The Martin Scriblerus Alliance

Judy had been massaging my neck all morning, trying to get rid of the tension.

‘You don’t have to decide now,’ she said as she poured a little more oil onto her hands and began to knead it into my non-responsive muscles. ‘Give it the rest of the day. Nothing is going to happen on a Sunday.’

‘But isn’t it only right that I join them?’ I asked her for what must have been the ninth or tenth time. ‘It just seems to have my name written all over it.’

Judy tutted. ‘Is it really what you want?’

And there she had me. Was it really what I wanted?

The whole thing began some months ago after I wrote the first entry on this blog. One visitor who passed himself off as a member of the German aristocracy started to leave comments and I was intrigued enough to track him down to his homepage. The man also travelled under the name Higham and he was part of a group of bloggers who had the word ‘Blogpower’ tattooed on their foreheads. For all of ten seconds, I had thought about asking to join them, but being an independent spirit, wary of grown adults who form themselves into societies, I decided that it wasn’t for me. I would cut a lone furrow and plant in it what I liked.

And I was happy with this arrangement until this morning when I saw a new outfit getting together in the blogosphere. It made me feel rather like James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. I wanted to be one of the first at Higham’s side, armed with my throwing knives, six shooter, and a small bearded helper called Oddie.

I suppose it was the name that attracted me: The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. ‘The Dunciad’, as you know, is one of my favourite poems and heavily influenced my own much maligned ‘Mock Heroic Epistle on the State of Jeremy Paxman’s Sock Drawer’. I remain one of the few men to consider himself a Scriblerian, carrying on the work of the greatest English writers of the eighteenth century. The Scriblerian Club was a small group of like minded men of huge wit who produced some of the most biting satire of their day. Whenever they gathered it was like an episode of QI but without the third-rate standups. Their whole habit of mind was that of parody. Their humour was ripe with caustic epigrams and extravagantly pointless footnotes, all of which bewailed the leaden fools of London society. The peerless Swift wrote ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which over the centuries has become something of a children’s story, yet in the unabridged version is a joyously vile and scatological rant against people in general. That a new Scriblerian Club should be forming close to me on the web made my heart beat a little faster. All of which I explained to Judy this morning.

‘Well you should clearly join it,’ she said as she finished on my neck and set to work on my shoulders. ‘If there’s a group of satirists out to undermine the fabric of society with their cleverly written parodies of modern manners and life, then you should be there leading them Richard.’

‘Parody?’ I asked. ‘Who said that this has got anything to do with parody? The Martin Scriberlus Alliance is about bloggers gathering together under a label to signify good quality blogging.’

Judy’s hands slipped from my back. I thought it was because there was too much oil but then I felt them grab me around my neck.

‘Quality blogging? Quality blogging?’ She screamed as she shook me. When she let go, the tempest had passed. ‘If there’s really such a thing as quality blogging, you certainly shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of it. Not when fourteen percent of your readership think you should quit!’

And there was nothing I could say to that.

I pulled on my shirt and came sloping in here to type this up. Any other bloggers out there who think they write a good blog, I recommend that you head over and check out The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. Unfortunately, because of issues to do with quality control, I’ll be unable to join in with what is sure to be an excellently run project.

Two Rectums Spotted

And by that I don't mean 'spotted' as in 'heavily pimpled'. Though, who knows? A person with three buttocks would surely suffer more 'anal acne' than a person with the normal two.

What I meant to say is that the last hour has seen Yahoo! hit hard by searches for 'two rectums'.

(To my very many new readers, I should explain that, for some unknown reason, this blog has become the world authority of 'duel rectum syndrome'. I currently top both Google and sit in second place on Yahoo! for the phrase 'two rectums'.)

In the morning, I intend to get my team of researchers trying to contact the person from Huntington Beach, California who got here with the search term: 'I have two rectums'. There has to be a medical explanation.

Chip Dale's Back and Armed With Memes!

The heavily oiled mass of manically depressed Welsh thongdom has been roused from his winter slumber and he has tagged me with a meme. I’m a little humbled to see myself listed in his hopes for 2008, so I’ll happily include him in my own. Those of us who go through life misunderstood by the wider world need to stay together, even if it means getting a cheap hustler’s body oil on my best casual slacks.

There are some reassuringly similar themes in our two lists. Chip is clearly a deep thinker. As, I believe, a I. His musical choices are not as suspect as I’d have imagined given that he spends his life wiggling his hips to bad disco music. All I can do is entreat him to give Serge Gainsbourg a listen.

So, my hopes for 2008 are these:

1. I manage to start earning a living with my writing, so I can begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest living author of our age, Mr. Fry.
2. I continue to blog, despite all my labours in the real world involving cleaning products, discounted tins of baked beans, or labelling guns.
3. People stop asking me to quit blogging. We can all enjoy a good laugh about it but on cold mornings and late evenings, it actually makes me pause before I put finger to key.
4. My collected volume of essays and shorter pieces, ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’, wins me the Samuel Johnson Prize, presented to me by a woman called Selena dressed in ocelot, with all my fine blog readers in attendance in the cheap seats at the back.
5. I finally master French so I can more fully devote myself to my current obsession with Serge Gainsbourg.
6. Chip also manages earn a living doing what he most enjoys doing. Not by stripping but by writing. I miss his blog.
7. My big project is a huge success bringing me yet more fame and fortune. I don’t mean ‘Dick Justice’, which will be as successful as these ITV documentaries can be, but the project I’m calling Richard Madeley’s Secret Summer Project 2008.
8. I am elected to become the new Lord Mayor for London.

I don’t normally tag other people but I’ll use this to promote some new and relatively unknown bloggers. It’s only natural that I tag my good friend Stephen Fry (but he’s so busy, I don’t expect him to even acknowledge this), my new favourite social commentator Mr. Jerry Caesar, the difficult-to-type AxyxZ, and to Bertas who is much too busy to be a couchslob.

Monday

I have an appointment at a local job agency on Monday morning. Because of my celebrity, I’ve been putting this off for too long. It was only Bill Oddie promising to come with me and provide modal support that convinced me to ring them and make the appointment.

This depressing thought (the appointment, not Oddie’s involvement) means that I can’t be bothered writing today. Instead I thought I’d canvass you for job ideas for a man of my unique qualities. You must bear in mind that I have a low boredom threshold and would like a job involving high levels of creativity. I can work unbelievably hard when motivated to do so, and I’m very prolific in my ideas. I don’t want to deal with the general public and routine ‘office work’ would lead me to take a jump off the end of a knotted rope within the month. Money doesn't motivate me in except insofar as if I'm going to be giving up my writing career (something that even more of you seem keen on, judging by the current poll), I want to be paid well to do so. I quite like the idea of getting into advertising but wouldn’t know where to begin.

The Touch of Nepotism

An old farmer friend of mine, who shall remain nameless other than to say he’s big in diary cows, rang me on the landline late last night. He caught me with a Cadbury’s chocolate finger stuck up one nostril as I tried to bite off its other end without using my hands. You might call my behaviour ‘odd’ but these are the challenges I sometimes set myself just to keep myself sane.

‘Madeley?’ I said, stuffing the remaining finger into my mouth.

‘Richard,’ said my farmer friend, ’I need a big favour.’

I sank back into my chair but not before taking the 500 page manuscript from the desk and putting it on the floor. As I set it down, it struck me, not for the first time, that the title, ‘Fry, Oddie, & Me’ sounds pretty convincing as a collection of my shorter essays and shorter writings, mainly culled from this blog. My agent has been onto me for weeks to get it printed out so she can begin hawking it around the bigger London publishers and procure me a bit of loose shilling for my pocket that had become increasingly prone to muttering to itself and sitting lonely in the corner.

‘Fire away, Desmond,’ I said, though Desmond is not his real name. ‘You know I owe you plenty of favours. What is it now? Want me to come and help you like last time and rub butter into your cows’ udders?’

‘No, no,’ said Demond. ‘Nothing like that. It’s to do with my youngest, Samantha. She’s just turned twenty three.’

‘You want me to come and rub butter into her udders then?’ I asked as I wiped chocolate from my nose.

I don’t think Desmond was too impressed with the light way I verbally fondled his daughter. However, he was obviously trying to keep on the good side of me and let my comment slip by like a well margarined teat.

