Another Extract From My Autobiography

Judy thinks that it might be worthwhile if I begin to post the occasional anecdote from my autobiography. I’m afraid that these aren’t the parts the Daily Mail will be paying us a fortune to serialise next year, so don’t expect to read about the time Judy worked as a ‘dog of war’ in Angola or how I helped rig the Icelandic vote in the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest. These are the smaller adventures from the Madeley files and, as such, are self-contained appetisers to the volume currently sitting in my wordprocessor.

I want to begin with the following extract which comes from the middle section of the book. Here, you will find me living the high life in 1980. I’m already settled in the routine of hosting the nation's favourite morning talk show but doing the occasional bit of freelance work on behalf of the government, to whom I was both advisor and trouble-shooter.

[Taken from Chapter 7 of 'When Greatness Comes Calling: The Extraordinary Life of Richard Madeley' © Richard Madeley. All Rights Reserved.]

One of the strangest yet notable experiences of 1980 was my involvement in one of the boldest feats of mechanical engineering ever attempted in Western Europe. It would bring together three government agencies, two of the armed services, and some of the biggest names in light entertainment. It began, however, quite humbly when my name came to the attention of the people at the Environmental Agency. They knew of me because of the part I played in developing a methane-powered engine for Jeremy Clarkson’s rocket car. The new engine had been a great success, despite an earlier model exploding and leaving the lank-haired Clarkson with a permanent perm. With such a high profile achievement to my name, however, men in important positions in Whitehall thought me perfectly placed to help them combat an emerging threat to the British Isles.

One morning in the middle of October, two men travelled up to Liverpool and cornered me in my dressing room. They found me in an upbeat mood. The show was over for another day and an interview with the newly-reformed Monkees had gone particularly well. I was particularly happy because I’d managed to get Davy Jones to sign my locker. For much of the 1980s, I’d use that locker to break the ice with nervous guests. Most struggled to find it as amusing, which, I suppose, is evidence of the stupidity of some of our guests, but it could always cheer me up. Eventually, in an act as ironic as it was spiteful, Judy had the locker taken out to sea and dumped somewhere off New Brighton in 1989. She’s never been a woman to appreciate a good pun and rarely allows me to use the same joke for more than ten years.

I can’t say that the men from the ministry were that keen on the jest, even when it was in its prime. They were in no mood for Davy Jones’ Locker and they soon got quickly down to business. They explained how they were facing an environmental catastrophe due to the aging condition of one of our favourite national monuments. I’m talking, of course, about Ms. Barbara Windsor.

Over the course of the 1960s, little bubbly Barbara had become a household name. She played chirpy but chesty young women with a habit of losing their tops at the slightest encouragement of man or nature. Babs was in her element when her ‘baps’ were ‘popping out’ in front of the nation’s campest comedians. These were men without the necessary chromosomes to enjoy the sight of her pendulous breasts floating wild and free. How ironic it was that Charles Hawtrey was always there whenever her nipples needed soap suds to hide them from the nation’s view. Brassieres would only fly off when Kenneth Williams gazed in their direction. If it wasn’t for the late great Sid James and a few members of the London underworld, Barbara’s breasts would have gone unappreciated by males of the heterosexual caste. As it was, they retained their popularity throughout much of the 1970s and they went on to star in some of the funniest British films ever made. ‘Carry On Henry’, ‘Carry On Matron’, ‘Carry On Abroad’ are all classics of their kind. And who will ever forget ‘Carry On Dick’ which brought more jokes about my name to the public’s attention than any film before or since?

By 1980, however, Barbara’s star was beginning to wane. More specifically, her chest was beginning to wane. Southwards. What had once stood proud like a twin-nippled symbol of everything that was good and holy about Britain, was now making the three feet one inch journey towards her ankles. The government feared the unknown consequences should that once magnificent edifice slip so far. Were it to succumb to gravity, they were concerned about the environmental damage that would be left behind. It was the kind of disaster that had once befell small Welsh mining communities and rice farmers in China. They knew that only a man with a keen eye for mechanical problems could solve it.

'Richard, we want you to do something about Barbara's droop,' said the man from the Ministry once he had finished drawing a pair of breasts in pencil on the dressing room wall. ‘If we leave it much longer, who knows what might happen? God knows but this week we’ve even had to stop Barbara going to visit a children’s hospital. The Prime Minister was paranoid that they might fall while small children were standing beneath them.’ Here he tapped his drawing with the pencil before drawing in a small child beneath the pair of mammoth breasts. ‘Could you imagine what the newspapers would say? The PM wants to call in the army.’

‘Well, they have the lifting gear,’ I admitted, ‘but can they be trusted with a matter of such delicacy?’

‘That’s exactly our problem.’

'So you want me to produce a clever solution to the problem, rather like Howard Hughes provided for Jane Russell in 'The Outlaw'? You require a supportive brassiere that lifts, separates, as well as ensures the long term stability of Barbara Windsor and the nation? Well, gentlemen, you needn’t worry any further. This is exactly the kind of problem that excites me. In fact, I can’t wait to get my hands on it Barbara’s breasts.’ I wiped the last of the makeup from my face and began to list my demands. 'Of course, I'll want detailed schematics and I’ll need to make a close inspection of the site. If you can get me satellite pictures of the cleavage, I’d feel better. If you can’t manage that, I’ll take my own measurements with a steel tape measure I’ll be sure to warm between my thighs.’

'That might be tricky,' said the man from the Environmental Agency. 'You see, Barbara’s not admitting to the problem. She won’t allow any of us to get close enough to see how far things have slipped. We had a team of inspectors dressed as East End wide-boys and spivs but they can’t get close enough without her seeing through their disguises.'

'It’s a no go area, then?' I asked and began to shake my head. 'Then I don’t see how I can help you. Without access to the site, I can’t take the measurements that I’ll need to begin construction of a suitably reinforced brassiere.’

Ministry kicked a chair in the corner of the room while Environmental wiped his face on a cloth he picked from the back of the door. I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was the last of a pair of Fred Talbot’s thermal underpants which had perished due to a particularly warm autumn. We only kept them to wipe the sweat off Russell Grant whenever he got too excited by Taurus’ proximity to Gemini.

‘There must be something you can do,’ said Ministry. He looked at me and whispered. ‘They speak very highly of you in Whitehall. They say that there’s no man they’d trust more to solve a problem on this scale.’

I always respond well to flattery. ‘Well, this will be tricky but I think I might have a solution...'

'You do?'

'It’s obvious. We'll have to get her to appear on the show. There must be something she wants to plug. Once we get Barbara on the sofa in front of an audience of many millions, Judy can distract her while I crawl around the back of the sofa and take all the measurements. We’ll have to synchronise the cameras so they don’t show me fondling our guest but I think we can make it work. We have done in the past...'

'That’s genius!' said the man from the Ministry.

'If only all our problems were as easily solved,' said the man from Environment.

And so it was that the arrangements were made by the people at Granada and shortly after it was announced that Barbara Windsor had agreed to come on the show to promote her appearance on ‘Worzel Gummidge’. She’d played a character called Saucy Nancy and I wrote Judy enough ‘saucy’ questions to keep Barbara busy. I was to get on my hands and knees, crawl around the sofa, and install the same type of motion sensors that had been used on the side of Mount St. Helens and would measure any movement in her bust line.

However, when the day of the recording came around, I was nervous. Even Judy noticed that I seemed to be sweating more than normal.

‘You’re not wearing underpants, are you Richard?’ she asked, five minutes before we were due to go on air. I had to admit that I was. ‘Honestly,’ she tutted. ‘Why do you do it to yourself? You never normally wear underpants. You know you get too warm wearing them in the studio.’

