A Pubic Service Announcement from Chip Dale

I’ve spent a hellish two days trying to calm down a distraught Romanian. When she heard Gordon Brown announce there’s to be no general election this year, Gabby began to sob incoherently. I was in the middle of some pretty exotic yoga positions at the time so it took me ten minutes to untangle myself before I could get to her. By then, she had cried herself dry and she explained in her cracked, fragile voice that she had put a rather large wager on a November election.

‘I was made promises,’ is all that she would say until she went to bed early on Saturday night.

Sunday lunchtime, I woke up and found Gabby sitting in front of the TV watching Adam Boulton on Sky News. She was wiping tears from her eyes, which I took as a pretty good sign that she’d been crying again.

‘Exactly how much money did you bet?’ I asked as I picked the raisins from my Alpen.

She seemed to shrink, her collar bone becoming more pronounced, like twin punctuation marks bracketing her head.

‘Less than fifty pounds?’ I asked, hopefully.

She shrank again and the inverted commas become more like semi-colons.

‘I thought it was certain,’ she shrilled in a quiet timid voice. ‘I had been made promises, so I bet all of it.’

‘All of what?’ I asked.

She resembled ET as she stretched out and her finger and pointed to the spare room.

‘All of it,’ she repeated. ‘All of it.’

My heart took a tumble down three flights of stairs as I realised what she meant.

‘Not my thong money?’ I cried, rushing from the room.

In the spare room, I lifted the loose panel beneath the radiator and shoved my hand into an empty space that still smelled of pineapple oil and stale sweat. My thong money had all gone. Months of pouch cash.

I returned, distraught, to Gabby who was crying again.

‘Do you know what you’ve done?’ I said. ‘Are you aware that the UK economy is now awash with money that smells of my loins?’

She tried to smile. ‘I can pay you money back,’ she said.

But that was hardly the point. Money is less important than loved ones, friends, and quality of life. And it means nothing when there’s a real national emergency. My unique smell had been sitting in the pockets of lesser men and women who might not be able to cope with the Chipster’s musk.

And that’s why I’m now issuing (and wearing) a Amber Thong Alert. Go to your wallets and purses and smell your cash. If the notes smell distinctly of pineapple, do not use them in any circumstances where you might not wish to breed with a stranger. The notes are potent. Return them to your local bank or destroy them. Do not place them near your loins. Avoid all contact with skin.

‘Do you really think that is necessary?’ asked Gabby as I went to the window and set off an air horn. I just squeezed it again and waited for the echoes to fade before I shouted my warning to the people of Bangor.

'May the Lord have mercy on their souls,' I muttered, though, by then, Gabby was crying again.