‘Sam’s always wanted to get into journalism,’ he began. ‘She’s done her qualifications. Got her 2.2 from the University of Luton and she now fancies working for one of the big broadsheets. You know… Like The Guardian, or The Times. To be honest, Dick, if it came down to it she’d probably give The Telegraph a try. But that’s just it. I was wondering if you could pull a few strings and get her an “in”.’

‘An in?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t know what an “in” would look like. If I did have an “‘in”, I’d used the “in” myself to get myself “in”. I’m more prolific than Clarkson and with more opinions that Gill. I’m perfectly placed to attract a huge readership but even I can’t get in the front door.’

He sounded disappointed. ‘You can’t tell me that you haven’t got some strings you could pull. She’s pretty good at writing. Spells well, good punctuation, the lot. And she has a lively mind. Not the other day she noticed have few black umbrellas there are in the world. How observant is that?’

‘It’s clearly Pulitzer material,’ I agreed, ‘but print journalism is not a business for familiar favours. You don’t get into print just because you’re the son or daughter of an established name. You have to learn your craft by spending years if not decades working in local newspapers. Tell your daughter to start out at the bottom and by the time she’s fifty, she might earn her chance to flex her writing muscles with the big boys.’

You can tell when a chap’s disappointed but doesn’t want to show it. It’s all in the verbal ticks he displays when finding a reason to get off the line.

‘Oh, well, if that’s the way it is, mate,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I bothered asking… Thanks for nothing.’

After I hung up, I surprised myself to discover that a pretty rotten mood had made itself at home in the room. Putting a flea into a fellow’s ear is not the Madeley way. Not when he considers the fellow a good friend. However the assumption that some people have about me just rubs me up the wrong way. Just because I’m famous, it doesn’t mean that I should be obliged to do every rum Harry a favour. Doors that are closed to me shouldn’t be opened for others just because I say so. Might as well hang a bloody sign around my neck reading: ‘“A” list media careers here, form an orderly queue at my right elbow’.

Anyway, I turned off the light to my office, with one small smile directed towards my finished manuscript, and I hopped it up the stairs towards warm bed and an even warmer Judy.

The warmer Judy was already sitting up in the warm bed, a notebook on her lap.

‘Shopping list?’ I asked as I dropped my trousers.

‘Synopsis,’ she replied.

‘For the shopping list? Surely it’s not that long, even for a New Year order.’

‘For my novel,’ she said.

I tried to give her one of my dignified stares. Hard to do when you’re standing in the middle of the room with your trousers around your ankles. However, I think I did a fine job of it. She seemed to shrink in the bed and pull the notebook towards her.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she snapped. ‘You’re just angry because you can’t get anybody to read your stuff.’

‘It is not stuff,’ I told her. ‘It’s clever social commentary disguised as lightweight comedy. Besides, what makes you think you’ll be any different?’

‘Of come on, Richard,’ she laughed. ‘We haven’t been running the country’s biggest book club without knowing something about books. I’ve already got a plot and plenty of characters. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to sit down at the computer and write my first chapter. How difficult can it be?’

I stepped out of my trousers and picked them up. A snap of the wrists and they were folded and draped over the back of the chair and I set to unbuttoning my shirt.

‘Give me the outline,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what you have.’

She cleared her throat and looked at her pad.

‘Justine Pontleby is the 22 year old daughter of well known celebrity chef Gordon Pontleby. Trading on her father’s fame, she lands a top job in the world of afternoon TV.’

‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Could never happen. A young sniff of a girl like that would never get a break in TV. She’d have to work years in regional TV or radio before she’d even get a chance of the big time.’

Judy just peered over her half-glasses before she continued.

‘She meets debonair Richard Smiley, a charming if slightly psychotic host of a popular TV talk show. Smiley has dark secrets involving an addiction to sniffing Toilet Duck. When he is involved in the accidental maiming of the show’s weatherwoman, Justine is forced to help cover up the crime…’

I shook my head as my shirt fell away. Just before it hit the floor, I flicked my leg and the shirt came flying back over my head. I caught it and folded it in a single move before I turned my attention to my socks.

‘The thing is, Judy,’ I said as I bounced on the edge of the bed. ‘You have a plot but it’s unbelievable. A man as crazy as this Smiley character would never get his own show.’

‘He hosts it with his sister,’ said Judy.

‘Again, that’s very unlikely,’ I replied as I rolled up my socks and threw them on the chair.

Down to my underpants, I jumped up and strode out to the mirror to run through my five minute Tai Chi exercise I do before bed every night. I like to be centred before I sleep.

‘Don’t you want to hear the rest?’ asked Judy as I began to fight imaginary foes in slow motion.

‘To be honest, Judy, I don’t. It seems to be yet another of these unbelievable stories about the corrupt world of the London based media. I just wish you could tell it how it really is, with the honourable people who work long hours on quality programming before returning home at night feeling totally rewarded with their lives. Instead, I suppose it will be nothing but tales of sex, drugs, and stale bread rolls in the Green Room.’

She closed her notes.

‘I already have an agent who is interested in representing me,’ she said.

I was in the deep squat of the tiger stance as she said this. I felt my muscles tighten. ‘An agent?’

‘Felicity R––,’ she replied.

I looked at her blankly.

‘You know. She’s the daughter of old Reggie.’

‘Little Felicity? She’s a literary agent now?’

‘Oh, come on Richard. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Reggie asking us to put a word in.’

‘Did he?’

‘He did.’

‘I don’t remember putting any words in anywhere,’ I replied, feeling so small squatting there in my red and yellow underpants.

‘Of course you didn’t. But I did.’

‘You did?’ I stood up and heard a bone in my back go acoustic. ‘You can do that? You can put words in?’

Judy stretched a hand towards the light. ‘Not for anybody,’ she said with a smile. The room went dark. ‘Goodnight Richard.’

The Richard Madeley Award For Headline of the Week

The first recipient of my highly prized 'Headline of the Week' award is to be found over at the United Nations Population Fund website. I love a good prosaic headline and the United Nations do them better than anybody.

Delivering Hope in Nigeria: Natalie Imbruglia Visits Newly Launched Fistula Project

I think what makes it work so well is the internal rhyme. Which has led me to launch The Official Richard Madeley Rhyming Couplet Competition. You've got the rhyme, now I want you give me a couplet.

For example:

There once a pretty singer called Imbruglia
Who did charitable things for the fistula.

How Big is Vanessa Feltz's Cleavage?

For the person in London currently searching Google for 'How big is Vanessa Feltz's cleavage', I can end your quest right here.

It's big. Bigger than even your 1280x1024 desktop resolution could handle. I mean it's really, really big.

I wish you well and hope I answered your question. I now feel that my afternoon, spent fruitlessly looking for a post-Channel 4 job, has not been totally wasted.

How Did Chuck Norris and His Wife Meet?

To the person in Oklahoma who came here after asking Google 'how did Chuck Norris and his wife meet', I have your answer...

It was 1993 and Chuck was fighting Henry 'Buster' Davenport in an exhibition match in Toronto, Canada. Half way through the fight, Chuck caught a roundhouse kick to his face which caused him to bite his tongue due to loose fitting dentures. The fight was immediately stopped while medics attended to Chuck. The young nurse who treated him was his future wife. They have been inseparable ever since and Chuck always jokes that finding his wife was well worth losing the last quarter of an inch of his tongue.

I'm always happy to help my friends across the sea. Happy New Year.

Love At First Sight

I love you. No, no. Don't say a word, stranger. I know you feel the same way too. You've been looking at my blog for the last couple of hours. Savouring everything I've written. Let's meet. I'll bring chocolates. Who knows. A little wine. A comfortable room...

Lets make babies together.

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.

How Tall Is Jeremy Paxman?

To the person currently searching Google to ascertain the correct vertical dimension of the nation's favourite surely current affairs presented, I can confirm that Jeremy Paxman is 5 feet and 7 inches tall, though his inside leg measurement is still a somewhat impressive 32 inches.

It was a pleasure to be of service.

What are Jane Seymour's hobbies?

To the person from Birmingham searching Google for the answer to ‘what are Jane Seymour’s hobbies’, I’m delighted to inform you that they are:

1. Photographing rare forms of underwater coral;
2. Researching her book on Mexican drug cartels, 1970-75;
3. Decorating plaster-cast elves;
4. And visiting her health club where she relaxes in mud by wrestling naked with midgets.

