And On The Seventh Day, Madeley Rests...

Or he does once he’s done that thing that all bloggers do when wanting to fill space on a Sunday: post the oddest search engine queries that brought visitors to the site. I’ve only just got around to looking at the results for last month and, as usual, we've got a fairly mixed bag.

1. ‘Creep Richard Madeley’

We have a new number one. I don't see why this should be so popular this month but I’m now going to be looking over my shoulder in case somebody has been working out the best way to creep up on me.

2. ‘I hate Richard Madeley’

The long standing number one drops to number two, which is indicative of the thawing in the relationship between the British people and the Madeley man mountain. My Appreciation Society is having an effect, as I always knew it would.

3. ‘Richard Madeley a terrorist with AK47’

In some quarters, the suspicions still continue. Can't a man attend a terrorist training camp without being labeled a terrorist?

4. ‘two rectums’

Why ‘two rectums’ remains so popular it is still beyond me. I do know that anybody wanting to search for ‘two rectums’ on Google will come here before they go anywhere. This is the duel rectum center of the world wide web. The way I calculate it, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably got two rectums. If so, I want to hear from you. There’s an award winning documentary in this or my name's not Madeley.

5. ‘Ray Mears hedgehogs’

At some stage every website gets a visitor looking for Ray Mears and hedgehogs. There’s simply nothing better than a hedgehog cooked in mud and wrapped in tin foil. The only problem with hedgehog meat is that’s a natural laxative. Beware. Especially those of you with two rectums.

6. ‘Richard Madeley is a cute nice guy’

Speaks for itself. I’m cute and I’ve a healthy respect for all men and women, even if they do have two rectums.

7. ‘deadly beast drawer’

English students at some American universities are already studying my 200 line mock heroic epistle on Jeremy Paxman’s sock drawer as part of the degrees in English Literature. People searching for the text of the poem accounts for this result.

8. ‘penis cactus gift barrel shaped order’

We do actually have a biscuit barrel that’s shaped like a cactus and, as I believe I've recounted on many occasions, I once got my penis trapped in it. I'm sure the story is in my archive if you can be bothered looking.

9. ‘Richard Madeley commando’

It’s the commando I go when I go commando. It's Madeley sans underpants.

10. ‘Jeremy Clarkson eats chaffinch’

The cruel persecution of Jeremy Clarkson is obviously continuing. If people want evidence of the time he ate chaffinch then they need only come around and ask Judy to show them our photo album. I’ve lost the number of times he’s eaten chaffinch at this house. I think he particularly likes the way I prepare them over a hot charcoal as I was taught by Ray Mears.

11. ‘Richard Madeley in a lift’

Mysterious. I’ve been in lifts but, as far as I can recall, nothing of significance has ever happened in a lift. I gone up many times but I've never gone down. I normally use the stairs.

12. ‘person with two rectums’

See my answer to number 4 or seek medical help.

13. ‘Mickey Rooney beard photo’

There’s no picture of Mickey Rooney with a beard here. There is, however, a picture of him smoking a pipe. I would hazard a guess and say it’s the best photo of Mickey Rooney smoking a pipe that’s available in the public domain.

14 ‘Judy plums’

I'm only too happy to clear up this little urban myth. No, she doesn’t have plums. Never had, has, or will. Unless they’re mine, in which case she’s threatened to have them turned into ear rings.

15. ‘what fine would you have to pay for smuggling fur for ocelots?’

The most intriguing result. After a little research I can now confirm that it’s a $20,000 dollar fine and up to twelve years in prison. Madeley’s rule of thumb when smuggling ocelot fur: don’t get caught. Here endeth the lesson.

Dual Rectum Syndrome: A Considered Response

Since the last update, five minutes ago, I’ve had three more visitors looking for details on the practical problems of having two rectums. These are clearly not the same people, coming from various places across the US. It is leading me to now think that I’ve cornered the market on Google for searches to do with this most interesting medical condition.

To all you Americans wanting to know about having two rectums, I believe this is the place to be. I’ll have to see if I can get our team of researchers to find somebody who actually does have two rectums so I can interview them for you. Perhaps it could lead to the establishment of a society and we’d have conferences each year to discuss life with DRS, or dual-rectum syndrome. In fact, we’d hold it twice a year. Then it would be a biannual bi-anal bash. Bum bum...

Two Rectums Revisited

It would seem that I have yet another American visitor looking for information on ’2 rectums’. Since last night, I’ve done some deeper research on this matter and would like to now refer you all to the case of Ivan Sanu, a Polish immigrant who entered America in 1932. It was discovered, during his routine medical on Ellis Island, that he had two rectums. He claimed that many members of his family also had two rectums and during the 1890s, four of his uncles had earned good money in the circus when they formed a comedy group and called themselves ‘The Eight Rectums’. Mr. Sanu explained that his condition was in no way debilitating since only one rectum worked at any one time. He did, however, complain that he found it impossible to ride a bicycle and had to wear special trousers the could cater to one extra central buttock.

