The Chip Dale Guide To Handling Birds

Gabby informed me that we’re not having Christmas this year.

‘You want Christmas, you go have fun with blogging friends. You go with Dick Middlely, The Dirty Referendum, or The Fractional Popstar. Gabby not doing Christmas. We all out of turkey.’

This was news in the shade of the unexpected and with distinct highlights matching my shock and surprise. I picked the remote control from my lap and muted the lunchtime news. ‘Out of turkey?’ I repeated. ‘But what’s happened to Henrietta?’

‘Henrietta’s gone,’ said Gabby. ‘Escaped.’

‘Escaped? You’ve been rearing that turkey for the last six months just for our Christmas meal. She couldn’t have just fled!. Not when we’re so close.’

‘She gone. She jump fence and run away.’

‘Jumped the fence?’ I protested. ‘But she could barely walk. I’ve not seen breasts that big since I visited Richard Madeley’s website and realised that he’s started to post porn.’

‘Henrietta gone and Gabby not know what to do. I grow turkey. Biggest turkey I ever grow. And I looking to cutting off head. Now, what am I to do? Gabby very, very disappointed.’

I sat back on my chair. In the last few weeks, it had slowly begun to shape itself to my immobile torso as my malaise rarely shifted me before the TV. Moping might be a more accurate term for it. Only this was different. This was perhaps the news I’d been waiting for. This could put mustard back in the Chipster’s thong.

‘Well, I’m not going to accept it,’ I said as I slapped my thighs and stood up. ‘I’m going to find Henrietta and I’m going to rescue her.’

‘You find turkey?’ laughed Gabby. She threw herself down on the sofa and propped a cushion under her head before she picked up the latest edition of ‘Choke Holds’ magazine that had arrived in the morning’s post. ‘You go find turkey, then I sit here and read.’

‘And when I do rescue her, I’ll bring her safely back here so you can chop off her head.’

Gabby waved away my promise. ‘Turkey gone. It eaten. A fox get it.’

I nipped to the bedroom where I put on an insulated thong and my waterproof vest. As soon as I reached the door, Gabby came running.

‘You really do this for Gabby?’ she asked, suddenly full of eagerness.

‘I’m doing it for my Christmas lunch,’ I said.

She patted me on my chest and ran back into the living room. When she returned, she had a gift for me. ‘Be careful,’ she said as she pushed a large knife into my hands. ‘If you find Henrietta, you not let her peck you. Chop off head before you get hurt.’

I took the knife and was about to slip it under the narrow band at the side of my thong. Then I had second thoughts. ‘I not going to get arrested for carrying a weapon,’ I told her as I concealed the knife down the spacious pouch of my winter thong, ‘but there might well be charges of gross indecency before the night’s out.’

The obvious place to start a turkey hunt was at the last place the bird had been seen. The allotments were unusually quiet when I arrived there around three. It was a brazenly cold afternoon, with a stiff breeze cutting across the open patch of land. My nipples were hard and tingling, like two sensors set to white meat as I began my search around the turkey enclosure. It was there that I noticed some heel prints in the soft mud that ran to a small gate that led to the series of small cottages that sit to the rear of the allotments. It seemed a bit too obvious a lead but I thought I’d check them out first.

The garden of the first cottage overlooks Gabby’s allotment and belongs to an old doctor who retired from the profession some years ago, about the same time as he was struck off the medical register. As far as I knew, he still lived there with his sister. It took me no time to get around to the front of the house and ring the door bell. Moments passed before it opened to a dark crack.

‘Yes?’ asked a soft voice from within.

‘Oh, hello,’ I said as a pair of wizened eyes came peering out to greet me. ‘I’m looking for a bird…’

‘A bird?’ said the voice. The door opened a little more and a little old lady wandered forward and began to peer at my groin. ‘What on earth are you wearing, young man?’

‘It’s a thong,’ I said.

‘A thong? It doesn’t look very warm.’

‘Oh, it’s very warm,’ I assured her. ‘Very spacious too. Can you believe there’s a weapon packed in there?’

‘A weapon?’

‘For the turkey,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’ve come for. My girlfriend owns the allotment at the bottom of your garden and our Christmas turkey seems to have gone missing. I was wondering if it might have escaped over your fence.’

She gave me one of the oddest looks I think I’ve ever received. ‘And when you find this turkey, you’re going to kill a turkey with you weapon?’ she asked and pointed to my thong.

I shrugged. ‘That’s the general idea,’ I replied.

She waved me after her. ‘The turkey is out back. Let me go and get my glasses. I want to see this!’

Sure enough, Henrietta was sitting in the rear garden, trapped by four sides of trellis fashioned into a makeshift pen.

‘It was my brother,’ whispered the little old lady as she emerged from the house. She’d wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and a pair of glasses now rode the smooth incline of her nose. ‘He’s been watching that turkey grow all year,’ she continued to explain. ‘He’s rather naughty, I’m afraid. I told him he shouldn’t steal it but he said you wouldn’t notice.’ A she smiled, yellowing false teeth moving uneasily on thin gums. ‘Now, I believe you promised to show me how you’re going to kill a turkey with that “weapon” of yours.’

