Back In My Dark Place

I had lost my zest. My zip went missing. It’s pep that I needed, yet there was no pep to be found.

Blogging is serious work that pretends to be easy. Others can write their 200 words each day and then do a normal day’s work. I’m not like that. I tend to knock out 2000 words or I write nothing. So long as I have my mojo firing, it will carry me through. But when my spark isn’t there, I’m lost for things to say.

Encouragement. That’s all I needed. A few kind words from a friend will usually fill my tanks and send me raring along at a hundred miles an hour. Then it’s a straight road all the way to Productivity USA. The problem is that life tends to be discouraging. On the days when I don’t have the limo to carry me around London, I’m be loaded down with a laptop and books, suffering public transport and the crass and utterly rude British public who sneer at those of us in false noses, bowler hats, and pink earmuffs. Umbrellas also don’t like my company and will usually self-destruct as soon as I touch them. A combination of these took me to a dark place over the weekend. By Sunday lunchtime, I was sitting in the garage, smeared with engine oil and muttering ‘the horror, the horror’ as I was tattooing ‘exterminate all the brutes’ onto my right kneecap.

Which is where Bill Oddie comes into my life.

I know that if I introduce Bill into my day, he will do something that will help raise my mood above the basic threshold at which I begin to function. Beards have a compelling quality made all the more intoxicating when they stand no higher than four feet eight inches and have a working knowledge of owls.

‘Hello Dick,’ said Bill. He was framed in the doorway of the garage. How he’d managed to avoid tripping any of the booby traps I’d set, I really don’t know. ‘Judy says that you’re in a bad mood.’

‘The world is against me,’ I wailed. ‘I’m hindered in all my great projects. Nobody wants me! There are no visionaries out there willing to put their faith in this brain and these two magnificent hands of mine. Give me work to do and I’ll do it. But inspire me, Bill... Inspire me and I’ll raise you a cathedral or build you a dam!’

‘That’s very good of you,’ replied Oddie. ‘I have some logs I need chopping in my back garden. I want to make them into some bird boxes.’

I shrugged. It’s rare that you find somebody wanting cathedrals or dams. Bird boxes would have to do.

So I spent my Sunday afternoon in Bill’s back garden chopping and carving wood. It wasn’t work that inspired me but it was honest toil and saved me from having to return home where Judy was ensconced in Glastonbury. She has a thing about Neil Diamond that puts my fixation with Vanessa Feltz’s cleavage to shame.

Anyway, by the time Bill came out to see how I was doing at six o’clock, he plucked at his beard and nodded with great appreciation.

‘Excellent word, Dick,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen wooden logs cut with such skill. The way you split them is the work of genius but the way you’ve assembled them into a bird house that’s an exact scale replica of the Taj Mahal is simply quite stunning. My tits will be most pleased.’

I blushed as I felt a little bit of pep return to my body. ‘Why thank you Bill,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to show you that I was back.’

He looked at the bird box and nodded. ‘Oh, you’re back, Dick. You’re most definitely back.’

The Man With The Advice

The decline in this blog’s readership continues apace. Barely had the letter of complaint from the Tunisian High Commissioner crossed my desk than Judy informed me that a man had arrived to turn off our internet supply.

‘We’ve paid our bills, haven’t we?’ I asked the leisurely end of a pair of overalls sticking out from the cupboard beneath the stairs where the cable modem is hidden.

‘Don’t much matter,’ said the man. ‘We’re trying to reduce the overheads on our system by removing the low users. We’re beginning with the lowest and then working our way up to the moderates.’

‘Disconnecting many are you?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘You’re the first I’ve done. It means you must be the lowest user of the internet in the whole of the South East. Quite a feat. You mustn’t do much downloading.’

‘That might be true but I can’t be a low user,’ I said. ‘I write a blog!’

He appeared from the doorway. A thin moustache, gaunt face, sallow eyes, hair in black enamel. Think John Waters in overalls. ‘A blog?’ he asked.

‘The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society,’ I explained. ‘It’s big with the homeless and African polygamists.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard of you,’ he smiled, his cracked teeth appearing darker their tobacco stained cavity. ‘They were talking about you back at head office. You’re the big star of TV who can’t buy readership.’

‘Really?’ asked Judy. I hadn’t noticed her standing at the back of the room, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned my blog. She doesn’t know about the trouble I’ve been having. ‘You told me that there were thousands reading you,’ she said. ‘I thought you were bigger than Big Iain Dale or Devilish Kitchen Cabinet.’

‘Thousands?’ laughed the engineer. ‘From what I hear, he can’t get dozens. What was it yesterday? Twenty six? Twenty seven? ’

I shrugged. ‘It was actually twenty eight,’ I said. ‘But three of those were by the same person looking for information on Trevor Macdonald and the Jehovah Witnesses.’

Before any of you complain, I know I shouldn’t have been so blasé about the Witnesses. Nor should I have been so blasé when Judy fainted.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said to the engineer. ‘She always does that.’

‘Tits,’ said the man with a wink.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You need more tits.’

I looked down at my chest, a little confused.

‘Breasts,’ he said when it was apparent I didn’t follow his meaning. ‘Ladies with no clothes on? You need nubile young wenches with a preference for flimsy t-shirts, washing cars, and bad nozzles on hosepipes. Oh, Lor! Look what’s happened! You can see through my shirt. So you can. That sort of thing.’

