Invitation to a Beheading

The good news is that I’ve got that job hosting ‘Eye of the Storm 2’. The producers had sent the confirmation via my agent and it only arrived today. The letter gave me the kind of relief I would describe as sexual, if that didn’t imply that I know what it means to have congress with second class mail. And, please, I want no filthy innuendos made about that line. There’s been far too much of that around here lately…

You see, this is a big moment for me. I’ve finally stopped taking my nerve medicine and I’m already beginning to see normality stretching out before me. No, I mean it… And thank God, too. A state of constant misunderstanding has existed between us for months.

Until tonight, I didn’t realise that some of you have been reading this blog in the mistaken belief that it was meant to be funny. I assure you that it wasn’t. Some of you have even been encouraging me to greater excesses, while laughing at a man who, in reality, has been suffering a nervous breakdown. No, don’t laugh. You all seem to have missed the point. I’ve been sick. The medication was playing with my mind.

Luckily, a few new visitors from the colonies saw through my drug induced miasma and diagnosed my problem. Lucky for me, they are viewers of House. That’s a medical drama and it clearly helped them recognise the symptoms of a man suffering the delusions of one who thinks he’s a friend of the Great Fry. A forum reader called Amysusanne was perceptive enough to witness the Emperor with his flaps a-hanging.

“I don't really get it either. I mean once, okay...whatever. But he seems to be beating this joke into the ground and I don't get the "funny" in it. I guess people are responding "LOL" favorably and it's egging him on? Who knows. Maybe there *is* some inside joke I'm not aware of, but otherwise it's just a little confusing.”

Whatever, indeed! Too damn right it is confusing. I’ll be glad to put these last few months behind me. Taking pain medicine with wine is not good. The doctors warned me that I might grow slight breasts, but never did I think they’d appear on my elbows.

Thank God too that He’s gone! Stephen is off to America. I’ll miss him and his spectral presence. But at least he’s over there where he can be canoodled by the febrile young things who are panting hot and ready to lay down their lives on behalf of a living legend in tweed. Being neither a comedian nor having a comedic bone in my body, I fully appreciate what His fans have to say to me. Were wiser words ever put in the form of a forum post than those typed by dear Warycary?

“I don't find it funny either - does Stephen? I think someone should up this guy's medication and prepare the restraints.”

Restraints, certainly! Medication? Perhaps not. I’ve been so high on the stuff it burned my eyeballs and I’ve been seeing Christ in my cocoa. And do you know what? I also don’t think any of this is funny. Who was laughing? Not me. And not Stephen, I’m sure of that.

Were I speaking to Stephen Fry now, I would make this pledge to him.

I, Richard Algernon Madeley, being of unsound mind and addled intellect, do hereby swear that I will not write any more posts that attempt in any way to be funny. I revoke the codes, creeds, and ethos of the comedian and swear that I will uphold the good practises of the TV talk show host, without wit and without humour. I am not funny. Nor have I ever been funny. Funniness shall never be mine.

Thank the Good Lord who has let me see sense before the writs began to fly. To Mr. Fry, I can only express my apologies. In his name, I renounce comedy, blogging, and the words ‘Oddie’, ‘baboon’, ‘bassoon’, ‘elbow’ and ‘Nutkins’.

And God Bless America.

The Scrabble Champion

Among the many remarkable properties possessed by half quarts of cheap spirits left over from Christmas is the ease with which they manage to sneak their way into the garden shed at some point during the New Year. Some might describe it as uncanny, the way they always seem to find men more than willing to loosen sobriety’s belt buckle.

One such man had spent his Sunday morning replacing the garage’s automatic door mechanism with the engine he’d stripped out of an old hover mower. It was a job I’d been intending to do for weeks. As it turned out, the space of a lunchtime was all it took for things to go horribly wrong.

