Christmas message to the nations of the world

Ooops - Bongo Herbert!

Apologies to all concerned.

Friday night: an apeology

Can I say about Friday night how very sorry I am that you have none of you have yet apologised to me for your behaviour. What a disgraceful shower, and carrying on like that in Club Derrig!

Disco tonight and my dance card is ready!

Well, you've got to let a laydee dream, haven't you?

Crackling

So today I could've been a right Christmas cracker, all done up in a dapper little outfit, hanging about on a bridge with a few more of the lesser sorts from Team Derrig.

And where am I? Stuck up the back end of some filthy canal doing a quiz that I would've done much better.

I tell you now, there is no justice in this life.

Meaty goodness

Now imagine the equivalent for people who (imagine it if you can - deep breath) DON'T LIKE MEAT!!!!

There can be little more revolting than sticking something to your skin that resembles mashpo. Unless it be real mashpo. Or peas. Now peas - that'd be like having a gangrenous patch of buboes upon your hide.

So, stick with beef, you know it makes sense.

Bellybuster magnifico

Gourmet paradisico

After yesterday's ginormo-gutstuffer courtesy of Club Derrig's culinary corner, I have today partook of the annual festive chums lunch up Acorn House and done it all again.

I can barely move, only managing to waffle (waddle/shuffle) in a stiff-legged stylee and bloated to all feck. It feels like I could burst forth at any moment, spilling out like a huge sausage from a very thin skin, all pinkish and totally ghastly to the vegetarianistas.

"What a life!" as the Lebanesians do say about it, again.

Just lovin' them marvellous bongos!

Lookee-bongo-likee-bongo!

Feisty bongos!

Frenzy-Up-A-Bongo!

Bongo solo!

Bongos on a plate!

Master of bongos!

Restaurant review - Blow-out enormo (Bongos: Intermission)

Never in the field of human consumption was so much piled upon one plate for one person i.e. me, up at the gastronomic corner of Club Derrig.

Now that's what I call a feast, and no mash to boot! Spuds-a-plenty, gravy, meaty stuff, and yorkie puds.

Eat your own heart out. I nearly did.

Bing-o Brand-o bongo!

Hep-cat Daddie-o bongo!

Georgio bongo!

Bongo drongoes!

Bongo congo!

Clowning glory

I've been inspecting progress at the new heaquarters for moi truly.

Naturally health and safetiness is a big number one in such situations and so I donned the regulation overcoat and big yellow high-vis waistcoat.

However, as big chief uber-bod on the pro-ject I am provided with a special hat denoting my status.

I think I might keep it for those evenings entertaining the laydeez chez Derrig Towers.

Bongos!

Mano a mano

Any resemblance to the participants is entirely likely.

Today I have the once again privilege of being one-to-oned by her Boss-Ship-Of-All-She-Surveys-So-Watch-It-Me-Laddo TM.

Of course, I will let her think she has won. As per usual.

Of course I loves yer

I have been respected in my instruction that Club Derrig show the marvellously entertaining musical 'Sikes!' tonight in order that we may "singalonga" together at the words of it. I will - as is my habitual behaviour in darkened rooms - be beating my own knobkerry in time to any rhythmic oom-pah-pahs that arise, and heaven help anyone who stands in my way, sirrah!

My genius for this kind of idea is recognised throughout the environs here, and it was not stolen from Tallulah via the Genius Amanuensis at all, although he is known to be gifted with second-hand inspirationalism.

So, three cheers for me again, and on with the Tony-award-winning-common-law-wife-beating-set-pieces-accompanied-with-jaunty-music-but-that's-OK-it-was-all-years-ago.

At the double

And don't forget a meal beforehand...

A lot of people ask me: what the hell is that on your head?

Many others ask me about my magnificent hit-rate with the opposite of the man of the species - to wit, the laydeez of the species of us.

It's no big secret, but you need to think of your technique as being like a blunderbuss - let one off in a crowded shopping centre and one of your victims is bound to be of a laydee.

But there are also a number of other easy-peasy lemon-squeezy ways of bagging one for yourself and having at your establishment in front of a rug on a fire.

