Trombones and Hot Tubs

It was last Sunday evening and in the heat of a passionate trombone recital, Judy was splendidly radiant. Her cheeks were twin meltdowns, hot spots of densely packed atoms beyond which many atmospheres of pressure were being forced through the mouthpiece to produce the most wonderful brass version of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’.

Brrrrp... brrrp... brrr... brrr... brrrrp... brrrrp... went that familiar melody but, for me, a man in the middle of his winter blues, it was more than an enticing charm; it was a promise of spring mornings and dry days when I’ll be able to go jogging around the neighbourhood in my Lycra shorts and no court orders keeping me two hundred metres from David Dickinson’s solarium. Others clearly felt the same way. I looked around the church hall and saw many of our friends and neighbours spellbound by this great rarity: Judy playing her trombone for a paying public. I was captivated by the music and my wife’s talents, and I suppose it was a pang of pride that made me tear up at the end and miss the arrival of the lumbering giant at my side.

‘That was ****ing awesome,’ said Vinne Jones who had made a surprise appearance at the event and an even more unexpected appearance inches from my face.

‘Well, thank you,’ I said.

‘Not heard a ****ing noise like that since I ****ing stuck my ****ing studs into Robbie Fowler’s j*****w.’

‘Right,’ I replied, looking around for somebody large to hide behind. I don’t know about you but I tend to feel uncomfortable hearing that word used in polite company.

‘Listen,’ said Vinne, ‘you ever need somebody to stuck his ****ing studs into somebody’s j*****w, you just give me a call, yea?’ And with that he slid his business card into my upper breast pocket.

‘I’ll do just that,’ I promised.

‘Chipper!’ said Vinnie and slapped me playfully across the jaw.

I was still trying to work a detached retina back into place when Judy came down from the stage. Her lips were slightly puffed and numb from an hour of strenuous blowing.

‘Shoo wash thasht,’ she said.

‘Vinnie Jones,’ I whispered. ‘He was offering to stand on the j*****w of any man who incurs our displeasure.’

Judy blushed at the word, which I don’t think I have ever before uttered in the presence of my wife.

‘Wash a lovelsh geshshshure,’ she replied, though clearly a little disturbed by what she had heard.

‘That’s the beauty of being a celebrity,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Good people are always willing to go out of their way to please us with kind offers.’

I thought no more about this kind offer until Wednesday, a momentous day in the Madeley home. It was the day that I was to have my new spa delivered.

As you all probably know, I’ve always been a man who takes his ‘wellness’ seriously. The spa was a newer luxury model with extra spouts installed across the base to provide a more vigorous flow of water across the user’s posterior quarter. The makers say that the force of water alone can keep an eighteen stone man buoyant and I was eager to test their claims in a pair of specially adapted swimming trunks which I’d rigged to carry extra ballast in a reinforced gusset.

After a couple of hours, the installation engineers came out of my shed (I call it a shed but it’s really a large complex outside the main house where I spend most of my time) to declare that the installation was complete. I quickly grabbed my shorts and a large bag of lead pellets and headed out to give it a trial run.

‘Don’t soak too long,’ shouted Judy from the kitchen. ‘You know how your j*****w turn in cold water...’

Since she’d heard me say that word, she had grown an unfortunate habit of using it. I suppose I should have said something about it but I was too excited to answer. Instead, I ran for my first look at my new spa.

Five minutes later, I was sitting in the large tub (big enough for eight healthy men, if you’re into that sort of thing – and I’m not), waist high in nicely warmed water and with a gentle stream of bubbles ticking the inside of my thighs. It was but the beginning. I had the remote control in my hand and I slowly moved the dial from ‘1’ up to ‘2’ and then beyond.

Soon the water was rushing past at a vigorous ‘6’ and I could feel that I was about to lift off. With great anticipation, I moved the dial to ‘7’ and...

Nothing.

‘7’ felt exactly the same as ‘6’. I turned it to ‘8’ and then ‘9’ and still nothing, no noticeable increase in the water’s force and no sign that my buttocks were about to lift off from the bottom of the spa.

Two minutes later, I was on the phone to the installation engineers.

‘Oh, we’re aware of your flow problem,’ they said. ‘In fact, we’re looking into it at this very moment.’

‘Then why didn’t you mention it earlier, before I stripped off?’ I asked.

‘Well, we didn’t want to disappoint you,’ they said.

‘Disappoint me? I’ve bought a top of the line spa and I expect top of the line performance. I don’t want to be left to discover that my water disappoints me at a mildly vigorous “6”. At the very least, I want my every cavity cleansed by a forceful “10”.’

‘We’ll look into it,’ they promised.

An hour later, I was in my dressing gown and sitting in the kitchen when the phone rang.

‘Bad news, Mr. M.,’ they said. ‘It’s an issue of water pressure. Normally, a house such as yours in a well supplied area will have enough pressure to run a spa at its optimum setting. However, in this case, you have a slight problem. It seems that one of your neighbours is using too much water. The pressure of the local water main has dropped by the time it reaches your house.’

‘And do you know who is doing this?’ I asked.

‘We’re looking into it at the moment,’ they said. ‘We’ll ring back when we have news.’

Another hour passes, by which time my j*****w are dry and I’m back into my civilian clothes, sitting in the living room where I’m giving my Scrabble pieces a polish before the big weekend match with Stephen Fry and Sir Clive James.

‘Richard?’ said the ever-more casual engineer. ‘We’ve isolated the problem. The water flow is being disrupted at number 43.’

’43?’ My mind did a quick run down the street until it came to a familiar driveway. ‘David Dickinson!’ I spat.

‘That’s the chap. He’s the funny thing. He’s running an Aqualine 2400 whirlpool and spa with a colonic nozzle.’

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ I said. ‘That’s at least half as powerful as my new hot tub.’

‘Ah,’ they replied. ‘That wouldn’t be a problem except he’s also got forty-two computer controlled ornamental Greek nymphs urinating around the side of his pool in carefully choreographed patterns. It’s quite the impressive sight but I’m surprised you get even a sniff of water when their bladders are on full power.’

I knew there was no point in asking David to control his forty two bladders. Since me and Michael Palin scorched David’s crotch, my relationship with David has been somewhat strained. It meant that I’d wasted money on a spa rendered incapable because a neighbour with a passion for kitsch. Which brings me back to the card in the breast pocket of my Sunday suit.

