circus monkey's mirror

MA, HE'S MAKIN' EYES AT ME!

2011-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

FAST FOOD FRENZY (HOT DOGS ANYONE??)

2011-07-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

Oh my little chums! Mon petits braves! Where to begin? You will, of course, have missed your favourite hirsute, tricycling entertainer these many months. Well, blame it on the North Koreans - and the British Council.

The latter hired the former for a tour of that beknighted country. Heaven alone knows what they were thinking. I mean do they WANT to start a war? Dodgy jugglers, depressed clowns and cowardly lion tamers aren't exactly going to give our Asian friends the best picture of Old Blighty. Mind you there's always your old tricycling pal to put a smile on their faces with his many entertaining japes and wheezes.....

Anyway, as usual, our esteemed owner was boracic lint at the time (internet poker has a lot to answer for) and was dazzled by a fistful of taxpayers ackers....up front...so off we went.

After a Command Performance we set off for a tour of the provinces. Each place we fetched up was less appealing than the last - which is saying something in North Korea - until at last we arrived in the most far flung part of N.K.........and ran into our er "little local difficulty".

I won't say there wasn't much in the shops.........mainly because there weren't any shops. There wasn't much of anything, actually, and that included cash. We were reduced to accepting vegetables in lieu of readies at the box office. I hope I never see another radish in me natural. Ooops. Pardon. That, however, was to be the least of our troubles!

Our Acrobatic Dogs Act started to attract a lot of attention.....far too much attention. Now its one thing to show your appreciation for the circus performer's skill by clapping your hands and even stamping your feet but this lot were actually salivating, licking their lips and rubbing their stomachs in all too eager anticipation!!!!!! They obviously considered our canine compatriots to be "fast food"!

Matters came to a head when a couple of the local "Likely Lads" attempted a "Carry Out". A fracas ensued and the local rozzers showed up swinging batons like.....well like a North Korean rozzer. The last thing I saw was stars - and I'm not talking Milky Way.

After months of being held in the local "chokey" we were given a show trial in Pyongyang. It was televised every night for a week between "An Audience With The Dear Leader" and "Flog It". By the way forget about antiques, in their version its the political dissidents who get the flogging. Talk about making your eyes water.
Can't see that being licensed around the world. Mind you in a world where they made a show about people's dirty lavatories anythings possible!

Yes, the whole sorry affair very nearly did your correspondent in - permanently! Until that is Dave - yes, you cynics, that Dave - came to the rescue.

Now I know that he has had a lot of stick recently for not standing up for us circus animals but here's one that will be forever in his debt!

I don't know what he threatened the Dear Leader with - an airstrike against their nuclear facilities, sending Bob Crow to run their Railways or an immediate ban on imports of pickled cabbage soup - whatever it was it did the trick and before you could say 49th parallel we were all back in Dear Old Blighty.

Ah yes, it all seems like a bad dream and a world away. I'd like to say I've put it ALL behind me but unfortunately those radishes are STILL repeating on me.

NEXT TIME: From the sordid extremes of a North Korean jail to the equally sordid extremes of every day circus life.

STOP PRESS: RETURN OF CIRCUS MONKEY'S MOJO

2011-03-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Marcel the Circus Monkey, who has been recently indisposed due to stress, depression and a hernia brought on by a too strenuous bicycle act, will soon be returning to the sawdust ring.

From his bed at the "Home For Distressed Circus Monkeys" he would like to thank all his fans for their good wishes and gifts of bananas, peanuts and toffee apples. But he would like to ask people to desist from sending bars of peanut brittle as it tends to get stuck in his choppers.

SEE YOU ALL SOON!

THE BEST LAID SCHEMES...................

2010-09-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'll give you "I do like to be beside the seaside......." What passes for management at "the Circus of Fools" decided that, since we were booked to appear at Sandy Cove On Sea, it would be a good idea for us artistes to mingle with the hoi polloi along the Esplanade as a way of drumming up some free publicity.
Whoever was responsible wants to sit down in a darkened room and put their head between their knees the next time that they get a bright idea.

Strangely, the idea might have worked tolerably well had it not been for the spite, malice and sheer stupidity of some of my so called colleagues.........oh, and a pair of roller skates! But more about that later.

As I say, the "Big Plan" was for all of us Merry Circus to do our "sctick" on the Esplanade in the hope that this would lead to a stampede to the Box Office.

The juggler was to perform tricks with his new coloured balls (stop it, you at the back). Stromboli was to tow a baby Fiat with his teeth - and after all that expensive dental work too!

Mario was to wave his wand and produce things out of thin air. The last time he waved his "wand" in public it produced a desperate need to pay out a tidy sum to hush things up.

THE DOGGING DAYS OF SUMMER

2010-06-29T03:00:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lapse in communication my little chums but morale round here has been lower than a snail's Dr. Scholl's recently. We are in the middle of the dog days of summer and most of our dysfunctional little band of jugglers, clowns and cut throats are even more "barking" than usual. We are currently encamped in a remote part of the West Country ( whose bright idea was that - it means that the audiences are even remoter)where the heat is something brutal. Oh the heat!, the torpor, the unattractive sight of circus workers in string vests!. It's like Tennessee Williams with Cream Teas! It's so hot that I can't sleep at night. I tried lying on a mat on the grass outside the caravan but the local wildlife kept nicking me crisps. Weeeeeeeeell, if I can't sleep I've got occupy myself somehow haven't I? It's not just the heat though. At night there are strange noises coming from the woods at the edge of the field where we are camped. The sound of car engines, doors opening and shutting and, oddly, creaking metal and the odd horn sounding - in more ways than one!. Beppo reckons its some Pagan group celebrating midsummer but its a bunch of the local, randy "stoats" doing what randy "stoats" do with no consideration for the peace and repose of hard working show folk. That Beppo! For all his bravado he is as innocent as a day old babe - only a lot less intelligent. Allow me to give you an example. The other night, just as I was sitting on my mat polishing off my umpteenth bag of crisps and longing for the "arms of Morpheus", dopey comes around the corner, trips over yours truly and falls flat on his face. The good news was that he was wearing his three foot long comedy shoes and so sprang straight back up again. The bad news was that he bent his new video camera all out of shape. Apparently, those sniggering little psychopaths, Zippo and Bippo, told him that the lady who rides the big white horse had a habit of sleep walking in the nude and Beppo had the idea of capturing the event for posterity - not to mention selling the footage to "You've Been Framed". Is there nothing that some people won't do for £250? I hope he takes it out on Zippo and Bippo's hides with that big comedy belt of his - the one with the massive ornamental buckle. Just so long as he doesn't do it at night. As I've just mentioned, it's hard enough trying to get to sleep around here as it is! P.S. A word to the wise: Never eat more than six bags of salt and vinegar crisps at the one sitting. I did last night and I my bl***in lips are still numb!

P.S. A special treat for all you pleasure seekers this time! Play the clip at the top of the posting and hear Mr G. Colonna sing his little heart out. Mr. C is currently the Assistant Pachyderm officer but, who knows,if your response is favourable the management may find a late night spot for him. It will probably be a very late spot - and not necessarily at this venue! If the response isn't so hot, well don't worry, the pachyderms speak very highly of him.

HEARTFELT THANKS FOR THE TALENTS OF GERRY COLONNA AND THE KIND FOLKS WHO PUT THE LOVELY FILM TOGETHER, THE MANAGEMENT.

"ON ME 'EAD SON, ON ME 'EAD!"

2010-05-25T03:20:00.000-07:00

OR DOWN WITH THE MOB AND THEIR CONFOUNDED FOOTBALL HYSTERIA OR "OH, THOSE WORLD CUP BLUES

Well, folks, its on its way, thundering down upon us like an express train on steroids and, if you feel anything like I do about the prospect, you'll feel as though you are tied to the track with no hope of escape like that lady in the silent pictures that Stromboli and I are so fond of.

It would all be bad and bad enough but we look out of the caravan window and what do we see? None other than the sight of Beppo practising his ball skills (stop it!!!!) in his spare time. Have you ever seen someone practising "keepie ups" with two foot long shoes. No? Thought not. Add to that an orange wig and a big red nose and he looks like........well a proper clown - and not in a family entertainment sort of way. I'll say this for him though, he is a proper Millwall supporter - no-one likes him and he don't care!

No use bogging off abroad on holiday either! It'll be he same there. Only the colours and the language'll be different. Has the whole world gone mad? Even the Bedouins will be clustered round the old Panasonic Wide Screen Grrr!

Football? I just don't get it "mes amis". What's so special about 22 grown men kicking a leather ball around a field anyway? Don't they have proper jobs?

We actually had a similar game back in the jungle but at least there was a reason for it.

The object of our game was to get rid of members of the tribe who, in one way or another, had become liabilities to the rest of us.

We'd chase the miscreant through the jungle kicking coconuts aimed at his head. The one who scored the most "goals" got first dibs on the most nubile young female in the tribe. I'll tell you what, as incentives go you can keep your Porsches and Maseratis and Lamborghinis.

Needless to say, yours truly was absolutely hopeless at the "game" and once had to be stretchered off after my coconut bounced off the trunk of a Ban Yan tree and hit me square between the eyes.

As for the aforementioned miscreants, after the umpteenth missile connected with their noggins they usually got the message and were seldom seen again.

Brutal little savages, I hear you say, but, face it, it's no worse than what you lot can do to your Team Managers. Besides, we had a great esprit de corps - and there wasn't so much as a dodgy footballer's haircut between us!!!!!

CIRCUS MONKEY ATTACKS NICK CLEGG

2010-04-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

You folks don't half get yourselves into some scrapes when picking your leaders!

A certain baby faced individual called Nick Clegg performed well in a couple of T.V. debates and now, all of a sudden, he is the "Great White Hope".

Performed well? Let's not get carried away (although many of you seemed to have).Basically, he performed as well as Wally The Seal when he manages to keep that big coloured beach ball balanced on the end of his nose for a few minutes.

I can understand letting T.V. advise you on which soap powder to buy, but choosing a leader for you...........

I live in a circus and see madness up close and personal on a daily basis but choosing a leader that way is just......well madness!

I know that I am just a jelly bean munching, toffee apple chewing circus performer with questionable personal habits and none of it is any of my business anyway, but baby face wants to let 58,000 criminals out of jail to paint fences, tidy up gardens and help old ladies over the road. He wants to give up the good old pound to join the crumbling euro and he even favours a law that would give drunks the "right" to demand that the driver stops the bus to let them off wherever they please. Grrrrrr!!!!!!! To add insult to injury he is annoyed at you for being glad that Britain was on the winning side in World War11. What would he be doing now if you'd lost it?

