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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 11, 2010 12:58:15 GMT
..'I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky' sang the members of the Poet Laureate Selection Committee (do try to keep up dear) as they swept across the golden strand, barging aside the purveyors of hours beneath the gaudy sunshades and the dark-skinned salesmen of warm slices of watermelon. 'Oh Look', squealed the poetess of Cheam, peering through her D & G lorgnettes and dropping a freshly greased gigolo onto the baking sand where he sizzled like a fresh sardine, 'there is a cruise ship in the bay'. This briefly woke the dozing noble, who exclaimed 'Show me the wine list and bring more Stilton', before lapsing once more into the usual sleeping pose of the unelected rulers of a now lost Empire.
A cruise ship there certainly was and clearly from a once great British marque but now doomed to haul the quarrelsome and barely sober around the seven seas wherever it was sunny. Closer examination showed that it carried no ordinary passengers however. There was a large sticker pasted to the stern proclaiming that it knew not if it came here often, large forgotten gin and tonics were swilling over the decks until they escaped through the scuppers and into the foaming briny, shuffleboard was being played in fluffy tartan zip-up slippers, the steering wheel of the ship was covered with a pink leather cover and a little bandaged teddy dangled from the rear view mirror, the crew all had faces filled with compete incredulity and
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 11, 2010 13:14:28 GMT
yes - you've guessed - it was the Togs' Voyage in all its glory. (apologies to the PLSC - my long term memory isn't what it was....)
Where were we - ah yes, swilling about on the briny with Sir Terry and entourage, complete with beige cardis, fire-eating vicars, bearded newspersons trying to chat up get advice from sailors (hellooo Boys) on the best way to get away from the mooring and out of the harbour without crashing into the Sailing Club Commodore's floating gin palace and losing face with the rest of the nautical sorts in the Yacht Club, small Scottish people carrying out safety checks on the aclohol served by the many bars, a gentleman of illustrious Irish lineage selflessly carrying out similar checks on the extensive menu options in the galley, and, who is that person with pockets full of gaily-coloured balls.... why, it's
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 11, 2010 15:09:44 GMT
..at first sight it appeared to be Doddery Alan, erstwhile 'Vice of the Biles', and onetime quite important newspeddlar of the airwaves but having nothing valuable to say about him, closer examination showed it to be Tigger Woody, best golfer in the world and now 'principal flaggelant' of the World of Sport, who had been signed up by the Captain to give gloffing lessons to the short sighted and hard of hearing. Tigger had taken the opportunity of a couple of weeks of floating about in order to continue to avoid the paparazzi and was given, whilst on board, to walk around in a Murphy Slaw bandanna, white open-chested shirt, blue frock-coat, peg leg, parrot on the shoulder and
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 12, 2010 9:03:06 GMT
white welly boots to catch the remnants of the chalky decorations down the back of the frock coat, eyes humbly cast down, dopey facial expression, boring anyone who stopped to talk to him long enough with his tales of the addiction clinic - the coward's modern way of saying "it wisnae me - a big boy dun it and ran away" - all the while the parrot, called Montmorency, was squawking into a mobile phone trying to arrange new sponsorship deals for Tigger with Disnae productions for such things as bouncy castles, bouncy babby seats, bouncy balls, bouncy trampolines, bouncy kanga-shoes, pogo sticks, those bouncy stilt-type things, bouncy hamburgers, bouncy chicken wings, bouncy cheques, bouncy stairlifts, bouncy walk-in baths,
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 12, 2010 20:25:41 GMT
bouncy Playboy girls and a bouncy lifejacket.
Ere long the ship pulled into harbour on Nattergonia Island in order to replenish with gin, Tena pads, little blue tablets, gin, Dentufix, corn plasters, gin, walking stick ferrules, gin and a bottle of Baileys (or two). This gave the passengers the opportunity to sightsee on the island, and to perhaps meet its owner Sir Ricky Muchcash. Accordingly, those going ashore were all dressed in high vis pacamacs and rainmates, liberally greased with Cooltan, given a brown paper bag containing 2 bloater paste sandwiches, a packet of crisps with a little blue salt twist, a Fry's Five Boys choccie bar and some Rennies. They were all fitted tightly into their walking reins, had their hearing aids adjusted and were all roped together into a 'crocodile'. They the
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 13, 2010 9:08:49 GMT
n toddled off with attendant nursies, followed by a baggage mule-train carrying zimmers, porta-potties, walk-in baths and electric buggies in case of mishap, heading for the first of the island's attractions, the Hanging Gardens of Nattergonia.