‘Vinnie,’ I said on the telephone yesterday morning. ‘What do you think about ornamental Greek nymphs that urinate around a rich man’s hot tub?’
Vinnie growled. ‘Makes me want to stick my f*****g boots into some rich guy’s j*****ws,’ he said.

And like the delicate notes of Judy trombone, that was music to my ears.

Anal Probes, Cow Mutilations, Cilla Black

Strange lights lit up the sky over our undisclosed part of South East England last night. The first I knew of them was when Judy shouted me from our indoor swimming pool where she’d been partially submerged for about an hour before she was due to have her nightly trombone practice. Abandoning the research notes for my new book, ‘Pirates & Stumps’ (which I've decided will be next year's 'Richard&Judy Book of the Yaarrgh'), I went rushing from the living room to find Judy dripping on the veranda and staring out into the garden.

‘What are those strange lights?’ she asked, pointing a wrinkled finger westwards.
I handed her a towel before I went out to investigate. I wasn’t happy that she proceeded to follow me out into the cold night air but that’s Judy. She’s got the thermal resilience of an arctic vole. To be honest, I was also less concerned about my wife’s wellbeing than the meaning of the lights she’d pointed out. They were strangely coloured discs of radiant energy flashing in some odd yet non-random sequence. Clearly, there was only one explanation.

‘It’s the alien invasion!’ I said, believing it. ‘Thank God for that! This can only be good for us, Jude. Perhaps it will take an extra-terrestrial to see that our place is on terrestrial. With some higher intelligences in charge of the world, we’ll see out stars rise.’

‘Really?’

‘Mark my words, Jude. Unless, of course, they’re the other sort of alien...’

‘The other sort?’

‘You know... The sort that go in for anal probing and mutilating cows.’

‘Ah,’ she replied. ‘Channel 4 viewers.’

‘That sort of thing, yes,’ I answered. ‘Probably enjoy Polish animation and the films of Jean Luc Goddard.’

Judy looked worried as she watched the lights. ‘I’m not happy about this, Richard. What if they are the other sort of aliens with their probes?’

‘Then Paul O’Grady will be quids in, as they say. He’s get another series. No doubt about it.’

‘But shouldn’t we do something?’

I shrugged. ‘What can we do, Jude? If this is, as I suspect, the alien invasion, then we can only sit here and wait until they want to speak with us. Perhaps they’ll make us their spokespeople.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said Judy. ‘Richard&Judy’s Anal Probing and Cow Mutilation Club is not something I’d want to put my name to.’ With that pronouncement, she wrapped the towel tightly around and turned back towards the house.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m ringing Cilla,’ she said.

I shook my head, baffled by the faith that Judy puts in Cilla Black. I turned my attention back to the lights and walked deeper into the garden, away from the house and the illuminated carp pond, solar lit shrubberies, and the halogen lights that Judy set into the path when she laid it last summer. At the bottom of the garden, I sat down beside our ornamental Ainsely Harriot statue that Judy cast in concrete last year. Judy spends many happy hours on that bench but this was one of the rare times I had gone and sat there. I averted my gaze from Ainseley’s haricots, as I’ve taken to describing his beans, and I watched the light show. I had no doubt that Cilla Black could hold back an alien invasion for an hour or two but, unlike Judy, I knew that Cilla’s voice would eventually pack in and the invasion would go ahead.

After about five minutes sitting there, I began to have my doubts about the whole alien invasion scenario. It wasn’t so much that the lights seemed to be less dramatic than I’d originally thought but I had detected a low level noise to which they seemed to be moving in rhythm. It was if some bad music was being played in a house on the other side of the Madeley pond/lake.

I rushed back into the house to find Judy on the phone with Cilla. I didn’t have time to get involved so I grabbed my coat and headed out the house and began to walk down the street in the direction of the music.

Before I reached the end of the road, a head popped up over a hedge. It gave me quite the start, given that it was wearing a Arabian turban with non-matching Kenyan tribal gown and Manchurian dragon slippers.

‘Michael!’ I cried to Michael Palin. ‘What you doing there?’

‘Observing the lights,’ he said.

‘You’ve seen them, then? What do you make of them?’

‘It’s the alien invasion, isn’t it?’ His turban bobbed about with excitement. ‘It’s what you’ve always talked about. Or I do hope it is,’ he said. ‘I’m desperately in need of a new long distance journey I can film for the BBC. Michael Palin’s Earth to Centuri has a ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t think it is the invasion,’ I told my excitable friend. ‘It seems to be coming from a house down the road. You fancy coming along as I investigate.’

Michael thought for a moment and then his face broke into a huge grim. ‘Michael Palin’s Journey From Some Undisclosed Location in South East England to Some Other Undisclosed Location in South East England. Quite the catchy title. Haven’t got my camera team but I could quite easily get a book out of it. Count me in.’
And so we set off, me in still in my slippers and Michael dressed like a third-rate stage magician. The music led us on and grew louder once we turned the end of the road.

In the next street, the lights were at their brightest. I could sense Michael’s disappointment as he saw the beams of light coming from a nearby back garden and lighting up the low cloud base. The was also the unmistakable throb of music accompanied by some high pitch shrieking that was a frightening as it was familiar. The house itself stood higher than the rest and was decorated in white plastic facia with a few pink flamingo illuminated in their plastic glory stuck around the front lawn, which had been spray painted a green turquoise.

‘Rather a tacky end of another exciting Palin adventure,’ said Michael.

‘I agree,’ I replied, looking at the windows painted in a garish shade of yellow with pink curtains beyond.

I began to walk up the path, determined to find a reason why Cilla Black had been put on the alert for alien invasion when there was a yell from the side of the house and a figure came running towards us.

‘Hell,’ said I as I recognised the figure. Although he was more tanned that me, with brighter teeth too, and darker hair, he was still the embodiment of everything that the name Madeley doesn’t stand for. In a way, you might say he is my direct opposite; the negation to everything that’s positive and wholesome about me. You might even say that he was the Anti-Madeley.

‘How the hell did you get in?’ asked Simon Cowell, not at all breathless and with his high pectorals perked with adrenaline and stimulated to the point of twitching. ‘This street has restricted access. How did you get past the gates?’

‘We’re celebrities too,’ said Michael, adjusting his sagging turban so he stood a bit taller.

‘Yes,’ I added. ‘No doubt about it. The gates recognised us and swung open.’

