I have a passing interest in ornithology, so you can imagine how pleased I was when Bill Oddie sent me a letter inviting me to his garden party.
No doubt, I thought, he will have some examples of rare British birds to show us. Maybe captive ones. Although that would be a bit cruel. So I hoped it was not captive ones. I hoped he'd just have a slide show or something. I knew he had been taking a keen interest in the reintroduction of the Great Bustard to Salisbury Plains. Perhaps he would have some news about this. Interestingly, the Bustards were being shipped over from Romania. "What, no orphans!" I joked with myself.
The invite was printed on the kind of cardboard that you normally find invites printed on. But it was embossed with the image of a red kite. I'm not a big fan of birds of prey. I tend to prefer small garden song birds, finches, wrens and so forth. But even I have a soft spot for the red kite. As do most human beings who don't deny the holocaust.
The holocaust is the popular name for the attempted genocide of the Jews during World War Two in Nazi Germany. Other people were killed as well, but people tend to focus on the Jews because of the connection between Jack The Ripper and Judaism.
Anyone who has investigated the Jack The Ripper case first hand knows exactly who he was. Unfortunately that doesn't make for good books, so the mystery is perpetuated. For what it is worth, he was Aaron Kosminski. However, he was not responsible for all the murders attributed to Jack The Ripper. The press lumped a couple more in unnecessarily. The police knew it was him but he was committed before he could be arrested. The way the law was at the time, this meant charges could not be brought against him. It's a shame; I prefer the story about the king getting a whore up the duff and the masons killing them all up.
Bill Oddie's invite stated that I should wear a suit. I got my suit from Moss Bros. It was a nice suit. It was grey and had lapels. I like lapels.
The shoes I wore were black. They laced up. I put them on my feet.
When I got to the party Bill Oddie was stood in front of his barbecue. It was one of those disposable ones you get in a pack of three from Poundland. He'd propped it up on a couple of bricks to stop it burning his mum's lawn. The bricks were those ones with holes all the way through that you sometimes find snails in. I hoped that Bill had checked for snails before he lit the barbecue, otherwise they would be roasted alive inside their shells, which can't be very nice. But then, Bill is something of a conservationist, so I doubt he would have done.
The majority of snails in Britain were brought over as food by the Romans. Not the Romanians though! They aren't bustards! So, yeah, as well as subjugating the Celts, the Romans also subjugated the native snails. Not so impressive I suppose; but they still did it.
On the barbecue were two sausages, a hamburger patty and some slices of corned beef.
Corned beef, incidently, orinally came from a method of curing beef to stop it going off. Nowadays, of course, it comes in tins. Much of the corned beef in the UK actually comes from Uraguay. Which is interesting because Bill Oddie once went to Uraguay.
Anyway, it was pouring with rain, so Bill's mum was having no luck lighting the barbecue. And the Great Bustard he had on display in a hutch at the other end of the garden was pretty distressed.
The whole thing was a massive washout. We ended up going to McDonalds instead. Interestingly, the Happy Meal toy was a book about the true identity of Jack The Ripper.
I went to a bash once. 95% of the people there were pricks. Not amusingly so. Pathetically so. Depressing.
I'm willing to bet sandwiches existed for ages before the Earl Of Sandwich "invented" them. The prick.
(PERSONALITY HORSE Graham Tapes - free download album - coming soon, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 10:06, 4 replies)

I think I heard Ronnie Corbett do this bit about 20 years ago
Word for word in fact. Except he called Earl of Sandwich a queer, not a prick.
( Two Hats 🎩🎩, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 10:17, closed)

I don't believe a word of this rubbish.
It is clearly an attempt to get into AB's archive, but the archive appears to have been abandoned.
Maybe its an attempt to get into Broadmoor?
(Gritty, yet fluffy. kipperpillock is obsessed with me =), Fri 21 Oct 2011, 10:26, closed)

FIRST!

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 21 Oct 2011, 16:17, closed)

It's a shame this post wasn't first...

But there's only room for one first - and this week, that was me.

FIRST!
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Tue 25 Oct 2011, 12:50, closed)