Talk To Rex

With having babies now being a patriotic duty for women, and in light of the news that many women earning over £50,000 are single (according to the Evening Standard, who aren’t citable online, bastards that they are), are we going to see a change in the rape laws to legalise bands of horny men gang banging their way around St Katharine Docks? Juicy accountants, broadcasters and deputy policy commissioners, David – you know you want to.

Philip Stott

Shortly after his landmark performance in An Extremely Memorable Emergency, Stott started training to become a lawyer. He soon discovered that things were not going to be easy for him. The network of Freemasons running through the lawyering business had obtained photographic evidence of Stott mocking their ceremonies in a Scottish Masonic lodge using inflatable Daleks and thespy facial expressions; whatever he did, wherever he went, Stott found that his work was being thwarted. Although he was never able to pin it on the Masons, and although the people around him were superficially friendly and supportive, he knew that he was trapped in a hopeless situation.

Things were to get even worse. Arriving home from a difficult session of lawyering one evening, Stott discovered that his wife had been brutally murdered by a one-armed man. Yet when he reported the crime, the system of law that he had devoted his life to turned against him: he found himself accused of murder, tried and found guilty, and sentenced to death under new immigration laws established by Michael Howard’s Tory government (Howard himself suspected to be a leading Freemason).

But on his way to the gallows, the horse and cart transporting Stott was overturned by a steam roller from an Ealing Comedy. Joining forces with Stanley Holloway and Joan Simms, and directed by John Gordillo, Stott went in pursuit of the one-armed man for over 150 episodes, finally using his law connections to cleverly narrow down the potential suspects to two criminals, One Armed Jack and One Armed Harry. In a final twist, it turned out that the murderer had been hired by Dave Gorman, collecting material for his new show Dave Gorman’s Para-assassin Adventure, in which Gorman attempted to pin as many murders as possible on people with physical disabilities.

Stott’s harrowing experience was later made into the fourth Indiana Jones film.

Yesterday evening’s broadcast of the first in a new series of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy has brightened up my life no end, and was a radio triumph to make up for a thousand shoddily scripted episodes of The Archers. Well done to everyone involved. I doubt any of them are reading this, but well done anyway.

Particular plaudits to Andy Taylor for his portrayal of Zem the Mattress, one of the most truly delightful things I have ever heard.

On the down side, I am missing Andrew Pontzen. Would anybody like to join a club for people who miss Andrew Pontzen? We could talk about our favourite Pontzen incidents (drunk Pontzen playing keyboard in somebody else’s show, or his lecture on black holes), we could swap Pontzen concepts (“pig tree” – I mean, how brilliant is that?), we could quote him incessantly (“every song needs a minor section”).

Anybody interested?

Ugly woman blames everyone else for her success.

Honestly – she’s wildly successful (more wildly than she deserves), but giving her an Emmy is just taking the piss. Let’s ignore for a moment the suggestion that Sex And The City is a comedy (possibly it was once; by the end it’s just Light Entertainment, but of course there’s no category for that and she’d never have beaten Allison Janney in the real drama stakes …). It’s just going to encourage her to do more acting, which is the last thing we want.

There’s a ray of hope, though: in her speech she said “This is great punctuation for the end of a long sentence … a glorious finish to a journey of a lifetime.” So maybe she’ll just stay put now and pop out a few Broderickettes.

So Tony Blair has stood up and said that global warming is having serious effects on the planet. Nice of him to notice – I think the rest of us got there a couple of years ago. Or is it just that Cherie has been buying houses in cities close to sea-level, and has made it clear that if they’re swept away in floods there’ll be no more sex for Tony?

I feel cooler already.

So called. People use it to show that actually they’re too clever to call something what everyone else calls it. People who use it come across either as arrogant twats, or as stupid twats. Either way can’t be good for them.

If it is so called, call it that. Then shut up.

The Friday Project, partly because of its general wit and charm (in the form of The Friday Thing), partly because London By London lends the impression that the capital is largely inhabited by attractive young women, and not even slightly in the hope that we’ll get a reciprocal link out of it.

Foam guitar?

I know all about those.

Or does this page make no sense whatsoever? Foam guitar? Holiday spot? Oh, it’s all too much. I’m going to bed.

I have discovered details about a greyhound called James Lark.

I don’t know much about greyhounds, but it looks to me like he’s jolly fast.

Though he hasn’t done a race since August 2002.

I wonder if he is dead.