‘A likely story,’ laughed Cowell. ‘I’ll give you thirty seconds to get out before I call my bodyguards, who happen to be a very talented close harmony boy band called “Knuckles Inc.”. Look out for their single next Christmas, their techniques for breaking kneecaps in about twenty seconds.’

‘Pah, idle threats,’ spat Palin as he turned on his dragon heels and began to run.

I watched him retreat before I turned back to Cowell. ‘How the hell did you manage to buy a house in this area? I thought we had rules about your sort moving in.’

‘Oh, you can do what you like down there on millionaires’ row,’ he said. ‘This is billionaire’s row.’

‘And the lights?’

‘I’m having a small barbeque and outdoor disco for friends,’ he said.

‘Bit chilly for that, isn’t it?’

He looked at me, his lopsided grin even more lopsided and full of grin. ‘You don’t have your back garden fully centrally heated, Richard?’

The point was cruelly made. I didn’t wait around for the debut performance of Knuckles Inc.’s hit, so I trudged back down to millionaire’s row, feeling my pockets pinched by the desire to have my own back garden centrally heated.

I got back to the house to find Judy dressed in fatigues and ready for combat. Cilla Black was apparently on her way and would be parachuting in within the hour. I didn’t have the energy to explain. I did contemplate mentioning to Judy about centrally heating the garden. She’s a dab hand at plumbing and electronics and could do it on the cheap. However, that would involve my explaining about Cowell and that would mean another call to have Cilla Black stood down for the evening. Planes were already in the air. It would be easier to have her land and explain it all then. As Judy went out to prepare the landing strip with flares, I headed for the kitchen and something to settle my stomach. Even without any anal probing, I was still in for a long and painful night.

In The Land Where The Cheggers Dwell

The adjustments I've been making to my sleeping pattern have left me suffering terrible bouts of narcolepsy. As soon as I stop moving, my eyes close and I'm asleep. And little do I care where I land. Since I started to get up earlier in the day, I've been found sleeping behind the sofa, in the laundry closet, and nestled at the back of Judy's clothes cupboard. As I move on with my plan of getting up an hour earlier each morning, the narcolepsy seems to be getting worse.

'I think you should go back to bed,' said Judy at eight o'clock this morning. I'd just fallen face first into a bowl of cornflakes and only the years Judy spent as a life-guard saved me from the milk I'd sucked into my lungs.

'No, no,' I replied, 'I'll be quite fine. I can't feel as tired as this all day. I just need a little fresh air.'

'You're going to look a mess for this afternoon's show.'

I couldn't deny that but I was in mood for giving up. Madeley will need to be heading into the city at seven thirty on Monday and I want to be doing so after more than a couple of hours sleep.

With that in mind, I resolved to ensure that I would wide awake for five o'clock this afternoon but physically tired when it came time for me to retire to bed an hour earlier tonight. I changed into my tracksuit and went out the front door, fully intending to jog five miles down the road and back again.

The enterprise began quite well. I turned right at the front gate, ran down past David Dickinson's place, and then peered up Michael Palin's drive in the hope of seeing him, despite the rumour that he's currently walking barefoot across Australia for the BBC. Then I was skipping past Trevor McDonald's house and then gave a wave to Clive James who was washing his car. I then carried on down to the cheaper end of the street. It's rare that I go that far on foot. The problem of living in a strictly hierarchical neighbourhood such as ours is that there are always people on the lower levels who demand something from those at the top.

Today was no exception. I'd just run past the house owned by the neighbourhood recluse who used to be Shakin' Stevens when I heard a voice shouting me.

'Richard?' squealed a scouse accent. 'Hey! Richard? It's me!'

I turned around in time to see Keith Chegwin leap a low privet hedge and come running after me.

I might be prone to rushes of serotonin to the brain but I was not without certain emergency functions. Before I could consciously issue instructions to my legs, I was running the other way.

'Richard! Stop!' came another appeal. 'It's me. Cheggers!'

If you know anything, you'll know that Madeley hates men who refer to themselves in the third person. I looked over my shoulder to find that Cheggers was pursuing me but I was relieved to see that he wasn't gaining.

'What do you want?' I shouted but not lessening my stride.

'Any... chance... for five... minutes... on... your show?' he asked.

'Not a chance,' I shouted.

'But Cheggers has got... a... new... computer game... coming out...' was the rather breathless reply.

'A computer game?'

'A... showbiz... trivia... game...'

For a moment, I thought about stopping to learn more but then I remembered that chatting with Cheggers usually involves him telling you the story about when he presented a show nude on Channel Five.

'Haven't got time, Keith,' I shouted as the thought of Keith's shrivelled genitals encouraged me to pedal my knees faster.

'But it's on the Wii...' shouted Cheggers, the last syllable draining out into the silence of my eventual getaway.



Deciding not to risk another encounter with Swap Shop's scouse siren, I took the long route home, cutting through the estate where most of the Radio 4 lot live. I was quite relieved when I spotted John Humphrys who allowed me to take a short cut through his garden and to climb the wall that separates his apple orchard from the bottom of the Madeley estate.

When I get into the house, I mentioned what Cheggers had told me about his computer game.

'I think we're missing a trick here, Judy,' I said. 'Here we are spending time with our clubs for books, wine, cheese, and nuts, but we're catering to a vanishing audience. We need to start appealing to younger viewers.'

'We're not having a video game club,' she replied.

'No,' I said, 'but I thought we could easily have a Richard&Judy video game.' I looked towards the Xbox 360 that Stephen Fry had bought me for Christmas and I wondered if 'Zorg the Destroyer' would have any advice about my idea of making the jump into the virtual world.

'I'll ring Stephen this afternoon and see if he can think of any genre of game that would suit us,' I said as I sat down on the sofa and pulled off a shoe. 'I think a first person shooter based on the Richard&Judy formula would rocket to the top of the video games charts.'

Judy might have answered. I really can't remember and I haven't got time to go and ask her to repeat herself. I only woke up ten minutes ago with one trainer still on my foot and the other propped beneath my head as a pillow. I must now go and wash and change. I also have to get rid of the large Nike logo that's now embossed on my cheek.

You can't believe how strict they are at Channel 4 about produce placement and advertising.

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.

Wind Up The Willows

The moment Ronnie Corbett refused to don the frog suit, I knew we were in trouble.

