In Katie Derham's Shoes

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I’ll not hear a bad word said against Katie Derham. Like many this day and age, she may lack a certain professionalism but she completely wins me over by her beauty. Had I not already found my soul mate in Judy, then Katie would be the woman for me. Or that, pretty much, was the conclusion I reached when chatting to Bill Oddie when he came over yesterday.

I was on my way back from a lazy Saturday morning jog around the neighbourhood when I met Bill at the bottom of the drive. He was wearing his favourite RSPB deerstalker and carrying a large inflatable carrot.

‘Good news,’ he said, ‘there’s a major crisis at the Beeb.’

‘An invasion of large PVC rabbits?’ I suggested with a nod towards his carrot.

‘Oh, this?’ he waved the orange inflatable in the air. ‘This is for Judy.’

‘Ah,’ I said, as though it made complete sense that Judy would want a large inflatable carrot.

‘I mentioned that I had one and she asked if could have it when I was finished with it.’

‘Stop right there, Bill,’ I said, wiping the sweat from my brow. ‘I don’t need to know any more. Tell me instead about this crisis at the BBC. Am I right to assume that they’ve discovered that the large red button on the National Lottery draw isn’t actually connected to the Random Ball Juggling machines?’

‘Not at all,’ said Bill looking a touch bewildered. ‘The natural history team have been called in for an emergency meeting. Poor old Katie Derham was due to take delivery of the star of a new reality TV show for next autumn’s schedule. Unfortunately, she’s had to drop out because she never mentioned that her house is in the middle of London and lacks a lake-sized pond.’

‘An odd thing to forget to mention,’ I replied. ‘The fact that this house has a lake-sized pond is usually the first thing out of my mouth whenever I walk into a production meeting. But tell me, Bill. Does this have anything to do with me?’

‘Only that I’ve put a good work in for you and your pond.’

‘You mean they want me for a show?’

‘Couldn’t do without you,’ he smiled. ‘Though, to be honest, Dick, you were the only port and this a pretty ferocious storm. The whole series had been thrown into doubt. Production schedules were being rewritten and if it hadn’t been for my last minute suggestion, they were going to defrost David Attenborough from his cryogenic chamber. They’ve been saving him for the day when the icecaps head south.’

All fascinating details, I’m sure you’ll agree, but to cut a short story even shorter: it turns out that Bill had been so impressed with the natural organic taste of my right areola that he had suggested that I might be the ideal man to fill Katie’s shoes. Not that I normally go in for wearing women’s shoes, you understand, but on this occasion I could and would.

After arrangements had been made, agents contacts, contracts signed, Bill and I sat down for lunch and waited for the men from the BBC arrived with the crate. It arrived shortly after one o’clock and contained not women’s shoes but my co-star.

'A beaver!' said Judy when I told her the good news.

I corrected her. 'A reality TV beaver. They've trained him to avoid looking at the cameras. We'll be keeping him in the lake, so you don't have to worry about him coming up to the house.'

In actual fact, the lake sits at the furthest corner of our enormous plot of land. It is fed by a fresh water river that flows in from the Corbett estate and drains off into our neighbour’s land. An hour after the crate arrived, I was standing on the banks of the lake as I watched Bill and Stephen Fry wade through the grey waters. Stephen had responded to my plea for help with his usual display of selfless loyalty. They had been working tirelessly to remove the large map of the UK I’d scuttled there back in the nineties.

‘I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ said Judy after a few moment's thought. She was standing at my elbow and wrapped for winter. Her pessimistic view of the whole beaver situation was, I think, a result of being reminded about the map. It never puts her in the best frame of mind. There has always been a touch of guilt about the way we left Fred up in Liverpool when we came to make out fortune beside the Thames. Judy had thought it particularly cruel of me to sink our weatherman’s favourite prop but I thought it was the kindest thing to do in the circumstances. A man like Fred Talbot would never have escaped that map and at some point he’d have done something foolish, like try to sail it around the coast. Scuttling had been an act of great kindness.

‘You’re only being negative because it’s not your career that you’re thinking about,’ I told her. ‘Come Autumn, you’ll be penning your best-selling novels. But what about me? I need to be seen on TV. This beaver could be the break I’ve been talking about. I could become the new face of BBC wildlife. Can you imagine Alan Titchmarsh with a beaver?’

‘Unfortunately I can,’ said Judy, not without menace.

‘Look here,’ I said, kicking the crate. ‘This beaver won’t bother us. I’ll come down here and feed him in the morning, say my bit to camera, and then come back and make us breakfast. You won’t even know he’s here.’

‘So you promise me that I won’t become part of this?’

‘I wouldn’t want you to,’ I said. ‘This is my beaver. Not yours.’

She crossed her arms and turned back for the house. ‘I’m going to put the kettle on. Ask Stephen and Bill if they want a drink. It must be freezing in that water.’

I shuffled down to the edge of the lake and watched a muddied Stephen Fry drag a chunk of East Anglia from the water.

‘My, my,’ he said as he dumped it on the bank. ‘What on earth are we going to do with a one tenth scale model of Lincoln Cathedral?’

‘If you don’t know, Stephen, I’m sure I don’t have the answer,’ I said. ‘Where’s Bill?’

Stephen didn’t need to reply. Bill surfaced from beneath the weeds. A waterlogged piece of knitting trailed behind him like a net as he made for the shore.

‘Isn’t that one of Fred the Weather’s old jumpers?’ asked Stephen.

‘It might be,’ I said, somewhat surprised to see it. ‘I wonder what it was doing down there…’

‘There’s so much rubbish,’ said Bill, sitting down on the bank and wringing the moisture from his beard. ‘The map’s hollow and there’s plenty of space inside. I managed to dive quite a way down and I’m sure I spotted an old gas cooker and a sleeping bag.’

Stephen pulled off one of his yellow marigolds in order to scratch his head. ‘Think back, Richard. When you dumped this map in the lake, did you check it to make sure that Fred wasn’t living in it at the time?’

‘I can’t say that I did,’ I confessed. ‘It’s not something you look for: minor celebrities living inside large floating maps. I do remember than it took a while for it to sink. I recollect saying to Judy that it was like it had a life of its own, the way it kept making muffled hammering sounds as I pushed it under with a stick.’

Stephen winced. ‘You don’t think those muffled hammering noises could have been Fred?’

‘I thought it mere buoyancy.’

Bill sucked his teeth and shook his head. ‘You should probably get on to his agent. See if anybody has seen him in the last ten years.’

That I would certainly do. Only, at that moment, there was a squeal from the crate.

‘You beaver’s hungry,’ said Bill.

‘Bless him,’ said Fry. ‘Were I a man with a large freshwater lake in my rear yard, I too might indulge myself with the purchase of the castor canadensis or North American beaver.’

‘These are European beavers,’ said Bill.

‘Ah,’ said Fry. ‘Then it is castor fiber.’

‘What’s the difference between a European and American beaver?’ I asked.

‘One is hairier,’ said Bill with an inexplicable smirk.

‘Oh dear,’ said Fry, pulling on his rubber glove. ‘Come on Bill. Let us return to our aquatic toils lest Richard asks us any more questions and you are tempted to more vulgarity.’

It was an odd note on which to end a conversation and, somewhat confused, I wandered back up to the house, thinking it best to leave them to their private jokes.

A couple of hours later, Judy woke me. She was standing at the living room door.

‘Stephen says that they’ve finished,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ I replied, sitting up in my recliner and setting aside the newspaper beneath which I had been so solidly snoozing. ‘Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.’

When I got back to the lake, I discovered that Bill had stripped out of his wet clothes and was wearing a dry one-piece undergarment in a faded colour of ruby. He resembled an old gold prospector while Stephen resembled the old prospector’s offended mule. He was looking at Bill with a disgust it is hard to describe as mild.

‘So are we ready to release the beaver?’ I asked.

‘You are a few minutes too late for that,’ said Stephen, giving Bill another funny look. ‘I have already bore witness to its hairiness. Most certainly European.’

‘Oh, ignore him,’ said Bill. ‘We’ve done no such thing. Your beaver is still in his cage.’

‘Well, there’s no time like the present,’ I said as I went over to the crate and unlatched the hatch. The beaver was bigger than I expect and he needed no encouragement. He came lumbering out like an obese rat and hit the water with barely a splash. He swam out to the middle of the lake where he turned and looked back at us.

‘The good thing about your garden is that you’ve got plenty of trees,’ said Bill, wiping a tear from his cheek.

‘Oh, Judy takes great pride in our woodland,’ I said, myself distracted by a slightly moisture about my own eyes. The beaver looked so happy as it splashed in the water. ‘No doubt our little friend will enjoy rummaging around them looking for nuts and berries.’

‘Nuts and berries?’ repeated Bill. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was looking shifty.

‘Have you thought of giving him a name?’ asked Stephen. ‘I find it preferable to name an animal to whom one is expected to grow attached.’

‘Of course I’m going to give him a name,’ I said. ‘And being a bit of a literary man, I thought I’d name him after my favourite literary beaver. Tarka. I used to love that book when I was a child. Bill doesn’t know this but it’s why I’ve been so quick to agree to make this documentary. I’m looking forward to our months together. I love to watch them lying on their backs as they float in the water…’

‘Richard,’ said Stephen, placing his arm around my shoulder, ‘I really hate to be the one to inform you of this but I believe that Tarka was a…’

‘A lovely little fellow!’ squealed Bill, rushing up to us and giving the two of us a squeeze. ‘That’s what Stephen was going to say. Tarka the Beaver was one of my favourite books too as a lad up there in Lancashire. Such a nice chap, Tarka the Beaver… Come on, Stephen. I think we better be going. Let’s leave Dick alone. He needs to get to know Tarka and Tarka the Beaver must get to know Dick...’

