wrong of me to speculate. There was just something reassuring about the way the walnut stock kicked bruises into my hip. I was blasting away at some old oil cans I'd thrown out onto the lake sized pond. I'd been drinking Wild Turkey all afternoon, trying to convince myself that the genial man who hosts a tea-time talk show can really be one crazy son-of-a-bitch channelling the spirit of that other crazy son-of-a-bitch, Hunter S. Thompson. My descent into madness was terminal. It was just a matter of figuring out which way the wreckage would lie.

'You know Bill,' I said as I pumped a few more shells into the breach. 'This is so goddamn right after a long week of feeling sorry for myself. Those bastards at Channel 4 don't appreciate me. The craven heathen pigf****rs.'

'Fire away,' said Bill, 'I was told me that it would calm you down after your battle against your black dog.'

'It's been more like a charcoal grey dog,' I said, reaching for my now underweight bottle. 'But it had rabid bloodshot eyes and drool that could eat a hole through sheet metal.' My lips snatched more whisky before I realised what Bill had said. 'Who told you this would cheer me up?' I asked.

'Oh, this was all Stephen's idea,' said Bill.

'Stephen? Stephen?' I repeated, the whisky having dulled my senses as well as my self-pity.

'He rang me this morning from America where he's filming his documentaries. He told me where to find his old shotgun and he said that I'm to let you fire every last shell if it makes you feel better.'

'That beautiful yet crazy son-of-a-bitch,' I said as I turned the weapon on Judy's ornamental garden and took the head off my least favourite dwarf. 'Die you miserable pot bellied dwarf bastard,' I cried as the air filled with plaster dust.

Bill looked hurt.

'No, no, Bill,' I said, taking my bottle from the floor. 'No offence meant. I was talking to the other pot bellied dwarf.'

'None taken,' said Bill but I could see that my words had hurt him where he lives. His face had that same torn expression it had the time I'd accused him of destroying his reputation inside the BBC by selling his cheap plastic herons.

'The thing is, Bill,' I said, resting the shotgun on my hip as I prepared to oil my temper with more liquor. 'I want to do something wild. I want to prove that I'm more than the man tied to a desk or making small talk between five and six every weekday evening. I think we should take a trip.'

'A trip?' asked Bill. 'A trip where?'

'A road trip. A road trip to Blackpool.'

His eyes lit up. 'There's a fantastic RSPB sanctuary up there on the Fylde Coast. This time of year, we might be able to spot a few of the early migratory waders.'

'I'm not looking to go birdwatching,' I said and lowered the gun ready to menace one of the oil cans that had been foolish enough to resurface. 'I'm talking about us having ourselves a wild weekend of excess in the spirit of gonzo. What do you say, Bill? Are you up for “Fear and Loathing in Blackpool”?'

'Does that mean we'll have to take drugs?'

The gun kicked. The can sang its death note.

'Drugs? Sex? Alcohol? I prefer not to name the vices that work for me,' I said. 'But I do know that I don't need illegal drugs to be reckless and slightly insane. My brain chemistry is a rare mutation of genius.'

Bill sank to the floor and picked up a can of Red Bull. There's nothing more wretched than a caffeine addict swollen with that heinous delusion that they are all powerful. The Greeks worshipped Dionysus for a reason. They didn't have the god of the Genus Coffea in their Rolodex.

'We'll need a car,' he said eagerly.

Luckily, I had it covered. 'Terry Gilliam is a good friend. He still has the Caddy from the film. Convertible in bright red. He'll let us use that. We'll hang a flag from the back.'

'The RSPB crest?' suggested Bill.

'The Stars and Stripes,' I yelled. 'It's the only way to go. From this moment, you call me Richard Duke. You can be my faithful assistant, Dr. Oddzo. I won't be happy until we've got ourselves a hotel suite and smuggled a monkey and a midget into our room and pumped them full of Toilet Duck.'

Dr. Oddzo ran a hand through his beard, his eyes now fully dilated as the Red Bull kicked in.

'I'm with you,' he said and pushed himself to his feet. 'We'll tear Blackpool apart!'

I pushed another shell into the gun, preparing to fire it into the lake, but before I could get my finger around the trigger, Dr. Oddzo had snatched the gun from my hands. That crazy bastard. The spirit of his age: a worn down stump of high living on BBC expense accounts yet a beautiful last hymn to the Sixties.

'Head down, Corbett!' he scream as he fired shells into the neighbour's bedroom window. Glass shattered. The shreds of net curtains floated down like confetti.