The usual suspects had gathered around my kitchen table, but even to the older heads among us, the night had been a sobering lesson, teaching us that the human spirit is never so foolish than when it’s soaped up on coffee. Clarkson had not stopped pouring the Nicaraguan blend all afternoon. By the time we’d cranked the hours forward to six o’clock, the caffeine fizzed whenever it met serotonin in our systems. You have to believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing so excitable as Bill Oddie when he’s tapped up on the roasted beans of Central America.

‘It will be a blast!’ said Clarkson. His bottom was perched on the kitchen work surface, allowing the rest of us an unrestricted view of the fist tight crotch with enlarged knuckles. ‘Come on, guys. What do you say? Where’s that British spirit? Where’s that resilience to see a good job done?’

‘If he mentions Brunel one more time I believe I’ll try to swallow my tongue,’ muttered Stephen.

‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel wouldn’t have sat around waiting to make a decision. He’d have had this job done hours ago. Come on? Who’s with me?’

There then followed much furrowing of brows as we began to comprehend the scale of J.C’s proposal.

In the end, Fry had been the first to declare his willingness to go along with the plan. ‘If only to hasten myself on to my doom,’ he said. Palin had deliberated long and hard before announcing that he too was in. Oddie had already volunteered an hour earlier. Once he’s on coffee, he’s up for anything. He’d announced his decision with a dozen toots on his plastic duck call.

The only real doubt among us was Corbett. I could see that I would need to set him a good example.

‘As for me,’ I said, placing my hand on Ronnie’s shoulder, ‘I’m always happy to put my weight behind the Clarkson bandwagon. After all, it is for charity. Charity makes big men out of us all.’

As soon as I said that, Ronnie piped up.

‘You’re so right, Dick…’ he began. ‘I can call you Dick? Ha! Wouldn’t want to be putting my Dickies where they’re not wanted… As the snooker player said the ballerina. No! Actually, the snooker player never said that at all. I was lying for the sake of the joke, you see…’

‘Ronnie?’ asked Jeremy. ‘Are you in?’

‘I’m in! I’m in!’ he said, cradling his own cup of coffee high against his chest. ‘Which reminds me of something I said to my wife on my wedding night…’

Clarkson groaned. ‘Look, guys. I can’t say how good it is that you’ve all agreed to do this. I owe you all one.’

‘I would never say no to a cause so worthy,’ replied Ronnie.

We all stared at him for a few moments longer, waiting for him to continue as we knew he must.

‘No, that’s it,’ he said. ‘I can see when my rambling monologues are not wanted…’ He ran his tongue around his teeth, looked up to the ceiling, and then down at his cup. ‘But, of course, that does remind me of a joke about a one legged man and a mule. No, it does! He generally coped well with his disability but he found it difficult to find his ass. Ha!’

‘Okay,’ said Clarkson with a withering look directed to the smallest man in the room. ‘I’ve got the gear in the back of the car. Unfortunately, I can only take one of you with me and that will have to be Ronnie.’

‘I can always squeeze into the glovebox,’ said Ronnie as though it needed explaining.

‘Quite,’ said Jeremy. ‘Dick? Can you, Mike, and Bill go with Stephen?’

‘It will be a pleasure to drive such men of enviable talent,’ said Fry. ‘And Richard is always welcome too.’

Now it was my turn to groan.

The race up to Biggleswade was surprisingly tight for most of the trip up the A1. While Jeremy had to refuel his jet car every fifteen minutes, Stephen’s encyclopedic knowledge of the roads of Southern England allowed us to keep a steady pace. At the finish line, Clarkson probably nipped in ahead of us because Stephen had slowed to twenty through the tight streets. Jeremy had clearly interpreted this as a sign of weakness and exploited it to the full. He’d made up two miles to come roaring down the street, the wake from a sonic boom busting many a gusset in the window of Dorothy Perkins.

‘That journey might have cost be seven and a half thousand pounds in fuel, but it just shows you that you can’t beat the power of the jet,’ said Clarkson once the rest of us had bundled out of Stephen’s cab.

‘Is this it?’ asked Bill, looking at the rather drab stage set in the middle of the town square.

‘This is, as you say, “it”,’ said Jeremy. ‘Come on. The kids will be here soon.’

‘Where’s Ronnie?’ I asked, realising that our numbers were light by one Corbett.

‘Oh hell,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ve left him in the luggage compartment.’

‘I saw my life flash before my eyes,’ said Ronnie as he emerged from the car a minute later. ‘And I never realised I was so short!’

The plan was elegant in its simplicity. Because of her involvement in high level diplomacy between the UK and Russian governments, Kelly Osbourne had been forced to cancel her plans to light Biggleswade’s Christmas lights. Jeremy had stepped in and promised that we’d all be on hand to put on a scene from his favourite book, The Wind in the Willows. Children from the local behavioural treatment centre were due to come along at eight and we would entertain them until nine o’clock when the town’s Christmas lights would be lit, accompanied by a firework display. The fact that we hadn’t rehearsed a thing didn’t seem to discourage Jeremy.

‘Grab your costumes,’ he said, ‘and just remember that this is for children who won’t actually have read the book. It means we don’t have to be word perfect with the original source material.’

‘You want us to make it up as we go along?’ I asked.

‘That’s generally the idea,’ he smiled. ‘Now Stephen, it’s probably best if you play Mole. Dick, of course you’re Ratty. Bill, sorry to typecast you like this, but could you be Mr. Badger? Ronnie, you are born to play Mr. Toad. That just leaves Michael and myself who are going to be weasels.’

‘Typical,’ said Michael. ‘I came all this way to play a weasel. This is “A Fish Called Wanda” all over again.’

‘You’re comparing this great collection of British talent to a small budget film?’ scolded Oddie and he helped Jeremy pull the basket of costumes from the back of the rocket car.

Michael flipped the lid and dragged out the first costume.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said as he examined something green and rubbery. ‘We did have a budget on “Wanda”.’

‘That’s Mr. Toad’s frog suit,’ said Jeremy, snatching the rubbers from Palin’s hands and holding them up.

‘I’m not wearing that,’ said Ronnie. ‘Where are my tweeds? He’s the lord of the manor for goodness sake. Mr. Toad always wears tweeds!’

‘Not in this production he doesn’t,’ said Jeremy. ‘And I don’t think the kids will notice. A green frog suit is as good as I could come up with at short notice. And you’ll look the part once you put the snorkel on.’