Stephen shrugged as Bill began to drag him towards the house. ‘I should think of another name if I were you,’ he shouted back as he went. ‘In fact, I’d ask advice from members of your blog. I don’t know…’ He wriggled free of Bill’s grip, stopped, and looked at me with a meaningful stare I couldn’t quite interpret. ‘Tarka the Beaver just doesn’t sound quite right to me…’

I waved him away and turned my attention to my newest friend, giving himself a good scrub in the middle of the lake. Beavers are clearly one of the few subjects about which Stephen knows little. I just knew that Tarka and I were going to be friends.

‘Isn’t that right, little fellow?’ I shouted to the lake.

As if in agreement, Tarka bobbed down in the water and I smiled with delight when he resurfaced, a shining piece of wood in his mouth. I turned my back on the lake and began the long walk back to the house. I would have to ask Judy about the tree that grows in our garden and produces branches that are so white that it almost resembled a thigh bone.

The Sting of Winter

Today I was stung by a winter bee.

What’s that? Did I hear you say there's no such thing? Nonsense. I swear it was a bee, though one well lagged against the winter chill, which here in the South West is a rather balmy twelve degrees measured by the Madeley elbow. There was also an air of premeditation about the attack. The bee had been hiding among the grow bags in the garden shed, readying itself for the right moment to strike. And strike it most certainly did, at ten thirty this morning; lancing its mortal barb straight through my shirt, between the weave of my string vest, and deep into my chest.

Given the intense pain – I am, you should note, mildly allergic to bee stings – I ran into the kitchen to inform Judy that poison was pumping its way into my system and I might pass out at any moment.

‘You can’t have been stung,’ she said, applying pastry topping to a pie. ‘It’s winter. Bees don’t come out in the winter.’

I proceeded to demonstrate that they most certainly do come out in winter and they can sting a man by collapsing on the kitchen floor.

The next thing I remember was feeling a pleasurably erotic sensation about my right nipple.

‘Stephen?’ I muttered as I opened my eyes and saw a grey head bent over me.

‘Got it just in time,’ said Bill Oddie, sitting up and wiping spittle from his lips. ‘I’ve got all the poison out. He should be fine now.’

‘Bill,’ I said, reaching for those soft downy cheeks of his. ‘You’ve saved my life… And… And you’ve been suckling at my right teat.’

‘Lucky for you I was on my way around,’ said Bill. ‘I've had expert medical training so I always know what to do with a sting. It is a bit early in the year for bees. I’ll have to make a note of this for our annual Springwatch survey. You’re probably the first person to see a bee this year. Global warming is clearly having an effect and I’ll be saying as much in my letter to the UN Climate Commission. I hope I can get a quick picture of your right nipple for the report. This might be the evidence we need to prove that the world is indeed warming up.’

‘Snap away, Bill,’ I said pulling open my shirt and turning my wounded areola towards my saviour. Oddie played with his Nokia, snaps were taken, and then we all retired to the living room for coffee and some chat.

‘You know,’ said Bill, after we had all calmed down, ‘your nipple has give me an idea.’

‘Has it Bill?’ I asked. ‘And what idea might that be?’

‘Well,’ he said, gently stroking his beard as he does when thoughtful, ‘you know that I have my own line in bird feed? I was wondering if there might be a market in bees.’

‘Bees?’

‘They are our natural pollinators. H.G. Wells once said that if the bees die out, so does mankind.’

‘Did he?’ asked Judy, balancing her cup on her knee. ‘We’ll have to see if we can get this Wells on the show. He sounds like he'd make an interesting guest. Don't you think so, Richard? Has he written any books?’

I gave Bill the look to tell him to just smile.

‘He did,’ said Bill who moved on with an admirable deftness. ‘Now, the problem with bees is that it’s very difficult to attract them to the average garden. They are put off by all sorts of things like the signals from computers, household chemicals, and the general artificiality of modern living. And that’s where I think your nipple comes in. There can be no coincidence that the bee was attracted to your nipple.’

‘So much so that it stung me and died in the process,’ I pointed out.

Bill waved aside my argument. ‘Nonsense. You tried to brush it away. A bee will always sting when attacked. They’ve got the personality of Gordon Ramsay. Sting first and ask questions later.’

‘With all due respect,’ interrupted Judy. ‘Gordon Ramsay does not leave his back end sticking in his victim.’

She had a point, if only one devoid of all sense.

‘Look,’ said Bill, ‘all I’m saying is that Richard’s right nipple might hold the answer to the nation’s bee problem. I could get some scientist friends of mine to have a look at it. See if we can’t extract whatever chemicals Richard produces that attracts bees.’

‘He does attract lots of bees,’ agreed Judy.

Which is true. I’m something of a bee magnet in the summer. I once fell asleep on one of our touring holidays in France and woke up with a full beard of bees. It took two days before I was rid of them. Two long and lonely days...

‘I suppose if it’s for the good the country’s bees,’ I relented, ‘I’d be happy for scientists to look at my breast. But I warn you now, Bill Oddie: if there are profits to be made from this venture, I’d like a fair share of them.’

‘Of course,’ smiled Bill, draining his coffee. ‘In fact, I think this could “bee” a very profitable buzzness indeed.’

Friday's Search Terms

Some days are particularly fruitful in the world of the internet search engines. In the last twenty four hours, I’ve had visitors searching for the following terms, which I shall now attempt to address to the best of my considerable ability.

"Who is Mrs Jeremy Clarkson?"

Mrs Jeremy Clarkson is the wife of Jeremy Clarkson, TV host, the nation’s favourite baiter of badgers, and professional strongman. Her name is Frances and she holds the female land speed record which she set at 655mph in Jeremy’s rocket car.

"Do women fancy trannies?"

Tough question. I would say that it depends on the tranny. Generally woman prefer MP3 players as the sound quality on even the most modern transistor radio isn’t as good as you can get from a basic MP3 player. Whereas MP3 players now come with touch screen controls, trannies are generally stuck with knobs which can be fiddly and hard to use when your fingers are cold.

"Tell me about midgets in orange jackets"

Good question. Simply put: it is the law. Since 2004, all European midgets have been forced to wear luminous orange jackets to make them visible in crowds. This rule was brought into effect after a spate of high profile accidents involving taller people tripping over midgets in public places.

"Stephen Fry taxi blog"

Stephen does write a blog from his taxi. The address of the ‘Stephen Fry Taxi Blog’ is known to only a few close friends and I couldn’t possibly publish it here. It is, I can assure you, one of the best blogs out there and even wittier than his public blog. No, honestly, I wish you could read it. It is genius. Pure genius.

"Richard Madeley penis model"

So what if I did? I was young and needed the money. The pictures were all tastefully shot in black and white and though I was nude there was nothing wrong with that. It was the 1970s. We were all nude back then. Except for Harold Wilson, who you wouldn’t want to see nude. Even with his pipe. You would want to see me nude, though. Prints are available at a reasonable price. Email me if you’re interested.

"Technically a midget in UK"

To be a midget in the UK you have to be less that four feet nine inches tall. The most surprising aspect of this fact isn’t that Ronnie Corbett is classed as a midget but that Noel Edmonds is too. It’s something of an in-joke within the media, just don’t mention it to Noel’s face… the next time you’re down there.

"Midget riding a donkey pic"

Officially this is Google’s most popular search term. There are many images of midgets riding donkeys, but the most famous resource is probably www.midgetsridingadonkey.com.

"Does Chuck Norris wear dentures?"

Yes. As I've explained on many previous occasions, he has two pairs. One for everyday use and another for films when he wants to sneer. His sneering dentures are slightly larger and ride higher on the gum.

"How did Eric Church meet his wife"

What an interesting question! I’m glad somebody has finally asked me that. Many of you won’t know who Eric Church is, which is odd given that he’s the UK’s top fiddle-playing gynaecologist. He’s played the fiddle between the thighs of some of the country’s most famous women and the odd man too. He met his wife, Sandra, at a banjo and fiddle convention in Stockport. Sandra is an expert banjo player as well as being an ear, nose and throat expert with a Middlesex Hospital Trust.

"Richard Madeley bog"

This happened only three minutes ago and I had to include it since it’s such an odd thing to ask me about. There only interesting fact I can tell you about this is that there are no locks in the Madeley home. Digestion is a normal function of the human body so why should we be ashamed and hide it away? I’ve lost count of the number of times that Judy has walked in on me mid-movement. In fact, some of the best conversations we’ve ever had took place while I was elbow to kneecap. I recommend it to all married couples. Unmarried too. If it doesn’t break you, it will bring you closer together.

[Update: Judy has just pointed out that 'bog' might be a mistyped 'blog' and I needn't have gone into all this detail. However, I think it's interesting and helpful advice, so I'll let it stay.]

"Does Chuck Norris have any hobbies?"