‘Do I?’

He stroked his thin moustache and perched himself next to the vacuum cleaner. It was a seedy look, as if he had plans for poor little Henry’s dust bag. ‘If you want the hits, you need the tits,’ he smiled.

‘Are you saying that in order to become popular, I need to post…’

‘Pornography,’ he nodded. ‘Works for all the big blogs.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

He crawled out from under the staircase. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m leaving you with a connection so you can look into this. And if you don’t want to post porn, then post pictures of traffic accidents, or people falling over. But if you’re asking me, the solution to all of your problems lies with tits.’

I couldn’t ask any more because that’s when Judy started to come around. I also thought I’d better move her away from where she’d fallen in the fireplace. She started to come round as I extinguished the smoke coming from her right ear, otherwise she was only slightly singed.

The subject of tits did worry me, though. Later in the day, I thought I’d expore the engineer’s advice. I rang up my old friend Peter Stringfellow, who knows everything you need to know about that sort of thing. The poor man only looks so old because he spends so much of his time worrying about the well being of so many young ladies.

‘Look, Pete, I need some buxom young ladies for my blog,’ I said.

‘When do you need them?’

I looked at my watch. ‘How about eight o’clock tonight? Judy’s off to the cinema to watch something French. I’ll have the house to myself.’

Stringfellow’s hearing aid whined as he turned up the interrogation. ‘What you going to do with them?’ he asked.

‘I thought I’d photograph them in the nude, get them to fill in questionnaires, and then stick them in a taxi with the fare home.’

‘And Judy knows nothing about this?’

I then explained about the need for material for my blog and my pitifully low readership.

‘Twenty eight people?’ He laughs like partially stunned roadkill. ‘You must work hard to drive them away. But whatever you’re doing, I’m not lending you any of my girls. They’ll come back stinking of failure.’

Later that night, as we lay in bed, I put down my copy of Anne Enright’s The Gathering and I turned to Judy who is still trying to get through last year’s book club selection.

‘Do you remember than incident at that awards ceremony when you had your little accident with your top and I helped to tuck you away?’

Judy went pale.

‘Only, I was wondering if you have any pictures that I could post on my…’

I slept the rest of the night in the tool shed with a copy of ‘Salmon Fishing In The Yemen’ lodged nine inches beneath me. Later today, I’m going to see if Dr. Raj can remove it, but it’s from the shed that I’m writing this report.

Which explains today’s top tool shed facts. Did you know that the contents of the Madeley shed include one lawnmower, three spades, a fork, fertilizer, weed killer, a bucket (with hole), a bucket (without hole), a bucket with a brown liquid in the bottom, a bucket with a charity sticker on the side? Conclusion: we are a family of many buckets. In fact, more buckets than I have readers. Which remains, I think you agree, a perilous state of affairs.

In The Company of True Beauty

Jordan’s bringing her tits onto the the show tonight so I’m feeling a bit humble. It might get a bit crowded on the sofa so we might have to get Judy to shove over a little or ask Jordan to let a little air out.

For those of you that don’t know who (or what) I’m taking about, we’ve posted this bio on our official website.

Katie Price is one of the most successful female celebrities in Britain today. She has conquered being a model, author, mum, wife and now perfumer! Katie is the author of four successful books, two of which are autobiographies. This month, Katie releases her new perfume ‘Stunning’. She joins Richard & Judy in the studio to talk about her new baby Princess Tiaamii and Pete’s struggle with Meningitis, her amazing success as an author, and her new perfume.

Hard to know where to begin, isn’t it? Makes my own accomplishments pale somewhat. To be honest, these big name interviews get me nervous. I've been back and to to the toilet all morning. The woman has talent oozing out of her every pore. I imagine this is how Parkinson felt before he interviewed Ali.

I should probably begin by chatting about little Princess Tia Maria and then asking her about becoming a role model for many young girls across the country. I’ll ask her about her boob jobs and how she got started in the business of soft core pornography. Of course, she’s a famous author with two novels out (ooh er!), so I’ll be asking her about the creative process that brought about her ‘amazing success’ and the moral choices she makes when faced with the job of writing page after page of sex. I'll ask her if she finds it as tedious to write as I find it tedious to read. Then I’ll ask her how she comes up with her ideas and how she first came up with now notorious scene in her first novel when her heroine ‘did it like a monkey’ in Knowsley Safari Park.

The woman is sure to interest you so don’t forget to tune in. And also, don’t forget to buy her new perfume, “Stunning” available from 24th August. Prices start from £18.00 but it’s cheaper if you buy it by the pint.

Some Jordan facts. Jordan has famously nicknamed her breasts Eric and Ernie, but did you know she's been sued by the estate of the late Ernie Wise? Did you also know that Jordan’s perfume actually contains her own nipple juice and comes with a money back guarantee should your nipples not grow an inch after using it? Jordan hopes to be shortlisted in this year’s Booker Prize and, if she is, she’ll be only the second author to do so with breast implants. Jordan is also involved in a high court action against the country of Jordan when it was announced that the small middle eastern nation intended to have a boob job and market its own perfume. Jordan’s calendars are always top sellers but did you know that for the past five years they’ve been missing the month of March?