Fresh Goat?

Another summer solstice is behind us and Jyuti’s best linen is back in the cupboard with only minor chutney damage. As we all stood around in the back garden two evenings ago, wrapped in our ceremonial robes and declaring our love for the Moon and Sun Goddesses, I felt completely at ease with the world. Life is often trying and unfair to men of good looks and talent. Some of us are unfairly singled out for abuse. Yet it’s reassuring to know that Mother Sun is always there to ensure we’re all tanned to at least a Madeley Factor of 4. I suppose that’s why those of us in the druid faith are always happy in each other’s company. There’s really no mood better than that of a group of celebrities when there’s a goat to offer up on the high altar of light entertainment.

Which is why it struck me as odd that Stephen Fry looked so intense as he walked around the garden waving a large wooden baton.

‘Ah,’ said Stephen, ‘’tis I, Fry, with my ceremonial fertility cane, hewn from the finest Brazilian hardwood and guaranteed to deliver fecundity to all who fall under it.’

‘You mean it’s a stick of procreation?’

‘You might say that,’ said he, directing randomly towards David Dickinson.

‘I really wish you wouldn’t do that,’ I said, jumping in the way of the stick. ‘There are lots of people here but the last one I’d like to see frisky is Dickinson.’

‘I do not choose,’ said Stephen. ‘’Tis the stick that chooses whose loins will be blessed this summer eve.’

And with that he was off, this time to worry the already pregnant Billy Piper with his cane.

I left Stephen to his shamanism and slipped over to the buffet table where Sir Clive James was struggling to get some of Jyuti’s homemade chutney off his ceremonial gown.

‘I’m a mess,’ wheezed the Great One. ‘I’ll never be able to look a vestal virgin in the face. I have chutney where chutney should never tread.’

I gave him a slap on the back. ‘Cheer up, Clive. It’s not every year that you get to be the one to deliver the final blow to our ceremonial goat.’

‘But the chutney,’ said Clive. ‘I can’t slaughter an animal looking like this. And what will Jyuti say? Goat blood might not be the only life essence to flow by the close of play.’

‘Spare me the chutney,’ I replied. ‘Just think. You’ll soon be awash with the fresh arterial spray of the best Norfolk goat that money can buy. You should look forward to that.’

‘Ah, Raj,’ said Sir Clive, looking at me over his glasses in that way that reminds you of the great intellect at work behind that magnificent brow of his. ‘You know how to cheer a fellow up. I feel moved to write you a poem, perhaps in three stanzas and with end rhymes.’

‘I can do even better than that,’ I said. ‘Go and stand near Stephen. One wave of his stick and you’ll feel positively chirpy about the world and the vestal virgins won’t stand a chance with you. Nor will the goat, if I’m honest. But there you have the Great Circle of Life. You can’t have everything.’

And that, on this Sunday morning, is the message I want to send out to all my friends in the druid community. I know you were disappointed that neither Jyuti nor I could be with you at Stonehenge the other day, but we promise to make up for it next year.

These things are foretold in the Book of Richard, as lifted from the Book of Tesco.

'Shabna Grithalda Vertiga Raj Vespa.'

The Vanity of Human TV Presenters

“And Swift expires a driveller and a show”

Vanity is such a modern drug that it should really come in a foil wrap. So many of us are under that charming, wonderful, warming narcosis which makes us feel so loved for our gifts and talent. This really is such a new wonder drug that makes us feel so special, it’s sometimes a shock to learn that there are others out there who go hungry or struggle with their insignificance. Haven’t they had their tabs this month? Doesn’t ego come on the National Health?

Yet I suppose it is hardly surprising that we choose to be doped up on our sense of self. It is hard to survive otherwise, when our culture is so unendingly rotten. Riven by petty feuds, blatant falsehoods and aggravated narcissism, London is a den of arrogance, ambition, and arseholes. We need that occasional boost to pep us up. Vanity keeps us strong. And occasionally it forces us to make mistakes.

