Frothing About Froth

What should the froth/liquid ratio be in a good cappuccino? Is ‘a good cappuccino’ a oxymoron or does it only become so when we change it to ‘a good Starbucks cappuccino’?

These are the somewhat unexpected questions I find myself asking after a day on the front lines of the Christmas sales. We made it home, leaving the field of battle with only moderate lesions. Behind us there were a few isolated scenes of destruction wherever Judy did decide to tread. Some days I fear she’s more elbow than woman. Presents have been bought for our nearest and dearest. I tried my best for all you regular readers, though I fear that some of your comments didn’t get through in time. It was unfortunate that I couldn’t check my email on my iPhone due to an issue of incompatibility between my gloves and the touch screen.

The highlight of my day was an argument I managed to start at the local Starbucks where I refused to accept a cup of their milky java which contained 70% froth and 30% liquid. It amazes me when I do complain, being on the whole a rather placid man. I would say the Christmas spirit brought the best out of me but I like to think it’s because I’ve been reading A.A. Gill’s ‘The Angry Island’. It has encouraged me to become more overt in my displays of disappointment. Not for me, this hypothesis that we’re a nation of people who suppress their anger and then go and invent new and exciting types of lagging. There are no trips down the Nile because I couldn’t tell my wife that I don’t like the colour of her curtains.

Instead, mug in hand, I stormed the serving counter and demanded action.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t normally do this but I’ve been reading A.A. Gill’s “The Angry Isle” which has encouraged me to be more overt in my displays of disappointment. This cappuccino is more froth than milk.’

The serving assistants looked at me as though I’d asked them to run my cup through a battery of highly scientific tests to detect neutrinos. After one of those long moments in which the world seems to stand still, in silence, one of them gathered the general gist of what I was saying.

‘Cappachino is supposed to be half froth.’ she said, her eyes as empty of wits as the mug was devoid of dairy product. 'They all vary quite a bit.'

I looked at her and smiled. ‘The average human IQ is supposed to be 100 but I sure this fact didn't stop one's mother feeling a great sense of disappointment when it was recognised that we fell below that.’

She was surprisingly quick. ‘There’s no need to be rude,’ she said. ‘It’s not my fault that you don’t know your coffee.’

‘I don’t know it because I’ve yet to have been introduced to it.’

‘Well,’ she replied, picking up the jug of milk and topping up my cup. 'Nobody else seems to have a problem.'

‘I bet they don't,’ I said, darkly. ‘It’s this kind of shoddy treatment that makes me long for less professionalism in the catering service.’

And that, I think, is a truth of our consumer society. We have the perception that things improve because coffee shops have better decor and a more varied menu. Yet the identikit façades mask highly evolved organisms that put the customers’ needs a distant second to profit. Froth is the battleline where we stand nose to nose. They will know the exact froth to coffee ratio that ensures that 9 in 10 people don't complain. If they can sell half a cup of froth, that’s 9 half-cups of milk they save themselves. Transfer that to every Starbucks across the land and they must be saving millions. I fear for the milkmen. Starbucks must account for the majority of those notes left out in the morning that read, ‘No milk today, thank you’.

I think I made a difference today. Gill has clearly changed my attitude and my life. Though whether I was right to subsequently buy two collections of his essays is yet to be determined. There is only so much change that Judy will accept and what that cantankerous / placid ratio might be is much harder to judge.

Preparing To Do Some Serious Elf Harm

It’s now late Friday night and I’m sitting here feeling quite perplexed as to why Cactus TV have failed to send me their Christmas greetings. At the very least, I thought I’d be invited to their Christmas party tonight. They forget me each year, yet here I’ve sat, all night, dressed as a Christmas elf packing a bottle of Blue Nun. I suppose their party is now drawing to an inebriated close with Dr. Raj’s doing his Britney Spears impression with a couple of finger rolls.

I'm also perplexed by the first results of the new poll. Only two votes are encouraging me to write my autobiography, nobody has requested more of my celebrated poetry, and one of you have suggested that I should give up blogging. The only consolation is that the majority of you feel that 2008 will be a year of celebrity nuptials.

Such disappointments perhaps accounts for why I’m posting something brief tonight. But it’s not the only reason. ‘Operation Elbow ’goes into operation at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Judy and I are already girding ourselves for a lighting raid on London’s shops to finalise the Christmas gifts. We’ll be first through the doors when the stores open at nine and we should hopefully be home before the crowds descend. It leaves me with this brief window of opportunity to ask you all what you want. Get your requests in now and I’ll see what we can do. There aren’t many of you, so I’m looking to spend no more than a couple of hundred pounds on each of you.

If you're lost for ideas, why not ask me for an electronic toothbrush or the new Charlie Brown DVD?

Zorg the Destroyer

By eleven o’clock, Madeley was one of those happily contented figure you typically read about at Christmas. A small glass of port had spread warmth through these tired old bones of mine and A.A. Gill’s gently paced sojourn through the English psychology had weakened my resolve to linger a moment longer in my armchair. Already drifting across that boundary between wakefulness and sleep, I had turned off the Christmas tree lights before I slowly climbed the stairs to bed, only stopping off at the bathroom to change into my pyjamas and dressing gown and to fill myself a glass of water in which I would soon leave my million pound smile to soak.

I was about to pull the master switch that turns off the outdoor floodlights and arms the infra red turrets on the battlements, when there was a fretful hammering on the front door. Such was the indecency of the hour and the panicked nature of the knocking, I was immediately awake and my old army training kicked in. I was down the stairs in three leaps and had the front door opened and the intruder wrestled to the ground in the time it has taken you to read about it in a line of my immaculately written prose.

It was only when the red mist began to clear that I recognised the small figure trapped beneath my knee. It was Mrs. Ronnie Corbett, dressed in her night gown and wearing a look of absolute terror on her face.

‘My poor woman,’ I said, moving the sharp edge of my tube of denture cleaner from her jugular. ‘What must you think of me, throwing you over my shoulder like that?’

‘Richard, you have to come,’ she said as I helped her to her feet. She was clearly shivering, obviously with the cold, so I moved her into the living room and sat her in a chair before draped my dressing gown around her shoulders. ‘Ronnie’s had a terrible accident,’ she explained, ‘and they said an ambulance can’t come for a good two hours.’

‘Don’t you worry yourself, Mrs. C.,’ I said. ‘You were right to come here. There are few people in this street that are more used to dealing with emergencies than Judy and me.’

As if to prove the point, I promptly nipped upstairs, grabbed my car keys, and told Judy about our visitor. Then I came running back downstairs and rushed out to the car. I was at the front door of Corbett Manor in less than three minutes. That’s when I realised I was still in my pyjamas and that I’d left Mrs. Ronnie Corbett sitting on the chair in our front room.

I was about to get back in the car when headlights flooded the drive. It was Judy in her little Suzuki Swift bringing Mrs. Corbett and keys to the house.

‘We thought we’d better come along,’ said Judy, who had somehow managed to waste three minutes dressing herself, applying full make-up, and picking out a suit for Mrs. Ronnie Corbett. I told her that I had more important matters on my mind.

We found Ronnie in an armchair, a huge log fire burning beside him, and the poor man writhing in agony. Blood speckled his tartan trousers. His lime green intarsia golfing sweater offended the eye.

‘It was the walnut,’ explained Ronnie as I kneeled at his side. ‘It shattered in my lap.’

‘That is only too clear,’ I said. A pair of nutcrackers lay on the floor, alongside a spilled bowl of Tesco’s finest selection of Yuletide nuts. The poor man had obviously become one of only three people who, on average each year, are injured when an abnormally pressurised walnut explodes with the force of a hand grenade. Razor sharp shards of walnut shell had penetrated his trousers and caused extensive damage to his lower regions.

‘We can’t move him like this,’ I said, examining the site of the injury. ‘Some of these pieces of walnut could be lodged in vital regions.’ I stood up and looked for the nearest phone. ‘We need help immediately or he might never play golf again.’

‘Is it that bad?’ asked Ronnie.

‘Sit tight, little fellow,’ I said, laying a reassuring hand on his head. ‘Stay still and don’t, for god’s sake, tell any anecdotes involving the letter P.’

‘Ah, no… Indeed…’ he said. ‘Which reminds me… Ha! Did I tell you the one about the Polish postman?’ His face winced with pain as he mouthed those lethal syllables.

‘I told you not to,’ I said as I began to dial the number I’ve learned to memorise for moments such as this.

As you know, Judy’s a woman unable to restrain her curiosity. And we know what that did the cat, though forensic evidence was lacking.

‘What about the Polish postman?’ she asked, to my utter dismay.

Ronnie, ever the hero, let out a trademark ‘ah ha!’ and then delivered his punch line with his usual immaculate timing.

‘He delivered the mail on time,’ he said before he pushed his glasses up his nose and passed out.

I shook my head. I could hear a phone ringing. A moment later, there was a click.

‘’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently engaged in an online game of Halo3 under my XBox gamer tag of Zorg the Destroyer.’

‘Hello, Zorg,’ I said, ‘’tis I, Madeley, on Ronnie Corbett’s telephone. We need your help.’

