Wednesday 30 December 2009

SMILE AND LET IT LIE.

Great Christmas shows Kid. Great shows which put a smile on everyone's face, even Michael McGimpsey!
On Christmas morning Michael McGimpsey looked at himself in the cobwebbed mirror and cried, "I'm, smiling! I'm smiling for the first time in my life and it's all down to genial Gerry Anderson and his great Christmas shows."
A smiling Michael McGimpsey ran on slippered feet, to his small latticed bedroom window, threw the window open wide and yelled to the crowd below, "LOOK! Look at me everyone, I'm-smiling!"
Most ran away in terror, but a few remained to take photographs of the most unusual Christmas miracle.
A still smiling Michael McGimpsey spied a young boy and cried, "I say there young shaver," (Michael had seen the lad working in the barber's shop.) "is that big turkey still in the butcher's shop window?" smiled Michael.
The young lad put his hood down so he could hear better and roared, "Yes it is Guv. And a bigger blinking turkey, I ain't ever seen in my blinking life."
"What a smart boy," giggled Michael.
"What a smart, intelligent lad. Here is a £50 note of the realm," smiled Michael. "Run to the butcher's and buy that big turkey. Then invite all your little hoodie friends to join me for a merry Christmas dinner."
"Cor thank you Guv," said the minute hoodie.
"People say Michael McGimpsey is a rum cove. But you is all right in my book mate. I like you Mike."
"What a smart intelligent boy that is," giggled Michael McGimspsey, as he threw off his night cap and danced around his bedroom. But even smiling has its handicaps. Later in the week, a smiling Michael McGimpsey was turned away by Ryanair. And all because his smiling, beaming face did not reflect the photograph on his passport.
BOO Ryanair. Oh yes I will. He's behind you!
Tommy my cat sidled up to me with a horrible grin on his feline face, nudged me in the ribs, winked and said, "What do you think then? What do you think of all the Lady Ga-Ga malarky then? Come on. What do you think of it then?"
"Be off, you unfeeling feline!" I yelled. "It is Christmas, a time of good will. I refuse to speculate on the one known as Lady Ga-Ga."
"Message received and understood," leered the remorseless feline. "But what do you think eh? At the end of the day like, when all's said and done, what do you think of Lady Ga-Ga? Come on. Don't sit on the fence. Stop messing about. Say what you see. What do you think of Lady Ga-Ga? Is she a.......?"
"STOP!" I yelled. "I don't want to hear anymore about Lady Ga-Ga!"
"Who or whom rattled your cage then?" said Tommy. "I was only going to say, is Lady Ga-Ga a good singer?"
I looked down at Tommy's little pale, whiskered, innocent feline face and replied softly, "Yes Tommy, I think Lady Ga-Ga is a very good singer."
Little Tommy picked up the Financial Times, sat down on his favourite armchair, crossed one skinny leg over the other, put on his reading glasses and said, "Mind you, she does look a bit like the bloke who works in Tesco's."
"You couldn't let it lie!" I screamed. "You just couldn't let it lie. GET OUT!" I roared. "GET OUT and never darken the door of this hovel until you learn how to--let it lie!"
That's what I have to put up with Kid. All you have to put up with is Sean Thaddeaus Coyle. Want to swap?

Monday 28 December 2009

What a Character!

What a great show to start the week Kid, a show full of festive Christmas cheer and a nod and a wink towards Hanukkah.
"Ah Hanukkah," said Tommy my cat,
"when the nine candles on the Menorah shine out like-like, nine candles on a Menorah."
"The festival of light!" I yelled.
"Christmas lights, Menorah lights, the Northern Lights, Bud lite. Everything is-light."
"LET THERE BE LIGHT!" screamed Tommy. "Did you know," said Tommy, "that today is the shortest day of the year? Tomorrow the sun will head back towards earth, with the horn blaring and the lights flashing."
I became all light headed and yelled, "Let's sow wild flowers and slap on some sun cream."
"Where's my sun bonnet and little tangerine shorts?" cried Tommy.
We were brought back to the cold, harsh reality of Winter, when two hard snowballs came flying through the window and hit Tommy and me up our respective cake holes.
I think the snowball thrower was Jim Rodgers, though I have no proof. But as the ugly, deformed man in the bell tower of Notre Dame cathedral said when he looked over his shoulder, "I have a good hunch."
Tommy nudged me, winked at me and said, "I think we have one."
"Will you stop talking like Sean Thaddeaus Coyle!" I yelled. "You think we have one-what?"
"A character," said Tommy, tapping his nose slyly and winking in a very repulsive manner.
"And who, or whom is the character?" I said.
"The shaving man," said Tommy, leering most hideously and winking and nodding like a mad thing.
"Eeh by gum Thomas," I yelled, "You're right. Why would a man, well-on in years, take the trouble to phone Gerry and talk about-shaving?"
"He's a character," giggled Tommy. "I feel we have a new character, The shaving man."
"Not so fast my fine, feathered friend," I cried. "The shaving man is going for a shave with a cut throat razor. Should the shaving man suffer from the shakes or hiccups, it could be goodnight Vienna for the shaving man."
"What the shaving man must do at all costs," said Tommy, "is keep his head."
"Not so easy," I said, "when all around you are losing theirs."
"Kipling?" said Tommy.
"No thank you," I said, "I'll just have a rich tea please."
Tommy and I had tea in the tea room, which is adjacent to the tee-hee room where we go to laugh and quite near the sitting room, where we stand looking out of the window.
We also have a box room. We go in there in times of stress, put on boxing gloves and batter the face of each other. We also have a room upstairs, which we brought down stairs and turned into a spare room. If Tommy or I pick up a bit of spare round the docks we bring them there. My bedroom window is up on the roof to catch the early morning sunlight. Our front porch is round the back and our back porch is round the front. A man is coming round next week to tile my back passage.
We have removed all the doors and replaced them with big gaping holes. This allows the wildebeest to run through our house during the annual migration from Ballymena to Poleglass. As the magnificent beasts thunder by the sofa, Tommy and I sit on the mantelpiece singing.
"BORN FREE.".
Did you ever find out what wee ghostie was haunting bonny wee Lord Laird's kilt?
It could well be yon wee caber ghost from Fife. AYE!--Fife.