Judy arrived back from the hairdressers around noon and, as normal, drove her car right up the garage door. The moment her front wheel broke the infra red beam the door snapped open in rather brisk 0.1 seconds. Truth to tell: it was probably a bit too brisk. It proceeded to rise a further meter before it met resistance in the form of the garage roof. In less than the time it takes me to write ‘bent metal’, twenty four square feet of corrugated roofing had been peeled back before the electric motor had freed itself explosively from its bearing and gone sailing off in the direction of Dale Winton’s bungalow. It was about this time that I had retired to the workshop I maintain in the garden shed and this is where the liquor sought me out not long after.

It only takes the sound of fire engines rushing to the scene of a blaze in a camp celebrity’s bungalow for a man to appreciate what it means to share a bottle with Ronnie Corbett’s cat. Mr. Brucie often comes and sits in the shed for a little warmth. And so it was yesterday. We shared a few sad stories, Corbett’s cat and me, and then we each promised undying friendship to the other before one of us passed out.

I awoke at four o’clock to find that I’d emptied the bottle to within half-an-inch of its life and that Mr. Brucie had already broken our pledge of loyalty. Alone, I stumbled back to the house and plagued by the thoughts of my Monday interview at the local job agency, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I retrieved a box of matches and the manuscript to ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’ from my office, and then proceeded back outside where I dumped the pages in the barbecue pit. Swaying slightly in the cold air, I stood over it as I doused the whole lot with the last of the spirits.

‘This is it,’ I said, looking at my collected outpourings of the last few months. ‘It’s been fun while it lasted old friend but we knew it we could never go on like this. Goodbye cruel world! Tomorrow, I becomes a normal man.’

And with that, I struck a match and leapt back to protect my eyebrows as five hundred pages of my closely typed wit and wisdom began to blaze where summer bangers usually sizzle. I imagine this is how many of the great unpublished books met their end: with pages flipping and turning in a drunken heat. The force of inebriated flames pulled the manuscript apart, wantonly ripping off the odd page to send it hot and flighty into the sky.

As tears began to trail down my face, there was a movement in the shadows of my attention and I felt somebody come to stand next to me.

‘Is there a sight more likely to make a grown adult weep than watching a melancholic talk show host consummate his passion for wretchedness?’ asked the familiar voice.

‘Stephen?’ I said, wiping a few sooty tears from my eyes.

‘Ay,’ said the Great Man, brushing back a veil of that floppy hair some of us love so much. ‘’Tis I, Fry, with you at the end.’ He put his great paw on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as we both gazed at the blackening pages, rolling in the flames like my tortured dreams. ‘You intend to go through with it then?’

‘Bill’s coming with me tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘It’s always good to have an Oddie on hand.’

‘He’s the perfect man for the occasion,’ said Fry. ‘Were I just a little less famous, I might have accompanied you to your interview.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ I smiled. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. I’ll be wearing a bad suit.’

He seemed to understand the gravity of the moment for the first time.

‘You mean it won’t be bespoke?’

‘As unbespoke as they come,’ I said.

‘And am I to assume that it won’t be in some shade of gaudy showbiz orange?’

‘It will be very grey. It even came with a small plastic bag containing the spare buttons.’

‘Not buttons for you to stitch on yourself?’

‘The very same,’ I replied. ‘There’s not even room for a cape.’

To that he gave an audible shudder. ‘Shudder,’ said Fry.

‘Oh, don’t be down, Stephen. I’ve had a good career.’ I said this reassure myself as much as him. ‘These next few months will be bitter but at least I’m taking steps to get myself a proper job.’

But now I turned to see tears streaming down Stephen’s face. ‘Oh, forgive me, Dicky,’ he spluttered. ‘To think that you’ll be one of the hoi polloi in a matter of hours… It’s almost too much to bear. What will become of us?’

‘Not to worry,’ I said, taking his hand in mine. ‘Why don’t we go back into the house and have ourselves a jolly game of Scrabble? I’ll give you a ten tile lead.’

‘Include a blank and you’re on,’ he smiled through his tears.

That I certainly did. Half an hour later, I had just overcome Stephen’s ten tile and a blank lead with a cunning use of a ‘Q’ on a double word score. I was about to follow it up when the doorbell rang.