It was a pleasure to help you.

Ainsley Harriot's Italian Marble

Call it devilry if you must but part of me was actually glad that it had happened.

Ainsley Harriott has been something of a byword for upward mobility since he rose to stardom a few years ago. He’s an unusual beast in the world of celebrity and one from whom you would be wise to keep a measured distance. That distance is usually measured inches longer than the reach of his tongue, which he is more likely to use when greeting you than he is likely to shake you by the hand. It has worked remarkably well for him. From stirring noodles on BBC2, he moved on to conquer America before he came back home last year and returned to Ready Steady Cook where he can be found, five days a week, leering towards cameras and sticking out his twenty seven inch tongue for ‘the ladies’.

This deep background is my way of introducing the fact that he moved into the area just before Christmas. Yesterday was the first time we’d had chance to set foot inside his house.

‘Come on, Richard,’ said Judy after she’d found me at noon sitting in the middle of the living room zapping aliens on the XBox 360 that Stephen Fry bought me for Christmas. ‘You’ll become a vegetable if you play those games much longer.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said as I slipped out from behind a docking crate and hit a bug between the eyes with my sniper rifle.

‘Ainsley’s having a few friends over to his new house,’ she said. ‘He’s invited us around for a New Year’s drink.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, most eloquently, I thought, as a laser blast seared a hole in my virtual spacesuit.

‘Well? Are you coming?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, dropping the controller as Fry’s onscreen presence began to dance over my dead corpse, his cape, emblazoned with the Fry crest, flapping in the solar wind. ‘You know, I’m not over this cold and Stephen has just pwned my arse…’

She raised her fists and set them on her hips. ‘Must you do everything that Stephen says? Get changed this minute, Richard Madeley. For once, you can actually do something for your wife. And the fresh air will do you some good. I’m sick of hearing you sniffing.’

I was not in a fit enough state to argue. I got changed, shaved off two weeks of beard, and met Judy at the car. This isn’t to say I was feeling well. In fact, by the time we were pulling up at Ainsley’s house, I was feeling pretty nauseous. A bright pink mansion with yellow decoration will tend to do that to a man, especially when it’s also been covered with bright blue Christmas lights to spell ‘Alright ladies?’

‘Richard! Judy! How lovely of you to come,’ said Ainsley, meeting us at the door. He stuck a kiss on Judy’s cheek before he the turned and licked me across the brow. ‘Hello Richard,’ he drawled before he smacked his lips together as considered the flavour. ‘You’re a mite tasty. But you’ve not been getting plenty of greens over Christmas, you naughty man! Your iron is low.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I explained.

‘A mild cold,’ muttered Judy.

‘Oh,’ said Ainsley, ‘a marital dispute! Well don’t let me stop you two from arguing.’ He wiped a fleck of something from my shoulder before he gestured us into an adjacent room. ‘Come on in and meet my friends. They’re just dying to meet you.’

Walking into the room felt like I’d been slipped into BBC2’s afternoon schedule. Anne Robinson was holding a competition with a walnut cabinet to see who could maintain the tautest frown. Watching the two of them with professional delight was the David Dickinson wannabe, Tim Wonnacott. You probably don’t know the man as he’s one of the BBC’s cult stars. I always think he has a look of Terry Thomas had the great man been hit across the chin with a frying pan. Also in the mix was the face of upper-crust wildlife, Ben Fogle, and the face of pretty much everything else, Cheryl Baker.

‘Hello Judy,’ chirped Cheryl (you’ll find she always chirps). ‘Richard. You’re looking well.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I said.

‘A mild cold,’ said Judy.

‘I was once a big star in America,’ said Robinson, who has the peculiar habit of starting every conversation with this disputed fact. ‘There’s a horrible bug going around. We had to cancel the Christmas Weakest Link because of it.’

‘Well at least it’s good to know that it’s not all bad,’ I muttered as I settled myself in a chair next to Tim and Ben.

And that was pretty much it from me. I listened to the group chatter about the business. Ainsley couldn’t stop telling us about the famous people he had licked. He could describe them down to their fat content and how must salt they have in their diet. I confess, he was doing a pretty good job at getting on my bad side and my mood went from petulant to glowering at the half-hour point when he turned to me, put his hand on my knee (I hate it when people do that), and said ‘oh, Richard, you look gloomier than when I told Robert de Niro that he tasted of fish’.

‘Not gloomy,’ I said to him. ‘Just a touch of indigestion.’

Which was the truth. As tired as I was of listening Ainsley’s tongue talk, I was more worried by the increasingly sharp pains grumbling in my left side. They were the warning signs that experience had taught me to heed.

‘Ainsley, could I use your bathroom?’

‘Of course, Richard,’ he said, stroking my knee. ‘Up the stairs. First on the right.’

He set me on my way with a pat on my bottom. I can’t be sure that he didn’t do so with his tongue. I didn’t stop to check. Even heeling it all the way to the bathroom, I barely made it in time.

The flu left my body in a spectacular display that the BBC should have filmed in high definition and shown on the stroke of midnight on New Year. After fifteen minutes of stomach cramping agony, I was done and feeling unbelievably well. I really can’t describe how a good purge revitalises the Madeley system, though what it had done to the atmosphere in Ainsley Harriott’s bathroom I really can’t describe. A pig farm on a warm summer day would be a picnic site by comparison.

I brushed myself down, wiped the hair from my face, which I splashed with some cold water, before I returned to the living room. I found Tim Wonnacott sitting by himself reading a copy of ‘Which Cooker & Hob’ magazine.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Tim.

‘Much,’ I said. ‘It’s been a bad virus.’

‘I hear it’s going around,’ he said.

I looked at the empty chairs once occupied by a Robinson, a Fogel, a Baker, and a Judy. Not to mention a man called Harriott with a twenty seven inch tongue.

‘Where’s Judy?’ I asked.

‘She’s with the rest of them,’ said Tim. ‘Ainsley wanted to show them the improvements they’ve had done to the house.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well I suppose it is an impressive pile.’

‘Bit too modern for me,’ said Tim. ‘Though I hear that the new bathroom suite is something to behold. Specially imported Italian marble.’

‘It is,’ I assured him. Having spent fifteen minutes with my ears stuck between my knees there had been plenty of opportunity to examine the quality bathroom suite. ‘I should bet it cost him a fortune.’

‘Oh, well, don’t let Judy bully you into buying some,’ joked Tim.

‘Hopefully she won’t see it,’ I smiled.

He lowered his magazine. ‘No chance of that,’ he replied. ‘You don’t think Ainsley wouldn’t be off showing them that? They were looking at his new bedroom first and then they were going to the bathroom.’

Normal legs would have taken the steps one or two at a time. A newly purged Madeley did it by the threes and fours. And yet I was still too late. I met the group coming back from the bathroom. The upstairs landing was crowded by looks of mortification. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a look of disgust on Judy’s face quite like the one I saw when she lowered the handkerchief from her mouth.

What could I say?

The four of them brushed past me and left me standing there. A moment later, Judy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her handbag hung ominously over her shoulder. She pointed to the front door.

‘Are we going then?’ I asked.

She just pointed.

She only broke her silence five minutes later in the car.

‘You could have opened the window,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t work the latch,’ I explained. ‘I swear he’s had them specially made to open with his tongue. You can’t hold me responsible for that.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘I’ve been ill.’

‘I’m sure that excuses everything.’

‘Well it’s not as though you don’t already know that this happens. It always happens when I’ve had a bad cold. Does it not matter that I’m feeling better?’

‘Feeling better has nothing to do with it,’ said Judy. ‘Ben Fogle said it reminded him of an incontinent camel he once rode across Libya.’

‘And what did Ainsley say?’

‘Pickled onions.’

‘Pardon?’

Judy flicked me a look. ‘That’s all he said. He licked his lips and said “pickled onions”.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, nodding. ‘Well, I happen to like pickled onions.’

‘And do you know what Italian marble costs?’

I remembered Tim’s warning. ‘Don’t get any ideas, Judy.’ I said. ‘We can’t afford a new bathroom suite. Not with the Channel 4 contract coming to an end this year.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she moaned. ‘We’re not having Italian marble if it can be discoloured so easily. He says he’s going to have it steam cleaned but I don’t think it will make a difference. Honestly, Richard, I know that you’re a man on many unique and enviable skills, but I never thought you’d be able to turn Italian marble brown.’