‘Oh, hush!’ said Stephen. ‘Were it that I could lay aside my railgun and come to your aid, but I fear that my gaming reputation would suffer enormously were I do abandon this festive firefight while Zorg the Destroyer currently tops the frag leaderboard and pwns the arse of the Lapwing of Death’

‘Pwns the arse of the Lapwing of Death?’ I asked before I could help myself.

‘Alas, our friend Oddie is new to the fragfest which is Halo3. He has yet to acquaint himself with the tactics of finding himself a high vantage point and a sniper rifle. Some players frown on it, but I, Zorg the Destroyer, says it’s a true Englishman’s calling and the only reliable means of dispatching these alien scum.’

‘Stephen, we need your help immediately,’ I said, hearing a groan from the armchair as Ronnie regained consciousness. ‘A walnut has shattered in Ronnie’s lap. I think he’s suffering from severe shell lacerations, with what I can only describe as potential trauma to his hazelnuts.’ I looked at Mrs. Corbett and Judy, neither of whom seemed to understand my euphemism. Ronnie obviously did. He groaned and again passed out.

‘Ah,’ said Fry. ‘Walnuts are pwning little Ronnie’s hazelnuts? Then Zorg the Destroyer will be there immediately. I advise you to move neither the patient nor his nuts.’

Sound advice. Instead, I got Ronnie a glass of whiskey and poured it down him as soon as he came around. Judy had found a large rug to keep him warm, and we all sat around, taking turns to stroke Ronnie’s brow as he grew increasingly feverish. After fifteen minutes, I was beginning to fear for him. The poor man had begun to recite old scripts to ‘Sorry’, which I thought had been unhealthy enough the first time.

Eventually, I saw lights flicker beyond the window and the sound of a diesel engine pull up outside.

‘That’s Stephen,’ I said.

Judy jumped up and was at the door before the Great Man could knock.

‘Ah! The lacerations of the festive walnut,’ said Stephen, appearing in the doorway. He cast his cape to one side and came to loom over Ronnie. ‘So, might I see the sight of the explosion?’

I pulled back the rug and Stephen winced. ‘Tartan and lime green. A combination that the BBC has happily outlawed.’ He gazed at the spread of the wound. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to remove the trousers. Ladies, could you please leave the room? This will not be pretty.’ He opened his medical bag and removed a pair of scissors with which he proceeded to cut away Ronnie’s tartan britches.

The operation was slow and extremely gory. Ronnie was fitful throughout, though brave and screaming only once as Stephen dug a large chunk of walnut from his groin.

‘Ah, the walnut is indeed a terrible weapon,’ said Stephen, swabbing the wound. ‘Were it only a landmine.’

Around three o’clock in the morning, the last stitch had been sewn and a good colour had returned to Ronnie’s face.

‘There,’ said Stephen standing up. ‘All done. And a pretty little job I’ve done of it. You were damn lucky, young Corbett, that I spend a few months last Autumn training to be a surgeon.’

‘I’m so grateful,’ whispered Ronnie. ‘I’m grateful to the two of you.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Stephen. ‘What are friends for if it’s not for coming to dig fragments of walnut from your unmentionables.’ He turned to look at me. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I have spent the last hour trying my best not to mention that large gap in Richard’s pyjama bottoms exposing his lack of underwear and the coldness of the evening.’

Ronnie smiled. ‘Nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times,’ he said as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I closed the gap in my pyjamas but Stephen just patted my shoulder. ‘My advice to you sir, is fear not the walnut! Were one to explode in your lap, it could only correct the deficit that nature so cruelly intended.’

My Letter To Cactus TV

Much to my horror, I've today realised that I haven't thanked the good people at Cactus TV for all the work they've put in over the last twelve months, making the show the success it is. I've hastily dispatched the following email to them, along with my official Christmas card.


Hi Guys!

Many years ago, a star shone brightly over Romford, East London, and a baby boy was born. That child grew up and, yay, how the people loved him! Well now that boy is a man and he wants to wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Speaking for all of us at ‘The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society’, I just wanted to say that ‘The Richard&Judy Show’ is a success because of the little people. And by little people, I don’t mean nanuses.* I mean you guys at Cactus TV. You are the people who put the shows together and it wouldn’t be the same without your input.

So, have a great holiday and a spirited New Year,

Hugs, squiggles, and kisses,

Dick

* I don’t mean to jump to any conclusions. If you do employ any people of diminutive size, then it’s quite clear that they also contribute to your much deserved success. Granted, they probably don’t do any heavy lifting work, like shifting scenery or moving the sofa, but I’m sure they do work that’s commensurable with their size and I would want to send them my suitably proportioned best wishes for the festive season.

The Autobiography: BBC Radio Carlisle

Both The Daily Mail and The Sunday Times have contacted my agent to see if they could be the first to print details from my forthcoming autobiography. Instead, I’ve decided that you, the dear disciples of my Appreciation Society, should have the first opportunity to read extracts from the book. Unfortunately, there were certain contractual obligations I was forced to accept along with my £500,000 advance and I only have permission to post a few chapters here. The rest of the book will have to remain a secret until it goes to press in the summer.

For the moment, I hope you'll enjoy chapter one, which opens at the beginning of my broadcasting career, when I was working at BBC Radio Carlisle.

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

In the beginning, there were knees.

There were two knees, to be precise, dressed in an airy fold of chequered trouser with full Donny Osmond flair, and they were both mine, rattling together at a good rate as I counted off the steps leading up to the newsroom at BBC Radio Carlisle. The peculiar garb surrounding the knees could be attributed to the wild days of 1975, their energy to the fact that this thin grub of a nineteen year old had just come back from recording the interview that would change his life.

How strange it is to describe my younger self. Six ripe feet of confidence, an inch or so of ambition, and the whole thing topped off with a twist of something special. Young Madeley was made in my image, or I made in his, and there was nothing that was going to stand in the way of our reaching the top.

My shoulder made light work of the newsroom doors as I barged into the studios that day. I marched towards my desk at the rear of the office, giving a mighty lung of ‘Hi guys!’ to the small enclave of reporters stuck there.

‘Ah, Madeley,’ said old Ben Primrose, the station’s chief newsreader, editor, and the man who taught me the golden rule that reporters always go that extra mile for a good scoop. He was sitting on his chair, feet on his desk, and a pencil prying that extra mile into the cavity of his right nostril. ‘I trust you’re sounding so bright because you’ve finally brought me the piece on the council’s grid replacement policy I asked for last week.’

‘I’ve got something better,’ I told him. ‘Prepare to see the future! The impish charm of Madeley has done it again!’

‘Done what?’

I brushed him aside and made my way to the desks beyond. One was my own; the other, that of Simon Drisdale, a behemoth of casualwear and skin conditions. He was related to Primrose in a way that I never did establish and was rapidly making a name for himself as a local crime reporter, first on the scene of every snatched bag and tampered parking meter.

‘I have in my possession a tape containing twenty minutes of quality gossip and chat.’ I turned to face the pair of them as I set my heavy tape recorder on my desk and let the strap fall from my shoulder.

‘Gossip?’ scoffed Drisdale. ‘And here I was thinking that you were out there working on a proper story.’

‘Gossip can be news too,’ I said, taking off my jacket and sitting down at my desk. The big tape deck had rubbed my shoulder raw but it had been worth it.

‘So who have you interviewed?’ asked Drisdale.

Officially, Primrose was the only person who could question me about my role in the news department. Not that this stopped his relative-of-undisclosed-significance from giving me the third degree when he felt like it.

I looked at him and felt a smile spread my upper cheeks. ‘On this tape I have an interview with the nation’s favourite funny man.’

‘Richard Briars!’ laughed Ben from the other desk. ‘I love The Good Life as much as the next person but it’s hardly news.’

‘It’s not Richard Briars,’ I replied.

‘Eric Morecambe?’ returned Drisdale. ‘Bob “Golden Shot” Monkhouse? The Honourable Nicholas Parsons of “Sale of the Century” fame? Or is it Ed “Stewpot” Stewart from “Crackerjack”?’

‘Crackerjack!’ cried Ben.

I was in no mood for antics. ‘I’m talking about Bill Oddie.’ I said at last.

‘The Goodie?’ snorted Ben. ‘Are they still going?’

‘Man, oh, man! Are they! This is 1975!’ I said, winding the spool to the beginning of the interview. ‘The Goodies are this decades Beatles, only they’ve promised us that they’ll never break up.’

‘Perhaps they should,’ said Ben. ‘Then you might have some news for me and a good reason why this radio station continues to ignore the large scale replacement of the county’s grids.’ He swung his legs from the desk and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he ran a hand across his well oiled comb-over. It was the hairstyle of choice for any true radio or TV journalist and I had found myself envying it on more than one occasion. ‘You really don’t understand what we’re doing here, do you Madeley?' he asked. 'People turn on their radios to hear news. They want to know about the world situation, what the Mr. Wilson has to say…’

‘And crime,’ added Drisdale. ‘People want to know that their handbags are safe and, if they’re not safe, they want us to assure them that The Sweeney are just around the corner.’