‘I’m not expecting anybody,’ I said as I stood and headed for the front door but Stephen just waved me away. Now recovered from his emotional outburst, he was clearly preparing to run me through with a ‘X’ he was eying for a triple letter.

It was a threat I would have to postpone for later because standing on the welcome mat was Sir Clive James. We’ve not been on speaking terms since he kicked me out of his house during an interview. It didn’t appear that he had recovered. He was red faced and he was waving a singed sheet of paper.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, pushing the page into my face. ‘Comes flying through my window. Is this your name on the top?’

I took a look at paper. ‘Ah, my story about Terry Nutkins and the squirrels!’ I said, recognising the style. ‘Made it all the way to your place, did it? That’s miles away. It couldn’t have got there quicker than if I had tied it to a squirrel and a blazing one at that.’

‘Bad prose travels quickly,’ was all that Sir Clive said, displaying the sort of wit that earned him few friends inside the BBC.

‘I thought it one of my better efforts,’ I answered.

‘Better efforts?’ laughed Clive. ‘Only such a stunningly crass effort could destroy the manuscript to the new book of poetry it has taken me ten months to get right! Every single verse had been rhymed to perfection before this came through the window.’

‘Pftttt,’ said a voice high above my shoulder. It was Stephen. I’d thought him anxious to get on with his triples but there was poetry to discuss and that rarely keeps him out of a fight.


‘What the bloody hell did that mean?’ asked Clive.

‘It meant, my dear squat friend, that there’s a new polymath in town and you are certainly not he.’

‘You think not?’

‘Look you two,’ I said, standing between two of the greatest minds of our age. ‘Can’t we calm down?’ I turned to Clive. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught us at a bad moment. We’re in the middle of a game of Scrabble.’

His face changed. ‘Scrabble? You play Scrabble?’

‘We both play,’ said Stephen. ‘Care for a game? We could fight for the title of the “Nation’s Favourite Intellectual”.’

Clive stuffed the sheet of paper back into my hands and brushed me aside. ‘Out of the way, Madeley,’ he said. ‘Sir Clive James never says no to a challenge.’

And that was it. The last evening of my showbiz career was taken up with serving drink and food to a pair of insatiable Scrabble addicts fighting for the right to call Radio 4 their own. The night was abound with rare words, with scatterings of ‘x’s and ‘z’s. ‘Zouave’ matched ‘nuzzler’, ‘zonk’ with ‘zoom’. I could only gaze on the scene as one o’clock struck. Such a happy scene, yet mixed with he certain dread that it might be the last. Could I really give up my friends? Could I change the life I knew so well? Would I print out a new copy of my manuscript?

I closed the study door on a friendship newly found and I made my way to bed. Stephen would play until the early hours given a man foolish enough to encourage him. Sir Clive James was clearly that man. To the sound of their mutual laughter, sharing a joke in Spanish, I climbed the stairs. Perhaps I’d see them again before I left for town in the morning. Perhaps I wouldn’t. The only thing that matter was that peace reigned and I would soon be asleep, eased their by the gentle orange glow from the still smoldering ruin of Dale Winton’s bungalow.

The Squirrels

If there’s one thing in the world I could change, it would be people’s obsession with decking. Don’t get me wrong. I like a nice bit of wood as much as the next man but not at the expense of a good old fashioned herbaceous border. In fact, a herbaceous border much like the one I found myself trampling yesterday afternoon in an attempt to cheer myself up.

Though the weather’s gone cold, Judy still insists that we do our gardening once a week. After the depressing news about my statistics and the even more depressing news that I’d drank all the whisky, my slight inebriation had been calmed by the freshness of the air and half an hour spent digging the border. Then it was to be my job to rake leaves in my typically efficient manner. I don’t mind raking leaves but I do think it’s Judy’s duty to save me the trouble whenever she can. I wasn't going to touch the rake until I was sure that all the leaves had fallen from the tree. And that’s the reason why Judy had climbed the big oak we have growing at the bottom of the garden. She was doing her best to pick out all the dead leaves before they fell.