Anyway, what can you expect from a party that managed to find a home for that mad bat Sarah Teather?

By the way, am I the only one that's noticed Cleggie's remarkable resemblance to Private Pike in Dad's Army?

Altogether now.............stuuuupid boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TRUE CONFEZIONS

2010-03-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

Talk about feeling dirty and unclean and generally tainted! Stromboli (the Circus Strong Man) and I have been sitting pursed lipped and in high dudgeon in our shared caravan all this past week.

Indeed, my lips are so pursed I could easily suck the filling out of an individual fruit pie through the whole in the top - and try drinking tea with pursed lips and not making a noise. Impossible!

Both Stromboli and I have been badly let down. Our usual high standards in matters moral have been betrayed. We are disgusted, distressed and utterly discombobulated.

The reason for this dramatic upset? Gather round my little playmates and lend an ear. Beppo, the clown, (both in the professional and personal sense) has been exposed.........being, well, exposed. It seems that in his dim, distant and dirty past, before he donned the fright wig, the big shoes and the big red nose, he turned a coin appearing in dirty films.

It was all quite some time ago, back in the days when such items were shown in dodgy clubs in Soho or sold under the counter in plain brown wrappers and he was quite the little star for a while. All his films had an exotic, or should that be erotic, Eastern theme with titles such as "The Nabob Of Neasden", "The Peckham Potentate" and last, but not least, "The Sultan Of Surbiton". Talk about typecasting.

In most of these insults to the art of cinema (or should that be sinema) he was dressed in a fez, baggy trousers and those funny pointed slippers that turn up at the toes. I believe in one film they even had silver bells on the end. Not much chance of him sneaking up on an unsuspecting member of the harem there!

Now it's Beppo's toes that are turning up - in embarrassment - and its all his own fault. Instead of turning his back on his old life completely ( like they do when they join the Foreign Legion) and, before YOU say it, no, there isn't much difference between that and Circus life (Camels and animal droppings feature heavily in both) he hung on to one reel of film, presumably as a memento of his time as a rising star.

He might even have got away with doing that if he hadn't fallen out with Zippo, another member of his troupe, and gotten him fired.

Zippo, a four foot three inch ball of tightly coiled venom and vengeance strode over to Beppo's caravan with the intention of standing on a table and headbutting his malefactor but, finding Beppo was out, Zippo had a forage through Beppo's belongings looking for something of intense sentimental value to steal and sell and found.........you guessed it.

Before you could say "social work report" Zippo had sold the story to the local newspapers and T.V. stations and posted a clip on YOU TUBE. Quelle Scandale. Quelle Horreure! You didn't know I was bi-lingual did you? I said bi - LINGUAL you at the back!

Anyway, we are all laughing stocks now. Our collective skills and talents are set at naught. In the eyes of the public we are merely second fiddles to a loathesome lothario with a spotty bum (the film may be old but its crystal clear).

I feel for Mariella, I really do. An angel like that should never be tainted by the wickedness of ths world. I wonder that girl ever sees fit to come down from her high wire at all!

NEWSFLASH! UPDATE!

Just had the busiest week since I first came to the Circus. Box office is "Boffo" as they say in Variety. Since that clip of the aforementioned S.B. was posted on You Tube the public has flocked to us.

I half think they expected to see Beppo in some triple x rated confection but how they think he could get up to anything wearing shoes two feet long defeats me - as it would Beppo.

Anyway, who cares. Beppo's misdemeanours were all a long time ago, mustn't be judgemental and all that and besides Stromboli and I have both embraced the joys of pragmatism.

The audience are still throwing things, but this time it's money - after each act.
We've been cleaning up. Stromboli, ever the scholar, bought himself a new Thesaurus and I got a catering size jar of Dill Pickles. Oops pardon!

THE UNKINDEST CUTS OF ALL

2010-03-10T04:17:00.000-08:00

N. Osferatu, our esteemed, if strangely nocturnal circus accountant has got himself into a lather of almost hysterical activity of late. All the more alarming since he is usually a very inanimate fellow who has been known to sit motionless for hours at his office desk rather like one of those tropical reptiles who only show signs of movement when their overlong tongue flicks out to catch some unfortunate passing insect whose only crime was to be in the vicinity. Osferatu 's tongue, by contrast, usually flicks out to give some unfortunate an ear bashing for spending money - even when it happens to be their own.

All that is by the by, though. No, the real reason for the hysteria is that someone gave him a year's subscription to the Financial Times (you know the big pink paper that you often see worried looking financial types reading across from you in the train or in your local coffee shops).

Osferatu, glad not to have to rely on the financial page in the Daily Star any more, has been drinking in every word of it. But one word has made a bigger impression on this cold fish than all the others. The word in question is "cuts".

He has got it into his head that massive cuts are needed in the circus expenses. He feels it is his duty to make swinging cuts to prove his financial virility. He feels like a veritable little "Master of the Universe".

To him the word has become a talisman, a slogan, a leitmotif.......a sort of verbal accountants Viagra. Mind you, that last one conjures up images too horrible to contemplate.

Anyway he is bandying the word about, wielding it like a sword and generally waving it in people's faces. He loves the power it gives him. The only time you see anything like a glint in those cold dead eyes is when some poor lackey is standing before him, knees knocking at Osferatu's not so veiled inference that the aforesaid lackey should brush up his C.V.

He doesn't even bother with Labour's pretence that his cuts won't hurt you because they are kind cuts. No, he is taking pride in the fact that his cuts will involve much bloodshed.

In fact, on the subject of blood...when the lion tamer made the mistake of taking back Charlie the lion's dinner pale before the King of the Jungle felt he'd finished there was much blood. I wouldn't go quite as far as to say there was carnage but.......... As the medics fought like, well lions, to make sure Solly kept his right arm, Osferatu, I have no idea what his first name is, hung around the scene leering and whetting his lips over and over again. There is something not quite normal about the man and one day I'll find out what it is.

Anyway, like many other dreary, bloodless little men, he takes a pleasure in weilding power over the helpless. He started off in a small way by cutting the length of the sticks on the toffee apples and replacing the useless Latvian jugglers china plates with plastic ones. Takes all the fun out of Laszlo's incompetence if you ask me.

Now he has had the nerve to ask the divine Mariella to wear something a "bit more plain and sensible", if you please. I'm speechless just thinking about it. The man's a barbarian.

What's next, hiring three legged circus horses for goodness sake? I'll tell you something, I'm hiding my spangly shorts until that subscription for the Financial Times runs out.

NATURE WATCHED

2010-01-29T04:17:00.000-08:00

Did you see Nature Watch the other night? It was all about my fellow chimpanzees and how dashed clever we all are and how - breathless hush - we have even learned to use tools. Frankly, I thought it was all a bit patronising.

They showed you one of my "brothers" poking away at an old log so that he could feed off the creepy crawlies inside. Big deal! Give me a decent Black and Decker and leave me alone for a couple of hours and I could build Stromboli a DECENT bookcase. I'm sick of looking at the rickety thing he's got at the moment. It's hardly a fitting home for Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zola, Mickey Spillane and all the other literary greats.

Later in the show the scientist chappies gave these monkeys at Edinburgh Zoo a film camera in a shockproof case to see what they did with it whilst, at the same time, making much of the fact that our D.N.A. is 98% the same as yours.

With that sort of percentage and a decent budget,they could probably have got a better end result than the people who make Emmerdale! All of this prompted me to wonder what percentage of MONKEY D.N.A the people who make "Live From Studio 5" and the "Wright Stuff" posess.

98% of human D.N.A. eh? I'll bet that you are all shifting nervously in your seats at the moment because if we had 98% of your rights you'd be in serious schtook. We'd be competing with you and yours for jobs and housing, wouldn't we? We'd be cheaper to employ than your average Lithuanian.

You'd see us everywhere. Delivering your post, serving up big Mac's in the local McDonalds or taking your fare on the good old No.37.

Just imagine us moving in as your next door neighbours. Just as you and your family and friends were enjoying your BBQ on the one hot day in Summer we would be up the tree in our own garden cackling, gesticulating and waving our backsides in your direction. Well, what do you expect when Carlsberg Special is so cheap?

Worst of all, imagine the look of horror on her loving Papa's face when some little Britnee or Chelsee brought her latest agile, if hirsute, beau home to meet the folks saying, "yeah, he ain't much to look at but he's "murder on the dance floor" an' he can spin round on his head faster than any of 'em others".

Relax, folks, relax. As you were. It'll never happen. A number of things stand in our way at the moment but for the sake of brevity I shall mention just three. We're short,we're hairy and we're bandy legged.

McDonald's? We couldn't reach the counter. We would have to sit on it.Health and Safety would never stand for it. Well, you wouldn't want your tray sharing space with a monkey's behind, now would you.

A postman's round? Leave it out! With these legs? It takes me all my time to cross the circus ring.

Mind you, from what I have seen of bus conductor's, we might be in with a shout there.

I can't help feeling that our day will come though. You have seen Planet of the Apes haven't you? HAR! HAR! HAR!

p.s. If anyone out there has a Black and Decker I'd still like to have a bash at that bookshelf!

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

2010-01-05T06:05:00.000-08:00

It has been brought to my attention that certain shortcomings in my behaviour need to be addressed and so, with Stromboli looking over my shoulder, (he means well) I commit my New Year's Resolutions to paper:

1. I shall not feel obliged to eat all the unsold toffee apples at the end of each day.

2. I shall not bite the hand that feeds (literally).

3. I shall not water the plants in other people's homes (metaphorically).

4. I shall not drop my spangly shorts and "moon" at members of the audience - even if they have been throwing things.

5. I shall not pick the spangles off my spangly shorts just because I am bored and have nothing else to do.

6. I will sit still while the nice make up lady combs my parting and puts on the Brylcreem.

7. I will not eat the Brylcreem.

8. I will finish things once I have started............

Wait a minute Stromboli has just gone out to see the Boss about something. Just time for me to nip out and fill up on toffee apples. It was a slack night to-night. There's probably tons left. Anyway, what sort of resolution is it if you can't break it? Eh? Eh?

Happy New Year to all my fans! A big sloppy kiss to you all!
P.S. did you know that because of my extra wide and elastic
lips I can kiss at least three people at a time - not that I
ever get the chance.

