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.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Read My Peas

It has always been my wife’s biggest fear that success of any kind would go to my head. This explains the look of disgust that Judy gave me as she closed the newspaper and looked up at all the mashed potato balanced above my immaculate and crease-free brow.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit much?’ she asked.

I moved myself a slightly more casual angle, hoping to soften the effect of the potato which I’d sculpted into the shape of a hat with the words ‘top blogger’ inscribed in peas. Only Judy wasn’t quite seeing the point of my new mash sombrero.

‘You have an ego bigger than Herefordshire,’ she said, heading over to the fridge where she recovered a bottle of plonk. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been satisfied with being one of the sexiest men on TV, a veritable living god among presenters, without taking this kind of praise to heart.’

‘Ah,’ I said, wiping aside some errant punctuation that had slid to my eyebrow, ‘this is success independent of my work with you, Jude. I might have become a publishing sensation with my book, “Fathers & Sons”, but that’s now so heavily discounted that they’re giving them away with every bottle of Ambre Solaire. But this is my blog. This is my life’s work! This is my attempt to prove to the world that Richard Algernon Madeley is a cut above the normal TV fare. This is a demonstration that my talent is more than skin deep and that those of us lucky enough to call ourselves “celebrity” are really something quite special.’

Judy wiped the neck of the bottle before she sank a mouthful.

‘So you’re still plan to go ahead with your little exhibition?’ she asked but the look had softened in her eyes. I knew it was the closest she would come to giving me her blessing.

It was enough for me. I stood up and grabbed the walking cane that Stephen Fry had presented to me on my thirty seventh birthday last year and I walked to the door where I gave my evening suit a final brush down, my tails a flick, before I headed out.

‘Have fun!’ said Judy, mildly scolding but proud, nevertheless.

For a Monday morning, the road in this undisclosed part of North London was surprisingly busy. I’d forgotten that it’s the school holidays so, when I began to walk up the street, a line of children were soon trailing behind me. Some were only there to pick up the odd pea. Others clearly had high hopes of getting a taste of some Smash. But a few cheered me along, applauding me as I strolled with my head held high.

‘Ah!’ said Michael Palin as I found him unloading exotic foodstuffs from his car. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it Dick?’

I pointed to my hat, careful not to tip it.

‘The Sunday Times? Jolly well done!’

I smiled as I passed along.

I had almost walked past Jeremy Paxman’s house before I noticed him. He was up a ladder and cleaning out his gutters.

‘See my show last night?’ he cried. ‘I explored Victorian sewers.’

I couldn’t look up. ‘Very good,’ I replied and then pointed to my hat.

Jeremy’s getting on a bit and his eyesight isn’t what it was. ‘Oh,’ he snarled. ‘Top dogger! Well I suppose congratulations are in order.’

I hadn’t time to waste explaining. My mash was beginning to run and I had only a few minutes to achieve my intended goal.

At the Dickinson residence, I could tell that people were home by the glow of a slightly irradiated light coming from the upper bedroom window.

‘Oy! Dickinson!’ I cried.

There was a movement of curtains and then the naked torso of TV’s top antique appeared, black goggles sitting in the recessed pits of his eyes.

‘Get a load of this, Duck,’ I cried.

‘Pah! Bloody hell, Madeley,’ replied David ‘The Duck’ Dickinson. ‘You’ve got nothing better do with your bloody time?’

I pointed to the peas.

Even in his tanning goggles, David’s eyesight is still as sharp as it was when he was a seventy year old. He nodded. ‘That bloody sums you up, Madeley,’ he said. ‘A “loo logger”.’ And with that, he shut the window.

I was crestfallen. I gazed at my reflection in the windscreen of Dickinson’s bright orange Bentley and I could see that I was far too late. Peas had slipped and the effect of my mash coronet was ruined. ‘Top blogger’ had become ‘loo logger’ and was already on its way to ‘lo goer’. Judy was right. Pride does come before a fall. Humiliation is but a slipped pea away.

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.

Anna Ford’s Mole

After a week of sitting in a cramped radio studio until one o’clock in the morning, it was a relief to be back on the spacious Madeley estate last night, helping Judy roll her new kegs down into the cellar. Since she’s taken up amateur brewing, my wife has spent a sizable part of our fortune buying the right equipment to open her own brewery. Barely a day doesn’t pass when the right side the R&J ampersand isn’t on the phone to either James May or Oz Clark, asking how to prepare her mash tun or when to add the yeast. When she came back from town last night, her four miniature shire horses pulling a cart loaded with large wooden barrels, it all felt a little too surreal for me. Yet I am, above all things, a loyal husband. After twenty minutes hard work, I rolled the last of the kegs down into the cellar and then stood back to wipe the moisture from the creaseless brow beloved by so many.

‘Not bad for a man of thirty eight,’ I said.

‘Fffft,’ said Judy as she began to unwrap the accessories that went with the barrels.

‘Okay... Thirty eight and some months,’ I said as I parked a tired cheek on the retired sofa we brought with us from ITV. It was a familiar feeling beneath me and I set to brushing away the dust from the sheet covering the indentation where Denise Richardson used to sit. As I rubbed my hand over that strange old crest and twin valleys, the exact shape and contour of Denise’s buttocks, I felt something strange beneath my fingertips. It was a shape I didn’t remember as being part of Denise’s lower slope.

‘Hello,’ I said, slipping my hand under the sheet as a man might slip his hand up a dress. ‘What’s this?’

Judy groaned as my hand emerged holding a dusty bottle.

‘Well I never,’ I said, immensely cheered by the discovery. ‘So this is where you hid them!’

‘Do you blame me?’ asked Judy, fingering her spigot.

‘I don’t blame you at all,’ I said, retrieving another two bottles. ‘In fact, I’m delighted. I’m sure they’ll have improved with age.’

We were talking, of course, about wine. But this was no ordinary wine. It wasn’t French and it didn’t come with elegantly designed label and hefty price tag. Yet this was the very rarest of drinks; none other than Bill Oddie’s fabled buttercup wine.

In the days when Bill was still an amateur bird watcher, not yet sure that he’d make a career out of his twitching, he had alternative paths that he had explored in fits of his usual high-pitched enthusiasm. He could have become the nation’s top astronomer if only he hadn’t lacked the necessary height to reach the eyepiece of the telescope I helped him erect in the attic of his hobbit hole. His involvement in the world of midget show ponies was the reason that Judy took up the reins (excuse the pun) and how she, herself, became one of the nation’s experts in horses under four feet tall. Eventually, Bill chose ornithology but, for a while, my bet had been that Bill would make his living from wine.

Bill Oddie’s Buttercup Wine is one of the great vintages of those post-Goodie years and it is still talked about in hushed voices among societies of London’s more knowledgeable tipplers. ‘Vin de Oddie’ is surprisingly light on the tongue, with a warm syrupy feeling that glides down your throat before returning with burst of citrusy aftertaste. It then slides down again, retreating with a woody flavour reminiscent of beards, before it comes back, rushing at you with a claw hammer and starts to beat your around your wrists and your ankles. I once drank a bottle of Bill’s wine and lost all feeling in my legs for three days. I remember one disastrous Monday when we had to film ‘This Morning’ with assistants carrying me between points in the studio to cover up the fact that I was still paralytic below the waist. It was after that episode that Judy took all my wine and hid it away. And this was why I was so happy to been reunited with my collection after all these years.

I carried the bottles up to the kitchen where I immediately introduced one to the corkscrew and then poured myself a healthy glass.

‘Are you sure it’s okay to drink that, Richard? It looked awfully yellow.’

‘As if kissed by a sunset,’ I said, in my best winespeak. I ran the cork under my nose to test the aroma. I gasped. ‘Ooh, Bachelor’s Super Noodles!’

‘Pardon?’

I picked myself up from the floor and straightened my fringe. ‘Wow! This stuff has really matured. It’s a real MILF among wines.’

‘A MILF?’ asked Judy.

‘It’s a wine term, Jude. You wouldn’t understand.’

The glass was surprisingly heavy as I picked it up, the wine more like olive oil the way it clung to the sides.

‘Oh, Richard, please. Not all at once.’

Even I wasn’t that foolish. I rolled the wine around the glass, ensuring that its aroma would build in the bowl and make it both a taste and smell sensation. Then I gave it a measured sip before I swished the wine around my mouth, over my tongue, between my teeth, and ending with a quick gargle. I am, as you can obviously tell, a man who takes his wine seriously and in a professional manner. Only then did I swallow it.