These had started life as your bog-standard gardens, until an overspill of discarded Sheep Dip Scotch from Sir Ricky's cliff-top mansion undermined the foundations and left the plants clinging to the rock-face p*ssed as newts and with all their little tendrils a-quiver, leaves trembling, petals drooping, pleading with the bees to
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 13, 2010 10:10:15 GMT
(replaces dead battery in wireless keyboard).....'Fetch me another wee dram hen' and 'Ahm sae parched'. 'Could I just have a wee drop of water in mine' pleaded a stocious scabious, whilst a disjointed diascia wanted merely a cube of ice. 'Make mine a large one', said the gunnera, a plea echoed by a legless legume. 'Oh Yes, same for me old bean' said the blotto berberis and a hungover hibiscus reached for the dregs of its gin and tonic. 'Oh Yes, G &T, what a spiffing good idea' said the dozing noble, who had somehow become attached to the wrong party. Having been handed the aforesaid libation he was slipped quietly into a vacant bathchair and parked behind a large blooming Clemantine, where he felt right at home.
Before long the nursies rounded up the party of perspiring togs with false promises of tea and crumpets and an afternoon dozing in deckchairs around the bandstand, roped them back together and led them back to the ship, for it would soon be time to
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 13, 2010 13:40:30 GMT
attend one of Deadly - The Voice Of The Spherical Object's -infamous quizzes so the nursies herded the Togs together and with shouts of "Come Bye" and "Away Tae Me" they rounded the Togs up into a bleating group, drove them in a serpentine through the slot machines, round the poop deck, through the sheep dip pool, through the buffet guarded by slavering, gnashing Dormobiles to prevent any snacking between meals, past the bar and through the portals of the grant ballroom where they were shed into groups of four and herded by the nursies to pens tables where they were fixed with a hard stare to encourage them to stay in their places and not go wandering off before round one, which was entitled
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 13, 2010 18:06:09 GMT
'Famous People Who Chose the Wrong Side'. The answers included some obvious ones such as Musso, Trotski, Robert E Lee, Austria and Robert Kilroy Silk. There was also little Jimmy MacHackem who foolishly replied 'nothing that wilnae keep' one gloomy morning on the Culloden road when he was asked if he was 'doing anything special' that morning. Similarly there was Pte. Tommy Arkins of the Grenadier Guards, on leave from his unit one rainy day in June 1815, who said 'thanks very much' when offered a lift to Waterloo by a Belgian imigrant cab driver. By Round Two, entitled 'Famous Rebels Who Came Unstuck', the Question-master was amazed to find that at least 3 of the Togs remained awake and one of those even had her hearing aid switched on. Unfortunately, another two, who had actually appeared the most attentive, were subsequently found to have expired from the excitement, and would therefore have to be smuggled through Liverpool Ringo Star Airport in a pair of second hand
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 14, 2010 9:22:01 GMT
thigh-high fishing waders, complete with webbing braces, with the ends stuffed with Fisherman's Friends to hide the evidence of human occupation and to mask the smell.