The First Horseman Wears A Bright Orange Jacket

Late last night, or more accurately, early this morning, I was at something of a loose end but not yet quite ready for bed. The New Year had come in with me home alone but I was also in one of my rare moods of mild optimism. Judy had left me with five party poppers to pull once Big Ben struck midnight, while she’d gone off to celebrate with her friends. I had missed out, being, as you know, still full of a cold. Forced to forgo the revelry, I’d counted down to the New Year on my own, popped my poppers, and then sat beneath the trails of crepe paper that came raining down on me. It was bliss. You just can’t know what a relief it is to a man to know that he’s avoided for another year having to kiss Cilla Black as she screams ‘Happy New Year everybody!’ I was beginning 2008 with that rare luxury of full hearing and I decided to use it profitably by doing a bit of channel surfing just to see how the year’s television was shaping up.

I quickly turned off the usual celebrations on BBC1 and ITV. There are few things guaranteed to lower the spirits than watching drunk celebs getting maudlin about ‘the people who can’t be with us tonight’. The truth is so very different. They don’t give a Brylcreemed fig about other people, just where the next drink is coming from and whose keys they’ll be picking out of the ashtray at the end of the evening. Instead, I loitered on Trains, Planes, and Automobiles on Channel 4 which remains one of my favourite comedies of the eighties. But, since I’d come in halfway through it, I didn’t want to spoil it for myself and I flicked over to BBC2.

That’s when my blood froze the flesh to my bone. There on the screen was a horror so great that should I have heard the dolorous chants of the undead coming from the kitchen, I would have ran to them with a joyful trip to my step. The sight that greeted me on BBC2 was the perfect embodiment of New Year and why I’ve learned to hate it so much.

The show was ‘Jules Holland's Hootenanny’ but the screen was all Lenny Henry. His big round bald head was pushed right into the camera’s lens and he was pulling a face like a demented lunatic, mouth wide open, eyes squeezed together. Every blocked pore on his thickly made up chin was visible among the stubble, his nostrils and mouth three gaping holes hiding the unknown horrors of the year ahead. I’m just thankful that I get through most years without coming into close contact with the man. That he should be there, front and centre, within minutes of the start of a new year is a bad sign. In 1987 I remember turning on the TV and seeing Bill Oddie playing the spoons. That year turned out to be a very good one.

Having a tipsy Cilla Black bearing down on you is nothing compared with Lenny Henry forcing his ‘craziness’ on the nation. In fact, there are very few sights that can guarantee to turn my stomach so quickly. There are people inside the business who think that Lenny is a comic genius. They are the very same people who are doing so much to make me prematurely grey by promoting Alan Carr as though he’s the best cure for constipation.

The character of the self-appointed ‘funny man’ is more odorous than any. They share in those same mistaken principals that lie behind the vividly coloured jackets that too many TV presenters wear in the belief that it gives them personality. Lenny has made a career by making loud noises and grinning like a village idiot. The gulf between his act and his real life are more obvious than we find with most comedians, which makes his act all the more onerous. I want to tell him to calm down, to assure him that he doesn’t need to be ‘on’ all the time. He needn’t be ‘funny’ in order to be funny.

I’ll be writing at this at more length later in the year when I’ll be giving The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, with a paper titled ‘Comedy for the Credulous: An Argument Against Lenny Henry’.

In the meantime, I just have to say that I fear for 2008.

Watch this space.

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.

The Man Who Was Sunday

I’m heavy with a cold and in no mood or fit state to write. I’m about to climb back into bed and finish G.K. Chesterton's ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’. For contractual reasons to do with the Richard&Judy Book Club, I can’t recommend that you read it. It’s not about middle-aged women experiencing life-changing events on holiday in Spain, or office romances set in Luton. Nor is it the heart warming tale of the survivor of an explosion at the country’s largest kipper factory. In fact, it’s not the sort of thing that would get into our book club, it being a silly little tale about anarchy and order, written in prose that shines like polished silver. I’m reading it very slowly so I can savour every moment of its brilliance. I certainly don’t recommend that you rush out and buy yourself a copy.

Avec Richard Parker et Judy Barrow

Judy arrived home this evening with some exciting news, sure to feature widely in the morning newspapers. She caught me out of bed, standing shivering in the kitchen as I mixed myself a Lemsip.

The ‘bug’ had struck me around six o’clock but, by ten, what had begun as a mild headache and gathering thickness in the throat has come roaring into life as a full blown malady. Some might call it a cold but I personally think it much more than that. The Word Health Organisation needed to be informed in order to set up a quarantine. For that reason alone, I ask you not to get too close.

‘I’m been talking with Mark,’ said Judy, dumping her handbag on the work surface and quite obvious to my fever.

‘Mark,’ asked I, in a whisper. ‘Which Mark is this?’

‘Mark Ronson. The music producer.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, testing the Lemsip with my elbow and deciding that it was hot enough to drink while being cool enough to avoid a trip to A&E.

‘We’re going to record a song.’

I gave her one of my hard stares, at once doleful and cynical yet with an undercurrent of the mildly delirious. ‘A song?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Judy, but there’s a sick man standing in your kitchen. Beneath this dressing gown is a body wracked by fever. Don’t you notice my pallid colour and general lethargy?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you but a slight sniffle,’ said Judy, ever the humanitarian. ‘Don’t you want to hear the good news?’

‘Okay,’ I wheezed. ‘What’s the song?’

‘Not just any song,’ said Judy. ‘It’s one of your favourites. I’ll give you a clue. It’s French.’

‘Not “La Vie En Rose” by Grace Jones? Some say it’s a camp classic but it always gets my testicles swinging.’

‘Close,’ she clapped. ‘It’s actually "Bonnie and Clyde". You know... By Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot?’

Shocked? I dropped my spoon in the Lemsip.

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘How on earth did you come up with an idea so brilliant?’

‘Oh,’ blushed Judy. ‘I knew we needed a bit of money so I thought we might cover the next few months by getting a single to the top of the charts.’

‘Ah, but not any song,’ I said, already shuffling my feet to the tune I knew so well. ‘My favourite song.’

The truth is that there’s a story to all this. Way back when I was a young man, Serge Gainsbourg was my idol. I modelled myself on his stick thin look. What people now think of as my creepiness and slight resemblance to a reptile is just a deliberate attempt to copy the French maestro. When I was old enough to afford to travel, I actually went to Paris and hung out with the great man. Though I spoke little French, we seemed to share an understanding that went beyond language. It was the universal language of the misunderstood genius. In a way, you might say that Serge was to me then what Fry is to me now.

I picked up my Lemsip and knocked it back in one go.

‘Steady there, champ,’ said Judy as it dribbled from my chin.

‘I need to get well,’ I said, staggering towards the door on my way back to bed. ‘I’ve suddenly got a reason to live.’

‘I’m glad your happy,’ said Judy, taking my arm and helping me to the stairs. ‘Mark’s very excited about the project.’

‘It’s bound to be a hit,’ I said. ‘He’s a great producer.’

‘The best in the business,’ she answered. ‘I think it takes a special kind of genius to come up with a twist so novel.’

‘Twist?’ I asked.

‘Oh, didn’t I mention?’ said Judy, as I we made the landing. ‘I’ll be playing Clyde and you’re playing Bonnie.’ She paused and took a step back. 'Oh dear, you do look bad, Richard. Should I call a doctor?'

'Just call me Brigitte,' I said, feeling nausea overwhelm me.

Best of the Web

After I had unnaturally manipulated the fates by spilling a chicken’s innards over a prostrate Anne Diamond, The Guardian was forced to unwittingly choose my piece on ‘The Trouble With Dames’ as one of its ‘best of the blogs’ items for today. It accounts for all the new visitors and a disturbing rise in the number of people who want me to stop blogging.

Ten percent Thirteen percent Sixteen percent of my visitors now seem to think that The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society is a bad thing. I’m astonished by this figure almost as much as I’m astounded that not one of you have asked me to write more of my award-winning poetry. It’s as though my ‘Mock Heroic Epistle to Jeremy Paxman on the State of His Sock Drawer’ doesn’t exist. All I can say is that you won’t get another if you ignore my poetic genius in this callous way. Stephen Fry need only rhyme ‘chesty wheeze’ with ‘striptease’ and he’s in line to become the next poet laureate. And the less I say about Pam Ayres the better. Do we really need another comic poem about a painful pimple on a dairymaid’s buttocks? I think not.