For one simple example of it, take an instance: speed mating. It's a fine art, but you basically rush into a room like you are bringing the news from Ghent to Aix, or the other way round, and engage in word-based communication with a ripe 'un.

Of course, it's not always that easy to communicate at a laydee, especially a strange one, of which there are many of them out there waiting for you to be ensnared up their webs.

So here are my top opening lines, guaranteed to intrigue 'em and give the impression you are top speed mating material. And remember, in speed mating, you've only got two minutes to get your point across. So to speak.

Thusly:

"Interesting fact! The spoiler on a Austin Fandango Mark 3 is set at 23.5 degrees."

"Listen!"

"No, you go first. Make it quick though, I've got a lot of you to get through."

"Christ on a bike, who did your surgery?"

And the never-fail 'desperate-man-in-a-hurry' option:

"Would you like half my house and my pension?"

I can guarantee* you'll bag a brace with those lines.

*worthless

Crystal ballsing

It's coming through the ether...


I can see it now...


A vision of...


Club Derrig...


Is it...?


Yes, it's tonight...


I'm getting a vision of the bar....

Welcome abroad!

It is with the greatest pride in all the world of the internet and beyond that I welcome my many international guests who drop in up here on this blog of mine 'Hell-o-oh!'

Bucuresti, Warzawa, Noord-Brabant, Hamburg, California, Ohio, Virginia, and Quebec - I await the votes of your international juries!

Come on you French lads - you know vous desiree it.

Eating out Lebanesian-style

It is a difficulty for me to recall rightly any previous occasion before on which I dined and supped and dined and supped quite so magnificently in a Bristolian unplastered tunnel.

But I think the picture above brings to life beautifully the extragant and sumptuous delights spread before me to such mouth-wateringly dribblesome effect. Yes, I was truly brim-full to the epiglottis and almost on spilling point, requiring me to stand perfectly upright and not tilt my head in any direction, but in a good way. Now that's what I call a sign of a good night's gut-stuffing and no mistake.

And when I thought it could get no better I was presented with not just one but two complementary memento mori fridge magnets to remind me of what will forever live with me, and my dining companions, as 'The Night Of The Garlic Sauce and beer'.

In the words of the traditional Lebanesian saying - "What a life!"

An incredible tale

I like to hear that I am a raconteur of the highest order, and I believe it to be true on top of that with bells on as well as all that too.

I am frequently to be found raconting away, perched nobly on my noble seat at Club Derrig's classy 'Derrig's Bar', spouting off about the many adventures I have embarked upon (and in some cases fallen off), my many and frequent rousting abouts of laydeez near and far, far away, and my traversing of this sad globule we call Earthworld.

It is, I am sure you'll have to agree, my gift.

But hold your harnesses! It is, as is usual with all these things, an rotten curse too.

For I am an immensely critical auditor of the tales of others. I am forced - not through pernickitiness or Braisbyism - to tease out of every last word, phrase, and sentence the subtle nuances that are, for example, wasted on the ever-wasted Beattie. He's simply not on the look-out for discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions, illogicalities, and tautologies.

But it's not just the chaff that is an rotten curse. It is also the tales of unremitting brilliance, wit, incisiveness and warmth that strike me. And when I hear one these pearls, I am transfixed, like a rabbit in the old headlock. Sometimes I can only bear a few words before I am begging the teller to desist it straight at once.

Only the other day I was spiritually lifted as one such narrative was wafted trickled into my ears from the slithery tongue of a strangely familiar woman of no-fixed-mental-ability.

She began in an eerie voice: "Once upon a time there were two menus - one on the wall and one......"

Already I could take it no more. I made my excuses, and left.

Pick and minx

Being of world-renowned status and famousness can be a bit of a bloomin' old chore, I can tell you and just did.

It gets so that one can't even walk down the street without being set upon by hordes of delightful darlings all keen on getting to know me in the flesh (or en flagrantly as I believe the infamous Frenchy nation of lovers-not-fighters has it).

And it's not just the impingement on my freedom either. It is of course entirely unfair on these luscious loverlies - I could not attend to all of them and their many and various wants, not with the best willy in the world. There just isn't enough of me to go round yet.