How could I explain that I was only wearing them because I feared that any prolonged contact with Barbara Windsor’s breasts would enrage Little Richard in front of a national audience of millions? The pair of super-tight underpants I’d bought on our last Italian holiday would be perfect for keeping the beast at bay.

The show began well. Our first guest was Jacqueline Bisset, for whom I’ve long held many impure thoughts. It gave me plenty of chance to test the viability of my underwear, which I was glad to see withstood the considerable strain placed on them. Things only began to go wrong with our second guest who was a yoga instructor who believed that keeping blood from the knees helped maintain a healthy body. When we came back from the break, they insisted on putting me through a few basic moves. Being double jointed and having a natural athleticism, I didn’t think twice when he asked me to stand on my head and cross my thighs. I’ve done the ‘inverted stork’ a dozen times on live TV and never without a problem. However, never before had I been wearing skin tight underpants made for slim Italian hips. By the time I got around to the second half of the show, my underpants had ridden up and were cutting off the circulation to the lower half of my body. When it was time for Judy to introduce Barbara, I was in no fit state to go crawling and groping. My ankles had turned black and my thighs were the size of buoyancy aids for ocean going yachts.

‘It’s lovely to see you here, it really is,’ said Judy, beginning the interview. ‘What have you been doing since we last saw you?’

‘I’ve been busy,’ squeaked Barbara. ‘I’ve just finished doing an episode of Worzel Gummidge...’

‘Did you get your breasts out in every Carry On film?’ I asked, a touch panicked by the size of my legs and wanting to hurry things on.

‘Not all of them,’ said Barbara, still smiling.

‘Yes, but all the ones I’ve seen...’

‘Perhaps that’s why you keep watching them, Richard,’ replied Barbara. She’s quick like that.

The small talk over, I scratched myself, which was the sign for Judy to distract Barbara.

‘Tell us about of Worzel Gummidge,’ said Judy as I casually slid to the floor.

I winced as my underpants dug into my groin but the pain quickly passed. Doctors later told me that a nerve had been severed and by the time I began to crawl around the sofa, there was no feeling in my legs. Had the camera panned out by even a fraction, the world would have seen my engorged black ankles disappear behind the sofa and, a few moments later, my hands emerge under Barbara’s armpits. She was so busy telling the world a funny story about Jon Pertwee and a rancid carrot that she didn’t notice me taking careful measurements of her bust or attach the small transmitters that would send back precise measurements should the slope decide to fall.

It was a job well done. By the time I was back sitting next to Judy, I was numb below the waist and wondering if I’d severed any vital parts of my anatomy, but generally satisfied that I’d managed to complete the trickiest stage of Operation Windsor Sag.

As I recovered over the course of the next month, I worked diligently on my designs for a new brassiere with a double cantilever, five vertical stays, and twin lace cups made from braided steel cable. Because of the scale of the engineering task, we had to disguise it as work commissioned by the navy. By the time my legs were back to normal size, we’d taken over a dry dock in Hull for the build and the finished brassiere was moved to London in an armoured convoy on the night of November 11th, 1980.

The next day, we passed the brassiere over to a team of Royal Engineers, specially chosen for their indifference to the female bust. Half of the platoon were leg men, the rest of indeterminate sexual orientation. At half past seven in the morning, working in darkness, they breached Barbara’s front lines and set about attaching the first push-up bra of its kind. They managed to outfit her bust under heavy bombardment and suffered only seven losses in the process. All were later decorated.

Though I say it myself, the work we did that day will last centuries. It was a piece of engineering to match London’s sewer system and was the sort of feat of British knowhow that would bring a tear to Jeremy Clarkson’s eye. The government rewarded me for my duties with another medal, which, again due to national security, went unlisted in the New Years Honours. In addition, my patent for the lifting and separating brassiere earned me a small fortune when it was later marketed under the name ‘Wonder Bra’. Though they didn’t know it at, women across the globe had me to thank for their newly-found cleavage but I was just happy to have served my nation and help preserve a monument that generations of school boys would be able to visit and admire for many years to come.

In Which I Feel Loved And Take Everything Back

Flattery will get you everywhere, especially when it's directed towards my toes. I awoke this morning to find Judy massaging my feet.

'I thought it would help you relax,' she said as she used her elbow to work the tension from my heel. 'I have to say, Richard, that you have the sexiest hard skin I think I've ever seen.'

'It is unusual to see scales like that,' I admitted as I tried to sit up in bed. Judy just kept a firm hand on my ankle and wouldn't let me shift. I couldn't for the life of me presume to understand her behaviour, though had I known that Judy had such a gift for the foot massage, I wouldn't have to go into London every month to get my rub down by my Korean shiatsu master, Madame Ping Shu Nut.

'I thought you were a little highly strung yesterday,' said Judy after another five minutes of blissful hand-on-bunion action.

'Highly strung?' I reflected on her words. 'I suppose I was a little.'

'A little?' She snorted a laugh. 'I thought Bill Oddie was going to cry when you vowed to hunt down and kill every goshawk in Kent. The poor man... I've never seen him run so fast. I bet him and Nige are still out, catching every bird of prey in order to give them sanctuary.'

'I suppose I should ring him to apologise,' I said. 'But I just couldn't listen to yet another boast about how he's BBC2's most popular presenter. Not when everything has been going pear shaped for me lately...'

'And what's wrong with pear-shaped?' asked Judy, suddenly stopping mid-massage to stroke her blouse down over her ample hips.

'I didn't mean it that way,' I said, knowing how my dear wife is proud of her full figure, as indeed, she should be. 'I just think that life is not treating me all that fairly and I've been in no mood to write. I would much rather go out and heckle people. You know how I accidentally kicked a dwarf in Manchester last week? Well, I never told you but it made me feel so happy.'

'It's that autobiography you're writing that's doing it,' she said. 'You're reliving painful experiences from the days before you were a celebrity. It can't be good for you, Richard. It's making you bitter. I don't even know why you're doing it. You've already been told that there's not a publisher in the country who would want to read it.'

I had to admit that she was partly right. The whole exercise was futile, no matter how well I was progressing in writing my life story. I've already reached 1977 and the time I spent working to overthrow Fidel Castro. 'I suppose thirteen thousand words feels such a long way from finishing the damn thing,' I said. 'By threatening to abandon blogging, I was merely admitting that blogging might be the only thing I'm cut out for. I enjoy doing it but it makes me feel bad about myself.'

'Perhaps you should go back to masturbation,' she said. 'At least it was something you did in private.'

'Now you see,' I said, looking down the bed. 'That's the sort of remark I can't repeat on my blog. Do you really want me to get a reputation as a sex blogger?'

'It was just an idea,' shrugged Judy. 'Denise said that she thought it might cheer you up.'

The thought of Denise Richardson giving me advise about self-abuse was enough to make my toes curl.

'Yes, well, today will be different, Judy. I swear it. I'm going to be much more upbeat.'

After another twenty minutes, Judy finally managed to straighten out the curl in my toes which had wrapped themselves around my heels. I then showered and covered myself in talc before dressing myself in my favourite Afghan gown. I cleaned out my office and even wiped the bird muck from the window (it had been sitting there all week and I'd seen no good luck to speak of). Finally, I gave Stephen Fry a call and asked if he was in the mood for a Scrabble marathon.

'Scrabble? Ah, Dick. Were you to see me now, relaxed on my chaise longue, you would think I were a man content with the world. But, alas, 'tis not so. I yearn for the chance to increase the value of a “zumbooruk” on a triple word score. I'll be around in ten minutes.'

Sure enough, the man is as exact as he is tall and wise. Ten minutes later, the front door opened and Stephen Fry backed into the hall, dragging his suitcases behind him.