‘I was planning of cutting it’s head off,’ I said, though now I had found Henrietta, I didn’t think I had it in me to do the wicked deed.

‘Chop off its head?’ asked the old woman. ‘I thought you were going to bash it unconscious. I was quite looking forward to watching you giving it a good bludgeon. Mind you,’ she laughed, ‘it’s so many years. I can’t remember what a good “weapon” really looks like…’

To be honest, I think she was a little senile. She wasn’t making a word of sense. I pulled out the knife and held it up to the light.

‘Just a standard carving knife,’ I said. ‘The handle’s a bit fancy but nothing too modern. Surely you have knives like this?’

The woman looked confused. ‘Oh,’ she said, and touched a hand nervously to her throat. ‘I… well…’ I thought a blush illuminated her thin makeup from beneath. ‘Perhaps you should just take back your turkey,’ she said, her manner changing from enthusiasm to casual indifference, as though she didn’t want me around any more. ‘I’ll make sure my brother doesn’t steal it again.’

‘You can tell him from me that he needn’t go stealing it,’ I replied, not liking this change of mood. ‘I’ll make sure we save him a breast. After all, it is Christmas and there’s more than enough turkey for all.’

As I led Henrietta past the front door, the little old lady reappeared again.

‘Oh, young man,’ she said. ‘You never told me your name.’

‘Chip Dale,’ I replied. ‘And the turkey is called Henrietta.’

She waved me over to the doorstep. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing like stuffing at Christmas, so when you do cook your turkey, you must use this.’ In her hands she held out a small box of Paxo. ‘It goes wonderful with meat.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ I began to say but before I could finish, she grabbed the front of my thong and shoved the box of Paxo down the pouch.

‘Very spacious,’ she cooed. ‘And like I said, there’s nothing that can beat a little stuffing at Christmas.’

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.

A Tale of Two Dicks

Hello fellow Thonglateers, Chipsterites, and Devotees of Big Chip Dale. I’ve been silent for good reason: I’ve been struck by a strange melancholy that has left me feeling unhappy with the state of the world. I don’t mean you, of course. You’re all right. Salt of the earth, and all that. I mean the others. Them over there. They’re always doing that, hardly ever stop it, and rarely look like they’re going to give it up for something more reasonable.

I mean what’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with people? What is wrong with Pakistan? What’s going on in Burma? And why do the Spice Girls insist on reforming? Christmas approaches and I’m staring into its headlights like a small rabbit with its foot trapped in a manhole cover. Run, Chipster run! Before it’s too late!

Only it is too late. Cliff Richard’s back. He’s bringing out an album to menace all of us over Yuletide. I suppose a man won’t be able to walk around his local Woolworth’s without having Cliff injected into the base of his brain. There some tune will fester before breaking out as a canker on the lips, the size of a tennis ball. A man won’t be able to go five feet without whistling it, hating himself for his very susceptibility to catchy middle-of-the-road songs. Damn this musically blessed brain and whistle-tastic lips.

I don’t know who said it – I suppose it some witty type with wisdom dropping from them like dandruff – but ‘hell is other people’. I don’t know what they meant by that unless the other people were Cliff and the Spices. Or perhaps Jamie or Britney or Paris. Ah, Paris. We’ll always have Paris. I mean it. We’re stuck with her for the rest of our lives.

What’s wrong with the world? What is wrong with me?

I’m just sour. I see that Madeley got a puff from The Guardian. And his blog was visited by Stephen Fry. All in the same week. Good luck to him. I wish the man well. I really do. Only the blogging highlight of my month was to welcome my first visitor from Nepal. Interesting. They searched for the phrase ‘thonging’. I don’t know what it means but it was a highlight...

October's highlight...

[sob]

[sigh]

I wonder what November has in store... I wonder...

Be Back Soon...

First thing in the morning, I’m off to give my talk to Bangor’s young unmarried mothers. I’ll be in the Civic Hall discussing blogging from nine thirty, so feel free to drop by if you’re that way inclined. It means, of course, that I haven’t got time this evening to finish what I’ve been written for you. It will have to wait until I get home around lunchtime. It might be later if the young unmarried mothers keep me for long, and longer still if it involves my having to provide urine samples. Rest assured, The Chipster will not be fathering any little Chipsters in Bangor’s Civic Hall and anything you might hear on that subject will be unproven allegations by lonely young women.

You might ask yourself why I’m going to put myself through this ordeal. ‘Chip,’ you might even now be saying, ‘a man of your healthy loins should not be putting himself in a compromising situation involving mothers breast feeding their nippers before your unguarded thong.’

And I would normally agree with you. I have indeed been warned to wear something that’s easily wiped down as the air will be thick with the breast milk from heavily lactating mothers . Yet that will be he least of my concerns when there are so many new babies in the room. I don’t even expect my voice to be heard above the crying, the puking, and the mother’s baby talk, which if you ask me if much worse than any noise an infant can produce.

The reason I'm determined to see it through is that I’m beginning to enjoy my role as doyen to unwed mothers, new bloggers, and the rest. Only yesterday, I emailed my support to one of the more junior members of our society, to encourage him to keep blogging despite his woeful readership.