‘A snorkel?’

‘It was the best I could do for goggles. Look, Ronnie, this is for charity.’

Ronnie fell silent, as did we all except Bill who was wrapped in a large fur coat and was getting into his role by sniffing around a nearby hedge.

‘Look, Jeremy,’ I said, ‘can’t Ronnie be a weasel? You could play Mr. Toad.’

‘He looks nothing like a weasel. He’s too short.’

‘That is a fair observation,’ said Stephen, who had been silent throughout the disagreement. ‘In which case, I could play a weasel, Ronnie could play Mr. Mole, and Michael would then play Mr. Toad. It would, I believe, solve all our problems.’

As ever, Stephen had done it. The man has a brain the size of a subcontinent. And one of the bigger ones at that.

Soon, suits were on, places on the stage were taken, and we ran through a quick rehearsal before the children arrived. Although ours was one of the oddest stage adaptations of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, I thought it had some charm. Stephen managed to ad lib his way through the entire thing, improving on the original in everything he did. Oddie paused at the half-way point to lecture the children on the reproductive habits of badgers, complete with mime. Michael played Mr. Toad admirably and his inclusion of some fish slapping seemed to delight the kids. As for my Ratty, it probably stole the show. I managed to get Stephen’s weasel to sit down for five minutes and we discussed the problems in his personal life and I recounted the time I’d had my vasectomy. The whole thing was wrapped up perfectly by Ronnie who ended the night with a long rambling story about his life with Mrs. Mole and a particularly funny story about his wedding night whose punchline was ‘I won’t mind but you better ask the stoat.’

What more is there to say? Christmas lights were lit and then fireworks played their part. The children were herded back to their behavioural unit and we packed up for the evening.

Later that night, after I’d got home, I was stood looking out over the garden when Judy came up behind me.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she offered.

‘I was just thinking how lucky I am not to be a rat,’ I said. ‘Could you imagine what it’s like, living and foraging among rubbish. It makes me so very glad to be human.’

‘I thought that would be obvious,’ she said.

‘Not to all of us,’ I said and put my arm around her as we stood and watched a large grey badger frolicking on the back lawn and only occasionally standing on his hind legs and looking remotely like Oddie, that dear and charming man.

Rub-a-dub-dub, Four Men and a Tub

There are moments when I despair for mankind; moments when I become a little fretful about the state of the world and wonder what would happen if I gave up my TV career to become a man with nothing more than a bag of onions and a plot of land. The simple life often appeals to me but then I usually run myself a big bath, soak for half an hour or so, and emerge a well wrinkled optimist with hardly a bad word to say about anybody or anything.

Yesterday was a busy day at the Madeley household. A highly respected man of letters threatened to have me killed for releasing footage of him shaking a leg at the Charleston, and then David Dickinson forced me up a ladder to give his crotch a good scraping. Days of rosier hue there certainly have been and Judy wouldn’t have been at all surprised if, upon arriving home at ten o’clock, I had told her that I was heading straight for the bathtub.

Unfortunately, by the time I did arrive home at ten o’clock, Judy was gone. I’d forgotten that she’d made plans to see Equus in the West End for the nineteenth time. She would be staying over in the city with Denise Robertson who had bought herself some high powered binoculars especially for the occasion. It meant I had time alone to enjoy a good long bath and my special formula of salts were soon filling the house with the aroma of apricot and cinnamon. All my earthly worries eased away as I slid into the hot water. Bliss.

I woke up five hours later.

The water was cold and my legs had gone dead. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Below the waterline there was more shrivelled skin than in the audience to a Cliff Richard concert. I didn’t know if I should call for help or sing a chorus of some chirpy Christmas hit.

‘Judy!’ I cried, my voice sounding hollow against the walls of the tiled bathroom. Then I remembered that she’d gone away for the night and that I was alone. Trapped in a bath. With possibly severe wrinkle damage and hugely bloated buttocks that had wedged me tight into the bottom of the tub. I knew I had to act and, if I was to escape from my bath, I would have to do so without her help.

Panic, my rarely reticent mistress, wrapped me it her tight embrace. My breath came to me ragged and uncontrolled. Luckily, Dr. Raj had taught me meditation techniques for a moment such as this so I began to think of my ‘comfort mantra’ and began to say it aloud.

‘Sue Lawley’s sponge pudding… Sue Lawley’s sponge pudding… Sue Lawley’s sponge pudding…’

Eventually, I felt my breathing ease and I found myself able to think myself through my predicament. Consider: man in bathtub; unable to move; becoming more bloated with every passing moment. It seemed that the only chance of escape lay sitting in the pocket of my trousers. It was the new Apple iPhone I’d bought over the weekend, after much pestering from Fry. The trousers were, however, a good few feet away and beyond my reach.

However, I’m a man of some considerable imagination. I quickly grabbed my bathrobe, put a knot in the cord and then tied it around my large luxury loofa. On the third attempt I managed to snag my trousers and drag them to the side of the bath where I reached for the phone. Luckily, I’d charged it up that very morning and it came on with a bright chirp as I ran a finger down the screen.

Unfortunately, severe wrinkles had not been a design consideration back at Apple HQ. After accidentally selecting the MP3 player and then pulling up a detailed map of Swindon on the GPS, the internet browser loaded and I inadvertently checked all my emails. Only then did I manage to get to the phone book. That’s when I remembered, to my horror, that I’d only got around to putting one number in there. There was nothing I could do but press dial.

‘’Tis I, Fry, past midnight on my iPhone,’ yawned a somewhat sleepy Stephen Fry.

‘Stephen, thank god,’ I said. ‘I need you to call somebody to help me.’

‘Richard? Is that you?’

‘Yes, ’tis me, Richard, on my iPhone and I’m stuck in the bath.’

‘In the bath? Heavens!’

‘You must call somebody here in the UK. I need somebody to come and rescue me at once.’

‘I’ll be right over,’ said Stephen.

If I hadn’t already been wedged into the bath by my bloated buttocks, I would have still been rooted to the spot in shock. ‘I thought you were in America,’ I said. ‘What happened to your counter-clockwise tour of the nation?’

‘Oh, I’m go back to finish filming that in a few days but I had to come back home to narrate a piece for The Sir John Soane’s Museum. I had to tell people about their quite wonderful collection of chimneypieces. But more about that later. I’ll be there within minutes.’