Sunday 27 December 2009

Boxing manoeuvres

Great shows last week Kid, but now you have to do it all over again. You have to climb into the ring, slip in a gum shield and come out fighting.
When you return to your stool for a rest during the eleven o'clock news, Mr Coyle will wipe your face with a towel, give you a drink of water and pull out the waist band of your shorts. This manoeuvre in sporting circles is known as the boxer's grope.
And there is no better exponent of the boxers grope that Mr Coyle.
Jordie Tuft had an unfortunate experience with the boxer's grope when bare knuckle fighting in Kilburn. Jordie's second, Pug O'Toole, gave old Jordie such a violent boxer's grope, when Jordie got up for the fifth round, his boxing drawers fell round his ankles and he walked into a haymaker from Crazy Julian Grayson. Old Jordie lay on his back, legs akimbo, muttering about Jeyes Fluid. The referee was so transfixed he forgot to count. Many people got a good eyeful before the towel was thrown into the ring. Many women and indeed a few men were treated by St. John ambulance men for severe traumatic shock.
Mad Frankie Frasier told me that story in the Blind Beggar pub. I looked down at him and said,
"Mad Frankie are you really mad?"
He looked up at me with his little, cold, shark eyes and replied softly, "I'm not mad, but I am a little miffed at the decline in moral standards and the startling increase in, How's your father? Is your mother still working?"
Before I left that night, Frankie kindly pulled out two of my teeth, and I didn't even have to ask him! Apparently Mad Frankie had seen signs of decay in my two front teeth and whipped out his pliers before you could say Broadmoor.
A diamond, that's what mad Frankie Frasier is, a diamond geezer.
But this looking back through Rosie Ryan tinted glasses, won't get the turkey stuffed.
"Ram in more," yelled a loud, uncouth voice.
"Ram in more."
I peeped into the butcher's shop and there stood Tubby Nolan overseeing the stuffing of a large nude ostrich.
"Ram in more stuffing," roared Tubby.
"I want that baby stuffed to the gunnel with stuffing!"
"But Mr Tubby," said the sweating, red faced butcher, "I have stuffed 65 pounds of stuffing into that ostrich!"
"Oh, all right," growled Tubby. "Sew her up and throw her on the wheel barrow I brought with me."
As Tubby wheeled the large, stuffed ostrich out of the butcher's, I grabbed him by the jowls and screeched, "Luvely-Jubely Tubby, tell me, oh plump one, when do you have your dinner on Christmas day?"
"Between the hours of nine and eleven," roared giant turf stacks.
"How lovely," I said. "You go to church in the morning, have a light lunch and then sit down to your dinner at night, between the hours of nine and eleven. How civilized."
"Are you mad?" yelled Tubby, "On Christmas Day I eat from nine in the morning until eleven o'clock at night."
As he pushed the ostrich in the wheel barrow down the street, wearing his old Patrick Moore suit, I looked at a small, lazy eyed dwarf from Derrylin and said,
"Now there goes something that would make Charles Darwin scratch his head."
The Derrylin dwarf concurred and we retired to a local hostelry to get as pissed as two Dungannon newts.
Kid, you have probably seen some pissed newts in your time, but until you see a pissed Dungannon newt, you ain't seen nothing yet.
PS. Is Coylers wearing his Santa boxing shorts???
Have one of the girls give him a boxer's grope!.

Monday 21 December 2009

Bring Back The Chuckle Brothers.

Great come back show Kid, after strutting your stuff on the cat walks of Paris. I hear you were modelling the Spring collection for fashion designer, Willie John McClabber from Cullybaccy.
As your melodic, dulcet tones were carried by the breeze, like veritable thistledown all over Norn Iron, people lifted their weary heads and stood up proud, like the tall poppy. Two days of cold. Two days of-Coyle!
"Gott in Himmel!" screamed Edwin Poots. "Is this all there-IS?"
Poots was apprehended on his way to a high bridge, with his pockets full of pre-decimal pennies. And now, he is dancing in the street, laughing, telling jokes and twisting small dogs into the shape of balloons. As the old song says,
"What a difference a day makes!"
"GERRY'S BACK!" shrieked Tommy my cat, as he did a somersault in the middle of the room, arrayed in white, lace blouse, charcoal grey pencil skirt, Doc Martin stillettos and dark brown, support stockings. He banged a wooden spoon against a brass gong and yelled, "Bring on the dancing girls!"
In staggered three old dears from an old folks' home. Oh, it was pathetic to see them try and kick up their old wrinkled legs.
"We are the Follies Bergerac," croaked one, as she made an ineffectual attempt to flash her knickers.
It was- pathetic and hideously repulsive.
To think that someone's dear old mammy would be reduced to-THAT! Thank Goodness my late mammy got a job in Duffy's circus before she popped her clogs. I picked up the bisum and swept the three old crones out into the street.
Suddenly, like the tide, Tommy's mood changed. He put a crash helmet on me and ran at the wall with his head. When he got up he roared, yelled, shrieked and uttered the most high pitched falsetto screams I have ever heard.
"Tommy!" I cried. "Tommy, what ails thee lad?"
"DID YOU SEE THEM?" screamed Tommy.
"Did you see Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson stand and shake their heads behind each others back?"
"I did," I said, "as did most people in Northern Ireland. But no ones cares. We are all sick and tired of the little games."
Tommy eased himself down on a pile of twenty pound notes from the Northern bank and softly said, "Remember the Chuckle Brothers? That was a golden time. Everything was turned into one big joke. Teeth," said Tommy. "all you saw were teeth, when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were touring the province to wild acclaim as The Chuckle Brothers. Where did it all go wrong?" sighed Tommy. "Why is everything so grim? No more laughing. No more chuckling. Nothing now but grumpy drawers.
I don't like grumpy drawers!" shrieked Tommy. "I want the Chuckle Brothers and I want them-NIGH!"
Then the poor feline slumped down into a blubbering heap.
I went to the window and stared out.
People were shopping, children playing, dogs doing what dogs do best. I crossed my legs across my chest and softly muttered,
"Christmas? Bah. Humbug!"
Galvanized into action, I gave a skip like old mother Reilly, yelled, "GERONIMO!" and ran at the wall with my head.
Which is why I am writing this letter in intensive care.
Happy-ah-ah-HAPPY LANDINGS.
Maybe it will all turn out nice--soon.

