Drunk in 318

I said I probably wouldn’t post tonight because I’d be too busy getting drunk alone in my hotel room here in the heart of Manchester. It was clearly a lie. I am posting and although I’m happy to report that I’m suitably braced to the gills with alcohol fortified with paint thinner, I'm not alone. The Titch is currently asleep on top of the TV (vodka, it seems, doesn’t totally agree with his sense of consciousness) while Elberry – tempestuous, wonderful, psychotic Elberry – is, even as I type, out on the balcony, threatening to jump unless he’s brought four young hobbits and a ring of immense power. As for myself, I’m drinking myself through a bad patch. It has been one of the most difficult and tiring days of recent history. There have also been tears.

I’ve just come off the phone with Judy who is quite distraught. She’s been overlooked for the job of treasurer at her local Pool & Billiards Association. It was not a job she was particularly wanted and, to be honest, had only applied for out of spite because her direct rival in the association had declared her intention of going for the job. That’s not to say that Judy wasn’t the best qualified, had the seniority, had the respect of her peers, and, to be blunt, deserved the honour. Yet to have lost out to a woman with gigantically large character flaws has been quite hard for the old girl to take. I can’t wait to get back down south so I can console her properly with long lectures on the way the world never rewards the virtuous, how evil conquers all, and that people who spend their days plotting mischief usually get career advances before those of us that don't.

Ah! I see that Elberry is trying to pull the TV set from the wall and I have no doubt that he intends to throw it over the balcony into the crowds of intoxicated lags and lagerettes heading home. This, I fear, is what happens when Selena Dreamy makes a promise to join us in our revelry and then disappoints us with excuses about Labour ministers and flying ducks. Or at least I think that’s what she said. I can see I’ll have to intervene before Elberry goes too far. I’m not against these randoms act of violence but The Titch is still sleeping on the TV and I wouldn’t like any of my blog’s loyal readers to end up fried on Manchester’s tram lines.

So I’ll end it here. And without a picture. Lola has rightly brought me to task for posting too many photographs taken through Madeley-o-vision. I’m overdoing it on the facial deformities. Let’s restore some balance with lots of heartfelt pretentiousness torn straight from today’s notebook. It’s not funny and is full of that worthiness that comes of those afflicted with delusions of significance.

I’ll try to speak more sense with you all tomorrow.

As written in my notebook:

I’m beginning to dislike myself. Not just what I am and who I’ve become, not this version of Me but the one who turns in for work and grows more manic with every passing hour. Each morning I wake up and find that there’s more to dislike. Eight o’clock and I’m sluggish at my desk. By noon, the tedium has warmed me frantic. Three o’clock and I’m unable to sit still. I say foolish things, embarrass myself. Animals repeat the same actions when distressed. I’m walking the same carpet. Desk. Window. Cooler. Desk. Window. Cooler. Desk.

Perhaps I’m listening to too much Philip Glass. I don’t understand music but I can be evangelical about Bach and Glass: the phrases, the small nuances that change, the sudden expansion after so much that’s been contracted and small. For three months I listened to nothing but Koyaanisqatsi. Now I'm in love with his soundtrack for 'Mishima'. Stunning every time. It reminds me that there no need for a kaishakunin when lead your life by timesheets and use a wireless keyboard.

Somewhere deep inside me, I think sparkling waters still ripple. Good thoughts still condense; ideas drip and form pools where there once were lakes. Yet it’s not the routine of office life that I mistake for misery. It’s the silence. It’s the evaporation. It’s knowing that I could be doing something so much more meaningful with my time. My life. This one shot.

Am I too old to develop ADHD? I find myself fashioning a pair of pince-nez spectacles from a paper clip and the two foam circles taken from the top of a pack of recordable CDs. They sit on my nose and people give me strange looks. I’m so utterly bored.

There’s nothing here that lacks meaning. My are thoughts are disjointed because I’m disjointed. My brain is consuming itself. It’s four o’clock. I make a foolish remark and somebody makes me feel insignificant for being so politically incorrect. How could I misjudge things so badly? Why can't I just be myself and say what I want? Except that I’m on melt-down. This is creative energy channelling itself into the wrong places.

I've escaped. I'm travelling through the city, sitting behind a man on a tram. Grey suit, hair brushed Donald Trump style like a lid operated by a pedal and your foot. One day the wind will catch it and the lid will open. Them we’ll all know what he’s reading. I can only see that he’s holding typewritten pages. I see the line: ‘Arthur slipped off his rat mask’. It’s a manuscript for some unpublished story or novel. A woman is typing away on her laptop across the carriage. A thin guy looking sick, emancipated, jots in a notebook. He probably wants to be Dostoyevsky. Everybody here is a writer. This too makes me hate myself. There are too many words. The world is preserving itself for posterity. Words,in and for themselves, are never worth preserving. Only intentions. Art is not random. It's designed. I don't think writing makes you a writer. That's just a deal people make in order to discount their misery by 20%.