‘Exactly right, Simon. You see, Madeley, our audience expect us to be serious. They don’t turn on the radio to be entertained. They want news about grids. Not some squeaky voiced hippy telling us about a show he’s made for dim witted children.’

‘But the news of the future will be like this,’ I protested. ‘The news of the future will be full of celebrity gossip and journalists won’t have to go out and get stories. Stories will come to us. We won’t have to talk about grids. We’ll spend our days with interesting people, learning about their fascinating projects. We won’t need to go down to community centres and interview people about bring and buy sales. Journalists of tomorrow won't know how to spell "fête". We’ll be in state of the art studios, listening to Cilla Black tell a funny anecdote about Johnny Morris and a lemur.’

Ben picked his pencil again, only this time to use its moist end to gesture at me. ‘Cilla Black’s lemur might be the future, Madeley,’ he said, ‘but, while I’m in charge, you won’t be filling our airtime with any of that celebrity rubbish. You need to sort yourself out or you’ll never be a success here at BBC Radio Carlisle. If you aspire to sit in this seat, you’ll have to learn what it is that people want. Remember, it might not be as exciting as interviewing Bob Oddle, but there’s nothing wrong with an honest story about grids.’

History teaches us that the briefest of moments can radically change the future. This could well have been one of those times. I sat at my desk, fury cramping my hands on that tape machine. I looked up into Drisdale’s face and saw a look of elevated pleasure inflating his cheeks until they were taut, red, with a sheen of delight as though they were ready to burst.

Barely able to hold my anger back, I grabbed my jacket.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Ben.

‘I’ve left my notebook at Bob Oddle’s hotel room,’ I lied and stormed from the building. I thought I’d never go back.

That night, I lay alone in my room in the small bedsit on Viaduct Road and stared up at the cracked, water-stained plaster, much as I imagine Michelangelo occasionally took a gander at a ceiling and wondered how it would look with a few pert breasted nymphs. Only I saw visions of a different kind. I saw sofas and television sets dressed in creams and shades of pastel. I saw happy faces engaged in light hearted banter about a whole manner of interesting subject. I could see myself, sitting alone on that large sofa, talking to the world’s most celebrated people and occasionally cutting across what they were saying with a choice observation of my own. Just as I began to interview Dolly Parton and tell her about uses of mutton in the Restoration, a voice cut through it all and brought me back to Carlisile.

‘Richard? There’s somebody on the phone,’ shouted Mrs. Crumb, my landlady, from the bottom of the stairs. ‘He says his name’s Ben.’

I picked up the phone with a sullen grasp, all fingers and very little palm.

‘Hello?’ said a voice I knew at once wasn't that of Ben Primrose. ‘Is that young Madeley?’

I said that it was.

‘Bill Oddie here…’

My heart skipped not one beat but a few and certainly enough to kill a less healthy man. Poor old Mrs. Crumb. Through the persistent wax that plugs her ears, ‘Bill’ had become ‘Ben’. Instead of being told that I’d been relieved of my grid reporting duties at BBC Radio Carlisle, I was again speaking to the world’s greatest Goodie.

‘Are you the young chap who came and interviewed me today?’ asked Oddie. ‘Only, I was wondering if my interview had been broadcast yet.’

‘N… no, no it hasn’t,’ I stammered. ‘And to be honest, it might never get broadcast.’

‘Oh,’ said Bill. ‘Was it not good enough?’

‘It’s not that, at all. I’ve been told the interview doesn’t fit with the news policy of BBC Radio Carlisle.’

‘I see,’ said Oddie. ‘That’s a bit awkward isn’t it? Still, I suppose there’s no harm done. You can always boast that I’m the Goodie that got away.’

‘That’s not the point,’ I said, my passion overwhelming me. ‘They should play your interview. I know there are lots of people out there who want to hear about your life as a Goodie. They want to know if Graham’s sideburns are really his own? Does Tim really wear union jacket underpants? Do you all sleep in the same bed and, if so, who lies in the middle?’

‘Oh, it will all have to wait for another time,’ replied Bill. ‘Don’t be too down about it. It’s not that important. It’s just an interview…’

‘But it isn’t just an interview,’ I said, scolding the man. ‘Can’t you see that’s the problem? This is about the future.’ Somewhere, my appeals had turned into sobs and my face felt the heavy grease of the deepest tears. ‘Why do interviews have to be dull? Why should the interviewer not ask the questions that everybody wants answered? And why can’t I occasionally chip in with a word or two of my own? Were you offended just because I stopped the interview to explain my theory on how termites reproduce?’

‘No…’

‘Of course you weren’t!’ I replied. ‘If anything, it turned an average interview into something that would enhanced our mutual reputations. And don’t you see that this is the future? Didn’t people tell the young Henry Ford that he was mad when he fitted a petrol engine to an ironing board? But didn’t he show them?’

Oddie seemed startled. His voice rose an octave. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that he did… An ironing board? Fancy that.'

‘The first petrol power ironing board,’ I corrected.

‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘But regarding my interview, I’m sure you’ll take them around if you tell them how you feel about it.’

‘They might do, except I’ve decided to quit,’ I explained, as much to myself as to Oddie. I’d worked so hard to get a break in journalism that, until this point, I hadn’t been able to acknowledge how far this setback had taken me. My voice was strangled by emotion. ‘The truth is, Mr. Oddie,’ I gasped, ‘I’m beginning to think that the news business isn’t for me…’

I didn’t wait for a reply. So overwhelmed by disappointment, I simply thanked him for ringing me and I hung up the phone. Soon I was back in my room. I dropped onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep, my own tears replaced by those of a specially invited audience of viewers laughing at my interview with Bob Hope.

The noise of feet storming the stairs woke me, perhaps an hour later. Then the door rattled.

I rolled out of my cot, surprised to find myself still wearing my office clothes.

Light blistered my eyeballs the moment I opened the door.

They were colours like I’ve never known, cast into shapes, psychodelic and mysterious, where the wild orient mated with abstract geometry with a hint of the Hawaiian. A shirt the colour of a molten sky was being assaulted by a gold medallion, handing over a pair of bright yellow dungarees. The whole ensemble was overgrown by coarse black hair, spouting from every opening yet the whole of this burning mess reached no higher than my elbows.

Standing on the doorstep was a bundle of fundamental elements, in a hot state of comic fusion.

‘Grab your coat and come with me,’ said the nation’s favourite Goodie. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’

Playing God

That oaf Clarkson rang me, Sunday afternoon, when I had my heels set to the horizontal and a bowl of cornflakes dancing in my lap. I hadn’t got up late as much as transferred my slumber from the bed to my favoured armchair. You know the one… with the large vibrating cushion? On a medium massage, the chair can turn a bowl of milk into butter before you’ve finished spooning flakes of cereal to your mouth. I was certainly in no fit mood to be taking telephone calls from men with points to prove.

‘Dick? Jeremy,’ said Clarkson. ‘Listen. You know Top Gear’s not on tonight because of the billiards? Well, I want you to come over. I need your help.’

A large flake of vitamins and goodness hung from my chin, held there by a dribbling of the local dairy’s finest. ‘Want? Need?’ I repeated. ‘These aren’t words a man likes to hear on a Sunday.’

Clarkson sounded shocked. ‘And since when have I not been allowed to ask you to return me a favour on a Sunday?’

‘But it’s a day for cornflakes and football,’ I protested. ‘How can I come and help you when I’m wearing only my dressing gown?’

‘Is this the very same Dick Madeley who needed my help only last week?’ asked Clarkson, adopting that voice designed to mock a man within an inch of his life. ‘Wasn’t it you who said: “Don’t worry, Jeremy. If you ever need help, you know you can call on me”?’

‘But that was a weekday promise,’ I explained. ‘When you do a favour for somebody on a weekday, you expect to pay it back on a weekday.’

‘What?’

I moved the phone from my ear as Clarkson detonated a barrel full of bluster. I turned my attention to a large cornflake which I kidnapped from the bowl before cruelly breaking it on my teeth. When the hectoring noise from the telephone ended, I put it back to my ear.

‘It stands to reason,’ I said. ‘A weekday favour cannot be called in between midnight on Friday and midnight Sunday. That makes it a weekend favour, which are worth far more. You’d then be in my debt and by a considerable amount. If fact, more than I’d be happy to loan you.’

‘I’ve never heard such rubbish,’ spluttered Jeremy.

‘You say it’s rubbish but I say it’s common knowledge. Everybody knows that a weekend favour weighs more than a weekday favour.’

At that moment Judy came in, her face flushed from a morning down at the stables with her show ponies. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’ll put you on speaker phone and let’s see what Judy has to say.’

I pressed the button and the red light came on the phone. ‘Are you there Jeremy?’

‘I’m here,’ sighed Clarkson.

‘Now, Judy, let me ask you since you’re impartial…’ Jeremy sniffed his distain at that one. ‘If a man does another man a favour on a weekday, can that other man expect to call his friend to do them a favour on a weekend? Doesn’t this other favour have to weigh the same?’

‘There’s no such thing as the weight of a favour,’ answered Judy, much to my surprise. ‘When you do a favour for a friend, it doesn’t matter what day of the week it is.’

