Mark Carruthers and The VIew

Great shows last week kid. Great shows which greatly aided 79 year old Skipper O'Gill, as he set off on his epic voyage to cross the Atlantic in a kitchen sink. Skipper, seemed well prepared for the journey. He had two table tennis bats to row with and a sliced loaf and a hard boiled egg tied round his neck. When asked by a hard nosed hack from the Derry Journal, how he propsed to bail if water got into the sink, Skipper, laughed and said, "I will simply remove the plug and the water will run out. People watched as Skipper went in and out with the edd of the tide. By nightfall, Skipper could be heard under Derry bridge singing sea shanties and yelling, "Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink!" Tommy my cat and I leaped to our feet as Mike Nesbitt brought an hysterical crowd to fever pitch at the UUP convention with a defiant yell of, "GO HOME! and prepare for, opposition!" "A ground breaking speech!" cried Tommy. In the distance I heard a far away rumble as the back woods men in Tyrone and Fermanagh, broke cover and stampeded to the centre ground. Left alone in the back woods, Ken Maginnis, ambled off into the darkness like a brown bear, eating wild berries as he went. Tommy watched as I burned ticks from my body with a red hot poker and said, "What is your view of the View?" I looked out the window and said, "I can see clearly now the rain has gone." Tommy gave licence for his face to show exasperation and yelled, "I speak of the NEW, bespoke BBC, show, tailored for Mark "Socks" Carruthers. The new, talk show is called, The View, and features Mark, putting blunt, hard nosed questions to the same old faces we have seen and heard, over the past thirty years." "Oh, I saw that!" I cried. "Mark asked two gentlemen what Mike Nesbitt, needed to do to revive the UUP party. After talking about it for ten minutes both gentlemen said they didn't know AND, Mark said, he didn't know either! Next day, people talked of little else as stage coach horses were changed at great Victoria station." "The View," mused Tommy. "I don't think much of the name. Why not, the View from The Beeb? The View from the bridge, or the View from the rear window?" That's Tommy. Always pushing the envelope. Always thinking outside the box. Always getting behind the back four and passing to the extra man. Hungry drunks parted, like the Red Sea, in the chip shop as Tubby Nolan, burst through roaring, "Make way! Make way! Certified glutton coming through!" "Why Mr Tubby," said the owner. "Hungry again? It's not more that twenty minutes since you left with a barrow load of fish suppers." "Less talk and more frying!" yelled Tubby. "I want a quadruple chip and a pentagon fish. A plethora of mushy peas, two handfuls of salt and half a pint of vinegar." "Certainly Mr Tubby," said the owner. "Anything else?" "Yes!" roared Tubby. "Twenty toothpicks and a strong bucket guaranteed to withstand fierce, projectile vomiting." As Tubby made his way outside, pulling his snack behind him on a little red wagon, the owner said to his assistant., "Marcus, take a spade and a torch and go dig another acre of potatoes. I fear the galloping glutton, will be back!"