Waterstones. End of the day. I pick up a book. Published. Envy. I read a line randomly from the middle. ‘A child’s pleasure ran through him’. I hate the line and put the book back. I buy myself some Philip Roth instead. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

In Which I Respond To An Outrageous Accusation

I’m blogging late tonight and I have to ask you to picture the scene. Judy is already in bed. Fed with cocoa laced with Horlicks and a tablespoon of Ovaltine, she is wrapped in her fleecy pink PJs and lies with her knees in the air dreaming of Engelbert Humperdinck frolicking naked on his mink farm. Meanwhile, I’m down here in my office. My tie is dragged to one side and the shirt is wet on my back. I light myself another cigarette before I pour myself three fingers of some cheap cooking sherry I found behind the potatoes in the pantry. Only then do I run a hand across my unshaven (though undoubtedly handsome) jaw and contemplate the next words I’m about to hammer into my keyboard.

‘Saul Bellow eat your heart out!’ I cry. ‘How’s that for setting a scene?’

Here, I think, you have a touching portrait of a man deeply troubled. A man who has tonight been accused of lacking depth!

‘Where is your killer punch,’ wrote a friendly blogger.

‘Where indeed?’ I replied.

I’m a man who writes his blog in minutes, not hours. My mind only flits here for relaxation while my body does great things in the real world. You might say that this blog is the product of .05% of my brain’s capacity for genius. Yet the accusation that I lack depth still troubles me. I won’t shame those shameful types who have said these things. I only ask that they take heed of wiser words than mine. For I believe it was Cicero who once lamented: ‘high ratings don’t make the man shallow, but the shallow man can have high ratings, particularly on Channel 5 when the show features oily breasts and that guy who used to be in Eastenders and has a metal plate in his head’.

So, what if I’m here for cheap laughs? I always thought there was more between us than that. So much more. Forgive me for speaking on your behalf, but I thought we had something special going on between us. Not in a way that requires lubrication or tissues. I just mean: intellectually. After all, you are members of my ‘Appreciation Society’ and part of that appreciation is to understand my many hidden depths. Work commitments might prevent me from posting my regular interesting facts, but it doesn’t mean than I’m no longer in possession of suitable nuggets of data were you to ever need them. You only need to ask and I will tell you that Australia is the single largest piece of sandstone in the world and that earwigs got their name because they resemble Victorian ‘ear wigs’ that were popular in the 1840s. You want more? Well, did you know that brisket is technically a biscuit of meat and that Kent has more homeless Iranians than Tehran?

But I can see that all this depth is wasted on some of you.

I’m travelling up to Manchester in the morning, hoping to find inebriated Russian billionaires littering the streets after the UEFA Cup celebrations. As I rummage through their pockets, I’m going to try to formulate a new action plan for this blog. You claim that I’m not writing enough quality material and I agree. A re-launch is called for. Even the title, ‘The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society’ might need altering to highlight that this is blog written for intellectuals by intellectuals. I’ll leave Elberry to quote his German philosophers and post pictures of flat-chested women who choose to wear no knickers despite the high likelihood of their needing to bend over while standing in close proximity to a camera with a zoom lens. I’ll stick with handling the meaty end of the thinker’s baton, so to speak. I might not have the eye for interesting curios like Bryan Appleyard, know a little about everything else like Nige, nor have an encyclopaedic knowledge of brothel etiquette like Selena Dreamy. I don't know a thing about literature and choose to leave that sort of business to Ms. Baroque. I'm no font loving style magnet like Davethedesigner and my hand could not find the pulse of American politics if you placed my fingers on Hillary's thigh. I suggest you go see Jerry Caesar if that's your thing. And if you want your politics cold and aloof, head over to that frightful bore, Iain Dale, and ask him about ten pence tax rates and Gordon Brown’s habit of scratching his nose when happy.

However, those of you that choose to stay with me will see that I have an abundance of good sense. With the right plan, I might even start to enlighten you to my further hidden depths. You'll discover why I don't trust people who buy 'The Big Issue' and what rare earth metal I've had lodged up my right nostril since Vietnam. What's more: I’ll make thinkers out of all of you. Then we’ll see who still believes that I write ‘a shallow blog’.

The Straight Edge

As usual, an email from Elberry found me elbow deep in the compost heap of my own scribblings. I don’t know what I was doing there. It’s such a festering mound of old prose, unpolished stories, and novels that have far to go before they can even be considered ‘half-finished’. You see, I’m troubled, dear Madeleyites. I’ve been troubled for the last few days. It all goes back to my hosting this year’s Galaxy Book Awards.

I managed to get through the show with the minimum of trouble. Bill Oddie was sitting backstage with a dart gun filled with mild tranquilizers. His job was to watch a heart-rate monitor and fire a dart into my buttocks whenever it became apparent that I was getting too excited. It worked well until I watched Russell Brand receive his award for best biography. I was suddenly filled me with such rage that the darts didn’t work. Oddie missed with one which lodged itself into Jordan's forehead. The poor girl was struck dumb. It was left to Dame P.D. James to leap up on stage and pin me down during Russell’s acceptance speech.

Now I’ve had time to calm down, I’m left to reflect on what has been a week filled with unique events.

First there was kindness when help came from a totally unexpected quarter. A complete stranger contacted me and helped me with my search to find an agent.

