Save Me The Hairy One, Norman!

‘Hey Dick! Long time no see!’

I looked up and saw the postman’s face peering through the hedge. I just waved and hurried back into the house, conscious that my Mediterranean tan might look a tad decadent on a dreary North London morning in the middle of March.

‘You know, you wouldn’t feel so out of place if you put on some clothes,’ said Judy when I happened to mention this incident over our smoothie-maker a few minutes later. ‘Lord knows what the neighbours think when they look out to see you bending down to pick up the milk.’

‘Oh, you’re only jealous because I sing the body electric,’ I replied, quoting my favourite poem by Walt Whitman, written shortly before he took up yodelling and changed his name to ‘Slim’.
Judy snorted a laugh but I could tell she was rattled. She might mock my youthful energy and zest for free living but she also knew I couldn’t help it. The moment we’d arrived in Sardinia, naturism had become my new thing. Now that we’re back, I’m finding it hard to adjust. Frankly, a man spends so much time under that hot sun that his body learns to hate the restrictions of jollies and vest. And when a man has a body such a mine, one has an obligation to treat it well, polish it daily, and to show it off whenever possible. It’s a bit like owning an Audi.

‘You know,’ I said, sitting down at the breakfast table with my red meat and muffin smoothie, ‘I wonder if we’ve done the best thing. I know you wanted to come back, Jude, but I could have retired out there under the Sardinian sun, just you, me and the friendly goat herders.’

‘The only reason you liked it there was the fact that you could talk to those herders for hours and they’d never tell you to shut up.’

‘What can I say? Sardinians are a pleasant people. They have all the ebullience of the Italians but without the prostitution rings in the corridors of power.’

‘They also didn’t understand a word of English. What you wouldn’t accept was that they’d never debate the fluid dynamics of the sun’s core no matter how many times you tried to explain nuclear fusion. No, Richard, you are better here where we can put your energies to some use devising some new ground-breaking talk show format based around obesity, gypsies and/or weddings.’

I suppose she had a point, which I expect you to agree with. Yes, I’m talking to you, Norman.

Norman, you are the reader who waited for my return and I’m sorry that you’ve had to wait so long. Sardinia was my idea of heaven minus the afternoon slot on Channel 4 and too little choice in the range of soft cheeses. But now that I’m back, I intend to breathe new life into this blog. A hot spicy breathe, Norman, fragrant with salsa and beans and maybe a little truffle. And I’m doing it all for you.

You see, my old friend, I did receive all the emails you sent me and I’m sorry that I ignored you for so long. But I now I’m back and ready to tell you the truth. So, no, I’ve never shaved my armpits except for a brief period in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War when it was all the rage. Yes, we do intend to attend the London Olympics but only in a sporting capacity. I hope to qualify for the marathon now that my giant transparent jelly costume has arrived. As you know, Judy will be dressed as a custard.

As to your other questions, I’m afraid I’ll have to be quick: a) Formica, b) Lewisham, c) cheese pizzas, d) a big Hungarian, e) squirrels, and f) never in goggles except once on my honeymoon.

Finally, you ask me I’d like to adopt one of your kittens. Such a generous offer and I’d be a fool to refuse. So, save me the hairy one, Norman. Let’s call it ‘Hope’, for that’s the new theme of this blog. I return to you a changed man. Positive outlook, clean smile, and buttocks browned and blessed by the warm Sardinian hills and ready to blog again.

As I used to tell my friends up Punta La Marmora where the goats roam free: I’ll see you all tomorrow when I’ll explain the basic logical operations of semi-conductors, eleven ways to sex a mollusc, and how to do CPR using a couple of jumper cables and a bag of lemons.

A Response to the Scurrilous Newspaper Reports Regarding 'Strictly Come Dancing'

01/09/09:12.02PM. Press Release on behalf of Uncle Dick:

"I’m asking people to stop sending me abusive emails about ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. The news that I have ‘snubbed’ the show is overstated, as is my reported wage demand. I asked for a paltry half a million and not a penny more.

On the whole, discussions were friendly and I always felt it certain that the BBC would eventually allow me to wear my spats with a sequined cummerbund. In the end, negotiations broke down when could not agree to my reasonable demand that a duck should be waiting for me in my dressing room at the start of each show. Nor would they allow me to partner Melinda Messenger in the naked Bolivian Tango. Suggestions that I wanted a rigged phone vote are as scurrilous and unfounded as the suggestions in some print media that negotiations ended when I made a joke about a toupee. I didn’t say toupee but tepee, Polish not polish, and Dusty Lee not Brucie.

Finally, I would like to make it clear that this does not close the door on my future participation in the show. I wish them well in the coming series, even though I’ll be watching Bill Oddie’s new ‘Owl Odyssey’ on BBC2."

Uncle Dick Madeley,
North London

On Poetry and Vacuum Pumps

I woke up bright and bushy this morning, played a game of wardrobe lottery and emerged a winner in a pair of brown corduroy slacks, a shirt with Gladstone collar and generous tie, all topped off with my favourite black beret. A quick look in the mirror and two snaps of my fingers later, I sloped off down the stairs, turned right at the weights room, went down the corridor past the swimming pool, arboretum, and tanning salon, and made a sharp left into the kitchen.

‘Morning Jude,’ I said to Mrs. M as I slid to a halt in front of the fridge.

Judy was sitting at the Formica work surface, her old vacuum cleaner dismantled before her and a vacuum pump held to her lips. When she replied, she made a sound not unlike a Clanger addicted to morphine.

‘I know what you’re saying,’ I said as I cracked open the Zanussi, ‘but Fate has ordained that I’m wearing a beret today.’

She gave another toot at the pump’s inlet valve.

‘You could say that but let’s see what the day has in store.’

Toot, toot!

‘Nonsense!’ I replied. ‘It’s not certain that Jeremy Kyle would ever say that, even if he did breed budgerigars...’

No matter how much you try to keep the small talk going with a person speaking through a dismantled dust manifold, there is only so much of it you can take. This is especially true of a woman whose lungs have been hardened by years of trombone practice. Some of the sounds Judy made were like a duck armed with a megaphone. It wasn’t long before I realised that eating breakfast in the kitchen was not for me or my beret.

Seeking a little P and Q in the garden, I took my toast, orange juice, and my copy of ‘The Guardian’ to the shade of Judy’s new trampoline. There, to the distant sounds of nozzle flushing, I ate my breakfast, read the paper, and tried to discover what the day had in store.

It didn’t take long to figure out why Providence had ordained that I should be wearing my beret on a Saturday. Once I was done with the Swine Flu update and cheering Jeremy Clarkson’s attack on Gordon Brown, I paged through to the arts section and discover a selection of poems about Iraq commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy. But don’t you worry, kind reader! I’ll mercifully quote only one stanza from ‘Big Ask’, the only poem in the selection written by our new poet laureate:

Guantanamo Bay - how many detained?
How many grains in a sack?
Extraordinary Rendition - give me some names.
How many cards in a pack?
Sexing the Dossier - name of the game?
Poker. Gin Rummy. Blackjack.

Now, as you know, I’m something of a poet myself; or should I say, I’ve been writing under the pseudonym, Gus Scrottee, for some months now. And by the time I’d finished reading Duffy’s latest, I’d stuffed my beret in my mouth to stifle the cries of anguish that would have otherwise ruined the quiet of the morning in our undisclosed part of North London.

I don’t mean to be pedantic or to criticise somebody trying their best but what sort of question is ‘how many grains in a sack’? Would that be grains of corn or grains of rice? And how big is the sack? Bigger than a gentleman’s sack, a swag bag sack, a sack of coal, the sack of Rome in 1527? Even when she has a chance to be clear about a detail, she waddles off, her pockets full of abstraction.

‘How many cards in a pack’? asks Carol Ann. Well, there are normally 52 but are we going to count the jokers? Or are we talking about Tarot cards (there are 78) or a deck of Italian cards which contain 40?

I’m often asked why the old book club hasn’t included any of Ms. Duffy’s work and this is the reason why. You won’t find this vague speculation in David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, even when he’s talking about clouds at a very high altitude. And you certainly don’t find this kind of confused thinking in Kate Mosse’s ‘Labyrinth’, even if it was about David Bowie leading a Fraggle Army.