Unabashed, Dedders set off an air-horn, causing a few more Togs to expire, but ensuring that at least some were awake when he pressed on to Round Three, entitled Name 26 Sparkly Items In Boggy's Wardrobe In Alphabetical Order. Our Togs were quite good at the first few - Armband, Bell-bottoms, Cardigan, Doc Martins (or are they for the dog?), Elbow Pads, Fringed Hiawatha Outfit and Galoshes, but their energy began to run out about then and the call went up for
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 14, 2010 10:28:06 GMT
drugs. Principally that standby often concealed behind the Anusol in many a toggy bathroom cabinet and now commonly available under the counter at most dubious pharmacy outlets, major branches of Pets At Home and online at stopleak.com. I refer of course to 'PEEStOP4U'. Dedders, becoming aware of the odour often present by halfway through most of his entertainments, had ordered a break so that the nursies could administer tablespoonfuls of the above libation and to replace or adjust Tena pads (max absorption) and gentlemens latex embarrassment preventors (NB When using this appliance, please ensure that the rubber hose is firmly screwed into the waste disposal bucket and that the tubing is properly fitted and tightened firmly using the hose clip provided). The nursies, being as they were, all spent 'hostesses, 'resting' actresses, unemployed trollops dedicated medical professionals wheeled away their charges for individual treatments to the tune of
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 14, 2010 11:01:33 GMT
Roll Out The Barrel, encouraging several of the participants to roll their elastic support hose down to their knees and indulge in an improptu performance of the Lambeth Totter to much shouted accompaniment of "Oi" and "Ows Yer Father" unfortunately delivered with such gusto that many sets of false teeth went skittering across the poished ballroom floor to end up in a heap at the bandstand.
There followed anguished mumbles of "Me Teef!" so the perfumed trollops nursies had to abandon thoughts of lucrative private consultations in order to collect all the wallies in a large glass bowl borrowed from the galley and arrange an orderly queue of toothless types in order to try the new parlour game of "Match the Falsies"
Dedders, with ever the eye to an opportunity, immediately started
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 20, 2010 16:26:52 GMT
snogging some mad old bat. Now, the mad old bat in question, having spent a fair number of years hanging upside down in the back of some poo-ey cave in Patagonia living on bluebottles, had saved up for the cruise for many years and was hoping at least for a liaison a deux with some fit young deckhand. She was not, therefore, overjoyed at being tongue-wrestled by some BBC roue in cavalry twill slax and a tweed jacket with rear vent. 'Unhand me at once' she said,fetching him a sharp swipe across his bulbous proboscis, 'or I will dangle you from
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 21, 2010 8:24:45 GMT
the lifeboat davit by your left big toe, smear you with bloater paste, and let the seagulls have their wicked way with you.
Unfortunately this rather appealed to Dedders, so the old bat had to have a quick rethink and decided instead to coat him in Teflon, before gathering up the assorted Togs milling round the buffet, and torturing him by having them throw 'am samwidges, sossidge rolls, snorkers and other assorted comestibles at him from dawn to dusk... because of the teflon coating of course none of the food stuck, and Dedders' cries of pure anguish at seeing all this lovely nosh slither out of his reach and splash into the sea before he could get his pearly whites anywhere near it could be heard throughout
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 21, 2010 12:33:16 GMT
Broadcasting House, where special outside broadcast cameras had been rescued from the 1970's so that Dedder's anguish and distress could be enjoyed by colleagues and creditors alike. Indeed, on the 7th Floor, the denizens had gathered and were dressed appropriately in togas and sandals, with scantily clad nymphs brought in specially from the newsroom to dispense grapes, larks tongues and Starbucks. 'Finish him 'orf...Finish him orf' they were crying out at every well aimed snorker and thumbs down were waved at every sea-bound vol au vent. 'Off with his head' spluttered the dozy dozing noble, who once again had meandered into the wrong set, 'sack 'em all, sack the lot of them' he spluttered as the remains of his mind slid back to the '70's. Once again he was eased into his bath chair and this time parked behind a couple of spray-tanned former Eastenders rehearsing for Channel 5. Outside Broadcasting House a crowd was gathering, anxious regarding the fate of the former darling of the morning airwaves, 'Don't hurt him, leave him be.......we need him, we need his balls'. In fear of a widening disturbance the DG gathered his toga around his slim frame and walked out onto the BBC balcony borrowed from the Romeo & Juliet set. He raised his hand and proclaimed
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 22, 2010 13:14:28 GMT
"Friends, Romans and Countrymen, tend me your leers. I come to braise Dedders, not to ferry him about the world on a posh rust bucket with all those coffin-dodgers. If you lot down there are so keen on those giant plastic marbles of his I suggest you have a whip round and hire a brawny matelot-type personnage to set sail in a lighter from Canary Wharf to rescue him. Now begone, the lot of you. I don't know who gave you the idea that it's your BBC - it mine... alll mine I tell'ee"
And with that the DG waved a limp wrist a few times and tottered off the balcony to play hide and seek with the BBC Vestal Virgins.