'I suggest we play normal rules for the first twenty four hours,' he said, 'and then we'll move over to the far more challenging game, which I devised while touring America. Every vowel scores double and there must be at least three in every word.'

'Sounds intriguing,' I admitted.

He puffed himself up in that way he has when feeling most proud of himself. 'I once had a game against myself that lasted a full ninety three hours,' he said. 'Quite the challenge.'

It was during our first game (Stephen was losing and therefore in the mood to chat) that I mentioned my off-the-cuff threat to abandon my Appreciation Society.

'You should consider changing to the form of the blessay,' he said as he sucked on his pipe. 'A long twenty-seven-thousand-word post twice a month is enough to keep the punters happy. It also leaves you plenty of time to do what you want. Write your novels or launch new projects even more intriguing than your Nut Club.'

'I do have ideas in that direction,' I admitted. 'I would quite like to adopt a pseudonym and launch a blog that's sure to offend everybody who reads it. That's my problem, you see, Stephen. I'm much too polite for the modern world. I need to find my edge.'

Stephen pulled the pipe from his lips. 'Then I make this promise to you now, Richard. We'll do it together! You keep on writing you Appreciation Society and I'll help you in any new venture that takes your fancy. Have you thought of writing a blog about wallpaper?'

'I don't know,' I smiled. 'Wallpaper isn't really my cup of tea. I was thinking of some pretty extreme subjects. They might make you feel uncomfortable to be uninvolved in something so puerile.'

'The more offensive the better,' smiled he, the man who has yet to let me down. 'And I'm sure there will be room for a little something on the nature of decorative wall covering.'

'Then that's a deal. The Appreciation Society continues but I'll get to work on a new blog that will remain anonymous but frisky, well written but depraved, Oddie free but round enough to roll down Blogger's Hill. People won't know what has hit them!'

'Excellent,' said Stephen as he learned forward and set out a word across a triple word score. 'There... “zumbooruk” which I believe is a small cannon that sits on a swiveled rest on the back of a camel.'

In Response To Mutley

“You try too hard to be funny Mr M... sometimes real feelings are the important thing. Let us know about your real self...” (Mutley the Dog)

And so, Mutley jams his finger (or is that paw?) into an exposed nerve. Trying too hard or not trying hard enough: I feel doubly damned. I have neither the will nor the energy to be funny today. Yet, should I try, I suppose I’d only be accused of trying ‘too hard’. And you know what? I really don’t give a damn any longer. I’ve had it with blogging.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Madeley’s having one of his tantrums. You might be right. I might feel different on Monday. A publisher might ring me this evening to say that they care enough to take a punt on my talents. I might get a writing gig that earns me a pittance but restores the belief that it is all worth it. It’s probably only today that I feel like I really do mean it when I say that I’m quitting this world of blogs. I’ve been writing them for over three years, written well in excess of 1500 posts, and in all that time, in the real world, my Channel 4 gig has come to an end and I’ve risen to the position of a desk jockey stuck in a serviced office somewhere between Manchester’s Chinatown and the Gay Village. Today is my payday and I have £30 to last me four weeks. That’s always a sobering thought when you sit down in the morning and try to make strangers laugh.

Not that I have many readers. People must have tuned into to the show just to see Judy. Nobody tunes into read me. Some say I write too much, others that I write too little. It’s my own fault. I suppose. I never pandered to the sex and knickers brigade, where every post involves a sex toy and a lubricated donkey. I don’t post porn, filth, or even bad language. There too, I misjudged the British public. I should reinvent myself as a prostitute and, tomorrow, give you the inside leg measurement of my first punter. Would you read me if I turned tricks? You needn’t answer that one.

I should have spotted where I was going wrong. Every morning I go through half-a-dozen mailboxes to delete the emails and comments I receive because of my blogging activities. How many mornings do I read something along the lines of: ‘you know its like you think your funny but your not funny you are just sad and i want you to die’? Eventually the poorly written insults from teenage girls weaken the spirit. For the first two years, it was all quite amusing. Now they are just a sad incitement of education in this country. Even our insults have fallen below the standard expected of a fully functioning Western liberal democracy. And when the Belgians can hurl more imaginative insults than your own people, you know your country is in trouble...

Damn, there I go, trying to be funny. And I’m clearly not funny. Why else would my novel get dumped a couple of months before it was due to be published? But then, blogging was always a delusion to match that of my writing. There was a time when I laughed at the emails I received from people wishing me dead. Now I’m tired of it. Why did I expose myself to the petty ridicule of a few and the desperate pleading of others? Just for the thanks of a very small minority?

So, I’ve had it. I concede defeat. And I suggest that we all give up. The mainstream media win again. Only those with real talents get a place on Jordan and Pete’s latest talk show. Say what you want about Katie Price but she’s gone out there and achieved what the rest of us haven’t. You can all mock her but how many of you were nominated as best children’s author at this year’s Galaxy Book Awards? I would have been so proud to have presented her with that award. I mean that. So very proud.

As for me, I’m going to save what little remains of my dignity before I become one of the slaw-jawed misanthropes with a chip on their shoulder because they’ve not had their manuscript published about the man who invented sea salt. I always wanted to write professionally. Moaning about my lack of success was never how I thought it would go. So, before it goes any further, I’m going to play elsewhere. You might see me on satellite TV. Watch out for me on the next series of ‘Eye of the Storm’.

Mutley, you’ve done a great thing. Your comment was the straw that broke this camel’s last vertebra. I’ve clearly been trying too hard and now I’m not going to try any longer.

The Morning After Eurovision

Goats have been nibbling my ears all night and the sun still hasn’t risen. I’m sitting here in the darkness, listening to replays of ‘Divine’ and trying to work out why Europe hasn’t seen fit to vote for a group of female backing singers wearing beards. It was only a shame that the act of casual violence promised us at 2.30 in the video didn't make it to the Eurovision stage. Sebastien Tellier was robbed of his deserved Eurovision glory. It's wrong. It's all so very wrong.


The conclusion I’ve come to is that I clearly have no taste in music. Or, at least, I don’t share the public’s taste, which I suppose is a different thing entirely. The BBC’s plans for my taking over from Terry Wogan also lie in tatters. I sat through the Eurovision last night, taking notes on now to insult our European neighbours without sounding too insulting. It came as a terrible shock to all of us to hear that Terry is thinking of standing down. My time might have come a little too quickly and there’s already talk of giving the job to Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand. The BBC’s doubts are valid ones. Do I really have the experience to insult tanned East European divas with bleached teeth and hideous moles? Is the UK ready for my support of Europe’s alternative acts, with catchy melodies and a proper sense of the ridiculous? We shall have to wait and see.

I wouldn’t mind but the evening began so well, with Terry reminding us that last year’s winner looked like an ‘angrier version of Janette Krankie’.


I thought my own ‘glandular Ronnie Corbett’ was closer to the mark because I at least had the gender right...

Things started to go askew when Sir Terry began to praise the power ballads and mock the different. My choices from last night were all the songs that have received the most insult from the nation’s media this morning. I am, as you know, quite a fan of Tellier but I also was won over from the entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina. At first, Judy suggested that the guy looked like a paedophile with a Leslie Phillips fixation but we were soon warming to the enjoyable alternative rock song by Laka. The whole performance was helped by my understandable attraction to Cleo Rocos wearing a revealing dress and knee-high stockings.

The Spanish entry was also quite catchy and surreal, plus he was backed by a few attractive woman displaying plenty of flesh. I’ve often been accused of watching Eurovision for what Judy describes as ‘tail’ and I won’t deny it. A bad song with flesh on show is easier to endure than yet another ballad sung by a Romanian steel worker and her friends.