'Gonzo!' cried Dr. Oddzo, that twisted version of the human prototype as he ran back up to the house.

'Too crazy to live, to rare to die,' I muttered as I followed after him.

The Richard&Judy Nut Club Launch

Last night I dreamt I went to Madeley again...

It was always going to happen. I'd eaten too much cheese at the Grosvenor Hotel, London, where I was attending the launch of our latest project. I always dream about myself when I've overdone it with the cheese. It is a little known fact that I am one of the few men to whom curd is a mild form of hallucinogen. Unpasteurised milk is known to make me very happy.

The event began in earnest at eight o'clock when we arrived by limo. Our PR people quickly ushered us onto the stage where we were to make the official launch. Though I say it myself, I looked a superior specimen of manhood in my crushed velvet evening suit with purple cummerbund. Judy radiated beauty in a crimson dress of my own design.

'Hand stitched,' I announced to the photographers below the stage as I lift up the hem of the dress to be sure the cameras picked up all the detail.

Once the bulbs stopped flashing and Judy has finished blushing, it was time for the speeches. With my usual reticence, I went first, ad libbing the whole thing.

'It's an absolute pleasure for us to be welcoming you here, isn't it Judy?' I said. 'We know how much you've all enjoyed our book and wine club. Last year we launched our cheese club which has also been a huge success and we hope that tonight's launch will see the Richard&Judy Nut Club become a national institution. A bit like Judy, really... I know Judy wants to say a few words but it falls to me to thank you all for coming this evening and to promise that, in the future, when you think of the Richard and Judy show, you'll think of nothing but nuts.'

It was then Judy's turn to say a few words. As usual, they were scripted and she'd spent the whole day memorising them.

'We know there are many people out there who, either through poor education or a scarcity of resources, do not eat nuts as part of their daily diet. With our club, we hope to make this country a nut loving nation once again.' She smiled at the crowd before somebody handed her a big set of ceremonial scissors and she cut the ribbon.

Unknown to the crowd, the ribbon was connected to dozens of sacks of walnuts and brazils hidden in the ceiling. Once Judy severed that cord, thousands of free nuts came raining down on the crowd. Unfortunately, before I could work out what the screaming was about and why people were calling for an medical help, I had to introduce the evening's special guest.

As you might know, only this Christmas, the pressurised shell of a walnut exploded in Ronnie Corbett's lap, leaving him with severe lacerations to his golfing tweeds and a fear of all large nuts. You can imagine the response of the crowd as Ronnie came out on stage. And when he cracked his first walnut since his accident, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

The rest of the evening was taken up with a healthy combination of wine, cheese, nuts, and the smell of antiseptic cream rubbed into minor bruises and grazes which as few claimed were caused by Judy's stunt with the ribbon. It was good to see our friends and family relaxing, sharing our love for good food. I hope you all will follow our example.

Details about The Richard&Judy Nut Club will be available shortly at www.richardandjudysnuts.com.

'In The Tabernacle of the Bald God' by Martin Amis

Richard writes: "When I drunkenly stumbled into Professor Martin Amis at Maureen Lipman's cheese and wine party last month, I was ready to blame an excessive number of elbows in the room for my slight trip. The last thing I wanted to do was pay for the dry cleaning of an expensively ruffled jacket and corduroy trousers. I needn't have worried. Martin laughed off the stain, which he said delighted him because it was the same shape as the mole on Philip Roth's thigh, and instead asked me for an interview. The deal was struck there and then, and this is the result."

An aluminium bullet propelled me from Manchester to London. It carried the cordite stench of the intercity commuter train; a two hundred mile per hour slug rattling around the cranial cavities of canting fools whose scything fingers lay waste to lines of unkempt prose and words that die minuscule deaths between the covers of business reports, feasibility studies, and the cadaver-like morbidity of the end of year accounts. Solzhenitsyn one wrote of the moment when the 'soul, which formerly was dry, [...] ripens with suffering'. I was about as far from the Gulag Archipelago as you could get but I was also on my way to watch a man ripe with rich agonies of his very own.

An hour later, I'm sitting watching cameras shuffle softshoe across the floors of a subdued studio in South London. I've become enchanted by the insoluble piety of the place. At my side, sits a devote woman and her flask. She is knitting a cardigan big enough for a Sherman tank. She tells me that her name is Brenda before she turns to me, mid-purl. 'It's for Richard,' she says, her breath scorched by hot Darjeeling. 'He always looks so cold.'