This regrettably enjoyable turn of events has left me with no option but to instigate - at my own enormous expensivity - a process whereby the parties doing the chasing of me must go through a rigorous selection procedure. This involves a presentation on a subject of my choosing - e.g. "lovin' it up big time with a celebrity" (such as myself), followed by a mock media appearance - asking such questions as "are you prepared to dress up as a woman monkey?", and a panel interview against a strict job description and personification specification.

The successful candidates are then invited onto live television (BBC Radio Six) to take part in a revival of that old favourite 'Blind Date', where they are put through their paces in spoken smut and sauciness.

I, of course, am far too busy a-lovin' and a-so-forth to dirty my hands with this broadcasting processing of the hopefuls, so I am delighted to have volunteered the ever-grumpy Beattie. Well, who else would know my foibles in such glowing detail?

Rouge Rogue

Cabbing Fever

Finally I get the chance to park my rear end behind the wheel of possibly the most recognisable means of transport in the world of all time (after, of course, the London Routemaster bus, the popemobile, the Titanic, the Spitfire, Genevieve, the ski-lift, the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, Shergar, James Bond's Aston Martin DB5, the Bullet train, Del Trotter's yellow Reliant Robin, the pogo stick, the Batmobile, the Vespa scooter, the Segway, that car out of Starsky and Hutch, shanks' pony, the go-kart, the Flying Scotsman, Red Rum, the Mystery Machine, roller skates, the A-Team van, the Ark, the Triumph motorcycle -and sidecar, Kon-Tiki, the Nautilus, Phileas Fogg's balloon, the Queen's gold coach, the Saturn rocket, Herbie, K.I.T.T., Concorde, Concordski, the Viking longboat, the Sinclair C5, the jumbo jet, Bucephalus, the dog-sled, the funicular railway, the skate board, the tube train, and white-water rafts).

I had that Beattie in the back once.

Sparktacular

I know what you're thinking.

"Isn't that pretty! What a brilliant sight! How beautiful! Aren't sparklers great! I'm looking forward to bonfire night! Good old Guy Forks! Soup and jacket potatoes! Fireworks hooray!"

But STOP!

STOP! right now.

Think for a minute - seriously.

Just consider: that single sparkler could all-too easily fling out a lone spark that could whizz across and land on an innocent bystander's lycra bonfire-night 'Snugfitta'TM costume, creating a raging meltingness that causes the whole outfit to dissolve, leaving me standing there in just union jack y-fronts and my glittery deeley-boppers.

So think on: Health and Safety - it's not all totally cobblers.

Guest posting: Lady Jojojojojo

Well, look at me leg all casted up, la.

There I was smashing a shuttlecockle across the netting and leaping like a right nutter to do it, and next thing I'm sprawled on the deck like I'd been on the business end of a Kirkby Kiss.

Six weeks out of action - no wairk, no tarting up the new abode, no getting off the settee, no action upstairs (thank the fook).

Ain't life grand!

Nice ice, baby

I was proud today to visit the emporium opened by that master of the art of 'rappling', Mr. V.Ice, probably Canada's finest export since logs and stuff.

Regrettably Mr Ice himself was not in as he was down at the butcher's picking up some bulk supplies of scrag end and tripe for his speciality ice-creams.

I blame that Esther Bloomendal.

Pegging out

I thought I'd heard the last of all that pegging nonsense, but it seems Cap'n Jaaaaaaaahn has been out and about with his equipment and self-erecting tripod - capturing this magnificent example of a huge big one.

Imagine that clamped to a tender spot! Fair flushes the old tear ducts, I can tell you.

I salute you, Cap'n Jaaaaaaahnn, and admire your many ways of persuading reluctant cabin boys to get on with their swabbing and jigging.

Pastry delights

There's not much I enjoy more than a game of Visually-Impaired Buff with Ms Kelly Brook.

Black Sabbath

Last night I stumbled upon the World's Sweariest CoupleTM - Ozzly Ozzbornio and his flame-haired pot-of-vitriol-cum-missus Shazza, out for the evening to celebrate their special night.