The rest of the commissioned poems were little better and made me realise how far poets are from ordinary, down-to-earth people such as ourselves and Judy. But why should poetry be something for the privileged classes? Why must it be highbrow and elitist? And why shouldn’t poetry be written by a handsome TV presenter wearing a black beret while sitting beside a trampoline as his wife plays tunes on the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner?

No sooner had I reached this conclusion than I moistened the nib of my pen and sat down to scribble my own poem inspired by recent events. It is my gift to you, this fine Saturday morning, and my gift to the world.

Uncle Dick Madeley’s Meditation On Responses To Tragic Events Across The Globe But More Specifically In Iraq By Contemporary Poets; Inspired by Carol Ann Duffy’s Poem ‘Big Ask’ And Written After Eating A Slice Of Toast Whilst Sitting In The Shade of Judy’s Trampoline

I remember
thinking I should write
a poem about Iraq when
my wife told Englebert
Humperdink that she believed
he had the best horn section
in popular jazz. He
thanked her and I thought
I glimpsed mortality
in the damp spall cast from
his eye; the vague sense
that having the best horn
section in popular jazz
was to be his legacy,
like George W.’s legacy
was not a popular horn
section but the war in Iraq.

Oh Iraq! You have seen
the best and worst of us,
requiring the occasional
random italicising
as if to say this is
more meaningful
than any of the other
evils that the world
has to offer, such as
swine flu, recession,
the new series of
Top Gear on BBC2,
Peter Andre’s next
album or Real Madrid’s
transfer policy in the
summer of 2009.
Such terrors demand that
I randomly insert some
glib violence of mine:
the blood smearing my
hands from when I
butchered an onion.

Although the cut was little
compared to the blood in
Iraq, it was making my
italicised lunch that day
that first convinced
me that I understood
your suffering. From the
heart of NW3, I now see that
no war is exotic and all
wars taste of crimson cheese
and the bloody onion.

Oh! The brutality of America
that I like to attack because
they are not like we English
but powerful and full of evil,
except for ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’,
‘24’, and ‘Prison Break’.
However, quality TV comedy
and drama does not atone for
the B-52s (the aircraft not the
New Wave rock band) and
the evils done by your
helpfully rhyming hand.

And so Judy, the vacuum
bugle blows and
my poem ends
with some trite sense
of resolution, perhaps
the
odd
line
strangely
written as though I’ve
left my elbow on the
keyboard, which conveys
the sense that I have
suffered because I know
how to strangely enjamb
a line, which is rather like
saying ‘we’ll see you after
the break’ or ‘in next
week’s show...’ before
eventually our season
ends and silently to writing
Daily Express columns we go.

Seeking Squirrel Help

As a sign of my looming middle age (only five years to go!), I’ve started to feed the birds in the garden. I have become an expert in buying cheap seeds and suet, which I have taken to stuffing into Judy’s old stockings and hang them around the garden. The trees are now filled with dozens of feet shaped blobs of Judy’s size six fashioned out of millet and lard. Bill Oddie has also advised me about his specialised bird mix and, after he’d agreed to give me a healthy discount, I’ve been buying sacks of the stuff which I’ve used to fill Judy’s old brassieres that I suspend between tree stumps. You might say that our garden has become a haven for wildlife, or indeed, men who like to view women’s underwear in a natural setting.

Anyway, through much effort, expense, and luck, I have managed to attract sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, and even feral pigeons missing a variety of toes/feet. Judy hasn’t been impressed, or, at least, she wasn’t until the other day when she saw a squirrel swinging from one of her old bra straps.

Of course, living in this undisclosed part of North London, we are accustomed to seeing squirrels, but rarely have they ever ventured into the garden. Things have now changed. My nut sacks hanging from the trees are attracting squirrels in large numbers and I’ve become delighted with my new role as chief squirrel warden.
However, it now appears that I’ve been making an error common to all new naturalists. Prince Charles told me the other day that instead of feeding the squirrels, I should really be chasing them with a very large mallet. Grey squirrels are apparently a pest, a form of vermin, and need to be destroyed wherever they are found. I didn’t see his point until he compared them to Labour ministers.

Now, I’m not adverse to a little squirrel battery but the dilemma I face is this: I have never seen a red squirrels in my life unless it was lying by the side of the road doing a good impression of a Dunlop all weather tread. I’m told that I need to kill the greys to attract the reds. But I don’t see how I’m automatically going to have red squirrels in my garden if I sign up for this grey cull.

In TV terms, it’s like alienating your usual audience searching for viewers who wouldn’t in their wildest dreams watch your show. My grey squirrels are like my audience of mature women with a thing for handsome thirty-year old men in tight slacks and a causal way of sitting on a sofa. I’m not going to beat them lifeless with a mallet, even if that does attract a young audience that enjoys a pierced nipple and has the lyrics to Lady GaGa’s latest toothache tattooed on their rear.
Somewhat reluctantly, I’ve built a trap to catch the poor things – the squirrels, not my mature viewers. It’s a humane device, mainly constructed from assorted items I found in the bag of Judy had filled for the Heart Foundation. The trigger is a length of knicker elastic and the trapping mechanism one of Judy’s old corsets with the ribs sharpened to points. The overall appearance is of a giant Venus flytrap, big enough to catch squirrels, but built by Dorothy Perkins.

I don’t want to deploy it until I’ve had expert advice. So, my question to you is this: do my squirrels deserve to live or die? I need professional squirrel advice or, failing that, your off-the-cuff suggestions.

The Jesus Suit

My new braces (teeth, not trouser) got caught in my best cufflinks this morning. I won’t say what I was doing to get them trapped – it certainly had nothing to do with licking my own wrists, despite the evidence of the CCTV that Judy’s installed in the bathroom – but I will say that it shows you the lengths I’ll go to look both handsome and fashionable for my new solo career.

‘Are you sure you want to go to church, Richard?’ asked Judy as she manned my elbow and tried to part me from myself.

‘Barry,’ I replied, my voice muffled by six inches of quality cuff in a tapioca brown silk. ‘Will you please call me Barry?’

Judy gave my arm a tug and the cuff came clear but almost at the expense of an upper left incisor.

‘How many times have I told you that I’m not going to call you Barry?’ she replied. ‘It’s just ridiculous!’

‘And how many times have I got to show you the official documents proving that my name is now officially changed to Barry Madeley and that by...’

‘Oh, rubbish!’

‘... by not calling me Barry, you are denying me my rights as a human, a celebrity and as a Barry.’

My wife sat down on the edge of the bed and kicked off her pink frilled slippers. ‘You’ve changed, Richard,’ she said before she slipped to the floor in search of the black shoes she usually only wears on BAFTA nights. After a moment or two of activity under the bed and one sonorous ring against the chamber pot, she appeared again. ‘I mean, this new look just isn’t you. What on earth do you think you’re doing? A man your age getting his teeth straightened! And what do you think you’re wearing? You look like Des O’Connor having one of his senior moments.’

I had no need to defend myself. I could recognise the envy of a woman who had been left behind by the changing times. Judy has never been a fan of my crushed velvet jackets, my flared trousers with strips of silk running from hip to ankle. Judy is resistant to the eternal cycles of fashion and she won’t accept that my body has exactly the same ratio of body fat to exquisitely cut shank as it had when this fashion first came around in 1973.

‘Don’t worry, Judy,’ I said, straightening the bow tie given to me by Mickie Most. ‘Just because I’m dressed like this doesn’t change the way I feel about you. You are my one constant in an ever-changing world. You’re like the rock of Gibraltar.’

She glared at me.

‘But, obviously, without the baboons...’

That seemed to do the trick. ‘Do you really mean that, Richard?’ she asked, a sweet smile developing as she reached out for my hand.

I gave her hand a firm shake. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said, introducing myself with a raffish charm, ‘the name’s Barry...’

How her face changed! She stuck a foot into a shoe wish enough force to cause a slight fold to develop in the carpet. I’ve always suspected that our carpet fitters used substandard carpet grips and this was the proof.

‘Barry! Barry! They say that insanity strikes men earlier than woman... And now he wants us to go to church! I don’t see why we need to go to church.’ She muttered this last bit but not so far under her breath that I couldn’t make it out.

