A Few Mini Film Reviews

Not a stellar lineup this time but I thought I'd post the rest in order to encourage you all to see the first.

Rescue Dawn

Christian Bale gets thin again. This time he’s in the jungle and not eating enough rice. Gabby spent two hours waiting vainly for Dawn to turn up and missed an oddly commercial film from Werner Herzog. The last time Bale ‘got thin’ was for 'The Mechanic', one of the great amnesia films. This prisoner of war film, set during the Vietnam War, is an equally good. Okay, I'd say it's even better. I’d recommend it from its fantastic slow motion opening sequence to the end credits that were only ruined by somebody shouting 'I don't get! He was Dawn?'

Flood

Only we Brits could make such an odd thriller about the weather. Heavy storm produces a tidal surge that floods the Thames. Not a bad premise once you stop reminding yourself that Londoners would be saved had they either climbed on top of The Dome, or simply moved upstairs for the duration. However, not a bad film considered the rather low budget and David Suchet's poorly dyed eyebrows. Actually, if you do watch it, there's a really impressive bit in the middle when one of the minor actors has a scene in which they're totally silent. Perhaps it was my imagination but I thought it really great piece of acting that made the whole thing worthwhile.

The Last Legion

Gabby chose this one. Ben Kingsley has a very bad beard in this rather brainless romp which isn’t as bad as you’d think. Lots of sword action to keep Romanian commandos happy in this version of the King Arthur legend told in a very roundabout way. I, myself, was taken with a rather lovely woman from the Indian subcontinent who had a way with the knives that reminded me of somebody who is now snoring not two rooms away from me.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Well, another of Gabby’s choices. Young athletic woman gets to wield large caliber weapons and very sharp knives in the vicinity of zombies. An odd thing to say but I’ll say it anyway: should have been longer. I quite enjoy a good post-apocalyptic scenario but why the producers insist on filling them with mindless action, I don’t know. I, myself, was taken with the rather fine Milla Jovovich who had a way about her that reminded me of... Oh, you get the picture.

Quality Street My Arse!

I hate being treated as an idiot by a big corporation, so when I was handed a box of Quality Street today, I knew I’d have to find five minutes to sit down, brood, and then write about the stinging wart on the behind of the British confectionery industry.

Those damn heathens, wearing their sheep’s testicle necklaces and waving dead chickens over piles of fuming herbs, they have gone and done it again. Nestlé have introduced two new chocolates to the Quality Street family. And what might those two new chocolates be, you ask? Do you anticipate the ‘Mint Sensation’, a mint cream wrapped in dark chocolate? Or maybe it’s that ‘Lemon zest’, a lemon flavoured cream in milk chocolate? Or you might not like soft centers, so how about a Hazelnut Blob, or a Walnut Whizz, or a bloody Nougat Knob?! No, no, and no. Apparently this is all too obvious to the witch doctors at Nestlé. Not when they can introduce the world to the taste sensation that is the ‘Milk Choc Block’ and, wait for it, ‘The Toffee Deluxe’. The Toffee Deluxe! I feel ulcers bursting in the sugary corner of my digestive tract. What the hell is ‘deluxe’ about caramel? It’s burnt sugar! How much more cheap could an ingredient be?

Every person on the planet knows that caramel is the most miserable substance on the earth. The devil god of confectioners created when he was cast from Belgium. Buy a tin of Quality Street at Christmas and you can guarantee that by New Year’s Day there’ll be nothing but Toffee Pennies left at the bottom. So why introduce another toffee we are all sure to avoid? It says on the box: ‘Indulge yourself with toffee deluxe – our rich, buttery toffee wrapped in smooth milk chocolate’. Give me a break! Come on, Nestlé, I’m sure you could save yourself another fraction of a penny per box by taking space up with another cheap-to-produce lump of flavourless gunk? What the world needs now is another version of the Caramel Keg! Your copywriters can make something scraped from a kennel sound exciting. ‘Why not treat yourself to the Doggy Delight, a luxurious lump of faeces wrapped in a delicious dark chocolate’?