If Terry Wogan does retire from Eurovision (and assuming that the BBC don’t do the sensible thing and give me the gig) then I suggest that we should withdraw our considerable funding from the competition. We pay a large portion of Eurovision's wages and if our licence fee isn’t being used to provide an easy outlet for our latent xenophobia, then what is it going to be used for?

24 Hours...

...to Eurovision joy and my favourite night in front of the TV.

This weeks wages are on a French victory. If Sébastien Tellier doesn't win, the world will fall into darkness and goats will nibble your ears.

Today On The Train...

I sat next to a fat man with tic-tacs.

The Blog Post In Which I Try To Pick A Fight With Will Self

In a duel between two of the better looking members of the ‘Grumpy Old Men’ cast, I think I'd have the advantage of my never having been a smoker. In fact, such is the clear superiority I’d have over the author of The Butt, which I recently added to my library, I would have more than enough opportunities to trap his wheezing body with the deadly Madeley earlobe manoeuvre inside three five-minute rounds. The fight would be over and I’d then have chance to confront an immobile Will Self about the terrible state of his penmanship.

That, at least, is the plan.

There is, in this, as much a note of confession as there is boastfulness. Confession because I’m quite aware that I lack Will’s relationship with words; his loquacity, the way he rumbles and tussles with synonyms, and the élan with which he executes any series of clauses over the course of a tightly writ contemporary satire. Yet I'm not ashamed to acknowledge that I have a clear advantage over the man when it comes to keeping the punters happy. I know, for example, how to sign my name. See:

The process that led me to make this startling realisation began on Friday morning when I found myself again cast out onto the streets of Manchester. An independent television producer with a mild Goebbels complex threw me from the ‘Eye of the Storm’ production offices because of the way I pronounce the word ‘mist’. Tearful, I dashed down to Deansgate and into Waterstone’s, where my slightly outlandish disguise of a beret and a false nose/moustache combination is sure to attract no ridicule. Half of the customers in the shop are celebrities seeking a little solitude and if nobody is going to recognise Bill Roache in a floral hat and woman’s taffeta gown, then I know I’m sure to be safe from the general public. It’s why I go there at least twice a week and rarely buy anything. I just loiter around the Henry Miller books where I console myself that – had I the money – I still wouldn’t go to the desk with a book covered with more modernist nipples than an Elberry post.

Yet Friday was no ordinary day. I had money from my birthday tucked into my sports girdle. In addition to which, I had eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, so I had a few extra coins in my pocket. I was in the mood and financial zone to buy a book. This is how I came to find myself deciding which of the editions of Will Self’s latest to grab. Was it to be the drab paperback made from recycled egg boxes or a hardback signed by the great man himself?

I chose the latter option but soon became disillusioned with the book once I’d settled myself in the coffee shop and set myself to reading it. I had a problem with how it was written. Not the story, I should add. I just mean the signature.


Swipe a pen across a sheet of paper dancing on a manic breeze and you might approximate the autograph I have in my book. The indifferent run of the pen lazily describes a shape that could be a ‘W’ but might also be some strange runic code involving white witches and duck tape. A few dots had been hammered after the scribble, but these too were without meaning. Where they the eyes of the author looking at me or nipples on a lounging figure? Has I turned away from Henry Miller only to still buy myself a reclining nude with literary pretensions?

Or was it that Will is so tired of signing these books that he no longer cares? Has the signed edition really become such a formality? A sham? A marketing exercise? Getting home late on Friday night, I retired to my room examine a few of the other signed editions I own. It didn’t take much searching to realise that Will is just not putting enough effort into his book signings. I have signed editions by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Bennett, and David Mamet; all of whom were quite happy to exert their elbows when it came to signing my front pages.

Kurt Vonnegut's signature is a work of art as well as including a good partortion of his name, including at least a 'K', a 'V' and a 'T':



David Mamet's signature is almost readable on account of the two recognisable initials.


As for Alan Bennett, his signature is a work of precision to match his prose. Should a signature ever wear a herringbone tweed, this one would certainly have creases to match.


It begs the question: does Will Self know how to write his name so others might recognise it or is this lack of legibility caused by the rocking motion of the Waterstone’s gravy train? I suppose I’m surprised that the act of signing a book still involves a writer putting pen to frontispiece. Might we soon have to satisfy ourselves with the first edition ‘as breathed over by Will Self after a particularly spicy meal’? Might the tang of chicken korma curry be enough to prove that the book has been in the author’s presence? Get the man to urinate on a pile of hardbacks from a great height and I would consider that his mark has been made. Let Waterstone’s print stickers for the cover that read: ‘As Sprayed On By The Author’ and I’ll pay a premium price for a book by the man who best captures the zeitgeist, the throb of the nation’s pulse. He has words coming out of places where most men grow hair. I just wish he weren’t so incapable of signing his name legibly.

Will: I’m calling you out. I demand that you post me a legibly signed copy of your book or I’m coming for you. And I warn you that my deadly earlobe manoeuvre has crippled many a healthy man.

Herring Nipples

While Judy hogs the living room and watches the FA Cup final with Dame Shirley Bassey, I’m spending my afternoon here in my office, catching up with blog business, buffing my elbows, clipping nostril hair, and generally doing that important spot of grooming I’ve put off for so long. One of the problems with the Madeley gene is that the males of the line have the quickest growing nose hair to ever grace a chin. Judy has often suggested that we turn it into high quality matting that I might sell via this blog. It’s a fine idea except I can’t promise a supply a single shade of fibre. An everlasting ‘Welcome Home’ mat is one thing but would you really buy one that’s got flecks of grey in it?

I don’t know why I’m asking you this except I want to also take this opportunity to clear up any outstanding business on this blog. I have a love/hate relationship with my statistics, as indeed, I have with reality, and my posts recently dried up while I came to grips with my new job in Manchester. I even stopped looking to see how many people continued to visit me and never had chance to see who has linked to me, included me in their memes, or generally badmouthing the finest looking man in an electric-violet cummerbund.

First of all to Elberry, who really moved me with his post, ‘The Knights of Madeley’. The thought of being sponsored by my readers touches me deeper than my expert Korean masseur, Hwan Long Finger. However, I’m not a man to take charity. I just ask you to gather at Trafalgar Square next Friday at noon and march on the offices of Random House or Macmillan. I’ve got a firm undertaking from Selena Dreamy that she’ll do the dance of the seven veils before any publishing executive or literary agent willing to put me on their books. (And I would like to take this opportunity of publicly thanking Selena for this kind gesture and for filling in after Vanessa Feltz slipped dropped out during rehearsals. I’d also like to thank The Twitch for handling that situation so well.)

Speaking of heavy matters, I’d like to thank the people at the BBC’s College of Comedy competition for their gracious response to the ten pages of sitcom I submitted to them last month. By not contacting me, they have chosen to preserve my dignity and respect my privacy. I’d like to also thank them for not dragging me into London for the final round of interviews, nor loading my schedule with the onerous duty, as winner, of having to write them a complete sitcom. My loss will ensure that the BBC’s next generation of sitcoms will be of the same standard as the last. Hurrah!

Finally, I would like to send my thanks to 'Maureen Chlorine' for the admirable attempt to render my handsome profile in finger paints but I wonder if she really needed to include my plastic bag in the same picture.

Onto meme business: I’ve been listed in a meme on Monscooch, where I’ve been asked to describe myself in six words. Hard to do. Do they want the ‘real’ Richard or the public Richard? I think I’ll cheat and give them both. So, the public Richard is:

Brash
Bouncy
Affluent
Fertile
Tanned
Gregarious

As for the private Richard, you might say that he’s almost a totally different man. The Richard you get to see on this blog is:

Complicated
Optimistic
Moody
Gullible
Generous
Nige

Which leads me on to Nige’s brief-but-much-appreciated post, to which I was forced to add my own three replies. The problem of being both Nige and myself, writing two blogs a day, is that I sometimes get a little confused as to which persona I’m inhabiting. Am I the wren loving twitcher with a love of English poets or am I Nige? Only time will tell.