‘See!’ cried the phone. ‘Good old Judy. Well done my dear. Now get your lazy husband out of his chair and get him down to my place. I need his help.’

With the argument lost, the appeal of my bowl of cornflakes faded. Even my vibrating cushion seemed to mock me. I dumped breakfast in the waste disposal, threw my dressing gown on the living room floor, and marched myself naked back to my bedroom where I dressed myself as though it were a weekday. Forty minutes later, I was in light casuals, open necked shirt, sunglasses hooked coquettishly in the V, and pulling up at the gates to Clarkson’s place. I was surprised to see that they were already open and even more surprised when a donkey came trotting out, Clarkson trailing behind it.

‘You took your damn time,’ he said, dragging a reign on the donkey and bringing it to a stop.

‘What’s with the mule?’ I asked.

‘This is Florence,’ he said, a bit dopy, and grabbed the donkey by an ear. ‘Lovely creatures, donkeys. Very docile.’

‘And this is what I’m here for? A donkey related problem? Why didn’t you call Oddie? You know he loves this sort of thing.’

‘You don’t even know what this sort of thing is,’ said Jeremy. ‘You see a donkey and assume it’s some woolly eared job involving cardigans. Well it isn’t. I’ve got you here for a totally different reason. I want you to play God.’

‘God?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you think I grow tired of being typecast?’

‘I’m sure you do but the local sect of Christian types have asked to borrow my donkey for their nativity. They’ve also asked me to play the voice of God.’

‘There’s a terrifying thought,’ I muttered.

‘I’ve agreed but I’ve got cold feet or, at least, a slightly chilled larynx. That’s why I rang you. I want you to do it in my place. There’s not much to it. Lots of proclaiming. You get to say “thee” and “thou” a lot. And the occasional roar.’

‘You didn’t think of ringing Fry? The man’s a born actor.’

‘I did but he said he thought the role beneath him,’ explained Jeremy. ‘Oddie agreed to do it only so long as he could leave the earth not to the meek but the meerkats.’

I could see Jeremy’s problem. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, resigned to do the man a favour, ‘but you’ll have to pay me back. This is worth at least a few hundred words for my blog.’

‘Anything,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ll even let you ride Florence down to the village hall if you like.’

‘I’ll leave that to you, Jeremy,’ I said, backing towards the Range Rover. ‘I’ll meet you down there. These days, God prefers to travel in his four by four listening to Chris de Burgh’s greatest hits.’

Clarkson visibly paled. ‘Oh my merciful heaven! Chris de Burgh?’

‘What can I say, Jeremy? God does like to move in mysterious ways...’

Madeley Restored

The sparrows were not at fault.

I should have known all along that they could not be culpable. It shouldn’t have taken my ringing up Bill Oddie to bring them back and install them back in the eaves for me to know they do not boost a WIFI signal. According to Fry, the reason my broadband failed was because the line had been ‘severed by either a vengeful rodent or a sullen wife’. Judy claims she knows nothing of snipped cables, though if you were to put her on a lie detector, I’m sure the truth would come pouring out of her. She’s been oddly happy today and, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that my broadband was sabotaged in order to get me out of the house.

If so, then I need to thank her. I sometimes forget how good it is to get away from this office. I spend relatively little time in London and I sometimes forget how much it frees the brain of the cobwebs that accumulate over the weeks and months of labouring with words. Writing the scripts for the next series of The Richard&Judy Show, along with writing much of the material for Dick Justice, I have become like the proverbial candle lit at both ends. Yesterday, the two flames met at the middle and there was no more. I could barely rouse myself to write a word, despite their being an episode from Sunday that’s worth relating as it’s both festive and involving Clarkson at his most argumentative.

Now I’m home, I’m eager to write and I’m burning white hot with ambitions and ideas. You might have to give me 24 hours or so to catch up. I’m also working my way through a copy of The Angry Island that began as pristine and slowly getting dog-eared.

I’ll end this update here. I can hear the sound of a ladder being propped against eaves. It will be Oddie, back to remove sparrows for the second time today. Hopefully my broadband connection will hold up and I’ll be able to post this.

Service Announcement: Regarding Sparrows

If you care to imagine Bill Oddie scrambling up a set of ladders in order to rescue sparrows trapped beneath the ramparts of the Madeley home, then you’d have an idea of the events of yesterday afternoon and why I’m writing such a short post this lunchtime. The sparrows seemed to hold the key to my broadband connection. Since their removal, I’ve had no internet and have been forced to a cafe in the city from where I’m posting this. It’s a sobering experience for a man of my celebrity.

Until Fry can come around later today (he’s very busy, at the moment, recording voice overs), I’ll be off the radar. He suspects that the sparrows were acting as some kind of free flying booster units to my wireless connection and thinks there may well be a fortune to be made in this discovery. I’m not so sure but I can only ask you to bear with me.

Normal service will resume shortly with a particularly galling account of my Sunday spent with Jeremy Clarkson. In the meantime, I’m off to do some Christmas shopping.

The Celebrity Standings

Seventeen days into December, I see that 'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' has grown by around twenty six thousand words. Had I been aiming for literary prizes, I’d be a quarter of the way through my novel set in Ireland. My poor Irish orphan would still be struggling to overcome her allergy to stout, and I’d be beginning to chart her rise to become the most powerful woman in the land. Sometime in January, I’d be describing how she swims off into the Atlantic leaving a hairy-lipped peat cutter to bewail his unconsummated love over her bloated corpse. Something like that... I haven’t worked out the details but it's the stuff of literary prizes, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Since the pre-Christmas slump has started, I thought I’d begin to ease myself into holiday mode. This is aided by the simple fact that I don’t need to write any 2000 word accounts of my day. It has been, in all things, quite normal. Bill Oddie popped by this morning to borrow Judy’s Black & Decker Workmate and I’ve agreed to nip to see Jeremy and pick up the manuscript to his latest collection of essays. As usual, I’m proofreading it for him and he has got to the point where he trusts my eyes above all other.

What I thought I would do today is spend some time completing a job that has been long delayed. Reading back over some recent comments, it occurred to me that the battlelines aren't clearly drawn in the world of showbiz. You might think that in a world as friendly as light entertainment, I’m here to sing the praises of all men and woman who labour under the weight of talent. And you’d be wrong. An Oddie is quite different to a Cowell. A Clarkson is very unlike an Osbourne.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to produce my official list of celebrities. This will firmly establish for all of you reading my blog, who is on the side of Madeley and who isn’t. As you can see, there are a few surprises. The Osbourne’s remain a divided family. While we can, without fear of contradicting ourselves, declare Sharon and Jack as undesirables, it’s hard to be negative to a man so monumentally insane as Ozzie. Nor can we overlook Kelly’s work in bringing peace to Rwanda. You can also see that we’re still faced with the problem of a waxing James Blunt. His appearance on 'Top Gear' proving that he’s essentially one of the good guys but, unfortunately, he is still insists on opening his mouth and singing. Until this issue is resolved, he has to remain floating at the foot of our list.

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.

Strictly Dreamy

(Left to right: Bill, Judy, Myself, Selena, Stephen.)
Click picture to see Judy's legs in more detail

Barely had the glue begun to dry on Crown Prince Willem Hendrik’s elbow than the phone suffered a harmonic seizure. In my panic, the poor man’s arm fell off and attached itself to my thumb which I then had to shake manically in order to free it from the monarch’s grasp, heavy as it was with plastic cement. Only then could I reach for the receiver.

‘Yes,’ I snapped.

‘Oh, hi… Richard? This is Clare at the BBC. I’ve not caught you at a bad moment have I?’

‘You had,’ I replied. ‘I was enjoying a quiet five minutes in my office, putting the finishing touches to my latest Airfix model from the Great Dutch Potentates Collection.’

‘Well, if you’ve got time, I need a word. I’m afraid we’ve made a bit of a botch with your booking.’

I groaned as I deposed an armless Crown Prince by sticking him beneath my desk. There were more important matters at hand, if not to elbow. Judy and I had been asked to make a guest appearance on the BBC’s hit show, Pro-Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing At Christmas. Our booking has been long standing and we’d already devoted weeks of preparation to our dance routine. With only hours left before the big night, complications were the last thing I needed.

‘Could you be a dear?’ asked the producer. ‘I need you to check your contract. Did we say that your team should have “three men and one woman”?’

My hand reached for the file we use of future bookings and extracted the contract embossed with the BBC crest, a unflappable gannet with gremlin passant.

‘You did,’ I confirmed. ‘And we wrote back to say that our team will comprise Bill Oddie, Stephen Fry, Judy and myself. So that’s two men, one woman, and an Oddie.’

‘That’s just it,’ said the producer. ‘It should have been two women.’

‘So you’re saying that our team is a woman short?’ I bit my lip. This was not the first time I’ve been left to rue the inefficiency of the BBC. They once promised me a James May but delivered a Keith Chegwin.

‘We can provide an extra dancer without a problem,’ said Clare the Producer. ‘We’ve had Kerry Katona training in case of an emergency like this. She can join up with you at a moment’s notice.’