Friday 18 December 2009

A Saga Of Snipes And suckling pigs

Great show yesterday Kid. People are booking street corners, so they can stand and talk about the great show. In the short time since the great show was broadcast three books, an opera and a ballet have been written about it.
Seamus Heaney plans to write a saga about the great show, after he consults old Jordie about the best way to keep the bogland snipe from perching on his head.
Poor Seamus is a martyr to the bogland snipe.
Flocks of them follow him, as he cycles to the village shop for a new snug pen.
Some snipe even have the audacity to perch on the handlebars and peer into Seamus's poetic visage. No bird in God's creation is harder to shake off than a bogland snipe.
I was sitting in front of the fire, counting my knees with the aid of a calculator, when I heard a scream from the kitchen.
Tommy my cat ran in yelling, "That Oxford dictionary is dangerous. I opened it just now and the word sequesteredness leapt out and hit me a dunt on the head."
"Tell me about it," I yelled. "I was flicking through the dictionary yesterday and the word nonchalance jumped off the page, hit me right up the gub and chipped my tooth."
"What shall we do with that dictionary?" yelled Tommy. "If the word spike or arrow leaped out it could put out an eye."
"Take it back to Eason's," I cried, "and get John Daly's new book, "101 things to do with a bald head" And if they don't stock that, get, "How I survived the great big biblical flood," by Walter Love."
"What a great story that is!" said Tommy. "Walter survived the biblical flood, by clinging on to an inflatable rubber man for 40 days and 40 nights.".
"Walter was lucky," I said,"if a big wave had came along, he could have lost an eye."
"I know," said Tommy. "There's not a day goes by, but Walter is lowered to his knees by block and tackle, to pray to the Lord God almighty for the use of both oculars."
Tommy looked at me and said felinely, "Could Walter Love be a-prophet?"
"Walter Love a prophet?" I laughed,"more like a dead loss."
Do you get it? Profit. Dead loss? Ah forget it."
"One thing I will say about Walter Love" said Tommy, "he sure does know his jazz."
"Why would he not?" I yelled. "He's been shaving them since Moses was a lump of a cub."
Oh how we laughed. With Ha-Has. Tee-Hees and the odd gurgling giggle.
A startled suckling pig with an apple in its mouth ran by our house, closely followed by a panting, red faced Tubby Nolan.
"Hi ratbag" yelled Tubby, "have you seen my lunch, a small, suckling pig with an apple in its mouth?"
"No," I lied. "No small suckling pig with an apple in its mouth, has sprinted past this house with a startled look in its little piggy eye."
"Sugar and spice," cursed Tubby. "It must have given me the slip at the round-a-bout. I bet it was hiding under the discarded mattress."
"Never mind Steven," I said. "You have the look of a glutton who would love bread pudding."
"Bread pudding?" cried Tubby. "I love bread pudding. Bring it on."
I went into the kitchen, picked up a stale, mouldy pan loaf and ran back to the door.
"Here's the bread," I yelled. "Now sling your lard, you fat pudding." and I slammed the door shut on Tubby's large, fat, pink, startled face.
He lumbered off down the street, with the pan loaf clutched under his sweaty oxter roaring,
"Here, piggy, piggy. Here, piggy, piggy. Sue'ee. Sueee. Sueee!"
Just like Johnny Cash!

Wednesday 16 December 2009

Moving Statues

Welcome back Kid. During the time you were away,Tommy my cat and I sealed off the corner of the room where the radio sat, with police tape. WARNING! DO NOT ENTER! CRIME SCENE! screamed the yellow fluorescent tape. We were both aware, that Mr Coyle was sitting in a secret bunker, broadcasting high octane diddy-dee music to an unsuspecting public.
In an effort to stop any infiltration, Tommy and I had removed the plug and stuffed a cocktail of Diazepam and Temazepam through the grill of the radio.
As an added precaution,Tommy had drawn on the floor the chalk outline of a man with his hands to his ears in utter agony. We could do no more. All we could do now was wait, as Sean Coyle was unleashed on the poor innocent people of Ulster.
Tommy bit my lip and whispered, "The casualties will be very high."
"I know," I whispered, "We must do what we can. Let's give blood."
We whipped out our respective pen knives and cut each other on the arm. We could do no more. We cowered as we heard the terrible screams, coming from people who had fallen foul of Coyle's dreaded-Diddly-Dee. Then the siren sounded and it was all over.
"A programme to end all programmes," was how Churchill the insurance dog summed it up.
OH YES! OH YES!
As soon as I felt the buzz from the potato bread, I grabbed Tommy by the neck and yelled,
"Where was Gerry? Come on, spit it out. Where was Gerry? We have ways of making you talk. It's called-Primary school."
"It's a fair cop Guv," spluttered Tommy, pointing out the window at Matt Baggott who was going by wearing a Dusty Springfield wig.
"It all began at-Knock," whispered Tommy. "Gerry saw something-move."
"Something move?" I yelled. "What was it, a council workman or a hair on John Daly's dome?"
"Gerry saw a moving-statue," whispered Tommy.
I blessed myself with an open cut throat razor in my hand, which is a very dangerous thing to do and yelled, "Gerry saw a moving statue?"
"Well, yes-and-no," said Tommy. "He was standing on a grassy knoll with a high hedge to his right. Suddenly he saw the head and shoulders of John the Baptist go flying past the hedge. What Gerry didn't know, was that John the Baptist was lashed to the trailer of a small van and was on his way to have his broken arm repaired."
"So our Gerry was conned?" I yelled.
"No!" yelled Tommy. "Our Gerry conned himself. He was in a heightened state of awareness and allowed his eyes to play tricks on himself."
"AH!" I said. "So our Gerry has been in the Priory clinic for a few days."
"No," said Tommy. "Our Gerry has been in Lough Derg for a few days. Lough Derg is closed for the Winter, but our Gerry got the Pope's dispensation to spend four days on Lough Derg, confined to a Monk's cell and fed nothing but water and the stale heels from pan loaves."
"It's his own fault!" I roared. "Did not Oscar Wilde say, "When one sees what one thinks is a moving statue behind a hedge, one should not bet the farm on it. Better if one hedged ones bets."
"Good old Oscar!" cried Tommy. "I wonder how he's getting on these days."
I began to wonder about Oscar Wilde too, and that's how we spent in the rest of the day, in Wilde wonderment.

