Excuse my absence yesterday. I’ve been working with a homeless charity after pressure groups got in contact with my agent over comments I’d written last week about a tramp called Dodger. A monsterous injustice was committed on the name of Madeley but nobody seemed to care about that. Nobody leapt to my defence when I was unfairly criticised in comments. But I suppose everybody assumed that I have a big team of lawyers to do that for me. Dodger certainly wasn’t surprised. He’d told me privately that even bringing the subject up would lead to trouble. That’s the problem of being a blogging celebrity: honesty brings its own misery.As I was serving soup to the homeless on the North Bank of the Thames, I looked up and saw somebody taking pictures of me. I thought it the paparazzi but noticed that the camera was too small. Then I assume it was a tourist. Then they lowered the camera and I saw it was Jamie Oliver.
‘Oy, Madeley,’ he yelled, a huge grin on that meat shank of a face of his. ‘How are you seasoning your soup?’
‘F**k off, Oliver,’ I shouted. I was cold, tired and stank of cabbage soup. He just chuckled and began to show off to his friends.
‘Is it oxtail? If it is, you want to season it with some real sea salt for that added flavour.’
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I shouted back. ‘F**k the hell off, Oliver. We don’t need you around here.’
That got a small cheer from everybody in earshot. It surprised me. I’m aware that not all of you like me. In fact, I realise that I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. But in a contest betwee myself and Jamie Oliver, it seemed I had the popular vote. It was a unique and very satisfying feeling.
That's why I begn to feel good with myself and I grew determind not to respond to any more taunts. Only Oliver then began to get personal.
‘Love the black eye, Madeley,’ he shouted. ‘Did Judy give it you?’
My face must have visibly darkened. I don’t like to hear people making fun of Judy. I was about to ask him if he wanted one of his own, when I received some welcome support from an unexpected source.
The guys I’d been serving soup to suddenly turned on Oliver. The sound of tin soup tins being dropped was something eerie. It was like Dawn of the Dead as these shambling fellows then began to chase the guy who is supposed to be the nation’s most loved chef. I heard they lost him somewhere near Vauxhall Bridge but there’s an all-points-bullitin that’s gone out through London’s vagrant community. Oliver won’t be able to show his face in public without being spotted by one of them.
Jamie Oliver doesn’t deserve one of my factoid dumps but I’m cautious about what I say about the homeless, so I guess he’ll have to do. Did you know that his father made trombones and from an early age Jamie had a natural gift for the instrument. He’s still the only person to high a high C on a trombone before his fourth birthday. His remarkable lungs allow Jamie to talk for seven minutes without a breath. The downside of that is he needs extra large shirts as he’s always ripping them whenever he breathes too deep. His chest measure fifty seven inches fully inflated.