The Richard in question is Richard Madeley, talk show host, polymath, and the man credited with the discovery of butane. 'That was many years ago,' he smiles when I later remind him of his origins in petrochemicals. 'I was trained as an organic chemist. Judy says it's now chemistry of a different kind but I still find it odd to be working in daytime television. I miss my pipettes.'

I want to tell him that he does more than work in daytime TV. To women like Brenda, he is the daytime. Though not for very much longer. He has invited me here to record the end of his decade-long imprisonment. I'm there to act as his witness: to sit and attest to his virtue in this tabernacle built for Brenda and the other knitting Gods of Middle Age. Bearing witness would be easier if the master of the television talk shows approached his premature retirement with a little more dignity.

I had found him stalking menacingly at the fringes of a circle of producers. Richard is a beast of capacious energy, occasionally lashing out at any who dare invade his space. One of the show's researchers runs away, her sobs echoing long after Richard had rebuked her for bringing him Marmite instead of coffee. Caffeine is his drug of choice. It's why I took my seat beside Brenda. Caffeine addicts are better left in their zone of jittery expectation. An hour later, I'm still there, watching Richard finish another show.

'Great show, guys! We should get that paraplegic brass band on again,' he announces as he drops down off the set and waves me over. His wig has slipped. I haven't the heart to tell him. Friends had advised me that he's a man whose vanity gorges on his charm. He lives an eccentric's life; dashing between emergencies as unnatural as his brow that never sweats, even when layered with a hairpiece weaved from the bristles of a mildly albino badger. On the phone earlier that morning, he had explained how Stephen Fry had helped him shave his head during a orgy of Taxi Driver and drunken self-loathing. In the flesh, this Travis Bickle has a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice that allies itself with the twinkle in his eye. He's a man fit for psychotic episodes. His humour attests to it in every act of passive aggression. When not directed at himself, it yawns in the face of absurdities that surround him. I tell him that he reminds me of Normal Mailer.

'When I started out, I only wanted to write like Mailer,' he tells me in his changing room. He has a habit of saying things he thinks other people want to hear. He knows I write novels so I'm treated to the Richard who should rightfully have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. 'Mailer was a model for how I've lived but my novels are more like something that Saul Bellow would write. Who would publish them? I'm not Jewish enough to be properly recognised as a Jewish novelist.'

I ask him how Jewish he is and how Jewish he wishes he was.

'I'm not at all Jewish,' he confesses. 'Except when I write. Judy compares me favourably with Howard Jacobsen. So does Howard Jacobsen. Howard Jacobsen thinks I'm Jewish.'

It's ingratiating and I'm tempted to ask to see the manuscripts. Does the man have prose as tight as the skin of his forehead? I feel almost transparent beside him; a glyph of anti-health and tobacco rot. Bellow would find it amusing watching this man freely handling his pelt while claiming to be the literary success to Herzog and Augie March. I want to tell him this but Richard's mind is already elsewhere. A parcel has been delivered to the door and he cannot wait to open it.

'Another stuffed heron,' he laughs, perching the cheap doll on the hardwood cliff of his table. 'It's for Bill Oddie. Ever since I mentioned that he's been speared through the thigh by an errant heron, his fans have been sending me these.'

It's clear that fans mean more to Madeley than he admits. To him the recognition is more than cant. Fans are important to the mystique of the man who lets it know that he wears no underpants and never locks the bathroom door. The psychology of the anal retentive is like cheap aftershave and it would be an insult to accuse him of wearing it.

'My fans tend not to come out in daylight,' he laughs. 'I'm not a fashionable wit like Stephen Fry. It's why I'm so often misjudged and people don't like me mentioning my friends in conversation. I don't know what people expect: that celebrities don't live near each other? That men like Stephen wouldn't search me out for a game of Scrabble. Some people find it difficult to believe that Ronnie Corbett lives next door. If I ever wrote that over forty celebrity friends live within a mile of our house, I'd be crucified.'

Crucifixion focuses his eyes and subconsciously he rubs stigmata on his palms. Would it be too easy to say he has a Christ complex? It's the interviewer's prerogative to avoid asking difficult questions when you feel an affinity for a subject. And it's hard not to feel for Madeley. In Manchester, delivering my yearly lecture to young writers, somebody had mentioned the blog that has become a byword for self-destructive journalism. It's called The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society. Humble it is not.

'Writing my blog has allowed me to reach out to people I'd normally cross the street to avoid,' he says. 'A few are a little psychologically unbalanced but I find that's the world. On some days, two hundred people drop by and read about my life. I love them all. Even those that drop by to call me a twat...'