‘Well?’ asked Judy, standing to one side and armed with the fire extinguisher.

‘Well?’ asked Judy, standing to one side and waving a burning cat around the room.

‘Well?’ asked the devil waving a fiery pitchfork in his hand.

‘Well?’ asked the devil, who fell away beneath me as I rose into the sky.

‘You’re a yeasty fellow,’ said Stephen Fry, floating before me, his green cape flapping behind him like the wings of the angel we all know that he really is. ‘Did you ever discover the secret of Anna Ford’s mole?’

‘I didn’t,’ I said, looking down. I was floating beside him, hundreds of feet in the air. Talk of Anna Ford’s mole made me suddenly maudlin and aware of the passage of time. ‘Am I imagining this?’

‘Yippee!’ said Bill Oddie who flew past me wearing the national dress of the bumble bee.

‘This is all your fault,’ I shouted after him.

‘Oh, shush now,’ said Stephen. ‘Can’t you see that Bill’s happy?’

‘I can’t feel my legs,’ I realised. I looked down and I was surprised by what I saw.

‘You’re probably wondering about the size of your ankles,’ said Stephen. ‘That’s because they aren’t your ankles.’

‘Not mine?’

‘Ah, indeed they are not. Those are the lovely ankles of Ms. Denise Robertson. You have her legs too and, I should imagine, her buttocks, though I have not ventured that far in order to test my theory. But rest assured, Richard, that I am confident that the rest is all you.’

‘I want Judy,’ I moaned.

‘Ah, here comes Bill,’ said Stephen. ‘Let’s see what he says about that.’

‘Wheeeee!’ said Bill Oddie, a streak of black and yellow beard, wings struggling to sustain a heavy paunch.

‘Richard wants to go home to Judy,’ explained Stephen.

‘I bet he does,’ said the Bumble Bee Bill Oddie. ‘But he still doesn’t understand the secret of Anna Ford’s mole? Should we tell him?’

‘I loved Anna Ford’s mole,’ I sobbed.

‘Richard?’

I felt a slap across my face. Stephen seemed surprised and then shook his head slowly.

‘Anna?’ I begged. ‘Tell me the secret.’

Another slap and I opened my eyes and found I was lying on the kitchen floor, my head resting on Judy’s lap.

‘That was wonderful,’ I said. ‘Stephen was an angel.’

She slapped me around the jaw, her knuckles rattling a couple of my teeth.

‘That’s for what you said about Anna Ford,’ she scolded. ‘And I’m hiding those bottles again. I should really pour them down the drain but I wouldn’t know what they’d do to the water supply. You always get like this when you drink, Richard. All I hear is you muttering about Anna bloody Ford.’

‘That was Stephen’s fault,’ I explained. ‘He mentioned her name. Bill was there too. He was a bee and you were...’

‘Yes?’

‘You were another angel,’ I lied.

She stood up and let my head slip and crack against the floor tiles. ‘Richard,’ she said, ‘if I live to be fifty, I’ll never understand you.’

I suppose she was right. I stood up, smiling as I was surprised to find that my legs were my own and that they still had feeling. My bliss was only compromised as I watched a certain devil take the remaining bottles of buttercup wine out into the garden. The night was soon filled with the sounds of digging somewhere over near the ornamental statue of Ainsley Harriot. Judy knows, I suppose, that it’s the one part of the garden I try to avoid. However, now I have a reason to travel that far and even the sight of Ainseley’s meat shank and a side order of sprouts won’t be enough to keep me away. Not now. Not while there remained three bottles of Bill Oddie’s buttercup wine hidden beneath the turf. Not when I’ve come so close to solving the mystery of Anna Ford’s mole.

Sucking Popsicles On Llanelli Hill With Stephen Fry

‘Heavens! Zounds! Bless my heart, though ’tis a thing of beauty and verily blessed within tw’pence of its life.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s you.’

‘Indeed, indeed! ’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, calling you about your latest Twitterage.’

‘What about it?’ I asked, momentarily distracted as I packed my combination nostril tweezers / electronic pliers into a bag for my late shift at the BBC. ‘I’m in something of a rush, Stephen. You probably don’t know this but I have my own show going out on 5Live tonight.’

‘Indeed I do know,’ replied Fry. ‘I know all about it as I also listened to last night’s excellent discussion about America via an quaint little application I downloaded for my iPhone called...’

‘And your point?’ I snapped, knowing that I had to be firm. I really hadn’t time for a technology review and sometimes you just have to be strong for Stephen’s sake. He’s likely give you a Dork Talk column for nothing when the Guardian should really be paying him a small fortune.

‘Ah,’ sang Stephen, his voice booming. ‘My point is that I hope that you’re feeling better?’

‘Better?’

‘From your recent gastric upset. I read your last Twitter post. I believe you had a problem brought on by sucking an iced popsicle on Llanelli hill.’

‘Oh, that!’ I laughed. ‘Never been to Llanelli in my life. As to there being a hill suitable for iced popsicle sucking, I wouldn’t know. Probably isn’t. Wouldn’t want to be quoted about that. Not the sort of thing I’d like to see in the papers. I can see the headlines now: “Madeley likes to suck iced popsicles on Llanelli Hill”.’

‘Quite, quite,’ mused The Great Fry, no doubt his green cape flapping, ‘but why did you send me a message implying that you were unwell?’

‘Because it was my entry into your Twitter competition,’ I replied. ‘You know how I enjoy word games. It made my afternoon coming up with that little gem.’

There was a gasp on the phone and I suspected that one of Stephen’s iPhone apps had updated as I’d been speaking. I was wrong. It was just the sharp intake of breath that one genius makes when he recognises another of his kind.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘But it was so eloquent. Far be it for me to question your skills, Dick, but I asked people to post a message in 140 characters that contain fifty letter “l”s. I wouldn’t expect something so poetic. You would have to indeed be a master of the English language to achieve such a feat.’

‘And achieve it I did, Stephen,’ I said and then allowed a long silence of my own to make my point.

The fact is that I was quite proud of my little composition in 140 characters. It was poetry of the Twitter and, I’m reliably told, one of the first classics of the 140 character form.

Lolly+Llanelli hill=fell ill. Silly! Roll, loll, anally full. Belly=bellows=flatus hell! Mill all local pills & swill llama milk. All well. LOL!

‘Well, well,’ said Stephen. ‘This does give me a little problem! Heavens! The word “shudder” was made for such moments and I would use it here except my doctor has ordered me off them for a week. Oh, heavens! Blast, indeed, and... Oh, shudder!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You must see, Dicky, that I can’t be seen choosing my friends, even if their entries (excuse that phrase for I speak not of your bottom) are so much more polished and pleasing than the rest.’

‘Indeed you can’t, Stephen,’ I replied. ‘And I expect nothing less than fair play. What’s the prize, by the way?’

‘Ah, Dick, you know I can’t say.’

‘Oh,’ I groaned. ‘Not another DVD of “Kingdom”! You know how Judy won’t take the last one out of the machine. You know she’s started to wear a cape of her own. You’re a bad influence, Stephen.’

Stephen hummed and ermed a little and then his voice rose an octave into that magical realm of voice where it normally dwells. ‘Dick, let us see what tomorrow brings. Should you win, I can promise you a gift that will make your days brighter, your life more pleasant, and make you the talk of the town.‘

I hung up the phone. I had to prepare for a radio show, even if it seemed that somewhere out there, there’s a cape with my name on it.

In Conversation With: Katy Evans-Bush, Poet

One of the biggest regrets in my life is that my blog has not yet become a regular port of call for the nation's intelligentsia. Due to some mix up in the way that Yahoo! and Google categorise blogs, my Appreciation Society is rarely quoted in The Guardian's literary pages and it has yet to get a mention on any programme hosted by Mariella Frostrup. Yet as many of you know, I have tried to model my blog on the website that I consider to be the nes plus ultra of 'the casual highbrow'. Clive James might have stopped replying to my emails but I still maintain that he provides a service like no other, embodying articulate argument with a dose of salty wit. Where he goes, I will follow. (Except, of course, where mandated by that damned restraining order of his.) And until I launch my own video podcasts ('Madeley Meditates With...' is the plan), I will continue to post diary extracts and occasional opinion pieces.

Today, however, I take my first step towards my destiny with Sky Arts HD with an interview with a real, living, breathing poet.