And with that, he hung up. I love the man dearly but, to be honest, he wouldn’t have been the person I’d have asked to come help me out of the bath. Yet if brains were brawn, he’d be the first. Chimneypieces, indeed!

Half an hour later, I was woken from the early stages of hypothermia by the sound of a large shoulder impacting multiple times upon the front door. Then there was the noise of lanky legs ascending stairs before the bathroom door was flung open and Fry marched in.

‘Thank god!’ I cried, fearing that my body couldn’t stand much more shrivelling.

‘Not God, but close,’ he said. ‘’Tis I, Fry, in your bathroom!’

‘You have to get me out,’ I said. ‘I’m freezing, my legs are completely dead, and my body has absorbed so much water that I’m now wedged tight beneath the waterline…’

He untied his cape and threw it dramatically to one side as he came forward to grab hold of me.

‘Poor Richard,’ he said. ‘Throughout this adventure I shall refer to you as “Thora”, as though I were the playwright Mr. Bennett and this were a drama fit for the great Dame Hird herself. Old Lady in Bathtub.’ He let me slip as he stood up and pulled a notebook from his pocket before jotting down the idea. ‘The scenes almost write themselves,’ he said with evident glee.

‘Just pull me out,’ I pleaded, giving him both my hands.

After two minutes of struggle, I fell through his grasp for the dozenth time and Fry stood and leaned against the wall.

‘Who’d have thought you could be so terribly slippy when naked and wet?’ he said. ‘This is impossible. I need help.’

‘Well, if you must, go get Palin,’ I said. ‘He’s only a few doors up the road.’

Not an ideal solution, I suppose, but there you have it when ‘needs must’.

Fifteen minutes later, Palin walks in, still dressed in a dressing gown he’d clearly bought in Afghan bazaar. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself in a bit of a lather.’

‘Oh dear,’ groaned Stephen. ‘Well past midnight and the older generation of comedian still insists on punning. I can tell you, Dick, he’s been working on that one all the way here.’

‘Comedy legend,’ said Michael with a wink as he came and peered into the murky water. ‘Somebody dropped the soap or is that the natural colour of a well washed Madeley?’

‘I wish you’d hurry up and get me out of here,’ I said, feeling not a little embarrassed by my nakedness. I was only glad the water was opaque with the soap.

‘Stephen, you get his legs and I’ll take his arms,’ said Michael. ‘And I’d advise you to not look towards the middle. That is only fit for fair maidens called Judy.’

They huffed and puffed for a good few minutes before Palin fell back and sat down on the toilet. ‘He’s not going to shift,’ he gasped. ‘I tell you what… Why don’t we empty the water first?’

‘No way,’ I said. ‘I’m already cold enough and I’m not exposing myself to you two.’

‘There’s nothing down there we’ve not seen a hundred times,’ said Palin.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Well, those trousers you wear on the show,’ he said. ‘They don’t leave much to the imagination when you go spreading your legs for the ladies.’

I resented his implication and told him as much. ‘I can’t help but sit the way I feel most comfortable.’

‘Hush, you two,’ said Stephen. ‘We don’t need to empty the water at all. We just need an extra set of hands.’

‘We could always ask David,’ suggested Michael.

‘Not Dickinson,’ I said, drawing the line. ‘It’s bad enough that I’ve seen his groin at close distance. I don’t want him seeing mine. There’s a good likelihood that he’d flick it with his nail and call it a bad 1960s reproduction.’

‘Well you must have another neighbour,’ said Stephen. ‘Is there anybody close by who you don’t mind asking for help?’

I thought a few moments. ‘If it weren’t an emergency, I’d never suggest this,’ I said. ‘But you could always go and ask Corbett.’

Stephen looked towards Michael. Michael looked towards Stephen. Finally Stephen spoke.

‘Matthew or Ronnie?’

‘Ronnie, of course. And before you say anything, the man is stronger than he looks.’

‘I’ll go get him,’ sighed Michael. At the door he turned to look at me. ‘Are you sure this is the only option?’

I would have shrugged by even my shoulders were beginning to suffer water damage.

By the time Michael returned with little Ronnie Corbett, Stephen had finished lecturing me on the delights of the Sir John Soames museum’s collection of rare pickle jars and I, in my desperation, had almost found it interesting.

‘Anybody in?’ asked Ronnie, sticking his head around the door. ‘Ah, Richard! How good to see you. No, don’t get up. Ah ha! No, seriously. I’ve not seen a flesh that white since my wife cooked turkey last Christmas. I’m not saying it was underdone but it did help us unwrap the presents. Ah ha! No, come on. We have to get you out of there. My wife doesn’t like me being out at night. She thinks I might be mistaken for a peeping tom. No, honestly. My wife is a terrible worrier. She went to the doctor with an irritable wart. He told her that is she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t have married me. Oh no. Actually, I’m being unfair. My wife is very loving. She wanted me to take her ballroom dancing. I said fine, I’d do that so long as she took an interest in my golf. After two weeks she told me that she thought our foxtrot was fine but our tango would be better if I stopped shouting “fore” and if left my nine iron in the car.’

‘Ronnie?’

‘With you in a moment, Dicky. Actually. I’ll let you know that I’m a very accomplished dancer. I look very good in tails. I’m often being mistaken for a bridegroom. I’ve been stuck on so many wedding cakes, my toes have got frosting damage. Ah ha! No. Seriously…’

‘Ronnie?’ I said again this time splashing some water his way. ‘Ronnie, please?’

‘Oh, of course. Don’t know what I was thinking. How did you managed to get stuck in there, Dick? As the bishop said to the actress. Ah ha! Have I told you the one about the pygmy and the slipper salesman?’

Fry groaned. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the legs if Ronnie you can take one arm and Michael get his middle.’

‘I’m not touching that,’ said Michael. ‘This gown is real Afghan.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ronnie, rolling up the tartan sleeves to his own dressing gown. ‘As they say, if you have a man by his balls, his legs and arms will follow.’

What more need I say? Ronnie was right. They had soon dragged me from the bath and wrapped me in a bathrobe before placing me warming before the fireplace.

‘I can’t thank you all enough,’ I said to my friends as they sat with me and helped drained my drinks cabinet. ‘I honestly thought I was a goner there. History would have Jimmi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and me. Three famous bathtub corpses.’

