The Lovely Gabby

If you heard tortured screams of dread anguish during the night, I don’t want you to worry. It was only me.

A Romanian uprising took place late last night and the flames of have only recently died down. It all began when Gabby decided that she wanted to start posting things on my blog.

I was sitting watching ‘Oh Lucky Man’ on Sky Cinema, when an arm suddenly appeared under my nose. As you can probably imagine, my upper lip is not usually the place to find arms, so to say I was a little taken aback is something of an understatement. However, I was less surprised to find a hand attached to the arm and that’s when I recognised the half dozen rings decorating the fingers. It was Gabby’s hand and it was holding a piece of paper that looked suspiciously like the flyleaf from my new copy of Auden’s poems.

I swallowed the large sob that had somehow developed in my throat.

‘Chippy, read,’ she said, or, more accurately, demanded. ‘Chippy: read!’ is more like it, I suppose. The colon is so very Romanian.

So, I read aloud from the piece of paper with the emblem of Faber & Faber still visible at the bottom of the page.

‘Hiya lovelinks! My name’s Gabby and I’m Romanian songbird and I sing songs in a band with my gorgeous sister and we make gorgeous pop music for the people in London who sell our records until we get to number seven in the pop charts doing the hokey cokey for the lovely ladies and gentlemen of the UK of England…’

There was some more about recording contracts, double decker buses, animal mutilations, but I think you get the picture. The point is: I knew at once that I had to save you. I had to take a bullet for each person who comes by this blog and expects to read undiluted Welshman. Which I did without hesitation.

I suggested that she get her own blog. I told her that she should get her own website, where she could put audio clips of her singing. I told her that she could sell tshirts with her picture on. And then I told her that people come here for thong news and they might not even like the hokey cokey. That really wasn’t the wisest thing to say. My lips kissed ring but it certainly wasn’t papal. There was then a row, then tears, and then some brooding stand-off near the knife draw.

Eventually, around one o’clock, I thought the danger had passed so I went to bed, nursing my thick lip, and leaving Gabby sitting under the kitchen table and knocking back her potato moonshine.

The sound of snipping woke me around four in the morning.

It was Gabby sitting in the bedroom cupboard and cutting up my thongs with a large pair of paper shears. Naturally, I screamed. That’s probably the noise you heard if you live anywhere on the 53rd parallel. Gabby screamed back and threw the shears at me. Luckily, I ducked and they passed straight through the plasterboard wall.

She then threw a thong at me but I had already got to her before she could do any real damage. A dozen pairs of summer thongs were ruined but that’s really nothing to a man who owns thousands. I was more concerned with what she could have done and I’ve vowed to keep my collection under lock and key from now on.

This morning she was as bright as marmalade, fully of apologies, and blamed a bad brew of
spud shine. She also announced that she didn’t think she needed a website as her career’s already better than mine.

‘Keep your bloody blog, Chippy,’ she said with one of those wide honest warm hearted Romanian smiles. ‘You keep your bloody blog and I keep BBC Top of the Pops.’

I hadn’t the heart to tell her that they cancelled Top of the Pops six months ago and that it was widely rumoured that she was one of the reasons.

Everything was neatly wrapped up when the neighbour came around a delivered a pair of paper shears he said he’d found sticking in his kitchen door this morning. He’d noticed my name on them and wondered if they belonged to me. I explained the whole thing and I should imagine the smile he had as he walked away was not a little feeling of being blessed.

Which is also how I hope you feel on this fine March morning.

Thong on.

The Welsh Thong Awards

Gabby astonishes me. She looks like your typical Romanian pop star until she’s had that one drink too many. Then she becomes their answer to a burning tanker loaded with butane driven into a primary school for the deaf.

On Saturday night, we attended the Welsh Thong awards, which is an annual event where those of us in the field of exotic entertainment get to pat each other on our slightly greasy backs for another good year of hip gyrations, wiggles, and generally giving plenty of air to our genitals. We got there early because, I'll be honest, I wanted to take in every moment of the occasion. It’s not often you get to be voted top in your profession and it might not happen again.

It would a bit of an understatement to say that I looked like a God like in my white top hat, bow tie, white tails, and formal black thong. Gabby looked good too but let’s face it, people were there to see me. Which is probably why she hit the bar as soon as we got there.

Brought up on strong vodka and whatever else they brew from potato peelings in those Romanian villages, she handles her drink better than any Welshman since the late Richard Burton. I wasn’t too concerned about her drinking, even when we began to mingle with the other guests. She was charming as ever, playfully snapping every g-string she could see, and her delightful laughter could be heard far across the hotel and out into the car park beyond.

All was going pretty well until nine o’clock when I went up on stage to accept my award. That’s when I made my speech, which was well received in almost every part of the hall.

"Fellow Thonglateers. It’s been a good year for stripping. Which makes it a genuine honour to be standing up here, fully clothed for a change, and to accept this, my second Welsh Golden Thong award. I want to thank everybody who has come to see me perform and to all those who voted for me. I want to especially say a word of thanks to Neil Kinnock. Without him, I wouldn’t be standing here. Neil, you’re an inspiration for all men who want to wave their wangs in the air!

You know, with so much war and suffering in the world, it’s good to know that oil can be put to a good use. So I accept this award for all those that had fought so hard to secure the oil fields in the Middle East. Without them, our spuds would chafe!"

Thank you and thong on!

Pretty good speech, I thought. Or I did until I went back to my table and found Gabby staring at me. Of all things, she’d taken offence at that remark I made about spuds. She thought I was making fun of her habit of hoarding potatoes. She looked livid and as people were began to congratulate me, I could see that my dear sweet Gabby was thinking of a way of ruining the moment. And when Ben ‘Wigwam’ Tailor, probably South Wales’ biggest thonglateer, came over to wish me well, she decided to act.

She jumped up from her seat and launched herself at him. For a moment I didn’t know what she was going to do, but in a flash, she’d snatched off his thong and ran up on stage.

Ben laughed it off and soon everybody was smiling as they watched Gabby begin to sing her number nineteen hit, the Hokey Cokey, whilst waving Ben’s thong in the air. I can’t be sure all the lyrics were original as she was by this point slurring her words, but I know she hit every note like a true professional. In fact, you’d have been pressed to notice that many of the lines were off colour and involved a long list of what we men of Wales can do with our potatoes.

Eventually, she calmed down and to a huge round of applause jumped off the stage and went running for the bar. That’s where I found her, rolled up in a ball behind the curtains, having succumbed to a deep alcoholic sleep.

Once he had his thong back, Ben helped me carry Gabby to the car and I managed to get her home. She slept for most of Sunday and, eventually, an extremely contrite Romanian songbird woke up about eight o’clock last night. I assured her I wasn’t angry, promised I wouldn’t mention this to any immigration officials, and promised that the whole thing will be forgotten.

So, for the sake of Welsh/Romanian relations, I want you to forget all about this unfortunate incident. Gabby’s a good girl and doesn’t deserve many of the tough breaks she’s had in life. And if you happen to bump into her in Bangor today, just be kind to her.

And, for Christ’s sake, don’t mention potatoes.