Taken as an indication of the British public’s tastes, I think ten percent thirteen percent sixteen percent is a rather worrying figure. Would they prefer it if I wrote about politics or sport? Do they want more details about my daily life, what kind of cheese I prefer, and which of my relatives is suffering from a prolapsed elbow? What, in other words, am I doing wrong?

Carrion Comfort

I’ve had a dizzying twenty four hours and hardly enough time to write about it. There are moments like this when the impetus to write is at its lowest. I'm talking, of course, about those moments when ‘the Real World’ puts its considerable weight against your door and forces its way inside.

The Madeley attitude towards the Real World is a rather naive one: I try to avoid it whenever I can. A frigid shoulder is the best the Real World can expect from me. Yet yesterday it had me cornered and I could tell by the look of malicious intent in its eye that I would be lucky to get away without serious damage to my ego. Where it bit me, I prefer not to say. That it bit me at all is enough for you to know.

As you’re no doubt aware, the imminent arrival of 2008 has had me feeling deeply anxious about my future. It came to a head around midnight on Christmas Day. I was sitting at the bottom of the garden, a bottle of whisky on one knee and a garden gnome on the other. As I emptied one, I confessed my problems to the other. Neither offered much of a solution. Yet my sobbing must have carried up to the house because not long after I’d emptied the bottle, a figure of hope came looming over my shoulder.

‘Don’t let Cilla get you down,’ said Fry. ‘She doesn’t mean anything by it. How was she to know you’re a quarter Russian?’

‘It’s not that,’ I said, wiping a tear from my cheek.

‘Then why the tears and the need for a gnome?’

‘I’m broke,’ I confessed. ‘I need to find work or all this will come to an end.’

‘Ah,’ said Stephen, sitting at my side. He took the gnome from my knee and threw it into the shrubbery. ‘There is no need to confer with the little people when Fry’s around. If you need money, then you only need to find some work. Take me as your model. I’m always running low on funds but there’s work out there for men of reasonable intellects.’ The sight of a smile of my lips confused Stephen into thinking I was happy again. He slapped my knee and stood up. ‘Now come on back into the house,’ he said. ‘If we don’t stop Cilla’s 60s medley, she’ll start into the hits of the 70s and I can’t be sure that Titchmarsh won’t snap in a most violent manner.’

How that I wished it were all so simple!

With the Channel 4 contract running out in the Summer, I’ve become preoccupied with my finances. Now, no doubt you are sitting there, wrapped in the warmth of your semi-detached in some lovely London grotto, quaffing quality brandy while a large wolf hound sleeps by an extravagant fireplace. You think to yourself: what is Madeley blathering on about? Surely the £500,000 advance for his biography was enough for him. And what about the millions he has earned during his stint at ITV and Channel 4? You might even wonder about the ‘You Say, We Pay’ monies. Where are they now, you might uncharitably ask?

Well it’s nearly 2008 and that means it is time for brutal honesty. The Madeley funds are low. Lower than low. Were I an office cleaner, tethered to a vacuum for £5.50 an hour, I might consider myself comfortably off. It has got to the point where I need to act or prepare for a life wrapped in cardboard and selling matchbooks. Even blogging is becoming a luxury I’ll be unable to indulge for much longer. That’s why I spent yesterday making a full inventory of my skills and why I intend to make use of them in the near future.

I scribbled down the list yesterday morning. After half an hour’s consideration, I had the following laid neatly out on the back of one of the Tesco shopping receipts I so assiduously keep on me.

Full Name: Richard Caesar Madeley

Sex: Alpha Male

Occupation: Talk Show Host

Qualifications: Honorary doctorates from five universities, plus ‘O’ levels in carpentry and English.

Skills: listening, interrupting, pontificating, writing (questionable), loyalty, intelligence, computer literacy, expert on every conceivable subject, established contacts in light entertainment.

With my curriculum vitae complete, I folded it up and stuffed it down my sock. Half an hour later, I was in a nearby metropolis and had found myself an employment agency.

‘Hello,’ I said to a lively twinset sitting at a desk by the door. ‘I’m looking for work.’

The woman gazed up at me and within the space of the word ‘blink’ she was screaming my name.

‘Richard Madeley! Oh my God! It’s you, isn’t it? It’s really you!’

‘Guilty as charged,’ I said, ‘though I was let off on appeal… Irresistible sex appeal.’

‘Oh my god! What are you doing here?’

I put my foot on her desk and rolled down my sock to show her my makeshift C.V. Then I gestured to my surroundings, the green office furniture, the walls covered with small cards briefly describing employment opportunities. ‘I’m here seeking work,’ I said.

‘Oh, come on!’ she laughed. ‘Don’t fool with me. What are you really here for? Is it a show?’

‘No, no,’ I replied. ‘I’m really here for work. Or, at least, I’m here to see what kind of job a man of my vast experience and skills can land.’

‘You’re really here for a job?’ she asked, looking not a little disappointed. ‘Well what kind of position are you after?’

‘Ideally it would be something in presenting a national teatime chat show, perhaps on a generous contract of a few million a year. But if you don’t have that, I thought something in an office…’ I held out my details. ‘I’ve written down all my skills if that’s any help.’

She took one look at my résumé and, after making a comment about the price I pay for peas, turned it over. She seems quite impressed as she cast an eye down my qualifications on the back. She then picked up at a card she had been in the process of filling out.

‘To be perfectly honest with your Richard, with this limited skill set we’d be looking to place you in a role such as a General Catering Assistant.’

‘And what does that entail?’ I asked.

‘Can you ladle dumplings?’

‘I see,’ I replied, not immediately attracted to the work. ‘And is that it?’

‘We do have an opening for a Community Care Worker. You would get to meet a wide range of interesting people.’

‘Define “interesting”,’ I said.

‘Newly released prisoners and people with some kind of social disfunction. It’s basically work with the violent and the criminally insane.’

‘A bit too close to dealing with bloggers,’ I replied.

‘What about a Human Resources Officer working with Information Systems?’

‘Ah ! An executive job. That sounds more promising. Are there any more details?’

‘Full training will be given on site,’ she said, ‘though you might have to double for the usherette on a busy night.’

‘You mean I’d be selling tickets in a cinema?’

‘That’s what I said,’ said the woman. ‘Human Resources Officer working with Information Systems.’

‘And is that all I’m good for?’ I asked, falling back onto a chair, amazed at what I had heard. ‘Does an honorary doctorate not account for anything these days?’

‘Almost as little as a real one, I’m afraid,’ said the woman.

There really was nothing more I could say. I told her that I’d consider the job working with ex-convicts and made my way home. I got back at three to find Stephen Fry lazing in my arm chair. He was smoking his pipe.

‘Ah, the Dick of the house is now in residence,’ he said as he closed my copy of ‘Private Eye’. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I settled myself with a humourous read while I waited. Unfortunately, I’d already read that particular volume of Wodehouse and was forced to pick up the “Eye” instead. There was a joke on page seven that almost made me smile. Then I realised it was merely an errant staple.’

‘Judy not home?’ I asked as I threw down my car keys on the table.

‘She had go out early to beat the London traffic. I understand that it’s bingo night at Denise Robertson’s.’

I kicked off my shoes and made like the last English Oak and collapsed onto the sofa. Given the angle between my head and Stephen’s chair, it felt like I was about to undergo a session with my shrink. As it turns out, that’s not far from the truth.

‘Oh, Stephen,’ I began. ‘Why is it so easy for you? How did you become such a polymath? You only need to say that you’re going to do a thing and you cause it to happen. You want to publish a novel, the publisher says how much do you want as an advance. You say you’re writing a book on writing poetry and they make ready to print a hundred thousand copies.’

‘Do I sense jealousy, Richard?’ asked the Great Fry.

‘Only admiration,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of being typecast as the handsome yet knowledgeable irritant. I want the next stage of my career to bring me moderate rewards for all the work I do. Is it too much to ask that I’ll not be consigned to spending my days writing invoices and inputting data into a computer? I want to carry on writing, Stephen, but the world simply won’t allow it. Have I deluded myself into thinking that I have a talent for this work? Are those people right who vote for me to give up blogging? Should I accept my lot in life and succumb to the routine of a telesales office?’