‘I’m sure she can,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t think that sounds very safe.’

‘Safe?’ asked the producer.

‘Well, isn’t it dangerous asking four people to dance over my dead body?’ I snapped.

‘I see,’ came the reply. ‘So am I to take it that you have a problem with Kerry?’

‘I have more than a single problem with Kerry. She’s epitomises what’s wrong with this country. Publishers sell her novels though she doesn’t write them, supermarkets use her to promote a healthy lifestyle she doesn’t herself follow, and her personal life is like some rogue state that’s just gone nuclear. To say that I don’t fancy flinging my hips around a dance floor with her would be something of an understatement. I’d prefer to dance the cha-cha-cha with North Korea.’ I rubbed a hand across my immaculate brow. ‘Look, leave it with me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I can find some able bodied woman with an immaculate sense of rhythm.’

‘Well, if you say so, Richard, but in my experience, ballroom dancers are hard to find.’

I came off the phone and uttered Clarkson’s favourite expletive. This was the last thing I needed. The Christmas work has begun to come in thick and fast and I could see that I wouldn’t even get chance to watch myself on Have I Got New For You? I went to find Judy who was busy swimming lengths in our indoor heated pool.

‘Cock up on the Pro-Celebrity Stricture Come Dancing Christmas Special front,’ I said. ‘We’re a woman light.’

Judy trod water as she cleared out an ear that had become waterlogged. ‘Did you just say we’re a Norman light?’

‘I said a woman. And not just any woman. A woman who knows the foxtrot inside out.’

‘We’ve been taking months of secret lessons to get us up to speed,’ said Judy. ‘Who could we possibly ask? We don’t even know anybody called Norman.’

Poor Judy. Her inner ear is such a weakness. She has large earholes, you see, and her lobes also have a natural tendency to attract water. When she’s been swimming, we’re lucky if her hearing is back to normal within a week of her drying out. I went back to the office and rang Oddie.

‘Simple,’ said Bill. ‘Katie will do it.’

‘Katie?’

‘Kate Humble. We present "Autumnwatch" together. Lovely girl. She has an eye for a fine badger.’

‘That’s well and good,’ I replied, ‘but can she dance?’

‘Not a step,’ laughed Bill, ‘but there’s no better woman when you need to identify the call of the screech owl.’

I hung up, leaving Oddie with a promise to ask Katie if we couldn’t find a better alternative. All things considered, if it got that bad, I’d have even consider a screech owl.

‘Stephen?’ I said moments later after the speed dial had finished speeding through his forty seven digit phone number. He’s not so much ex-directory as triple-ex directory. There’s nothing that Stephen appreciates more than his privacy.

‘Ay, ’tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently practising my foxtrot for Pro-Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing’s Christmas Special.’

‘Odd that you should mention it,’ I said. ‘’Tis I, Richard, one Norman light for our team.’

‘Did you say a “Norman”?’

‘A woman. A woman,’ I cried. ‘What’s wrong with people today?’

‘A woman. I see… And is that just one woman we're short?’ he asked, apparently unfazed by the problem.

‘You make it sound like it’s a triviality. We need a woman with immaculate timing and an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary ballroom dancing. This is a woman who has to dance on national TV with Bill Oddie. She has to be good.’

‘Simple,’ he said. ‘Ask Selena Dreamy.’

I was astonished at how the man’s mind works. I’ve said it before but it’s just not connected like those of normal human beings. He’s definitely got the full spec at Mankind 2.0 standards.

‘Of course,’ he continued. ‘When she came to see the mango tree growing in my conservatory, Selena demonstrated a quite admirable set of pins on her. Never has a woman been more blessed by the gods of the rhumba, if not the paso doble, cotillion, two step, and the bunny hug.’

‘Do you know her number?’ I asked, having long ago concluded that the astonishing blog phenomenon known as Selena was really a pipe smoking taxidermist from Slough. That she existed in female form was astonishing news.

‘Naturally, I do,’ replied the Great Fry. ‘What is the point of owning an iPhone if one doesn’t have the telephone numbers of the nation at one’s fingertips?’

‘Why indeed?’ I asked as the phone went silent and I heard Stephen’s fingers begin to stroke his iPhone.

An hour later, I returned to the pool. Judy was practising back flips from the diving board. I waited for her to surface before I told her the good news.

‘We’ve got our woman.’

‘I knew you would,’ she smiled. ‘I got thinking about it too. Norman Collier. He’s always good for a laugh.’

I shook my head and returned to Crown Prince Willem Hendrik’s elbow, the one constant in an often confusing world.

The Big Break

It’s odd to find myself talking about my having a ‘big break’ when I’ve already established myself as TV’s most popular talk show host. Yet having conquered an audience to whom the menopause was a vague and distant memory, I’ve always longed to establish myself with a younger crowd for whom the juices have not yet ceased to flow. I’m still a relatively young guy and I like to think that my finger is on the pulse of today’s audience.

My chance arrived this week and the result will be broadcast tonight. I’m actually relieved that the day is here. It means that I can finally tell you all about it. If you check BBC1 this evening at 9PM, you’ll be in for an early Christmas treat. The last episode in the current series of Have I Got News For You has a very special guest presenter.

I’m not saying who it is but I arrived at The London Studios early last night. The production facility sits on the South Bank, an area I know quite well since it was once the home to London Weekend Television where I made many shows in the eighties. It’s now home to the UK’s most successful satirical quiz show.

The two stars of the show were very welcoming, although they’re not what you expect. Ian Hislop isn’t as funny in the flesh as he appears on TV while Paul Merton refuses to speak to anybody before the recording. He spends fifteen minutes kneeling in a corner of his dressing room where he has constructed a small shrine to the Comedy Gods.

‘Best not to bother him,’ said Hislop as he walked me past Merton’s dressing room. ‘He thinks he’s channelling the spirit of Buster Keaton.’

‘I thought Keaton was a silent comedian,’ I replied.

‘Which probably accounts for a lot of things,’ commented a producer who was passing us at the time.

‘Producers,’ cried Hislop after him. ‘What do they know about comedy?’

‘We know that our last laugh wasn’t at the expense of Anthony Eden,’ said another, going the other way.

Hislop took the insults in good spirits. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered darkly as he led me down to the studio.

The host’s seat is possibly one of the most envied chairs in television. All the greats have sat there. Forsyth, Aspel, Corbett, Fry. I adjusted it lower, it having been left from the previous incumbent the week before. Jo Brand hadn't done a bad job hosting the show but I thought that by saving me for last, the producers were doing the right thing; ensuring that regular viewers went away from the series with a proper sense of edgy, topical satire.

Once I'd lowered the chair, I proceeded to spend some time getting myself in the comedy zone. My main job for the evening would be to read jokes from the autocue, but, unknown to the guys, I’d written myself some topical material I knew would go down a storm. My favourite joke was going to be:

"Gordon Brown couldn’t sign the reform treaty in Lisbon with other European leaders. Critics accuse him of staying in London to avoid the embarrassment of being seen giving away all our rights to non-elected officials in Europe. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said ‘Je n'ai aucun commentaire’ from his office in Brussels."

Like a true professional, I'd memorised my own material so I'd be able to slip it in when the moment was right. As it turned out, I'm glad I was on hand to provide additional laughs. The actual recording went well enough but the writers on the show had struggled to fill the autocue with good material. It was a shame since the audience seemed to have an endless amount of affection for me. However, once I began to ad lib, I think I managed to turn the show around. The audience listened in awe as I began to ad lib a rap around the subject of Ed Balls and primary schools. I then managed to get my Gordon Brown joke in, right after the ‘Odd One Out’ round, when I also made a quite cutting remark about Al Gore and tumble-dryers. I just hope they keep it all in the final edit. Other than that, I really can’t say too much in case I spoil the show.

Afterwards, as a way of thanking me, Paul and Ian took me for a meal in a crowded little bistro not far from the studio there on the South Bank.

‘Order what you want,’ said Paul in a loud voice as we took our seats. ‘After all, you’re paying.’

The bistro broke out into spontaneous laughter and then a small round of applause. Paul milked it for all it was worth while Ian sat gloomily with his nose stuck in a menu.

‘You two must get rather jaded after all these years working together,’ I said.

‘Not at all,’ replied Paul as he sat down. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do without Ian. He’s my little bald Judy.’

There was more laughter, more applause, and, from Paul, more standing up and bowing.

‘Does he does this all the time?’ I whispered to Ian.

‘Only when he’s trying to impress people,’ he said.

‘So I should feel honoured?’

Ian shrugged. ‘Put it like this, I’ve not met a person he doesn’t try to impress.’

Paul sat back down.

‘Me and the real Judy have our marriage to keep us fresh,’ I said. ‘There’s much to be said for sleeping in the same bed as your television partner.’

‘We tried that once,’ said Paul, his voice reaching out above our heads to the rest of the diners, now hanging on his every word. ‘I couldn’t put up with his snoring. Although, to be fair, he was funnier than when he’s awake.’

More laughter.

‘Look, cut it out,’ snapped Ian, somewhat petulantly I thought.

‘Oooh,’ went the crowd.