Cheery,

Marcel

CIRCUS MONKEY REVIEWS THE B.B.C.'S "BIG TOP"

2009-12-08T03:11:00.000-08:00

I have been out of action with a bad case of groin strain these past few days (that bl**dy tricycle again) and have consequently been watching far too much T.V. for my own good.

I must say I did like "CASH IN THE ATTIC". You know, that's the cosy one where kind hearted folk sell off all their bits and pieces to buy a state of the art wheelchair for an aged relative. Of course you also get the selfish sods who blow the kids' inheritance on an overpriced round the world cruise but, then again, what did the kids ever do for them!

I've got to say, though, that I've seen enough naked middle aged ladies to last several monkey lifetimes (Gok Wan's "HOW TO LOOK GOOD NEKKID"). I have news for you, my supercilious oriental friend, I have always looked good NEKKID and I am well into my middle monkey years.

One morning while rubbing my tender groin (an image you could probably have quite happily got by without. Sorry!) I thought that the Simian race had actually taken over the airwaves but it was just Matthew Wright, a big eared, loud mouthed twerp with a rubber mug, just like those hooligan bonobos I was neighbours with back home, hosting one of those interminable daytime Talk Shows.

You know the kind. They always have a panel of z list celebs of no obvious great intelligence who, by virtue of the fact that a television camera is trained on them suddenly become expert on all the rich panoply of human affairs. Proper bl**din little Oracles of Delphi - and I don't think!

If you want a worse example of talk T.V. (oh you do? do you. You little masochists you!) may I direct you to LIVE FROM STUDIO 5, which goes out in the evening, or, as I call it, AN OIK AND TWO SLAPPERS. A little hard? A tad too cutting? Well, watch it and tell me I'm wrong!

I'll save the best till last - O.K. I'M BEING FACETIOUS. The B.B.C. are trying their hand at family entertainment again. Just out of interest, why do their Press Releases always make Family Entertainment sound like an Orwellian concept - straight from the Ministry of Laughter?

Speaking as a circus performer myself I have to say that it is not very realistic.
It's too colourful. Our establishment is a monument to the faded and the grubby. What's not faded is usually stained with some unidentifiable substance, or another, of which soup is the least problematic.

It's too glamorous. Amanda Holden's legs? Pleeeze. Apart from the divine Mariella, who is so far above us that she is not really part of this shambles, the owner of the best legs around here is Montezuma, the Circus Horse.

There was one note of reality, though, that clown who put the ferrets down his trousers. I could see Beppo, our chief mirth maker (O.K., I am being facetious again) doing that. The only difference being that he would not be doing it for the benefit of his act but for idle curiousity.

Actually, when you think of it, THAT'S funny!

SOMETHING ABOUT PETTIGREW (PART TWO)

2009-11-19T02:57:00.000-08:00

You may remember that we left our hero, and future owner of this circus, Algernon R. Pettigrew, making his way into the fair city of Edinburgh after being left to his own devices by the Raggle Taggle Gypsies because they were sick and tired of having to scour the Greenwoods for him every time he got lost.

He found lodgings at the "Bide A Wee" Guest House run by Miss Agnes Flotsam, an Edinburgh landlady (of whom it was often said...... but never, ever proved!) who was kind enough to feed this waif up and wise enough to leave him to his inner turmoil - as long as that turmoil didn't involve a lot of noisy crying which would upset the other guests.

After a day or two he felt fit enough to face the world - even that bit of it called Edinburgh - and so, on a fine Spring afternoon he strolled through town, buying a lottery ticket on his way.

Then, that same evening, as he watched T.V. with Agnes Flotsam, he found that he was now a multi-millionaire ex sandwich board man. His eyes lit up. Who needed sandwich boards now. Who needed all that running through Greenwoods anyway. He was sure that was the quickest way to catch Dutch Elm Disease.

At the news of Algernon's good fortune, Miss Flotsam let out an involuntary whoop, apologised and left the room carrying an empty biscuit plate.

Our dancing rover sat staring at the T.V., like a hypnotised rabbit trying to make sense of his new reality.His new position in life was a little daunting but it was certainly more exciting, than squirrels, strange flowers and trees with bark in the shape of a human face.(see previous posting for enlightenment).

Then it dawned on him that Miss Flotsam had been away longer than was strictly necessary to replenish a plate full of "Jammy Dodgers". He was just thinking of getting up to look for her when she burst back into the room, a vision in pink chiffon, the scent of "A Night In Tangiers" wafting all around her and carrying a plate of little pink and yellow cakes which she set down before him on the coffee table.

"Can I interest you in a Fondant Fancy, Algie?", she said in a voice quivering with desire and marinated in Gordon's Gin. "The'yre very moreish."

She licked her lips lasciviously and fiddled with her under wiring suggestively and, for good measure, she fluttered one false eyelash so vigorously that it fell into her mug of hot chocolate.

Algernon was finding that life was suddenly becoming so much more interesting. All of life's pleasures - even the forbidden ones - were being laid before him on a plate. Oh, he sighed, with guilty pleasure. Guilty pleasures, guilty, guilty, guilty, pleasures.

He eyed Agnes' swelling bosom and the curve of her hips. It was his turn to lick his lips now. It was all there, just in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and take it.

So our hero reached out and........picked the pink Fondant Fancy nearest him!. Then he picked another and another. Then he fell asleep in front of a repeat of Holby City and Agnes retreated to the kitchen and sobbed her heart out and didn't care whether the other %^@~~~** guests heard her or not.

Miss Flotsam was disappointed in a sort of Olympian way at the failure of her seduction attempt. Coming second to a fondant fancy is hard even for the most philosophical of women and the nearest Agnes had come to Greek Philosophy was the kebab shop owners musings on Edinburgh's local business rates.She was not a quitter,though. After all there were multi millions at stake if she could hook this "slippery little minnow".

Next morning there was an extra sausage on his plate at breakfast and she had taken the trouble to stuff his mushrooms with some delicacy, or another, which on questioning, she was slightly evasive about. Algernon was suspicious. Even his stint n the Greenwoods had not taught him to trust mushrooms. Things could go either way with mushrooms.When Miss Flotsam went pack to the kitchen to get more toast Algernon saw his chance and stuck them down the back of the settee, hoping that by the time she found them he would have moved on to pastures new.

On the day that his winnings cheque cleared he sought refuge from Miss Flotsam's attentions at an afternoon performance of the circus which had just arrived in town.

He had never been to the circus before and was absolutely enchanted. Then, it suddenly dawned on him. Here was the family he craved. This was the biggest and best family in all the world and, what was even better, was the fact that if he owned it and was paying the bills they could not leave him behind. Why, even if he got LOST they would HAVE to look for HIM.

Without wasting another second he went to his bank and came back in a couple of hours with a suitcase full of money.

He burst into the owner's luxury caravan and demanded to buy the whole show "lock, stock and barrel".

He fully expected to have to haggle but five minutes later he was the proud proprietor and the slippery little sod of an ex owner, whose character I have already given you, had burned tyre marks into the grass outside the caravan and was already history.

Pettigrew sat down on the couch with a contented sigh. Was it all a dream? He pinched himself. No, it wasn't! He was home, home at last.

Just then the door flew open and there stood N. Osferatu, the circus business manager/accountant/sword swallower. He was not a happy man, but then he never was.

Still, that's another story!

Our last picture shows the aforementioned Mr. N. Osferatu in one of his better moments.

ONCE AGAIN, WE DEDICATE THIS POSTING TO THE SUBLIME HARRY LANGDON, CINEMA CLOWN EXTRAORDINAIRE!

SOMETHING ABOUT PETTIGREW (PART 1)

2009-11-06T03:16:00.000-08:00

I thought it an opportune moment to start an occassional series featuring some of the Dramatis Personae of this travelling "Circus of Dreams" and where better to start than our proud - if often perplexed owner - Algernon R. Pettigrew.

He took over the circus shortly after I arrived myself and is generally regarded as a decent sort, if a little child like and naive. He is certainly an improvement on the previous incumbent of whom it was said, "if he entered a revolving door behind you, he'd be waiting for you on the other side, ready to pick your pocket".

Algernon was born to a travelling rat catcher and a mother who was, well let us just say, "well travelled". Times were tough when little Algie arrived in the world but, as well as his rat catching work his father had just started a side line in organic sausages and, not to be outdone in the entrepreunerial stakes, his mother toured the dockside bars of their hometown singing bawdy songs and selling kisses to sailors who did not seem at all "put off" by her glass eye and missing front teeth. She was one of the few among us who could truly say (to paraphrase the song)that she'd seen what the boys in the back room would have - particularly as she was the one thatgave it to them. As long as they paid for it she didn't care!

Algernon was a fey, dreamy child and while his peers were playing games during the break, he could be seen staring up at the passing clouds. It was during these childish reveries that his dinner money was invariably stolen - so he was a fey, dreamy AND skinny child!

He left school with no qualifications other than a gold star for being in charge of Miss Winterbottom's Spring Bulbs in Primary 7.

A succession of jobs followed. He was briefly employed putting holes in doughnuts at a local bakers but he left after a couple of weeks complaining bitterly about it being an empty experience.

Being fey and dreamy and forgetful was not much help in his next chosen occupation for, after the third time of finding himself in the High Street without a stitch on because he had forgotten to put his clothes ON AGAIN, he was fired from his job as a life model at the local Art College.

It was third time lucky though. He answered an ad. placed by an Oriental Carpet Merchant who was holding an exhibition of his wares at a prestigious nearby Hotel and needed a Sandwich Board Man to tell the world about it.

Algernon's ability to walk up and down half a dozen streets over and over again, stand motionless at strategic street corners for half an hour at a time in the wind and rain and go for a very long time without needing to go to the toilet stood him in good stead.

Soon he was advertising everything from hats to holidays and carpets to car doors and he would have jogged along quite nicely too if some jobsworth on the local council had not decided that sandwich boards were an Elf and Safety ishoo. Overnight sandwich boards were banned from the town.

Algernon was distraught. He took to covering his old round and standing motionless on street corners with his arms held out to mimic his missing sandwich board.

No-one is exactly sure but it's reckoned that it was about this time that he came into contact with a representative of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies (you know, the ones that "laughed and sang as the Greenwoods rang") who suggested that a spell with them might help him to see the world afresh.

Well, young Algie saw a good many Greenwoods and did his fair share of laughing and singing in them in the next few weeks. The whole experience did him a power of good. It really took him out of himself. It was a real tonic and much better than expensive therapy. There was just one problem.