‘Shush, Richard,’ smiled Stephen. ‘There are many more miles left in you.’

‘Indeed,’ added Michael. ‘You don’t think Dickinson would let you go anywhere until you’ve finished scrubbing his groin?’

Ronnie laughed. ‘Poor David’s groin! It reminds me of this story about a bank manager from Congleton and a goat with extremely large udders…’

‘I’m sure it does,’ I muttered but Ronnie couldn’t be stopped. The last thing I remember fore falling asleep is the sound of Stephen Fry chortling softly over a punchline involving cold fingers.

The Lads' Night Out

David Dickinson's Mildly Singed Crotch: Part 2

Let’s open the windows, heel the cat out the door, and clear the air in here. I need to be honest with you.

Too many bloggers do nothing but lie to their readers and consistently mislead them. I’m not like that. I’m known as ‘Honest’ Richard for a reason; I’m ‘Madeley’ with a capitalised ‘Truth’ and with the British Standard Mark for Veracity branded on my behind. Which is why I’m so blunt when it comes to admitting that I’m one of the most disliked men in the country. Oh, there’s no use in denying it. I’ve seen all the skits and cartoons. I’ve heard all the things that people say about me. And it’s all water off a drake’s rear-facing manifold, as it were. None of it fazes me. Besides, unpopularity has many rewards. I don’t get troubled by people wanting me to endorse their products and I’m rarely chased by the paparazzi. Children fear me, pensioners jeer me, and I’m unwelcome in twelve different countries, two UK holiday resorts, and the BBC.

There are times, however, when you want the press on your side, a few people to cheer you up when you’re feeling down, or somebody with a bit of muscle to aid you in your times of trouble. I needed all three only last night when I was faced with a man alleging that I’d scorched his crotch with a blazing wheelbarrow of rubbish.

‘Listen here, matey,’ said David Dickinson, thrusting a golden finger into my chest, ‘you can’t put a blazing wheelbarrow full of rubbish between my thighs and think you can get away with it.’

We were standing in the hallway and he had technically trespassed his way from the porch and onto the Axeminster.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, David,’ I said in my most reassuring voice. ‘But if you get any of that tan on my shirt, I’ll hit you with the laundry bill.’

‘Oh, you cheeky bloody bugger!’ he wailed. ‘This tan is pure Far East, mate! None of your Ambre Solaire nonsense with me.’

‘Be that as it may, David,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know anything about your scorched crotch.’

‘You don’t know anything about it? You admitted to doing it on that bloody rubbish blog of yours.’

‘Rubbish blog!’ Now it was my turn to stretch for the decibels. ‘Rubbish blog! Don’t you know that Stephen Fry writes for The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society? I’m the talk of Tunisia and Australia!’

‘It’s a rubbish blog… A child could do better. Bloody nonsense you write about on there. You’d think a man of your years would bloody grow up and do something more productive with his time. All this obsessing about Bill Oddie. You’re bloody mad, man! You don’t really think Bill Oddie and Stephen Fry got where they are today by writing such bloody stupid rubbish do you?’

I gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Depends on your definition of bloody stupid rubbish.’

‘Oh, a smart Alec! I see. Now I’m beginning to get the full picture. You and that Michael Palin both think you can outsmart the Duke Dickinson. Well, I’ll tell you something now, my friend, and I hope you’ll take this on board: the Duke bows down for no man!’

‘Or woman,’ shouted Judy from the kitchen.

Dickinson smiled. It was a dreadful conjunction of ‘pearly’ with ‘white’. ‘Thank you, my dear. I was about to add “woman”.’ He pointed towards the door. ‘You should listen to your good lady wife. She knows the Duke and knows what happens when you scorch his thighs.’

‘Mildly scorch,’ I said. The truth was, despite the explosion and the flames, Michael Palin’s rocket powered wheelbarrow has done a poor job of demolishing the giant hoarding that Dickinson had erected on his front lawn. His towering presence was still casting an orange glow over the whole suburb.

‘Listen, are you going to do the right thing, apologise and fix the damage?’ he asked. ‘If you do, then we’ll say no more about it.’

‘And what about Palin?’ It seemed to me to be the most obvious and fair question. ‘Don’t you think he’s more to blame than I?’

David tutted and readjusted the knot of his tie. It was the size of a fist holding a coconut. ‘My poor boy. Michael works for the BBC. I work for the BBC. You work for Channel 4. You get my drift?’

‘Damn the BBC handshake,’ I cursed as Judy emerged carrying a tray of finger sandwiches.

‘Like to try a pawn nibble, David?’

‘Love to, my dear. And then I’m going to get this bloody idiot of a husband of yours to come and scrub down my crotch.’

I waved Judy’s bemusement away and grabbed my jacket.

‘This might take all evening,’ I said.

9PM. David Dickinson’s lawn. I’m up a ladder chipping away the scorched paint from a three foot wooden crotch.

‘He got you then?’ said a voice below me.

I look down to see Michael Palin standing with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a cocktail. He’s a bit of a show off when it comes to his elaborate drinks. Since he came back from his first world tour, Michael’s won’t touch alcohol unless it’s mixed with Cobra venom.

‘I’m supposed to call you “The Lovely One”,’ I said. ‘A poster on my blog told me that’s your real name. Only, from up here, I can think of at least a dozen alternatives that are more appropriate.’

‘BBC immunity,’ he said as though that were apology enough.

‘And to think, Mike, we had spent the afternoon slapping each other with fish. How could our friendship founder on David Dickinson’s crotch?’

‘Many have,’ he said and sipped his snake juice as I continued to scrub. ‘The thing we must remember, Dick, is that our friendship is bigger than this. We must look beyond Dickinson’s crotch and think of our next great adventure together.’

‘You’ve got plans?’ I asked, intrigued.

‘Oh, I can’t say too much and this might be more than a two man operation. We’ll need to bring in specialists.’

‘What kind of specialists?’

‘Well we’ll need a man who understands technology and somebody who can mimic the call of a duck.’

I turned back to my hand which had continued to scrub. I was suddenly excited again. ‘I might know two men who fit that profile,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you going to tell me more?’

He raised his glass and turned back to his house. ‘In time, Richard, in time,’ he said as he fell into the shadows, whistling the tune to the ‘A Team’, as though an omen of better times ahead.