Then there was helpfulness. The agent rang me and talked to me for 25 minutes during which they gave me some very helpful advice.

Then there was frustration. Back up in Manchester, I was mildly scolded by a producer on ‘Eye of the Storm 2’. If I didn’t need the work, ‘Eye of the Storm 2’ would be looking for another presenter.

Finally, there’s vacillation. I’m considering returning to education. The last week's sequence of events has convinced me that I need to have some direction in my life. There has to be something more than 'Eye of the Storm 2'. And writing blogs is fine but they are hardly the stuff of novels. The agent told me as much, advising me that there’s no book to be made from this blog. It means that I have to rub out 190,000 words from my list of publishable material and to write something big and new.

Which leads me to my hesitation... The local University runs a creative writing course. I’m tempted to apply for it. How I’d pay for it, I have no idea. Whether they’d accept me is open to question. And how this would help me, I’m really not sure. But as I told Stephen Fry when he rang me on Sunday morning, since he's been in America, I’ve been missing that spiritual straight edge to run my pen along.

Amateur Hour

Bill Oddie advised me to ignore it and mention owls instead. Stephen Fry sniffed a scornful nostril of huff at the very thought of humbling oneself before the people at the Beeb. Judy just looked nervously around the room and then whispered ‘do they need to know?’ It is a good question but one I’m still struggling to answer.

It’s my ‘writing CV’, you see. I don’t have one. Having spent most of my career in front of the cameras, I haven’t enough writing credits to my name. I started to jot down my résumé at one minute past two and finished thirty seven seconds later when I couldn't decide if making a plumb tart with Antony Worrall Thompson live on ITV counted as a ‘professional production’. The fact that I’m now ready to send my competition entry to the BBC’s 'College of Comedy' means nothing if I don’t have a CV.

As you know, the irony of this is that I am Mr. Comedy. I’ve starred in more funny YouTube videos than any other living man except for David Hasselhoff. My impression of Ali G is in the Comedy Hall of Fame. I’ve also studied comedy, theorised comedy and I’ve interviewed many of the greatest comedians, including Lenny Henry, Les Dennis, and John Leslie. I’ve also written 190,000 words on this blog in addition to screenplays, sitcoms, novels, short stories, and poems. And I still maintain the seriousness of my intention to get my ‘Epistle to Jeremy Paxman on the Stat of His Sock Drawer’ included in the next Oxford Book of Comic Verse.

I’m now at the stage where I wonder if I shouldn’t be as creative with my CV as I have been with my script. I was thinking of something along the lines of: ‘at a recent performance of my slapstick routine in Manchester, I was widely applauded, with more people laughing at my antics more than those of the professional mime artist who shared my billing.’ By which you know that I mean to say: I recently fell over in the middle of the street, much to the amusement of Manchester’s shoppers.

Speaking of which, I find myself with a few days before I head back up to that fine city. Having finished proofreading the script to ‘Eye of the Storm 2’ last week, on Thursday I begin work on ‘Eye of the Storm 3’. We will be introducing a whole new range of climatic conditions to the show as we explore gusts and gales. However, before I fall silent, I wanted to say thanks to the people who have written to me lately. I’ve had some very generous responses to my friend’s problems regarding his publisher. Nothing has yet come of it and nothing might ever come of it. However, it’s always reassuring to know that there are people out there willing to help the friend of a multimillionaire television presenter. You all have my thanks and need only ask if there’s anything I can do for you.*

* This does not include: financial assistance, publishing deals, babysitting, lifts, proofreading, help with tax forms, catering, cups of sugar, borrowing my lawn mower, or any other yet-to-be-determined duties.

A Sunday Morning Protest

When it was suggested that I be a torch bearer for the Olympic flame, I had to ask myself if I wanted my name to be associated with a regime famous for human rights abuses and cruelty on an unimaginable scale. In other words: did want to be known as the man who helped support the Sugar Babes?

In the end, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in my shaving mirror and refused the dubious honour of being sandwiched between Denise Van Outen and some Blue Peter presenter. It would appear that it was the correct decision. It would seem that half of London is as appalled as I am in the way that the Suger Babes have hijacked the Olympic flame and used it for their own purposes. I gave a cold shiver as I watch BBC News 24 as the Sugar Babes’ bus drove past the protesters and the dumb music drowning out the intelligent chants. It put me in the mood to do my own spot of protesting. I spent my morning replying to not one but two requests for help from struggling writers.

It’s only because there have been two of them in the space of a couple of hours that I’ve decided to comment on a regular phenomenon. People see what they only want to see when browsing the web. They see only what applies to themselves, what enhances their own reputations. They want the easiest path to success. I can hardly blame them. Yet neither of the authors had bothered to read my blog. They simply wrote to me, assumed I could (and would) help and then launched into long descriptions of their books and offers to send me a copy.

As any of my regular readers would know, I’m a man always willing help a friend. However, I must draw a line at people who sidle up to me on the great internet pavement and ask for the price of a publishing contract. This is not an attack on these young hopefuls but had they bothered to scroll down the page beyond my email address, they might have read about my own struggles. Rather than help them, I’d happily encourage them to give up. The whole world is engaged in the process of writing books and the more I can do to encourage rivals to abandon their scribbling, the more chance there is that my own highly amusing novels (which are sure to sell millions) will find a home.