‘It’s like doing pantomime at the Hackney Empire, this is!’ cried Paul to more applause. ‘Richard, here, take these magic beans I’ve purchased from that bald little elf. Let’s plant them and we’ll see what grows.’

‘It’s always the same,’ complained Ian. ‘He can’t switch off.’

‘I can’t help if,’ said Paul. ‘Once you’ve started to channel the comedy greats, you can’t just turn them off like it’s a tap.’

‘They’re still coming through you now?’ I asked.

‘Of course. I can’t stop them.’

‘So who is it now?’

Paul looked pensive for a moment, his eyes losing focus as though he were staring into the middle distance. Then his eyes cleared. ‘Yootha Joyce,’ he said. ‘Earlier on I had Hancock for five minutes.’

‘Yootha Joyce?’ I cried. ‘You’re channelling the star of a mid-seventies situation comedy. And a bad one at that!’

‘George and Mildred was comedy gold,’ protested Paul.

There wasn’t much I could say to that. The meal soon arrived and we ate it in comparative silence. We chatted occasionally about the business and I told them about my big hopes for Dick Justice, coming to ITV this Spring.

When we’d finished the meal, we slipped out onto the South Bank and the two of them started to argue about a taxi. I would have offered them a lift but Paul had started to channel the spirit of Lenny Henry, despite protestations from both Ian and myself that Henry isn’t dead.

‘He’s as good as,’ said Paul. ‘What’s death if it’s not doing a one man show at the Dudley Town Hall?’

I suppose he had a point. After saying my goodbyes to Ian, Paul, Yootha, and Lenny, I walked back to my car reflecting on what had been an odd evening.

Catch the show tonight and I’m sure you’ll all agree.

Wind Up The Willows

The moment Ronnie Corbett refused to don the frog suit, I knew we were in trouble.

The usual suspects had gathered around my kitchen table, but even to the older heads among us, the night had been a sobering lesson, teaching us that the human spirit is never so foolish than when it’s soaped up on coffee. Clarkson had not stopped pouring the Nicaraguan blend all afternoon. By the time we’d cranked the hours forward to six o’clock, the caffeine fizzed whenever it met serotonin in our systems. You have to believe me when I tell you that there’s nothing so excitable as Bill Oddie when he’s tapped up on the roasted beans of Central America.

‘It will be a blast!’ said Clarkson. His bottom was perched on the kitchen work surface, allowing the rest of us an unrestricted view of the fist tight crotch with enlarged knuckles. ‘Come on, guys. What do you say? Where’s that British spirit? Where’s that resilience to see a good job done?’

‘If he mentions Brunel one more time I believe I’ll try to swallow my tongue,’ muttered Stephen.

‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel wouldn’t have sat around waiting to make a decision. He’d have had this job done hours ago. Come on? Who’s with me?’

There then followed much furrowing of brows as we began to comprehend the scale of J.C’s proposal.

In the end, Fry had been the first to declare his willingness to go along with the plan. ‘If only to hasten myself on to my doom,’ he said. Palin had deliberated long and hard before announcing that he too was in. Oddie had already volunteered an hour earlier. Once he’s on coffee, he’s up for anything. He’d announced his decision with a dozen toots on his plastic duck call.

The only real doubt among us was Corbett. I could see that I would need to set him a good example.

‘As for me,’ I said, placing my hand on Ronnie’s shoulder, ‘I’m always happy to put my weight behind the Clarkson bandwagon. After all, it is for charity. Charity makes big men out of us all.’

As soon as I said that, Ronnie piped up.

‘You’re so right, Dick…’ he began. ‘I can call you Dick? Ha! Wouldn’t want to be putting my Dickies where they’re not wanted… As the snooker player said the ballerina. No! Actually, the snooker player never said that at all. I was lying for the sake of the joke, you see…’

‘Ronnie?’ asked Jeremy. ‘Are you in?’

‘I’m in! I’m in!’ he said, cradling his own cup of coffee high against his chest. ‘Which reminds me of something I said to my wife on my wedding night…’

Clarkson groaned. ‘Look, guys. I can’t say how good it is that you’ve all agreed to do this. I owe you all one.’

‘I would never say no to a cause so worthy,’ replied Ronnie.

We all stared at him for a few moments longer, waiting for him to continue as we knew he must.

‘No, that’s it,’ he said. ‘I can see when my rambling monologues are not wanted…’ He ran his tongue around his teeth, looked up to the ceiling, and then down at his cup. ‘But, of course, that does remind me of a joke about a one legged man and a mule. No, it does! He generally coped well with his disability but he found it difficult to find his ass. Ha!’

‘Okay,’ said Clarkson with a withering look directed to the smallest man in the room. ‘I’ve got the gear in the back of the car. Unfortunately, I can only take one of you with me and that will have to be Ronnie.’

‘I can always squeeze into the glovebox,’ said Ronnie as though it needed explaining.

‘Quite,’ said Jeremy. ‘Dick? Can you, Mike, and Bill go with Stephen?’

‘It will be a pleasure to drive such men of enviable talent,’ said Fry. ‘And Richard is always welcome too.’

Now it was my turn to groan.

The race up to Biggleswade was surprisingly tight for most of the trip up the A1. While Jeremy had to refuel his jet car every fifteen minutes, Stephen’s encyclopedic knowledge of the roads of Southern England allowed us to keep a steady pace. At the finish line, Clarkson probably nipped in ahead of us because Stephen had slowed to twenty through the tight streets. Jeremy had clearly interpreted this as a sign of weakness and exploited it to the full. He’d made up two miles to come roaring down the street, the wake from a sonic boom busting many a gusset in the window of Dorothy Perkins.

‘That journey might have cost be seven and a half thousand pounds in fuel, but it just shows you that you can’t beat the power of the jet,’ said Clarkson once the rest of us had bundled out of Stephen’s cab.

‘Is this it?’ asked Bill, looking at the rather drab stage set in the middle of the town square.

‘This is, as you say, “it”,’ said Jeremy. ‘Come on. The kids will be here soon.’

‘Where’s Ronnie?’ I asked, realising that our numbers were light by one Corbett.

‘Oh hell,’ said Jeremy. ‘I’ve left him in the luggage compartment.’

‘I saw my life flash before my eyes,’ said Ronnie as he emerged from the car a minute later. ‘And I never realised I was so short!’

The plan was elegant in its simplicity. Because of her involvement in high level diplomacy between the UK and Russian governments, Kelly Osbourne had been forced to cancel her plans to light Biggleswade’s Christmas lights. Jeremy had stepped in and promised that we’d all be on hand to put on a scene from his favourite book, The Wind in the Willows. Children from the local behavioural treatment centre were due to come along at eight and we would entertain them until nine o’clock when the town’s Christmas lights would be lit, accompanied by a firework display. The fact that we hadn’t rehearsed a thing didn’t seem to discourage Jeremy.

‘Grab your costumes,’ he said, ‘and just remember that this is for children who won’t actually have read the book. It means we don’t have to be word perfect with the original source material.’

‘You want us to make it up as we go along?’ I asked.

‘That’s generally the idea,’ he smiled. ‘Now Stephen, it’s probably best if you play Mole. Dick, of course you’re Ratty. Bill, sorry to typecast you like this, but could you be Mr. Badger? Ronnie, you are born to play Mr. Toad. That just leaves Michael and myself who are going to be weasels.’

‘Typical,’ said Michael. ‘I came all this way to play a weasel. This is “A Fish Called Wanda” all over again.’

‘You’re comparing this great collection of British talent to a small budget film?’ scolded Oddie and he helped Jeremy pull the basket of costumes from the back of the rocket car.

Michael flipped the lid and dragged out the first costume.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said as he examined something green and rubbery. ‘We did have a budget on “Wanda”.’

‘That’s Mr. Toad’s frog suit,’ said Jeremy, snatching the rubbers from Palin’s hands and holding them up.

‘I’m not wearing that,’ said Ronnie. ‘Where are my tweeds? He’s the lord of the manor for goodness sake. Mr. Toad always wears tweeds!’

‘Not in this production he doesn’t,’ said Jeremy. ‘And I don’t think the kids will notice. A green frog suit is as good as I could come up with at short notice. And you’ll look the part once you put the snorkel on.’

‘A snorkel?’

‘It was the best I could do for goggles. Look, Ronnie, this is for charity.’

Ronnie fell silent, as did we all except Bill who was wrapped in a large fur coat and was getting into his role by sniffing around a nearby hedge.

‘Look, Jeremy,’ I said, ‘can’t Ronnie be a weasel? You could play Mr. Toad.’

‘He looks nothing like a weasel. He’s too short.’

‘That is a fair observation,’ said Stephen, who had been silent throughout the disagreement. ‘In which case, I could play a weasel, Ronnie could play Mr. Mole, and Michael would then play Mr. Toad. It would, I believe, solve all our problems.’

As ever, Stephen had done it. The man has a brain the size of a subcontinent. And one of the bigger ones at that.