Katy Evan-Bush is probably best known to regular readers as Ms. Baroque of the famous 'Baroque in Hackney' blog. On Saturday, I caught the 87 bus into the north east of London to sit down with her to discuss her new collection of verse. In a way, going to Hackney was like taking a trip into the depths of my own psyche. It was not pretty as I got to grips with my own fascination with the poetic form and I should warn you that the following interview is taken verbatim from the tape. I'm sure you'll find it as informative as it is a frank and somewhat provocative analysis of modern poetry. I want to thank Katy for taking the time from her busy schedule and for indulging me and my many questions. I'd also like to thank her picking up the tab for the large deluxe mocha with cream and two flakes which I enjoyed enormously to the detriment of my favourite pearl silk shirt.

----------------------

RM: First of all, Katy, it's so good of you to take the time to talk to me for my Appreciation Society. I've promoted some right old tat in my time, so it's a welcome break to be discussing something classy for a change.

You've written a delightful collection of verse called 'Me and the Dead', which both Judy and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading with our cocoa at night. It's really helped us relax and Judy has managed to catch some quality shuteye over the last two weeks. I've not heard her snore so loudly since she had her last major sinus infection. However, I wanted to begin by asking you to what exactly is poetry and why should anybody go the trouble of finding the poetry section in their local bookshop when they could be buying 'Fathers and Sons', which is itself extremely reasonably priced, if not already heavily discounted in most stores?

KEB: 'Fathers and Sons', by Turgenev, it's discounted in most stores?? This is wonderful news! Well, the obvious reason to look for the poetry section in that case, Dick, is so they can read 'Eugene Onegin', by Pushkin. Or any other book of poetry really. Poetry is much more interesting than 99.9% of prose. Maybe worth remembering if you ever start a book club. It's about more than sales figures you know. (Though there is still time to buy 'Me and the Dead' on Amazon for Christmas!)

RM: It's interesting that you should say that. In 1814, Byron's poem, 'The Corsair', sold 10,000 copies on the first day. By 1859, Tennyson was shifting 10,000 copies a month of the first of his 'Idylls of the Kings' poems. This year, 'Fathers and Sons' is selling stronger than everything ever written by both Byron and Tennyson. Do you think that chat show hosts have become the poets of the age?

KEB: Ah, Dick, you're really feeling it, aren't you! I suggest you sign up for a local workshop and unleash your creativity. Anyway, I know from all the IQ tests they gave us at school that your question relies for its power on a pattern developing - the downward trend in poetry sales - and that this pattern would be impossible to sustain indefinitely, because you can't have negative sales. I think poetry will be fine even without the chat shows. Though if any chat show hosts are reading this...

RM: One or two, Katy. One or two...

It's hard to think of an upside to death, which makes 'Me and the Dead' such a brave title. Did you ever consider something that was a little less depressing? Judy suggested 'Me and the Chronically Unwell', which, as she puts it, at least holds out the possibility of recovery.

KEB: I may consider that for the next book. The third one is already titled, in fact, and it fits perfectly, as the plan is for it to be called 'Me and the Really Much Better'. Many people have failed to be depressed by my title, in any case - they seemed to think it was about Jerry Garcia.

RM: Both Judy and I loved the first poem in the collection. I think I speak for both of us when I say that it gave us a great sense of community, reaffirming the importance of friendship in our lives. What led you to write that beautiful lyric titled 'Acknowledgements'?

KEB: Dick, I think you and I understand each other. Without the silent bow of the head to those who have helped us on the journeys that are each of our lives, what are we? Where would we be? How could you hope to have a journey at all without the warming hearths, the staging posts that make up the epochs of our lives? You have understood my work here in a deep way.

RM: One of your poems is called 'A Later Letter on Art', which begins: 'and some of artists I met were so technique I could not / stomach them'. A beautiful line but one that raises an interesting question. Is poetry an art of the stomach or the brain? Is it about rationality or appetite? And, if the stomach, would that be the upper or lower intestine?

KEB: You've been talking to Stephen Fry again. Upper.

I do think you're onto something there though, because poetry is of course about the stomach. The brain comes into it too, I know, but the stomach is where our raw food is transformed into that heat which fuels us and becomes energy. It becomes something wonderful - life itself. In poetry, the raw material of experience is put through a similarly transformative process to become something that fuels us in our lives.

I think this can even be more true of poetry than of prose, because in poetry, both writer and reader are freed from fiction's mundane 'what happened next' straitjacket. In a poem you can be true or make things up, you can simply make an observation and leave. You don't have to stick around for 200 pages trying to decide what colour a character's front door would be.

RM: I might be misreading your collection as a whole based on the second poem, 'The Only Reader', but you seem to be very interested in geese. Do you think that geese can tell us something profound about our lives?

KEB: Well, they know when to go south. They know how to make a formation and stay in it - an example of group dynamics that someone should try and explain to my kids. They're iconic, too, the Canada geese as they fly overhead - they seem make the air move with them, it really feels like something's happening. You want that kind of thing in your life. They don't mess about, do they.

In my poem, of course, the goose turns out to be the harbinger of the poem itself, almost the soul of the writer, or the reader. It's a poem about renunciation, really.

In fact, the poem started out much more humbly. This is an example of how things can change in progress. I started it one day in a bad mood over one rejection slip too many - I think the total at that point had reached 5,746 - and the original working title for the piece was the much more snarky 'Letter to the Editor'. I changed it after I saw what I'd written, it just didn't seem right anymore. And I realised that, although I still felt annoyed, I had written something that was true to how I really felt and that went deeper than my annoyance.

RM: You write about quite a few animals. Just off the top of my head, I remember you mentioning a moose, a mouse, a giraffe, rabbits, sardines, doves, a bear, a cow, a wolf, a bull, a kangaroo, a duck, a pig, pigeons, buffalo, lots of deer, sheep, some dinosaur, three otters, and, of course, the geese which we've already talked about. Judy also thought she spotted a beaver in there as well but I think she was just misreading one of your metaphors. My question to you is this: John Clare famously wrote a poem called 'The Badger'. Have you ever thought of writing a poem about a badger?

KEB: Have you seen what happens to that badger of Clare's? I might try it. I might make something nice happen to a badger. I'm a big admirer of Clare. He's famous for writing 'nature poetry', but his poetry is actually quite political - he wrote about the enclosures, for instance - and the badger poem is about the stupidity of the villagers who hunt the badger down, chase it through the streets and pretty much torture it to death. Animals look pretty good compared to those humans.

RM: Katy, I hope you don't mind my asking but how tall are you?

KEB: Taller than John Clare, and much taller than a badger.

RM: I only asked that because John Keats was a small man and so was Alexander Pope. Do you think that small people make the best poets? And might it have something to do with their having a different perspective to the rest of us? Do you know that Pam Ayres is only four foot three but rhymes like a monster?

KEB: Yes but I bet she can't think of a rhyme for monster (DM: 'hamster', 'roadster', 'York Minster'?). I think small people find it hard to see at concerts and plays, or even in a crowded tube train, so they have to find something else to think about. Maybe that's it. I was always tall for my age until I was about 11, and I suddenly stopped growing.

My other hero, the essayist Charles Lamb, was also very diminutive. But I think people were smaller then. They weren't taking vitamins and eating meat every day, were they.

RM: Would you agree with my theory that technically speaking, Shakespeare might have been a midget, and do you think that this possibly accounts for his high forehead which we see in the Droeshout portrait in the first folio?

KEB: Dick, you're going to have to think of a new theory. I know someone who's working on the theory that Shakespeare was Marlowe's sister.

I think it's fair to say he's no taller than average, though. He just doesn't look tall, does he. How tall are you?

RM: I’m a glorious six feet and two inches, which means I have trouble sitting in any seat designed for the average human spine. But enough about me. What did you learn from Stephen Fry's excellent primer on poetry, 'An Ode Less Travelled'? Have you ever penned an alexandrine? And, other than superheroes, do you like men in capes?

KEB: I have penned alexandrines, I've even let them out of their pens and herded them into new pens.

And 'An Ode Less Travelled', really? Well, I learned that Stephen Fry writes poetry; I think we deserve to see some! And I learned that he thinks that "this is an embarrassing confession for an adult to make."