10 Pages of Funny

So, I finally managed it. In the last couple of days, I’ve written the first ten pages of the sitcom. Whether it’s any good or not is not important. I’m just relieved that I’m finally out of the dry spell that’s bothered me for about a month. The new job completely broke the routine I’d kept to for the last couple of years and which had made me so prolific. The job has also made me much too reclusive when I get home. I’d stopped answering phone calls from Fry, who insists that I help him finish the libretto for his opera about the iPhone when he gets back from America. I’ve not seen Oddie for days; the scent of spring having sent him off looking for the first frog spawn of the season. Even Judy has deserted me for the fresh air of the garden. From my office, I look out on her now, her elbows deep in the loam. Will there ever be such a women to sit on a daytime couch and touch Richard E. Grant’s knee? I think not.

Now that my competition submission if written, I’m going to give it a final polish, add a few more jokes, and then send it off to the BBC. I doubt if they’ll like it. It’s probably far too Channel 4 for their tastes, what with all the midgets and macaroni cheese. Perhaps I should ask you to judge it for me before I waste postage sending it. Only, that would require my publishing it to this blog and I’m not so keen on giving it away for free. Why let the competition know what I’m up to and give them a chance to write something better, with more midgets and cheese?

Liberated from my mental struggles, I’m now in the mood for a walk. I always have my best ideas when I’m walking. I fancy nipping to the local Tesco and spending money on strange forms of bread which I’ll never eat. However, I mustn’t. This is a month for tightening the belt, readjusting the braces and even rearranging my sock drawer. I don’t even intend to buy a single book this month. Well, that’s a lie. I bought James Wood’s ‘How Fiction Works’, which I recommend without reservation if you’re into intelligent writing about books. I think it was buying this book that shook me back into activity. Thank you Mr. James Wood. (And I loved you in Salvador.)

However, I have one bit of bad news. My bad luck is clearly spreading. I can only give you ample warning that if you find that you have inadvertently given yourself a paper cut, you must sever your arm at the elbow to stop the bad luck spreading to the rest of your body. I send this advice out to Elberry, in particular, who I see has failed to get funding for a PhD.

I suggest to him that he write his thesis anyway. Those of us who lack the patronage of a publisher to fund our writing must struggle to do what’s important to us. I see that he makes the point that office work is tiring not because it’s difficult but because it’s easy. I understand this so well. I think it was Joseph Heller who wrote 'Catch 22' in his spare time, at night, after working all day (possibly in a proofreading post in Manchester). I’m trying my best to write after a day working on 'Eye of the Storm 2' but I would say that the majority of we mortals cannot succeed like that. The analogy we’re looking for is that of a car’s gearbox. Any driver will tell you that it’s impossible to move immediately from first to fifth gear. The two extremes are equivalent to the way the mind works when doing office work and doing original writing. You need to build up speed to do the latter. This can take hours, if not days or weeks. The other can be done as soon as your arse hits your office seat at 8 o’clock in the morning.

Towing Caravans With Elberry

I should tell you that I once met Elberry. I have pressed the man's flesh. I have looked into his eyes over a table littered with coffee cups, Thornton's fudge, and unsheathed knives.

It was a strange day when I'd made the long journey up to Manchester to meet that keg of pressurised intellect I'd come to know via the comments he'd left at Thought Experiments. I'd wanted to introduce him to the nation via the teatime show but I soon realised that Elberry is not for a family audience. I was frightened of the man as soon as he approached me outside W.H. Smiths' booth on Victoria Station and asked me if I knew if the trains running to Nottingham stopped at Crewe. It had slipped my mind that this was meant to my coded way of recognising him. Instead, I had tried to get away from this apparent madman and began to make frantic signals to the nearest policeman. However, once the confusion was resolved and handcuffs removed from Elberry's wrists, I headed off into the city with a man whose self-professed aim of the day was to buy himself a new copy of Dante. He explained to me that his old edition had fallen to pieces through overuse.

I ask you now: Is there any way to put a man more on edge than by admitting that you've worn out your copy of The Divine Comedy? Pretty soon it became apparent that Elberry was the most impressive example of what he, himself, describes as the condition of so many office temps: the man or woman of genius 'being used to tow caravans'. He could quote poetry that I'd read and long-since forgotten. He knew foreign languages, which have always been my weakness and the source of much of my own envy. More impressive was the fact that he was unapologetically Elberry. He lacked fear whereas I am nothing but fear. His blog provokes others with his strong viewpoints and pictures of naked flesh, there as bait to those people who are simply not Elberry. In the living flesh, he is no different.