I can barely keep up this afternoon with all the queries coming into the blog. Now a visitor from Dallas asks if Chuck Norris has any hobbies. I’ve had to ring Stephen for an answer to this one and he’s quite certain that Chuck does have hobbies. Apparently, Chuck’s hobbies are breeding horses, sculpting decorative mullions, oriental cooking, and Subbuteo. I'm glad we could help.

Why the BBC Needs Stephen Fry to Electrocute Alan Dedicoat Every Saturday Night

Just before the National Lottery draw was made two nights ago, an attack of peptic reflux had forced me from my study and into the living room, where I found Judy perched on the edge of the sofa. The light of the television was reflected in her eyes, big like polished soup bowls, and illuminating the lottery ticket in her trembling hands.

‘Shush,’ she said when I took a breath to speak.

Chastened, I slid into my armchair with my glass of Andrews and I waited to see if the numbers 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5 and 6 would come rolling out of the machine and make us richer than an Oddie.

‘“Amethyst” is my lucky machine,’ explained Judy.

The comment did not warrant a reply. Why they give the machines names is beyond me. I don’t know what’s wrong with calling it ‘Ball Juggling Machine Number 4’ for the difference it would make to the outcome. Or perhaps it would make a difference: chaos theory and all that... Which is why I don’t waste my money on these foolish games. How is a man to make an informed gamble about something that might be decided by which side Dale Winton’s wearing his underpants? It’s why I’ve not actually watched a National Lottery draw since the days when Winton was a sprightly 68 year old. It made it quite the education to catch up on the world of randomly selected numbers.

Stood next to BJMN4 was the presenter, a young Adonis photocopied straight from GQ magazine and buffed to a high sheen with Turtlewax and Botox. He was wearing the ubiquitous BBC single breasted suit and had a crest of hair like a plastic newt basking on his head. From a professional viewpoint, he did a competent job. He wasn’t Stephen Fry competent but he was certainly mid-to-high Noel Edmonds good. He knew where the camera was and when to smile, and then, when the big moment came, he knew exactly how to put both of his hands on the big red button in front of him.

‘Okay everybody,’ went the sparkle on his teeth, ‘good luck!’

And as we enjoyed this moment of great theatre brought to us by the people at Colgate, he pressed the button…

There was then a pause for a fraction of a second before he did something that’s had me puzzled for days. He turned to the two men operating and he said: ‘Gentlemen, could you start the draw?’

At this point, one of the men, wearing white cotton gloves as if to prove that he was in no way shifty, walked to the machine and flicked a small switch on the side. With that balls started to pop from the slot like some Bangkok novelty act and somebody somewhere became a millionaire.

All of which raised an obvious question: what the hell was the red button for?

After two days, I’ve come to the conclusion that the red button wasn’t actually connected to the lottery machine. I know it's hard to believe but bear with me. Might it be possible that whenever these celebrities start the lottery draw, they are only pressing a bit of shiny red plastic connected to nothing but the podium?

I know what you’re thinking and I agree. It is shocking. I remember an agent friend of mine once telling me that the majority of ceremonies involving star names turning on Christmas lights make use of fake levers and switches. The actual ‘lighting up’ operation is being run from behind the scenes by some council worker, no doubt with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and effectively ‘turning them on at the wall’ with a muttered curse about it being ‘about bloody time’. But this surely can’t be the case with the National Lottery draw. That red button must do something.

Mustn’t it?

Well I fear that it doesn’t and it’s merely another sign that we’ve passed out of an age of myth, legend, and ritual. There was a time when esoteric ceremonies meant something. The Queen would regularly have her earlobes tickled with an eagle’s feather, leading Richard Dimbleby to whisper that the feather represented the Isle of Skye and this gesture was that of an eagle, riding a current of Hebridean air, bowing its head in solemn reverence to the awe of Her Majesty who took great pleasure in the bird’s show of deference. It might have been a bit of Victorian hokum but it was an engaging bit of hokum. And we never doubted that it symbolised something worth symbolising, even if it was the oppression of the Scots by the English. The same was always true of launching a ship. When the bottle of champagne smashed against the hull of the latest cruise liner, we didn’t actually believe that the momentum of the bottle caused the ship to start sliding down the dock's ramp, but we did all share a deep cultural flashback to those old pagan sacrifices our ancestors made to the Gods, asking them to bless our crafts before Clan Chieftain Madeley went off to pillage foreign shores.

But have we now gone beyond that? Is it so very wrong of me to want a world in which big red buttons are linked to machines that actually do something? And might there still time for us to put things right?

The BBC Special Effects and Props department has always been feted as the best in the world. Or, at least, that’s the valuable lesson taught to us by Blue Peter. Surely, there must still be men who know how to wire up a big red button so it lights up to signify the beginning of ‘the ball dropping process’. Better still, can’t they rig it so it gives mild electric shocks to Alan Dedicoat up in the gallery. The man sounds far too cheerful for a man working on a weekend. A few scrotum-tightening volts passed across his reproductive lobes would do him the world of good and BBC One on a Saturday night would become exciting again. Get Stephen Fry involved and there won't be a man, woman, or child who doesn't tune in to see how high he came make the nation’s favourite announcer leap from his chair. Damn it. Couldn’t we all lay wagers on how far Dedicoat will fly, with proceeds going to good causes?

Not only would it make the big red button mean something again, we would take the random factor out of the lottery. We could introduce an element of skill into the life of the nation’s gamblers. We would return to the days of ‘Spot the Ball’ and the Football Coupon but with the added entertainment value that comes with a pair of well polished electrodes.

So, if anybody is reading this from the BBC, please get in contact. You know my email address. I’m full of good ideas like this and, lucky for you, I’m looking for a job.

The Shetland Midgets

Animals and Dick Madeley hold an uneasy truce, born out of years of conflict, often bloody, and usually resulting in me with underpants to ankles and a tetanus shot stuck in my behind. It’s the principal reason why I rarely talk about Judy’s passion for Shetland ponies, despite her being, in the sad and often disturbed circles that rate such things, one of the nation’s top show breeders. She has won awards for her miniature horses that surpass her many achievements in television. I think I’m even safe in saying that only George Lucas has done more to further the cause of midgets worldwide.

Yet as much as I avoid having anything to do with them, there are certain times when I can only bite my lip, give a snort, and become a bit horsey. Yesterday was one such day. The annual Richard&Judy Horse of the Year Show is organised by Judy’s stables and held at a large converted aerodrome in Norfolk. Unlike that other horse festival with a similar title, our show celebrates the country’s equestrians in the only way that’s right and proper: by attracting the country’s top celebrities and getting them drunk before sunset.

This year was a special year because it was the tenth show and Judy was going to be showing Raymond and Percy, her two prize Shetland ponies. Now, running around a ring leading a midget horse is not something I normally look forward to, but this year there were a few compensations. For one, Jeremy Clarkson was going to be on hand with his donkey. He’d promised to bring old Flossy along for the children to ride for a pound a go, with all proceeds going to his Donkey Sanctuary and Meat Processing Charity / Investment Opportunity. The other reason for my optimism was the fact that we’d persuaded Stephen Fry to be our master of ceremonies. This had been one of my better ideas and I knew things would go well once I heard the familiar voice echoing around the show ring.

‘Ah, ’tis I, Fry, on the Tannoy, welcoming you all the twenty second Richard&Judy Horse of the Year Show. Indeed. Were I to say what kind of show we have for you today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I would be doing you all a great disservice. For I simply cannot anticipate the soft warm bundles of frilly goodness you’ll see here today. My! I can merely ask you all to put your hands together, if they are not already thus, and welcome out our first act: Ms. Sandi Toksvig and her celebration of the beauty of bareback!’

The audience cheered and we were away with a the usual display of bareback riding that Sandi does each year to open the show. I’ve seen it all before so I made my way backstage where I found Judy, that paragon of professionalism, demonstrating why she’s often called the Queen of the Midget Mounts.

‘Get that ****ing comb and ****ing-well brush it a-****ing-gain!’ she screamed at one of the young grooms. ‘I want that tail ****ing silky. ****ing silky!’

I decided to walk right through the paddock – as I believe it’s called – and head off to see how all the other celebrity acts were getting on with their preparations. Or I would have if I hasn’t spotted Clarkson smoking his pipe at one of the side doors. He was admiring some big bunkers on the other side of the old runway.

‘Do you ever stop to consider the engineering that goes into something like that?’ he asked. ‘Staggering. Simply staggering.’ He used the end of his pipe to point out a detail. ‘That concrete must be twelve feet thick. They were probably once home to battlefield nukes.’

‘Strong stuff,’ I agreed. ‘That would even protect you against a blast from a battle hardened Cilla Black.’

‘She’s not here is she?’ asked Jeremy. With hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned Cilla’s name. Jeremy was clearly still worried about that drunken argument they’d had at our Christmas party. I know for a fact that she’s still very upset that Jeremy considers ELO superior to the Beatles.

‘I’m afraid she couldn’t make it,’ I said, to reassure him.

‘Couldn’t she? Oh damn,’ he said, returning to his pipe. ‘Perhaps that explains the good turn out.’

‘No, that’s just the Lily Allen effect,’ I explained. ‘She’s brought her publicity machine with her. We have half of London’s PR staff out in the crowd. I don’t know what sounds louder: the applause for Toksvig on an Arabian or the sound of fingers on blackberries.’

Jeremy puffed away, seemingly quite content gazing across at the hardened bunkers.

‘How are the donkey rides going?’ I asked to shake him from his dreams of low yield battlefield nukes.