Actually, in the first paragraph of his Foreword, he talks of poetry as something that adults do "in their idle hours" for 'relaxation and enjoyment', citing things like Agatha Christie's gardening. His slightly problematical example of James Joyce's singing sheds some light on the essentual confusion of Fry's thinking: because of course Joyce wrote poetry. But of course he was a poet.

And in respect of Nabokov's butterfly collecting (Fry: 'he chased butterflies'), this may be a good place to remind your friend that Nabokov was in fact as distinguished a lepidopterist as he was a writer. He wrote scientific papers and was responsible for organising the butterfly collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Harvard.

He was also very interested in ghosts.

As JD Salinger's character Seymour Glass told us - and I'm quoting from memory here - no one who is doing his real work, or living according to his true nature - I forget exactly how he put it - has time for hobbies.

RM: You try your hand at a variety of forms in this collection. Some with long lines, some with short lines, while others remind me of the butterfly shape poetry of George Herbert. So let me ask you this: have you ever tried to write a poem in the shape of a squirrel?

KEB: There you go with your animals again. You're obsessed! Does your wife know about this?

RM: I think I'm right in saying that you primarily write free verse. Why do you think that most modern poets, with the exception of Pay Ayres and myself, generally shirk away from rhyme?

KEB: It's too hard. It takes a master to succeed, and it takes someone who doesn't mind how they look if it fails. I think you are that man. I do have some things in rhyme, though. I can do it.

RM: I'm sure you've read both 'Fathers and Sons' and my 'Epistle on Jeremy Paxman's Sock Drawer'. However, I have just finished my newest poem, which I've titled 'An Ode To Judy's Biscuit Barrel'. As a contemporary whose opinion I value, what do you think of it?

You sit on a shelf, at the back of my wife's larder,
Just a bucket of fragments and biscuits gone harder.
Figs, rich tea, arrowroot, and then there's the Nice,
Only there's nothing nice in how you entice
My wife's hips larger, my barely noticeable paunch,
To expand from ye miscreant nibbles, taken after lunch.
Is that what you seek, causing disruption to our lives?
Tempting us with the rich salvation of sugar. Like pies,
You seduce my Judy and care little for what comes after,
As bad as Apple strudel or something flaky filled with sultana.
Oh, terrible biscuit barrel, on the shelf above the spuds!
Don't mock me for my simple taste for your rich savoury goods.
It is Judy you're after, so take her instead, let me pass,
Prim and sexy, with nothing to mar my slim yet nubile ass.

RM, London, 2008

KEB: It's very beautiful. Judy must be so pleased. Speaking of rhyme, that 'after/sultana' rhyme is very daring!

RM: Thank you. I am rather proud of that, though I don't think I've got my iambs lined up quite right. But let me ask: do you think an old fashioned believers in scansion such as myself is holding onto a moribund dogma which, at the very least, is a patriarchal imposition of a phallocentric order over the course of the metrical line and, at the worst, an anachronism unsuited to an age of deconstructive tendencies and the post-Hegelian heterodoxy?

KEB: Yeah.

RM: I recently read a report on the internet that said that Stephen Fry has bought Ezra Pound's pickled testicles. Collecting parts of a favourite poet was quite the craze in the nineteenth century. Trelawny was supposed to have owned pieces of Shelley's jawbone. If you could own the organ of one poet, which organ would it be and who would be the poet? Judy said she'd go for Shelley's heart but I know that I'd always plump for Milton's spleen.

KEB: Milton's spleen! That's good. Well, I wouldn't want Dylan Thyomas' drinking hand. But if we're talking as collectors here - connoisseurs - I might ask for Byron's frontal lobe.

RM: Excellent answer. I might have to trade up from the spleen.

I confess that normally I only read Clive James' verse, primarily because I'm sexually attracted to older men with copious supplies of good whiskey. Why do you think that people don't read poetry? Is it a fault of people or the poetry? And why do you think Sir Clive won't respond to my emails?

KEB: That's probably why people don't read poetry, you know - they're shy. School just makes them even more shy, and then when they grow up and go in the bookshop, they don't exactly see poetry piled high in the 3 for 2's! I'm always getting people telling me how much they used to love poetry, but they always say they have no idea what to read, or what they'd like. I frankly think that if the industry hyped poetry even a fifth as much as they hype novels, they'd sell tons more of it.

And, you know, as for Clive: you're just too cute! He's probably just shy.

RM: A quality hardback, priced reasonably at £12.99, it's a book would look good beneath any tree this Christmas. But enough about 'Fathers and Sons'... How do you go about writing a poem? Are you like Anthony Burgess' 'Enderby', suddenly struck by strange but interesting phrases? Or are you more methodical in your approach?

The French poet Mallarmé said (to Edgar Degas, in fact, who had told him, as people are so prone to do, that he 'had an idea for a poem') that 'poems are made of words, not ideas'.

I've found that most of the time the most successful poems start with a word, or phrase, or group of sounds. Failing that, the best way is if you have something you just want to tell. Then it's like, 'just put it down'. Some poems come out all at once and virtually never get touched again - 'To My Next Lover' was like that. But some take ages of tinkering. Cosi Fan Tutte went through loads of versions, both rhymed and unrhymed, over more than a year, but when it clicked into place I just knew it - and it was finished very quickly after that.

I know a line of Mallarmé, you know. It goes: 'Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui'. You know what those are, don't you. Words.

RM: And German words, if I'm not mistaken...

I was very moved by the poem, 'To My Next Lover'. What exactly do you think of Bill Oddie and do you think poets are naturally more romantic than normal folk?

KEB: Well, I heard Bill writes poems in his spare time: his frank and unambiguous boulevardier sestina, 'Birdwatching', was a particular favourite of mine.

I think poets are less romantic than normal folk. I never had less interest from blokes in my life than when I was hanging around with the poets the whole time.

RM: 'If music be the food of love, de dum, de dum, de dum.' Nobody can forget those immortal lines by Shakespeare. But if you were to be remembered for one line from this collection, what would that line be? I know that my favourite line from 'Fathers and Son's' read: '£18.99 RRP'.

KEB: Hmm. I think the line, "Sorry, I'm all over the place - I didn't sleep too well," sums up an awful lot of my life philosophy in only 11 short everyday words. Well, they're everyday to me. I asked my boyfriend to pick one and that's the one he picked.

RM: Some of the best poetry has come out of great adversity such as personal tragedy or war. Do you think a war would help modern poetry and do you agree that it would be a small price to pay?

Dick, we paid the price with Ezra Pound. We paid for 'The Cantos' in the currency of fascist radio broadcasts, and Ez never learned his lesson, because he got off on an insanity clause. (Hey - it's Christmas.)

I think that another war might not help poetry, anyway, because that phenomenon - the War Poets - was a particular thing - one of those moments wheh something unusual is forced through. I do think that extremis forces the poetry - I mean 'forces' in the greenhouse sense. So any cultural crisis would probably incline to create a flurry of poetry.

It wold be refreshing to have some more public poetry being written - British poetry right now seems a little bit navel-gazing.

RM: One cliché of postmodernist thought is that of form or, more specifically, anti-form. Yet poetry always retains some semblance of order. Wallace Stevens wrote terrifyingly complicated verse yet the cadences of the line have a natural flow to them, mainly due to the elegance of his caesura, which are always apparent to the reader. As poetry increasingly relies upon the ear to decipher its structure, is there a problem ensuring that poetry remains poetry? In other words, is Pam Ayres the best poet of our generation or should that honour go to John Hegley?

KEB: Well, poetry is about order. Because it's about words, and language is an ordering system which we use to understand the world. Poetry should never really be just about self-expression, and this is where Stephen Fry and I come together (as it were) as one. The best poetry is that in which the words begin to operate in some way independent of mere meaning, so that other parts of the brain are brought in to deal with what's going on. Pattern - whether just the shape of the stanzas or a repeating word or sound (like rhyme, or alliteration, or assonance), interesting or lovely sounds, double meanings, quotes and allusions, wordplay like puns, all contribute to the sensation of a good poem somehow going deeper than prose. And that's even before you get to what the poem's saying!

Wallace Stevens is possibly the greatest American poet of the twentieth century.

Clearly it's me, Dick. I'm just misunderstood.

RM: I know the feeling, Katy. I know it only too well.

Well, listen, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on my blog. We have to leave it there so I can catch my bus. The book, 'Me and The Dead', is available in all good bookshops and online. I hope that everybody looks out for it when they're out buying their copies of 'Fathers and Sons'. I wish you the best for it and for the future. Judy said only this morning that your poetry has changed her life and that she'll never look on blond trumpeters the same again.