‘We’re attending the house of the Lord because I believe that this new start is more than just a reconfiguration of the Richard&Judy partnership,’ I explained. ‘I think it’s a calling.’

‘A calling?’

‘You just can’t accept it, can you Jude, that I’ve been called. You know? Like that guy in the Bible who was told to pursue a solo career out in the desert.’

Judy frowned. ‘You mean Jesus?’

‘I’ll be facing my own demons. And who knows what temptations await me in the wilderness of light entertainment? The devil has many guises. Well, perhaps one less since Natasha Kaplinsky went to Channel 5.’

‘So, you are comparing yourself to the son of God?’

‘But not in any way that makes it blasphemous,’ I replied. ‘I’m just noting the similarities between my life and that of another handsome man who had the common touch and was widely misunderstood by an ignorant public too busy worshipping false gods, such as Richard Hammond.’

‘I knew there was a reason you’ve been wearing a lot of sandals lately,’ said Judy before she stood up and disappeared out on the landing.

Well, no more was said on the matter. We sat in silence as I drove the Ranger Rover at a Christian’s pace all the way to the local C of E. We would have been there much sooner if the Christian had moved out of the way but the fool didn’t seem to care how much bumper I applied to his tail lights.

At the church, a small crowd gathered to welcome us. They cheered Judy as she climbed out of the car, though I think there were a little surprised to see me given the things I’d said the last time I visited. However, they have a new vicar and I gave her my winning smile before I paused by a young woman parked in a wheelchair by the door.

‘God bless you, Uncle Barry!’ she said but I just smiled and lay my hand on her head. I’m not saying it would help her. I mean, I wasn’t about to restore to her the use of her legs. Or, at least, not immediately...

The Adventures of Baz Mad

The party lasted long into the night at Madeley HQ, here in our undisclosed part of North Londonshire. The great and good of showbiz had come to mark the end of the Richard&Judy partnership and Bruce Forsyth was there, too, entertaining us all with his soft shoe shuffles and his famous anecdote about a golf umbrella, Jimmy Tarbuck’s 9 iron, and a sticky eighteenth hole.

The night was a success worthy of our long career in television but, eventually, around 2am, I saw Judy tap her nose and fiddle with an earlobe and I knew it was time to ease our guests casually towards the front door. Or, if that didn’t work, drag them by whatever surgical enhancement provided a firm enough grip.

‘Have you seen the genuine Tudor buttress on the end of the house?’ I asked David Dickinson, who had spent most of the evening on his hands and knees, looking for maker’s marks beneath the IKEA coffee table.

‘Genuine Tudor!’ he cried. ‘This I’ve got to bloody see!’

He didn’t, of course, ‘see anything’. But once I’d got him to the front door he did feel the creped underside of my right boot placed in the small of his kidneys. Similar tricks worked on Alan Titchmarsh, Natasha Kaplinsky, and Dame Kelly Holmes, each of whom I’d managed to lure away from the buffet table with the promise of a drooping plumb tree, a photo opportunity, or the challenge of a sprint up the drive in aid of Cystic Fibrosis. In the process, I’d also managed to get Forsyth out the front door by tying a five pound note to a thread attached to Dame Kelly’s dress. I know she prides herself a running a good middle distance race but I’m sure even she was flagging when she turned the end of the road chased by Brucie out to top up his income.

Back in the house, the party continued to shed talent like the BBC during a pay review. A pair of recognisable sandals were sticking out from beneath Vanessa Feltz so I grabbed them by their heels and gave a yank. There was a loud squeak and a ‘pop’ noise, much like a cork coming from giggly bottle, before the yank produced a Yank. An anglicised Yank, to be specific, dressed in quality tweeds to go with his Jesus boots and horn-rimmed spectacles.

‘Oy! What did you do that for?’ cried Vanessa and made a move to drag Johnny Depp back towards her.

‘Where am I again? What am I here to promote?’ asked Johnny, probably confused due to the usual high build-up of CO2 in Vanessa’s cleavage.

‘I think it’s time to let Johnny go,’ I said, quietly pleased with myself for rescuing my favourite Hollywood ‘A’ list star from my second favourite member of the triple D brigade.

‘Well, would you like me to take him home?’ she asked.

I know her games and I couldn’t do that to the poor lad. I tucked a ten pound note into his breast pocket and whispered into his ear the directions for the local bus stop. That’s the thing you can sure about with Johnny Depp: he’s a true professional. You only need to direct him once and he’ll give you a performance worthy of the Number 14 to Kensington.

By this time, Judy had managed to get rid of most of the minor celebs, working her charm to great effect. Whenever they threatened to stay, she’d sob on their shoulders, breath tales of woe in their face and ask if they could help revive her career. There’s nothing more certain to upset an ambitious young celebrity than the taint of failure or retirement. And any that prove particularly resilient to tears will eventually scarper if you offer to put them in touch with Les Dennis’ agent.
Soon, we were down to one old favourite who would be stubborn to shift given that early in evening she’d disappeared with a bottle of Drambuie. Thankfully, Vanessa stayed long enough to help us in our search.

Eventually, I found Cilla Black down in the cellar, blowing tunes over the empty end of the empty whisky bottle.

‘Surprise surprise!’ she’d cried as I opened the door of an old wardrobe in which Judy used to keep her spigot collection.

‘Come on, Cilla,’ I said as I lifted her from the wardrobe and threw her over Vanessa’s shoulder.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Vanessa, ‘I’ll take her from here.’

‘I used to sing with the Beatles!’ cried Cilla.

‘Of course you did,’ I replied. ‘There had to be a good reason they broke up.’

The last I saw of the two of them was Vanessa walking down the drive with Cilla over her shoulder, trying to pat out the rhythm of ‘Obla Dee Obla Da’ on Vanessa’s bottom.
With the last farewell made, Judy put out the milk bottles before I turned the lock on the front door and we both breathed a sigh, or, more accurately, two sighs divided by the familiar ampersand that has served us so well.

‘So, that’s that for Richard & Judy,’ I said.

‘We’ve had a good run but I think we’re making the right decision to retire before you hit your mid-life crisis,’ she replied moving in for a cuddle.

‘Indeed we have,’ I replied, my arm draping around Judy’s shoulders. ‘I just wonder what the future has in store for Barry Madeley...’

‘Who’s Barry Madeley?’ asked his wife.

‘Barry is my new name,’ I said, already cursing myself for having spoken my thoughts aloud. These were plans to which I had failed to make my wife privy. It was time for some firm explanations. ‘You see: I don’t want people expecting to hear “& Judy” whenever my name is mentioned during my solo career. That’s why I’ve changed my name to Barry. I’ve been meaning to tell you ever since it became official two months ago.’

‘Two months! But I don’t understand why you’d change it. Richard goes so well with Judy.’

‘Well the name’s now Barry,’ I said, ‘but if you want to be informal, you can call me Baz.’

‘But I don’t want to be married to a Baz,’ she replied.

‘So call me Bazzer or even Bazroid if you prefer the exotic.’

But Judy just fell silent and realising that our hug had gone cold, I gave a shrug and climbed the stairs to bed. I was already fluffing my pillows by the time Judy joined me.

‘I don’t understand why you won’t let me call you Richard,’ she said.

‘Look, Jude,’ I replied, ‘I know you’re attached to that name but I’m seeking a new audience that is beyond your reach. I want to appeal to dynamic go getters in my own age range. If they’re older than 35, they’re ancient in my book, Daddio. Baz Mad doesn’t do fossils.’

Judy’s face turned a shade of beetroot high in the Betanin, which as you’ll know, is the chemical that makes Judy red.

‘Baz Mad?’ she spluttered.

I’d done it again. I hadn’t meant to let Judy in on my plans so early on in my separate career but the cat was out of the bag, as they say. So far out that it was probably thinking of bringing a dead rat back in through the back door.

‘I thought I’d abbreviate my surname as well,’ I explained. ‘“Baz Mad” has a certain ring to it, don’t you think? Sounds a bit like Gaz Top and do remember how successful he was?’

‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Judy, sourly folding down the sheets on her side of the marital mattress.

‘Abbreviations work in this increasingly fast culture of ours. Twitter has taught me a lot about being brief, Jude, and “Baz Mad” will look great on the cover of my novel...’

‘Your novel?’ asked Judy.