Finally, I must mention search terms. It’s always a pleasure to look to see what people have put into Google. Not having examined my statistics in months, I have missed some real gems. The following three caught my attention:

‘Herring nipples’

What more can I say about my favourite brine-flavoured snack? They’re the juicy North Sea chews that you can tickle in your pocket.

‘What’s wrong with Richard Madeley’s left knee?’

I sprained it when I fell over after ogling a mime. It is still giving me a little pain, though I’m glad to report that the last few days has finally seen a small improvement.

‘Who is Richard Madeley?’

A perfect moment to post the description of myself I wrote for my entry on Wikipedia:

Richard Madeley, TV host, writer, blogger, fertility god, and inventor, is the immensely popular and influential host of his own talk show on Channel 4. His wife, Judy, often appears as his special guest. Richard also writes a blog which is even more popular that his TV show. An estimated 4.5 million readers a month read about his adventures with celebrity friends Bill Oddie and Stephen Fry. He has been sued by ex-pat Tunisians, members of the deaf, blind, midget, and homeless societies, and David Dickinson, though he has settled out of court a record number of times. He is currently writing a epic poem based around the lives of his blogging friends.

Red Dawn

Drunk Russians are calling up to me from the street. If they can smell my fear, I don’t know why they also blow kisses and wave women’s underwear that they’ve looted from the local Anne Summers.

You’d think I’m in downtown St. Petersburg, not a hotel just a few hundred yards from Manchester’s Town Hall. I’ve turned off the lights and I’m keeping well away from the window. The way these folk fire their small arms into the air, it’s easy to catch a chunk of shrapnel. In fact, as easy as it is to catch the lacy bras they keep throwing up here. Since the Rangers fans rioted last night, the Russians have decided to show them how it’s done. Tonight, the city has the air of the worst kind of African capital. Think Mogadishu but with canals and trendy coffee shops.

(And surely they don’t expect me to fit into anything less than a DD cup?)

I knew there was something wrong once the armoured personnel carrier dropped me at the office which sits in Manchester’s Chinatown, at the edge of the Gay Village. As soon as I ran down the tailgate, I realised there wasn’t the usual abundance of flamboyantly dressed men from the orient whistling to me. Just men with blue football scarves wrapped around their wrists. Or around their RPGs. Whichever was thicker.

‘It’s been like this all night,’ said Art, Eye of the Storm's producer, from beneath his desk. ‘Since they won the cup, the Russians have decided to take the city. The council offices fell at dawn and they’re now working their way towards the Ardale Centre with the intention of taking the last free Starbucks south of Bolton.’

‘Damn their post-Soviet hides,’ I cried and looked to grab the nearest gun.

‘It’s no use,’ said Art, clearly sensing my intention to make a stand. ‘They’ve put snipers in every Greggs The Baker.'

In Manchester that could only mean one thing. 'That's one killing machine on every corner!' I cried.

'Precisely. You better get back to your hotel and lock your door.’

‘But there’s nothing we can do?’

‘Just flee the city at the earliest opportunity, Richard, and be sure to tell the world our story,’ said Art, tears in his eyes.

And what a story that is! I can confirm that Manchester has fallen to the Russians and as the bullets and bras fly outside my hotel window, I'm waiting for darkness to fall. I'll either escape or be captured by men who want to dress me in undersized brassieres.

I don't know if I'll make it home. In fact, you might even say that it's either London or bust...

In Which I Respond To An Outrageous Accusation

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

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

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

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

‘Where indeed?’ I replied.

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

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

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

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

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

A Discourse On Toast Muffins

A brief post for the sake of my nerves.

Judy sat down with her Slimming World magazine a few minutes ago and thumbed through it as I mixed some pancakes with the joyful air of a man who has just had the all clear on his stool sample.

‘They have a fantastic recipe in here for a poached egg on a muffin,’ said Jude. ‘Only, instead of a muffin, they’ve cleverly cut a piece of toast so it looks like a muffin.’

‘In which case, it’s not a muffin,’ I replied. ‘That’s a recipe is for poached egg on toast.’

‘No, it’s poached egg on a muffin,’ said my dear deluded wife. She was clearly in no mood to argue the point -- I could tell because the veins were standing out on her forehead -- and I was left to silently mix my batter, otherwise seething with an unexpressed rage towards toast ‘muffins’.

Which is why I’ve come here to vent.

My problem is that I can’t accept these random redefinitions of the things around us. You cannot cut a piece of bread into the shape of a muffin and then say it’s a muffin. It’s a piece of toast with the edges trimmed off. Confectionery companies try this trick of redefining products more than anybody and, unless you're diabetic, you probably fall for it. Take, for instance, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. They are repulsive balls of cheap chocolate packed with sugar but I understand that some people like eating them. They are usually sold and eaten at Easter. So much so that Cadbury clearly believe that they can market the brand name all the year round. And this is why you can now buy a Cadbury’s Creme Egg bar.

But it begs the question: but if it’s a bar, why is it called an egg? You see my point? You might even argue that a chocolate egg is not technically an egg since nothing is likely to come from it except tooth decay and large hips. But if you do, at least, accept the premise that something shaped like an egg can be called an 'egg', it still doesn’t make any sense that chocolate shaped into a bar can be called a ‘Cadbury’s Creme Egg bar’. They've now even gone a stage further and released the Creme Egg Twisted. (How you twist an egg, I have no idea but when I hear the name, I think of that most dreadful medical condition, feared by schoolboys everywhere: 'twisted testicles'. How you twist a testicle, I also don't know. But I I've always lived in the fear that it might happen to me. However, I digress...)

I know you probably think that your dear beloved Richard has finally lost it. You might even be sitting there, considering writing to the authorities to ask that my stools be resampled. However, I think you’ll find that I’m merely unnaturally sane in this crazy world.

Right, I’m now going back to my batter. I’m going to make myself a pancake hat, which I’m going to wear until Judy sees sense.

Happy Birthday Me!

It was more than the maturing of my peppercorn stocks that prompted Judy to wake me this morning. ‘It’s your birthday, Richard,’ she said. ‘Or it is according to Wikipedia and if that’s good enough for our team of Cambridge-educated researchers, then it’s good enough for me. Now what would you like to do to celebrate?’

I didn’t know what to say, birthdays having become something of a low point of my year since I prefer to go by my skin age rather than my real age. Besides, I’ve been miserable for so long that I have forgotten the meaning of ‘fun’. It was clear that Judy could sense my mood.

‘I know the contract negotiations with Channel 4 have upset you,’ she said, ‘and I appreciate how tiring it must be to travel up to Manchester once a week to work in an office. But why don’t we spend the peppercorn dividend on the biggest barbecue this street has ever seen? I could ask Cilla to come down and you could give Bill a call...’

The thought of Cilla Black singing ‘Happy Birthday’ was enough to turn a pubic hair but Judy did have a point about my needing to relax. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a good time with my showbiz friends and there’s nothing as good for the spirits as singing one the karaoke while Bill Oddie plays his spoons.

‘We’ll do it!’ I said, throwing back the sheets on my naked body. ‘Uncooked meat on a Tuesday! There’s nothing as likely to provoke the threepenny bits on a Wednesday. And Stephen’s back in the country. Now his arm is fully healed, I’m sure he’d love to bring over his famous sausage.’