Soon, suits were on, places on the stage were taken, and we ran through a quick rehearsal before the children arrived. Although ours was one of the oddest stage adaptations of ‘The Wind in the Willows’, I thought it had some charm. Stephen managed to ad lib his way through the entire thing, improving on the original in everything he did. Oddie paused at the half-way point to lecture the children on the reproductive habits of badgers, complete with mime. Michael played Mr. Toad admirably and his inclusion of some fish slapping seemed to delight the kids. As for my Ratty, it probably stole the show. I managed to get Stephen’s weasel to sit down for five minutes and we discussed the problems in his personal life and I recounted the time I’d had my vasectomy. The whole thing was wrapped up perfectly by Ronnie who ended the night with a long rambling story about his life with Mrs. Mole and a particularly funny story about his wedding night whose punchline was ‘I won’t mind but you better ask the stoat.’

What more is there to say? Christmas lights were lit and then fireworks played their part. The children were herded back to their behavioural unit and we packed up for the evening.

Later that night, after I’d got home, I was stood looking out over the garden when Judy came up behind me.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she offered.

‘I was just thinking how lucky I am not to be a rat,’ I said. ‘Could you imagine what it’s like, living and foraging among rubbish. It makes me so very glad to be human.’

‘I thought that would be obvious,’ she said.

‘Not to all of us,’ I said and put my arm around her as we stood and watched a large grey badger frolicking on the back lawn and only occasionally standing on his hind legs and looking remotely like Oddie, that dear and charming man.

The Official Richard Madeley Appreciation Society Christmas Card

With just a couple of weeks to go and since most of you will soon be going off with families and loved ones, I thought it best to send you my official Christmas card. Getting it early means that you still have time to use it as a desktop or have it printed on a t-shirt and worn to every Christmas party. And if you find yourself feeling lonely this Christmas (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?), you can always look at this picture and know that you have at least one friend in the world who won’t desert you.

Which is more than be said about Dr. Raj, the cheap brain hustling quack. Going away ‘to sunnier climes’ for Christmas. And just when we all need his help the most. The only trained trauma councillor I know and he’ll be thousands of miles away when the turkey hits the Fry. As for me, I’m stuck on blogging duties. I’ll still be here, working my fingers to the bone. Though, I know I shouldn’t, the alternative is ‘Christmas with Cilla’. And no, that’s the not the name of a TV special. I wish it were. At least I’d be able to leave the room. This Christmas we’re having everybody over. Des O’Connor, Esther Rantzen, Alan Titchmarsh... And, of course, Cilla. The only benefit of having Cilla Black in the house is that we have trained singer who frighten off any carol singers. Still, I’ll have Oddie and Fry here to keep me sane.

How did I get onto talking about this? Oh yes… The Christmas card. Well, here it is. Please do the sensible thing and spread it around. The more people see it, the more festive cheer we spread between us.

Richard & Judy's Christmas Books 2007

I just want to take a moment and mention our show, this coming Saturday. It’s a one-off special for the festive season, when Judy and I will be presenting what we like to think of as our ‘gift guide’ to the best Christmas books.

We’ve put all our favourites into four categories which include celebrity autobiographies, stocking fillers, coffee table books and cookery books. Even better, in the studio we’ll have Ronnie Wood, Sharon Osbourne, Russell Brand and Helen Mirren who'll be choosing which of our nominations make it to the final selection.

I'm really quite excited since neither Judy nor I know which books our guests have selected. I’ve already filmed the segments for all my choices but you’ll have to tune in to see which of the following our panel chose for the final end of year book list.

Richard's List of His Best Christmas Books 2007

Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book by Bill Oddie

Gonzo by Hunter S. Thompson

The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry

Erewhon by Samuel Butler

The English by Jeremy Paxman

Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years 1969-1979 by Michael Palin

House of Meetings by Martin Amis

And It's Goodnight from Him ...: The Autobiography of the Two Ronnies by Ronnie Corbett

Life at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

Beyond Good and Evil by by Friedrich Nietzsche

Stir Crazy

It was past midnight and I was as cold and lonely as the proverbial pickle left in Russell Grant’s lunchbox. A member of the local constabulary had his hand on my shoulder as he led me on a never ending walk down to the cells. Along the frozen galleries and corridors, I could hear a radio playing the echoing strains of the second movement from Schubert’s Piano Trio in E flat Major. A slow moving piece, it was poignant, perhaps, but with a certain, resigned tempo that made the injustice seem all the greater.

I’m no stranger to persecution. It’s true of all great men at all times of history. As I always say: if Galileo couldn’t escape his fate with hemlock, what chance have I? Yet never could I have imagined fate being so cruel as to put me away for allegedly damaging the thing most precious to me.

The police had arrived around nine o’clock, responding to a complaint from as yet unidentified reader of this blog who had reported me for kicking Judy. The shock of the allegation couldn’t have come at a more unexpected hour. When the police arrived, I’d been spread out on the living room floor with Bill Oddie. Our attempts to erect a new flat-packed bedside cabinet that Mrs. M. had bought from IKEA had been thwarted when Bill, being Bill, lost one of the half-inch cross-headed self-tapping screws. We’d been crawling nose to shag (or, indeed, beard to shag) in a desperate attempt to find it. That’s the moment the police chose to swoop and when the scene descended into mild farce.

Bill answered the door and immediately screamed a warning that I should heel it out the back. As he began to struggle with the officer, I was on my pins heading south. Unfortunately, I ran straight into a second policeman loitering behind the recycling bins parked outside the back door.

Any struggle was a formality. I was soon escorted back into the house where I found Bill in handcuffs. I managed to talk the officers into letting him go before I was led from the house. It was the least I could do for the little fellow. In return, Bill promised to contact Judy, who was spending another night in London with Denise. Only I knew that, try as he might, Bill would never get through to her. Judy turns off her mobile when she’s in the theatre and nothing could interrupt her watching Equus for the twentieth time.

And so, with Bill Oddie left behind, rallying my supporters, I’d been taken to the local police station where I’d been read my rights and had begun my long march to the cell.

‘Let’s see what we’ve got in box number two, shall we?’ said the officer, stopping before a grey door. He unlocked it and pushed me in. ‘Have a bit of we stay and you pay,’ he added with a grim laugh.

The door slammed shut behind me and I found myself staring at a heavily tattooed bench of flesh which slowly began to sit up.

‘I was dreaming about soup,’ said the bench.

‘Any particular flavour?’ I asked.

‘Scotch broth,’ it replied, ‘but it could have been mushroom.’

My eyes adjusted to the light and I could make out a human form in the place of the bench. It was big man, well over six feet, lying on a cramped cot.

‘So sorry to have woken you,’ I said.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, yawned, and then slowly extended an arm out towards me.

‘The name’s Dave,’ said Dave. His hand completely wrapped my own and it was then that he reminded me of a slightly more tattooed version of Terry Scott, only a good three feet taller and with at least two more pierced eyebrows.

‘Nice to meet you Dave,’ I replied. ‘I’m Richard. Richard Madeley.’ He released my hand and gave a long stretch. I skirted around his legs and sat heavily down on the sponge cot on the other side of the cell. Dave smiled and lay back down. Then, as if to prove how compassionate he was, he allowed gas to escape from his lower dietary tract. I knew then that I wouldn’t be dreaming about Scotch Broth or mushrooms. They weren’t nearly spicy enough.

After five minutes, he looked at me from beneath his brow, thick with grease and rivets. ‘Hey, ain’t you that bloke from the telly?’ he asked. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Madeley,’ I told him again. ‘Richard Madeley.’

‘Ay, that’s him,’ he replied. ‘Ain’t you him?’

‘I am,’ I said.

‘Well I never. And what they got you for?’

‘I’ve been arrested for illegally poking my wife with my big toe.’

‘Yea? Well, ain’t that something? You do that programme with your missus, don’t ya? I sometimes watch it if I’m not busy.’

‘Busy?’ I asked, naively. ‘And what do you do for a living?’

‘Oh,’ smiled Dave, ‘nothing too heavy. I just rob stuff.’

‘You’re a thief? Fantastic! We should get you on the show.’

‘Sometimes I just handle,’ he said, a little shyly. ‘That’s what they’ve got me for this time. Handling.’

‘And what were you handling? I hope it wasn’t toes or you could be in serious trouble under European law.’

‘Not toes,’ said Dave. ‘Just handguns. Glock automatics, Smith & Wesson 9 millimetres. I just do a little trade in them for the local families.’

I shifted down on my cot and tried to close my eyes. Knowing that you’re in a confined space with a man who runs a business supplying small firearms to gangsters tends to restrict conversation. It felt a bit like working on literacy schemes with the government.

We lay like that in the darkness of the cell a good hour before one of us spoke again.

‘So how do you come up with your ideas for your show?’ asked Dave, sometime around one o’clock.

‘With great difficulty,’ I answered, rolling from the side of the bed that stank of urine to the side that carried the aroma of vomit. ‘Ideas are the hardest things to come up with.’

He grunted in the darkness. ‘I have some fantastic ideas for TV shows,’ he said.

I opened my eyes. Sitting in the slight murk of the cell, Dave had the composure of a church gargoyl. ‘I really don’t think it’s as easy as that,’ I told him. ‘For instance, my new series is called “Dick Justice”. It’s taken months of planning just to get the first episode worked out. I’m going undercover to smash the gangs flooding Blackpool’s Golden Mile with poor quality rubber novelty items from China.’