My most embarrassing moment was when I mentioned how I questioned my devotion to a certain brand of notebook. Not having ever had this conversation with a human being before, I mispronounced the name. I still don't know why I thought it was 'moleskin' but Elberry was the first person to put me right. 'I believe it's Moleskine,' he said in what I can only presume was the syllable perfect pronunciation for whatever language it was he was speaking. Ever since that moment, a few hundred yards outside the main city branch of Waterstones and on the corner of the square dominated by The Royal Exchange Theatre, I've thought of Elberry whenever I pick up my 'moleskin' notebook. That one little event has become evidence to me of the distance that lies between my ambitions and my failures, the kind of brain I've always wanted and the sort of brain I actually have.

After a couple of exhausting hours in which my meagre intellect retreated before his seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of literature, I began the long trip home, wondering what to make of the man who had variously left me feeling full of admiration, confusion, despair, and just a little fear. Elberry remained something of a mirror to me. Only, more recently, I have become more of a mirror to Elberry.

I too have moved into the world of the office temp, though I lack the genius to move even a caravan. Without the powers to both write and work, I have been forced to be far too casual with this blog, a project that has always given me great satisfaction. Not only that, I have produced next to nothing. A few pages of a woeful sit-com and a few blog posts are the product of six weeks writing. I had previously written a novel in that time. Yet it has proved to me that the writer's life sits at odds with those of the office worker. To me, the two things are mutually exclusive.

Bloggers exist on the border between the professional and the amateur. A rare few make a living doing what others aspire towards. The majority of us make less than nothing and are lucky to make even that. Yet a cherished few symbolise the woeful gulf that exists between productivity and reward. Despite mundane office chores, they still live a live that isn't compromised by mental exhaustion, commuting, or the drudge of earning a wage. Whatever their achievement, whether it is being deep, difficult, intractable, witty, wise, gentle, or homely, they remain loyal to themselves.

This brief ramble was prompted by an email from Elberry this morning. It made me realise that I'm finally beginning to understand the forces that have moulded the man. He thinks in terms of epochs but lives in a world of Formica and open plan workspaces. In private, he sends the most supportive emails, devoid of all the blood, mucus, and bile. He communicates with me when I'm feeling down and for this I just wanted to thank him. It's as if he fully understands how the prolonged silence of another man who lives to write is really a cry for help.

The New Regimen

After two weeks living according to “the new regimen” I've come to the conclusion that I'm in desperate need of good luck and for my life to change. Tickle an Oddie by the chin and you have a happy man. Only not every man can be pacified so easily. We Madeley men are of bulkier intellectual stock. As Judy and I compete for the literary honours, I've taken an early lead. My new novel is 20,000 words long and Judy is lagging far behind. Yet in the time I've been away from you, I've been feeling utterly miserable. It's been going on for too long. I need to vent.

You might have noticed my silence on the blog and the less-than-stellar performances I've been putting into the afternoon show. I'm finding it difficult to blog. I lack the usual spark. Does it have something to do with the ongoing problems of my one-handed assistant? Oddly enough, I don't think it does. Is it Stephen's absence from my life or the solitary habits of Oddie when spring approaches? I think it more likely. But I also suspect that my 7AM starts are destroying me. 'Eye of the Storm 2' has the mendacity of a flesh eating virus. I find that I struggle through days caring less and less about the world around me. There's a grim satisfaction in climbing in bed at night, so tired that my worries won't keep me awake and happy that the virus has left me with my limbs.

I suppose there's no disguising the indignity of the work, of the place where my talents have brought me. I want to get back to being the old Richard, writing too much and telling you all about my days spent in celebrity adventure. I really do. Instead, I've taken to secluding myself at night in the garage where I've started to hatch plans. I'm slowly turning into Elberry but without the intellectual vigour to accompany my moods. This work breeds solitary men with grievances who bookmark the addresses of mail order retailers who sell hunting knives and crossbows.

On Stephen's Podcast

A sleep has rid these bones of the aches and shivers brought on by two days in a cramped recording studio and other associated duties of a man employed by others for tasks not of his own choosing. Damn it all to hell and back. This is no life for a monkey. Not even a handsome monkey with an artificial mane culled from the heads of Taiwanese virgins.

I'm now bound to a different kind of desk; one piled high with good books and assorted manuscripts of my own terribly overactive imagination. To tell you the truth, I'm feeling quite relieved this morning that friends haven't exposed confidences. I've just chuckled my way through the first of Stephen Fry's podcasts. Not that I found his quite obvious pain funny. I was merely relieved that our adventures together had been compressed down to his confession that he 'spent time with friends'. I'd been sent a warning earlier in the week that the podcast would be appearing but my work commitments stopped me writing about it as I normally would. If my first thought was a quite selfish one about exposed confidences, my second was the worry that there would be many more contradictions from the version of the Great Man's story I'd already published. In the end, I think our two narratives join neatly together. Indeed, as neatly as two pieces of bone held together by screws and plates. The only point where our stories diverge is in the moment of the accident. Naturally, Stephen displays Stephen's usual forgiving nature and lays no blame at the hand or flipper of the manatee. I think we all know different and should continue to show our support for the man by continuing our reverse boycott, by buying all goods made from the manatee.

Listening to Stephen has also given me new ambitions. The last two days of hard work pales when one considers Stephen's schedule. I would offer to take some of his duties from him but I fear he's protective of the little niche he's made for himself as the nation's most ubiquitous fitting, suitably for schedules both evening and daytime; bathrooms and kitchens too, I imagine.