Three hours later, as the sun beat down on Emery Close (named after its first famous resident Dick), I prodded my fork into a lump of quality meat and turned it over before basting it with some of Judy’s spicy sauce. The garden was full of family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues. David Dickinson was loudly explaining the difference between walnut and mahogany, while Ant (for once without his Dec) was playing his banjo as Stephen Fry interrogated Robert Llewellyn (he of Scrapheap fame) about welding techniques for the softer alloys. Over in a corner, we’d left some old golf clubs for the kids who were using Keith Chegwin as a makeshift pinyata. His little Scouse screams amused all who heard them.

‘Isn’t this better?’ asked Judy, standing at my side and buttering her buns. ‘We’ve been needing a day like today to get rid of all the tension.’

‘A man could be happy if only he could prod meat for a living,’ I agreed.

Judy put her lips to my cheek and wished me a ‘Happy Birthday’.

I blushed, realising how lucky I am. I turned over a sausage and thought of how many men would swap their whole world for just a few hours of living like that. I had reached for a bottle of sauce, believing that things couldn’t get any better, when I saw Vanessa Feltz arrive. Dressed in a thin summer dress, she came jogging over to me. Judy muttered one of her more nautical curses but I was mesmerized.

And that’s when the world caught fire.

A little time later, I woke up and felt an intense pain across my forehead. A figure was bending over me, wiping my face with a damp cloth.

‘Ah, ‘tis I, Fry,’ said Stephen, ‘extinguishing your flames with my now ruined summer cloak. Dear Richard, did you think it wise to pour a can of fuel onto a lit barbecue? Were I am man more given to reproach, I would advise you that it is a very silly thing to have done. I would berate you with a “tut” and a “tush”. Bless...’

‘Is that what happened?’ I asked, trying to sit up. I felt for my brow and was surprised to feel how smooth it was. ‘The last thing I remember was being distracted by the approach of Vanessa Feltz’s summer bosom. It was like a field of sunflowers bouncing towards me. I must have picked up the wrong bottle? Am I injured? How do I look?’

‘Eyebrows,’ said Stephen. ‘The poor little fellows stood no chance. Your brow is as smooth as a Brazilian buttock. However, it has taken years off you. You now look like a man in his fifties.’

The dear man. He can always provide a ray of sunlight in even the darkest of hours. I patted his arm and managed to climb to my feet from where I surveyed the scene of the barbecue. Much of the back lawn was blackened and all my meat ruined. Even Stephen’s famous sausage was too scorched for salvage. But say what you want, days like this that remind you that it’s important to surround yourself with friends, family, colleagues, and large bosoms.

What more can a man ask for on his birthday. Except, of course, a new set of eyebrows. Brown if you’ve got them...

In Which I 'Cop A Feel' Outside Picadilly Station

I would like to publically apologise to the woman sitting by the window on the express into Manchester this morning. I didn’t mean to grope her leg. It just happened.

The problem was that I’d been wedged into my seat by an impatient passenger who wouldn’t let me get to my bag when I sat down. As soon as I was in my seat, I was forced to drag my bag beneath the table and, from there, extract my James Wood book. In the process of searching for the zip, I inadvertently ‘copped a feel’ of the woman sitting opposite me. Not that it was much of a ‘feel’. It was more of a slight brush against her shin. The look she gave me was pure disgust and I must have winced as I awaited a face full of pepper spray. As it was, I turned a shade of red that was off the David Dickinson scale and mumbled my apology. I was then forced to stay on the train until the end of the line lest getting off (not the best phrase in the circumstance) at my normal stop would involve more groping beneath the table.

But that’s the sort of week I’ve been having. Yesterday it was pots and paddles. Today it’s a minor sexual assault. I really worry what tomorrow will bring.

Rectal Matters

Selena Dreamy’s return to blogging has prompted me into action. It’s with some shame that I’ve been silent for the last few days and I realise that this has led some to think that Selena and I share the same patch of time, space, and hair gel. Well, that’s not the case. I have much better legs that Selena, though it’s often been said that we’re identical around the bikini line. The truth be told: I’m really Nige in disguse and spend my weekends pretending to be Elberry as I chase tramps with a carving knife and a copy of Wittgenstein.

I’m also given to write tonight since it’s with greater shame that I’ve not responded to your kind comments from last week (thank you M-Alice -- you really did cheer me up when I was feeling down). It’s just that life has been so hectic and I’m still labouring from the effects of the recent flu outbreak, which a hospital doctor recently informed me was the worst he’s ever known since he made the trip from Zambia.

However, to catch up on recent events, I must really go back to the Friday night I spent at the local hospital. I was called there to retrieve my relative who, being much improved, was released to make way for the usual influx of drunks that fill the nation's wards over the weekend. A hospital is quite the interesting place to visit at 11 o’clock at night. I recommend it to any of you who happen to be connoisseurs of terror. I arrived and soon found myself walking alone down long empty corridors whose fluorescent lights periodically flickered and went out. It was like some cheap horror movie but without the usual guest appearance by Robert Englund. At every turn I was faced with a new sign indicating the way to the ‘Facial Reconstruction Unit’, 'The Elbow Attachment Department' or, even more sinister, ‘The Mortuary’. I then had to make the return journey pushing a heavily sedated relative in a cast iron wheelchair, with the words of the nurse still ringing in my ear: ‘pull it, don’t push. It can easily break your legs.’

After such drama, life settled down for the rest of the weekend and I almost enjoyed my Bank Holiday Monday which I spent reading ‘Blott on the Landscape’. Things were really looking up. Then the telephone rang this morning. It was a man from the local environmental health department who said that he wanted to come and see me.

‘I’ve got some good news,’ he said once we’d got him settled in the living room. ‘Your relative's tests have come back from the labs and everything is clear.’

‘That’s good news, isn’t it Richard?’ said Judy, from the arm of the sofa.

‘Indeed,’ I replied, not sure what any of this had to do with me. It was my relative who had been sick, not Madeley (Richard). ‘But if there’s no sign of the usual flesh eating viruses, why exactly are you here?’

He smiled in the impure way that only men charged with the cleanliness of our nation can smile.

‘Well, there were signs of a certain bacterial infection...’

‘Bacteria?’

‘Oh, there’s no need to worry. There’s no danger. These bacteria are found dormant within all of us. We just have to carry out our usual checks and make sure that they’ve not come from contaminated food.’

‘And that’s a relief too,’ smiled Judy. I wasn’t so sure that she understand half of what was being said.

‘Checks?’ I asked.

‘Have you eaten any meat in the last week?’ asked the officer.

‘I don’t touch the stuff,’ I replied. ‘Bill Oddie made me sign a pact.’

‘Have you drank any milk that might have come in contact with blue tits?’

‘None that I know of,’ I answered, being the sort of man who remembers the tits he’s contacted during his busy week. ‘Bill Oddie has warned me about tit related infections.’

The environmental health offer smiled again and wiped a tongue over his hygienically clean lips. ‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said. ‘All I need to do now is ask you to give me a sample.’

‘Ah ha!’ I cried. ‘So that’s your game!’

‘Not so much a game,’ he said. ‘It’s more of a test of your dexterity. I’ll leave you a jar.’

‘There’ll be no jars,’ I said, rising to the moment. ‘You won’t get me urinating into one of those damn things. What’s this country coming to when a man can be ordered to urinate into any old cocked hat?’

‘Urinate?’ he smiled. ‘Who asked you to urinate?’

And that, my dear reader, is how I have spent a Wednesday I had originally set aside for writing chapter 15 of my latest novel. This is probably a detail too far, even for an honest blogger such as myself, but have you ever faced the problem of filling a sample jar with your own waste material? It’s not an easy task, despite the small plastic spoon they provide. It might not have been so bad but the spoon was remarkably similar to those that came with Screwball ice creams of my youth. I didn’t know if I had it in me to dig into the stuff, and when I did, I found it very difficult not to start looking for the gobstopper at the bottom.