As for ‘the choc block’, it’s chocolate wrapped in chocolate. There can be nothing cheaper unless they wrap air, which, let’s face it, is what they do every Christmas and Easter when the thickness of the chocolate in novelties and eggs get thinner and thinner. A ‘choc bloc’ is hardly a confectionery innovation and I’m damn sure it doesn’t excite me when they advertise it on the box in lovely clip art stars with ‘New’ in glowing letters. As for it being ‘a bite sized block of creamy milk chocolate’… Bite sized? For who? A midget, perhaps, or a small Persian cat. A one year old baby with a very tiny jaw.

I get so utterly fed up of corporations selling us things with words that attempt to disguise reality. Small cars are ‘compact’, ugly cars are ‘exciting’ or ‘innovative’. When Renault launched the Megane, they disguised the fact it has a terrible rear by showing us images of women's bottoms. The car was still ugly but like one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs, I now drool every time I see one drive past.

Nestlé operate their ‘new cholocate’ scam so they can these cheap ‘new’ chocolates we’d never choose to eat take up space that was previously occupied by chocolates you might actually enjoy. How many Orange Creams, Strawberry Creams, and the Hazelnuts do they save with this little example of penny-pinching? We’re being screwed on a global scale. Sod ethical business practices and all the stuff that gets Mark Thomas’ goat. What about being able to buy a decent box of reasonably priced chocolates? I don’t eat chocolate that often and when I do I usually prefer something expensive but delicious, even it is means only having a very small quantity. Don’t give me fudge! I hate fudge! And don’t call it a ‘fondant center’ when you mean fudge. I just want to share a box of chocolates with my family knowing that I'm not going to have to elbow my own mother in the face just to get to the orange cream.

Nestlé, I’m onto your game, you cheap miserable bastards. The Chipster says wake up and smell the cocoa.

The Yorkshire Moors

It came to an end, as most adventures of this kind end, at a remote farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors. It had been Trixy’s idea to head north, thinking that Gabby’s natural inclination to veer towards Romanian airspace would steer her in a south-easterly direction. We were wrong. Trixy was busy arranging her shoes in the hay loft that she’d conveniently turned into a walk-in cupboard, when the noise of an engine fired up from somewhere outside the cottage.

‘It’s her,’ I said, not knowing what I was saying as much as just instinctively reaching for the obvious conclusion.

Trixy quickly gathered up her shoes and made a jump for it as a tractor ploughed through the wall of the cottage and something snarling leapt from the driver’s seat.

‘Ayiiiiiiiiii!’ went the same war cry that made the Mongol hordes stop at the Romanian border.

‘Gabby, won’t you listen to me?’ I cried as I felt steel-like fingers grip me by my neck.

‘Divorce her now, Chip Dale, or you lose windpipe.’

I waved my hand in the air, a sign of a thonglateer’s truce. Meanwhile, Trixy had disappeared and only when I sat up did I spot her running for the main road at an unbelievable rate of knots for somebody so given to cravings for nicotine. Not that I had long to consider this fact. Gabby leapt up to the tractor and pulled a large canvas bag from the back of the seat. She unzipped it and shook it out.

The figure was that of a man, tied up and with tape around his mouth. It was only when Gabby made a slit in the tape that I recognised the wheezing noise of Mr. Meradith, my solicitor.

‘Say it,’ threatened Gabby as Mr. Meradith gasped for air.

‘You are not legally married,’ he said. ‘Facebook can’t hold you to it and if you can’t technically be married given the documents that Ms. Gabby has shown me.’

‘Documents?’ I asked. ‘What documents.’

‘It would see that you’re already registered as the private property of Ms. Gabby under Romanian law. Technically, it might be argued that you’re a free man but given the EU’s relationship with Romania, I wouldn’t bet on that. You couldn’t marry anybody with Ms. Gabby’s permission.’

I didn’t know how to feel, even as Gabby pulled a length of rope from a hook hanging in the cabin and began to bind my wrists to my ankles.

‘I’m so sorry about this,’ I said to Mr. Meradith. ‘You must think something awful about us…’

He managed to get a smile out before Gabby resealed his mouth with more tape.