Mr. Stephen Fry's Buttocks: A Cautionary Tale of Tweed and Excess

‘My dear Richard, it was so very unseemly of you to make such a public display of my buttocks yesterday.’

So said the voice in the orifice shell-like. This was late last night and the fact that the voice was coming through from an iPhone in New York should give you an idea of the man on the other end. I had no doubt that he was fully extended to six feet eight and that at least five of those feet were wrapped in a purple velvet cape with concealed compartments for a wifi enabled swordstick and Bluetoothed brass knuckle.

‘A momentary lapse,’ I answered. ‘I couldn’t resist replying to the twitter in which you commented upon the complexion of your cheeks.’

‘Tut and pish, Richard. Tut and pish. As you very well know, I was making reference to my upper cheeks, those silken mounds of pearly hue.’ He huffed himself to a silence and for a moment I thought he’d hung up on me. ‘On no account was I referring to my buttocks, perfect, pert and dimpled though they may be.’

‘But not so silken?’ I replied with a playful snort which poor Stephen took the wrong way. He took it as a sniff of derision.

‘My buttocks are not to sniffed at, Richard,’ replied the Great Man. ‘Had you lived as many years in tweed as I, then your buttocks would have also taken on a damask finish. But, needless to say, I’d prefer it if that information remains between the two of us.’

‘So your buttocks are not for public consumption?’ I asked.

‘Au contraire, Richard! They are Fry buttocks and all things to do with me are consumed most eagerly by my adoring public.’

I shrugged. ‘I bet they would,’ I said, knowing the dedication of Stephen’s followers.

Contempt was the prime feature of Stephen’s next remark. ‘Honestly. My poor boy. You do have a terrible need to attract attention. I’ve noticed it in the nature of your twittering. Always talking about red onions... Heavens!’

‘I happen to like the red onion. I consider it to be...’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ soothed Stephen. ‘Everybody knows that you consider it the king of all onions.’

‘And it would go rather well with rump,’ I added but I don’t think Stephen caught my sly allusion to his toasted flanks. He was too busy continuing his transatlantic telling off.

‘But enough of this idle chatter, Richard. Call my aunt my uncle if you wish but do not be surprised when the very next words out of my mouth are those of a good scolding. For I have rang you from New York to ask you, nay implore you, to stop ruining twittering for the rest of us. No sooner had I launched my hugely successful Oscar Wilde Day on Twitter than you appeared talking nonsense about Manchester and onions. Shudder. Shudder. Shudder, Richard. And I say that not so lightly as to be heard only by moles. Bless their muddy little ears. Bless.’

‘I can’t help but be me,’ I replied. ‘Not all of us can be televisual Gods. Some of us are mere Holy Spirits.’

Flattery always works well on Stephen.

‘Oh,’ he chortled, ‘were I a less humble man, I would acknowledge that even my smallest flatus has the air of heavenly ambrosia. However, being the Fry of the genus Stephen, I need not make out that I am some kind of God. A lesser deity, perhaps...’

‘Flatus?’ I asked, not knowing the word.

Again Stephen sighed but this time it was one of those slightly condescending sighs which indicate his surprise that there are men in the world who haven’t had another book published in the past twenty four hours.

‘You don’t know your Latin declension, Richard!’ he scolded. ‘Repeat after me: flatus, flatati, flatatum, flaterati, flateratus, flateranimus...’

I confess that I’m paraphrasing here because my Latin is not up to his. I don’t know my arsari from my elbowarium. I’m sure you get the picture, if not the heavy odour of learning in the room. In fact, not long after, Stephen started schooling me in the Ancient Greek for wind breaking and I decided that it was time to make my excuses.

‘So sorry, Stephen,’ I said. ‘The old mobile’s battery is on the fritz. I better be hanging up.’

‘This is what happens when you buy Nokia,’ said the Patron Saint of Sim Cards, who promptly launched into a review of the newest mobile phones. Since it was verbatim to the review that I’d recently read in his Dork Talk column form ‘The Guardian’, I just hit the big red button and disconnected Stephen’s private communications satellite somewhere over New York.

Yet I was satisfied with our conversation. It had been instructive in more than Greek fartari and Latin flatus. It had taught me that in the future when I twitter, I must be more considerate to those people reading me. Previously, I have been tempted to post every detail from my daily life. Every thought has gone there and every wayward dream. But no longer will I twitter without aim. If you decide to follow me on Twitter, you will find me a much changed twitterer, with much less of the wit and more of the twit. And never once again will I send Stephen Fry a comment about his buttocks. Even if they do have a tweed hue and a russeted charm. Stephen’s buttocks are his own concern and from now I will leave them alone. And I advise you to do the same.

My Piece About Blogging, Written Last Week When I Was Moody And Thinking Too Much About Carrots

I have to ask you to indulge me with the following post. I scribbled it last week in a blatant attempt to pen myself out of a bad mood brought about by an unpleasant incident in Manchester whereby I was reduced to tears by a lactose intolerant leisure consultant and the work of proto-impressionist painter Adolphe Valette. You will find me, at the beginning of last week, doubting the value of blogging, though by Wednesday, I had moved on to doubt the value of dogging. By Friday, I was taking pot shots at logging and then the whole timber industry. Happily, I can now report that I’ve now changed my mind about all these things, except dogging, which still seems like a reasonable way to make new friends but I’m not so sure that it’s the most fuel efficient way of having a good time up a country lane late at night.

Change the sheets and polish that porcelain! I’ve decided that old Madeley is coming to stay with you.

But I don’t want you to worry or prepare anything special. I’ll only be with you for two weeks and I expect you to work me until I collapse. You want a pool digging? Just tell me how deep. Want the house repainting? A man hasn’t been born that can beat me around a Dulux colour chart. Work me hard, pay me nothing: that’ s how I like to be treated. It will feel just like being back at Channel 4. Damn their devious, back-stabbing, ‘O’Grady is more popular among the post-menopausal demographic than you’ hides.

But by now, you’re probably wondered if I’ve finally lost it. I too sometimes suspect that I’m walking east when my sanity is going west. Only, in this case, I don’t really think that I'm losing it is in the sense of walking though crowded markets whilst combing the hair of a heavily rouged coconut I like to call Molly. I just mean: how much longer can I go on like this?

Browsing the web, I stumbled across a group of my fellow bloggers talking about their monthly hits. Now, I know that you think you know what I’m about to say before I say it: that I’m about to wail on about how some other blog has forty times the hits that I have and that the most interesting thing they’ve ever written is the word ‘chiaroscuro’. And if you thought that’s what I was going to say, then you just take a merit badge and go stand at the front of the class. Bless the inordinate amount of soft fibrous fluff on your lovely cottony socks, for you are indeed right.

Blogging is an activity that most of us take up for purely narcissistic reasons. Those of us that don’t work professionally as journalists, will probably be writing in the vague hope that we can find work as journalists or writers or cartoonists or porn magnates. (I originally wrote ‘porn magnets’ but Judy won’t allow me to keep them on the fridge door. [Originally, I typed ‘porn midgets’ but that’s a story I’ve promised to keep under my hat. (I originally wrote ‘under my cat’ but that’s where I’m hiding the gloriously ribald account of my affair with a one-eyed Bulgarian vegetable seller called Molly who also happened to sell coconuts)]).

Anyway, to get back to my point: there can’t be many people who don’t open up their first Blogger account without thinking that they’re going to make a difference. The truth is that very few of us make a difference. There are ways to blog successfully and I consistently refuse to take those routes. I won’t post any videos of tap dancing dogs. I shirk porn (I originally typed ‘shake porn’ but... Oh, never mind...) I also won’t repost gags ripped from 'The Onion'. This blog is all me and is undoubtedly weaker for that. And, in a sense, every blog is about ‘me’. And ‘me’ isn’t very interesting. Have you read Iain Dale this week? Me, me, me, me, me. And Tories. Shudder, as Fry would say. Shudder.

The unhappy truth is that blogging is the poor relative to other social networking schemes that require far less effort and bring far more in terms of reward. Blogging also requires effort when a service like Twitter asks that you only write 120 characters a post. Facebook doesn’t even require that you write at all. You just send your friends vampiric bites to acknowledge their existence. ‘Dick Madeley has poked you with a carrot. Do you want to poke him back? Choose you vegetable of choice...’ Hardly the best advertisement for 'user created content'. After all: who likes being poked with a carrot? Not me. Not even Bill Oddie and I should know. I've poked him with plenty of carrots in my time.