Algernon had a bad habit of getting distracted as he danced and skipped his way through the woods with his merry companions. It might be a flower he had never seen before, a squirrel, or a peace of bark that looked like someone's face - the result was always the same.

As the strains of "a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no" drifted off into the distance our hero would be staring like a hypnotised rabbit at whatever had taken his fancy this time.

A half hour would go by before his Gypsy host's would realise he was no longer among their number and then a great "hue and cry" would echo through the trees until he was safely back in the bosom of his adopted family.

After the umpteenth time this got to be rather wearing for the Gypsies. You can't really blame them. After all, it takes away from the joyous sponataneity of the "laughing and singing" bit if you have to break off to launch a full scale manhunt every so often.

One morning, thinking it the kindest thing for all concerned,the Gypsy Folk rose extra early and left him asleep under a tree on the edge of a wood near Edinburgh.

Rosie, the pretty young girl in charge of the tambourine had formed quite an attachment and she brushed away a tear as she looked upon the baby faced troubador for the last time.

She knelt down and gently placed a four leaved clover in the breast pocket of his jacket, blew him a kiss and then parted forever. It would be quite a while before the words "hey nonny no" passed her lips again.

When Algie awoke. He ran through a gamut of emotions: mystification, shock, panic, anger. One moment he had a family and the next he did not.He wondered what he had done wrong and knew in the bottom of his heart how much he would miss them all but he knew he would miss Rosie most of all. Never to hear the jingle of the little silver bells around the edge of her tambourine again was a terrible prospect.

Eventually, he realised he could not sit in the woods forever. They were damp with dew and he did not want a flare up of the old trouble again. He had enough to deal with as it was.

Reluctantly, he rose from his woodland bed, yawned and made his way into the fair city of Edinburgh.

THIS POSTING IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THAT SWEET CLOWN OF THE EARLY CINEMA - HARRY LANGDON

A RISING STAR, THE BRIGHTEST STAR

2009-10-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well,I must say, life is settling down quite nicely after all the recent alarms and excursions. The "box office" has recently improved, our incompetent Latvian juggler is actually managing to keep two or more of his plates twirling on their bamboo poles at the same time (a bit of a metaphor for life itself, when you think about it) and - oh yes - toffee apple sales are going stratospheric.
All these things are welcome, of course, but, to be honest, they are a little bit pedestrian compared to the latest development at this "circus of fools"........Stromboli and I are in love!
No not with each other. Not in that way at least. I know showbiz types say that any publicity is good publicity but I could do without ending up on the cover of some obscure magazine dealing with the more unsavoury aspects of inter species behaviour and I am not talking about Hello magazine either.
The big snag is that we have both fallen in love with the same divine creature. Of course the added snag in my case is that I have fallen head over heels for a member of another species.
On reflection, its not a problem really as my love is a purely spiritual thing. Love her? Why, I idolise her. I look up to her. I have to for she is Mariella, one half of the Circus' High Wire Act and she is on a higher plane than the rest of us - at an estimate I would say about thirty feet higher.
Of course, as you know by now, Stromboli is an honourable man and his love for this wonderful creature is pure, if a little confused by messages from the loin department. After all he is one of Adam's descendants. Thank heaven I am spared this torture.
She is wonderful though. I wish you could see her. Dressed in the purest white with some sparkling sequins dotted around her costume, she climbs step by graceful step, up to the wire and Stromboli and I and the audience wait in a breathless, expectant silence.
We are waiting for her to show us that the affairs of the world are of no more consequence than a speck of sawdust in the ring below.
We are waiting for her to show us that a human being can, at least for a brief moment, fly high above this tired, soiled old world untainted by it all. And she does. She does. Up there, there is one who is all white and shining and smiles.
One night - I think it was the night that I fell in love with her - I happened to look up just as she was smiling directly down at me. I remember thinking that if St. Francis of Assisi had a little sister she would look just like Mariella.
For a slender few seconds I imagined that I was up there with her looking down with pity and compassion on a world that had long ago lost its way and whose inhabitants were, at this very moment, looking up at us and hoping to be shown it anew.
Do I over romanticise? Do I guild the lily? Am I too sickly sentimental to be allowed to socialise with diabetics?
Perhaps. Perhaps. But I know one thing: As she comes back down that ladder to join us mere mortals again I find myself mouthing the last words from that beautiful book, the Great Gatsby,.........."Come back. Come back. O glittering and white."

The illustration above is of Miss Mariella on a visit to a local school. Amongst other things, she set the children straight about why it's not a good idea to run off to the Circus, even if your parents are very annoying!

I have had a missive from Melissa Crawley - Williams (not the Suffolk Crawley-Williams surely?) She asks me if I am an animal keeper. No dear, I AM a circus monkey. Its not a nom de plume. Also she risks my monkey wrath by praising those b****y M***k**s again. Still, as judging by her picture, she is an extreeemely pretty young woman, I'll forgive her.
By the way, was that a day at the races or do you just like big hats Melissa?
If I didn't have Mariella in my life you would be next in line for a bit of inter species worship.
Ooo stop me before you fall in love with me. TTFN. c.m.

LEAPING LEMURS! WHAT HAVE I DONE?

2009-09-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Troubled days and sleepless nights since my little diatribe last time. I keep seeing Meerkats everywhere, I am the haunted monkey of Pettigrew's Circus and, NO, that is not a new act on the bill
The other night, during the Act, I could almost have sworn that I saw one of the aforementioned in the audience wearing a smoking jacket. It may have been because my eyes were still watering after getting "the family jewels" in a twist after a particularly tight turn but I was equally sure I saw him draw his fingers across his throat in a cutting motion.
Then, the very next day, my dear friend and benefactor, Stromboli the Circus Strong Man,got a very strange phone call. Someone with a heavy Russian accent said to forget about finding cheap car insurance as that task would be a cake walk compared to finding my lifeless body after he and all the other "Ivans" had had their way with it. Mummy!!!!!!
Stromboli tried his best to calm me down. He is of the opinion that it was one of Beppo's (head clown and would be circus shop steward) practical jokes. Apparently he is one of this blogs followers - however uninvited. If he was behind it I'm not sure whether I am more surprised at the depth of his malice or the fact that he can read.
Now look, once and for all lets set the record straight. Meerkats are not that bad.
O.K. they are a bit annoying - sorry Ivan - but you have to admit they are great entertainers. Millions of T.V. viewers can't be wrong. Can they?
If you are looking for an annoying creature, look no further than the Lemur. They really are annoying. In fact, they are downright obnoxious. All that high kicking and leaping around for no apparent reason. What a total waste of energy.
They are like a bunch of demented Tiller Girls or Pan's People after too many cans of Red Bull. Imagine that lot invading your favourite Palais de Danse on a Saturday night. Trouble? There would be fur, teeth and toe nails everywhere.
The local Romeos (or Neds as they are often known) would not like it one little bit. The high kicking "lemur leaps" would, inevitably be construed as a pre emptive kung fu move and many cries of "Come on,if you think you're hard enough you furry b**t**d" would ensue.
Secondly, the same young men would be insanely protective of their young women (or hussies as they are sometimes known)Over the melee you can just hear the strangled cries.....the language of chaos and violence.
"Oi, "banjo eyes", are you molting on my bird?"
"Oi, you swingin' on me girlfriend?" Note the use of the word "on" and not "with". It's no mistake.
No, gentle reader, never invite lemurs to your wedding. As far as dancing goes, they just do not know when enough is enough. Heaven help the world if they ever get their hands on alcohol.
Oh, greeeeaaaat!!!!!!! I've just realised what I've done. Now I not only have a pack of murderous Meerkats on my heels, I've got the leaping lemurs too - and with those legs to propel them they'll probably catch me in half the time.
Look! Look! Let me try one more time to extricate myself from this diplomatic nightmare. To that end I shall tell a story against my own species - although admittedly, they were distant cousins.
Many years ago there was a beautiful little island in the Pacific Ocean. Developers discovered it and turned it into an upmarket and eco friendly resort. Everyone was happy. The natives, who had been having a particularly tough time of it got good jobs in the catering industry and hotel management while at the same time knowing that there beloved island would not become debauched or turn into a Blackpool with sun. The developers were happy as they could make a ton of money while still retaining the warm glow of eco harmony.
The hotels were all built, the airport runway extended, there were boats in the harbour and Prince Andrew and his latest paramour had booked for a whole month.
Then, a tribe of monkeys who lived in the hinterland in a part of the island that the developers had turned into a jungle adventure trail (eco friendly of course) made their presence known.
The natives had more sense than to bother with the interior (hot, sticky, murder on the sandals etc) and so the primate residents of this place had no experience in dealing with human beings. They took to dropping from the trees, landing on the shoulders of the unfortunate eco tourists and trying to screw their heads off, thinking they had found the best coconut on the island.
Some longhair professor came up with theory that the monkeys, who were heavily dependent on coconuts, deduced that a coconut that was actually walking around would have a bit more zing (and thus be better for them)than one that was just lying around on the ground.
Be that as it may, the resort never recovered. Prince Andrew never went back after his young lady was stretchered off with whiplash. Countless lawsuits followed and, so the story goes, the whole place is just festering away, like that town in the Brasilian jungle.
Oh no, I give up. That crowd of pestilential primates were related to the Bonobos who live on the other side of the river from the my folks. I can't even go home!
Sanctuary! Sanctuary! Has anyone out there got a small room I could use for a while?

DOWN WITH MEERKATS

2009-08-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

What is it with you lot and Meerkats? I don't understand it myself. You get your mug on the "haunted fishtank" a few times and all of a sudden you're the best think since sliced Hovis.
Well let me tell you something. They are nothing special. I mean what do they do, anyway? Yes that's right, they stand around in gangs and they wait for something to happen. And they wait and they wait. What are they waiting for anyway - Godot?
Then, on the rare occasions that something actually does happen, they scatter in as many different directions as there are Meerkats. Call that an Act. They can't even get you cheap car insurance!
Now take my Act. I not only juggle balls (stop that), I race around on my shiny red bike, get chased by clowns, take prat fall after pratfall and generally bring laughter and magic into the audiences life - EVERY NIGHT! That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is an ACT.
I don't even get my distinguished features replicated on the Circus' posters and yet those lousy show offs get a regular feature on that stupid "Walk on the Wild Side" programme. Struth! It's enough to give wildlife a bad name.
And as for that flatulent Gorilla....please. I know I am a chimp but he brings shame on the lot of us. Anyway, much of my problem in that direction has gone since Stromboli started making me drink buckets of Peppermint Tea. Not so much Gone with the Wind as gone with the Peppermint, you might say.
Then there's that pointy eared little idiot shouting after Alan. Someone wants to tell him that "Alan" has probably been trampled by a bunch of stampeding Meerkats.
Oh switch the T.V. off Come to the Circus and see a real Act. Meerkats! Meerkats! Meer Rodents I say.
Has somebody out there got a drink? I'm spitting feathers here!

