By Jove Missus, how very un-tattifilarious I am!Yes, like the rest of the Custard company staff, I have been told that I am no longer required to provide my illustrious guide after December 31st.
I have tried to explain that this is a guide to Liverpool and that although the by-line is Capital of Custard 2008, that there may be a legacy role for me in 2009.
The only role for you, they said, is a sausage roll.
Well I suppose they have to find something to do with the 2 million provided by
Sayers sponsorship in kind. I bet it wasn’t half a million-sausage rolls that they gave to Mr Hasitall. Mind you, they could have tricked him with that; he couldn’t have eaten them with the gagging clause! Why do they never ask my advice first?What a cheek though, trying to make me redundant, after all I have done to promote this year!
Anyway dear readers, I offer my apologies to you both for my recent absence. I have been locked in negotiations with Mr Stilton and Bradlow to negotiate a proper pay-off. £30 quid and a 2-minute DVD of the highlights was their last offer. “Hasitall has cleaned us out,” they said.
They claim they are skint and there is nothing left for the closing ceremony.
Well I found three bob down the sofa in Stilton’s office when they nipped outside for a Peroni to discuss my future. So I’m having that, by Jove yes!
Now “Honorary” Professor Rednose is said to have pulled the plug on the closing semolina event, although he may still be able to knock together a Sinbad and Jimmy Corkscrew Karaoke session outside Yates’s. He is of course closely connected to the stars of numerous cancelled shows, as well as being Patron of the Frodsham wind ensemble, so I hear. Yes there appeared to be a definite whiff of them during his recent speech.
I’ve told them to just leave the closing ceremony to me and the Sir Diddy’s men, we can cabal something together. I have a spectacular event all ready to go. Very simple and very cheap.
I will place a large inflatable Lambanana in all of the major city buildings, The Town Hall, St Georges Hall, The Municipal Buildings and both Cathedrals. Then we shall fill the buildings with custard. As the devices are inflated the custard will ooze from the windows and fill the streets of Liverpool for the people to engage in a custard festival, like the one they do with tomatoes in Preston or wherever it is, (somewhere foreign).
The metropolitan cathedral will be the finale - no offence to the C 0f E, as this is dictated by the architecture, not the Pope, even if he does love a bit on his rhubarb - custard will burst like a volcano from the wig-wam funnel roof in a great yellow cascade, running down Brownlow Hill to form a giant lake in the town centre. Souvenir spoons will be available from the car boot of my good friend Mr Harbottle, so everybody can dig-in. 
Yes I will invite Mr Harbottle back and with a bit of luck he can hand over the envelope to Wally and Dickie Mint with the outcome of the standards board investigation.The Lambananas will then burst through each roof and rise above the city. Now, here is the clever bit, at the stroke of midnight, the they will explode releasing clouds of nitrous oxide onto the crowds below (laughing gas to you missus, I have tons of it given to me by Tarbuck) and as it begins to take effect, a photographer from the Oldham Chronic will take a picture of all the smiling and laughing faces, heralding the event a huge success.
As they all become unconscious, the 08 ambassadors secret mission will be put into action as they lift every wallet, purse and any jewellery - that isn’t out of the catalogue - from the sleeping crowd. This will be used to plug the deficit! An inspired plan, I am sure you will agree.I am just waiting for Sir Rex Hesperus to cast a legal eye over it, just in case the gas is too strong and injuries result. It wouldn’t be so bad if everybody carried a Clack Donor Card but we don’t want to end up with severe clack injury and thousands in hospital on a ventittilator.
Speaking of inspired plans, missus, I have been clearing out my drawers recently and discovered a copy of an early suggestion for a 2008 event, posted directly to the Custard company from Hollywood no less!
Inspired by the Capital of Custard award Mel Brookside the well known director of Blazing Squabbles, came up with yet another vehicle for The Producers especially for 2008, but it has just gathered dust in the 08 place
Reading it again this week, I am not sure somebody didn’t lift a few ideas from it without giving him credit. Here is part of it.