‘You must succumb,’ said Stephen. ‘There are very few of us who can make a living by being witty. You are no different to the thousands who try and fail.’

‘You really think I’m no different?’

‘No different except you are perhaps a little more determined, rather stubborn, and have a higher tolerance for pain. Otherwise you’re born to fail.’

‘So that’s it then? ’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Stephen as he puffed away at his briar. ‘A man must know his limitations and you do have such woefully limited limitations, Richard.’

I exhaled a sigh that would have been enough to extinguish the world’s light.

‘Oh, come, come, Richard,’ cried Stephen in reply. ‘Don’t look on this as the end of your writing career. See it at the beginning of a career in telesales! And who knows? In a year’s time, perhaps you’ll be the most famous telesales person in the country. People will be talking about your telephone manner from Wick to Cornwall, from Bright to Aberdeen.’

I sat up and gazed on his magnificence. ‘My God, I do believe that you’re right,’ I said. ‘I will do this and I will be a success. I’m going into telesales. If I can’t talk to the nation each night at five o’clock, I’ll ring them individually at inconvenient times of the day. It’s about time people stopped thinking of Richard Madeley as a man who lives only to annoy them.’

The Trouble With Dames

‘That bloody Michael Parkinson is going to spoil this for all of us,’ I declared to Judy soon after I’d powered up my old laptop this morning. I tapped the screen where that ungrateful Yorkshire prig was staring out at me as though I’d just asked to hear, yet again, about the time he met Muhammad Ali. ‘Look here. It says that he’s going to be knighted in the New Year honours! I bet his publicist leaked that to the Press. No doubt about it, the damn heel… And after all we’ve done for him.’

A wan hand appeared from under the duvet. It recoiled from the light before whispering. ‘Richard, could you please be a little quieter when you curse Parky? It sounds too much like blasphemy.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to defend him!’ I snapped.

‘He is the nation’s favourite talk show host.’

That was low, illegal blow, especially on Boxing Day. ‘The last time Parky asked a penetrating question it was 1973.’ I said. ‘And even then he questioned Lee Marvin about his sexuality.’

‘Oh Richard, give it a rest,’ said the hand. ‘Or at least lower your voice.’

‘I can’t give it a rest,’ I answered. ‘And you know I don’t have any sympathy with hangovers. If you can’t hold your liquor, you shouldn’t drink so much.’ I turned my attention back to the news. ‘If Parky spoils this for us, I’ll never forgive him.’

The instructions from The Palace had been quite explicit: don’t respond when asked about Her Majesty’s New Year honours. It wasn’t my own knighthood that concerned me as much as knowing that Judy has become really attached to the idea of becoming a dame. The weeks of excitement had pretty much been centred on Judy’s outfit for the day. I think my own elevation to the knighthood had passed without even a single mention.

I closed the laptop and slipped from the bed. The hand retreated under the sheets, no doubt rejoining the rest of Dame Judy who had over-exerted her liver at the previous night’s party. Things had been going well until Stephen Fry began supping champagne from Selena Dreamy’s shoe. Judy shouted that had to try it herself and kicked off a slipper. The poor woman was now suffering, not because she’d miscalculated the potency of the drink but the size of her own feet. It stands to sense that it one can get a touch tipsy by supping from Selena’s small pumps then you can get totally bashed by drinking from Judy’s size elevens.

I pulled on my dressing gown and quietly headed for my office, having decided make my phone calls from there and allow Judy chance to sleep off her bad head.

One soon learns about one’s friends when the Press are sniffing about and it’s important to remind some about their loyalty. The man I was about to call is well known for being unable to keep a secret and it was important that I got to him before the newspapers.

I dialled, I sat, I waited as his phone rang, all the time staring at my unfinished Airfix model of Crown Prince Willem Hendrik and wondered if I’d ever find time to finish making the complete Great Dutch Potentates Collection. Eventually, somebody picked up the phone.

‘Jeremy?’ I said, loud and cheerful. ‘It’s Dick. How you feeling?’

The phone groaned. I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I’d hear that this week but Clarkson had more reason than many to be tender between the ears. He’d got himself in a drinking game with Sue Lawley and lost consciousness on the eleventh round. The last I saw of him was when A.A. Gill dragged him by his ankles, out to their waiting taxi.

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I don’t like bothering you on Boxing Day but I just wanted to give you a warning. Looks like the Press are out to discover the contents of the Queen’s Birthday Honours. If they contact you, please don’t mention our names. It’s meant to be a secret.’

‘Yes, yes, sure,’ muttered Clarkson. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nine thirty,’ I said with a crisp alertness.

I heard a head impact on a pillow. ‘Oh! You bast…’ began Clarkson before the phone went dead.

Need you any more proof that the man’s a wit and wag from morning till night? I think not.

I dialled the next number on my shot list of those ‘in the know’.

‘’Tis I, Fry, whispering on my iPhone,’ said The Great Man.

‘Morning Stephen. Feeling a bit peaky, are we?’

‘To paraphrase the Bard, my revels now are ended and I have foresworn all spirits that have melted my brain into air, into thin, thin air…’

‘Yes, well,’ I replied, ‘if you insist on drinking like that with The Merry Wives and Windsor, then your hangover is “As You Like It”.’

‘Very droll,’ muttered Stephen. ‘But how was I to know that Mrs. Madeley and Mrs. Titchmarsh could handle their liquor as well as Barbara Windsor?’

‘I’m sure it’s a hard lesson learned, Stephen,’ I answered, ‘but I’m sure you’ll recover your elan in no time. However, that’s not why I’m ringing. I just wanted to warn you against mentioning our names if anybody asks you about the New Year Honours. It’s supposed to be a secret.’

‘You should know that I’m the model of discretion,’ said Fry. ‘Fortunately, I’m currently also a model of forgetfulness. That was quite a party, or at least what little I can remember of it. Perhaps you can you shed some light on why I can taste shoe leather and anti-fungal cream?’

I did just that. He seemed less than amused. I then asked him if it was true about him buying Weasel Vomit coffee for Prince Charles.

For some reason, the question brought out conversation to a premature end. He had to dash off to the bathroom, leaving me with no other alternative than to ring the final person who knows about my impending knighthood.

‘Morning Bill,’ I said to Oddie. ‘Hope I didn’t wake you?’

‘Wake me?’ laughed Bill. ‘I’ve not been to bed. Nature doesn’t rest for Christmas. I’ve been out watching hibernating moles.’

‘That doesn’t sound exciting,’ I replied.

‘To be honest, Dick, it’s not the most fun you can do at four AM on a freezing cold December morning. However, you learn a lot about yourself watching a mole sleep.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ I replied, though not at all sure that I believe a word of it. ‘I’m just surprised you’re not feeling a bit bloated in the gills this morning. You were putting the drink away as well as anybody.’

‘Oh, I feel fine,’ said Bill. ‘But that’s probably because I’m immune to whisky. Ever since I was bitten by a raccoon, alcohol doesn’t affect me. I might as well have been drinking tea.’

‘Well it would have been a bit cheaper if you had,’ I replied, sourly. ‘Listen, I’m ringing to make sure you’ve retained your ability to keep a secret. The Press are nosing around for hints to the Queen’s New Year honours. I want you to remember that nobody is meant to know about Judy and me.’

‘I’m keeping it under my hat with my pet dormouse,’ said Bill.

I believed that he would.

I listened to Bill go on about moles for five more minutes before I hung up the phone and came out of the office to find Judy creeping slowly down the stairs. It looked like she was heading for the kitchen so I moved ahead of her to get the door open.

‘Did I hear you on the phone?’ she asked as she shuffled past me.

‘I was ringing Bill to remind his to keep the New Year honours a secret. He’s a wonderful man but prone to blurting things out that he shouldn’t. Wouldn’t want to jeopardise our honours because of a slip of his wayward tongue.’

‘Our honours?’ asked Judy, stopping by the sink and looking a bit puzzled.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know… The letter from Buckingham Palace…’

‘Oh, I remember the letter,’ said Judy. ‘I just didn’t remember your name being on it.’

