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.

Suffering the BBC Blues

I see now that The Chipster’s continuing grouchiness is partly the result of watching too many food programmes. Rick Stein, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson… They present a view of food that I’m totally unable to share. Perhaps there are people who are able to afford freshly culled Bulgarian shrimp or that rare form of lemon grass which only grows in the shadow of a Buddhist monastery in Tibet, only I don’t see it for sale at my local Co-Op. Nor do I have oddly shaped dishes to serve it on, nor lots of middle class friends who we have around for dinner and discuss the middle period of Gustav Mahler’s life. TV chefs throw Parmesan cheese around like it’s cheaper than mud and then, usually in a self-pleased air, admit that ‘I don’t particularly like Parmesan and would always prefer to spend that little bit extra and use a cheese scented with the extract of a unicorn’s horn’. Have you seen what a piece of Parmesan cheese is going for these days?

It’s probably the misfortune of many of us that TV presents us with a vision of the world seen through celebrity eyes. Top Gear is the worst example I know. Despite being reduced to cycling everywhere, I still love the show but I do wish they wouldn’t keep reviewing £120,000 cars and then mocking each other when they admit they’re buying one. Clarkson can sound like a terrible bore when he starts on about his supercars. The only one I find I have time for is James May, who seems to have retained a sense of proportion, though he too might stretch my patience if he hands around that Oz Clarke for too long.

I also feel sorry for any poor fool who tries to copy the Top Gear’s challenges, not remembering that whey the trio drive across Africa in a second-hand car, they have a team of people to back them up, if not an army detachment or two. Holiday programmes do the same, presenting exotic locations as if they’re merely a bit further than ‘down the road’. And if you’ve not had your nose rubbed in it enough, leave BBC2 on after Top Gear and watch Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman ride down Africa.

I suppose many of us have long since realised that we’ll never earn enough to own an Aston Martin, but does the TV have to make it so hard for us? When they mock me for not being able to afford to buy a hunk of cheese, I begin to think that I should save money by not renewing my TV licence. It does nothing but make me feel miserable.

Take The Jeremy Clarkson Test

Go!

That’s for any of you who have already read this and having decided to test out my theory are reading it for a second time. But trying what out, do I hear you cry? Well, it’s my Jeremy Clarkson test, which I’m hoping to get approved by the great man as soon as I work out how to contact him.

I formed this theory when I noticed that Clarkson's books are hard avoid. They are in every shop, given away free with every bottle of Old Spice you buy from Boots, and you can’t have your breakfast without one falling out of a packet of ‘Oats Are A Bit Simple’. He is the nation’s most popular writer of non-fiction, unless you include Bill Bryson. But we don’t need to include Bill Bryson because we know that, all things being equal, it would come down to a fist fight and Clarkson wouldn’t play fair. Bryson would barely have time to strip off his comfortably warm woolly jumper before Clarkson would shoot him with an RPG he’s smuggled in from Afghanistan. Bryson would go the way of a Soviet helicopter high in the Hindu Kush.

It would leave Clarkson the winner and I could get on with explaining why I think he’s so popular. And it’s this:

Jeremy Clarkson is popular because it takes the same length of time to read one of his columns as it does to have a good bowel movement.

This is true. I encourage you to try is for yourself. This piece you're reading now is the perfect Clarkson length. The next time you feel yourself sliding towards a little relief, take this or any one of Clarkson’s witty rants about the French with you. You’ll find that from beginning to end, the column takes the same length of time to internalise as it does for you to, well, externalise.

Clarkson has mastered the lavatory read. He’s also adapted well to the unique requirements of this much misunderstood form of literature. Alfred Lord Tennyson was once the preferred choice of reading, with his long and slow moving poems the perfect thing for those low-fibre Victorians with fifty seven layers of britches and drawers. Have you not wondered why the nation has grown less intelligent as our dietary habits have improved? It is because we don’t spend as much time reading on the toilet. As everybody knows: it’s not what we learn in the classroom that improves us but what we read while we would otherwise be contemplating our knees.

Clarkson is the writer of the age. Humour is a proven relaxant, so his book, full of hair-brained schemes and slightly jingoistic looks at foreigners, are perfect for getting your insides moving. It’s certainly better than bouncing up and down for five minutes on the seat. He should really be prescribed on the national health instead of prunes, which as everybody knows, really are bad for you.

Okay. Now, I believe my time is up and those of you who have tried my little experiment will be wanting to pull up your trousers or skirts and be getting back to what you were doing. Those of you who haven’t finished, I really don’t know what to say. You’ve had all the time you needed…

Have you thought about eating more prunes?