Chip Dale's Dream

Should the Chipster ever profess his love for another man, let that man be Richard Madeley.

His offer to sell me the musk from his glands must have touched a nerve last night. It acted on me like some kind of psychic drug that seemed to cleanse my soul. My sleep was like a peyote hallucination. I dreamt that I met Alan Titchmarsh and I was forced to say to his face all the things I’ve ever said about him. The ‘other’ Richard Madeley was there too. He found me and gave me a thrashing for all the things he thought I’d written about him. It made no difference to him that I’m Chip Dale. He believed I was Dick Madeley and wished to punish me for all that man’s sins.

Then the dream changed and I was being chased across a field by hundreds of celebrities. Jeremy Clarkson was there, dressed for a hunt. Then there was Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, Ken Dodd, Sharon Osbourne, Oz Clarke, Jamie Oliver, and the whole of the England football team. They’d managed to corner me in a ditch where Clarkson came forward to give me the coup de grâce, despite all my protestations that I like the man and I think he’s one of the genuinely funny English writers working in the form of the abbreviated essay. At the last moment, Stephen Fry took pity on me and called for a vote to see whether I should live or die. Before they could finish arguing among themselves, I managed to slip away and made it to a road where I flagged down a car. Only when we’d gone about a mile or so did I turn to look at the driver. It was Angus Deaton and he began to mock me for not being funny enough… In the back seat sat Lenny Henry and Alan Carr, glaring at me as if they were the apostles of wealth and success.

Thankfully, that’s where I woke up. I found Gabby sitting beside me with a tape recorder in her lap. Poor girl. She thought I was undergoing a religious moment and I was speaking in tongues.

The truth is more mundane.

The Chipster may suffer terrible guilt when he doesn’t post here but self-doubt is a much more potent force. I suppose both would be lessened if I thought people thought I wrote other things, but that is too much to expect and I wouldn’t like to take any credit for another man’s hard work. Yet the fact remains, I am troubled by a conscience. I’m sorry if I’ve not been posting enough. But now my spirit is rid of the demons that have been haunting it for the last few weeks and I’m working again. I feel a little better and hope to improve my output in the next few days.

Richard Madeley, I thank you. And I thank you all for sticking by me. The Thong is at 75% and rising.