Saturday 12 December 2009

Courting controversy

What a great show you put on yesterday Kid. To say yesterday's great show was not controversial in the extreme. is akin to saying that Mark Durkin is not in constant touch with reality. Not only were you courting controversy, you were in bed with her, with the duvet pulled up to hide your guilty faces.
First, you and Tubby Nolan sat in the corner losing your religions. Then, just as suddenly, you both found other religions. I suppose from next year, Tubby will be called, Gerald Michael Nolan, and you will answer to the name of Steven Carson Samuel Anderson?
It's a right howdy-do and Tommy my cat is fair flummoxed. "I don't know what name to put on their Christmas cards!" yelled Tommy.
I advised him to let the hare sit. And the hare is still sitting, sitting in a cardboard box, drinking Red Bull and reading Ireland's Own.
THEN! Mr Coyle threw a law and order wobbly. What a rant from Ireland's least known golfer. "Clamp all cars," yelled the Clampet.
"No smoking, no drinking, no walking on the grass, no littering and NO how's your father after nine o'clock on a Saturday night."
What a complex little man he is, a Frankenstein monster made up from Charles Bronson, Oliver Cromwell, Matthew Hopkins, the witch finder general, Mary Whitehouse and Attila the Hun.
Tommy my cat was so frightened, he.....
Well, never mind what he did, but I'm not going out to the back yard for a mop and bucket. Tommy can clean it up himself.
THEN! The Pope phoned in again! Has he nothing better to do? Surely the Pontiff should be up on a chair, decorating the Vatican with balloons and paper chains. Does he not know that Father Brian Darcy has been hanging round the Vatican for a week, with an angel/ fairy in his hand, waiting to attach it to the top of the Christmas tree? This is a wanton waste of father Brian Darcey's time. Father Brian has confessions to hear and Showbands to introduce. Does the Pope not know that? Is he really infallible?
When I heard the guy sing, "What's He Doing In There?" I immediately thought of old Jordie. What is Jordie doing in there? Two weeks ago a wee doat was seen going into Jordie's cottage to dung out his bed. YES!-that's what they call it now. But up to 48 minutes to seven last night, no one has seen hide or hair of either Jordie or the wee doat.
Is it any wonder people are asking,
"WHAT'S HE DOING IN THERE???"
OH, I saw Lynda Byrons buying your Christmas present yesterday. I'm not allowed to say what it is, but I can tell you it will keep you nice and warm.
Oh if you must know, it's a fierce Rottweiler to race you round the roads of Derry and surrounding districts.
But it's the thought that counts, as Carol Volderman said, when she ran up behind Richard Whitley and screamed-"BOO!"

Mouth Music and Porridge

Great show to start the week Kid. As Frankie from Hoboken might say,
"A Summer wind came blowing in
From across the sea.
It lingered there and touched your hair
And groped your knee."
Ah, old blue eyes. No one can phrase, interpret or put over a song like good old Frankie.
How proud Omagh must be of Frankie McBride and the Polka Dots.
"Let's hear it for the Polka Dots ladies and gentlemen. And I mean that most sincerely."
I looked at Tommy my cat as he hung from the ceiling by a thread. He was pretending to be the peace and justice bill. Tommy looked down at me. I looked up at him. Our eyes met and Tommy said, "Only Gerry would finish a show with a girl singing through a snorkel."
"That was mouth music from the bonny wee isle of Skye," I said. "The inhabitants of Skye, and-aye, there are a few, made their living by spinning wool. But they found to their dismay, aye and chagrin, that it was nigh impossible to play a ukulele while spinning wool, so they invented mouth music."
"Good for them," said Tommy. "It's good to know that the massive government subsidy that goes on porridge is not wasted."
I wiped the sarcastic look from Tommy face with a floor cloth and then washed the floor cloth under a running tap-dancer.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door.
"DOOR ALERT!" yelled Tommy, putting on a gas-mask and slipping into a frogman's suit.
I stuffed an Iranian hand-grenade in the pocket of my knickers and skipped to open the door.
It was little Frank Mitchell. Oh he did look clean, neat and tidy.
"Tommy!" I yelled. "Come and see little Frank Mitchell. Don't he look clean, neat and tidy?"
Tommy came to the door and cried, "Oh Frank, how clean, neat and tidy you look!"
Little Frank came in and sat on the sofa, giving us an inkling as to the purpose of the big piece of furniture.
Frank, still looking, clean, neat and tidy, took out a pen and clipboard and said, "This won't take a minute. Could the both of you tell me ten things you like about me?"
Six weeks later, Frank still sat there, pen poised as Tommy and I scratched our heads. But a terrible change had come over little Frank.
No more was he clean, neat and tidy.
After six weeks, his hair had sprouted up like a hedgehog. Little Frank's hair hung over his eyes and ears. A full beard had appeared on little Frank's face, giving Frank the appearance, of a hobo hanging round a water tank, waiting for a train.
"How many reasons have we given so far?" I croaked.
"One," croaked Frank.
"What is it?" I said.
"The one about how clean, neat and tidy I am," croaked Frank.
"Stall the wedding!" yelled Tommy.
"Score that out, because you're anything but clean, neat and tidy NIGH!"
"Listen Frank," I said, "thinking up ten reasons why we like you is going to take awhile. Could you call back, say in five years time?"
When Frank hit the street, he was immediately arrested for vagrancy by Matt Baggott.
"Chief Constable," yelled Frank, "It's me-wee Frank Mitchell!"
"Listen chummy," roared Baggott, "I may not have been in Ulster very long, but one thing I do know, Frank Mitchell is always clean, neat and tidy."
I mean, you couldn't make it up!.