Quelle horreurium!

They're spooky and they're ooky

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhhh!

(Sticky-out freezing breast tips not featured.)

Twin of Evil 1 takes a relaxing moment away from her usual fund-raising activities .

With well-developed musculature and demonstrating an obscure yoga position (the pose of the still-wet-anti-perspirant) , she is clearly readying herself to greet the trickers and treaters brave enough to knock her up this evening.

The effect, I feel, would have been vastly enhanced up if she had managed to find a mask.

Engineering a feat of tautologicality

Ironbridge - so good they named the town and the bridge after each other.

It's a bridge. Made of iron. Get over it.

An invitation is in the post

I am delighted that The Spiv (a Treasurer) and Lady Jojojojojo (A Finance Officer) have finally found a lovely little place to live.

After years of scrimping and scraping through life with only a CostCo card to sustain them and their legendary generosity, they have at last acquired a modest property in which to spend their twilight years a-bickerin' and a-lovin'.

I look forward to the housewarming and the usual trays of Jose Ferrero Rocket chocolates and Colombian marching powder borne around the melee on silver platters by PORGs.

No offence, my smaller readers.

Competition time

Yes, it's me coming up all revolutionary.

No, relax, of course it's not! Me? Up a barricade? In those shoes?

I am in fact running a "spot the balloon" competition.

Simply put an 'x' where you think my balloon is and pop your prediction in my pigeon-hole. You too could win a balloon.

MacFashionista

Tallulah has discovered a brand new way of taking a sauna in a room whilst all about remain unsteamied.

This brand new total-vinyl sweat-enhancing baggy condom is not only comfortable and stylish, it is not even that! Available as a puncho or a capo (in the same design) it is produced in a resolutely lo-vis colour so the wearer can easily blend in with emperors and other imperial types.

I can let you have one for a fiver to the usual address.

Spam mail

I have become the recipient of spam mail from someone who chooses to be known as a 'Barber'.

In this rather childish attempt at a laugh at my expense, the spamster writes how much he appreciates all the work I put in on Tuesday, and the massive contribution I made to the success of the event. He goes on to write some would-be tosh about deserving a medal and that all went so smoothly it was hardly as if there was anything to do.

Of course, I am not in the habit of accepting votes of thanks, and in fact make it a point of principle to reject them and instead request that someone else be acknowledged viz. the Gavster, or the Genius Amanuensis. And I do this with a certain amount of dignity - not with any anger at all on my part. Not one jot. Not at all. No.

So 'Brother Brendan' - for I know it is you - you can take your spam and fritter it.

Z-Team

As for this lot, it doesn't matter what I do to try and exert some discipline into them, they will just stand around playing the fools and laughing at Joey Public.

And in case you are wondering who the mystery fool is cowering behind the pennant, then wonder no more, for 'tis...

...Beattie. Who, as is his spine-of-jelly wont, manages to lounge louchely even in the highest security zone known to anyone anywhere.

A-Team

No, I have to call them that or they'd get all uppity.

Anyways, here you can see them practising engaging with the public for the purposes of having a chat word.

Me and the laydeez XV

'Look, sweetcheeks, check your diary later, I'm here now.

There's no-one else about and I've got me best clobber on.'

Damn you, Gavster.

I'm not a punching-the-air kind of chap, unlike Mr Councillor Edwards. I prefer to take my pleasures in other, more modest ways.

And that's not just because he and the Genius Amanuensis got a public thank you, either.

Mock-Up

Posed by models.

I am delighted to be able to let you in on the ground floor of a brainstorm I have had for an idea of mine.

Basically all the information in the world ever will be compiled onto one computer in a room and then analysed down into bite-sized chunks for upping my braininess.

It'll be called a 'Nervous Centre'.

Go compare!

En training

Even on the bussy-train en route to Southport - the Mombassa of the North - I am hard at it briefing up the little lad Gavster.

It is harder than it looks: no matter how many times or how loudly I repeat myself he gets it first time. Irritiating Councillor.

It wasn't like this when I were a simple clerk.