A tear pools in his eye. Pure liquid sympathy. I dare not put it to him that two hundred readers are a piffling number, especially when most of them are there to abuse him. Reading through the names of his regular visitors is like reading out a roll call for a multiple personality disorder. AxmxZ, Selena Dreamy, Elberry, Hope-Athlete, Mutleythedog, Lola, Bertas and The Twitch. I suspect they are all the product of a single mind. When his contract ends, I expect the inevitable breakdown to begin with the cry: 'I am Richard Madeley and I am legend'.

Ruefully, he pops a pink bonbon in his mouth and I hear it crack between white porcelain before he begins to talk of Bill Oddie with great affection. His regard for his celebrity friends marks Richard out as something more than a good guy. He's a patron saint of lost comedians, failed and forgotten actors, and the detritus of showbiz.

The enigmatic hold that Bill Oddie has over Richard's career cannot be fathomed in the time I had with him. All I can do is tell him about the moment my own father introduced me to The Goodies. Kingsley called them 'Britain's response to Baudelaire' but my teenage sympathies lay eastward. There was never any doubt to an impressionable teenager that Bill Oddie was the voice of the anti-establishment and that his comedy was a vehicle for radical liberalism originating behind the Iron Curtain. In his bright red dungarees and lime green vest, he influenced me more than any other artist. I was seduced when still pubescent by guns firing tomato sauce and enormous cats. Later, when on the nadir of my own greatness, Bellow and Updike would efface Oddie from my life. In Madeley, I see a man who chose a different path. Young Amis smiles from his eyes and expresses it better than ever I can.

'Bill's a brainy little gnome,' he says with obvious affection.

I want to tell him that the brainiest little gnome is sitting before me, adjusting the wig on his suntanned brow. In this world of febrile sensibilities, where fashion is as disposable as the cant, Richard Madeley is the last link to homo celebritus. The moment passes too quickly. A knock on the door and I'm introduced to Judy, who doesn't seem to recognise the genius she berates for wearing his fly wide open.

'She's always telling me off about that,' he said, tucking himself away.

'Don't worry,' I reply. 'Norman Mailer always had the same problem. It's what comes of being a great Jewish novelist.'

The Madeley Bestiary

Excuse me if I keep burping. I’m feeling a mite bilious this morning. I think it must be something I ate in the last couple of days. However, I intend to crack on and have something posted for you before I scoot off to the studios to film this afternoon’s show.

I’ve also been delayed by working late into the evening on a new feature for my blog. You might have noticed the new ‘Madeley Bestiary’ in the column to your right. I’ll be adding to this excellent resource over the coming days, so both new and old readers alike will be able to reference the dramatis personae of my life. What’s more, if you print them out, they’ll form a set of cards that can be used to play a wide range of interesting games or used as a replacement tarot deck. Turn over two Ronnie Corbetts in a row and you’ll be in for ten years of good luck.

In Flames With Ronnie Corbett

I’m hardly a pendant when it comes to choosing my words. Nor am I the most dexterous wielder of the English language you’re find in the Land of Blog. But I do take an exception to those lexical mistakes and grammatical ambiguities that can be easily avoided. I direct your attention to an email I received from a certain Mrs. Dolore Mullis on Thursday morning. In it she asks me if I’ve ‘always wanted a penis the size of an elephant’. It annoyed me the moment it popped up in my iPhone’s inbox.

‘Look at this,’ I said to Ronnie Corbett as he drove our golf cart up the ninth fairway. ‘Surely she doesn’t actually mean to ask me if I want a penis the size of an elephant! Can you imagine that? Twelve feet long and eleven tonnes including trunk and tail?’

A glazed look descended over Ronnie’s face. I can only assume it had to do with the medication he’s still taking after his recent accident when a pressurised walnut exploding in his lap. All I know is that no sooner had I mentioned the elephant sized penis than he lost control of the buggy which veered into the light rough and ran smack into a tree. I’m blessed by excellent reflexes so I managed to leap out of my seat before Ronnie’s flask of whisky exploded in his bag of clubs. Soon there were flames everywhere. I was bloody lucky when a 3 wood narrowly missed my head.

As smoke began to billow above the course and golf balls began to explode in the intense heat, I ran back to the wreckage and pulled Ronnie from the driver’s chair. With the sound of concussions echoing across the greens, I dragged him into a nearby bunker were we could lie low until help arrived.

When he came around, Ronnie gazed up at me and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘have you heard the joke about the ambulance driver who arrived at the scene of an accident involving a hot dog stand and a bus full of male strippers?’