I’m talking, of course, about Richard Madeley, over at The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society. Little did I expect my email to provoke so much activity.

If you feel anything for me at all, you’ll head over there now and see what happens when The Chipster provides a man with inspiration. If you care not a jot about Big CD, but you’re in the mood for a story about massage parlors and North Koreans, then you should still head over there.

It will at least keep you entertained until the thong is back in the building.

A Day of Disappointments

The line of newly decapitated chickens left to drain over the bath tub told me that this was not going to be a day full of sunshine. I knew as much when I switched on my PC this morning. My attempts to lure Telegraph readers here with my newly launched blog had resulted in nice round figures. The round figure happened to be zero, which was also the number of people I'd managed to attract here after reading my post about Gordon Brown’s lack of humour.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that these Telegraph readers are a somewhat humourless bunch, conservative in their tastes, and the type of people who can’t appreciate a handsome Welshman in a thong. I also have another more sobering suspicion: that the Chipster has found his level. I shouldn’t post on anything other than generously proportioned underwear, genitals, and guide dogs for the blind. If recent comments are an indicator, I should also get drunk every night and go out on early morning raids to adjacent blogs where I should leave my badly types ramblings.

The utter failure of my posts at My Telegraph has been an ever greater disappointment because I’ve been giving more thought to trying to find a little work in freelance writing. I’m not sure what I could write, where I could sell it, nor who would buy it, but I have been reflecting on how stupid it was to turn down the chance to write for Britain’s best known publisher of hardcore pornography. I might not have known many of the words but, as Gabby pointed out, what are dictionaries for if not for looking up all the filthy synonyms for parts of the body?

The second big disappointment was Gabby’s announcement that she and her sister intend to record a third Cheeky Girls album. It was the reason for the chickens. She claims that white meat helps her vocal chords. Help them do what, is what I’d like to know. I’ve hidden this news here in the body of the post because I don’t want to unduly alert the media. The last time the Cheeky Girls got back together, the government stuck a military cordon around Bangor. It might not mean much to you but the people of Bangor suffer when those girls start to sing. They’re already talking about guest vocalists including Charlotte Church. I don’t think I need to say any more.

The third disappointing thing I’ve discovered today is that a good friend of mine, an honourary thonglateer and second most handsome man on the planet, will no longer be the head of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. The good news is that he’s hoping to become chairman of the Lib Dems next year. I wish him well with that. I really do. If more men were like Lembit Opik, this world of ours would be a better place.

The last disappointment to come along was the news that Richard Madeley is considering giving up blogging. Yes, you heard me right: it is a disappointment. I feel sorry for the man. I really do. We’ve had our public fallings out but we all know that they were only for the cameras. It was done in the best possible taste. I like reading his blog and I want him to reconsider. Come on Dick. Chin up. All three of them.

This has been an odd bitty post but I’m a bit of an odd man. I’m now off to write something intellectual for My Telegraph. I might even wear a cravat.

The Prunic War

Gabby had to massage my buttocks this morning to help rid the tension I’m feeling during these difficult times. She told me that I’m big enough to rise above the insults. I told her that it’s bad enough being insulted by A list celebrities (see my many previous posts about Fern Britton) but when I’m insulted by minor celebs, I think action needs to be taken.

Madeley’s comments about ‘taffy pulling’ are racist in the extreme. I punched the last man to call me ‘Taffy’. I also find Madeley’s threat sexist too. The idea of forcing sexual relief on a Welshman is disgusting. I don’t know what these showbiz people get up to in their green rooms, but just because I wear a thong and strip for a living, it doesn’t mean I’m available to be ‘pulled’ at a moment’s notice.

I hope you’re with me in my determination not to back down. I noticed that Mopsa sent a nicely timed ‘prune juice’ into Madeley’s comments this morning and I hope others will join in the assault. I was disappointed to see Graf von Straf Hindenburg let me down, and him coming from the family that invented high level bombing. By refusing to drop a 'prune juice' in his comment, he has revealed himself to be a cad and a turncoat.

I beg the rest of you to stand firm in the face of this aggression.

Prune Juice

I’ve been getting grief from that cheeky bugger Richard Madeley who left a comment in my last post asking me (or, rather, telling me) to stop you, my dear readers, from mentioning my name when you visit his blog. It seems that it’s happened on more than one occasion and he’s getting tired of reading about my buttocks.

At first, I was shocked that any of you would lack the sense to visit his poxy blog, but then I thought about it and realised: why not? If Madeley feels threatened, then it's probably because he has neither the fame nor fortune to compete with the top male stripper in Wales. So, in the name of good bloggerly relations, I’m going to ask you to go visit his blog and not to mention my name. Instead, when you feel the urge, I’d like you to make lots of references to ‘prune juice’. I don’t want you to go looking for reasons to mention prune juice. Just mention ‘prune juice’ apropos of nothing. I’ll set the ball rolling and I hope he’ll soon learn that he can't bully those of us who believe in a free blogosphere.

If Madeley wants a blog war then I’m just the man in a thong to give him one.