SUSAN BOYLE V LILY ALLEN - GO GIRLS!!!!!!!

Both Stromboli and I have been greatly annoyed over the way that the media keep picking on Miss Susan Boyle - the plain or, as Stromboli insists, "ordinary" Scots lady with the beautiful singing voice.

In a particularly mean spirited piece in Thursday's Daily Mail by some "hack" called Richard Simpson who starts off by using that, by now, tired old cliche. Yes, big yawn, he calls her the "Hairy Angel".

As far as we can see, apart from an unruly head of hair (every woman's right, surely) her only claim to fame in the "hairy" department is a bit of a moustache and, even that seems to have been taken care of just recently.

There is a lady in a caravan not a million miles away from here who is covered in hair from head to toe and at £1.50 a "gander" , less expenses, she's doing very nicely, thanks very much - and no Simon Cowell looking over her shoulder.

Simpson then offended our collective, aesthetic sense by referring to her as a singleton. A very stupid word if you ask me - invented , I believe, by that "Bridget Jones" woman. Need I say more?

Susan is also charged with being miffed at being upstaged by another contestant. Miffed? Miffed?? You should see Beppo when Zeppo throws in another bit of "comic business". You would not think that a custard pie thrown by a malevolent hand could create such mayhem.

Simpson finishes off by saying that Lily Allen thinks that Boyle is overrated. Oops! Pot, kettle, black anyone? Coming from a young woman who makes a living out of "designer angst" singing songs in a mockney accent, as I believe it is called, that's a bit rich to say the least.

The Strong Man and I support Miss Boyle in all her endeavours and would just like to say, in best empowering style, "Go Susan. You go girl!"

AUNT SALLY

MR Elmer Chantry, a traveller in ladies lingerie, from Devizes asks:

"Is the reason the ducks abandoned the lake house, which was so generously gifted by the taxpayer down to the fact that a 42in plasma T.V. could not be successfully got through the front door?"

EPISODE ELEVEN. OF LIFE, LOVE AND LEDERHOSEN

If you want a simple, trouble free life in the trouser department, dear reader, I implore you to stay away from lederhosen (you know, those little leather trousers that people from the Alps favour when they are playing with their Alpenstocks or Glockenspiels or whatever that big long trumpet thing is called) . I know wherof I speak.

As I suspected, Bobo's Bavarian Chimps act involves a lot of pratfalls, slapping and general chasing around and it's me who is making the pratfalls and being slapped.

As far as the chasing around goes, after an arduous twenty minutes of entertaining the great British public, the act ends with me on a cherry red tricycle, doing three rounds of the ring at high speed, pursued by the rest of the chimps and Beppo and his gaggle.

The chaffing is unbelievable. the worst thing is that I am only just recovering when I am due on again and, on the rare occasions when the circus vet is sober he palms me off with a next to useless cream whose chief effect is to make me feel like I have wet myself.

As for Beppo, the circus union man, he's just not interested in my suffering at all. Apparently, I am an inferior species and, therefore not within his remit. He wants to look more closely at some of his fellow members.


Pettigrew, the sole owner of Pettigrew's U.K. Circus, is incensed by the spiralling costs of the Olympic Stadium and has fired off a letter to the relevant Cabinet Minister making out a case for grants for touring circuses such as ours. Or as you or I would say, he's "on the earhole again."

Apparently, words and phrases such as "magic", "culture" and the "smiles on little kiddie's faces" were liberally sprinkled about this epistle.

I must admit, as I was racing around that ring, tearing my groin to shreds, the words "magic" and "culture" were far from my mind and as for the "little kiddies," well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



AUNT SALLY
Mr. Tiplady from Frimley Green writes:

So Hazel, the manic squirrel, Blears is handing the money back, is she? Well, except for the fact that it's my money, I almost wish she hadn't. If the Bottler in Chief had had a momentary attack of courage he might have actually fired her. Ambitious little "rodent" that she is, she might have had a funny turn and "gone for his nuts!"

Marcel says: Don't talk to me about funny turns but I admit the spectacle you imagine might actually be funnier than our whole act!!.

Have YOUR say. Send your "Aunt Sally" to johnnicollendeavour@yahoo.co.uk

EPISODE TEN. BEPPO!!! THE SWINE!!!

SWINE FLU IN MILTON KEYNES! CIRCUS BRINGS DREAD DISEASE TO MILTON KEYNES! PANICKING CLOWNS RIOT IN LOCAL LIDLS!

Beppo the clown nearly brought the whole circus to a juddering halt this week by crying "wolf" again - actually, this time it was "pig."

After the last show on Tuesday night he followed his thirst to a Mexican theme bar in what the idiot fondly imagined was the Bohemian Quarter of Milton Keynes.

To cut a long story short, after many Mexican beers and a bucket load of Tequila the barman, who it later transpired had been exposed to loose chili powder in the bar's kitchen, sneezed across the counter and right into Beppo's face. This is something I imagine many people would like to do, whether or not they have been anywhere near chili powder.

He didn't think too much of it at the time but later, as he was slumped against the counter in the local kebab shop waiting for his order, he saw the headline on some one's newspaper which read: "Mexican Swine Flu - Latest!" and the only two working cogs in his brain started to grind together.

When he came round the next morning he felt just terrible (nothing to do with the bucket load of Tequila or the Kebabs of course). Then he" saw" that headline again and panicked. His fellow mirth makers didn't stop at panicking . They went for full blown hysteria.

They locked him up in the old battered Transit that we keep the odds and sods in (he qualifies on both counts) and called it quarantine.

They phoned the local hospital with all sorts of horror stories. They called that civic responsibility. Soon the circus was swamped by men and women in masks and white overalls spraying everything in sight. The place looked like an X Files Convention!

Not that it bothered the Clowns. At that point they were rampaging up and down the aisles of the local Lidls. They were convinced that the plague had come and were stocking up on enough tins of tomato soup an packets of ginger nuts to see them through their own self imposed quarantine. They called that "looking after no. 1.

Have you ever seen a group of grown men wearing red hair and shoes three feet long in a blind panic in a supermarket? It was a lot funnier than their act or so I hear.

The last word, however, goes to my friend the Strong Man. He reckoned that clowns were a separate species to the rest of mankind anyway. Swine flu had already crossed one species barrier. He couldn't see it crossing another. Consequently, he could not see what the fools were worried about!

IMPORTANT
Send Stromboli no more than 500 witty words on anyone, or anything
about life in Britain to-day, that really, really annoys you. He likes to think
that he is not the only one keeping an eye on the "usual suspects" so it will
be good for my friend's morale.

Yours,

Marcel xxx.