IT'S RAINING IN MY HEART - BUT I'M EXPECTING A BRIGHT SPELL LATER!

2009-08-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

Pardon, if you will, the lack of communication in the last few weeks. Summer should be a carefree time, of course, but I have found that the recent sudden outbursts of hot, humid weather (sometimes for as much as twenty minutes at a time) followed by two hours of monsoon rain has put me in mind of the old country.
In fact its made me come over all melancholic just thinking of my kinfolk, from whose bosom I was so brutally ripped.
I see them all now, as though in a dream; Cholo playing with his coconuts, Bingo playing with Malulu, Bongo playing with himself.
Then, of course, sooner or later, the dream fades and I wake up in the Penny Arcade which is my new life and also in this beknighted country of yours.
No offence, dear reader. It's just that everything here seems to centre around how many possessions people can accrue or how much booze they can force down their throats or how much.......well, never mind about "the other".
And the paranoia in your world. Don't get me started on that. Well, now that I have started, I might as well finish.
Back home, we have big cats with very sharp teeth who mean us no good whatsoever constantly circling the old homestead. Imagine getting your bonce caught in jaws that could rip your nut off in seconds. That's something guaranteed to tighten the old sphincter, still we manage to keep cheery.
But you lot,....If you're not worrying about terrorists, or the state of the economy or swine flu, you are busy looking for something to worry about - and your meedja is only to ready too oblige, is it not?
Everyday seems to bring a new scare story about this, that or the other and, somehow, it seems that the more "experts" there are the more dangers they discover.
They are the new priesthood but they are not concerned with the state of your soul. They are only interested in imposing their will by telling you what you are doing wrong, and that you are not the person you could be and that everything is hopeless anyway.
Do your best to ignore the experts and they might just GO AWAY.
Oh, look, look, see - over there......a chink of blue in a glowering sky!

Can anyone out there send something amusing to free me from this "brown study"?

THE STAR SPANGLED SHORTS

2009-06-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Storm clouds hang heavily over our little enterprise at the moment.Audiences are conspicuous by their absence and receipts are falling.

The Latvian juggler recently had to be paid in ten and twenty pence pieces from the toffee apple stand. Having seen his act more times than I care to remember, I would say it would make more sense to pay him IN toffee apples.

There is a school of thought that says people need a laugh and some thrills in tough times. What they didn't factor into the equation is the fact that the only time there are "thrills" in THIS establishment is when there is an accident.Such thrills usually end in a flashing blue light receding into the night and more lurid headlines in the local press.

As for the laughter bit, while everyone needs a good laugh when times are hard, paying for the dubious privilege of engaging in outright mockery is regarded by most folk as an indulgent extravagance.

Embarrassingly, I seem to be exempted from the rash of economies taking place at Pettigrew's just now. Au contraire, by contrast with the rest of my fellow, mummers, chancers and clowns, money has been positively splurged on me in the last seven days.

The tricycle that I use in our act ground to a halt when one of the back wheels sheared off right in the middle of the proceedings the other night. Mind you, it got a bigger laugh than anything else we did. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have been furnished with a brand, spanking new tricycle that plays snatches of "Greensleeves" when I press the bell which, admittedly, can cause confusion when the children in the audience line up in an orderly manner for ice cream before our "fifteen minutes of fun" is over.

Also, following my ongoing problems with chaffing caused by the lederhosen, I have now been attired in spangly shorts and a gold lame waistcoat.

I must admit that I felt a bit of a fool at first (which is, of course, what I am paid to be) but the combined effect of my sporty new trike and the sequins on my shorts sparkling in the circus lights is really rather spectacular and I have started to enjoy being at the centre of things.

I have heard mutterings that I am getting above myself and becoming a bit of a prima donna. I deny this of course. Anyway, how do you maintain a low profile while parading around in a gold lame waistcoat and spangly shorts.

AUNT SALLY

A Mr. G BROWN, of 10 Downing Street says: I take great offence at being refferred to as a "SOCIOPATH" in your last posting. It's a bit much when I am bending over backwards to clean up the mess I made in the first place. Oops!............

Marcel says: "Bending over backwards, eh? We may have a vacancy for you......."

GORDON BROWN GOES TO THE CIRCUS?

2009-06-08T03:57:00.000-07:00

Pettigrew has us booked for Dunfermline, hometown of our own dear leader, Gordon Brown, who, if things get any worse for him (can they), may well be back on his home turf before we arrive.

If that, indeed, turns out to be the case, I hope he decides to pay us a visit, if only because I don't like to think of a "sociopath" with no means of diversion. You never know what they might be planning.

Shabby though our little Dunfermline Circus is, we should be able to keep his mind off things, even if only for a while.

There's the Great Vertigo and his high wire act.. He walks the length of his wire balancing a beach ball on his head while, somewhere in the background Fred Astaire warbles "there may be trouble ahead" on a scratched old 78. On second thoughts, that may only serve to remind Gordo of his own recent predicament.

There's always Bruno, our Latvian juggler. He prefers "They Call The Wind Maria" as his musical accompaniment. Presumably that's the same wind that keeps knocking his whirling plates off their poles. Apparently, the Circus would have turned a small profit last year if it hadn't been for all the china he smashed.

No, no, on second thoughts Bruno wouldn't do either. There are too many similarities between his act and Alastair Darling's "handling" of the economy.

There's always that "sweet little ginger nut", Candy, from our act, who tops off the evening by handling Bruno's balls. Now stop that you..............

What I mean is she does this twee little number where he throws little red and blue rubber balls at her and she throws them right back.

That's it! No skill. No panache. No doing it blindfolded or backwards and over her head or anything like that. Just back and forth, back and forth....... like some quietly demented tennis game for people who cannot handle excitement.

All the time she's doing it she has this mad, fixed grin plastered over her features. It's unearthly. No, wait. We can't have that. It would remind him of ...........Hazel Blears! He may be the worst P.M. since the invention of the wheel but I would not wish that even on him.

No, I very much fear that if it's a powerful and lasting diversion that he is in need of, there is only one thing that will do. He'll have to have a Jumbo Fish Supper with an extra portion of pickled onions, followed by a deep fried mars bar
and eat it on a shaky bus going home!!!! The ensuing two days of vicious indigestion will probably be enough to ensure that he forgets he ever was P.M.

AUNT SALLY

A MR. Tutti Del Frutti (of Sam and Ella's Golden Fryer, Dunfermline)says:

If a dat bum comes in my place I'll give him a Jumbo Supper all right......and dat deep fried mars, and dat.....red pudding I been trying to get rid of since the Falklands and dat jar with the boiled egg that gone purple wid green stuff floating in the bottom and....and

Marcel says: Enough. Enough. Now wash your hands thoroughly and get me a packet of peanuts! Anyway, I said diversion - not olivion!

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

2009-05-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2009-05-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

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.

EPISODE NINE: TRIPPING OVER HIS SIZE EIGHTEENS

2009-04-24T02:40:00.000-07:00

Stromboli was fuming this week Madder than I have seen him yet. He practically short circuited his new laptop firing off e mails hither and yon.

The reason for his hyperactivity? Of all things, a pair of clowns shoes.

A young man called Valerik Kashkin, employed by the Moscow State Circus, has been told by Elf and Safety that he can no longer wear his size eighteen clown shoes as they constitute a health risk.

It seems that he was performing in a show at Sefton Park when he fell off a ten foot high wire while wearing the offending articles and ended up spending a week in hospital. The young man did not hold the shoes personally responsible and was perfectly willing to put them on again when he resumed his duties. In fact, he insisted that they were a vital part of his act - his personal signature, if you like, but the superannuated gnomes were having none of it.

Well that was more than enough to press Stromboli's buttons. "Nanny state gone mad!" he yelled in the Daily Mail. "An unwarranted interference in the artistic process", he expostulated in the Guardian.

It was a difficult time, I can tell you, but he was just beginning to calm down when he had the bad luck to run into Beppo; head clown, head union negotiator for his compatriots in mirth, and........headcase!

Beppo is a fool. Yes I know he is paid to be a fool but he's a fool even when he is not being paid and very good he is at it too. He's argumentative, hot headed, a disruptive influence and, altogether, quite unstable. I should think that the only other type of employment open to him would be a post in Gordon Brown's cabinet.

Anyway, he had heard about the Russki's unfortunate accident and was in a right three ring flap about it.

Apparently, he was on his way to see Pettigrew to tell him that he would be handing in his comedy shoes because he feared his own fall from a great height. The fact that the "highest" he has ever been was when he got his hands on that cheap Paraguayan Rum seemed to have slipped his memory. In any case, from what I know of Beppo and the way he rubs people up the wrong way, his own fall from a great height will come from behind, caused by a determined push and will have nothing to do with comedy shoes.

Apparently, Stromboli was close to punching him on the nose - the real one, not the prop - but given Beppo was still wearing the big shoes he would just keep springing back again and again and again.

It just goes to show there is always some clown ready to spoil your day.

STROMBOLI'S AUNT SALLY

Labour Bribes Public Sector

I would like to nominate Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the P.M.'S right hand man (but only cos' its Brown's right hand that's operating this puppet) for this week's spot in Stromboli's "Aunt Sally".

Shortly after midday on Wednesday April 22Nd, 2009 he got up to tell us how he planned to get Britain out of its worst financial mess since the end of the Second World War.

Anyone expecting some brilliant and dashing strategy, or even a modicum of common sense, was to be sorely disappointed. Such strategy as there was seemed to consist of "max out the nation's credit card and keep your fingers crossed for a new Gold Rush. Oh, and on no account ask public sector employees to shoulder any of the burden.

He played that loathesome Labour trick of talking of the Public Sector as if it was made up entirely of selfless nurses, brave policemen and dedicated teachers. He, of course, made no mention of the army of pen pushers, trampoline instructors and general busybodies.

Oh how Labour love the Public Sector. They are joined at the hip. The Public Sector is Labour's largest and most easily identifiable constituency. They win elections don't they?