‘All sold out,’ he said. ‘I’ve done so well that I’ve now got the rest of the day to myself.’

‘How on earth can you sell out a day’s donkey’s rides?’

He winked. ‘That’s where you lack my genius. You might have noticed that there is now a donkey walking around backstage, carrying a crate of babycham and enough cheese nibbles to feed Cambodia. I strapped a tray to Flossy’s back and hired her out to Christopher Biggins for the day.’

A roar from the audience suggested that Toksvig’s bareback routine had finally come to an end. ‘Sounds like we’re up next,’ I said as I heard Fry announce a moment’s break. ‘Midget horses next,’ I said, unable to restrain a groan.

‘I don’t think they’re technically called midget horses,’ said Jeremy, who can be politically correct when it suits him. ‘The correct term is midget ponies.’

‘Well whatever they are, I’m up next. Are you coming to watch?’

He tapped out his pipe on his heel before he tucked it into his pocket. ‘It should be good for a laugh,’ he said.

We reached the edge of the ring in time to find Judy pacing nervously around. She has such a passion for the midget ponies that even her husband has to tread cautiously when he’s around her. Actually, that’s not a bad bit of advice. It’s all too easy to step on one of the bloody things and mess up your heels with blood and flaxen mane.

‘Where have you been?’ she snapped.

‘Admiring twelve feet of concrete on some Cilla-proof bunkers,’ said Jeremy; a touch foolhardy, I thought.

Judy’s face darkened, as it always does when Jeremy mocks one of her closest friends.

‘Don’t worry, I’m here now,’ I said to calm her. ‘Which one of these do you want me to take. Pinky or Perky?’

‘As well you know, Richard, they’re called Raymond and Percy. You can take Percy. He’s slightly lest skittish.’

‘I can’t see why we couldn’t hire midgets to ride these things around the ring,’ I said as I took the reigns to the little trotter. I felt mildly foolish with Jeremy watching me, his face big with a drayhorse grin.

There was a brief cough over the Tannoy before Stephen’s voice shushed the crowd.

‘Ah, shush,’ said he, ‘for, now, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I’m delighted to welcome to the ring, the couple of the hour… Were I am man given to long and rambling introductions, I would say that we feel the deepest love and affection for the people who made this event possible. Luckily, I’m not a man given to long and rambling introductions, so I will simply say, with no little humility and a touch of love that one might call “squishy”, that it does our hearts proud to welcome into the ring, Richard and Judy and their simply stunning Shetland ponies.’

To the March of the Bumblebee, we ran out into the ring. I was following Judy every step of the way as she bounced along with Raymond beside her. Percy was pretty indifferent to the whole thing, as was I, and we were soon losing a little distance from the lead.

‘Keep up,’ shouted Judy as she ran out ahead, waving to the crowd.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ I called back, having managed to get the reigns wrapped around Percy’s throat. From a distance, I imagine it looked like I wasn’t leading him as much as trying to strangle the life out of him.

I was thankful that after a single circuit of the ring, we stopped in the middle. I say this but I guess I wasn’t as thankful as little Percy who I’d had to drag around for the last few feet.

‘What do we do now?’ I gasped, though, again, not as much as little Percy who was sucking in plenty of air now he had the chance.

‘Oh, Richard, you know exactly what’s next. It was on the piece of paper I gave you. We stand here while the girls perform.’

I didn’t want to say that I hadn’t bothered with piece of paper. Never do. I ad lib my life and this was going to be no exception.

A fanfare heralded ‘the girls’ into the ring. In a synchronised canter, out came Jordan, Jodi Marsh, Jade Goody and Kerry Katona, all bouncing high and happily on their four mounts.

‘Apocalyse!’ I cried, unable to restrain myself.

‘What?’ asked Judy, holding Raymond’s reigns. The two midgets had become uneasy and were pulling at their restraints, as, indeed, was I.

‘Apocalypse!’ I cried again. ‘It’s the four riders. This is the end, Judy! Judgement day. And I’ve not had chance to do enough good in the world.’

‘Oh Richard, behave,’ she said, while maintaining her grin for the crowd.

The next few minutes were a nightmare to me. The four riders from the Book of Revelation circled me, their devilish orange faces shining in the spotlights. And lo, I looked, and beheld, an ashen horse; and she who sat on it had the name Jade; and Kerry Katona rode behind her. The number of the breasts was eight and hell followed with them.

‘They’ll end up with heavily bruised chins if this goes on for much longer,’ I said to Judy.

‘I’m warning you Richard. Cut it out.’

But I couldn’t. Round and round they bounced, cantered, twirled, and, indeed, bounced again. Just as I thought it couldn’t go on much longer, they wheeled around and trotted slowly towards us and the crowd rose in applause as their four mounts gracefully kneeled down and bowed to Judy, Raymond, Percy, and me.

‘That was really, really moving,’ said Clarkson, wiping tears from his eyes as I came off the ring and out of the spotlights. ‘That was really quite something. Never have I seen a man get on his knees and pray with such conviction. Did you really mean it when you asked God to take Judy first?’

‘Shut it Clarkson,’ I warned. ‘I’m in no mood to be mocked.’

‘Mock? I wouldn’t dare. I’d have paid good money to see that.’

I strode out to the back.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted after me.

‘To find twelve feet of blast proof concrete. I have some things to say I think it better the world didn’t hear.’

Bad Luck 3

I began by setting the laptop up, carefully arranging the lighting just right so I cut out the reflections, and turning off my digital camera’s flash. Only then did I begin taking picture after picture of ‘the cracks’ in laptop’s screen, just to be sure that I’d got a good shot of the damage. I then shut down my laptop, put it carefully back in its protective case, and carried it to the other side of the room where it would be safe. Then I’m back to my desktop PC, power it on, log in, wait an eternity for my virus protection to load, and then finally boot up my image editing software. It was finally time to find a perfect picture of the cracks, post it here and write a few words before I crawl thankfully to bed with a handful of the red pills Dr. Raj prescribed for Judy’s hot flushes.

Only, when I opened the camera, I realised that there was no memory in it…

It was so typical of my day.

I start again. Fifteen minutes later we have our grainy result. And it’s a beaut, isn’t it? It doesn’t do justice to the size and vibrancy of the cracks. These are cracks designed by Faberge and made by Swarovski.

There’s a moral in this: what you reap, you eventually sow. About a year ago, I reaped myself a new laptop. I’ve always used Sony laptops. It’s not just a style thing. In fact, it’s never really has been a style thing. It’s been about having a good working environment. I’m big into getting the perfect set up. I have to use my favourite word processor (Atlantis Word – small, quick to load, almost crash proof), with a dark background and bright text to make it easier on the eyes to write for long periods. My previous laptop was extremely small, with a ten inch screen and a titanium shell. It lasted me for about five years of travelling around and throwing it carelessly in my bag. I must have written a good few million words on it. Eventually, a copy of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry fell on it from about twelve feet and the hard disk developed a high pitched whine. It drove me crazy when I tried to write with it so I attempted to change the hard disk. The laptop died in the operation.

Last year, I bought its replacement. I should have spent more money.

I’d intended on buying an exact replacement for my previous machine; something I could lug around the house, into coffee shops, parks, and libraries, and always be able to write. Trouble was: the smaller the laptop, the more you pay for the laptop.

Sony have a TZ range of ultra portable laptops. A man could die of dehydration just drooling over them. I know I did last year when it came to choosing a new machine. Only the ultra portable laptops with either the titanium or carbon fibre shells were nearly two thousand pounds. Judy told me to damn the expense and get myself one. But that’s nearly Mac PowerBook territory. Of course, I’d never buy a PowerBook after having bad experiences buying countless replacement power supplies for a machine that had a habit of burning off your knees (yet falling outside their battery replacement scheme). Still, it was more than I could afford, even with the money from Channel 4.

So, strapped for cash but needing something to write on, I settled on not-quite-dirt-cheap model with a fifteen inch screen and a plastic case. One year and half a million words later and this is the result. Something has pushed against the flimsy plastic lid and caused the ‘cracks’ to develop inside the screen. It works but it’s hardly work friendly.

Some days I wonder why I write this blog. The main answer is usually to make myself laugh and in the process hope to make you smile. I’ve failed today, unless you’ve got one of those healthily warped black humours and find calamity funny (I have and I do, despite tonight’s tears). Less edifying is to see fate again conspiring against me and I’m reminded that the answer to all my problems begins with a ‘j’, ends in a ‘b’, and has a crudely formed ‘o’ in the middle.

So please: go vote in my poll. I might not stand by the result but it might help me choose one among equal evils.

Me. I’m going to bed. I’ve had enough of today. I only wait to see what tortures lie in store for me tomorrow. I do know that Judy mentioned something about Cilla coming around.

Bad Luck 2

... and as if to prove what a bad day I'm having, I've just turned on my laptop to do some writing and I've discovered the the screen is smashed. I don't know how it's happened, but there is a big cobweb of smashed LCD.

Bad Luck Wednesday

If the Gods of Insanely Bad Luck decided to descend on you for twenty four hours, they could not conspire to produce the kind of day as I’m currently living. There is not a thing I’ve done today that hasn’t turned out for the bad. Not one. In fact, I’m deliberately putting a speelling mistake into this post, just to avoid a more embarrassing one creeping in where I don’t intend to put one.