Friday 11 December 2009

Can You Be Too Irish?

Great shows last week Kid. Shows that will remain with us long after Michael McGimpsey has been recalled to the crypt. During the weekend Tommy my cat and I donned shorts and sun glasses and lay down in the front garden, but we were driven indoors again, by the thunderous roar of snow ploughs and fat, old men in red suits going, "HO-HO-HO". As Tommy said to me later, when we put a net across the living room, prior to playing lawn tennis, "Cor blimy gov, some coves out there, seem to fink it's Christmas or sumfink."
Later Tommy did something to me that he has not done for a very long time. He looked at me! Yes, Tommy the cat looked at me. Anyone who has ever been looked at by a cat will know what a terrifying experience it is. Then he spoke, yes, suddenly spoke.
"I have a tale to relate," said Tommy.
"But before I can relate said tale, I must ask you a question."
Tommy peered into my eyes and said, "Are-you-IRISH?"
"Aye, oh aye," I replied.
"Prove it!" said Tommy.
I sat down at the table, ate two kilos of champ, went to the door and threw a handful of stones and Irish danced in the corner for five hours and thirty seven minutes.
"Satisfied?" I gasped.
"Yes," said Tommy, "but I was expecting a little bit of gerrymandering."
The tale I am about to relate," said Tommy,
"is Irish in the extreme. One night I was sitting on the sofa. I had the remote in my hand and was idly flicking between channels."
"I NEVER flick," I roared. "I never flick between channels."
Tommy leapt to his feline feet and yelled,
"Let's put a stop to that old wives' tale once and for all. Everybody-flicks. Everyone flicks between channels."
He stood over me like a feline Perry Mason and said, "I put it to you that you flick. I put it to you that you are a frequent flicker and an implausible LIAR!"
I fell apart and yelled, "YES!, I admit it. I am a flicker. I am a freakish, freckled, fiendish, frequent flicker between television channels."
"As I was saying," said Tommy, "I was flicking between channels, when I flicked on BBC Two and happened on a show called, "Blas Ceoil."
"Blast Coyle?" I asked.
"No," said Tommy. "Blas Ceoil is Irish for, Come Into The Parlour. As I watched," said Tommy, "a woman, who, by the look of her red wind burned complexion, had spent the last 30 years on the west coast of Ireland staring out to sea. This buxom colleen began to sing a song, a song that tugged like a ferret at my heart strings. A song that grabbed me like a stoat by the throat. A song that floated my coracle."
"And what pray," I yelled, "was the name of the song that caused such a stirring in your gizzard, innards and bowels?"
Tommy sat down on a turnip mangler, closed his slitted eyes in ecstasy and softly whispered,
"The song that captured, enraptured and decapitated my heart was called,
"The Night The Goat Broke Loose."
"Catchy title," I said. "How does it go?"
"Never mind how it goes," yelled Tommy.
"I want Gerry to play it for me."
"Not a chance Kid," I said. "It's too middeny, too wellingtonish, too, Hello yeh boy yeh. In short-too Irish."
"I will not be thwarted!" screamed Tommy.
"I shall whip out my Bic and write to Edwin Poots immediately."
"Don't forget to take the top off the pen," I jeered. "Last time you wrote to Edwin Poots, you sent him a blank sheet of paper!"
Tommy stormed off to his study, head at a haughty angle and tail curled in fierce frustration.
After praying to meet a tall, dark handsome stranger God showed he has a sense of humour, when I ran into Tubby Nolan outside an all night knitwear and lolly pop complex.
The sagging pockets of his Patrick Moore suit, was stuffed with Mars bars and packets of prawn cocktail crisps. Instead of pens, Tubby's top pocket contained a row of Rolos. His challenge to be Ulster's premier glutton, was further enhanced by a large, family size carton of Pringles sticking out of his inside pocket. In spite of all the comfort food. Tubby seemed down.
"Get that pecker up Steven," I yelled.
Steven gave a wan smile and said.
"What's wrong with me? I am famous. I have enough money to buy a sweetie shop. And-yet, I feel empty inside. Unfulfilled. A husk. An empty shell. Why is that? What must I do to be happy?".
"Good works," I cried.
"Do good deeds. Give something back. Amen, amen I say onto you, no good deed goes unpunished".
"You're right! yelled Tubby. "I shall give of my time. I shall waddle down to the soup kitchen and help feed the hungry."
You probably heard about the great wino riot on the news. When the police battered down the door, they found Tubby, asleep with a big wooden spoon clutched in his greasy, chubby hand and all the Irish stew scoffed.
A new low, a new low even for Tubby Nolan.
"The poor you have with you always," yelled Tubby, as he was chased through Belfast by a baying mob of ragged, tattered, bewildered and confused hungry winos.
All this and more have I seen, as Frank Mitchell was given ten injections to cure his heredity listisis.
Ten to one he'll have a relapse!.