That’s when I realised that I’d done it again. As you know, Judy sees herself as a writer of some potential.

‘That’s right. I’ve decided that I want to write fiction,’ I said. ‘And I know what you’re going to say. We agreed that you would be the one writing erotic fiction and I’m not going to step on your toes, Jude. I won’t touch your eighteenth century courtesan, Jemima Flirt. Oh no! Baz Mad’s erotic fiction will be of a different tone altogether.’

Judy sank onto the edge of the bed without even bothering to fluff her pillows.

‘Erotic fiction? But that means you’ve stolen my dream!’

‘Not stolen, Jude. I merely took an interest and found I had a natural flair for soft-core eroticism. I’ve been writing my book for many months. It shouldn’t bother you. It will have been published months before you get yours in the bookshops.’

‘Oh Richard! It was my dream to publish a book of erotic tales.’‘And your dream is still your dream, Jude. However, Barry just got there before you. Here,’ I said, sliding my four hundred page manuscript from beneath the bed. ‘Cast your eyes over that. But take care. Some of this is so juicy it will drip off your chin. It’s a story set in a Lancashire town about a tyre fitter and his mature lover.

She looked at the front page.

‘Mrs Chatterley’s Rover: A Tale of Six Strokes?'

‘Catchy, isn’t it?’

She snorted or perhaps just cleared her throat before she began to read aloud from one of the more sexually explicit parts of the book, when the tyre fitter first meets Mrs. Chatterley on the A573 outside Golborne, Lancashire.

As he jacked up her rear, her marigolds squeaked seductively on his bald crown like two rubberised otters in a frisky dance. His passion overwhelmed her; her frigidity falling away like the rust on a large lug nut, oiled with WD40 and tapped with his spanner.

‘I feel so hot and dirty,’ she said but he just whistled and kicked her knees. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to rebore you cylinders,’ he replied.

Ten minutes later, her foot was suspended by the elasticated cord of her pine air freshener as she felt her fan belt snap and her hot exhaust splutter his name. ‘Ronald’.

‘My Rover’s a coupe!’ she cried. ‘It doesn’t have four doors!’ But he knew different as he packed her generous luggage space and ran a masterful finger over her vulcanised tread, every stroke of his foot pump engorging her inner tube, her being swollen to eternity!

Judy sat there in silence for nearly a minute.

‘Well?’ I asked. ‘Did that make you feel better? Did you like that bit at the end. Thought it made it sound a bit like D.H. Lawrence.’

She handed the manuscript to me and slid her legs under the sheets before leaning over and putting a kiss on my upper right cheek.

‘Richard,’ she said, ‘I should have known I had nothing to worry about.’
And with that, she reached over, turned off the bedside lights, and left me listening to her snoring that may have trembled the bed but they also made Baz Mad feel very contented with the world.

A Day On The River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real Story Behind Yesterday's Richard&Judy Announcement

Stretched out on her La-z-Boy recliner about a month ago, my dear wife, Judy, switched off the vibrating headrest for a moment and turned to me with a quizzical look chevroned between her brows.

'You know,' she said, gesturing with her bar of the dark yet milky towards her favourite film playing on our 72 inch plasma widescreen, 'how on earth are we meant to compete with this?'

I looked up over my book and dragged my spectacles to the end of my slender and twin nostrilled Julius Caesar.

'Compete?' I asked, following the aim of her Whispa bar to the sight of Bruce Willis' first and best bloody vest staining the screen red. 'What makes you think we need to compete?'

Judy shrugged. 'Look at the time, Richard. It's on at the same hour as our show would be playing on Watch.'

'So?' I asked softly, never one to take Judy's worries too seriously.

'They work by different rules on satellite TV,' she replied. 'Unless you're going to start wearing vests and shooting terrorists in your bare feet, we're never going to attract a big enough audience on Watch.'

I could see her point. With bloody violence oozing out of Sky Movies pre-watershed, why would anybody choose to sit down and watch Judy and myself interviewing Simon Le Bon about his new apple orchard in Herefordshire?

'You worry too much,' I said, bringing the conversation to premature close. Judy shrugged and pressed the big red button the recliner's arm. The room was quickly filled with the sound of electric motors and chattering teeth, and I went back to my monograph on sub-atomic physics.

I thought no more about Judy's fears until last week when she was out leading her brass band in a spot of light regimental parading around the neighbourhood.

I'd come in after a hard day covering for Sarah Kennedy down at the BBC. I had the house to myself so I naturally slipped off my trousers and fed myself into my favourite dressing gown. Not only did the silk feel good against my skin but the ermine trim tickled my thighs in a manner both pleasant and relaxing.

It was around eight o'clock and I had punched in the code for Sky Movies. Alien3 was just coming on and, being a huge admirer of Sigourney Weaver, I decided to spend the rest of the night in her company. Soon I was sitting with a tub of Ben & Jerry's pistachio ice cream in my lap and was I tutting at the bit where the late dear Brian Glover disappears through the ceiling in the spray of an arterial fountain. That's when the phone rang.

I picked it up, slipped it beneath my chin and carried on scooping the cold stuff.

'Madeley,' I said.

'Dickie!' cried a voice.

A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with either Ben or Jerry wedged between my thighs. It was The Agent.

'I'm a bit busy,' I explained. 'Sigourney's down to just her underwear and a flame thrower.'

'I'm ringing with some bad news,' he said. 'Watch are having second thoughts about your Twittering.'

'My Twittering?'

'They think you're doing too much of it and you're being far too interesting.'

'Pah!' I spat. A pistachio arced across the room and stuck to the end of Charles Dance's proboscis.

'I know,' said The Agent. 'Rather foolish of them but they feel it might look a bit odd if your followers on Twitter got any bigger than the average audience watching you on Watch.'

'I see,' I said. 'So, you want me to quit?'

'Not quit,' said The Agent. 'They just want you to be a little less entertaining. You know… Take a leaf out of Philip Schofield's book. Make lots of meaningless statements like: "oh, that sounds interesting" and "I haven't thought of that but is it purple?"'

'Is it purple?'

'That's the sort of the thing they're after,' he said. 'Listen, I've emailed you a few suggestions. Give it some thought and tell me what you think. But you've got to change your ways Dickie. The people at Watch won't stand for any more of your nonsense.'

Well, after this conversation, my mind couldn't rest. With Sigourney still battling men in latex suits, I dragged my new laptop to my lap and powered it up.

It's Dell XPS Studio 13, which meant that my lap went from about -5% to something in the high scorching. Frankly, I was glad that my thighs didn't shatter like a red-hot alien under a sudden shower of cold water.

Date: Thu, 29 April 2009 21:29:11 +0000

From: ************** <*******@**********.co.uk>

To: dickmadeley@yahoo.co.uk

Message-Id: <4a065b155c354b3f9d41453f@*****.co.uk>

Subject: Your bloody Twittering

Mime-Version: 1.0

Dear Dick,

When are you going to learn? I've just come off the phone with the people from Watch. They are very displeased with you, Dickie, dear boy. They've been reading your Twitter account and think it's most inappropriate. They want to know why you can't be this entertaining on the show! Can't you at least get a few of your Twitter followers to 'follow' you onto Watch?

So, we've been banging a few ideas around and we think it's best if you stop being so damn interesting on Twitter. It looks bad for the show. Look at how Schofield does it. Can't you Twitter like him? He never once outdoes his show. Remember, Dickie, that banality is the key. That's why we want you to try a few of these @Schofe-like 'tweets'.

'Interesting. I like pudding.'
'I think that's currently unlikely.'
'Chicken? LOL. I'd rather have feathers.'
'I don't. Judy has the bigger thumb.'
'Yes but sometimes no. Other times: maybe.'
'I had one. I fell off and I couldn't glue it back on.'
'Ditto.'
'Perhaps.'
'Too soon.'

The list went on for page after page of this tedious stuff and, when Judy got home at ten, she found me blubbering in front of the TV, a bucket of melted ice cream at my side and the large shaved head of Ms. Sigourney Weaver looking down on my from the TV.

'When will you learn that she only ever goes as far as her knickers in these films?' Judy mocked as she dropped her trombone case by the door.

'It's not that,' I said and explained about The Agent's phone call and Watch's concern at my Twittering.

Judy's face hardened like she was trying to blow the high C at the end of 'The Thunderbird's March'.