‘Not now, Ronnie,’ I said as I fingered my iPhone. ‘We’re in a tight spot. You might be wondering how you came to be impaled by your sand wedge. Well, fear not. It’s missed your vital organs and we can deal with that when the time’s right. In the meantime, I need to contact a man whose knowledge of English is greater than that of any other living soul.’

This time, the phone only rang once before I heard the voice that is a comforting warmth in a world of cold fury.

‘’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently stacking shelves in Waitrose for my new television series, joyfully titled, “Stephen Fry Stacks Shelves in Waitrose”. What do you want Richard?’

‘I certainly don’t want a twelve foot penis,’ I told him.

‘Well that’s a most reassuring thing to know,’ he replied. ‘Rarely have I greeted news with such an expansive of relief. Now that’s settled, might I inquire how big a penis you would like?’

‘Well that’s really not the issue,’ I said. ‘I’m ringing you to discuss the nature of poor writing in emails. When a stranger sends you message asking if you want a penis the size of an elephant, they surely don’t mean the whole animal, do they? Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask if you wanted a hung like an elephant?’

‘Ah,’ he chuckled, gently. ‘Herein you strike upon the very subject of a future Dork Talk column that deals with elephant genitalia in some detail.’

‘Does it? Well I’d love to have a look at that piece before it goes to print.’

‘I’ll email it to you immediately,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished it yet but I think it makes a few worthwhile points.’

‘And if you don’t mind, Stephen, can I post it on my blog? I’m sure my readers would like to see an early draft of Fry marginalia.’

‘Publish it as if it were your own,’ replied The Great Man. ‘Now I must dash. I’ve been called to do a clean up in aisle two… Yes, Mr. Forbes. I’m bringing my bucket and disinfectant this very moment!’

Fifteen minutes later, as Ronnie was being airlifted to safety, my iPhone beeped and Stephen’s article came through. It’s not quite as good as advertised but it is a first draft and is probably the most comprehensive article ever written on the relationship between an elephant’s penis and junk emails.

Enjoy.

–––

Dork Talk with Stephen Fry
The Spammers of Bad Grammars

Bless you all for stopping by again. Dork Talk is becoming a genuine bundle of like-minded bed fellows, all Firefox users, cheek to cheek under my large duvet made from a Sea Monkey. Fret you not a jot. I have nothing for you to ‘install’ today. I just wish to bend your ear on a matter of the utmost importance.

In the recent weeks, I have done my best to improve you lives by introducing you all to the joys of the iPhone and the electric toothbrush. What next, I hear you wonder, if indeed, I could hear you wonder. And what a world that would be were it true. Stephen psychic and holding you all to ransom. Mighty!

Well today’s article gives me a chance to warn you about some of the less eddifying technologies out there. Oh, I don’t mean non-Java complient handsets, though they are bad enough. Gor! No, I’m talking about elephants penises, goat glands, and the other terrifying promises being made in the world of web communications. None of us are free of those infernal emails and the false gratifications they promise. The problem with the people who write SPAM is that they lack the education to get the small details right. Take this little gem from the Fry inbox:

‘I gorgeous Russian girl with much love for you.’

Dear me, kind readers. What on earth can she mean? The she loves me as a man might love a vintage motor car or his mother? Or does this little Russian minx send me a veiled promise to give me pleasure that’s long, hot, and not a little moist? How is a man to respond, were he given to responding to the Russian mafia. I think silence is warranted on this occasion.

If you’re not shocked by the friendliness of Russian ladies, then you might be a little disturbed by the promises of some emails. Many are the times I’ve been asked if I wanted to have ‘a penis the size of an elephant’. Gulp. What a thing to behold, though, I relieved to say, not from close range.

I chuckled myself to sleep one night after receiving this communication from a dear lady called Alana:

‘oh my godness.. yourPenis is BELOW average size’

From a theological standpoint, this is troublesome to say the least. It assumes a phallocentric universe and that God in his greatness would overlook his single defining quality as a man. Then we have the use of the word ‘below’. An odd choice of word, to be sure. Many a well equipped man with short legs will be ‘below’ the average sized penis on a matter of altitude, though neither length nor girth, if you see what I mean and I’m sure that you do.