Thursday 10 December 2009

Turning Japanese

Great show yesterday Kid. A show, if I'm not mistaken, that will stand the test of time. Millions of years from now, swarms of wee, green men from another galaxy, will uncover Radio Foyle, clear away the cobwebs with a groping tentacle, press the play button and yell as one, in Ulster/Scots, "What a great show!"
Tommy my cat and I are into all things Japanese. We eat raw fish, bind our feet with tight bandages, kill whales, make great cameras and bow and bend while softly grunting, "Ah So! Ah So!"
We are also into the ancient Japanese art of Feng Shui. Yesterday, in order to ensure perfect harmony in our home, we listened to the great show, Feng Shui style.We found, through trial and error, that we would get bags more harmony, if we placed the radio half way up the stairs and I clung like a spider to the ceiling, while Tommy stood out in the back yard with one leg up in the air. After the great show. Tommy came running in and cried, "It's SO harmonic in here! Feel the harmony man. Feel the harmony!"
I myself was amazed! I thought Feng Shui was like the Japanese attack on Pearl harbour, a good idea at the time, but it all ended in tears. and indeed, BIG BANGS! And Nolan was involved in that too. Remember-Fat Boy?
But let's put the past behind us, the future before us and the present under the Christmas tree.
Talking about Christmas. Shouldn't the Easter eggs be in the shops by now???
I had great fun in Belfast yesterday. I stood on the Donegall road singing, "Chestnuts roasting by an open fire." You should have seen the way the men grimaced and crossed their legs.
It was hir-rare-eh-us, sorry, hilarious. I still have, as you can see, a little bit of Japanese in me, which is odd, because I walk like an Egyptian!
My late daddy, always walked in profile, like an Egyptian, while my dear mother, walked like a clod-hopper from Tyrone. You could always tell mummy had walked down a street, by the number of waste bins and small children that were lying overturned. She had no control over her feet. She threw them out like tentacles. And her Tyrone accent! How ashamed I used to be when she would call into the barbers, "How's she cutting boy? Keep her lit and between the hedges!"
Yes. mummy was a Tyrone woman. She came to a hiring fair in Belfast, met my daddy, who was looking for a good strong donkey, and raised myself and my sixteen siblings on the meager pittance my daddy got for being the village idiot, in a city full of village idiots.
It was a bad time to be an idiot back then. It was a buyer's market. There was a glut of idiots around in those days, still are, some might say. And now for something not completely different.
"Steven!" I yelled, "Cooee Steven. Why are you wearing that neck brace? Did you get whiplash reaching over for another chip?"
"There's nothing wrong with my neck," growled Tubby. "It's still made from brass. This neck brace helps me with my diet. I can only look straight ahead, so I am not tempted by food that may lie in my peripheral vision. This neck brace keeps me focused and staring straight ahead."
"Like a pair of Donkey blinkers?" I said.
"Exactly!" said Tubby. "But I couldn't get a pair of donkey blinkers to fit me. The neck brace is great. I've lost half an ounce since I put it on."
"So you would recommend that all fat people wear a neck brace?" I said.
"I would!" cried Tubby. "Since I put on this neck brace, I have never looked back!"
All this and more have I seen, as Tubby waddled across the road into the path of a big truck.
There was no harm done. All they have to do is fix the big dent on the lorry bumper.

Tuesday 8 December 2009

My Life is Incomplete

What a great show to start the week Kid. I looked at Tommy my cat and said, "Tommy, what a great show that was!"
Tommy who was blowing up balloons for Christmas with plastic explosive looked at me strangely and said, "What radio station did that great show come from?"
"That great show came from radio Foyle," I said.
"Are you sure?" said Tommy.
"It sounded more like Radio Fowl to me. All that talk about roosters and hens."
"Tommy, Tommy," I said. "There comes a time in everyone's life when...."
"A little rain must fall," said Tommy.
"Yes, that too," I said. "But there comes a time in everyone's life, when they get broody. They mope about for days. Then they look at their spouse, partner, cat, dog or wardrobe and say,
"I really must have a hen. My life will not be complete, until I have six hens and a rooster."
Then their partner, if at tall understanding, will hug them and reply, "Then GO! Go and find a rooster and six hens. I love you and will always love you, no matter what degrading, perverted, obscene hobby you choose."
"Well, I'll be buttered and jammed and called a sandwich," said Tommy.
"My late daddy had a great love for hens," I said.
"My late daddy loved one hen in particular called Yvette. Yvette was more than a hen to daddy.. She was a friend, a confidant, the rock my daddy clung to when times were hard. And Yvette was the only one who could make my daddy eat brussel sprouts.
On Christmas Day, my late Daddy would sit at the head of the table with a stubborn look on his face. My late mammy and my 16 siblings would shout, yell, gulder and roar, "Daddy, dearest daddy, do please eat your brussel sprouts!" My late daddy would shake his head, maybe even pour a little gravy over it and yell defiantly,
"By the Lord Harry, no brussel sprout will pass my lips this Christmas day!"
"GET THE HEN!" darling mammy would yell.
"Bring in Yvette."
In would come Yvette, clucking and wheezing. She suffered from acute asthma. Yvette would stare at my late daddy with her gimlet eye and before you could say, "Merry Christmas President Ahmadinejad!" my late daddy would grab a big wooden spoon and throw brussel sprouts into his mouth, like a fireman throwing coal into a steam train."
"What a childhood you had!" said Tommy.
"I can see now why you turned out so disturbed, distraught, crazy and mad!"
I ignored the fly feline's taunts and went on,
"Every July my late daddy put the bunting up on our street for the twelth of July. If I close my mouth I can see him now, setting out with a big bundle of bunting and Yvette the hen sitting on his shoulder. He would tie a piece of bunting to Yvette's leg. She would fly to a lamp post and attach the bunting with her beak. Then she would do the same at the opposite lamp post and soon the whole street was strung with red, white and blue bunting."
"What a chook!" said Tommy. "What happened to her? What happened to Yvette?"
"The troubles began," I said, "and the Republicans took out a Fatwah on her, because of her part in the battle of the bunting.
On gable walls, you could see murals of Yvette, plucked, stuffed, both legs up in the air and surrounded with roast potatoes and Bisto gravy."
"The troubles have a lot to answer for," said Tommy.
"Did poor wee Yvette end up just another statistic?"
"Indirectly," I sobbed. "My late Daddy knew that Yvette was on a hit list, so, rather than let the Republicans fill wee Yvette full of lead, one day hey stole an Oxo cube and we ate wee Yvette for dinner. But after that, daddy was a changed man. No more did he whistle, as he threw a kilo of bananas high in the air. His laugh had a hollow, empty ring to it and from the day he ate wee Yvette to the day he died and even after, my late daddy never ate brussel sprouts again."
"What a tale," said Tommy.
"And what a film for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks to make."
"Tom Hanks!" I yelled. "Only Dustin Hoffman could get inside the mind of Yvette the hen,"
"HEY! I'm clocking! Do you mind? I'm clocking here!"
All this and more have I seen, as Frank Mitchell signed himself into the Priory clinic, waving a list of ten good reasons why he should be there!