Nervous accountant Leo Blowsitall enters the office of Max Biallystorey to go through the accounts after another financial disaster costing the Municipal Theatre millions. Leo suddenly realises that you could actually make more money out of a sure fire flop than you could from a success and earn yourself huge pay-offs. So the stage is set to create a Capital of Culture fiasco. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3ERAV57bqaU
The first thing they need is the worst event programme ever produced.In a downtrodden Sydney apartment, they find Rubin Archsnits, with her cabaret extravaganza “ Springtime For Stilton” a musical play about the life and times of
As the opening night arrives and the curtain goes up, they watch as the assembled audience gasp in horror at what they see as the chorus line begins the opening number .
Springtime for Hilton and Liverpool
Winter for you, you poor sap
Financially we’re off the rails
We’re spending with no audit trails
Springtime for jobs if you’re southerners
You wont have to take the rap
Springtime for Hilton and Liverpooooooooool
Where failure’s rewarded by being awarded
Huge pay-offs for being so crap.
Springtime for Hilton and - Don’t be stoopid be a smarty come and join our lib-dum party
Winter for you, you poor - Forced out Jason, stitched up Forde, whoops here comes the Standards Board. Etc.
Delighted by their failure, they retreat to the bar to start working out how big a pay-off each can get. In the meantime the curtain opens for act two and some Lambananas parade onto the stage, followed by a giant spider. 
The audience begin to smile and identify with them. Max and the custard company had of course initially taken no interest in the Lambananas and had even talked about writing out the spider due to costs.
The audience pour into the bar, they want to save the Lambananas, they love them, 
they want to keep the spider, ok most of the rest is crap but there have been some good bits, and in spite of the general incompetence, millions spent and wasted or unaccounted for and the huge deficit, that is the real legacy, this has actually been quite successful. Imagine what it could have been like with competent leaders?
Our heroes shrink in horror.
“We got the wrong programme to start with, the wrong director the wrong leading man…where did we go right?”
“No way out - No way out!”
Cut to our heroes in prison singing “ Prisoners of custard, we all got busted”
Curtain Falls.
Hmmm. Perhaps they were right not to use it. Too far fetched. As we know, they did all get their pay-offs. Well apart from the people who will just get redundancy notices, the ones on the front line of the Custard Company who did the real work, that saved us from total disaster. Oh no sorry, I forgot, it was all thanks to the Custard Supreme, Professor Rednose. I do apologise. My word, a slip like that could cause a scouse divorce - fingers crossed.
But ladies and gentlemen what of the legacy, what can we do to keep the momentum 
going in 2009?
They haven’t been touched or opened up since the day they were constructed by eccentric developers who wanted offer gainful employment to thousands of Cockneys, Geordies, Mancunians and Poles. If we can just persuade the liquidators to open them up to the public I am sure many thousands would come to marvel at how and why they were built.
I used to have a penthouse you know. Unfortunately, the cleaner found it under the bed and showed it to the missus. I only kept it for the article on the Austin Healey gearbox and what to do if your big end keeps going.
Well whatever happens, if they don’t want me after December, I may take up the offer from Editor of the Oldham Echo Mr Alistair Zeta MacShag. He wants me to liven–up the obituaries column and give it a scouse flavour.
I have already suggested re-naming it the Brown-bread Section and Birthday Memoriam to be called, “Well at least I don’t have to buy a pressie”
But between you and me, I am in discussions with Sir Rex, Joe Roley, Laurence of Westphalia, Tom “who did that?” Dowling and Dave Printface, amongst others, to establish a rival evening newspaper that is truly loyal to the people of the city, written and printed in Liverpool, that will creates jobs in the city rather than redundancies for the sake of the Unholy Trinity's profits.
We already have the new title - The Liverpool Echo Cabal - which has a familiar ring to it. Anyway we are looking for a Head of Finance, a Cultural Editor and a Communications Director to complete the winning team.
We have also secured the publishing rights to the popular cartoon strip
“Our Wally” Although it may only be until the end of 2008, after which Andy Capps missus, Flo, may be the new cartoon feature.
How much to Oldham Catherine?
Tatty bye everybody, Tatty bye.
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