It has got so bad that I was driving back from a last minute trip to the supermarket (don’t ask) when I contemplated how easily it would be for me to get to an airport and fly away, out of this life. How long would credit cards last me before I’d be stuck on the streets?

I can’t wait for today to be over.

Behind

I despise getting behind with my work. The midnight crisis in which I deleted posts, dumped the old poll, and then went outside naked and howled at the moon was only going to delay me today. Yet there are so many things I have to write about. That’s the problem when a man of huge ambitions has a small crisis of confidence. It’s an ocean liner coming adrift on a grain of sand. Well, your comments have helped shift the grain and the propellers are turning once again on HMS Madeley. Give me an hour or two to get up a head of steam and then we’ll head into some tropical waters.

Before I go and turn out some serious verbiage, let me answer four questions that appeared in my blog statistics yesterday.

‘Which city is host to the only UK chapter of the Christmas Pudding Appreciation Society?’

Birmingham.

‘Where can I see transvestites in tight skirts?’

Birmingham.

‘How tall is Steven Fry?’

On a good day he’s six feet nine inches tall.

‘Judith Chalmers how old is she?’

She’s 87 but doesn’t look a day over 86.

The Poll

I’ve put shackles around the poll’s ankles and dumped it into the Thames. There was one bloody stupid idea: asking people if I should quit blogging. Stronger men might have laughed off the answer but not me. It has made me unduly bitter and I’ve found myself being cruel to minor celebrities, just to see them cry.

You might have also noticed that I’ve roped yesterday’s 2500 word post to the chain as it sank beneath the water. There is another 3000 words of the story that will be going with it. The whole thing was getting far too big. Nobody was going to read it, did read it, or would want to read any more. I’ve written 130,000 of this blog since it began a few months ago. There was an element of blind panic in my starting out on a story that would take another 130,000 to finish. Judy spotted this immediately and told me to calm down.

The thought of hunting for a job had me thinking that just a couple of weeks I could write a book. I just ask that you bear with me while I go through this transition. These are hard times. Even harder, I should imagine, that having two rectums or working for the BBC.

The Scrabble Champion

Among the many remarkable properties possessed by half quarts of cheap spirits left over from Christmas is the ease with which they manage to sneak their way into the garden shed at some point during the New Year. Some might describe it as uncanny, the way they always seem to find men more than willing to loosen sobriety’s belt buckle.

One such man had spent his Sunday morning replacing the garage’s automatic door mechanism with the engine he’d stripped out of an old hover mower. It was a job I’d been intending to do for weeks. As it turned out, the space of a lunchtime was all it took for things to go horribly wrong.

Judy arrived back from the hairdressers around noon and, as normal, drove her car right up the garage door. The moment her front wheel broke the infra red beam the door snapped open in rather brisk 0.1 seconds. Truth to tell: it was probably a bit too brisk. It proceeded to rise a further meter before it met resistance in the form of the garage roof. In less than the time it takes me to write ‘bent metal’, twenty four square feet of corrugated roofing had been peeled back before the electric motor had freed itself explosively from its bearing and gone sailing off in the direction of Dale Winton’s bungalow. It was about this time that I had retired to the workshop I maintain in the garden shed and this is where the liquor sought me out not long after.

It only takes the sound of fire engines rushing to the scene of a blaze in a camp celebrity’s bungalow for a man to appreciate what it means to share a bottle with Ronnie Corbett’s cat. Mr. Brucie often comes and sits in the shed for a little warmth. And so it was yesterday. We shared a few sad stories, Corbett’s cat and me, and then we each promised undying friendship to the other before one of us passed out.

I awoke at four o’clock to find that I’d emptied the bottle to within half-an-inch of its life and that Mr. Brucie had already broken our pledge of loyalty. Alone, I stumbled back to the house and plagued by the thoughts of my Monday interview at the local job agency, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I retrieved a box of matches and the manuscript to ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’ from my office, and then proceeded back outside where I dumped the pages in the barbecue pit. Swaying slightly in the cold air, I stood over it as I doused the whole lot with the last of the spirits.

‘This is it,’ I said, looking at my collected outpourings of the last few months. ‘It’s been fun while it lasted old friend but we knew it we could never go on like this. Goodbye cruel world! Tomorrow, I becomes a normal man.’

And with that, I struck a match and leapt back to protect my eyebrows as five hundred pages of my closely typed wit and wisdom began to blaze where summer bangers usually sizzle. I imagine this is how many of the great unpublished books met their end: with pages flipping and turning in a drunken heat. The force of inebriated flames pulled the manuscript apart, wantonly ripping off the odd page to send it hot and flighty into the sky.

As tears began to trail down my face, there was a movement in the shadows of my attention and I felt somebody come to stand next to me.

‘Is there a sight more likely to make a grown adult weep than watching a melancholic talk show host consummate his passion for wretchedness?’ asked the familiar voice.

‘Stephen?’ I said, wiping a few sooty tears from my eyes.

‘Ay,’ said the Great Man, brushing back a veil of that floppy hair some of us love so much. ‘’Tis I, Fry, with you at the end.’ He put his great paw on my shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze as we both gazed at the blackening pages, rolling in the flames like my tortured dreams. ‘You intend to go through with it then?’

‘Bill’s coming with me tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘It’s always good to have an Oddie on hand.’

‘He’s the perfect man for the occasion,’ said Fry. ‘Were I just a little less famous, I might have accompanied you to your interview.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ I smiled. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. I’ll be wearing a bad suit.’

He seemed to understand the gravity of the moment for the first time.

‘You mean it won’t be bespoke?’

‘As unbespoke as they come,’ I said.

‘And am I to assume that it won’t be in some shade of gaudy showbiz orange?’

‘It will be very grey. It even came with a small plastic bag containing the spare buttons.’

‘Not buttons for you to stitch on yourself?’

‘The very same,’ I replied. ‘There’s not even room for a cape.’

To that he gave an audible shudder. ‘Shudder,’ said Fry.

‘Oh, don’t be down, Stephen. I’ve had a good career.’ I said this reassure myself as much as him. ‘These next few months will be bitter but at least I’m taking steps to get myself a proper job.’

But now I turned to see tears streaming down Stephen’s face. ‘Oh, forgive me, Dicky,’ he spluttered. ‘To think that you’ll be one of the hoi polloi in a matter of hours… It’s almost too much to bear. What will become of us?’

‘Not to worry,’ I said, taking his hand in mine. ‘Why don’t we go back into the house and have ourselves a jolly game of Scrabble? I’ll give you a ten tile lead.’

‘Include a blank and you’re on,’ he smiled through his tears.

That I certainly did. Half an hour later, I had just overcome Stephen’s ten tile and a blank lead with a cunning use of a ‘Q’ on a double word score. I was about to follow it up when the doorbell rang.

‘I’m not expecting anybody,’ I said as I stood and headed for the front door but Stephen just waved me away. Now recovered from his emotional outburst, he was clearly preparing to run me through with a ‘X’ he was eying for a triple letter.

It was a threat I would have to postpone for later because standing on the welcome mat was Sir Clive James. We’ve not been on speaking terms since he kicked me out of his house during an interview. It didn’t appear that he had recovered. He was red faced and he was waving a singed sheet of paper.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, pushing the page into my face. ‘Comes flying through my window. Is this your name on the top?’

I took a look at paper. ‘Ah, my story about Terry Nutkins and the squirrels!’ I said, recognising the style. ‘Made it all the way to your place, did it? That’s miles away. It couldn’t have got there quicker than if I had tied it to a squirrel and a blazing one at that.’

‘Bad prose travels quickly,’ was all that Sir Clive said, displaying the sort of wit that earned him few friends inside the BBC.

‘I thought it one of my better efforts,’ I answered.

‘Better efforts?’ laughed Clive. ‘Only such a stunningly crass effort could destroy the manuscript to the new book of poetry it has taken me ten months to get right! Every single verse had been rhymed to perfection before this came through the window.’

‘Pftttt,’ said a voice high above my shoulder. It was Stephen. I’d thought him anxious to get on with his triples but there was poetry to discuss and that rarely keeps him out of a fight.


‘What the bloody hell did that mean?’ asked Clive.

‘It meant, my dear squat friend, that there’s a new polymath in town and you are certainly not he.’

‘You think not?’

‘Look you two,’ I said, standing between two of the greatest minds of our age. ‘Can’t we calm down?’ I turned to Clive. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught us at a bad moment. We’re in the middle of a game of Scrabble.’

His face changed. ‘Scrabble? You play Scrabble?’

‘We both play,’ said Stephen. ‘Care for a game? We could fight for the title of the “Nation’s Favourite Intellectual”.’

Clive stuffed the sheet of paper back into my hands and brushed me aside. ‘Out of the way, Madeley,’ he said. ‘Sir Clive James never says no to a challenge.’

And that was it. The last evening of my showbiz career was taken up with serving drink and food to a pair of insatiable Scrabble addicts fighting for the right to call Radio 4 their own. The night was abound with rare words, with scatterings of ‘x’s and ‘z’s. ‘Zouave’ matched ‘nuzzler’, ‘zonk’ with ‘zoom’. I could only gaze on the scene as one o’clock struck. Such a happy scene, yet mixed with he certain dread that it might be the last. Could I really give up my friends? Could I change the life I knew so well? Would I print out a new copy of my manuscript?