All of which has inspired me – if that's the right phrase – to be more productive. There's nothing like a spell of toil to stiffen the resolve. That's why this is a shorter than normal post from me today. I have something much larger I want to work on. You may get to see it in good time. You might not. I might release it anonymously to the underground and let it become a cult classic among bikers and university drop-outs. Do I hear you ask me about a title? Well isn't that obvious?

'This is no life for a monkey.'

A Day With The Writer's Market

After spending the last eight hours thumbing through the 'Writer's Market 2008' (forward by Peter Ackroyd), I've condensed over 50 pages of details for the nation's literary agents into one helpful pocket-sized listing. All you ever need to know about searching for representation is summarized in the following. I suggest you send them your manuscripts immediately. I know I have.


The Geoffrey Pinfrock Agency
14 Duntcare Road, London, L1 7RF

Contact: Geoffrey Pinfrock, Harry Grebe (historical and biography), Andrew Tinkle (fiction).

Established: 1952.

Insider Info: We specialise in fiction and non-fiction. We are on the lookout for bright undiscovered writers. Although we are renowned for taking raw talent and helping them to reach the next stage of their publishing career, we would much rather head-hunt a few established writers from other agencies whose percentages we are happy to undercut by a few points.

* Geoffry Pinfrock became a literary agent after a long career as a successful novelist, penning three books set around the Swahili Swamp Fever epidemic of 1873. Our agency is proud of its reputation as a relaxed environment where Geoffrey takes a hands-on approach with all new female clients. Charges of sexual misconduct and serial groping are routinely dismissed before our famously long liquid lunches.

Non-fiction: Considers anything with a celebrity face on the cover. No academic books unless it is accompanied by its own series on the BBC. No nature books unless your surname is Oddie. No books about poetry unless your name is Fry.

Fiction: Considers action/adventure, humour (not satire), mystery, romance (no pornography), thrillers, contemporary fiction (but nothing set in Ireland involving peat). We are actively seeking new novels about the angst of simple middle class London folk who work in a creative field such a publishing and turn to the booze and drugs as a form of escape.

Submission guidelines: Do not send manuscripts. Do not contact us via email, post, or carrier pigeon. Approach us in the first instance through a friend connected with the industry or an established name. We will not reply to you unless you're already known to us. Do not approach us in person. We own a bloody big dog who has a taste for human blood.

Clients: Victor Occram Jnr., Horace Tadpole, the estate of Sir. Henry Sellinger Pfnnar.

Tips: No unsolicited submissions, letters, or emails. To make yourself known to us, you should be either be a published author who we already represent or related to a published author who we already represent. People know to us are welcome to make themselves more known to us. The rest of you can just hop it. And yes: that includes you.

Please note: we are not accepting submissions at this time. All manuscripts will be burned on our open log fire while we sit around cackling as we warm ourselves by the heat of your fading chances of publication.

My Monday Moaning

I woke up this morning, gave a loud sigh, and began to gaze at the ceiling. I remained like that for nearly an hour before Judy came upstairs to see what was wrong.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, tearful beneath the duvet. ‘Call it the Monday morning blues or the new week syndrome but I’m suffering from a general malaise. I don’t recollect my outlook on life ever being this bleak.’ With another sigh, poetry came to my lips. I had memorised the lines a few days ago in anticipation of this very moment. ‘“I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space…”’

‘Oh, not another of your moods,’ replied Judy, carrying a pile of washing to the drawers. ‘I thought you’d be up early to feed your beaver.’

‘On days like this, not even a beaver’s the answer,’ I said.

‘Come on, Richard! What have you got to feel glum about?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I sighed. ‘Were I broke, unemployed, horrendously overqualified for every single job, living far from the nation’s media capital, and clueless about my future, then I might have a reason to feel down. As it is, I’m not Fred Talbot. But I do worry that my body of work is not being appreciated by the people that really matter.’

She began to consider my underpants before she folded them and tucked them away in the drawer. She was thoughtful for a moment or two longer than I expected.

‘Since you brought it up, Richard, I did want to ask you about how your job hunt is going.’

I groaned and buried my head under the pillow. ‘Don’t talk to me about that. I’m due in town today to revisit the job agency. They might have news for me.’

‘Well, isn’t that good? They might have found you some work.’

‘But that’s just it, Judy. I don’t actually want a job. I have enough work to do here, writing twelve hours a day for no financial gain and no exposure but knowing that I’ll be a latter day John Kennedy Toole whose work is recognised only after I leave Channel 4.’

To this, Judy gave one of her most meaningful huffs before she went downstairs. Five minutes later, I heard her car spluttering down the drive.

When I did get up, my email box was no great consolation. Five emails questioning the size of my manhood, three from unknown Kenyans offering me obscure financial opportunities, one from a writer hoping that I’d be able to further his career and his novel, and another enquiring about a job at Channel 4. As a generously proportioned man of some financial means yet unable to find himself a literary agent and soon to be out of a job at Channel 4, the emails could not have found a more inappropriate recipient. However, I quickly fired off replied to all ten and then got down to my day’s work.