Monday 7 December 2009

Working for Big Audrey

What great shows you put on last week Kid! If the five great shows next week, are as good as the five great shows last week, then we are in for another week of great shows. After a week of great shows, Tommy my cat and I like to chill out at the weekend. We wash our smalls, cut each others hair and generally just hang loose round the hood. People come up and say.
"Hey, what's happening man?" And either Tommy or I will reply, "Nothing much dude. Just hanging. Loose as a goose and slick as a rattlesnake."
Then we go into a routine of high fives and fist bumping, that takes between forty and forty five minutes. There are two main gangs in our neighbourhood, The Crips and the Bloods, but Tommy and I have our own gang called the Cripes and Be-jeekers.
Saturday morning was different. On Saturday morning Tommy and I were woken early by an urgent knocking on our pyjamas. It was big Audrey, mother of the renowned Tubby Nolan.
"Listen up punks," said Big Audrey, "and listen good. My son, Tubby--I mean-Steven is out of town. I want you two punks to babysit his house, until-Tubby--I mean, Steven returns.
Do a good job and I'll make it worth your while."
Big Audrey went to my purse and said, "I'm gonna pay you up front. Here's two pounds and seventy four pence."
"Oh thank you Mrs Tubby!" yelled Tommy.
That utterance got the unthinking feline a back hander across the puss.
With a feeling of apprehension and slight nausea Tommy and I stepped across the thresh hold of Nolan Manors. I felt a chill run up my back and a rivulet run down my leg.
Tommy boaked and cried, "I'm going to be sick!"
"No you're not Kid,"I replied. "Think nice, pleasant thoughts.Think, Dana, Wendy Austin and the Pips, Frank Mitchell's wee grey trousers."
Tubby's mansion was, as the song says, Cold As Ice.
The walls were painted matt black. The only furniture was a heavy, custom-made Lazy Boy reclining chair and a footstool. The chair and footstool were pulled up close to a gigantic fireplace. The only decorations were a few Sonys scattered around the floor. On every wall hung a massive portrait of Tubby. Tubby face on, Two profiles of Tubby and above the massive fireplace a large portrait showing, in graphic detail, the back of Tubby's massive head. Each portrait was signed by the great Russian portrait painter, Boris Slapiton.
Over in the shadows, in a corner, stood a large trunk. The trunk must have weighed a ton. Tommy looked at me and whispered, "Tubby's drawers. Shall we have a wee peep?"
"Are you mad?" I hissed. "The lid of that chest is probably spring loaded. If we open it, we will be engulfed in a sea of drawers."
"Good thinking, Window Woman," said Tommy.
"It's WONDER Woman!" I yelled,"Not Window woman."
Tommy and I made good use of the Edgar Allen and decided to take a little nap in Tubby's chair.
"While wewere napping, suddenly there came a tapping. Someone was loudly rapping, at Tubby's big front door.
I skipped to open the door, thinking it was big Audrey. But NO! A man stood there. A big pink, fat, naked man wearing nothing but a large nappy.
"Oh hello!" he said, in a Charles Hawtrey kind of way. "My name is Peregrine, I am Tubby's good friend and neighbour. Will you please enquire if Tubby wants to come out and play Sumo wrestlers?"
"Sling your nappy fat boy," I yelled. "Tubby Nolan has left the building." And I slammed the door on his big, round, fat, pink face.
Oh, the things that go on in suburbia.
"I need a drink!" I yelled. "Follow me Tommy and we will raid Tubby's wine cellar."
We stood before a massive steel door. We could hear the low hum of a generator.
DO NOT ENTER, warned a big sign on the door.
"Ulster/Scots knickers!" I yelled and I flung the big door open.
Tommy and I stood there, mouths agape. We found ourselves in a big hangar, not filled with wine, but filled with Tubbies, mechanical robotic Tubbies.
"The Tubbies are going to take over the world!" I yelled."Send for Matt Baggott and his invisible men."
Then I stopped and yelled, "NO! Stall the wedding. These robots might make a better job of running the country, than the robots we have up in Stormont NIGH!"
All this and more have I seen, as Lynda Byrons and I played, Pass The Orange, with an onion outside her hen house. Later the crumpets-UUUUUM! Melt in the mouth. They just melt in the mouth.

Thursday 3 December 2009

Is This All There Is?

Great show yesterday Kid. As for your callers.. living proof that not nearly enough Diazepam and Temazepam are being dispensed in Ulster. Have we reached a stage, where the drugs don't work?
I looked at Tommy my cat. He was lying behind the door with a whiskey bottle in his hand, pretending to be Matt Talbot before he found God.
"Is this all there is?" I sighed, as I crept round the floor, wearing blue gutties, a bridal veil and a pair of Hillbilly overalls. I pushed a peanut a few more centimetres with my nose and shrieked, "Won't someone take me to the Mardi Gras?" Then the dam burst and I shrieked, "To hell with living lives of quite desperation!" and I yelled, roared, shrieked, screamed and guldered. I lay on my back beating the heels of my little blue gutties against the floor.
"I don't want to be Lucy Jordan," I cried.
"I want to live, love, laugh and be happy."
Outside, people were happily preparing for Christmas. Inside my condemned hovel Tommy was yelling, "Oh Lord, take away this pernicious craving for the auld drink." And I was rolling around the floor like a tumbleweed screaming, "I want to be Queen of the May. I want to be Queen of the May!"
"Then someone, it could have been Jesus, yelled through the letter box, "Will you two head bangers pull yourselves together?"
A bright light filled the room and a feeling of peace and serenity descended on the house.
Tommy smashed the bottle of whiskey against the wall, leaped to his feet and proclaimed,
"HALLELUIAH, I have seen the light!"
I whipped off my bridal veil, looked into the mirror and cried, "I'm beautiful! I can see my hidden, inner beauty."
It was quite far in, but I saw my inner beauty. Behind the ugly, wrinkly, contorted mask I wear each day, I was-beautiful.
Tommy and I fell to our knees and gave thanks to the Lord. (And I ain't talking about Lord Laird)
Outside a 24 hour trout and sellotape store, I saw Tubby Nolan pulling furiously at the large fork on his massive trousers.
"Stop that Tubby! I yelled. "Do you want to end up on the Harry Hill show?"
Tubby stood there with the sweat running down his gigantic face. "I have four giant bars of Mars in my trouser pocket," gasped Tubby, "but I can't get them out. They are all in the breech position."
"Lie down," I said, "and breathe. Big breaths. In out. In out and don't push until I tell you." Ten minutes later, Tubby was the proud father of four bouncing bars of Mars.
"My babies!" cried Tubby, as he lumbered down an entry to eat them.
All this and more have I seen, as Lynda Byrons told her turkeys the sad reality of Christmas.
There wasn't a dry eye in the turkey shed.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Caravans and Old Codgers