I closed the study door on a friendship newly found and I made my way to bed. Stephen would play until the early hours given a man foolish enough to encourage him. Sir Clive James was clearly that man. To the sound of their mutual laughter, sharing a joke in Spanish, I climbed the stairs. Perhaps I’d see them again before I left for town in the morning. Perhaps I wouldn’t. The only thing that matter was that peace reigned and I would soon be asleep, eased their by the gentle orange glow from the still smoldering ruin of Dale Winton’s bungalow.

The Martin Scriblerus Alliance

Judy had been massaging my neck all morning, trying to get rid of the tension.

‘You don’t have to decide now,’ she said as she poured a little more oil onto her hands and began to knead it into my non-responsive muscles. ‘Give it the rest of the day. Nothing is going to happen on a Sunday.’

‘But isn’t it only right that I join them?’ I asked her for what must have been the ninth or tenth time. ‘It just seems to have my name written all over it.’

Judy tutted. ‘Is it really what you want?’

And there she had me. Was it really what I wanted?

The whole thing began some months ago after I wrote the first entry on this blog. One visitor who passed himself off as a member of the German aristocracy started to leave comments and I was intrigued enough to track him down to his homepage. The man also travelled under the name Higham and he was part of a group of bloggers who had the word ‘Blogpower’ tattooed on their foreheads. For all of ten seconds, I had thought about asking to join them, but being an independent spirit, wary of grown adults who form themselves into societies, I decided that it wasn’t for me. I would cut a lone furrow and plant in it what I liked.

And I was happy with this arrangement until this morning when I saw a new outfit getting together in the blogosphere. It made me feel rather like James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. I wanted to be one of the first at Higham’s side, armed with my throwing knives, six shooter, and a small bearded helper called Oddie.

I suppose it was the name that attracted me: The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. ‘The Dunciad’, as you know, is one of my favourite poems and heavily influenced my own much maligned ‘Mock Heroic Epistle on the State of Jeremy Paxman’s Sock Drawer’. I remain one of the few men to consider himself a Scriblerian, carrying on the work of the greatest English writers of the eighteenth century. The Scriblerian Club was a small group of like minded men of huge wit who produced some of the most biting satire of their day. Whenever they gathered it was like an episode of QI but without the third-rate standups. Their whole habit of mind was that of parody. Their humour was ripe with caustic epigrams and extravagantly pointless footnotes, all of which bewailed the leaden fools of London society. The peerless Swift wrote ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which over the centuries has become something of a children’s story, yet in the unabridged version is a joyously vile and scatological rant against people in general. That a new Scriblerian Club should be forming close to me on the web made my heart beat a little faster. All of which I explained to Judy this morning.

‘Well you should clearly join it,’ she said as she finished on my neck and set to work on my shoulders. ‘If there’s a group of satirists out to undermine the fabric of society with their cleverly written parodies of modern manners and life, then you should be there leading them Richard.’

‘Parody?’ I asked. ‘Who said that this has got anything to do with parody? The Martin Scriberlus Alliance is about bloggers gathering together under a label to signify good quality blogging.’

Judy’s hands slipped from my back. I thought it was because there was too much oil but then I felt them grab me around my neck.

‘Quality blogging? Quality blogging?’ She screamed as she shook me. When she let go, the tempest had passed. ‘If there’s really such a thing as quality blogging, you certainly shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of it. Not when fourteen percent of your readership think you should quit!’

And there was nothing I could say to that.

I pulled on my shirt and came sloping in here to type this up. Any other bloggers out there who think they write a good blog, I recommend that you head over and check out The Martin Scriberlus Alliance. Unfortunately, because of issues to do with quality control, I’ll be unable to join in with what is sure to be an excellently run project.

Two Rectums Spotted

And by that I don't mean 'spotted' as in 'heavily pimpled'. Though, who knows? A person with three buttocks would surely suffer more 'anal acne' than a person with the normal two.

What I meant to say is that the last hour has seen Yahoo! hit hard by searches for 'two rectums'.

(To my very many new readers, I should explain that, for some unknown reason, this blog has become the world authority of 'duel rectum syndrome'. I currently top both Google and sit in second place on Yahoo! for the phrase 'two rectums'.)

In the morning, I intend to get my team of researchers trying to contact the person from Huntington Beach, California who got here with the search term: 'I have two rectums'. There has to be a medical explanation.

Chip Dale's Back and Armed With Memes!

The heavily oiled mass of manically depressed Welsh thongdom has been roused from his winter slumber and he has tagged me with a meme. I’m a little humbled to see myself listed in his hopes for 2008, so I’ll happily include him in my own. Those of us who go through life misunderstood by the wider world need to stay together, even if it means getting a cheap hustler’s body oil on my best casual slacks.

There are some reassuringly similar themes in our two lists. Chip is clearly a deep thinker. As, I believe, a I. His musical choices are not as suspect as I’d have imagined given that he spends his life wiggling his hips to bad disco music. All I can do is entreat him to give Serge Gainsbourg a listen.

So, my hopes for 2008 are these:

1. I manage to start earning a living with my writing, so I can begin to stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest living author of our age, Mr. Fry.
2. I continue to blog, despite all my labours in the real world involving cleaning products, discounted tins of baked beans, or labelling guns.
3. People stop asking me to quit blogging. We can all enjoy a good laugh about it but on cold mornings and late evenings, it actually makes me pause before I put finger to key.
4. My collected volume of essays and shorter pieces, ‘Fry, Oddie & Me’, wins me the Samuel Johnson Prize, presented to me by a woman called Selena dressed in ocelot, with all my fine blog readers in attendance in the cheap seats at the back.
5. I finally master French so I can more fully devote myself to my current obsession with Serge Gainsbourg.
6. Chip also manages earn a living doing what he most enjoys doing. Not by stripping but by writing. I miss his blog.
7. My big project is a huge success bringing me yet more fame and fortune. I don’t mean ‘Dick Justice’, which will be as successful as these ITV documentaries can be, but the project I’m calling Richard Madeley’s Secret Summer Project 2008.
8. I am elected to become the new Lord Mayor for London.

I don’t normally tag other people but I’ll use this to promote some new and relatively unknown bloggers. It’s only natural that I tag my good friend Stephen Fry (but he’s so busy, I don’t expect him to even acknowledge this), my new favourite social commentator Mr. Jerry Caesar, the difficult-to-type AxyxZ, and to Bertas who is much too busy to be a couchslob.

Monday

I have an appointment at a local job agency on Monday morning. Because of my celebrity, I’ve been putting this off for too long. It was only Bill Oddie promising to come with me and provide modal support that convinced me to ring them and make the appointment.

This depressing thought (the appointment, not Oddie’s involvement) means that I can’t be bothered writing today. Instead I thought I’d canvass you for job ideas for a man of my unique qualities. You must bear in mind that I have a low boredom threshold and would like a job involving high levels of creativity. I can work unbelievably hard when motivated to do so, and I’m very prolific in my ideas. I don’t want to deal with the general public and routine ‘office work’ would lead me to take a jump off the end of a knotted rope within the month. Money doesn't motivate me in except insofar as if I'm going to be giving up my writing career (something that even more of you seem keen on, judging by the current poll), I want to be paid well to do so. I quite like the idea of getting into advertising but wouldn’t know where to begin.

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.’

The Richard Madeley Award For Headline of the Week

The first recipient of my highly prized 'Headline of the Week' award is to be found over at the United Nations Population Fund website. I love a good prosaic headline and the United Nations do them better than anybody.

Delivering Hope in Nigeria: Natalie Imbruglia Visits Newly Launched Fistula Project

I think what makes it work so well is the internal rhyme. Which has led me to launch The Official Richard Madeley Rhyming Couplet Competition. You've got the rhyme, now I want you give me a couplet.

For example:

There once a pretty singer called Imbruglia
Who did charitable things for the fistula.

How Big is Vanessa Feltz's Cleavage?

For the person in London currently searching Google for 'How big is Vanessa Feltz's cleavage', I can end your quest right here.

It's big. Bigger than even your 1280x1024 desktop resolution could handle. I mean it's really, really big.

I wish you well and hope I answered your question. I now feel that my afternoon, spent fruitlessly looking for a post-Channel 4 job, has not been totally wasted.

How Did Chuck Norris and His Wife Meet?

To the person in Oklahoma who came here after asking Google 'how did Chuck Norris and his wife meet', I have your answer...

It was 1993 and Chuck was fighting Henry 'Buster' Davenport in an exhibition match in Toronto, Canada. Half way through the fight, Chuck caught a roundhouse kick to his face which caused him to bite his tongue due to loose fitting dentures. The fight was immediately stopped while medics attended to Chuck. The young nurse who treated him was his future wife. They have been inseparable ever since and Chuck always jokes that finding his wife was well worth losing the last quarter of an inch of his tongue.

I'm always happy to help my friends across the sea. Happy New Year.

Love At First Sight

I love you. No, no. Don't say a word, stranger. I know you feel the same way too. You've been looking at my blog for the last couple of hours. Savouring everything I've written. Let's meet. I'll bring chocolates. Who knows. A little wine. A comfortable room...

Lets make babies together.

In Flames With Ronnie Corbett

I’m hardly a pendant when it comes to choosing my words. Nor am I the most dexterous wielder of the English language you’re find in the Land of Blog. But I do take an exception to those lexical mistakes and grammatical ambiguities that can be easily avoided. I direct your attention to an email I received from a certain Mrs. Dolore Mullis on Thursday morning. In it she asks me if I’ve ‘always wanted a penis the size of an elephant’. It annoyed me the moment it popped up in my iPhone’s inbox.

