MA, HE'S MAKIN' EYES AT ME!

FAST FOOD FRENZY (HOT DOGS ANYONE??)

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

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...................

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

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!"

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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)

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)

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

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?

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

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!

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

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?

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!