For more information, I’d suggest you try Sanu’s biography, One Too Many Holes (New York, 1938). There is a film version of his life, ‘Reap the Wild Wind’, which was made in 1942 and starred Ray Milland, only the business of the second rectum was changed for marketing reasons into his having an English accent.

The Man With Two Rectums

Although I’m glad that you’re tolerant on these rare occasions when I fall silent for a day, I do expect a little more from you when I don’t make my usual Monday morning appearance and still haven’t been seen forty eight hours later.

Not a single email message asking me if I’m fine. Not one of you checking with UK embassies to make sure that we haven’t been kidnapped by ex-pat Brits from Tunisia. Sometimes I just don’t understand you people. Here are two of the nation’s best loved people – or at least one of them as I can’t speak for Judy – who could have been snatched by a gang of heavily-tanned retired pub landlords and whisked to Tunis for God only knows what kind of sick and depraved camel-based action they do over there. I wouldn’t mind but when Fry goes off on one of his American odysseys, he’s got all different kinds of desperate people asking if he’s well. They send him cheesecake, write him poems, and all this for a blog as moribund as a copy of Ezra Pound’s poems wedged between Jordan’s breasts. He’s already got thirty seven comments for one measly article he wrote for The Guardian, yet my encounter with that psychic wonder known as Judith Chalmers still only has four!

So, for those of you who have been wondering where I am, I can now reveal to you that I’ve been ill. Pretty damn rotten actually. I’ve been suffering from a debilitating case of sinusitis that hit me late on Sunday evening and by Monday morning had me slowly melting in the sauna in a desperate attempt to reopen nostrils more blocked than the North West Passage. Apparently, I’d caught something from the snails.

Do I hear you ask about snails? Well it’s about time somebody did. I’ve been working with damn things for the last two weeks and not one of you noticed or asked me how it’s going. Do you really think I’ll carry on blogging if you continue to ignore me like this?

To be fair, it has been a hush-hush project. I’ve been secretly filming a new game show called ‘Snail’s Pace With Richard Madeley’, which is due to go out on ITV in the new year. The producers had been fearing that Noel Edmonds would steal the idea before we got the first series in the can. The premise of the show is simple. So simple that even Edmonds could copy it. Contestants have to answer a series of questions before they get to compete on a one-to-one basis against snails in some fiendish competitions in which snails naturally excel. It’s a bit like Edmonds’ current show, ‘So You Think You’re Harder Than An Toddler’, but with more slime, a better class of presenter, and far fewer infants running around hitting each other with hammers.

I can already tell you that it’s making for great TV and that the first show will be an instant classic. You won’t ever have laughed so hard as when you watch a 64 year old pipe fitter from Norfolk trying to beat a snail to fill a bucket with mucus. It really is hilarious and not half as grotesque as it sounds. We’ve also got tests of strength that involve dropping bricks onto contestants and snails, agility contests when we see who can bend the most, and then the highlight of every episode when we pit the remaining contestant against a bag of snails in a trivia contest. You think we humans would come out on top every time but you’d be surprised.

It’s a great show and I think it will help revive my career, if only I can avoid catching any more colds from the snails. At first the doctor told me he thought it was a reaction to the medication I’d been taking to reduce the swelling in my earlobes. Only when the tests came back did we realise that I had caught a cold from the show’s top snail, Slick Sherry.

Sherry is a special North American snail who had been winning the races on the show all week. Now it turns out that Sherry has only been winning because of the copious amounts of slime she’s been producing. Apparently snails can catch the same colds as we humans. Biologically speaking, I’ve not been producing catarrh all week but slime. I don’t want to go into the grim details but when I woke up this morning, I’d actually slipped out of bed and down the stairs. To tell you the truth, Judy found me in the vegetable garden lying on the underside of a cabbage leaf.

The antibiotics are finally beginning to kick in and I’m feeling a little better. I hope to resume my blogging duties in the next few days but, in the meantime, I want to leave you with some of the snail facts that I’ve discovered making the show. Did you know that snails are all allergic to toothpaste? They also have two rectums, a characteristic they oddly share with a BBC newsreader that modesty forbids me from naming. Snails can live over forty years and can produce enough slime in a year to fill a bathtub. Some American clinics offer rich celebrities a chance to sit in a bathtub of snail slime, which has proven ability to get rid of wrinkles. The only downside to the treatment is that exposure to salt will make you wrinkle twice as bad as before and you might regurgitate your intestines. And on that pleasant note, I’m off to write a synopsis for my next show, ‘The Man With Two Rectums: The Huw Edwards Story’.