‘Well, it was addressed to me,’ I said, amazed at how the drink was affecting my poor wife’s faculties.

‘It was addressed to Mrs. Richard Madeley,’ said Judy. ‘And it was about my DBE. There was no mention of a KBE.’

I sank down onto the wicker stool as Judy stumbled to the cupboard and took out the jar of salts. After she’d downed a pint of the stuff in a single go, she turned to me and belched gently. ‘You didn’t think they’d knight you after all the things you’ve said and done? I’ve warned you before, Richard. You should do more charity work.’

‘And what about all my work writing my blog if it’s not charity?’ I asked. ‘If it weren’t for me, there would be thousands of people going through life without the hope I give them. My regular readers would soon go off the rails if they didn’t have me.’

She waved down my complaint as shuffled away on her way back to bed.

‘Sir Richard Madeley,’ I heard her laugh before the bedroom door closed. I sat in the kitchen, listening to the echo of her laughter dance around the house, beating its merry step on all my hopes for the New Year.

The Denim Effect

‘Well?’ asked Judy, as I sat, sofa bound, my gift unwrapped on my lap. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ I lied. ‘It’s… just… what… I… wanted.’

Her spirit seemed to ebb back into her chair, as though her world were now somehow complete.

‘I’m so glad,’ she sighed. ‘You’re so hard to buy for, Richard. I just didn’t know what to get you. But then I remembered you mentioning that you were running low on aftershave. Denise recommended this. She says it’s the best.’

‘I’m sure she did,’ I replied, wondering what kind of recommendation that is for a man's aftershave. Not that I’d ever doubt Denise’s opinion about anything but I wondered what on earth she could be razoring that required an astringent with such muscle.

‘You have run out, haven’t you?’ asked Judy.

‘I have,’ I smiled and it was true. My bottle of Lynx Unlimited Vitalising Aftershave had run dry days ago. Since Christmas Eve, I’ve been rubbing fumes onto my face, wondering if my body would revert back to its natural masculine odours of cordite and cigar smoke. Yet none of this helped me overcome the shock of my gift.

I must have sat too long in silence, my fingers squeezing the life out of the neck of my new 100ml bottle of Denim Original. It lay in the middle of a floret of red wrapping paper that appeared to have exploded from my groin, as though I’d just given birth to a monster. In a way, that’s exactly what I had done.

‘What’s wrong? You’re not going to smell it?’

I glanced down at the unwieldy bottle embossed with a large gold medallion.

‘Do I have to?’ I asked, which wasn’t so much the ‘wrong thing to say’ as scribbling my Tony Hancock on my own death warrant.

Judy was erect in her seat, disappointment elbowing for attention on her face, already occupied by a Christmas bumper bundle of anguish. ‘Oh Richard! Don’t tell me you don’t like it!’

‘No, no, not at all,’ I said but made no move to open the bottle.

‘Richard Madeley, you are the most ungrateful man I think I’ve ever known!’

An ache in my joints told me to expect rain or tears. Neither are good for me. I panicked and unscrewed the cap. Women called Pandora have opened boxes in a similar fashion and with lesser consequences. My mind’s eye played out typhoons in the Sahara and tidal waves hitting Mogadishu. The devastation in my own living room was biblical. Not even cosy New Testament biblical. I mean Old Testament right hook from Henry Cooper dressed as Moses biblical.

The scent sent me back back in the 1970s of my youth: a denim shirt tucked into white flares, my tall afro combed to a sixty degree angle as it bounced to the sound of the Pointer Sisters.

The vision passed and I was left back staring at the picture on the box. Only Jeremy Clarkson still wears denim shirts and all that was missing was a female hand stretching in from the side of the picture to unbutton one of the shirt’s press studs. I could only think hairy chests and Burt Reynolds.

‘Well?’ prompted Judy, waiting for me to insert the bottle up my nose.

I raised the bottle and sniffed.

The coma was involuntary.

When I awoke, years might have passed but it might have only been seconds.

‘Like it?’ she asked. ‘Read the back of the box. It says it’s for the man who doesn’t have to try too hard.’

‘Or the man who doesn’t bother trying at all,’ I wheezed as I tried to clear my nostrils of a smell that reminded me of a blaze at a tyre warehouse I’d once covered for Granada Reports. I wanted to say as much, only I looked up and saw tears in Judy’s eyes. ‘No, that wasn’t a criticism,’ I hastened to add. ‘Denim aftershave is my favourite. It takes me back, that’s all it is. Good memories. I don’t want to open it in case it evaporates.’

Judy smiled. ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad that I’ve finally found you something you like. And what’s so good about it is that I can always get you some more when you run out. I’ll never be at a loss for what to buy your for your birthday.’

With that, Judy stood up. ‘I’ll go and check on the turkey,’ she said.

I smiled as she walked from the room.

‘God help me,’ I muttered as soon as she was gone. In only a matter of hours, I’d be greeting some of the most powerful people in the UK media. There was no way I wanted them to smell me like this. I also couldn’t let Judy think this had been one of her better ideas. I had to let her down in a way that made her feel like I was doing her a favour. Better still, she had to think she was saving me from myself.

There was only one option. I unscrewed the cap and knocked back the aftershave, all 100ml of the fire water. It tasted remarkably like Russian whisky and, like Russian whisky, left my lips quite numb.

‘Turply oplay?’ I asked as Judy came back.

She gazed at me before she looked at the empty bottle.

‘Oh, Richard,’ she said. ‘You said you’d never do that again. I thought you’d learnt your lesson with Old Spice.’

‘What canp I sthay, gorpgeous?’ I replied and raised the empty bottle. ‘Fill ’er up, and then give yourp Uncle Pichard a kissss.’

‘I suppose next year, I better buy socks,’ she muttered as she snatched the bottle from my fingers.

It was a sentiment with which I could only express my full agreement. I passed out on the sofa and slept a couple of hours until I was woken by Fry dressed as Santa dropping his large sack on my back.

But, as they say, my dear friends, that is a story for another day...

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.

My Christmas Gift to Judy

Men like Jeremy Clarkson are made for moments such as this. He has that indeterminable spirit of a wayward Fury, partly destructive yet with a remarkable caprice for making things better. You cannot stand in his way once he gets an idea into his head, which was exactly what was needed this morning when our resolve began to falter. If it hadn’t been for Jeremy, Judy might never have got her Christmas present. You see, he’s that integral to a successful festive season.

All that, however, is to get to the bacon before we’ve greased our lips with egg. The whole thing began after breakfast, this morning, when my gift to Judy arrived at the appointed hour and in perfect condition. She was not home at the time. I’d managed to get her out of the house by arranging for Denise Robertson to drop by at ten o’clock and suggest a bit of last minute elbowing through the Christmas crowds. That part of the plan went off like a clockwork pie. With Judy out of the way, the next stage could go ahead. A black London taxi arrived at ten thirty with our expert in the back.

‘Do you have to bother with that thing?’ asked Bill Oddie as he waited for Stephen Fry to finish fixing a lock to his steering wheel.

‘One can never tell with celebrity neighbours,’ replied Fry, which only led Oddie to make a rather mean remark about the intellect of men who drive London taxi cabs.

‘Stephen’s right,’ I said. ‘Just because many of the people in this street are respectable entertainers, it doesn’t mean that they’re not prone to the occasional bit of car theft. A Channel 4 executive recently told me that a high profile member of the spring schedule has a thing for doing doughnuts in bent super minis.’

‘I’ve heard the same rumours,’ said Bill, ‘though I don’t believe it has actually got anything to do with cars.’

If I looked shocked and not a little confused, I hadn’t time to dwell on it. A roar of a jet engine filled the street as Clarkson’s supercar fell from the sky.

‘So?’ he asked, an excited flush to his cheeks. ‘Has it arrived yet?’

I checked my watch. ‘Any time now, if the plan is going as arranged.’

Stephen took out a pocket watch from the front of his waistcoat and flipped open its cover. ‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t, given that I gave the plan its conception,’ he said. ‘If I have my numbers right, we should see the van arriving in three… two… one…’ He pointed to the end of the road.

‘Zero?’ asked Clarkson, snorting his amusement. That’s why he missed the large blue truck making a turn at the bottom of the road.

‘Ah,’ said Stephen, ‘I see that its front right tyre is low on pressure. That would more than account for a few seconds delay between here and central London.’