Which is where you now find me, scribbling this note before I begin on another day’s labour at the keyboard. The problem with writing a blog is that it’s such a small part of my day, a fraction of my output. This is what people fail to see when they send me emails. I have a beaver to feed, a novel to complete, inventions to patent, scripts to polish, ad libs to write, a man called Oddie to polish, and then letters to write and post.

I have a full day ahead of me but little energy to commit to the cause.

The Touch of Nepotism

An old farmer friend of mine, who shall remain nameless other than to say he’s big in diary cows, rang me on the landline late last night. He caught me with a Cadbury’s chocolate finger stuck up one nostril as I tried to bite off its other end without using my hands. You might call my behaviour ‘odd’ but these are the challenges I sometimes set myself just to keep myself sane.

‘Madeley?’ I said, stuffing the remaining finger into my mouth.

‘Richard,’ said my farmer friend, ’I need a big favour.’

I sank back into my chair but not before taking the 500 page manuscript from the desk and putting it on the floor. As I set it down, it struck me, not for the first time, that the title, ‘Fry, Oddie, & Me’ sounds pretty convincing as a collection of my shorter essays and shorter writings, mainly culled from this blog. My agent has been onto me for weeks to get it printed out so she can begin hawking it around the bigger London publishers and procure me a bit of loose shilling for my pocket that had become increasingly prone to muttering to itself and sitting lonely in the corner.

‘Fire away, Desmond,’ I said, though Desmond is not his real name. ‘You know I owe you plenty of favours. What is it now? Want me to come and help you like last time and rub butter into your cows’ udders?’

‘No, no,’ said Demond. ‘Nothing like that. It’s to do with my youngest, Samantha. She’s just turned twenty three.’

‘You want me to come and rub butter into her udders then?’ I asked as I wiped chocolate from my nose.

I don’t think Desmond was too impressed with the light way I verbally fondled his daughter. However, he was obviously trying to keep on the good side of me and let my comment slip by like a well margarined teat.

‘Sam’s always wanted to get into journalism,’ he began. ‘She’s done her qualifications. Got her 2.2 from the University of Luton and she now fancies working for one of the big broadsheets. You know… Like The Guardian, or The Times. To be honest, Dick, if it came down to it she’d probably give The Telegraph a try. But that’s just it. I was wondering if you could pull a few strings and get her an “in”.’

‘An in?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t know what an “in” would look like. If I did have an “‘in”, I’d used the “in” myself to get myself “in”. I’m more prolific than Clarkson and with more opinions that Gill. I’m perfectly placed to attract a huge readership but even I can’t get in the front door.’

He sounded disappointed. ‘You can’t tell me that you haven’t got some strings you could pull. She’s pretty good at writing. Spells well, good punctuation, the lot. And she has a lively mind. Not the other day she noticed have few black umbrellas there are in the world. How observant is that?’

‘It’s clearly Pulitzer material,’ I agreed, ‘but print journalism is not a business for familiar favours. You don’t get into print just because you’re the son or daughter of an established name. You have to learn your craft by spending years if not decades working in local newspapers. Tell your daughter to start out at the bottom and by the time she’s fifty, she might earn her chance to flex her writing muscles with the big boys.’

You can tell when a chap’s disappointed but doesn’t want to show it. It’s all in the verbal ticks he displays when finding a reason to get off the line.

‘Oh, well, if that’s the way it is, mate,’ he said, ‘I don’t know why I bothered asking… Thanks for nothing.’

After I hung up, I surprised myself to discover that a pretty rotten mood had made itself at home in the room. Putting a flea into a fellow’s ear is not the Madeley way. Not when he considers the fellow a good friend. However the assumption that some people have about me just rubs me up the wrong way. Just because I’m famous, it doesn’t mean that I should be obliged to do every rum Harry a favour. Doors that are closed to me shouldn’t be opened for others just because I say so. Might as well hang a bloody sign around my neck reading: ‘“A” list media careers here, form an orderly queue at my right elbow’.

Anyway, I turned off the light to my office, with one small smile directed towards my finished manuscript, and I hopped it up the stairs towards warm bed and an even warmer Judy.

The warmer Judy was already sitting up in the warm bed, a notebook on her lap.

‘Shopping list?’ I asked as I dropped my trousers.

‘Synopsis,’ she replied.

‘For the shopping list? Surely it’s not that long, even for a New Year order.’

‘For my novel,’ she said.

I tried to give her one of my dignified stares. Hard to do when you’re standing in the middle of the room with your trousers around your ankles. However, I think I did a fine job of it. She seemed to shrink in the bed and pull the notebook towards her.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she snapped. ‘You’re just angry because you can’t get anybody to read your stuff.’

‘It is not stuff,’ I told her. ‘It’s clever social commentary disguised as lightweight comedy. Besides, what makes you think you’ll be any different?’

‘Of come on, Richard,’ she laughed. ‘We haven’t been running the country’s biggest book club without knowing something about books. I’ve already got a plot and plenty of characters. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to sit down at the computer and write my first chapter. How difficult can it be?’