A final word to Mr. Darling: Bailing out banks and car makers is bad enough, but being pushed further into penury so that you can buy Labour their next General Election victory is just too much!

EPISODE EIGHT. STROMBOLI DEFENDS MISS SUSAN BOYLE

2009-04-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

I soon worked out that Stromboli's caravan was a realm set apart from the outside world. In there was peace and calm. In there was music and beauty. Stromboli loved his music and, being generous, he was not selfish with his pleasure.

It was here that I first discovered the glories of the Enigma Variations, Handel's Water Music and, my own personal favourite, Saint Saen's Carnival of the Animals.

Stromboli, as I think I have already said, greatly enjoyed reading aloud and so I was introduced to the wonders of F. Scott (Come back, come back o glittering and white) Fitzgerald's luminous prose and so many of the great classics. It was a mystery to me how all of that heart tugging beauty could be wrought from that ugly, confused place on the other side of the caravan door.

The only thing that I didn't like was that wretched little glass box that sat, bug eyed, in the corner. The main reason that I didn't like it was the effect that it had on my friend. It seemed that every time that he switched it on gloom settled on him like a mantel - usually because of some new evidence of the world's wickedness as explained on the latest news.

It might be something earth shattering or something relatively unimportant but, if it touches a nerve, the effect is much the same.

He marches up and down the length of the caravan fulminating against the ways of the world and then sits down to compose an email to be sent to some newspaper, broadcaster, M.P. or other on the subject in question.

For most of us this sort of behaviour would very quickly exhaust us but Stromboli cannot rest until he has righted the "wrong" - even if only on paper. HE is exhausted until he does so!

Last Saturday, however, it was the Radio, not the T.V., that had my friend wearing out the carpet.

Some dour Scots writer called A.L.Kennedy who, incidentally, is no oil painting herself, was having a "go" at Susan Boyle, the You Tube singing sensation. Kennedy was being all post modern and "Sunday Supplement Clever" about her "victim" and her looks and I could see my dear friend getting more and more worked up. After listening for a while and before the steam started to come out of his ears he switched the contraption off so violently I feared that the nob might come off in his hand.

He strode up and down the length of the caravan, as is his custom, cursing a world which cannot accept the beauty of a voice such as hers without questioning the packaging or attempting to qualify it in some way.

He worried for the lady herself and worried that the wretched media, having built her up, would soon be dragging her down again.

We listened to her sing a few more times on You Tube and every time we did he got more and more angry that people couldn't just accept this wonderful gift with gratitude.

He then spent a tortured hour composing a letter to The Times and then, happily, the anger faded away. His self administered therapy had worked once again and the sun, once more, shone in our little world.

EPISODE SEVEN. THEN THERE WAS STROMBOLI

2009-04-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

And then there was Stromboli. After all the upsets, the alarms and excursions, of previous weeks, finding a billet with Stromboli was like coming home. I would still rather have been gazing up at the moon sailing through an African sky, surrounded by those I loved but, if I had to be in this strange place, Stromboli was the best place to be in it with.

He was a STRONG man all right and in more ways than one. Apart from his physical prowess, he had certain basic beliefs that he would not betray in any way. Not for money. Not for social acceptance. Not even, I suspect for his life. Yet he readily accepted the rights of others to hold different beliefs provided that they did not try to persuade him that he was misguided in his.

Despite his moniker and the occasional lapse into cod Italian he actually hailed from Wythenshawe and loved his country with a passion and magnanimity that did not require him to hate those who did not belong to it or those who had found an honest home here.

He loved his country - yes - but he was in an almost permanent state of grief for what had become of it. He didn't like the fact that much of its power had been sucked away by those who lived beyond its shores and cared little for it.

He didn't like the fact that weak and stupid and, yes, sometimes wicked people cared more for the criminal than the victim. He believed in forgiveness but he also believed in appropriate punishment. He was not one of those fools who keep confusing weakness with compassion.

He loathed the effect that the electronic window in the corner of the room that you all keep gawping at was having on day to day life in his beloved country because it seemed to promote very stupid people into the position of being experts on this or that purely because they were famous for being something else. Even worse, for every one of those so called "experts" there were another ten thousand who hung on their every word.

But he reserved his strongest condemnation for Political Correctness because he regarded it as the chief weapon of a race of tyrants who used it to make words mean what THEY wanted them to mean and not what they actually DID mean. He thought of it as an evil attack on common sense and the sort of thing that Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler would heartily approve of.

All this makes him sound dour and humourless but he wasn't. In his loneliness, and as a way of escaping his despair about Britain,he filled his world with books, music and poetry. He used the beauty of these things to cleanse his soul and gird his loins for his letter writing campaigns which were his attempt to warn people through the letters pages of various newspapers and journals that they had better wake up to what was happening to their country before it was too late.

Joy of joys he read out loud to me although he could not have been aware of how much I understood ( most of it I, can honestly add) but I suspect that he took pleasure in having an audience and hearing the beauty of the sound of the words instead of just having them echo soundlessly in his own head.

In this way I discovered the works of Dickens, Tolstoy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ayn Rand, Mickey Spillane and so many more. Every now and then he would stop, gaze at me for a long moment and say "You understand, don't you". I usually replied with a bashful little smile before looking away in mock embarrassment and this pleased him greatly. I wouldn't indulge in this shameful play acting, outside of a professional performance, for anyone else but if it gave this complex, tortured man a moment's pleasure that was all right with me. It was little enough recompense for all his kindness.

Truth be told, there was not a lot that I would not have done for him by that point. What's more, I'll just say this, a creature as fine and noble as he was could have had the leadership of my tribe for the taking - whether he could climb trees or not!

NEXT WEEK: My education continues. New humiliations.

EPISODE SIX. CAGED AND UNCAGED

2009-04-07T06:13:00.000-07:00

No time was wasted in making me earn my keep at Pettigrew's Circus. I was barely back in the land of the living when I was marched down to join the other monkeys in what was, I have to admit, a rather generously sized cage. They had even put some branches in it so that we would have something to climb around on to stop us getting bored. Hah! They were obviously not aware of my notoriously low boredom threshold. I suppose it comes of being rather more intelligent than the average monkey or the average human being for that matter. (No offense!) Still, it was better than anything that meddling French charity had to offer.

I quickly gathered that I was to be part of a group of simian performers rejoicing in the title of Bobo's Bavarian chimps and what is more, I was to be, as they say in show business circles, the "fall guy". So, not only was I going to have to endure the humiliation of having to wear a Tyrolean hat, complete with peacock feather, and, of course Lederhosen, but it looked as if I was going to be getting my backside kicked regularly, both literally and metaphorically, by a group of creatures who, as it was to turn out, bore me no good will whatsoever.

They were a grim lot those other three. The first thing they did was to accuse me of being an illegal immigrant and stealing British jobs. The cheek of it. At least I was captured in what used to be a part of the British Empire, which is more than you can say of any of them.

Chico was the oldest of them and the self appointed leader. He had great broad shoulders and was obviously adept at using them to barge his way through life. Pedro was his lieutenant. A bit of a sycophant really. Whatever Chico said or did was all right with Pedro.

Then there was Candy. What can I say about poor Candy. She was definitely a "glass half empty" type of monkey. When she wasn't moaning incessantly about her lot in life or imagining that Chico and Pedro were laughing at her behind her back she was throwing dirty looks in my direction which I found a little strange since I had not been there long enough to offend her. I was later to find out that she was one of those little monkeys who need to feel offended by someone. It gives a perverse sense of order to their life.

No, she was not exactly my favourite "monkey girl" and I can safely say that, as far as my emotional state that night was concerned, I would have felt more comfortable with my bonce wedged between a tiger's jaw. I did try to get some sleep, but YOU try sleeping with one eye open

Then, out of the blue, my "guardian angel", yes, Stromboli, came to my rescue. He showed up early the next morning and, seeing me curled in splendid isolation on one side of the cage while the "Three Stooges" were huddled up on the other, he immediately worked out what was going on and took pity on me.

It was quickly arranged that I would bunk up with him in his rather spacious trailer. Surprisingly, the arrangement worked well and without any awkwardness. The only drawback being that if I was caught short in the middle of the night I had to go out into the cold to relieve myself but that proved to be a very small price to pay for his friendship and the education he was about to give me.

NEXT TIME: Stromboli (Renaissance Man). My Education.

EPISODE 5. I LEARN ABOUT THE EVILS OF STRONG DRINK.

2009-03-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

The coloured lights strung out in the sky were not a figment of my feeble, tranquilised imaginings or anything to do with visiting aliens. I didn't know it then, but they belonged to Pettigrew's Travelling Circus.

The two criminal masterminds bundled me unceremoniously out of the car and up to the door of a large caravan parked in the Circus compound. Desmond beat a sharp tattoo on the door with his clenched fist and it was opened by a dapper, pot-bellied little man in an expensive, maroon coloured leather jacket.

"Allo boys", he said in a conspiratorial tone. "I see you brought the package. Good. Good. Bring it in".

They laid me on a couch and the three men started to haggle over money. It was only then that I became aware of a fourth presence in the room. In the far corner of the caravan a powerfully built man, probably in his thirties, was watching me intently. Somehow, he did not seem like the others. His face, though not particularly handsome, was pleasant with broad, open features. He seemed entirely free of the suggestion of guile and treachery that clung to the three others like a cheap scent.

His gaze was hypnotic. I couldn't stop watching him watching me. Eventually, a slow smile formed on his face but there was no mirth in it. It was the sort of pitying smile reserved for the seriously ill.

At length, he came over and knelt down at my side. He took my pulse and stroked my cheek. For the first time since I'd been press ganged by those two French busybodies I felt completely at ease with another of God's creatures. There was something about this man........a certain depth!

"Morris, this monkey is finito", he said in a heavy, Italian accent.

All right it brought my mood down somewhat but, what he said was mitigated by the tone of compassion he used in saying it.

Desmond turned on his heel and said, angrily, "That monkey is NOT finito, my friend. He is, in fact, recuperating."

"Boys, boys ", said Morris Pettigrew, rubbing his pot belly, "No need for unpleasantness. Moisten his lips with some brandy. That'll do the trick".

Davie did the honours, but he was clumsy so, as well as my lips being moistened, my gullet got a good coating as well. I felt my eyes bulge. I felt my throat burn. I felt steam coming out of my ears and fancied I heard it whistle as it did so.