Great show yesterday Kid. Quite early into the great show I leaped up and yelled, "MAYDAY! MAYDAY!"
Tommy, my cat, threw two life buoys out from behind the sofa and roared, "WOMEN AND CATS FIRST!"
"SOS!" I yelled. "SOS!"
"Save our sausages!" roared Tommy.
"Gerry has just announced," I yelled, "that the wind has blown the left hand window out of an Avondale Corfu caravan!"
"Great balls of hot buttered toast!" cried Tommy. "This could be bigger than the Titanic!"
"Tommy," I screamed, so I could be heard above the sound of my own screaming, "check our inventory of left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans."
Tommy pulled out a large ledger and turned to the Avondale Corfu caravan page.
"Well Tommy," I yelled, "how many left hand windows do we have in stock for Avondale Corfu caravans?"
"73!" roared Tommy.
"Can we spare a left hand window for an Avondale Corfu caravan?" I yelled. "It could save the life of a fellow human being."
"Not really," yelled Tommy, "73 left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans is the lowest our stock as ever been for left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans."
"Could we not spare one left hand window for an Avondale Corfu caravan?" I cried.
"Not really!" roared Tommy. "If we sent that man a left hand window for an Avondale Corfu caravan we would only have 72 left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans left. And as your caravan advisor, I must tell you, that 72 left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans is well below the accepted number of left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans. It could lead to our financial detrement, if the price of left hand windows for Avondale Corfu caravans went through the roof."
"Then what will we DO?" I screamed.
"Nothing!" said Tommy, and that's what we did!
Tommy peered out at me from the left hand window of an Avondale, Corfu caravan and said,
"That guy Skippy, who came on near the end of the show, he really didn't want anything, did he?"
"No," I said, "he just came on the show to talk and heat himself. You will always find men like Skippy hanging around road works."
"Is that a fact?" said Tommy.
"It is!" I replied. "No sooner have the workmen got to work, when an old man, wearing a belted trench coat, muffler and cloth cap will appear. And they always saw the same thing."
"What's that?" said Tommy. "What do the old codgers say?"
"They stand near the hole," I said "hands in pockets. Then they turn to the workmen and say, "I remember when they put that pipe in there."
"Ah, the poor old relics," said Tommy, "I wonder what happens to those old men who only come out to peer into holes?"
"Most die," I said. "But one or two fall into the holes and are buried by the workmen, who later drive away laughing in their big lorry."
"What a subject for David Attenborough," said Tommy, "the sad demise of the old codger."
"I couldn't possibly watch such a programme," I said. "It would be too sad, too cruel. As soon as the old codger said, "I remember when they put that pipe in there." I would leap off the sofa and yell, "Push him in! Push the old know-it-all into the hole!"
"Ah!" said Tommy. "Every day for old codgers is Remembrance day."
All this and more have I seen as a tarred and feathered, Frank Mitchell was run out of town, sitting back to front on a donkey.
People have only so much patience and then they-SNAP!!!

Tuesday 1 December 2009

MERGING PARTICLES

Great show yesterday Kid. Tommy my cat and I listened to the great show, with two blonde hedgehogs super glued to our heads. We were pretending to be Jedward! We were competing to see who could be the most innocent and sweet. Tommy won, when he did something very cute, wet and childish in his little flared trousers.
"Thomas," I yelled, "is there no length you would not go too, no trick you would not stoop to, no Machiavellian knavery you would not resort to, so you could win a simple bet?"
"NONE!" yelled Tommy. "And don't you forget it!"
I was standing at a bus stop when I was joined, by Julian Symmons. Lynda Byrons and Donna Trainor and the conversation, as it invariably does, got round to the big, Hadron Collider.
"What is thon great big thing anyway?" cried Jullian. And him standing there with a face on him like a Jaffa orange.
"I don't know," said Donna Trainor, "but, according to the boy who comes in to check my sound levels, it's a great, big, circular yoke that is buried deep underground, to keep the rabbits from breeding in it."
"In the name of goodness!" said Jaffa head.
Lynda Byrons took a firework out of her designer handbag, lit it, threw it after a coal lorry and said, "Have youse two lost the bap? Listen to me NIGH! The GREAT, BIG, LARGE, HADRON COLLIDER is a dating machine for single particles. You put a male particle at one end, a female particle at the other end, and then you send them flying towards each other at terrific speed. When they hit each other they merge. Particles don't get married, they get merged."
"Oh, that's SO romantic!" cried Donna Trainor.
"Romantic my aunt Nellie," said Jaffa face. "Could they not just go to the pictures and have a fish supper after, like we used to do?"
"Oh Julian!" cried the two girls, "There's no romance in you, so there's not."
"No romance in ME?" screamed Jaffa face, "The both of you come down this back entry with me and I'll show you romance."
Lynda and Donna were still shrieking with laughter as they climbed into the bus.
Jaffa face was thrown off for not having the correct fare. Oh you should have heard him. You should have heard him.
I met Tubby Nolan coming out of Ann Summers, with a box under his arm that screamed-Wonderbra!
"Has it come to this?" I yelled. "Is this the last resort for your gigantic man boobs?"
"Keep your voice down" yelled Tubby, "in case big Audrey hears. I buy a dozen Wonderbras every Christmas to keep my Terry's chocolate eggs in."
"I don't believe a word of it," I cried. "You'll be telling me next that you buy tights to keep your brussel sprouts in."
"How did you know THAT?" yelled Tubby, as he walked away with little, tiny steps and a look of pain on his big, harvest-moon face.
All this and more have I seen, as Frank Mitchell counted down the ten best garages in Ulster, to get an oil change for a German Fokker World War Two plane.
Frank is scraping the bottom of the barrel now.
I think the end is in sight.
What a Christmas present for the people of Ulster!