Which brings all the way back to my offer. I’ve worked out the figures and I’ve calculated that the effort it takes me to do all my blogging is as profitable as if I came to work for each of you, my regular readers, for a fortnight every year. So long as you’ll pay my travel expenses, I won’t be out of pocket. For that, you’ll get at least forty hours of work out of me. Laying paths, decorating, fixing computer problems, teaching, or general administration: I can do the lot, possibly concurrently. And yes, if you want to, I’ll even let you poke me with a carrot.

Which reminds me of this story I keep under my cat...

Touchy Good Things

When Nige reminded me that some people still use CDs, I was filled with a warm glow but not a little shame. It’s like my own love affair with typewriters or admiring Elberry for collecting fountain pens: there is something so at odds in my nature that means that I yearn for the next great thing yet long for the old ways of doing things, as messy, noisy, and as difficult as they were.

This time it began with lust. This particular lust was directed towards a laptop. My current machine is a rather battered Sony, moulded from plastic, which rattles whenever I type and is now scratched to smithereens. And it’s rather heavy. It’s well over seven pounds but that doesn’t include the rather manly power supply which is not known for being light on its toes. I carry the whole kit with me to work but find that I can’t use it in public. It’s too cumbersome to take out on a train, to wide for the tables of my local bookshop / coffee shop.

Years ago I had a small 10 inch Sony laptop. It cost me a hefty chunk of a grant, had a titanium body, and weighed next to nothing. It lived in my backpack as I trawled the obscure corners of libraries, crawling for volumes that hadn’t been touched in years. I wrote a PhD thesis and a novel on that little beauty and it lasted me five years. Then a volume of Sir Walter Scott’s letters fell on it from a high shelf and it developed a whine (Scott’s letters can have that effect). The whine slowly drove me mad enough to attempt to replace the hard disc. In the process, something snapped, something shot across the room, I did much swearing. I had destroyed the machine.

My recent tax rebate came along at a good time. I had earmarked it for a lightweight laptop, with a smaller screen. I was thinking 13 inches. I wanted something I could carry with me when I’m out and about and save me when I’m wasting hours travelling.
I trawled around the websites and came to the conclusion that there just weren’t any machines with what I wanted. Or none near my ‘price point’. Sony have a TT series – the current version of my original, much loved Sony – which start at a dizzying £1700 of carbon fibre goodness. I then started to visit Manchester’s Apple store to try out the keyboard on their new Macbooks. I must have looked a fool these last few weeks, standing there, drooling over their cases, carved from a single piece of aluminium. I would just stand there, typing away on the laptops without there even being a wordprocessor loaded. But everything they say about the Mac keyboard is true. Forget about processor specs, graphic subsystems. I'd buy it just for the responsive touch, the size of the keys and the gaps in between. It’s just the most perfect writing environment. Macs gave some of the best software for writing and I had begun to dream of matching that kind of attention to a writer's needs with that touch. However, I had 929 problems standing in my way, each one with a rim in Latin and the Queen’s muzzle on the front.

And so, I began to look for something cheaper. The alternative was a Dell. Their portable laptops begin around the £600 mark but once you start upgrading to the better processors.... Well, they’re heading into Mac territory and even the basic models are too steep for my humble savings and tax rebate.

Which brings me to the iPod Touch. When Judy bought herself one for Christmas, I had a play with it and discovered, to my great delight, that there are tools for writers in the ‘App Store’. One of them allows you to turn the iTouch on its side and use the full width of its screen as a keyboard. I’m not expecting to write any great masterpiece on it but I now have the smallest portable word processor I could afford. And the other surprise was Shakespeare. It’s a free download and apparently contains the complete works. I will be happy now, jotting away, rereading Othello and the rest.

But I’ll stop here before I become Stephen Fry and describe how I hope to procreate with my touchy little devil. Heavens! Indeed, bless! For the syncing is now at an end and I’m itching to go off and play some more with my pod.

Twelve Things I Discovered Last Week

Perhaps it’s the lack of sunlight but I’m wallowing in a murky puddle of my own despondency. It could just be Monday morning and the lack of action in my inbox. Whatever it is, I have retreated to my room, leaving Judy in the back garden where she is using her leaf blower to put the frighteners on hibernating hedgehogs. For me, it’s a day to consider my options and to plan the week ahead. And I can think of no way of moving forward other than to look back on my past seven days. Here are the twelve important discoveries I made last week outside the field of particle physics.

Blog readers can cost me a fortune.
Recommendations for books left me out of pocket by a considerable sum. On Friday, I stumbled across a reasonably priced collection of Nicolas Bentley cartoons. I will be billing Nige accordingly.

Don’t Try To Be Witty About Disney

I managed to offend a close friend when I described the decor of the local Disney store as ‘resembling a paedophile’s bedroom’. Not a thing to say when she's purchasing gifts. Put a downer on the whole 'innocence at Christmas' theme she was aiming for.

Humour Is BIG At Christmas

All the book and DVD shops are now devoted to bad comedians and satirists making a fortune peddling their crap. What I want to know is why can’t other bad comedians and satirists can't make a shilling selling their rubbish

Apples Are Nice

In fact, typing on the keyboard on the new Apple MacBook Pro made me feel like I was playing with Brigit Bardot’s nipples (circa 1960). If Apple want to quote me on that, they can for the price of a new Apple Powerbook or Bridgit Bardot's nipples (circa 1960). The new notebooks are cut from a single piece of aluminium, which, by a remarkable coincidence, is the very same selling point as Bardot's nipples... Shame about the price, which puts both notebooks and nipples well outside the price range for this TV superstar.

Dell Laptops Are Small

And around £400, they are quite reasonably priced. Shame that they are also out of the price range for this TV superstar. I will continue to carry my large megalithic Sony with me, contributing to my bad knees and inability to write when in public. When I once dared open it in a Costa Coffee, I blocked out the light and drained the power from the frothing machine.

Fog Can Be Fun

Architecture never looks as when viewed on a clear November morning or when it’s thick with fog. Manchester’s Hilton Tower looked stunning in its grey overcoat on Friday.

I Like The New Yorker

Actually, I blew a gift voucher on the complete cartoons of ‘The New Yorker’. You know about my current obsession with the inky line, so I needn’t explain. The book doesn’t actually contain the complete cartoons but the price you pay is well worth it for the DVD-Rom, which includes over 79,000 cartoons in PDF format and fully searchable.

The Taxman Can Be Kind

Due to a long convoluted calculation that has to do with my earning very little (except my TV contracts, of course, which are in Judy’s name), I got a tax rebate last week. Hence my dreams of owning a new laptop and being able to afford to buy a couple of books.

I Miss Writing

I’ve not fully devoted myself to my writing for a few weeks and it’s time I tried to structure my week to get something finished.

My Feet Are Possibly A Little Bit Rank

Well, it's not my feet as much as my aging boots. Do you know the pair: black leather slip ons with the buckle on the side, currently held together with superglue and bits of leather cut from an old spectacles case? I love them. Best boots I've ever owned. However, I managed to clear a Clarks shoestore on Friday when I was a little too impulsive and I took them off to try on a replacement pair. As it happened, they didn't have my size in store. I bought a new tube of superglue instead.

Stephen Fry Is The Cause of Many Heart Attacks

When you get an email stating that ‘Stephen Fry is following you’, one can feel rather blessed. The fact that he’s tail-coating 21,000 other Twitterers is something that he should mention in the same email.

Stephen Fry's Honey Drizzler

Don’t you long for those days when a man could be caught strangling a ferret without having people judging him about it? I know that I do. It came to mind, earlier this morning, when I was caught manhandling a live rodent in the privacy of my own garden shed. Judy had assumed the worst: that I’d gone there with the intention of wringing some rattish neck. She just wouldn’t listen to reason and had even threatened to inform the RSPCA via their local representative.

‘What will Bill Oddie say?’ she asked, her panic only constrained by the shed doorway. ‘You’re getting a reputation as a serial rodent abuser, Richard. First it was house mice and then you killed poor Colin, John Cleese’s sweet lemur...’

‘That sweet lemur was trying to rip out your throat,’ I reminded her. ‘If I hadn’t smacked Colin with a copy of my hugely popular book (which is no misery memoir), you’d be without a larynx.’