'Well, that's it,' she said, coming to put a consoling arm around my shoulder. 'If it's a choice between your Twittering and our show on an obscure satellite channel, I choose your Twittering.'

I wiped away a tear or possibly even two.

'Really?' I gasped. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Judy has often expressed how she frowns upon my involvement with social networking, comparing it with the time I took an interest in amateur operatics in order to wear lederhosen.

'Richard. You have to do what your heart tells you. If you really want to waste your time and talent making glib comments to thousands of strangers, then that's what you should do. I will not stand in your way.'

'Jude,' I said, pulling her towards me. 'You've made the happiest man in the mid-five thousand followers.'

And that's why, yesterday, we made the announcement that the show will be ending on Watch. To be honest, it's something of a relief. I won't have to endure constant questions about viewing figures and I will have time to explore new avenues. Watch will miss us more than we will miss Watch and our future is now an open book of our own writing. In Judy's case, it's an erotic novel based around her heroine, the buxom eighteen-century courtesan, Jemima Flirt.

I, on the other hand, will continue to Twitter, continue to update this occasional blog, and continue to explore the vastness of this island Earth, cloaked in the moonlight of opportunity, the heat of circumstance, and the twilight of accomplishment.

Or, as I put it so eloquently in my official statement, 'We will be doing stuff together and stuff apart'. And I hope you will continue to be with me as I do that stuff.

God bless you. God bless Richard & Judy. And God bless all who sail in us.

The Fry-Day Fallout

My brain had not loosened up from my two days in a Manchester studio but waking in my bed this morning, it was so reassuring to smell a fried breakfast. Delirious was my happiness as I rolled over and found Judy lying beside me, the morning paper in one hand, some kipper in the other.

‘I always think of home when I smell kipper,’ I said, moving the bottle of HP sauce my wife had wedged for safety between my buttocks. ‘Ah, Judy! It’s so good to be back in familiar surroundings... You’ve got tomato sauce on your chin, love.’

Judy did her duty by the errant sauce and then nodded to her newspaper. ‘You made a proper fool of yourself yesterday,’ she said. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’
She handed me the newspaper, a local rag distributed only in our undisclosed area of North London. ‘Madeley’s Record Attempt Humiliation!’ read the banner headline.

I sank back into my pillow and groaned. ‘It was a brave attempt,’ I protested, ‘but the world of Twitter hasn’t quite taken to my own particular form of genius. Up to about midday I was roaring away. People thought I really was Stephen Fry and my following was soaring. Then at some point, I began to feel hungry. It reminded me than I’m a man, not a deity. My self-confidence crumbled and instead of the pithy one-liners of a God, I was just a man insulting people and making gratuitous remarks about bodily parts.’ I frowned. ‘It was not hubris, Jude. Hubris! And it was far from pretty...’

Judy wiped the kipper grease from her mouth and turned her attention to her eggs, which she scooped up and polished off in a couple of moves. She was clearly choosing her words carefully and I had to wait until she’d had gulped down a lashing of hot coffee before she spoke.

‘Richard, I don’t know why you bother with the internet. Your blog is doing nothing for your career and Twitter is as pointless an interest as you’ve ever had. You need to do something to help promote yourself among the people that matter.’

‘My blog is doing nothing for me?’ I had to laugh. ‘Only through my blog do people see me for what I am: a witty, articulate man who is capable of a myriad of TV and radio assignments. My career is going to go stellar before long, Jude! I came close to landing that job on Countdown and you know how I’m going to apply for a job on Soccer AM at the end of the football season. Helen Chamberlain has a something, Judy. I’m telling you that my chemistry could work with hers.’

Judy scowled. ‘I’m sure it would, Richard,’ she said, squeezing her morning banger between a round of toast. ‘And all I’m saying is that before you start trying to impersonate Stephen Fry on Twitter, you might think about the consequences. Stephen has a loyal fans.’

I hummed myself a indignant hum. ‘Or, as I like to think of them: acolytes, zealots, or old fashioned obsessivers knitting Stephen Fry balaclavas. I was lucky to get away with my trousers and just a few bruises. I don’t know how Stephen can countenance such behaviour.’

‘The problem with Stephen is that he’s too busy swimming with sealions to think about the feelings of one of his oldest friends,’ said Judy.

I couldn’t disagree with her so I slid back under the sheets and closed my eyes. It felt so good to be home, in my own bed, with my wife lying beside me as she slid the bottle of sauce back between my cheeks where it would keep warm as I slept another couple of hours.

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.

Mixed Nuts

That excitable woodland sprite we all know as B. Appleyard was in an uncompromising mood on Tuesday night; his brow savaged by heavy thoughts and greasepaint. Sparks of consciousness have rarely come as bright. Nor have they ever breezed so supremely into the Madeley salon after their stint on the R&J sofa, demanding to stick their fingers in my extra large tub of face cream.

‘I wore cowboy boots so your makeup girl might remember to leave me pale and wan like some mid-Victorian poet on a laudanum bender,’ he declared as he began to scrub his cheeks clear of their pseudo tan. ‘Now look at me! This make-up makes me feel like some heavily bloomered dame in pantomime.’

‘You did exceedingly well on the show,’ I replied, thinking a compliment might pacify the only reason why a sane man takes The Times on a Sunday.

Bryan growled. ‘I did well? I don’t see how. I failed to get my point across.’

‘Nonsense. Judy said that you explained the stone age diet as though you were a real Neanderthal. Or if not Neanderthal, then at least half-Dutch...’

I could see by the look on the old boy’s face that Bryan had missed my crude attempt at a joke.

‘She was that impressed?’

‘More than impressed, Bryan. You could have cudgelled her around the ear and dragged her to your cave to feed her honey and nuts. I doubt if you would have heard a squeak of protest over the sound of her breaking Brazils.’

Bryan growled again. Two growls in so many minutes are not a good sign. I could see that I was faced with a man whose tonsils needed immediate immersion in something topping the scale in percentage points.

‘Scrub up, Bryan,’ I said. ‘I’m off for a quick jar. Fancy coming along? Ricky Gervais says he might pop in a bit later, once he’s finished autographing the make-up girls.’ I didn’t think it good to say that I didn’t for one moment believe that Ricky would make it. I know Gervais and I know the makeup girls. A good combination they certainly do not make.

‘Well, I could do with a tankard of natural mead,’ replied Bryan, finally calming down. ‘This whole experience has taught me the wisdom of controlling your medium. The daytime sofa is clearly not my natural habitat. I need something sturdier for my manly posture.’

He had a point. Some of us are bred for the sofa and there’s a degree of softness about the Madeley being that women find comforting. This, they say to themselves, is a man made to ingratiate himself with a snuggle; a large beanie doll of manhood, fashioned for frolic and with the stuff of fluff and frivolity hanging about his collar. To put it more succinctly: there’s not a hair on my head that hasn’t been slapped with the squeeze from the bottle labelled ‘Gentleness’.

I think it’s important to labour this point before I tell you the remainder of this tale. My weekly jaunt to Manchester has prevented me from telling you the truth of Tuesday night, so if I do emerge from the narrative sounding like a callous man, then that’s merely a problem with the delay; a glitch in the story-telling process that I hope to cure with the above example of my sentimental nature. The same might be said about my intelligence, which might also suffer from its portrayal in the following account.

I was in a state of some nervousness by the time the clock did the splits around the six o’clock mark and a dangerous build-up of genius was threatening to bust asunder the tank surrounding the Appleyard cauliflower. His brain had been working at its usual one hundred and ten percent but Judy had stuck her thumb up his outlet valve. There’s no chance to ask a chap about the lyricism of Marilynne Robinson’s prose when Judy is busy asking him to name his top three beans. By the time he cornered me in my dressing room, the poor fellow was a veritable top on a stick, a whirling powder keg of mixed metaphors and twisted similes. I’d had half a mind to stick him in a taxi with an instruction to the driver to spare no horses and deliver him back to Chez Appleyard so he might explode before his keyboard in a literary puff of a hundred thousand words.

Only, guilt is a snorting donkey of a ride. No sooner had I thought to pack him off than my conscience gave me a kick as if to remind me that I was to blame for his condition. I couldn’t leave him and inviting him for a sneeze in the local wine bar seemed the right thing to do. It’s how I ended up escorting this dangerous load though central London and getting him sandbagged behind my favourite snug.