Needless to say: no gobstopper was found and I now feel that my very being has been violated. Wrapped up in a Tesco carrier bag and sitting on the kitchen table is a parcel beyond description. I’ve warned Judy to keep away from it but we’re all drawn to it as though it contains some strange magic.

‘I think I’ll go to bed early tonight,’ said Judy, staring at the bag over her cup of cocoa.

‘Can’t say I blame you, love,’ I replied, as I stared at the bag over my glass of brandy. ‘It’s been another of those days. I don’t know how many days like this I can take. I mean... It's not something you expect to be doing when you get up in the morning.'

She turned her eyes to me. 'Nothing surprises me when it comes to you, Richard.'

My Epiphany

This afternoon I was standing in the corridor of our local hospital and I was rubbing some kind of sweet smelling antiseptic lotion into my hands. An automated voice had told me to do this and I couldn’t go any further onto the ward until my hands were completely free of flesh eating viruses.

And that’s when it struck me: I really have to cheer up.

So I want to apologise to all of you who have been stopping by hoping to read something uplifting. I’ve been letting you down. I can see that now. This blog is meant to be fun but I keep taking life too seriously.

It began a couple of months ago when my laptop screen cracked and the subsequent repair process led my losing 60,000 words of a manuscript I’d been working on for months. I now understand that it was meant to be wryly amusing.

Then I was informed that my first novel had been cancelled by my publisher barely a month or two before appearing in bookshops. Oh, I hid my disappointment well by making it sound like it happened to a friend of mine. Yet it was really me who suffered this twist of fate. There I was: thinking that people across the land would be laughing at my cunningly fashioned comic tale. Instead, I’m now working in an office where my literary skills go ignored. Again, it’s hard not to chuckle as such terrible bad luck. But now I see the error of my ways. I'm laughing. I really am.

It was about this time that I fell over and blackened my eye in the famous mime-related incident. Weeks later, I still barely suppress a smile when the pain shoots through my still-ruined left knee...

A week last Friday, I fell ill with a version of the flu (Flu 2.0, I think it was) that had me in bed for six days. I was really sick and I’m still not right. But this only serves to remind me to laugh at the humour of my situation. Who wouldn't smile at days without sleep and constant temperatures. Comic gold!

This week’s highly 'comic' event was my sister being rushed into hospital at two o’clock yesterday morning with a rather horrible medical condition that we now learn will probably require surgery in the coming days.

It was while waiting to be let onto the ward to see her that I began to realise that Life is merely trying to be sardonic.

Now, I enjoy black comedy as well as the next guy. I really do. All these ‘bad things’ must be happening for a reason. Am I meant to fashion them into some strange comic tale that will make my fortune and save me from a life of being so highly qualified that I'm only capable of menial office work? If so, then Providence, that old chuckler, is being really kind in providing me such material.

But I wonder: could Life not move on and make somebody else their stooge for a little while?

No, please. Won’t it just stop and let something good happen to me, no matter how unfunny that might be?

Pah!

Life keeps hammering me. If I were a nail, I’d be worn smooth with thin filigree edges around my head.

The flu lasted twelve days before I began to feel like writing. In the meantime, I've had to take a week off work. It cut my monthly income by a quarter. Helpfully, the bank then hit me with one of their illegal charges and I received a demand to pay more tax to Mr. Brown.

Earning a living must be easier than I make it appear. The life of the uber-celebrity is far less glamorous than you'd expect.

Spending a living is so easy that even a fool can do it. However, this fool is still prevaricating about applying for a course in creative writing. I know it’s an indulgence. Where will I get the money? Channel 4 don't fund their stars through Higher Education. I should simply sit down and write a new book.

Today, I sat down and tried to write. I wrote 1000 words but tomorrow I’ll write none. I’ve spent an hour, tonight, standing in the rain. I was waiting for an ambulance to arrive and take a close relative into hospital. These things keep happening to me.

Some people say that life is worth all the struggle, just so long as we're standing near Bill Oddie.

I'm beginning to doubt it.

The Double Desktop Challenge Meme

This is the first of my meme catchup posts. Lady Thinker has tagged with the Double Desktop Challenge meme, which requires me to show you the current state of my virtual and real desktops. I don't honestly understand why you'd want to see either of these pictures but here you go. This is my PC's desktop as it was a few minutes ago... (Click it for the 'larger' view)...


And here's the desktop in the context of my immaculate desktop.


It's all a bit embarrassing, I think. If I were feeling at all well (and I wasn't preoccupied by Oddie snivelling behind the curtains) I'd change the desktop and tidy up my desk. As it is, I barely had the energy to get down to my den and back. I have Swearing Mother's meme to work on but I'll do that when Oddie's gone and I'm feeling better.

(Oh, I am supposed to tag people with this meme but take this as an open initiation to tag yourself. Did I mention that I've got flu?)

Cough, Splutter, Bang!

It was Judy’s fault. She should never have allowed Bill Oddie to come up to the bedroom when she knew I was getting intimate with a bowl of chicken soup. As soon as he saw me with the spoon perched guiltily on my lips, the poor man’s eyes filled with tears. If I’d had the energy to climb from my sickbed, I would have consoled my favourite Goodie with a somewhat germ-laden hug.

‘How will you forgive me?’ I asked.

‘You've eaten bird,' said Bill, 'I don’t think I can ever forgive you.’ And with that, he took to hiding behind the curtain. As much as I tried to ignore him, his sniffling stopped my falling back to sleep and the occasional damp patch appeared through the drapes whenever he blew his nose.

‘Doesn’t it matter to you that I’ve been so ill that chicken soup was the only thing to cure me?' I eventually asked. 'Aren’t you happy to see your old friend, Dick Madeley, feeling better and nearly fit enough to rejoin the world?’

The truth was that I’ve had one of the oddest cases of flu in my life. After two days up in Manchester, I returned home last week knowing that I’d have seven clear days to make real progress on my next novel. Only, when I got to work on Friday morning, I knew things weren’t quite right. My ankles were painful and I found it hard to concentrate. I went back to bed hoping to at least use the time wisely by reading a book. I slept most of the day away and H.G. Well’s ‘The First Men in the Moon’ remained unopened on my chest. By seven o’clock, the flu was in full control of the Madeley district. A curfew was imposed on all my good nature. I was shivering despite Judy’s habit of keeping the house at a solid 27 degrees and there was no part of my body that wasn’t aching. I was not easy to live with and I think Judy was quite relieved when I retired to the world of the Discovery Channel where I watched ‘Mythbusters’ for hours on end.

The weekend was a blur of hot flushes, spells of shivering, and explosions. A chesty cough developed and kept me awake at night (luckily, they show 'Mythbusters' in the early hours too) and I also suffered terrible earache which had nothing to do with the hours spent with detonating crash test dummies. What was odd about it was that my nose remained clear. In fact, it was better than clear. It was much more breathable than it is on an average day.

My temperature finally broke sometime last night. I woke up this morning feeling fragile but well enough to eat something. Judy had contacted Fry who had recommended a fresh chicken put through a blender. You might say that I’m only typing this because of the power of poultry.

As for Bill, he’s still behind the curtain. As I said, it’s been a very odd dose of flu.

The Straight Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Hail The Twitch!

The winner of my 'sweatpants competition was The Twitch, who correctly identified that one of the pictures was that of a torch and the other a police baton. I mailed my old pants to The Twitch this morning and runners-up prizes of Judy's old bobby socks are also on the way to all other entrants.

It's Competition Time

We didn't get chance to run this competition on the show so I thought I'd post it here. The first correct answer out of the hat will win a pair of my old sweatpants and a commemorative Olympic mug.