‘Oh, a likely story, Richard,’ replied Judy. ‘Just like you told everybody that Stephen Fry had his arm broken by the flipper of an enraged manatee. Why can’t you just be a man and admit that you brought that ferret in here to have your evil ways with it? What is it you like about beating up these poor animals? It has to be something more than comic effect. Do you like to hear their little bones break? Is that what it is, Richard? Is that what excites you? Is that how you get your kicks?’

By now, I had managed to subdue the ferret my kneeling on its tail and I delayed explaining myself until I had carried the animal to the shed door where I cast it out onto the lawn. It bounced once and then made a dash for the fence and the safety of Ronnie Corbett’s vegetable patch.

‘Judy, if you’ll only listen. I’ll tell you how this happened.’

I then proceeded to tell her about the events of my morning which had begun quite innocently with the optimistic hope of drizzling some honey.

I woke up around eight, feeling nipped in the places where my toes had escaped the duvet. Judy was sound asleep, snoring in that baritone that is now so familiar and perfectly tuned to a low B flat. Rather than waking her, I slipped into my slippers (you might say, made for that very purpose), and went down to the kitchen to address breakfast. Because I was cold, I thought I’d make myself my favourite morning tipple: some hot water dosed with honey. The kettle was soon boiled and I poured a good amount into my favourite Monty Python Toby Jug, fashioned into a faithful facsimile of Terry Jones’ best grin. Now it was time for the honey. And that’s when disaster struck. I took Judy's favourite honey drizzler from the drawer and dipped it into a new jar of organic honey (a gift from a friend). I then gave the drizzler a twist and withdrew it sharply. It emerged handle only. The end had come detached and had sank in the depths of finest honey ever transmitted by the bottoms of Felicity Kendal’s bumble bees.

But you know that I’m not the sort of man to wail about a honey drizzler failing. If nothing else, I am a man of action. I immediately went upstairs and dressed myself for my workshop. Then I took the damaged honey drizzler into the shed intending to repair it.

Now, I have one of the best outfitted workshops in North London and it’s in that shed where I’ve made many of the inventions that have made my name in the world of science and technology. It’s there that I built Paul Merton’s pogo stick, added the rockets to Clarkson’s rocket car. It was there that I invented yeast free yeast and gave birth to the iCod, the world’s first genetically altered flat fish. Yet after my initial inspection of the drizzer, I knew that I’d need expert help. This was no ordinary break but wood that had been heavily fatigued by years of constant drizzling. I reached for the phone and the number of the only man I can call on in these emergencies.

Three rings later and there was a noise like an armed riot in a Columbian kindergarten followed by a familiar voice. ‘Ah, ’tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, though I fear my Nokia noise cancelling headset will struggle to overcome the ambient sounds of my location.’

‘Where on earth are you?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like you’re on a war front.’

‘A war front, indeed, Dicky. I am currently doing a bit of Christmas shopping. I’m in Hameley’s toy store where I am in the process of scoping out a BattleTech War Mage with World Destructor Kneecaps and Nipple Mounted Lasers.’

‘Cut the dorktalk, Stephen,’ I snapped. ‘Listen, it’s about this honey drizzler you bought me for Christmas seven years ago. I don’t know what reviews you read before buying it but the ruddy thing has already broken.’

‘I hope you’re not asking me for the receipt,’ mumbled the Great Man. ‘I fear that I keep them for only six years before I destroy them.’

‘Stuff the receipt. I want your help repairing it.’

Stephen chuckled. ‘But I honestly don’t see what I can do...’

‘It’s a spiral fracture,’ I said.

He fell silent, no doubt overcome by the manatee episode and his own spiral injury. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ he said.

I opened my door nearly an hour later and ducked as nipple mounted lasers took aim.

‘You’re late,’ I said.

‘I know,’ said Fry. ‘It was a long line to the tills and I lacked the triple A batteries to power my nipples.’

‘So you bought it then?’ I said, nodding towards the robot.

‘Oh, tush. Indeed: gripes. How could I not buy such a sweet little droid? There will be much fun to be had over Christmas programming this to annihilate many a C list celebrity. But enough about my plans to destroy the talentless portion of our world. Show me the drizzer!’

I led Stephen to the shed and we began the long process of repairing the handle. The spiral fracture meant that we had to be careful as we applied wood glue and set the whole thing up in clamps. When it was time for Stephen to leave, he was exhausted and he had taxied off before he’d remembered the Battlemech Droid he’d left in the hall. Naturally, when I tried to ring him, his iPhone battery must have gone dead. Unable to reach him, I realised that I couldn’t leave his droid in the hall. Judy has few rules but I knew that she’d take poorly to the World Destrouctor Kneecaps.

I carried the droid to the shed where I made room for it behind my prototype for a Kranky firing Cannon. And that’s when I discovered the hole. It wasn’t a big hole but it was a significant breech in a shed that contains so many state secrets. The corner of the shed was now missing a good six inch circle of wood. I kneeled down and peered into the hole and found that I could see right through to the Corbetts’ side of the fence. If I’d known the layout of their garden, I might not have reached my hand into the hole, nor grabbed so tightly onto the first thing I felt.

At first, I thought it might have been one of Mrs. Corbett’s old stoles. Then I thought I’d put my hand into a crate of costumes from Ronnie’s cross-dressing days on the Two Ronnies. I thought perhaps that it might even have been the famous fur coat that he wore when he sang that song about the farmer judging the Women’s Institute’s sponge pudding competition. The whole thing was really a vulgar euphemism for something else and the thought of holding onto that coat encouraged me to try to pull it through the hole.

‘I hardly expect it to bite me,,’ I explained to Judy. ‘How was I to know that I’d put my hand into the cage where Ronnie keeps his prize ferret?’

Judy looked at me with a renewed look of love in her eyes. ‘If only you’d told me about Stephen’s robot earlier,’ she said. ‘All this would have made complete sense.’

‘So I’m forgiven?’ I asked.

‘Of course you’re forgiven,’ said Judy, wiping the trickle of blood from my cheek where the ferret had nearly taken out my eye. ‘Unlike the time you battered John Cleese’s lemur, this time you had good reason to attack that rodent. If only I had known, Richard, I might even have helped you beat it unconscious.’

The smile came easily to my lips. ‘Jude,’ I replied, ‘it’s thoughtfulness like that which has made you such a much loved public figure, a veritable mother to our nation.’

On The Other Side

A strange thing happened on the other side of everything that’s gone before.

I was walking in Manchester when a stranger approached me and asked me why I wasn’t still writing my Appreciation Society.

‘It’s simple,’ I replied. ‘A close personal friend of mine suffered a difficult few months and I gave him room on my blog to detail his personal suffering. In light of that, I thought it poor taste to continue to be so frivolous or go on about how unendingly successful I am. There’s a time for being humble, you know. All great men recognise that at some point in their lives.’

‘Bah!’ said the stranger so forcibly that he melted the waxed tip of his moustache. ‘Nonsense, Dick! Your blog is a gift to the world. It gives great joy to the lesser millions. I’m sure that even a man who has suffered some personal tragedy in his life would see that eventually an enterprise as great as the Richard Madeley Appreciation Society should continue. Dare I say that it should flourish? Heavens!’

I gave the stranger another look as he towered over me by a good twelve inches. Being, myself, a rather sexually sublime six feet two, I estimated that the man’s height topped out around the seventh imperial foot and all of that height seemed faintly familiar to me.

‘I’ll give it some thought,’ I said as I tried to disengage myself from the man’s grip and move off in the direction of the junction between Chinatown and the Gay Village where oriental men wear florid shirts. I had an appointment to keep with a producer who had contacted me about doing the voiceover for his line in budgerigar breeding DVDs. I knew from personal experience that it’s not good to keep a budgerigar handlers waiting. Geoff Capes once turned me upside and rectally fed me millet for being just ten minutes late to an interview with the World’s Strongest Fat Man.

‘Look here,’ said the stranger, not allowing me to go. ‘You must take up the reigns of your much missed blog. You owe it to your public, you owe it to Judy and you owe it to your friends.’

‘My friends!’ I scoffed. ‘Since when do they miss my blog?’

It was a good question. Bill Oddie received the news of my blog’s closing with a faint smile and a comment about it being ‘good for the owls’. Clarkson had scoffed somewhat before making a rather distasteful crack about taxi drivers and sped off in his jet car. As for Judy, she had be relieved that I had abandoned my passion for detailing her private life in such a public way. She had celebrated the end of the blog by burning my private papers in the back garden.