‘Well, here we are at last,’ I said as I placed the first round of the evening down on the table.

Bryan has ‘journalist’ stitched into his underwear. He downed his first glass of mead before the long hand on my watch had hopped across to the adjacent minute. Bryan wiped his mouth and looked imploring towards me as though I might provide another. After another trip to the bar, I finally sat myself down and began the slow process of deprogramming the brain that had been so woefully underused over the previous two hours.

Twenty minutes later, Bryan was beginning to explain the similarities between nuclear fusion and herringbone tweed when the snug’s door opened and a familiar beard came into view. It was Bill Oddie, dressed in green, and looking like one of Robin Hood’s men; merry, to be sure, but a touch wheezy when it comes to shinning up an oak. He’s more like the loafer they’d leave in the clearing stirring some pot of medieval broth lest Marion bust a nail stirring the brewing hoof of some deer. I was pleased to see him, though less enamoured with the cardboard box under his arm.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said, sitting down next to Bryan. ‘I’m on my way to see a vet and thought I’d drop in for a quick gargle.’

‘That’s not a cat in there, is it?’ asked Bryan, looking anxiously at the box which Bill had parked between the two of them.

‘No, not a cat,’ said Bill. ‘It’s a squirrel. Found the poor little fellow in the back garden. Not looking too well so I thought I’d crate him up and get him checked out. Run him through a full squirrel medical on my BUPA.’

‘A squirrel,’ laughed Bryan returning to his pint of nature’s finest. ‘My good friend Nige once told me a rather ribald story about a squirrel, a nun and a large bag of sucking sherbets.’ He then proceeded to tell the aforementioned ribald story but, though I smiled, I could see that Bill was not impressed.

Pushing his pint aside, Bill proceeded to tell his own story about a squirrel, a nun and a large bag of sucking sherbets which was touching in its significant parts. Had I know that Bill’s experiences with squirrels and nuns ran to such tragic lengths, I might have stopped Bryan upsetting the fellow with all that cruel talk about sucking sherbets and heavy breathing. However, the damage was done and it was left to me to lighten things up by recalling an anecdote of my own involving a Volvo and Christopher Biggins. I was on safe ground with Volvos, which are built by Swedes to be boring, and the earth beneath my feet was like concrete when it came to Biggins. At the end of my tale, I looked to Bryan, hoping to see a few amused creases about his eyes.

Damn it now, I thought. What have I said?

The poor man was wincing. Not just a little wince. This wince had hair on it and was known to its friends as ‘Barry’. A large tear had gathered at the side of Bryan’s eye and ran the length of his face as he tried to utter something. I heard only a gasp.

‘You’ve not had a bad related incident involving a Volvo, have you Bryan?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t mean to offend, you know? Fancy another pint of fermented honey?’

‘Ahhaaaaa!’ said Bryan who I now realised was in some pretty significant pain. Another tear followed the first down the track of his cheek in gold medal winning time.

I looked at Bill and Bill looked at me. I was about to call for help when Bryan’s paralysis broke and he shot up in his seat, sending the table crashing. It was then that I saw his problem.

‘Squirrel!’ I shouted and pointed at the tail end of a big red rodent hanging out of Bryan’s pocket.

Has ever a Sunday Times journalist suffered at the teeth of a squirrel and a stone age diet? It was immediately obvious what had happened. Bryan had packed his pockets with mixed nuts and their close proximity to the cardboard box had revived the squirrel which had gnawed through the box and dove into Bryan’s pocket with a dreadful intent.

I can only credit Bill for having leapt forward to recover the squirrel and save Bryan’s dietary requirement of a nut in each pocket.

‘It’s alright, no need to panic,’ said Bill as the animal came clear. That’s when the squirrel tried to take a nip out of Bill’s finger and, as any chap might do when nearly bitten by squirrel, he threw it to one side. The squirrel landed on all four of its paws and turned to face us looking, as they say, unwilling to take criticism.

‘Do they always foam at the mouth like that?’ I asked.

‘Rabid squirrel!’ cried Bryan, who despite everything was still the sharpest among us, if you didn’t count the red fellow’s teeth. Indeed, Bryan knows about many things to which I’m an amateur and if he was saying it was a rabid squirrel, I was not a man to argue semantics when there were chairs I might leap onto. Bryan and Bill followed my lead and the three of us were soon balancing on chairs as we watched a feverish squirrel patrol the floor near the snug’s only exit.

It didn’t take me long before I realised that my two companions were waiting for me to do something. Natural leadership, I always say, emerges in a crisis. People look to the strong types when their gizzards are hanging in the fire, or, in this case, over a frothing member of the family sciuridae.

‘I’m not standing for this,’ I said. ‘Three grown men standing on a chair should have enough firepower to defeat a squirrel.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Bill. ‘That’s a wild and dangerous animal.’

‘It’s a squirrel,’ I replied and I slipped off my desert boot. ‘I’ve faced worse.’ And with that, I jumped to the ground and lashed out. The heel of my boot caught the squirrel firmly under the chin. The chin barely flinched as the book flopped back.

‘Damn soft-soled shoes,’ I cried as I retreated to my chair.

‘Stand back,’ said Bryan, who had recovered enough sense and was slipping off one of his cowboy boots.

His aim was true. One moment there was a squirrel hopping cockily around the legs of my chair; the next, there was just a red stain the shape of a Cuban heel.

There was a moment of silence in which hearts eased off the throttle and two men jumped to the ground.

‘You’ve killed my squirrel!’ said Bill, still stood in shock atop his chair.

‘I’ve killed your rabid squirrel,’ corrected Bryan.

Bill teared up and I knew I had to say something to settle him. The last thing I wanted to see was a red stain the shape of the other of Bryan’s Cuban heels on the spot where the nation’s favourite Oddie had once stood.

‘Bryan did what was necessary,’ I told Bill as I lifted him down from the chair. Bryan went off to recover his boot as I began to stroke Bill’s beard. ‘Any sign of the squirrel?’ I shouted.

Bryan waved me over from the corner where his bloodied heel lay.

‘Squirrel meat,’ he said, nodding sadly to the remains of one arrogant rodent in the corner. ‘Such a waste. High in protean, low in carbs, makes splendid sausages.’

I gave him one of my more rueful looks. Renaissance Man looks on Stone Age Man. Two specimens of the human race. Two differing ideas about what sits well on a sandwich.

The Appleyard Interview

‘Well,’ I said to Judy, ‘this is it. The Big Day. After all these years on terrestrial TV, it’s taken me until the last week of the show before I get to invite a real guest to share our sofa.’

She looked at me, her nostrils flaring half an inch above a piece of toast. There was a momentary look of confusion as she bit down and then began to chew but when it came to wiping a crumb from the side of her mouth, she was back to normal and the crumb was dispatched with a flick of her cruel finger.

‘You’re not going to go on about this all morning, are you Richard?’ she asked. ‘The man is flesh and blood, just like you or me or even Bill Oddie...’

‘Yes, but this is not just ordinary flesh and blood,’ I replied, ‘and certainly not as much flesh as there was only a few months ago.’

‘Which is why we’ve asked him on the show,’ said Judy. ‘I just hope you’re not going to spoil things.’

‘Spoil things? I’m finally getting a kindred spirit onto the sofa, a man cut from the same cloth.’

‘And he’s going to be discussing his stone age diet,’ said Judy. This was clearly meant as a warning.

‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said and left it at that.

The truth is that this will be the first blogger we’ve had on the show whose blog I read daily. Bryan Appleyard might think he’s coming on to talk about weight loss but I have other plans. This will be a far ranging exploration of the man’s mind and if Channel 4 don’t immediately sign us up for a new series of ‘The Richard & Bryan Show’, I won’t have done my part for the intellectual development of this country of ours.