Amateur Hour

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Sunday Morning Protest

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

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

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

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

Madeley, Son of Madeley, King of Romford

Well that resolution didn’t last long. I told myself: no new books for a month. I come home with a new copy of Tolkien’s 'The Children of Húrin'.

Despite having read 'The Lord of the Rings' a number of times, in addition to 'The Silmarillion' and a few of the volumes of 'The Unfinished Tales', I don’t consider myself a huge Tolkien fan. I also thought the films trampled on the books like a runaway Oiliphant through a tavern full of hobbits. Even three huge four hour blockbusters flattened the stories. I’d like to forget the films before returning to the books. It was details on the smaller scale that I always enjoyed about the books, in addition to which they never really did justice to Aragorn.

I always think of Strider as a version of that windswept Madeley we only get to see on walking tours of the moors.

10 Pages of Funny

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Madeley's LuckWatch

It’s one of the unmentioned disadvantages of being a man that we can occasionally wound ourselves. I speak, of course, of striking oneself in an area that’s best left unstruck. How I managed to do this to myself, I’m really not sure but the feeling of sickness is only just passing. I was simply walking down the stairs and my right hand was swinging a little too freely at my side. It collided with the banister and rebounded into my crotch.

I’m only passing on this news in order to assure you that, as of 15:46, my luck has still not changed.

Website stats

Some statistics for the wearers of rainproof artificial fibers out there ... I was humbled to learn that hits on my website for March reached a record 534,083, which is one whole hit higher than other blogs I could mention.

The Vengeance of the Mimes

My run of bad luck continues. This time, I’ve been the victim of a mime-related incident.

A sign of getting old is how you handle a fall. There was a time when I’d bounce along the road and regain my feet after a couple of neatly executed somersaults. Pedestrians would cheer, applaud my exploits and a few would hold up cards displaying figures no lower than a perfect ‘10’. Yesterday was different. I had all the elasticity and bounce as a sack of King Edwards.

This morning I’m aching all over. I’m grazed on knees and elbows and my right eye is black. I’m also reflecting on how it’s all the fault of a mime and how this pernicious evil needs to be eradicated from our society.

Mimes are tricky sods. One minute you’re walking across Manchester’s Deansgate after enjoying your lunch break in Waterstones browsing through the books of Henry Miller. The next you’re walking past the Arndale Centre when you find yourself distracted by a mime. He was standing on a box and playing with a glass ball which seemed to float as his talented hands move above and beneath it. It was a display of that grace, poise and balance which was sorely lacking when I missed my footing and went sprawling out across the concrete to the gasps of my fellow pedestrians.

A moment later, a man was at my elbow. His thick Scouse accent was so alien in Manchester.

‘You alright mate?’ he asked as he took my elbow. I just readjusted the beret on my head and felt thankful that my disguise had not come off, despite my face cracking against the pavement.

‘I’m okay,’ I said, feeling embarrassment more than the pain in my knees and cheek. ‘It was that damn mime,’ I explained.

‘Evil silent bastard,’ he muttered in agreement before he disappeared back into the crowd.

I cast a final look towards the mime who had not even reacted to the drama being played out before him. I would have thought that he, more than anybody, would have enjoyed my pratfall, but he just continued to move in his silent world where all glass globes float on white cotton gloves.

I tuned my back on him and ducked into the nearest side street to escape the scene of my humiliation. Only then did I cast an eye towards the heavens and demand of the higher powers what they want of me. Why are they teasing me like this? What have I done to upset their cosmic sensibilities? Has there been some mix-up in the great balancing act? Is it because one of my middle names is ‘Mugabe’? Was this mime sent down to punish another man by that name?

Today I’m staying indoors and while Judy enjoys a day digging in the garden, I intend to write some more about mimes. I want to understand more fully the threat they and their cousins the clowns pose to the world.

My Friend The Blogger

Tonight I've had cause to reflect that some of us are simply too nice. A horrid little word this 'nice'. I hate being nice. Let me be arrogant, deceitful, ambitious and only in business for the quick profit. I despise my own affability, my easy going nature, my reluctance to do harm. Let me make money and damn the consequences. I normally try to see only the best in others. From now on, I want to see lies. I believe everything that people tell me. Let me begin to doubt them. I also believe in the old myths about hard work being rewarded in the long run. I see that it's all folly.

It's not easy to write this evening. The tenses all feel wrong. The first person is far too remote.

You see, this all begins with my friend, another generally affable sort who also writes a blog, putting the finishing touches to a novel. A publisher asks to see his manuscript. Compliments are exchanged. An offer to publish the book is made. A contract arrives. It's far from a generous contract. People who know about these things advise him to send his manuscript elsewhere. I advise him to look for a better publisher. I tell him that the contract is not right right for him. But the writer is an affable sort. He wouldn't do that to the only people who have shown any faith in him. He's loyal, you see. He lives by certain old fashioned principals. I keep telling him are going to ruin him. Yet he's never been adept at putting a price on his own skills. He accepts whatever terms other people offer him. He often works for nothing. So he signs this contract despite the fact that he won't see any money for at least a year. Even then it might not be very much.

All this happens some months ago.

My affable friend finishes writing the book and spends weeks working on the final proofs which he duly sends to the publisher. All this time, he's struggling on very little money, falling deeper into debt. Then it all goes quiet. He hears the occasional bit of news about the book. He learns that an illustrator has been paid to produce a picture for the front cover. The artist earns money from the book. My friend, the writer, doesn't. But he's affable so he doesn't complain.

It all goes quiet again but this affable guy notices that his book is listed on Amazon and that makes him very happy. He rings me. 'It's going to happen,' he tells me. 'Soon.'

Today, my affable friend had a long and not particularly enjoyable day at work. He explained to me that the job is tough because it's mundane. It's slowly destroying the guy's spirit. I share his pain. I know what it's like. As you know, I am in a similar position. Yet he also tells me that he wants so desperately to escape the trap of debt. He's only working to keep up the repayments on the debts he's amassed after a long time studying and writing, neither of which have made him rich. Quite the reverse. He should just take a job, five days a week, and earn £20,000 a year. He's a bright guy. He has good qualifications. Probably better than 99% of the people in the country. But he just wants to write. He wants to make people smile because he truly believes that it is a moral way of living.

But it's still a struggle. He's only getting through the days because he knows that he's got a book coming out. He's not in the 8 to 5 rut because he thinks that he is really a writer. He believes in his own talent. He refuses to become the suit they force him to wear.

Only, tonight, he arrived home to be informed that his book is now not being published. 'It's complicated,' he tells me.

I reply that I should hope that it bloody-well is complicated.

But now he's angry. He's also in tears. Yet he's still affable. He says that he can't hold any of this against the publisher. He argues they were in a difficult position. I agree. I tell him that their business didn't have a sensible business model. I say that I didn't believe in the books they published. He admits that he too had doubts: that if they could publish 'those' books, was his own any better? That's as much conversation as he can take. I come off the phone having shared his agony and having felt his pain. I too shed a few tears before I sit down to write.

Now I am left wondering what he really feels. Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. Despair. Perhaps even relief? I suspect that he is beginning to think what he's always feared: that his book wasn't that good, that he's not that talented a writer, and that he's fooled himself for so many years. I should imagine that he feels embarrassed given that he has told people that he was having a book published.

If I were him, I'd try to stay calm and to use his anger to spur him on. He should write to the publisher and explain how he feels like he's been used. He should tell them that they took his dreams and did the worst thing possible: they made them 'almost' come true.

Tonight I've only managed to write because my friend has fallen silent. How I wish it were so very different.

Stand Well Back...

I'm in a really black mood and I'm just about ready to explode...