With This Week's Guest Editor:
20th Century Philosopher Of Being
Martin Heidegger
(James Corden says: "Top man! Being all over the media like a rash is so stressing. Jack Black introduced me to Heidegger's 'Überwindung der Metaphysik' on the set of Gulliver's Travels: it's the perfect way to touch base after a hard day feeding my already-bloated ego."
Dear Martin,
as a mature man, it is...
Dear Sir,
I note that Paddington Bear will appear at Dalemain country house near Ullswater on the 25th and 26th of February, where he will visit The World's Original Marmalade Awards & Festival.
He won't, though, not really. Because he doesn't actually exist, does he?
Some soft-headed twerp buys his idiotic wife a teddy bear, then decides to write a book about an imaginary bear. It t...
When I opened my eyes I saw red coals, licking flames. My left leg was burning. Above me, giant faces loomed; they were contorted hideously. Had I truly descended to hell?
I had not. I looked about me. I was in the sitting room at 221b Candlestick Maker Street. The faces were those of Inspector Stanley Livingstone Stanley and - my God! - could it really be my friend Shylock Humes? I moaned, an...
Falling, I fell forever into fathomless blackness. Tumbling, I was helpless. Into what, I could not know, only that plunge I must, and for eternity. Was this Hell itself, was it Pandaemonium through which I plummetted?
And yet, there were glimpses, terrible, desperate fleeting visions, of a world so dear. Of a world forever closed to me. Our bedroom, at home, the smell of lavender. The lovely f...
My friend Shylock Humes and I were crouching on the lawn of the villa of Colonel Clavicord, late of the Bengal Dancers, waiting for our friends from Scotland Yard to gather their forces for the final push into the villa, where it was my fervent hope that we would at last encounter the denouement of The Adventure Of The Missing Christmas Goose.
Shylock Humes turned to me. In order to do this, he...
Dear Sir,
Here I am again (oh no I hear you cry!) with the latest from my researches into the history of the Dorking Sentinels.
(For any readers who are not Dorking-bred, and are unaware of the tradition after which your newspaper is named, the Sentinels were originally guardians put in place to watch for the coming of the Danes. After Ethelfrith The Unsteady defeated the Norse King Wolfram...
Dear Sir,
whenever I hear the song 'I'm 'Enery The Eighth I Am', I think, "that wouldn't work if they said 'Henry' like we do in real life."
The cockney accent makes it worse; they are implying that all cockneys say "Enery" instead of Henry.
Now if they used "Emery", as in Dick Emery, that might just work, plus there would be quite a demographic to aim for when it comes to re-marketing th...
My friend Shylock Humes and myself were sitting in a London growler, in the inky-shadowed street outside the villa of Colonel Clavicord, late of the Bengal Dancers. This villa was, I hoped, to be the scene of the great denouement of our adventure, in which all the various skeins, threads and loose ends gathered so painstakingly by my friend, would at last be tied, tidied and secured in lots of lov...
In Which I First Espy Roxanna, Comtesse de Vaudeville
Ah, Madame Garotte, stands yet your hugger-mugger maison at the end of the crooked track in the High Jabonne? I long to drink the black wine of Drucy from your squat tumblers, and stand beneath the oak lintel at dusk, listening to the song of the woodcock pierce the velvet summer night. Oh, Madame Garotte, do the fragrant skirts of petite Y...
with Tilly Wrestleman
Greetings friends! 'Tis almost that most Romantic time of year again. That especial day, when the gallant lover gets out the batter-pan and addresses the pancakes in honour of the Jewish Patron Saint of Scottish watercourses, Rabbi Burns.
I am singing of that night when an heap of steaming crepes is laid out for the delectation of our lover and his lass, in honour of Sh...
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's Valentine's Day. Another thing I can't stand is the Duke of Edinburgh, and at least Valentine's Day only comes around once a year, which is more than can be said for the Duke of Edinburgh, but once a year is once too often, insofar as Valentine's Day is concerned.
Another thing I find it hard to endure is the word 'insofar'. Especially when it is combine...