I was already sketching out the format of the show which included self defence sessions led by Elberry and Nige’s Magical Owl and Cravat Half Hour. They were ideas which proved that my mind was already firing on all twelve cylinders so I took my bowl of muesli into my office and began to prepare facts and questions that I’d be able to throw into our interview. Would Bryan know, for example, that Wallace Stevens was a trained juggler who wrote some of his best poems while balancing a stool on his chin? Would he know that it’s impossible to electrocute a cat or that 92% of all clowns are diagnosed manic depressive? I have hundreds of facts at my disposal but I really wanted to be prepared for whatever Bryan could throw at me. Channel 4 would struggle to constrain such a battle of intellects and I imagined us bursting through the scenery of the ITN News as our battle continued over on ITV. Katie Derham would flush at the sight of two thin but muscular men in such a titanic struggle.

I think it was thoughts about Katie Derham that made me worked feverishly away until noon when the telephone rang. I expected the call but wasn’t prepared for the tone of the enquiry.

‘Richard, it’s the newly slim-line Bryan,’ said Bryan. ‘I just thought I’d check that you’re not planning on surprising me with any difficult questions this afternoon. A man who has recently lost fourteen pounds in two weeks can’t take the strain of difficult questions.’

‘Difficult questions?’ I scoffed even as I shuffled my pack of fifty seven fiendishly difficult questions and obscure facts. ‘I don’t know what kind of man you think I am, Bryan. I’m looking forward to our interview with the excitement that I normally reserve for Angelina Jolie.’

‘Oh, I don’t have any tattoos,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t believe in them.’

‘Damn,’ I muttered, as my fifty seven difficult questions and obscure facts became fifty six. ‘Well, not to worry, Bryan. Judy just wants to chat about your diet. It will be a piece of cake.’

‘No, no,’ he replied. ‘I don’t touch anything made from grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, or processed oils.’

‘Well, to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t know what a legumes is,’ I said, wondering if I should scribble that question down on a card.

‘It’s an erect or climbing bean or pea,’ replied Bryan.

A lucky escape, I thought. The man has an answer for everything.

‘Well, don’t worry, Bryan,’ I continued as I prepared to hang up the phone. ‘I’m sure it will go swimmingly...’

‘It’s a diet, not one of those moronic exercise routines. I don’t believe in those either,’ he replied. I could see that I would have my work cut out. Yet in all fairness to the man, I could also see that Bryan was getting nervous and I thought it only right to give him a clue that I had prepared the odd difficult question.

‘Relax, Bryan,’ I said. ‘Remember that you’re with friends. I’ll ask you a few questions to put you at ease. Perhaps something tricky about Wallace Stevens, cats or clowns. I’m sure you’ll know the answers.’

Bryan sighed a thin avuncular sigh. ‘That’s very good of you, Richard,’ he said. ‘Just so long as you don’t go trotting out those old clichés about Wallace Stevens juggling, that it’s impossible to electrocute a cat, or that 92% of all clowns are diagnosed manic depressive...’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ I answered as the last of my cards slipped to the floor. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it at all...’

Important News

NEWS FLASH: I've just caught sight of myself in the mirror and I think I'm looking pretty damn good. Make sure you tune in at five and see if you agree.

Must dash. Tonight's guests are already arriving.

On Skipping

When Judy skipped into the kitchen for breakfast today, I knew that the mockery would not stop.

‘I would have thought that you’d have got tired of that by now,’ I said.

Judy’s lips did a fair impression of shocked. ‘Me grow tired of skipping? My dear Richard. So long as it give you great pleasure, I will continue to skip.’ And with that she skipped across the room to the fridge.

I’ve been suffering this teasing since last night’s show. After watching Meryl Streep skip through ‘Dancing Queen’ in the new film version of ‘Mamma Mia!’, I had said one totally innocuous line. I’ll quote it in full just to show you how innocent it was.

‘For a man,’ I said, ‘there is nothing nicer... and I mean pleasanter, for a man to see and admire in a woman or women, is when they skip, no matter how old they are. A skipping woman is a sweet sight.’

And I maintain that skipping is a sweet sight that fills a man with incalculable pleasures.

Now, I know I’m opening myself to scoffing here. There are some who might even say that skipping merely highlights the shifting contours of the female blouse as it goes bouncing around the room. And I agree. A buxom woman skipping wouldn’t be sweet at all if you look at like that. I merely meant to say that the pleasure of the skip reveals the innocent within us all. Happy go lucky, carefree, it is the child within all of us momentarily escaping the burdens of adulthood. Skipping is to be seven years old again when the greatest worry is whether your pet butterfly has died in the night. Skipping is coming home from school, the first day of the summer holidays. Skipping is going to the corner shop with twenty pence in your hand and knowing that you can buy a bar of chocolate and an ice cream with pennies to spare.

All of which I explained to Judy over breakfast.

‘Oh, Richard,’ she said, laying her hand on my arm. ‘I didn’t realise that you were such a sensitive soul.’

‘Well, I am,’ I answered. ‘And I hope this means you’ll end this horrible mockery of what was an innocent remark.’

She smiled and gathered the empty plates together. ‘Of course I won’t,’ she said and skipped off to the sink.

Some people just ruin skipping...

The McGowan Factor

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, means that their wives will be extremely vexed with them come Sunday. I don’t know what it was that gave me a hint that all wasn’t well in the Madeley household this morning. The thought that my blog is a year old tomorrow perhaps made me anxious about my career plans but, otherwise, there wasn’t anything particularly ominous in the creak of the bed springs, my healthy ablutions, nor the suds and foam on my cheeks as I washed and shaved. Conversations began and ended as naturally as they should, yet there was still something in the air that was more than the smell of Mrs. Corbett spreading muck around her roses...

‘Having a good morning?’ asked Judy as I appeared at breakfast.

‘Indeed I am,’ I said. ‘My ablutions were quality from beginning to end. Happiness, they name is Fruit & Fiber twice a day.’

‘And the toilet flushed first time?’

‘How can you tell?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You seem perky.’

‘You’re a remarkable woman, Ms. Finnigan,’ I said. ‘One day I’ll marry you under the eyes of the Christian God and make you a Madeley.’

Judy smiled thinly and watched me as I began to cobble together my breakfast. Despite my outward appearance, I was feeling uneasy about something and I could tell that my wife wasn’t the normal vivacious Judy who is usually up at seven on a Sunday when there’s concrete to be mixed. Naturally, I was suspicious that she was still angry about the third mistake that out caption editor, Dennis Plumb, had made on Friday when he had misidentified another of our guests.

It was when I was finally prepared to depart for my snug around ten o’clock, Rivita and coffee in my hands, that Judy spoke and the whole twisted mess began to unravel.

‘Richard,’ she began, ‘have you read yesterday’s paper?’

‘No, Judy, I haven’t,’ I sighed, knowing what was coming next. ‘I’ve been rather busy.’

‘Busy?’ She began to finger her necklace nervously and I knew I was in for trouble.

‘We had the newsagents change papers twice because you said you didn’t enjoy reading “The Independent” or “The Telegraph”. Yet I haven’t seen you pick up “The Guardian” once this week. I don’t see why we’re paying nearly twenty pounds a month on papers you’re not even reading!’

I took a step back. Two steps back if the truth be told.

‘What is it, Jude?’ I asked. ‘You’re not really angry about the paper, are you? I’ve been thinking all morning that you seem to be in a mood about something.’

Asking my wife about her mood was my second mistake, equivalent to allowing the Germans to rearm.

‘Well, no, Richard. I’m not alright. If you want me to be perfectly honest, I’m disappointed that you’ve not sacked Dennis. And didn’t I warn you about what would happen if he was still in his job on Monday? I’ve gone on and on about this, Richard, and I’ve told you until I’m blue in the face and yet you still won’t listen to me despite every...’

She went on for some time. When Judy begins to list all the things wrong with me, she can sometimes talk for forty five or even sixty seconds, but this morning it was something special. She also began to list all the faults of my friends and that took the speech well into lunch.

‘... and I’ll say this one last time, Richard: if I ever catch Stephen Fry smoking his pipe next to my washing line, I’ll drag that cape over his head and beat him until he stops moving. I found scorch marks in my...’

I tried to close my ears to most of it.

‘... and if Nige thinks that he can come and leave his owl with us while he goes off to France every couple of months...’

Like I said, it went on for some time.

Eventually, there came a point when I noticed that it had ended. I looked up from the newspaper I’d managed to read from front to back and wondered if Judy would allow me to change it for ‘The Times’ on a Sunday.

‘Finished?’ I asked.

‘You have to sack Dennis,’ spluttered Judy.

