By Jove, I’m back missus. It’s been a busy week for me. Half the house was accidentally demolished after Mrs Chucklebutty dug up a 2nd World War bomb in the back garden and kept battering it with a shovel to see if it was live. Yes we had a bit of a fall out over that, just because I left her in a tree for four days, but all is now back to normal. Peace in our time and pieces of the garden throughout the neighbourhood. She was okay when it went off having taken the precaution of wearing earplugs.
Anyway ladies and gentlemen, enough about the home front, which is all that’s left until we rebuild the back, down to the main business.
All of you Custard-Vultures will no doubt be wondering what’s left for 2008 as I turn again to the examine some of the remaining tattyfilarious programme of events.
Speaking of the closing ceremony, it looks like the result of the investigation into the behaviour of our current political leaders by the Ironing Board for England, has been put on hold with them deciding not to announce the guilt (or otherwise) of Messrs Bradlow and Mint until we have ended the year of custard.
It seems they wish to spare the city any embarrassment of having our Leader and future Lord Muck bundled out of the town hall under a blanket, at least until Cilla has given her Panto thigh one last slap. Give Pete Price one as well Chuck. ( She calls me Chuck, you know, the cheeky mare)
Step inside Cilla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHVLwHJNC-0
Surely this uncertainty leaves us with a great cloud - another one - hanging over the city for the rest of the year? If they are innocent, why haven’t they spared us the worry?But if the Chuckle brothers are guilty of bullying and conspiring against Mr Harbottle and leaking details of his ticky dodger to the press (the Ironing Board doesn’t like the press you know, by Jove) then by not going public, we are potentialy left with people running the city who may now officially be regarded as unfit for office. This risks the end of Capital of Custard year being dominated by front page spreads about the antics of these two, rather than Pete Price’s Ugly sister frock. Although I am sure we’ll be able to read about it in his column for many months after.
What’s even more worrying, is with our “world in one city” slogan, just imagine the damage if a guilty verdict is linked to the colour of Mr Harbottle’s skin! I have often thought why this brilliantly successful and charismatic young man should have been cruelly held up to ridicule by everyone who has ever come into contact with him or any of his work and why he has been treated so shabbily by Officers and Members with only a £230,0000 pay off.
And then the words of the Civil Blights leader,
The Reverend Doctor Paisley ring in my ear.
A guilty verdict could of course have serious implications for the General Postmaster who has been trying to cover up his chronic amnesia after forgetting to send in Harbottle’s complaint.
(Harbottle’s complaint is now officially recognised as an illness. See recent article in The Lancet by Dr Juan Peroni)
I also understand that Executive Board meetings are now called Late Night with Letterman.
But if they've been found guilty, Wally and Mint should go now, then in the remaining months, deputy leader Flo Coupdegras, could work to recapture the spirit of 08, which is currently akin to a bottle of turps in most parts of the city.
On 31st of December, at the closing ceremony, she could regale us on the steps of St George’s Hall with her Dance of the Seventy Million Veils. Recreating the council X-factor winning routine with her and Dr Rotweiller as Ginger Rogers and Freddy Kruger. Nightmare on Dale Street
The Doc dumps Flo for a blonde http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QccO0pvSqgU
What a spectacular that would be, lit by the glow of the stunning 3 inch Catherine wheel nailed to a stick and with the moonlight catching the ceremonial milk bottle to launch the Legacy Rocket as it soars over 12 feet into the night sky with a mighty phhzsst proclaiming,
“ is that it then?”
Mrs Brown's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8k0VI9tBc
Something good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evpMKx5nrfY
Arrangements have been made to ensure visitors are immediately fleeced by cab drivers, driven to Runcorn Bridge to arrive in the city centre via the Kingsway Tunnel 5 hours later.
Why hasn’t anybody ever thought of having a tram connection like other cities? That Marie Celeste South Parkway Station that cost millions is miles away from the airport, why not just stay on the bus to Lime Street? It’s the transport equivalent of the pub with no beer - the station with no passengers, just tumbleweeds and a ticket clerk who has gone mad through isolation, he thought life would improve after 15 years in the Lighthouse, the poor man. Built to handle the tens of thousands flocking through from the airport, no expense has been spared apart from on platform seating and any shelter to protect you from gale force wind and driving rain.
The sign says:
Welcome to Liverpool.
What did you come to Parkway for soft lad?
You’d have been better going into town.
You can’t even get a cuppa tea here.
Yer norra Cockney or a woolly are ya?
Who you looking at, knob head?
Actually I think everything after the first line, was added by Jimmy McGovern, in felt tip. When he gets the muse, he has to write it down you know.
But anyway missus, this year the festival should be amazing with the headline act bound to bring in the huge crowds being none other than, scouse cockney band Chas & Dave. Yes Mr Cole and Dr Rottwieller will open the event with their hit song “Rob-it, Rob-it”.