My new friend was horrified on my behalf. "Careful you clown" he said, looking menacingly at the hapless, useless Davie.

"Easy. Easy" Stromboli, said Pettigrew nervously, "We all know you are the strong man here. You don't have to prove it."

Davie seemed to like walking on eggs. "Yeah, Stromboli, don't erupt will yah!" Ladies and gentlemen, if looks could kill."

An argument started up again. This time it was joined by Stromboli who was vehemently defending my best interests. Bless him! While they were all going at it hammer and tong they completely ignored me. They had also left an almost full bottle of Remy Martin propped up beside me.

I was sitting up now. If nothing else, the brandy had certainly brought me around. Curious, I took another sip. This time it didn't burn.

Since nobody seemed to bother I took another sip and then another........and then another.
Soon the world was no longer a place to fear. It was a place of delight and wonders. I gazed, glassy eyed at the caravan and its contents. Finally, my eyes alighted on a top hat and a cigar sitting on a small table next to the couch. I put the hat on my head, experimenting with different angles: formal, jaunty that sort of thing. I put the cigar in my mouth and felt quite the thing.

It suddenly occurred to me, for no very good reason that I can remember, that Davie might like to see me in my new finery. To that end I approached him from behind and tugged at his trouser leg.

The events that resulted from this innocent notion unfolded quickly and violently. Here is a brief summation of what I remember:

Davie jumped out of his skin and, with an involutary movement of his arm, sent my top hat flying.

Stromboli hit Davie so hard I could have sworn I heard what remained of his teeth rattle.

Desmond took an ill advised swing at Stromboli and disappeared backwards through the half open caravan door for his troubles.

Davie ran out into the night after him rubbing his jaw.

Pettigrew finally emerged from his clothes cupboard to survey the effects of a few moments of mayhem on his living room. Then, all of a sudden, he burst out laughing.

There , lying on the floor in front of him, was a pile of cash. In the fracas the two masterminds had left their payment behind.

NEXT WEEK : I start working for the B.BC. (Bobo's Bavarian Chimps) . My respect and admiration for Stromboli deepens

YOUR RIGHT TO RANT!!!

2009-03-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

While we all wait anxiously to hear of Marcel's fate, may we, at circusmonkeysmirror, take this opportunity to inform you of our new regular feature - Stromboli's "Aunt Sally"?

If there is something about life to-day, or a particular politician or public figure that really makes you "see red" we invite you to get it all "of your chest".

All you have to do is sit, breathe deeply, (sometimes putting your head between your knees helps) compose yourself and then compose your epistle and then email it to johnnicollendeavour@yahoo.co.uk

No more than five hundred words please and as much wit as you can muster. No bad language (as if you would) and no libel or slander. I don't have the temperament for court appearances - and the paperwork!

We'd like to hear North American, Commonwealth and European rants too - as long as they are in English

EPISODE 4: DARKEST BEFORE DAWN

2009-03-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

As we travelled on through that seemingly endless night I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep.

When I slept I had terrible dreams which I can't begin to describe, except to say that they were dreams of fear and foreboding about this strange new world into which I had been so recently propelled.

When I woke I saw, more vividly than in any dream, that old, civilized world from which I had just been wrenched. It was a good world - and a kind one. No-one is left out in our world. There is a place for everyone and we don't fill folk full of neurosis just to claim the credit for making them well again as you humans do with all those articles in your newspapers about eating too much or eating too little or asking if you are actually in the right job, or the wrong one, or whether you are getting enough sex or too little etc etc etc.

Maybe we didn't invent the wheel or the steam engine, but then again we didn't invent the atom bomb or Reality T.V. either.

Just as I lay with a picture in my head of dawn coming up over my own dear world, I became aware of a light in the sky in the world that I now, reluctantly, inhabited.

It wasn't dawn, though, but what looked like a long line of gaudily coloured lights strung high up in the sky somewhere near the horizon.

2009-03-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

EPISODE 3.I FALL AMONG THIEVES

2009-03-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

I needn't have bothered with the "thinking cap" at all as it turned out. All these nights lying in the dark plotting my escape were, in the event, totally unneccessary.

It just so happened that "Ratty", who had become insanely jealous of all the "after hours" attention that his "main squeeze" was giving her "petit singe", had arranged a sudden, unofficial transfer for me.

I was awoken in the early hours of the morning by the squeaking of the door of my cage and the sound of agitated muttering between two low lifes, one of whom I strongly suspected, was the wretched Ratty himself and, before I had the chance to raise the alarm or even tell for sure who was accosting me, a large hand, almost as hairy as mine, clamped some chlorofolm soaked cotton wool over my mouth.

The next forty eight hours, or so, were a complete blur, not least because every time I came around, another hefty dose of chlorofolm was administered.

Eventually, when I came around for the umpteenth time, I waited for the hairy hand and another round of oblivion but, this time, for some reason, it didn't come.

As the mists in my addled bonce started to clear I was aware of travelling in the back of some sort of estate car, as I believe they are called. In the front seat were two humans. I could just make out their forms in the blackness. From their conversation I could tell that one of them
was the dominant figure in this relationship.

Just then one of the two turned round and peered down at me. It was not a sight calculated to reassure anyone in my state of peril. He sort of leered at me and I got an eyefull of a set of teeth that had more gaps than teeth and what teeth he did have seemed to have lost the will to stand up straight. Mind you, they had plenty of room to slouch around in. This unfortunate also had glasses as thick as bottle ends to contend with which made his eyes seem as big as billiard balls. I had seen a few human beings by now and knew that they came in infinite varieties but I didn't know that they came in this particular variety.

"Ere, Desmond, the monkeys reviving. Shall I stick him again?", he said in a high pitched voice that sounded as if it was permanently in a state of semi hysteria.

"No", said Desmond with slow and exaggerated patience. "He's already had enough to knock a b*&*^%$$Wdy elephant out"

"Can I hit him on the head wiv me torch then?" By now it was pretty clear that this character was not the dominant figure in the relationship.

"No, Davie, you cannot hit him with your torch" said Desmond building up a head of steam." If you hit him with a torch you will leave a big dent in his bonce and that will not go down well at the circus. Apparently the sight of a monkey with a crater for a forehead upsets the kiddies".

The bespectacled one obviously didn't know when to let it go.

"What happens if he goes berserk?" ventured Davie. "I seen one of them big monkeys go berserk on T.V. once. Frightful it was. It was beatin' its chest and tearing up all the bushes around his gaff. And you know what it did then Desmond? - You won't believe this.

I could sense that Desmond was about to blow - even from my position on the back seat - but Davie was too dense to read the signs.

"It kicked its kiddie into the long grass just as if it was a rugby football. It's own kiddie Desmond".

I lay on the back seat counting. One.....two.......three.

"Davie?"

"Yes Desmond?"

"The way things are going with you and me, I am likely to go berserk long before that monkey back there. And when I do go berserk an obsteporous simian will be the very least of your troubles, my son."

Hello, I thought, you've got a way with words haven't you. It felt strange to have even the sneakiest of sneaking admiration for one's captor but that is what it was. Quite apart from the fact that he had, just minutes ago, saved me from a fractured skull, I also felt drawn to him because, in a way, he was as out of place in this situation as I was myself. I got the feeling that he wanted to be rolling through the dark night on the way to an uncertain destination even less than I did.

After a long sullen silence Davie piped up once more. "You think I am stupid don't you?"

"Noooooooo Davie, my feelings for you go much deeper than that?"

I sensed cruelty in the air.

"Really mate?", said Davie expectantly.

"I think you are a complete and utter moron but, unfortunately, you're the wife's brother and if I get rid of you I'll be on short rations for months to come if you get my drift".

There followed a long, petulant silence and then...........

"Desmond?"

"Yeeees".

"After we ditch the monkey, can we stop for a Pizza?"

For the next while the conversation turned to pizza toppings and their various merits. It transpired that Desmond favoured pepperoni while Davie was more of a ham and pineapple man. This latter fact gave Desmond another reason to look down on the snaggle - toothed one. Apparently, amongst human beings there is a taboo about mixing pineapple with pizzas and perpetrators are treated with the same disdain that we reserve for those among our number who try to befriend those bl**dy monkeys across the river from us.

I was very soon tired of the subject of pizza toppings, I can tell you, and was just about to drop off when their idiotic conversation and my repose was abruptly cut short.

"Cossers", screamed Davie, in the manner of a hysterical schoolgirl.

"Keep yer knickers on" offered Desmond. "Put a blanket over the monkey and let me do the talking">

"Evening sir"

"Evening officer" Desmond replied, cool as a cucumber.

"We've had reports about poaching in this area. You haven't seen anything unusual, have you?"

You had to laugh.

"What's that in the back sir?" said the policeman gesticulating with a torch whose battery seemed to be on its last legs.

(Now, at this point you are probably wondering why I did not leap at the opportunity to alert this policeman to my peril. Well, no1, I was in no condition to be leaping anywhere.I had been pumped so full of tranquillisers that I could barely feel my lips let alone my legs and, point no. 2, I did not, at that stage, know what a policeman was. As far as I was concerned, the gentleman in question was just another source of human danger. )

"Oh thats just a mate of ours. He's had a bit too much to drink. We're just seeing him home" said Desmond helpfully.

"And does he usually travel in barefeet?"

Desmond leant towards the P.C. in a conspiratorial manner. "He's got this condition officer. Very rare it is. His feet swell up when he's had a skinful."

For some reason the officer accepted this and I began to wonder if he was related to Davie.

"No offence sir, but your mate, well he's no oil painting is he?"

"Naw, he's an ugly b$%^$*&d actually."

"And short too", said Davie, helpfully, for which he got a dunt from Desmond's elbow which must have broken at least two ribs.

Desmond moved quickly to rescue the situation. "Yeah, officer, that's why he drinks. Takes his mind off being short and ugly".

After that little exchange the officer couldn't wait to get back to the safety of his patrol car(the presence of madness seems to have that effect on some people) and we continued our way throught the night in silence.

So I was short and ugly was I? The silence helped me to seethe more profoundly. I was no oil painting was I?

I would soon learn the hard way that human beings think that the whole of what a person is lies on the surface and that 99% of the time its not worth looking any deeper. Would you dismiss Einstein as being merely short and ugly? How about Toulouse Lautrec? No, exactly.

We rolled on through the dark and, at that point, I swear to you, I thought it would never end!