I was in the process of pointing out what I thought was a large clump of leaves that were about to fall from the end of a thin branch high in the oak when there was a ‘coo-ee’ from the garden gate. I leaned on my spade and looked up to the house. I couldn’t make out who was there, nor how I was meant to respond to a ‘coo-ee’.

I decided on the cautious approach. ‘Judy!’ I shouted up into the tree. ‘There’s somebody at the back gate.’

I heard a loud sigh and then a branch crack. Despite the fact that was forty feet up the tree, she managed to get down surprisingly fast. ‘Okay, okay,’ she huffed, as she picked herself out of the slight hole she’d made in the soft ground. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’

‘That’s my girl,’ I said as I carried on supporting the spade.

It seemed to take her ages to trots to the back gate but, when she got there, there’s a squeal of delight and then excited chatter. Not being a man who likes to miss interesting things, I dropped my spade and went off to investigate.

‘Oh, Richard, look who’s here,’ says Judy coming around the side of the house.

My heart leapt. Not at 80s pop sensation Kim Wilde, as you might expect, but at the sight of my old mate Terry Nutkins.

Judy had invited Kim around to help with the garden but Terry had come at the invitation of the master of the house.

‘Terry!’ I said, going to shake the great man by his hand.

Kim’s eyes narrowed but I gave her a smile as I led my friend off down the garden.

Terry’s a great guy. He used to present the Really Wild Show on BBC1 but I remember him best from the days of Animal Magic when he used to own a sealion. Terry stills smell rather fishy, on account of his still working with animals, but when it comes to trouble with wildlife, there’s nobody better. Now, if you’ve been reading the 'Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' in recent weeks (and let’s face it, who hasn’t?) you’ll think I’d have invited Terry along to sort out the problem with he mice. And you’d be wrong.

‘It’s these squirrels,’ I said, ‘they’re a bloody nuisance.’

‘Ah, Sciurus Carolinensis,’ he said as we walked down the garden towards the trees. ‘They’re become a pest all over the country since they were introduced back in the 1980s. Do you know that radio disk jockey Dave Lee Travis was the first man to import them? He used to let them nest in his beard. Only they escaped and now they’re bloody everywhere.’

‘Spare me the tales about Travis,’ I said and pointed out the oak tree. ‘Judy was just up there and they were swarming all around her. I’ll tell you, Terry, that I was a little worried that they might bite her.'

'Oh, rabies,' he said, tutting.

'Rabies!' I cried. 'I don't like the sound of that. I can't even think of hitting my dear Judy with a spade just to stop her biting me.' I shook my head. 'But I suppose I’d have to do whatever it took to look after the living…

He gave me a funny look as he prodded a bulge in his trousers. That’s not as odd as it sounds as a pair of binoculars popped out of his pocket. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got, shall we?’ he said and set to examining the tree.

After a moment, there was an audible gasp from Nutkins.

‘My god,’ he said. ‘That’s remarkable.’

For a moment, I thought Judy had climbed back up the tree and Terry was remarking on her ability to swing from branch to branch like a gibbon.

He lowered his glasses. ‘Richard, do you know what you have here? You don’t have sciurus carolinensis, or what are commonly known as grey squirrels. You have Sciurus vulgaris, which we all know as red squirrels.’

‘Vulgaris?’ I repeated. ‘Well, they make me feel pretty vulgar when I see what they’re doing to Judy. Can’t we get rid of them?’

‘Get rid of red squirrels? This might be the only remaining red squirrel population in the south of England. You can’t get rid of them!’

‘Not even with poison?’

If he wasn’t bald, I think Terry would have started to pull his hair out. Instead, he just wiped a fist over his skull.

‘Richard, I really don’t think you see the importance of this discovery,’ he said and reached into another pocket for another bulge. Terry Nutkins is a man of many bulges. I don’t think any one of them is real. ‘You wait herem' he said. 'I think we’ll be able to show you how important this discovery is.’ And with that, out popped his mobile phone and he walked off to get a better signal as Judy came down the garden with Kim.

‘Hello Kim,’ I said and gave her one of those celebrity kisses (all sounds, little lips, no moisture) to make up for my ignoring her earlier on.