‘I don’t mean making shows,’ said Dave. ‘I mean coming up with ideas for new shows. I’ve got hundreds of them.’

I snorted a scoff and I heard the other cot squeal. Dave was sitting upright, his eyes like menacing stars set against the dark graffitied night of the cell wall, with the constellation of ‘Nark off, Coppers’ rising.

‘You don’t think I can come up with good shows?’ he asked.

‘I’m not saying that,’ I replied, fear overriding my bravado. ‘I’m just saying that original programming ideas aren’t that easy to come by.’

‘Yea, well what about “Felicity’s Fingers”? It’s my take on the oldest profession in the world.’

‘Prostitution?’

‘That’s the second oldest. I’m talking about gardening. Each week we give two teams a chance to race Felicity Kendal to plant a herbaceous border.’

‘Not bad,’ I said.

‘Oh, if you like that, I’ve got lots more. “Earlobe Alley”, “Sugar Rush”, “The Parsnip Game”, “Roll Over, Beets in the Oven”, “Pro-Celebrity Duck Hunt”, “It’s Purple, Doctor!”

I had to stop him. ‘And what exactly is that last one about?’

‘You mean “It’s Purple, Doctor!”? That would be TV’s first surgical quiz game. Doctors compete to diagnose real illnesses from descriptions of the symptoms presented by the nation’s top comedy talent. Think how funny it could be. We’d might have a man with one leg on one side of a screen and Phil Jupitus would describe how he keeps falling over. It would be hosted by Jimmy Carr.’

I have to admit I did wonder if had something there. I’ve pitched lesser ideas to ITV and won commissions on most of them.

It was the thought of making quality programming that probably helped me to sleep. As Dave began to run through the complicated rules of ‘Hey! That’s My Sausage!’ I was overcome with fatigue and drifted into an almost blissful sleep. I awoke at eight o’clock the next morning to a palatable change in the air. The stale cell felt optimistic as I listened to the soft yet lively humming of somebody outside the door. When it swung open, I was not at all surprised to see the man standing there.

‘As you no doubt expected, ’tis I, Fry, having negotiated your release,’ said Stephen. ‘You are free to go as the actress said to the generously blessed country swain she’d helped release from the threshing machine.’

‘How on earth?’ I gasped, sitting up on my cot. Dave was still sleeping and I thought it best not to wake him.

Fifteen minutes later, my shoelaces restored to my shoes, I was walking beside Stephen on the way to his black London taxi. ‘You are indeed fortunate, Richard,’ said the Great Man. ‘You are lucky that I crammed years of legal study into a few weeks last summer to pass my bar exams. There are very few people in showbiz who are fully trained lawyers.’

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I said as I slid into the back of the cab. ‘I didn’t even know you’re a lawyer.’

‘Among many things,’ said Fry, settling himself in the driver’s seat. ‘My practise is small but I like to think that my clients are blessed by the best legal mind this side of Mr. Rumpole.’

‘I’m sure they are,’ I replied and there began the conversation that would occupy us all the way back to the house. I had plenty of talk to get out, explaining to Stephen about my idea for a quality quiz involving the comic descriptions of serious surgical conditions.

‘“Lance My Boil!” sounds like a fine idea for a comedy quiz,’ said Stephen. ‘Put me down as the host and co-producer.’

‘Consider it done,’ I said as we turned the corner of the road and I saw the house in the distance. It did my heart endless good to see all the neighbours waiting to greet me, along with a few cherished friends. Oddie, Plain, Corbett, and even Paxman had come down to welcome me back. But the greatest satisfaction was seeing Judy standing there, tears running down her face.

‘I thought you’d be gone years,’ she said, sobbing into her blouse. ‘Yet it was only one night. It as only one night!’

‘One night indeed,’ I told her as I took her into my arms. She seemed to have stiff with worry. ‘One long and terrifying night for you, Judy, but for me, I saw a night of great things for the future of light entertainment.’ I held her at arms length and gazed into her eyes. ‘I’m going to restore us back to the top of the television ladder. Now what do you know about non-infectious diseases?’

So A Toe's An Offensive Weapon? Well The French Think So...

In the bad old days, prison showers were communal, cold, and full of men called Dennis who were not there for a quick soap, sponge, and sharing in the singing of a cheerful sea shanty. Thankfully those days are long gone. Prison showers now have hot water and nobody expects you to sing. There are still plenty of men called Dennis, though. Sometimes they’re even called Sergi.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this. Well, I’m here because my good friend Dick Madeley is in the clink. That’s right: Dick’s doing porridge with all the Armenian sex racketeers and old folk who’ve accidentally forgotten to mention that their husband wasn’t dead when they claimed on his life insurance policy. It's typical of British justice. Even now, as Dick tries to argue himself out of trouble, hoodies are probably turning his house over, stealing his clothes, and searching the garage for Judy’s home made wine. So, if you see a gang of thugs out of their brains on cabbage wine and wearing light cream casuals, you'll have your men.

Or girls. I mustn’t be sexist about this. They can also be gormless, pot smoking donkeys wearing more chains than a P&O ferry. Though if you ask my opinion, they should all dragged off to The Isle of Man. First prize to the first one to swim back to England. We'll tell them that they’ll win a Vauxhall Corsair with nineteen inch rims and a crate of White Lightening in the back, but if we’re really lucky, the tides will carry them off to Newfoundland where they’ll be culled and turned into handbags for rich Americans.

Still, I’m not here to talk about how I’d reform the judicial system in this country, though God knows that I could. I’m here to talk about toes. If, like me, you have ten of them, you might just be wondering what’s the problem. Well it seems the French don’t like our British toes. It doesn’t matter to them that they’re the toes of Churchill, Drake, and Sir Roger Moore. They want us to have toes like Alain Delon and that good looking woman in the Renault ads. According to them, British toes are dangerous. I know. Shocking!

Poor Richard had barely finishing blogging last night when there came a knock on his door. It was Officer Plod having taken the EU shilling, or whatever passes for a shilling these days. Probably a coat button with Michel Legrand’s face on it. Anyway, it seems that a man’s not even allowed to wake up his wife up by giving her a small prod with his toe. Seems Mr. Plod doesn’t do prods. The British big toe has now been reclassified by the bureaucrats in Brussels. That’s right: Richard’s toe is now a deadly weapon! There’d be more danger if he’d gone at Judy with half a pound of Normandy camembert and a bottle of cheap French red.

While the lawyers argue him out of his mess, I’m here to fill in for him on his blog. I thought I’d say something about this ridiculous situation we’ve got ourselves into. I mean, isn’t it as obvious as the nose on Gerard Depardieu’s face that French rules are written for Frenchmen? British toes are a totally different shape. They’re suited to the rolling green hills of Shakespeare’s country and the hard battered canyons across which men like Brunel dropped their iron bridges. They’re not the result of spending our lives wearing soft canvas shoes while we sit on the banks of the Seine, doing nothing but sipping coffee and discussing free will with a knickerless Béatrice Dalle on a push bike.

Yet that’s the problem with the European mind. They just don’t understand the British. They’re fine when they want to discuss things that don’t matter like whether God is dead or not. Personally, I don’t really care, unless I was mentioned in the will. The French can’t understand us why we Brits want to do something with a purpose. Like go to war or invent the jet engine.

Some years ago, I was driving through France in an old World War 2 Sherman tank. It was part of the celebrations commemorating the Allied Victory. As you’ll know, there’s no better way of reminding the French of the debt they owe us than by driving a thirty tonne tank down the road and ripping up their tarmac. We were going through a small village, just outside Paris, when the mayor came out to meet us. I say meet but he was waving his fists. I had to make a quick decision. Either mow him down with our 30 millimetre machine gun or go out and see what he wanted. A lesser man might have taken the machine gun approach, only I understand the French mind. They use their fists like we use flags with the Queen’s face on them. They don’t intend to look so aggressive. If you don’t believe me, tell me the name of the last world heavyweight boxing champion to come out of France. Precisely.

I climbed out of the tank and had a word with the mayor who seems a little upset by the slight three foot trench we’d dug along the main road running through his town. I explained to him that it wasn’t the fault of the tank but of dodgy road laying policy of the post-War French government and that if they’d employed Mr. Balfour and Mr. Beatty they’d have had no such problem. I then gave him Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s business card and advised him to ring him and get a quote. And that’s when the mayor kicked me in the shin.

First thing he thought: kick the tall English guy in the shins. It’s how they think, you see? To them, it’s not the fists but the toes that are their weapons of choice. To your average Englishman, toes are merely entertainment for your fingers after you’ve had a good walk through a newly ploughed field. As some great Greek person in a dress first put it: pick your toes, not war. Anyway, that’s what I’d told Dick. And that’s what I’m telling you all now. If you ever go to France, don’t go waving your toes around.

You’ll probably get nicked. And you don’t want that. There are even more men called Dennis in French prisons. And sometimes they’re called Pierre.

© Jeremy Clarkson, 2007.