‘Look at this,’ I said to Ronnie Corbett as he drove our golf cart up the ninth fairway. ‘Surely she doesn’t actually mean to ask me if I want a penis the size of an elephant! Can you imagine that? Twelve feet long and eleven tonnes including trunk and tail?’

A glazed look descended over Ronnie’s face. I can only assume it had to do with the medication he’s still taking after his recent accident when a pressurised walnut exploding in his lap. All I know is that no sooner had I mentioned the elephant sized penis than he lost control of the buggy which veered into the light rough and ran smack into a tree. I’m blessed by excellent reflexes so I managed to leap out of my seat before Ronnie’s flask of whisky exploded in his bag of clubs. Soon there were flames everywhere. I was bloody lucky when a 3 wood narrowly missed my head.

As smoke began to billow above the course and golf balls began to explode in the intense heat, I ran back to the wreckage and pulled Ronnie from the driver’s chair. With the sound of concussions echoing across the greens, I dragged him into a nearby bunker were we could lie low until help arrived.

When he came around, Ronnie gazed up at me and pushed his glasses back up his nose.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘have you heard the joke about the ambulance driver who arrived at the scene of an accident involving a hot dog stand and a bus full of male strippers?’

‘Not now, Ronnie,’ I said as I fingered my iPhone. ‘We’re in a tight spot. You might be wondering how you came to be impaled by your sand wedge. Well, fear not. It’s missed your vital organs and we can deal with that when the time’s right. In the meantime, I need to contact a man whose knowledge of English is greater than that of any other living soul.’

This time, the phone only rang once before I heard the voice that is a comforting warmth in a world of cold fury.

‘’Tis I, Fry, on my iPhone, currently stacking shelves in Waitrose for my new television series, joyfully titled, “Stephen Fry Stacks Shelves in Waitrose”. What do you want Richard?’

‘I certainly don’t want a twelve foot penis,’ I told him.

‘Well that’s a most reassuring thing to know,’ he replied. ‘Rarely have I greeted news with such an expansive of relief. Now that’s settled, might I inquire how big a penis you would like?’

‘Well that’s really not the issue,’ I said. ‘I’m ringing you to discuss the nature of poor writing in emails. When a stranger sends you message asking if you want a penis the size of an elephant, they surely don’t mean the whole animal, do they? Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask if you wanted a hung like an elephant?’

‘Ah,’ he chuckled, gently. ‘Herein you strike upon the very subject of a future Dork Talk column that deals with elephant genitalia in some detail.’

‘Does it? Well I’d love to have a look at that piece before it goes to print.’

‘I’ll email it to you immediately,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished it yet but I think it makes a few worthwhile points.’

‘And if you don’t mind, Stephen, can I post it on my blog? I’m sure my readers would like to see an early draft of Fry marginalia.’

‘Publish it as if it were your own,’ replied The Great Man. ‘Now I must dash. I’ve been called to do a clean up in aisle two… Yes, Mr. Forbes. I’m bringing my bucket and disinfectant this very moment!’

Fifteen minutes later, as Ronnie was being airlifted to safety, my iPhone beeped and Stephen’s article came through. It’s not quite as good as advertised but it is a first draft and is probably the most comprehensive article ever written on the relationship between an elephant’s penis and junk emails.

Enjoy.

–––

Dork Talk with Stephen Fry
The Spammers of Bad Grammars

Bless you all for stopping by again. Dork Talk is becoming a genuine bundle of like-minded bed fellows, all Firefox users, cheek to cheek under my large duvet made from a Sea Monkey. Fret you not a jot. I have nothing for you to ‘install’ today. I just wish to bend your ear on a matter of the utmost importance.

In the recent weeks, I have done my best to improve you lives by introducing you all to the joys of the iPhone and the electric toothbrush. What next, I hear you wonder, if indeed, I could hear you wonder. And what a world that would be were it true. Stephen psychic and holding you all to ransom. Mighty!

Well today’s article gives me a chance to warn you about some of the less eddifying technologies out there. Oh, I don’t mean non-Java complient handsets, though they are bad enough. Gor! No, I’m talking about elephants penises, goat glands, and the other terrifying promises being made in the world of web communications. None of us are free of those infernal emails and the false gratifications they promise. The problem with the people who write SPAM is that they lack the education to get the small details right. Take this little gem from the Fry inbox:

‘I gorgeous Russian girl with much love for you.’

Dear me, kind readers. What on earth can she mean? The she loves me as a man might love a vintage motor car or his mother? Or does this little Russian minx send me a veiled promise to give me pleasure that’s long, hot, and not a little moist? How is a man to respond, were he given to responding to the Russian mafia. I think silence is warranted on this occasion.

If you’re not shocked by the friendliness of Russian ladies, then you might be a little disturbed by the promises of some emails. Many are the times I’ve been asked if I wanted to have ‘a penis the size of an elephant’. Gulp. What a thing to behold, though, I relieved to say, not from close range.

I chuckled myself to sleep one night after receiving this communication from a dear lady called Alana:

‘oh my godness.. yourPenis is BELOW average size’

From a theological standpoint, this is troublesome to say the least. It assumes a phallocentric universe and that God in his greatness would overlook his single defining quality as a man. Then we have the use of the word ‘below’. An odd choice of word, to be sure. Many a well equipped man with short legs will be ‘below’ the average sized penis on a matter of altitude, though neither length nor girth, if you see what I mean and I’m sure that you do.

My advice to you is to set up some general mailbox rules. You should have a least one rule that deals with every message before you see it. It should contain the rule:

IF [message_from] != “Fry” THEN MOVETO [trash]
ELSE MOVETO [inbox] AND MARK [important] AND BOIL [twinings_earl_grey] WITH [two lumps] AND [milk=a drop] AND THEN GOTO [put_feet_up] WITH [stephen’s_latest_masterpiece]

You will find your life is much easier if you follow my advice. Consider: what indeed would you do with a penis the size of an elephant? Deary me. There is a question I think we will keep for a future Dork Talk. I really haven’t given it much thought. Shudder and, indeed, tremble.

How Tall Is Jeremy Paxman?

To the person currently searching Google to ascertain the correct vertical dimension of the nation's favourite surely current affairs presented, I can confirm that Jeremy Paxman is 5 feet and 7 inches tall, though his inside leg measurement is still a somewhat impressive 32 inches.

It was a pleasure to be of service.

What are Jane Seymour's hobbies?

To the person from Birmingham searching Google for the answer to ‘what are Jane Seymour’s hobbies’, I’m delighted to inform you that they are:

1. Photographing rare forms of underwater coral;
2. Researching her book on Mexican drug cartels, 1970-75;
3. Decorating plaster-cast elves;
4. And visiting her health club where she relaxes in mud by wrestling naked with midgets.

It was a pleasure to help you.

Ainsley Harriot's Italian Marble

Call it devilry if you must but part of me was actually glad that it had happened.

Ainsley Harriott has been something of a byword for upward mobility since he rose to stardom a few years ago. He’s an unusual beast in the world of celebrity and one from whom you would be wise to keep a measured distance. That distance is usually measured inches longer than the reach of his tongue, which he is more likely to use when greeting you than he is likely to shake you by the hand. It has worked remarkably well for him. From stirring noodles on BBC2, he moved on to conquer America before he came back home last year and returned to Ready Steady Cook where he can be found, five days a week, leering towards cameras and sticking out his twenty seven inch tongue for ‘the ladies’.

This deep background is my way of introducing the fact that he moved into the area just before Christmas. Yesterday was the first time we’d had chance to set foot inside his house.

‘Come on, Richard,’ said Judy after she’d found me at noon sitting in the middle of the living room zapping aliens on the XBox 360 that Stephen Fry bought me for Christmas. ‘You’ll become a vegetable if you play those games much longer.’

‘Hmmm,’ I said as I slipped out from behind a docking crate and hit a bug between the eyes with my sniper rifle.

‘Ainsley’s having a few friends over to his new house,’ she said. ‘He’s invited us around for a New Year’s drink.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, most eloquently, I thought, as a laser blast seared a hole in my virtual spacesuit.

‘Well? Are you coming?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, dropping the controller as Fry’s onscreen presence began to dance over my dead corpse, his cape, emblazoned with the Fry crest, flapping in the solar wind. ‘You know, I’m not over this cold and Stephen has just pwned my arse…’

She raised her fists and set them on her hips. ‘Must you do everything that Stephen says? Get changed this minute, Richard Madeley. For once, you can actually do something for your wife. And the fresh air will do you some good. I’m sick of hearing you sniffing.’

I was not in a fit enough state to argue. I got changed, shaved off two weeks of beard, and met Judy at the car. This isn’t to say I was feeling well. In fact, by the time we were pulling up at Ainsley’s house, I was feeling pretty nauseous. A bright pink mansion with yellow decoration will tend to do that to a man, especially when it’s also been covered with bright blue Christmas lights to spell ‘Alright ladies?’

‘Richard! Judy! How lovely of you to come,’ said Ainsley, meeting us at the door. He stuck a kiss on Judy’s cheek before he the turned and licked me across the brow. ‘Hello Richard,’ he drawled before he smacked his lips together as considered the flavour. ‘You’re a mite tasty. But you’ve not been getting plenty of greens over Christmas, you naughty man! Your iron is low.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I explained.