Bill gave a whistle, which sounded not unlike the appreciative note of a song thrush. I could only share his admiration for the man. You have admire such a brain. I have an urge to write Fry a verse drama using nothing but alexandrines in the New Year. Heroic couplets made from iambs just wouldn’t do him justice. I swear that there are moments in the day when I sometimes believe that he knows more than me.

‘Well gentlemen,’ said Clarkson, slapping his hands together. ‘Shall we get started?’

‘I think this is a most wonderful idea,’ said Stephen as we walked to the foot of the drive. ‘Were it my own, I would write about it in a novel.’

I slapped my old friend about the shoulder. ‘It was you who inspired me to be so bold,’ I replied. ‘Didn’t you tell me that there’s no gift as welcome as the gift of surprise?’

‘I may have remarked on that,’ he replied, ‘though perhaps in a manner that was both more witty and infinitely more succinct.’

As the lorry hissed to a stop at the foot of the drive, I felt something moving beneath my elbow. I looked down to see Oddie at my side. He was peering nervously at me over his glasses. ‘Do you have any idea about how difficult this is going to be?’

‘You’re the bird man,’ I said. ‘We’ll follow your lead. You said you’ve done this in Africa.’

He looked again at the van, which was blocking out the low December sun. Oddie doesn’t respond well to the gloom.

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he said.

It was much too late for doubts. The van’s driver was climbing out. He was a pasty looking fellow with a slight limp. This we only noticed when he dropped from the cab and winced as his right leg hit the ground.

‘That looked painful,’ I said as we approached.

‘Bloody thing took half an inch of flesh from my shin this morning,’ he said. ‘You Madeley?’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘Half an inch?’ I whistled between my teeth. It sounded nothing like a song thrush.

‘You’ve got to watch it with these things,’ said the driver. ‘They’re a bit dangerous.’

‘Rubbish,’ scoffed Clarkson. ‘I’ve been behind the wheel of an Ascari A10. Now that’s danger.’

‘Yes, well, mate, if you say so. But I know what I know. This ain’t something you should treat lightly.’

I turned and gestured to Bill. ‘Do you recognise this man?’ I asked.

‘Course I do,’ smiled the driver. ‘Mr. Oddie is a TV legend.’

‘Then you know I’ve ensured we’ve got the best in the business to handle this transaction.’

The driver shrugged and began to walk us to the back of the van. ‘If you say you know what you’re doing, who am I to argue?’ he asked.

The rear doors of the van opened to reveal a large cage inside. Inside the cage was my gift to Judy.

‘That’s a bloody big ostrich,’ said Stephen as the bird pecked violently at the cage.

I gave Stephen a surprised look. ‘That’s a bit prosaic of you,’ I said. ‘It was a line remarkably flat for a man of your calibre.’

‘One was momentarily distracted by the abundance of ostrich,’ he replied. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

I took a look at the bird. It was indeed a creature long in the leg and neck and with remarkable plumpness about its body. I then looked towards Bill hid behind Clarkson’s right knee. He too was remarkably plump about his body but his legs were visibly trembling.

‘I had to order the stoutest ostrich they had on the farm,’ I explained. ‘Do you think it’s okay?’

‘You certainly did that,’ replied Jeremy, moving to open the cage. ‘Look at those thighs. They’ll be able to handle the weight.’

It took Bill, Stephen, Jeremy, and myself a good half hour of coaxing to get the ostrich out of the cage and into the back garden. It was the sort of bird that really belongs in burlesque, more feathers than flesh and with the attitude of a slightly bad tempered stripper. If we hadn’t had Jeremy with us, I doubt if we’d have shifted the animal. Years of living with donkeys seem to have given him a special insight into the workings of stubborn animals.

By the time Judy arrived home at one, the whole scene was set. I went out to meet her at the car and, after covering her eyes with my hand, I escorted her into the back garden where events were due to unfold.

‘Well,’ I asked as I pulled my fingers from Judy’s eyes.

The sight to greet her was one of the most remarkable I think I’ll ever witness. Bill Oddie was racing around the back garden on the back of the ostrich, as Jeremy Clarkson held the end of a long reign. He used the free end to lash the bird onwards, keeping it running in a giant circle around our expansive back lawn. Meanwhile, Stephen was sitting to one side, reciting a special poem he’d written for the occasion. All three were clearly in their element, and Bill enjoying himself more than any. Holding on with one hand, he used the other to wave frantically as he shouted comic things like ‘get me off’ and ‘I’m going to fall’ and ‘I don’t like this’. Like I’ve said before, the man is of the highest order of good sports.

After a few moments, Judy looked at me.

‘Richard,’ she said, ‘why is Bill Oddie riding an ostrich around our lawn?’

‘It’s my Christmas gift to you,’ I explained. ‘Unfortunately, I couldn’t arrange it for tomorrow. The ostrich farm could only deliver it today.’

I hadn’t bargained for her to look so confused. ‘You thought I’d want this for Christmas? You thought I’d want to see Bill Oddie riding an ostrich?’

‘Well, no, not technically. Bill is just showing you how it’s done so you’ll know what to do when it’s time for you to have a go.’

‘I’m having a go?’ She laughed a bark of amusement. ‘Richard, you must be joking. You don’t honestly think I’m getting on that?’

‘Well it is what you asked for,’ I replied.

‘You think I’d want to ride an ostrich?’

‘Well that’s what you said! Two weeks ago when I mentioned about Christmas, you said you’d love to ride an ostrich.’

Judy’s face broke out into a wide grin. ‘What I said, Richard, if you’d bothered to unplug yourself from your iPhone, was that I’d love to be treated to a ride in an old stretch limo.’

‘You said ostrich!’ I protested.

She shook her head slowly. ‘Old stretch,’ she said and planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘But it was a lovely thought. And when it comes to memorable Christmas gifts, I don’t think there’s anything I’m going to remember with such fondness. How many women can say they’ve had Bill Oddie ride an ostrich for them for Christmas.’

‘Not even Mrs. Oddie,’ I admitted.

Well, what else could I do or say? I was utterly confused. In the end, I put my arm around my wife and we watched Bill as he carried on riding the bird, which never seemed to tire as it was whipped on faster and further by a quite gleeful Jeremy Clarkson. I wished that the moment would never end. Which it didn’t. Or at least, not for another hour filled with mirth and comic pleas for us to stop.

The Church of the Sacred Richard

Having been woken by a neighbour drilling into a concrete patio at 8.55 this morning, I’m still not fully back with the world. Yesterday's Christmas shopping took it out of me more than I like to admit, so you’ll have to excuse me if this is another of my shorter posts. They might be the norm for the next few days. Of course, there’s every chance that they won’t be the norm and I’ll be writing at length on Christmas Day, as if to prove what a sad time we celebrities really have when away from your screens. I think I’m just allergic to tinsel, while Judy can’t get enough of the stuff.

I don’t know an easy way of escaping Christmas beyond becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. It seems to me an odd paradox that the best way to avoid the festivities is to become a Christian. You rarely, if ever, hear an atheist or agnostic say that since they don’t believe in/doubt the existence of God, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Yet if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, you can get away with it every single year. People will, in fact, go out of their way not to offend your sensibilities.

Perhaps I should form my own sect, The Church of the Sacred Richard. It would attract a huge membership. Although it’s no longer a novelty to say that Christmas is the great feast of consumerism, everybody walks around muttering darkly about how much they hate it. The obligation to go into debt amazes me each year, even as I’m handing over my credit cards buying things for friends, family and Oddie. We go through the motions as if there’s no other choice. Well, TCotSR is that choice.

There’s another side of Christmas which I’m completely in tune with and which TCotSR would help promote: the need to spend a week away from work and worries. It’s just a shame that I’ll be spending January trying to make amends for the previous month’s excesses, both in terms of my finances and the time I’ve wasted sitting in front of the TV and watching a full season of Carry On films. For me, writing and blogging, I find that I need consistency. Christmas is coming at a bad time for me this year. Sometimes it comes at the wrong timde for us. That’s why, in The Church of the Sacred Richard, we celebrate Christmas when we want it.

If you’re interested in joining, sign in the comments and I’ll have your vestments made measure. Bishop Fry or Archdeacon Oddie will be leading this week's service in The Dog & Duck, Lewisham. Book early to reserve your seat.