My advice to you is to set up some general mailbox rules. You should have a least one rule that deals with every message before you see it. It should contain the rule:

IF [message_from] != “Fry” THEN MOVETO [trash]
ELSE MOVETO [inbox] AND MARK [important] AND BOIL [twinings_earl_grey] WITH [two lumps] AND [milk=a drop] AND THEN GOTO [put_feet_up] WITH [stephen’s_latest_masterpiece]

You will find your life is much easier if you follow my advice. Consider: what indeed would you do with a penis the size of an elephant? Deary me. There is a question I think we will keep for a future Dork Talk. I really haven’t given it much thought. Shudder and, indeed, tremble.

A Nun's Thighs

That dear man, Ronnie Corbett, arrived today with a flask of Mrs. Corbett’s home make chicken broth. I was in my dressing down with my ear and elbow close to a roaring fireplace when Judy showed him into my study. Even in my much weakened condition, I was happy to see him. He had clearly gone out of his way to visit me, despite his walnut wounds.

We spent a pleasant hour talking together. I told him that his limp seemed to have almost gone and he praised me for my pallor which he said was ‘as pale as a nun’s thigh’.

Yet the truth is that I’m feeling no better. The cold had progressed from the feverish stage and loaded my head to its muzzle with chemical weapon’s grade bacteria. There’s an odd feature of my flues and colds. I fear worse when my body is clearing its system than when I’m under the influence of some unfriendly virus. You might compare it to the condition in Iraq.

Anyway, I’m hoping to be back to normal tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. I have great plans for the New Year, including the campaign I’m going to start against the cult of the celebrity novel. Casting an eye over the January book sales at Amazon, I was pleasantly amused to see all the usual Christmas celebrity biographies are now half price and Russell Brand’s annoyingly titled ‘Booky Wooky’ (not necessarily the right title but I'm too sick to go look) is working its way towards a good pulping. Less amusing was the number of novels written by celebrities I noticed. Even our own Denise Robertson has spawned a couple of these potboilers. Something really needs to be done and I think I’m the man to do it. Judy has said to me on many an occasion that she intends to ‘become a writer’ once she finishes on TV. I try to tell her that writers are born and don’t suddenly ‘fancy having a go’ once the TV work dries up. However, on this, as in many things, we are bound to have differences.

Okay, I can feel my anger begin to rise and if I don’t stop now I won’t stop at all. I’ve already written more than I intended and I’m feeling weaker for it.

Until tomorrow when normal services should resume, I hope you all have a wonderful time tonight. Personally, I don’t treat it as being particularly special. It’s the most miserable night of the year when we all look back on opportunities not taken, disappointments accrued, and the world situation going from bad to worse. I’d be more than happy to celebrate New Year if we could take 2007 out behind the garden shed and smack it ceremonially around the head with a spade. Because we can’t, I don’t. Nevertheless, I wish you all a happy New Year.

From Richard...

In case you’ve not noticed, it is now Christmas Day and it has fallen to me to be the first person of significance to wish you a very merry Christmas. I’d be very grateful if you would also do me the honour of also accepting my salutations for the New Year. So grateful, in fact, that I won’t even mention Global Warming, Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the mounting crisis in the world banks, and the fact that Lily Allen has begun to reproduce. Although each so frightening as to turn an Oddie grey, they are stories for 2008 and we do well to now worry about them now. No, really, we shouldn’t…

Instead, let me be my usual understated self by saying that there is a significant lack of words in the English language to describe the love I feel for you regular readers. The ‘occasionals’ I like too but, let’s face facts here: it’s the regular readers (even those of you who don't think I know you're even watching) who butter my Christmas muffins. If I could, I would have you all pickled and popped in jam jars for my mantelpiece, where your little wrinkled cadavers could be studied during the remaining dark days of winter before I bury you in the fertile loam of my back garden sometime in the spring. With the right nutrients and careful watering, I’d raise many more of you, multiplying my readership with a fruitful harvest in the Autumn. This time next year, we’d have an army and who knows what good we could do!

Enough about the distant future. My day is going to be a busy one. We’re holding a small party here at our home for just a few hundred celebrity friends. Homes across London will be empty between the hours of 8PM and 3AM, while their owners are here enjoying a feast the likes of which have not been seen since the days of the toga. If you’re driving in the area tonight, please take care of celebrities running out into the road. We don’t want any accidents like we had on Judy’s birthday, when Billie Piper was impaled on a juggernaut’s radiator grill and carried all the way to Bradford.

I’ll be back tomorrow, when my hangover has lifted, to cast an eye over the destruction. My advice to you all is not to drink or to drive, and to avoid putting the moves on a Nolan, an Izzard, or a Clarkson. As for a Madeley… Well, let’s never say never, shall we?

Merry Christmas.

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.’

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.