I stepped out of my trousers and picked them up. A snap of the wrists and they were folded and draped over the back of the chair and I set to unbuttoning my shirt.

‘Give me the outline,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what you have.’

She cleared her throat and looked at her pad.

‘Justine Pontleby is the 22 year old daughter of well known celebrity chef Gordon Pontleby. Trading on her father’s fame, she lands a top job in the world of afternoon TV.’

‘Impossible,’ I said. ‘Could never happen. A young sniff of a girl like that would never get a break in TV. She’d have to work years in regional TV or radio before she’d even get a chance of the big time.’

Judy just peered over her half-glasses before she continued.

‘She meets debonair Richard Smiley, a charming if slightly psychotic host of a popular TV talk show. Smiley has dark secrets involving an addiction to sniffing Toilet Duck. When he is involved in the accidental maiming of the show’s weatherwoman, Justine is forced to help cover up the crime…’

I shook my head as my shirt fell away. Just before it hit the floor, I flicked my leg and the shirt came flying back over my head. I caught it and folded it in a single move before I turned my attention to my socks.

‘The thing is, Judy,’ I said as I bounced on the edge of the bed. ‘You have a plot but it’s unbelievable. A man as crazy as this Smiley character would never get his own show.’

‘He hosts it with his sister,’ said Judy.

‘Again, that’s very unlikely,’ I replied as I rolled up my socks and threw them on the chair.

Down to my underpants, I jumped up and strode out to the mirror to run through my five minute Tai Chi exercise I do before bed every night. I like to be centred before I sleep.

‘Don’t you want to hear the rest?’ asked Judy as I began to fight imaginary foes in slow motion.

‘To be honest, Judy, I don’t. It seems to be yet another of these unbelievable stories about the corrupt world of the London based media. I just wish you could tell it how it really is, with the honourable people who work long hours on quality programming before returning home at night feeling totally rewarded with their lives. Instead, I suppose it will be nothing but tales of sex, drugs, and stale bread rolls in the Green Room.’

She closed her notes.

‘I already have an agent who is interested in representing me,’ she said.

I was in the deep squat of the tiger stance as she said this. I felt my muscles tighten. ‘An agent?’

‘Felicity R––,’ she replied.

I looked at her blankly.

‘You know. She’s the daughter of old Reggie.’

‘Little Felicity? She’s a literary agent now?’

‘Oh, come on Richard. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Reggie asking us to put a word in.’

‘Did he?’

‘He did.’

‘I don’t remember putting any words in anywhere,’ I replied, feeling so small squatting there in my red and yellow underpants.

‘Of course you didn’t. But I did.’

‘You did?’ I stood up and heard a bone in my back go acoustic. ‘You can do that? You can put words in?’

Judy stretched a hand towards the light. ‘Not for anybody,’ she said with a smile. The room went dark. ‘Goodnight Richard.’

In Tandem With Bryson

Last week I attended at a charity cycle ride around Durham, accompanied on my tandem by the simply adorable Bill Bryson.

Bill agreed to step in at the last minute when Judy fell foul of her troublesome knee which, you all know, has never been right since she ran the London marathon back in 1987. You might say it was a bit of a blessing. Judy can be too competitive at times, whereas Bill was happy to coast merrily along. He’s also a laugh a minute, though this did lead to a few dicey moments when he took his eye off the road. But even when the brakes failed and we were heading for a ditch, Bill still managed to retain his whimsy. ‘There’s nothing like an English hedgerow,’ he said as we weaved between traffic and sped uncontrollable down the hill. ‘It prevents serious accidents as though God himself had planted cushion bushes down every English by-lane’.

A minute later, Bill was picking leaves from his beard while I took a look at the brakes. It’s then that I discovered that somebody had tampered with the locking nut. Bill thought it was just bad luck but I’d earlier eyeballed Des Lynam hanging around the bike racks with a spanner. I told Bill that I wouldn’t stand for it.

‘Nobody tampers with my nuts,’ I said.

But Bill, being Bill, soon managed to calm me down.

‘What would England be if it weren’t for slightly eccentric TV presenters with a compulsion to do evil?’ he asked and I had to admit that he had a point. ‘Come on, Dick,’ he said, patting my on my back. ‘We’ll go and have a pint of cider in a lovely old-fashioned pub and I’ll tell you some stories about my hilarious adventures with Cornish tin miners.’

Which is precisely what I did and why I’ve been hung over for the last week.

So, now I’m back, and how about some bumper Bill Bryson facts? Did you know that Bill is the country’s most popular author, having sold three books to every man, woman, and child? Such is Bill’s success, he’s being held responsible for a forest the size of Glasgow disappearing every day but, to counter this, he personally plants nearly a thousand new trees each week at his own private oak forest outside Birmingham. It there, on weekends, that he dresses in nothing but Loxley green and likes to be called Robin. Less well know is that fact that Bill has the biggest collection of beard-related literature in the world. He also collects vintage wirelesses on which he listens to broadcasts of old 1950s radio. And did you also know that Bill never flies to homeland of America. He works his voyage on merchant ships being a fully trained coxswain and able to hold his breath under water for several minutes.