‘Oh, he speaks,’ she said, rather tartily, though I’m not saying that Kim’s a tart. She’s still the beauty I used to lust over all those years ago.

‘Richard’s just a bit preoccupied,’ said Judy. ‘We’ve got terrible trouble with squirrels.’ She held up her hand. ‘Do you know one of them bit me?’

I reached for the spade. ‘They’re red squirrels,’ I said as I tried to detect the first signs of frothing on Judy’s mouth.

‘Oh, reds,’ gushed Kim. ’That’s wonderful!’

‘Not you too,’ I groaned. ‘If it wasn’t bad enough that we can’t rid the house of our psycho mice, I’m now told that we’re not allowed to kill squirrels.’

Judy tutted and explained the problem we’ve been having with the mice after Dr. Raj’s brain medicine left them all with multiple personalities.

Terry came back a minute later, looking very pleased with himself. ‘I’ve called my contacts in the BBC,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a nice little surprise for you, Richard and Judy.’

He wouldn’t tell me what it was but the whole street knew half an hour later when there’s the sound of a siren wailing down our quiet little residential cul-de-sac.

We all ran out to the front and saw a line of trucks coming down the road. They were all the distinctive colours of BBC Outdoors Broadcast Units, but the car at the lead, with the red flashing light and siren, was the focus of my attention.

‘I don’t believe it!’ I said.

‘Knew you’re be surprised,’ said Terry. ‘Since his retirement, he’s been on a state of high alert ready for a scoop like this.’

And sure enough, there in a car with a flashing red light was the great man himself, David Attenborough. All twitches, excitement, spittle. And that was just from him jumping out of the car

‘Where are they?’ he asks, full of that enthusiasm that’s made him a household name.

‘They’re in the back garden,’ I said, ‘up the tree.’

‘Up the tree!’ he laughs and trots off to the garden followed by his team of cameramen and sound recordists.

‘Well?’ asked Terry.

‘So, I guess this mean we can’t poison the squirrels,’ I said, ‘but would I be allowed to install electrical equipment in the garden and smear peanut butter over the leads?’

Terry looked at me, not knowing if I was joking or being serious. You know me, so you know I was being serious.

We all followed the crowd into the garden where David Attenborough was already shinning up the oak tree and gushing stuff to camera about this being a great discovery and the caution he had to show in case the squirrels had rabies. I gave another look at Judy but there was still no sign of madness in her eyes but I also knew that dehydration was the earliest symptoms.

‘Fancy a drink, Jude? I asked.

‘No, no, I’m fine,’ she smiled. I lessened my grip on the garden spade but wouldn't let it go until I was definately sure.

But by then, if I'm honest, it was all getting a bit too much for me and I was about to say I was going back to bed when a breeze suddenly got up. I began to shout something about elderly TV presented shinning their way up oak trees in blustery conditions when I realised it wasn’t the wind that had turned. Wind isn’t usually associated with the sound of rotors. A helicopter had just crested Madeley Towers and was looking to land in the middle of our large and expensively laid croquet lawn.

‘What now?’ I sighed. Terry just shrugged, Judy fainted, and Kim caught her. In a way, each person played their role quite admirably.

I ran across the helicopter and was about to tell them the price of quality turf when the back door opened and I saw the flash of the BBC logo

‘You lot can’t just keep on harassing Channel 4 employees in this way,’ I told the man before I even looked up into his face. ‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘not you!’

‘You can cut that out,’ said Alan Titchmarsh. ‘Where’s that bastard, Attenborough. I was promised all the wildlife gigs. He was supposed to stay at home and write the forwards to books.’

I pointed to the tree. ‘He’s up there,’ I said. ‘Don’t catch rabies,’ I said, my voice laced with sarcasm.

Titchmarsh jumped out and went racing off towards the oak and the only community of sciurus vulgaris in the South of England. I smiled at the helicopter pilot.

‘Going back into London?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘Don’t suppose you could give a man a lift? Drop me anywhere.' I said. 'I’m really not that fussy…’