They will also be attending an opening banquet with the Lord Mayor, dining on Jellied Cuban eels a la diddy, stunned salthouse fish, fresh from our very own docks and all sorts of seafood to reflect our maritime history. In fact the banquet is being held at one of the fishiest establishments in town, The 08 Plaice. Free parking will be available for guests of honour.
Fresh Fish Blues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AATtz__l9S8
LDL Test http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmzodvWDwSM
There is more ladies and gentlemen, no sooner does the Meryl Streep festival conclude than we have perhaps the most eagerly awaited event of the year commence. La Vending Machine! So keep some 10 pence pieces handy.
Everybody is wondering what’s in store for the city as the people who brought the great Elephant to the streets of London, or Boris Johnson as he is known, bring a spectacular creature to Liverpool for 2008. They are calling it La Princess! I do hope it’s not going to be a 90ft Princess Anne on horseback jumping over the Churchill flyover and blooding the children as she slaughters any pensioners wearing a fox fur.
Or a gin sodden Princess Margaret marauding through the city streets chasing Roddy Llewellyn with a corkscrew. It wont be the other one, despite the Liverpool connection and the affair with Doddy, I can’t remember her name - off Panorama - claimed Prince Charles secretly married a camel and Prince Phillip once tried to smother the Queen mother with a pillow after she drank his Old Spice.
But anyway, the French designers who have created La Machine first visited 
Liverpool looking for inspiration as to what kind of creature they could build. I understand they were shocked to see and hear about such a web of deceit, so with that impression, who knows what they may come up with.
Of course machines like this have their origin in Victorian times with the popular but smaller scale automatons that used to go on display. They would both shock and excite huge crowds of people at major events. Perhaps the most shocking example of the period was The Great Exhibition of Prince Alberts, when they all dropped their trousers in front of Queen Victoria at the Trooping of the colour. That was where they got the idea for the 21-gun salute.
Apart from that and the closing ceremony, I suppose the other main event is one I should keep quiet about since I misguided readers about it some time back. I mistakenly thought it was the HGV awards. However, since then I have received tens of thousands of letters from angry welsh folk. It is of course the HTV awards, a celebration of Harlech Televisions finest achievements.
And where better to celebrate that than Liverpool. Probably Sir Diddy put in a word for us after
he bought himself a place there with our council tax or was that Manchester. Oh, there's a thouht, we don’t want the Granada Awards; they might send Ray Gosling to investigate us. Mind you isn’t Bet Lynch still our cultural ambassador from those early heady days?
The HTV awards will celebrate an era of magnificent entertainment output. Remember they gave us Wycliffe, with Jack Sheppard, Three Little Words with Ray Allen and Barbie and Definition with Don Moss. Their Jewel in the Crown, of course was the inspired game show “Mr & Mrs”. 
Ahh you see, a lot of people only remember the Derek Batey version on Border TV, but the HTV one had the great and bald Alan Taylor, who wore a monocle and went on to do Paint Along with Nancy Komisnky. She married Reagan of course and ran the USA while he talked to the hat-stand all day. You know I may run off some t-shirts with that on. What’s Harbottle’s number?
They’d all want one especially if it had Alan and Batey on it. Subliminal social control as well. I’ll speak to Sir Bernard Hogan-Heroes about this.
Moving on, here’s a special message now to all you ladies. Oven Chips for the next couple of weeks missus, leave the chip pan in the cupboard, we don’t want any fires because Grotty cash is hosting the World Fire-fighter games, so you’ll have to make do with the Coast Guard in an emergency and swim out to sea. Yes it’s the Fire-fighter games at the Arena. We won the tender ha, ha by Jove!
This promises to be an event to rival the Beejam Olympics. They were going to have an Olympic style flaming torch ceremony but they just couldn’t help themselves and kept putting it out.
Nevertheless the main opening ceremony promises to be an amazing spectacle.
As the parade of fire-fighters march into the Arena, nine hundred and ninety nine (999 see they have thought it all through) specially invited youngsters will greet them with the now traditional hail of bricks and abuse as they kick off with the first event, “puttin’ar bommie out”. There will be music too from Nee-naw Simone backed by Sirenz, the stars of last years’ Matthew Street judge nobbling festival held on Fathers day.
Sad to say there is the usual controversy though to spoil the games. Apparently the pretty little girl in the Everton scarf singing “Smoke gets in your lies” was just lip syncing to little Wally Bradlow who actually sang it, but his head was thought to be too big and too crooked to represent the right image for Grotty Cash. Quite right. It looks like a peanut shell! It is a shame though; after all he scored top marks in the dope testing.
So missus, Grotty Cash is going to be the place to be over the coming months, particularly if you work for the Standards Board or the National Audit Commission. (Hopefully)
The message and advice then to Wally Bradlow and Future Lord Muck, Dicky Mint, remains the same.
Be Nice To Each Other
Tatty Bye Everybody Tatty Bye!
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