My friend Shylock Humes and I sat in the four-wheeler, in the inky-shadowed street outside the villa of Colonel Clavicord, late of the Bengal Dancers and host of the Annual Convention of Not-Quite Correct Things.
We waited on the arrival of Inspector Arbuthnot Williams of Scotland Yard, who ought by now to have been relieved from his vigil at 345 Bombay Road by Inspector Stanley Livingstone Sta...
My friend Shylock Humes, Inspector Stanley Livingstone-Stanley and I were jogging through the suburbs of Norwood in a London growler, bound, as we thought, for the villa of Colonel Clavicord, late of the Bengal Dancers, who was there hosting the Annual Convention of Not Quite Correct Things, for there it was, according to Humes, that we should, at last, attain the longed-for denouement of the Adve...
Inspector Stanley Livingstone-Stanley and I sat silently, as we lurched along through the winter evening streets of London. We were sitting in a two-horse brougham opposite a Bolivian admiral who was on his way to the Annual Convention of Not Quite Correct Things, which is an event hosted by Colonel Clavicord, late of the Bengal Dancers, and is a veritable Mecca to those with a penchant for the re...
Inspector Stanley Livingstone Stanley and I stood in the sitting room at 221b Candlestick Maker Street, waiting for Shylock Humes to emerge from his bedroom.
I had donned my Littlehampton waterproof coat with detachable 24 inch cape, in navy worsted serge. I was forced to wear the worsted one. My bestest coat had been at the Chinese laundry for a week or two, along with my Harris Tweed duck-sho...
Having clambered down from the scaffolding, I made my way to the window, where my friend Shylock Humes was looking out onto a wintry Candlestick Maker Street.
"Yes, doctor", said Humes, "this is the carriage I was expecting."
"But there is something amiss here!" I ejaculated, and immediately regretted it. Mrs Dudson was away visiting her cousin Effie at Ecclefechan. How would we clear up in...
It was upon the second morning after the first Christmas since my first marriage that I had called upon my friend Shylock Humes in order to wish him the compliments of the season.
There had been a hard frost overnight, which had given the fresh snow of Boxing day the character of sugar icing. The vile alleys were full of frozen drunkards and perished prostitutes, and the urchin children begged...
My friend Shylock Humes sat by the fire, subjecting the cardboard box Inspector Arbuthnot Williams had brought, to the most intimate and discerning scrutinies possible to man. I say man. I could not speak for woman, apart from our housekeeper, Mrs Dudson, whose scrutinies were generally limited to questions of domestic order, and were far from intimate or discerning. I say order. What I should per...
Hello, me dearios. I've been perambulatin' again. Perambulatin' I have. And my peregrinations, they have revealed much to me about the ways of our island people.
I did follow the ancient Way of the Cladger, through the old branglin' grounds of Somerset, and there I did espy the Church of St Ethel, at Upper Nacker, where lie the remains of Gideon Piddler, the inventor of the Steam Grundler in 18...
Dear Sir,
I melon to you as one who wishes to draw the pomegranate of your readers to the grape of those who are forced to endure the banana called "fruit insertion coconut", by which they are tomato to substitute the starfruits of fruits for the actual mandarins they really want to apple.
As blackberry can no strawberry pineapple, this is a very apricot condition for both sufferers and thos...
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's Jeremy Clarkson. Another thing I can't stand is the cat. Yes, the cat that sits on my window sill every evening and looks at me. I can feel its green eyes burning into my soul, while I'm heating the milk. Into my very soul, they burn, while the skin forms on the milk and it begins to rise dangerously high up the sides of the milk pan.
Bastit, that was t...
Oh no, don't. Ooh. Hold on, oh don't. Ooh, everything's in the wrong place tonight. I don't know where to put meself. Have you got the same trouble, Missus? Yes, you have, I can tell.
Don't laugh, oh no. Don't. Poor soul. What a shame.
When they asked me to do this piece, I must admit, it was all very daunting. It's very intellectual, this "thought for the day" business. Very highbrow. I tel...