This whole affair of poor Richard just saddens me terribly. A brilliant mind is now being ridiculed by the lowest among us. Yet those grub-eating satirists with their endless witticisms are just as prone to vanity. Their lives will contain as many (if not more) misjudgements as even the most litigious person will find in Richard’s misunderstood career. It’s the intellectual conceit suffered by all of us who aspire for success that we will occasionally choose the difficult path. Ridicule is the price suffered by anybody who has tried to rise too quickly, only to reveal that very human characteristic: an astonishing capacity to make a complete balls of things.

Jyuti made the point this morning when we came to discuss one of my greatest shames.

‘Jyuti,’ I said at a particularly sensitive moment over my cornflakes, ‘it sometimes disappoints me enormously that I can’t drive a car.’

My confession clearly startled her. She knows how rarely I like to make this little fact public. When you look back through my blog, you’d see the numerous instances when I mention having driven us somewhere. Only, I was telling the smallest untruth. I employ a man to do all the driving for me. He’s an ex-grand National jockey who lives in the back of the Range Rover and doesn’t complain when I force him over the back seat and I climb out the driver’s door.

‘Perhaps you should do something to change that,’ Jyuti replied as I’d finished sobbing.

‘And become a figure of fun like Richard?’ I asked.

‘I know what you mean, the poor man... Harassed by scientologists for plagiarism. It’s like being shopped for theft by Ronnie Biggs.’

‘Not just scientologists,’ I said, ‘but damn ungrateful bloggers who don’t remember how he eased the suffering of so many people. But is that what we’ve come to, Jyuti? Does a trained healer mean so much less to us than the men and women that drive petrol tankers? Why do we mock and humiliate our artists, yet are willing to pay for our cars in blood? Why am I, a man of so many skills, unable to perform the most basic necessities of modern life that I’m made to feel like an outcast?’

‘Perhaps you need to think about a new career,’ said Jyuti. She’s always wanting go solo so I was hardly surprised by her suggestion. ‘Phil across the road says that most jobs come with a company car these days.’

‘And what does Phil across the road do for a living?’ I asked.

‘He’s a photocopier engineer.’

A photocopier engineer. Jyuti wants me to become a photocopier engineer so I might learn to drive and we can put an ex-Grand National jockey out of his chauffeuring job.

What does this say about the world? The same world that is currently mocking Richard Madeley, even though there doesn’t walk a kinder, more generous man on the face of this rotten borough of Earth.

I feel quite pensive today, as though a great wrong has been done. Damn all, who mock him. And damn all photocopier engineers too. May they all rot in a world low on toner and heavy on paper jams.

Voices From My Past

‘Hello, Raj,’ said the voice I recognised but hadn’t heard in an age. ‘Long time no see.’

‘Richard?’ I said, struggling to recall the last time my old sparring partner from ‘This Morning’ had rang me. ‘Is that you? How’s life as a professor going?’

‘Quite well,’ he said. ‘In fact, very well. I’ve just launched a new blog.’

You can imagine who this news filled me with delight. ‘A blog! How fantastic, Richard,’ I said. ‘You might know that I’m something of a blogger, myself. One of the least read but widely admired blogger in the country. Only the other night a wonderful lady viewer emailed me for the recipe for my tuna plait.’

Richard didn’t sound too impressed.

‘You still have those inferiority issues, don’t you Raj?’

‘How should I know? I’m not Dr. Smarty Pants Professor of Psychology...’ I took a long deep breath and waited a moment. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Tell me about your blog...’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s just a place where I want to connect with an audience. Chat about important matters in my life and generally break down all barriers that prevent people from getting to know a super talented man of letters.’

‘Pretty much what I do with my blog,’ I said. ‘I hope you’ve got a good name for this project.’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘I call it “The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society”.’

‘You cheeky bugger,’ I replied.

There must have been something in the way I said this. It was more of a scream than your average, common-or-garden ‘cheeky bugger’. Jyoti came running in from the kitchen.

‘Listen to this, Jyt,’ I said. ‘You won’t believe it but Richard had gone and launched his own blog and bloody called it “The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Jyoti.

‘What’s wrong? Well, for one, there’s not many people who want to appreciate him. And don’t you think it sounds a little too like a certain highly popular blog read by 3.2 million people a week?’

‘It sounds nothing like Thought Experiments,’ said Jyoti as she retired back to the kitchen.

I just hung up the phone and locked myself behind my office door. There are only so many insults a man can take after another hard day split between Manchester and London.