The stunned crowd rallied itself and began to turn out its collective pocketses onto a pocket hanky placed carefully in the middle of the pavement, where they soon amassed
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 28, 2010 11:58:33 GMT
4/6d (all in copper) from £sd days (when you could buy fish and chips on a Saturday night, have a night out at the pictures, buy a new Ford Popular and a new sofa and still have change out of a ten bob note), 4' 7" of hairy string, a dried dead frog, some chewing gum scraped from some chav shopping mall floor somewhere, an inch of indelible pencil, a ticket stub for 'The Mousetrap', a mouse (dead), some slug pellets and a signed photograph of Ronnie Ronalde. Before long a police officer arrived and (after trousering the 4/6d) told the assembled crowd to move along as they were contravening the 'Standing Around on the Public Highway Looking at a Dead Mouse Act (1963) (amended). One fearless soul however blew a raspberry at aforesaid blue coated bandit and, gathering up the hairy string, he insisted that
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 29, 2010 8:47:56 GMT
by making a cat's cradle out of the hairy string the 'Standing Around on the Public Highway Looking at a Dead Mouse Act (1963) (amended). no longer applied, and that he should be judging the gathering under the 'Britain's Got Talent Audition Crowd Spilling Out Onto The Public Highway Act' (2002) sub-section 798, para 47, as applied to Equal Opportunities and Persecution of the Hirsute Performance Apparatus, which legitimised the gathering forthwith and with approval aforementioned and aforesaid and Patent Pending, License Applied For.
At this our Guardian of the Public came over all emotional, pulled out his truncheon and performed an impromptu chorus of 'A Policeman's Lot Is Not An Appy One' from Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Pirates of Penzance' complete with comedy bobbing up-and-down and truncheon gesticulations.
Just as he drew to an emotional close, a black stretch limousine screeched to a halt and out stepped
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Post by Ricky T Outhouse on Apr 30, 2010 10:46:59 GMT
Sir Ricky Muchcash and the poetess of Cheam, adjusting their dress (as the quaint terminology of the BBC Gents Lavatory would have it). It turned out that Sir Ricky and the poetess had bumped into each other when the cruise bucket luxury liner had berthed in Nattergonia and ever since they had been inseparable, so inseparable in fact that, if sensible precautions were not soon taken, the poetess stood in jeopardy of a birthing process herself. ' Out of our way you unwashed scum', insisted the ear-nibbling nobleman, ' I didn't pay ten buckets of gold for this 'ere life peerage to have to barge my way through a pavement load of plebeians'. At this the crowd began to disperse, all tugging their forelocks or wringing their caps in the traditional way of the Northern acolyte. Meanwhile, the poetess of Cheam began to read the Wry Ott Act in a musical tinkle and in rhyming couplets, until she was reminded by the bent copper guardian of the law that it was, in fact, unseemly and illegal to tinkle on a public thoroughfare, musically or not. At this the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who were all assembled in a nearby red telephone box that had survived the blitz, but not the Saturday night amorous athletics of Darren and S'mamfa on their weekly excursions up from the spray-painted vistas of the 'ammersmiff estates, began packing up their hinstruments and calling for 'ansom cabs. Sir Ricky immediately had a small flunky make a mobile telephone call and the constabulary representative was posted to the badlands of Dagenham, where he saw out the remainder of his service arresting Hoodies for being in possession of offensive skin eruptions and concealed
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Post by LucyQuipment on Apr 30, 2010 11:59:25 GMT
Boy Scout's badges for Good Citizenship, because they wanted to appear well 'ard and fill the hearts of old ladies and small roly-poly hairy dogs with fear and dread, which gave the chap in blue serge the perfect opportunity to nick 'em for trading under false pretences, unless they purchased the appropriate susstifficate, the Meandering the Public Footpaths and Bridleways With Menace Aforethought and Concealed Good Intentions susstifficate, available (strangely enough) from the central pages of the expelled bobby's notebook in return for a white fiver, a date with one of the Dagenham Girl Pipers, and
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