Between David Dickinson's Thighs

As you probably know, Michael Palin lives not six doors up the street from me. Of course, given the size of the houses and their gardens, that’s nearly three quarters of a mile away, but it still makes him, in my mind at least, ‘one of the neighbours’. We also have quite a history together. When we first moved in, Michael was one of the first neighbours to come and greet us. We struck up an unlikely friendship, only compromised by his occasional habit of disappearing for six months and then coming back smelling faintly of camel.

‘Hello Maddo,’ he said this morning, his head popping around the corner of the living room door.

‘Mike!’ I cried. ‘Who let you in?’

‘Judy, of course,’ he said, coming into the room and dropping onto the sofa.

‘This is such a coincidence. I was only talking about you yesterday. I’ve not see you in ages. Where have you been?’

‘Oh, you know, here and there. I’ve just finished filming a show for the BBC. I spent six months driving around America in a taxi cab.’

‘How odd,’ I laughed. ‘You know that Stephen Fry is doing exactly the same thing right now?’

‘Black cab?’

‘Of course.’

‘And would he be going anti-clockwise around America or clockwise?’

‘Clockwise.’

He clicked his teeth. ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘I did it anti-clockwise which is a different thing altogether. Much more difficult journey when you do it anti-clockwise.’

‘How so? I would have thought that they both were equal.’

‘Well there you go, Dick. It proves yet again that you often don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you know that America is totally uphill if you travel around it in a roughly anti-clockwise direction? If Stephen is doing it clockwise, he’ll save on petrol and will find it a much easier proposition altogether.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No, I’m afraid that if he expects to make good television with this ill conceived premise of a clockwise journey around America, he’ll be in for many disappointments along the way.’

You see? The man had only been in the room for a minute yet he had taught me something about the geography of America that I’d never learned from any other source. Can you now see why we get on so well?

‘So what brings you to see me on such a fine November morning, Mike?’ I asked.

‘I’m here to ask you a favour. You know that the house across the way has been bought by David Dickinson?’

I didn’t. ‘Not that dandy from those antiques shows?’

Michael nodded slowly. ‘The very same. Odd chap. Highly tanned and with a yen for purple suits. Not endearing himself to the locals.’

‘How’s that? He’s not made disparaging remarks about your legs has he, Mike?’

‘Worse than that. He’s erected a large wooden billboard in his front garden.’

‘A billboard?’

‘Advertising his new show. First thing I see when I wake up in the morning is his grinning face looking at me through the window. It’s even worse at night. It glows.’

‘Glows?’

‘Glows a mysterious orange. I can see it through the curtains. That’s why I want your help.’

‘Anything I can do,’ I promised, though my not being one of David Dickinson’s biggest fans had nothing to do with it. I’m a friend of Palin and I’m not one to stand back when the man needs my help. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Get dressed and come with me,’ he said.

Ten minutes later, we’d were walking up the driveway to Palin’s house. His home is something else: small, comfortable, eccentric. In my opinion, his shed is the most wonderful place on the Earth. It’s full of the old props from all the TV and films he’s done. Every corner is full of bric-a-brak sure to evoke happy memories of fish slapping, SPAM, and all the rest. Only this morning, he didn’t give me chance to go inside and examine his relics. He stopped me at the door.

‘This is it,’ he said, gesturing to a wheelbarrow sitting before the shed.

‘It’s a wheelbarrow,’ I said.

‘A fully-loaded wheelbarrow,’ said Michael and tapped the side of his nose.

‘Okay, it’s a fully loaded wheelbarrow. Why do you need my help?’

‘You’ve not examine it carefully enough,’ smiled Michael.

I bent down and made a careful inventory of the wheelbarrow loaded, as it was, with assorted house bricks, an old canister half-filled with petrol, four long plastic tubes and other assorted debris.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I can see I was wrong when I said it was just a wheelbarrow. It’s a wheelbarrow full of assorted house bricks, an old canister half-filled with petrol, four long plastic tubes and other assorted debris.’

‘Not just any old tubes,’ hinted Michael.

I bent down again and, sure enough, I saw that they weren’t any old tubes. They were tubes filled with a strange smelling paste. I shook my head, not knowing what to make of them.

Michael sighed. ‘You remember when we tried to build our own rocket? You remember that I was researching fuel compounds? Well, that’s what I have here. Plastic tubes filled with solid fuel.’

I was glad it was a penny that dropped and not a spark striking. ‘You’ve built a rocket powered wheelbarrow!’

‘I like to think of it as a flaming wheelbarrow full of rubbish,’ he said. ‘But rocket powered does have a ring to it. That’s why I want your help. I want you to aim the wheelbarrow while I set off the rockets.’

‘Aim it at what?’ I asked.

He nodded down the drive to the house across the road where a twenty five foot wooden David Dickinson was grinning like an orange tree high on dope.

‘Aim it at that bloody thing,’ he said.

‘How illegal is this, Michael?’

‘Not illegal at all,’ he assured me. ‘Has the government ever outlawed rocket powered wheelbarrows filled with flaming rubbish? Have they ever said that large wooden Dickinsons are protected monuments? I don’t think so.’

When he put it like that, I didn’t see how I couldn’t help him.

I grabbed the handles firmly as Michael lit the rockets. At first they only smoked but after a few moments, they caught and I could feel the wheelbarrow straining to be free.

‘That’s it, right between his legs!’ shouted Michael as I ran a few steps to steer it on its way.

I let go and the wheelbarrow shot down the drive, across the road, and caught a slight incline that launched it straight into Dickinson’s estate where it became lodged between his thighs. That's when the rubbish and a flame rushed up to lick his groin. It was only a split second before the explosion knocked me off my feet.

‘That was the blasting caps I put under the rubbish,’ explained Michael, ever the perfectionist, as he picked himself off the floor and dusted himself down.

I did the same as the door to Dickinson’s house opened and out came the Duke, pink bathrobe and a plastic shower cap on his head.

‘Who did this?’ he screamed. ‘Who did this?’

‘Excellent morning’s work, Dick,’ said Michael, shaking me by my hand. ‘Fancy a drink to celebrate our success?’

‘Why not, Michael,’ I replied. ‘And perhaps you could do me a favour?’

‘Anything. Anything at all.’

I looked towards his shed. ‘Fancy a bit of fish slapping?’

He smiled, those wonderfully kind eyes twinkling with boyish charm.

‘Haddock or bream?’ he asked.

‘Your choice, Michael,’ I said. ‘Your choice...’