Before she could start again, I waved my hand. ‘If this is about Friday,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to bother. I know all about McGowan.’

‘You do?’

I had to smile. Despite everything, Judy does her best to look out for me. She has a knack of berating me when all she’s trying to do is to save me from some of the harsher things that life throws my way. She had been trying to hide Dennis’ latest excess from me but I had learned about it yesterday afternoon.

‘I had Alistair on the phone,’ I explained. ‘He was gloating, as you can imagine, and he asked me if he’s allowed to quote it on his next DVD.’

‘He would,’ replied Judy. ‘Everybody wants us to endorse them but it doesn’t make it right. You’re much funnier than Alistair.’

‘You don’t need to tell me,’ I said. ‘I always said that Ronni Ancona carried those shows.’

‘Yes, well... You have one of those things for Roni Ancona.’

‘Things?’ I laughed though I knew that I shouldn’t.

‘It’s in your eyes, Richard... You begin to blink a lot whenever she comes on.’ I wanted to protest but Judy just shrugged. ‘Anyway, what matters is Alistair. He’s probably jealous because your Ali G impression is so much better than his.’

Music to my ears. ‘You’re telling me things I know already, Jude,’ I said.

‘Then sack Dennis and we can put this behind us.’

‘We can’t sack him. He’s a one armed man. We’d have an even number of limbs on the staff and that’s technically illegal under European rules.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘You’ll see,’ I said and gave Judy a wink. She smiled back and I stood up, planted a kiss of her brow, and then headed to my office where I was overcome with emotion.

The last time I felt like this was as a child when I was forced to give the family cat away. There must be somebody out there who has a use for a slightly unstable one-armed man with a Peter Manley fetish. He’s good with children and buries his mess in the garden. What more could you ask for?

Anybody?

John Cleese and Colin the Lemur

As much as I feel humbled (and not a little belittled) by the two days I’m about to spend up in Manchester, there are other times when I realise how unique it is to be me. Last night’s show, for instance, was an absolute screamer. One for the archives. It was the sort of show that Judy tapes to VHS, wraps in ribbons, and then stuffs at the back of her sock drawer. By the time we’d finished recording, I felt about ten years younger and a fluid ounce lighter. An hour spent in the company of John Cleese is like a year with any other man. He’s a riot and an absolute hero of mine. He also had me laughing so hard that I don’t mind admitting that I wet myself. And I don’t mean just a little bit wet. I mean wet enough for two grown men.

‘Is that it?’ asked John as the camera’s red light dimmed and we went off air.

‘That’s it,’ I said, wiping away the few remaining tears from my ankles. ‘Listen, that was one of the best interviews we’ve ever done. It’s not often that we do these shows live but you were an absolute pro.’

‘So what do I do now?’

‘Now you go home, John,’ I said.

‘Must I? Can’t I come home with you and Judy? I can make a fantastic omelette.’

‘You want to come home with us?’

‘Couldn’t I? I’d be no trouble. And what’s more, I’ll be just as funny as I was on air. But if you let me out of here now, I’ll be totally irresponsible. I guarantee I’ll be married again before midnight unless you save me from myself.’

I looked at Judy and Judy looked at me. Invisible signs were passed between us that only bats would have picked up.

‘Oh, okay,’ I said, ‘come home with us, John. But before we go, we just have to check the tape.’

For every show that we do live, we always go to the side of the stage where all the monitors are located and have a quick look to see how the show appeared to our viewers. Last night, with John in tow, everything was looking fine until the first ad break. That's when Judy noticed the mistake.

On the show’s credits some goon had written ‘Wednessday 16th July’. It was just the sort of mistake that Judy finds unforgivable. She just went berserk. She began cursing and screaming and lashing out. She tore a monitor from the stand and sent it crashing into a cameraman. John was rigid with shock while I could only strip off my jacket and try to calm down my wife, who I knew wouldn’t rest until the guilty person was found and punished.

‘Come on, love,’ I said. ‘Nobody will have noticed. It’s been proved that 92% of the British public can’t even spell “Wednesday”.’

It was slightly deceitful of me, I know, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I’ve been employing my old PA Dennis to work on the show’s graphics. The man has suffered enough and I feared for his remaining arm should Judy have discovered that he was to blame for the typo.

‘That’s not the point if most people are too dim to spot it,’ screamed Judy. ‘It made us look like rank bloody amateurs. It is most unprofe...’

At which point she tripped over John’s abnormally large feet.

For the first two steps, she looked like she would recover but on the third she completely lost balance and went stumbling into Rob the Zookeeper who, as you probably know, had been on the show to help John demonstrate how a lemur eats grapes and generally do his little bit to Help Save the Lemur.

I needn’t tell you that it’s generally not a good idea to go stumbling into a zoo keeper, especially when the zoo keeper is trying to coax a male lemur into its cage. Judy hit him around the ribs and Rob fell forward. What followed was a matter of angles. The way he’d been holding the animal and the direction he was falling... It’s probably easier and more polite to say that he goosed the lemur. Unfortunately, the lemur happened to be called Colin and like 82% of males called Colin, he didn’t like where the zoo keeper put his thumb. This made the lemur quite mad but he didn’t turn on Rob but turned on Judy.

Judy tried to bat Colin away but the lemur had his tail around her throat before she could deploy her highly trained fists to fend it away. John, in the meantime, being much closer, leapt straight into the fight and tried to pull the lemur off Judy’s face. Having claimed live on air that they are a very docile creature, he was clearly not prepared for the snarling teeth of a prosimian who have been violated by a zoo keeper's thumb.

‘Bloody things are supposed to be docile,’ shouted John as he examined his finger.

I had no thought for John’s finger or the zoo keeper’s thumb. Judy was turning a deeper shade of purple as the lemur tightened its grip on her throat.

‘Docile?’ I cried. ‘I’ll show you docile!’ And with that I cracked Colin across the snout with a copy of my forthcoming book, ‘Fathers and Sons’, which I just happened to have on my person and will be available at all good bookshops in the Autumn.

‘Gosh,’ said John. ‘I haven’t seen a man kill a lemur with a three hundred page hardback in years. You see. That’s why I miss the UK. You don’t get this in Santa Barbara. What else can you kill? Can we get a squirrel in here? I’ve always wanted to stun a squirrel. I could use my shoe if you’re all out of books.’

I let John witter way. With Judy now able to breathe, the four of us stood over the body of Colin.

‘I think you’ve killed him,’ said Rob the zoo keeper.

‘No,’ said John. ‘I think it’s still breathing.’ He moved to slip off his loafer. ‘Do you want me to finish him, Dick? Want me to give him the coup de grace?’

I was in no mood for John's sarcasm. I could see that the animal was indeed taking small gasps.

‘Perhaps mouth to mouth,’ suggested Judy whose had recovered enough composure to be back to her caring self.

Rob didn’t hesitate. He knelt down and began to administer artificial respiration, which, I can assure you, isn’t easy with an animal with a narrow snout.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said after a couple of attempts. ‘My mouth is still dry from the studio lights. I’m not getting an airtight seal.’

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘why don’t you let me have a go? I’ve probably got the healthiest lungs here and I’ve got more than enough saliva.’

‘Yes,’ said John. ‘Let Dick have a go. After all, he’s the one that nearly killed Colin.’

John may be a comic genius but he can be so distracting in situations involving lemurs battling for their lives. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to giving the kiss of life to a lemur. Rather filthy looking animals, if I’m to be honest. I closed my eyes and steeled myself as I took a couple of deep breaths before I grabbed Colin and quickly gave him as much air as I could manage in one go.

This, I suppose, was the moment when it all became too much for Judy. She gave a scream and then fainted.

‘Looks like you’re blowing into the wrong end, old boy,’ said John in that rather know-it-all way he has. ‘I’d say that if Colin does ever recover from the mortal touch of your forthcoming bestseller, then he’s going to be an extremely flatulent lemur for the next few days. What on earth possessed you to blow there?’

Naturally, I had no answer except to say that I didn’t know one end of a lemur from the other. I don’t suppose many men do. There certainly aren’t many TV talk show hosts who can claim to have give artificial respiration to the wrong end of a half-dead primate in the company of one of the nation’s most well respected funny men.

But then again: that was just the thing about yesterday. It was just so unique being me.