‘A mild cold,’ muttered Judy.

‘Oh,’ said Ainsley, ‘a marital dispute! Well don’t let me stop you two from arguing.’ He wiped a fleck of something from my shoulder before he gestured us into an adjacent room. ‘Come on in and meet my friends. They’re just dying to meet you.’

Walking into the room felt like I’d been slipped into BBC2’s afternoon schedule. Anne Robinson was holding a competition with a walnut cabinet to see who could maintain the tautest frown. Watching the two of them with professional delight was the David Dickinson wannabe, Tim Wonnacott. You probably don’t know the man as he’s one of the BBC’s cult stars. I always think he has a look of Terry Thomas had the great man been hit across the chin with a frying pan. Also in the mix was the face of upper-crust wildlife, Ben Fogle, and the face of pretty much everything else, Cheryl Baker.

‘Hello Judy,’ chirped Cheryl (you’ll find she always chirps). ‘Richard. You’re looking well.’

‘I’ve had flu,’ I said.

‘A mild cold,’ said Judy.

‘I was once a big star in America,’ said Robinson, who has the peculiar habit of starting every conversation with this disputed fact. ‘There’s a horrible bug going around. We had to cancel the Christmas Weakest Link because of it.’

‘Well at least it’s good to know that it’s not all bad,’ I muttered as I settled myself in a chair next to Tim and Ben.

And that was pretty much it from me. I listened to the group chatter about the business. Ainsley couldn’t stop telling us about the famous people he had licked. He could describe them down to their fat content and how must salt they have in their diet. I confess, he was doing a pretty good job at getting on my bad side and my mood went from petulant to glowering at the half-hour point when he turned to me, put his hand on my knee (I hate it when people do that), and said ‘oh, Richard, you look gloomier than when I told Robert de Niro that he tasted of fish’.

‘Not gloomy,’ I said to him. ‘Just a touch of indigestion.’

Which was the truth. As tired as I was of listening Ainsley’s tongue talk, I was more worried by the increasingly sharp pains grumbling in my left side. They were the warning signs that experience had taught me to heed.

‘Ainsley, could I use your bathroom?’

‘Of course, Richard,’ he said, stroking my knee. ‘Up the stairs. First on the right.’

He set me on my way with a pat on my bottom. I can’t be sure that he didn’t do so with his tongue. I didn’t stop to check. Even heeling it all the way to the bathroom, I barely made it in time.

The flu left my body in a spectacular display that the BBC should have filmed in high definition and shown on the stroke of midnight on New Year. After fifteen minutes of stomach cramping agony, I was done and feeling unbelievably well. I really can’t describe how a good purge revitalises the Madeley system, though what it had done to the atmosphere in Ainsley Harriott’s bathroom I really can’t describe. A pig farm on a warm summer day would be a picnic site by comparison.

I brushed myself down, wiped the hair from my face, which I splashed with some cold water, before I returned to the living room. I found Tim Wonnacott sitting by himself reading a copy of ‘Which Cooker & Hob’ magazine.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Tim.

‘Much,’ I said. ‘It’s been a bad virus.’

‘I hear it’s going around,’ he said.

I looked at the empty chairs once occupied by a Robinson, a Fogel, a Baker, and a Judy. Not to mention a man called Harriott with a twenty seven inch tongue.

‘Where’s Judy?’ I asked.

‘She’s with the rest of them,’ said Tim. ‘Ainsley wanted to show them the improvements they’ve had done to the house.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well I suppose it is an impressive pile.’

‘Bit too modern for me,’ said Tim. ‘Though I hear that the new bathroom suite is something to behold. Specially imported Italian marble.’

‘It is,’ I assured him. Having spent fifteen minutes with my ears stuck between my knees there had been plenty of opportunity to examine the quality bathroom suite. ‘I should bet it cost him a fortune.’

‘Oh, well, don’t let Judy bully you into buying some,’ joked Tim.

‘Hopefully she won’t see it,’ I smiled.

He lowered his magazine. ‘No chance of that,’ he replied. ‘You don’t think Ainsley wouldn’t be off showing them that? They were looking at his new bedroom first and then they were going to the bathroom.’

Normal legs would have taken the steps one or two at a time. A newly purged Madeley did it by the threes and fours. And yet I was still too late. I met the group coming back from the bathroom. The upstairs landing was crowded by looks of mortification. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a look of disgust on Judy’s face quite like the one I saw when she lowered the handkerchief from her mouth.

What could I say?

The four of them brushed past me and left me standing there. A moment later, Judy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her handbag hung ominously over her shoulder. She pointed to the front door.

‘Are we going then?’ I asked.

She just pointed.

She only broke her silence five minutes later in the car.

‘You could have opened the window,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t work the latch,’ I explained. ‘I swear he’s had them specially made to open with his tongue. You can’t hold me responsible for that.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘I’ve been ill.’

‘I’m sure that excuses everything.’

‘Well it’s not as though you don’t already know that this happens. It always happens when I’ve had a bad cold. Does it not matter that I’m feeling better?’

‘Feeling better has nothing to do with it,’ said Judy. ‘Ben Fogle said it reminded him of an incontinent camel he once rode across Libya.’

‘And what did Ainsley say?’

‘Pickled onions.’

‘Pardon?’

Judy flicked me a look. ‘That’s all he said. He licked his lips and said “pickled onions”.’

‘Ah,’ I replied, nodding. ‘Well, I happen to like pickled onions.’

‘And do you know what Italian marble costs?’

I remembered Tim’s warning. ‘Don’t get any ideas, Judy.’ I said. ‘We can’t afford a new bathroom suite. Not with the Channel 4 contract coming to an end this year.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she moaned. ‘We’re not having Italian marble if it can be discoloured so easily. He says he’s going to have it steam cleaned but I don’t think it will make a difference. Honestly, Richard, I know that you’re a man on many unique and enviable skills, but I never thought you’d be able to turn Italian marble brown.’

The First Horseman Wears A Bright Orange Jacket

Late last night, or more accurately, early this morning, I was at something of a loose end but not yet quite ready for bed. The New Year had come in with me home alone but I was also in one of my rare moods of mild optimism. Judy had left me with five party poppers to pull once Big Ben struck midnight, while she’d gone off to celebrate with her friends. I had missed out, being, as you know, still full of a cold. Forced to forgo the revelry, I’d counted down to the New Year on my own, popped my poppers, and then sat beneath the trails of crepe paper that came raining down on me. It was bliss. You just can’t know what a relief it is to a man to know that he’s avoided for another year having to kiss Cilla Black as she screams ‘Happy New Year everybody!’ I was beginning 2008 with that rare luxury of full hearing and I decided to use it profitably by doing a bit of channel surfing just to see how the year’s television was shaping up.

I quickly turned off the usual celebrations on BBC1 and ITV. There are few things guaranteed to lower the spirits than watching drunk celebs getting maudlin about ‘the people who can’t be with us tonight’. The truth is so very different. They don’t give a Brylcreemed fig about other people, just where the next drink is coming from and whose keys they’ll be picking out of the ashtray at the end of the evening. Instead, I loitered on Trains, Planes, and Automobiles on Channel 4 which remains one of my favourite comedies of the eighties. But, since I’d come in halfway through it, I didn’t want to spoil it for myself and I flicked over to BBC2.

That’s when my blood froze the flesh to my bone. There on the screen was a horror so great that should I have heard the dolorous chants of the undead coming from the kitchen, I would have ran to them with a joyful trip to my step. The sight that greeted me on BBC2 was the perfect embodiment of New Year and why I’ve learned to hate it so much.

The show was ‘Jules Holland's Hootenanny’ but the screen was all Lenny Henry. His big round bald head was pushed right into the camera’s lens and he was pulling a face like a demented lunatic, mouth wide open, eyes squeezed together. Every blocked pore on his thickly made up chin was visible among the stubble, his nostrils and mouth three gaping holes hiding the unknown horrors of the year ahead. I’m just thankful that I get through most years without coming into close contact with the man. That he should be there, front and centre, within minutes of the start of a new year is a bad sign. In 1987 I remember turning on the TV and seeing Bill Oddie playing the spoons. That year turned out to be a very good one.

Having a tipsy Cilla Black bearing down on you is nothing compared with Lenny Henry forcing his ‘craziness’ on the nation. In fact, there are very few sights that can guarantee to turn my stomach so quickly. There are people inside the business who think that Lenny is a comic genius. They are the very same people who are doing so much to make me prematurely grey by promoting Alan Carr as though he’s the best cure for constipation.

The character of the self-appointed ‘funny man’ is more odorous than any. They share in those same mistaken principals that lie behind the vividly coloured jackets that too many TV presenters wear in the belief that it gives them personality. Lenny has made a career by making loud noises and grinning like a village idiot. The gulf between his act and his real life are more obvious than we find with most comedians, which makes his act all the more onerous. I want to tell him to calm down, to assure him that he doesn’t need to be ‘on’ all the time. He needn’t be ‘funny’ in order to be funny.

I’ll be writing at this at more length later in the year when I’ll be giving The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, with a paper titled ‘Comedy for the Credulous: An Argument Against Lenny Henry’.

In the meantime, I just have to say that I fear for 2008.

Watch this space.