‘Not all your friends are so cruel,’ announced the stranger after I’d explained this to him.

‘Oh, you fool!’ I snapped. ‘You don’t know the celebrity mind.’

At once, I regretted being so rude and risk losing my disguise of the comedy pimple and large orange wig fashioned in a fetching combover.

‘Oh but Richard, I do understand them,’ said the stranger. He looked up the street one way and then up the street the other before he raised his black eye patch and peeled back one half of his Hercules Poirot moustache.

‘Fry!’ I cried, stumped to the tips of my shanks by the man’s presence. Suddenly the seven feet all made sense.

‘Ah, indeed, ’tis I, Fry,’ said Stephen Fry. ‘Here in Manchester dressed like a piratical Belgian problem solver. I have travelled all this way by black London taxi cab to say that you’re missing. Set aside all this talk of tragedy. Return to what you do best.’

‘You mean presenting the TV version of the perennial family favourite board game, Cluedo?’

‘I mean writing your blog,’ said Stephen as he readopted his disguise.

I left him standing beside the art gallery, adjusting the poppy on his purple cape, and I was soon in the heart of Chinatown, sharing noodles with the budgerigar man. But Stephen’s words lingered long after the taste of soya sauce and fried eel had faded. On reflection, I did allow my friend’s sadness to get the better of me. Much as I appreciate what he went through, how can I live without my blog? I have missed writing it and cannot leave it on such a sad note. It’s too dramatic to say that I’m back since I never really went away. But I will say that I’m stepping out from my disguise, casting aside the comedy pimple, and doing what Stephen Fry would want me to do: telling the world about the life of a ‘A’ list celebrity, revealing the contents of Judy’s dresser, and being the web’s foremost expert on just about anything and everything.

I’m back but now I’m sexier than ever...

The Loose Women

I begin with an apology. I feel no small degree of shame for the excesses of my weekend. Not only was I not myself, I wasn’t even Richard Nixon. The whole episode was regrettable and I know that I’ve disappointed many of you who had intended to vote for me in November. I know that Nige was especially anguished that I’d publishing the photograph he’d entrusted to my keeping. It was very bad form. All I can say in my defence is that two days on the Sudafed had turned me into a creature of excess. Things came to a head when Judy discovered me in the larder, at half past four this morning, trying to organise the mice into a labour union. If I hadn’t agreed to appear on ‘Loose Women’ this afternoon, I don’t know how I would have pulled myself together, though the Madeley mice would now be fully unionised.

As to my day. Much more pleasant things to report. I appeared on ‘Loose Women’ this afternoon where I was my charming best. Given that they’re pretty relaxed about these things on ITV, I decided to wear a small lapel badge of Nixon. The majority of the show’s viewers wouldn’t have understood its meaning but those of you who follow my Appreciation Society will have spotted my way of telling you that it was indeed me. The visit was made complete when I was making my way out of the studio. I managed to have a word with the show’s producer and explained how I hate to see goldfish put in those glass bowls. He agreed to release their prop goldfish into my care, so I arrived home, ten minutes ago, complete with a new pet for my office. Which is where I now sit, preparing to answer all my fan mail.



One in particular demands my attention. It was written by a fan with a rather delightful request.

'I have started on a series of cross-stitches of a quirky nature – the sort of thing you might hang on the wall of the loo. I am currently making one in green which begins 'Richard and Judy'. It has a pink gingham heart underneath, with tiny pearl beads round the border. Underneath I want to write something else.'

The ‘something else’ naturally perks my interest. Now I’m back to my normal self, I’m drawn to this ‘something else’ and believe that the most important job of my afternoon is to get this motto right.

After plenty of contemplation, ringing around celebrity friends, and checking them all with Judy, I’ve decided that any of the following would make such a wall hanging into the perfect gift. My question to you is: do you have any better suggestions before I decide to have these made in their millions for the Christmas market?

‘Richard & Judy. We still have the scars.’
‘Richard & Judy. We never bombed Cambodia.’
‘Richard & Judy. Stitch on friendly.’
‘Richard & Judy. Better than penicillin.’
‘Richard & Judy. Bill Oddie gives us onions.’
‘Richard & Judy. None of it was scripted.’
‘Richard & Judy. With added friction burns.’
‘Richard & Judy. We took testicles to tea time.’
‘Richard & Judy. Room for one more.’
‘Richard & Judy. Patrons of the ampersand.’
‘Richard & Judy. We chatted with the best.’
‘Richard & Judy. The other Chuckle Brothers.’
‘Richard & Judy. We did it Oprah’s way.’
‘Richard & Judy. Students and hippies love us.’
‘Richard & Judy. Student sand hippies love us.’ (Yes, it was originally a typo but I like it)
‘Richard & Judy. Stephen Fry’s other home.’
‘Richard & Judy. Devoid of all reason.’
‘Richard & Judy. Never been to Standish.’
‘Richard & Judy. We’ve had better years.’
‘Richard & Judy. This Morning’s minions.’
‘Richard & Judy. Now from Outer Space.’
‘Richard & Judy. Where the smart money goes.’
‘Richard & Judy. Try our heat rub.’
‘Richard & Judy. Better than a poke in the eye.’
‘Richard & Judy. Like Oprah but with merkin.’
‘Richard & Judy. The mild taste sensation.’
‘Richard & Judy. Harpsichord repairs a speciality.’
‘Richard & Judy. One careful owner.’
‘Richard & Judy. Made from sunflowers.’
‘Richard & Judy. Chimp friendly TV.’

Vice Presidential Moths

After two days on the Sudafed, the plaster angels are singing to me. This is some weird decongestive drip, one crazy mucous trip, but I can’t be the first President of the United States to announce that his decorating has formed a close harmony choir. They’ve been singing me Pink Floyd hits all night. Of course, the same thing happened to Truman but people forget about that because of that business with prune juice and the Guatemalans. The angel choir is just a Nixon thing, they media will say. Blame it all on Nixon. He was out of his head on cough syrup when he ordered the US fleet up the Thames to capture Channel 4 headquarters. Judy says that it will be seen as blatant aggression on foreign soil but I say that we were there for ten years. I can promise you that the next series of ‘The Richard & Judy Show’ won’t be like the last. I won’t be happy until we’ve rid London of the Red Chinese. And Castro. Don’t even get me started about Castro. And if I have to send the marines out to take down Jamie Oliver I’ll do it.

Who can I trust? That’s the question we have to bring to the Oval office. Who beyond these walls has Nixon’s best interests at heart? When I go signing my book, they all look at me as though I’m some kind of freak. They keep calling me Madeley. I can’t get them to stop. I wouldn’t mind if they called me ‘Tricky’, like the good old days, but they’re all out to get me. Except Nige. I love Nige. He reminds me of Spiro Agnew, which is why I made him my Vice President. Nige will know what to do, even if that means calling out the National Guard like he did that time to protect the moths.

Damn. I’ve drained another one. And I’ve lost my plastic measuring spoon. The last I saw of it was when it was stuck to Kissinger’s elbow after we met about the Fern Britton problem.

It seems pointless bothering measuring the stuff when my lips fit so snugly around the bottle. Great stuff, this Sudafed. All my flu symptoms have gone, though I can’t feel my right leg below the thigh and I’m sure that I’m developing breasts. Nothing pendulous. Just pert. Pert breasts are Nixon thing, they’ll say, and I’ll tell them that they’re damn right they are.

I’d ask Judy to have a look at them but she hasn’t forgiven me for calling her on my mobile this evening. I hadn’t known that I had until I found my phone in my trouser pocket with a fifty eight minute call still ongoing. Apparently her mobile phone had gone off sometime after seven. She’d picked it up midway through a meal with Dame Patrick Stewart and Helena Bonham Carter, only to hear me enjoying my nightly ablutions to a rousing rendition of Pink Floyd’s Money, terminating with a rhythmically perfect yanking of the chain.

Can I trust other bloggers? This is the key question. There was a time when I was added to blogrolls. Now I’m routinely deleted. They’re all out to get Nixon. I know it. Fry won’t answer any of my calls. He’s gone to Africa when Nixon wants him in Washington. I swear he's in league with the Red Chinese.

Can’t trust anybody. Except Nige who’d call out the National Guard for me. And the moths. Or maybe they're angels...