EPISODE 2 CAPTIVITY

2009-02-27T07:17:00.000-08:00

When I came round again the "bun" was still staring at me in that eerie but strangely kind way of hers .That was the only constant though. The rest of the world that I now found myself in was totally alien, and not a little frightening

For starters I was strapped down on what seemed to be a hospital bed covered in a crisp white sheet and wearing a dinky little crisp white cap. In fact the room was white in its entirety and filled with a blinding light that emanated from powerful overhead lamps. At first I found the light more uncomfortable than the straps that restrained me. When you spend most of your days in an equatorial jungle you are just not equipped to cope with that level of illumination.

To carry on with the white theme, the "bun", who was dressed in it from head to toe was standing on one side of my bed talking across it to a man with a very deep ponderous voice on the other side who was similarly attired - all in white. They talked on and on under their surgical masks in very serious tones and, apart from the occasional smile from the "bun", they completely ignored me.

I, meanwhile, struggled to follow their conversation. Since I was the sole subject of it and I did not yet know what their intentions were I thought my curiousity was entirely justified so my eyeballs flicked nervously from left to right and back again while I carefully monitored their facial expressions as well as listening to what they were saying.

After a good twenty minutes the dreaded V word (vivisection) had still not cropped up so I started to breathe a little more easily.

From the continuing conversation I learnt that a) they meant me no harm at all - quite the reverse b) they were part of some nosy parker charity with a special interest in my fellow primates( how ironic I thought as I lay strapped to a bed against my will) and c) they were so stricken with guilt that their little experiment had gone wrong that it looked like I was going to be the happy recipient of some spectacular 5 star treatment until I was well enough to be deposited back on my home turf.

Immediately I sensed an opportunity to milk this situation for all that it was worth. These two guilt stricken, politically correct ninnies wold be watching me like a hawk for the forseable future and any sign of unhappiness on my part would prick their consciences anew and their first impulse would be to comfort me and this comfort would almost certainly take the form of food. I had it made. Perhaps there was something to be said for captivity after all.

To put this theory to the test I looked up at the " bun" and gave her the full saucer eyed treatment while letting my lower lip go all a tremble but all she did was make that annoying cooing sound while patting me on the bonce again.

Oh well, I thought, the bananas will show up sooner or later!

How does that old saying go? - every silver lining has a cloud. No sooner had I been returned to rude health than they had me roped into helping them with their tests.

Tests? Tests my *%#**. Most of these so called tests were an insult to my intelligence. They mostly involved putting square shapes into square holes and round ones into round holes - that sort of thing. The only thing that made up for the tedium was the fact that they gave me a handful of jellybeans every time I got the answer right -and I always got the answer right.

Jelly beans!!!!!!!!! What can I say about jellybeans that would do them anything like justice? Exquisite things. One bite and all that sweetness flooding the mouth. My introduction to these small objects containing that indescribable pleasure was the first small hint I had that there might, just might, be hope for your world yet. Jelly beans!!!!!!!!!!! I will return to the subject again for there is much to be said in praise of jellybeans!

Day followed day. Test followed test. Each one was more bizarre and pointless than the last. Some of them, in retrospect,were nothing less than invasions of my privace and personal dignity. So much for respect for wildlife. I have since been advised I might have a case in law.

Respect? That'll be right. Its only the kind of respect that the powers that be choose to give you - not the kind that would do you any practical good. Worse still, they had stopped doling out the jellybeans. They seemed to have some idea in their heads that I should jump through their confounded hoops just for the sheer joy of it. Fat chance!

I don't know about you, but I have one cast iron rule and I budge for no-one. My rule is: no reward no effort so I "downed tools" and every time one of the self important fools came anywhere near me I shook my head vigorously, folded my arms and stared unblinkingly at the ceiling.

It drove them - forgive me - bananas. I was put on a close watch. My blood pressure and heartbeat were tested at regular intervals throughout the day. My reflexes were tested almost as often. Lights were shone in my ears and up my nose. I felt like the centre of the Universe and to tell the truth I was enjoying the attention, not to mention the greatly improved grub.

All of that would have been highly acceptable if it had just stopped there but, unfortunately, the "bun" who by this time, had taken quite a shine to me, took to visiting me after hours to comfort me in my "despair". The thing is she had the exact opposite effect. Two minutes of "coo cooing" and "there thereing" and she was on to her favourite subject - herself!

I have never met a more miserable individual in your world, or mine in all of my puff. If she wasn't moaning about "Ratty" who turned out to be her "significant other" - if you can call a creature like that significant - she was worrying about the state of the planet.

She worried about the ozone layer. She worried about the glaciers. She worried about the whales. I caught myself idly wondering what the whales had ever done for her that she should care so much about them. Forgive me my cynicism dear reader, but this woman would have made the arrival of "Typhoid Mary" seem like a cause for celebration.

Bless her little Gallic Heart but, more than all of the above, she worried about the "leedle monkeys" all alone in the big jungle and that is why, at the tender age of 16, she decided she wanted to work for some French mob whose name, loosely translated, meant Mercy for the Monkeys of the World. I ask you!

Well here was one "leedle monkey" who had been bowling along quite nicely, thank you very much, until she had placed her size nine jungle boots slap bang in the middle of his life. I didn't need her mercy and had never asked for it.

One night, after one of her visits, I was lying in the dark and trying not to cry while I took stock of my situation. The way I saw it, I had so far been assaulted, kidnapped and humiliated by this gang of do gooding hypocrites. They had been responsible for depressing me to within an inch of my life and they had also managed to saddle me with an adfdiction - jellybeans since you ask - and, I thought, things could only get worse. I came to a decision. I would have to escape.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and put my "thinking cap" on.

circus monkey's mirror

2009-02-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

EPISODE ONE: KIDNAPPED!

DON'T LISTEN TO THE POLITICIANS. DON'T LISTEN TO THE NEWS.

DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR FOLKS.

LISTEN TO THE CIRCUS MONKEY

Every week Marcel, the reluctant circus monkey, will hold up his metaphorical mirror to this crazy society of ours and give us his considered views on human relationships, the credit crisis, celebrity culture, the media, war and peace - the whole caboodle.

In these straightened times don't take life too seriously,

just make every Monday "Circus Monkey Monday" - You know it makes a sort of sense !

Anyway, to begin at the beginning...............It was a Thursday afternoon just before the season of the heavy rains and my extended family (or tribe, if you prefer) had just come to the end of one of our regular gatherings where we make decisions about how things are run - you would probably call it a Community Council Meeting, although not a Town Council Meeting - we are a bit more civilized than that. Everything at the meeting had been settled amicably as we are a peaceable lot in the main, unlike those screeching, backside waving hooligans on the other side of the river. That lot are not fit to be described as human beings, let alone monkeys.

The other members of my little community had wandered back to our camp to take up their various tasks but I was ahead with all of mine and had some free time due to me, so I had decided to linger in the clearing for a while and bask in the sun that was streaming through the forest canopy. With the rainy season due any day I wasn't sure how long it would be before I'd get a chance to do a little basking again.

I was just on the point of nodding off when I had that eerie feeling, with which I am sure you are all familiar, of being watched by someone near to you but out of sight. I opened my eyes and had a surreptitious look around just to be on the safe side as it were.

Sure enough!" There they were. Two of them. Hiding behind a tree just at the edge of the clearing: a buxom blonde human of the female persuasion with her hair tied so tightly in a bun behind her head that it had the effect of giving her eyes a permanently wide open, startled expression. The other one, a ratty looking little man approaching his middle years was fiddling about on the ground with some contraption that I could not see.

In their confounded arrogance they obviously believed that I was completely oblivious to their presence. It never ceases to amaze and irritate me how human beings underrate the Simian world. I continued to observe them out of the corner of my eye with mounting interest but, at that stage, no panic whatever.

Then the buxom woman held up what looked to me like a copper bangle for her colleague's inspection and I "twigged" right away - the jungle grapevine isn't there for no reason. The human beings were "at it" again, doing what human beings do best, which is to say, sticking their big beaks into other species' business

This was another of those exercises where they slap a metal collar on some poor chap and follow his every move on one of their infernally "clever" machines. Talk about a police state! That David Attenborough has a great deal to answer for. It's not even as if my life is particularly interesting: up one jungle path, down the other, a visit to the river bank, the occassional (very occassional) attempt at mating and that just about sums it up. It's even more boring than Big Brother, although, I must say a good deal more civilized.

I digress. You can be sure that I was still keeping on these two interlopers and getting more nervous by the minute. It was the thing that "ratty" was fiddling with on the ground that most concerned me. A terrible thought hit me like a hammer blow. Perhaps their expedition was more culinary than scientific. For all I knew a certain fast food chain was running out of cows to stuff into their burgers and was diversifying into Mc Monkeys.

Just then "ratty" caught his hand in whatever contraption he had been fiddling with and let out an involuntary yell. The "bun" yelled at him and, at that very moment, they both realised that I had been alerted to their presence.

Enough was enough. Whatever their reasons for being here, be it scientific, culinary or social, I was off. I turned to flee just as the little man got himself organised and pulled a trigger which sent a net flying in my direction. It missed me by just short of a foot, my left foot actually, and I would have made a clean get away if I hadn't tripped over a large box full of camera equipment left lying about by a natural history cameraman who had, all the while been filming away a few yards behind me. Well I don't have eyes in the back of my head!

So there I was rolling backwards and forwards in absolute agony and competing with the Howler Monkeys to see who could make the most noise but even worse than the pain was the fact that no-one, and I mean, no-one seemed to want to save me from these interlopers.

And don't talk to me about our friendly local tribesmen. Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. I could sense that they were somewhere near at hand but there was not so much as a cheep out of them. In hindsight, they were probably sitting around in their little circle drinking that stuff that gives them visions (no need for a T.V. licence in my part of the jungle). Pity. A quick round of poisoned arrows and I would still be at large and the Discovery Channel would have rather a large hole in their schedules to fill.

No such luck for your correspondent. The "bun" was bearing down on me wearing a very determined look and carrying a very large needle. Before I could say "Bingo, bango bongo I don't want to leave the Congo she had stuck it in.............well lets just say that the exact location was not a million miles from where the proverbial monkey stuck its proverbial nuts. To add insult to injury she had the colossal nerve, not to mention hypocrisy, to stroke my head and smile at me.

I rolled onto my back, head swimming, and stared into her face. Before I lost consciousness, I remember seeing a pair of startled eyes reflected in her permanently startled eyes. It was a split second before I realised they were mine!

Next week: I wake up in your world Am made to work for my keep And come to a decision.