And that, as they say, is that. The marriage was short lived and I think you’ll agree a welcome diversion from the usual round of dull events here at Chip Dale’s Diary. The solicitor was released unharmed back in Bangor and I was dragged up to the flat where I was finally set from of my rope bonds once Gabby had inserted numerous GPS trackers under my skin. Some of you might feel it goes against the Libertarian grain but I do like a clever use of technology. Especially when it gives rise to a new feature, which you should be able to see in my sidebar. It’s a live track of my position, fixed via Romanian GPS satellites and updated every five minutes. It’s innovations like that which you begin to miss as a married man.

All The Right Moves

The Chipster is in a dilemma and he doesn’t know what to do. I entered one of my own private thongs, designed and hand sequined by the Thonglateer himself, into a competitive fashion show last week. To my horror, I discovered on Friday that I’d won.

‘Mr. Dale, we are so proud to have your thong in our collection,’ said the designer when she rang me on Saturday. ‘Now, as you know, we’ll be doing a special London catwalk and we’d love you to come along and dance in your thong. It’s really quite an honour and I think you’ll like the exposure it will give you.’

If you know me at all, you’ll know that ‘exposure’ is my favourite words of three syllables. I couldn’t have been more happy. Happy, that is, until it got down to some muttered details at the end of the conversation.

‘And, of course,’ she said, ‘if you could come down a couple of days before the show, we’ll give you a few of lessons with our choreographer who will teach you the dance moves.’

It wasn’t professional of me, I know, but I laughed. ‘Dance moves?’ I asked. ‘You needn’t worry about that. I’m Wales’ number one male stripper. I think I have some pretty good moves of my own.’

Only the designer didn’t want to know. ‘But Johnny’s written you out a wonderful line of steps which he says will really show off your thong.’

I sank into my chair, wondering what to say. ‘But that thong has history,’ I explained. ‘We’ve worked together for years. I think I know what moves go well with it. Can’t you listen to what I’m saying to you? This thong will look fantastic if only you let me dance my own moves.’

‘But Johnny’s already worked them out,’ insisted the designer. ‘He’s won awards for choreography.’

‘Well, couldn’t he at least incorporate my ideas?’ I asked, growing more desperate.

She fell silent. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I think we’d be happier if our choreographer does it his way.’

The Chipster may be many things but he’s not demonstrative. I hung up the phone having agreed to dance the steps arranged by the choreographer. The only compromise I’d managed to win was that of the designer promising to post the sheet of steps to me. They arrived this morning.

Gabby had already gone to work, it being the day she does the 7 to 2 shift as the only member of Bangor’s traffic warden licensed to use firearms. I stripped down to my thong and cleared a space in the living room. I practised the moves all morning, broke for lunch, then practised again until three. That’s when Gabby came home with half a dozen of her friends in the traffic warden department. I’d forgotten it was the day she gave them extra instruction in methods of disemboweling a man with just a biro.

‘What Chip doing?’ asked Gabby, finding me stood in the living room in just my thong. I never like sweating heavily before strangers unless they know what I do for a living. But like most people, they seemed quite relaxed once I explained it to them. Then I told them all about the honour of being chosen to dance in my thong in London. I also mentioned how I’d been working on the moves sent over by the choreographer.

‘Lets see them,’ said Gabby, ushering her friends to chairs around the room.

‘Come on,’ said one young warden. ‘I used to take dance class.’

‘Yes,’ said another. ‘My sister dances with the Royal Ballet.’

What could I say or do? I put on the music and danced the dance.

The reaction was polite but not exactly ecstatic.

‘You see,’ I said to Gabby. ‘It’s not winning people over.’

She shrugged. ‘I see you dance better,’ she agreed. ‘So why not show us Chip’s moves?’

So, I played the music again and danced again but this time to my own steps. They were less elaborate than the choreographer’s moves, and they took less skill, but even as I was doing them, I thought they somehow fitted more with the essential nature of the thong I’d hand stitched myself. When I was finished, the sweat was coursing down the contours of my highly muscled torso.

The reaction was unanimous. ‘Chip stick with his own steps,’ said Gabby as the applause came to an end. ‘They suit you better.’

All her friends were in agreement. ‘Funny and intelligent,’ said one of her friends in what I thought was an American accent.

I pointed at the woman. ‘You see,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what I thought. Funny and intelligent. Exactly what I want an audience to think.’ It was a comment that just convinced me that I was right and that there was a dilemma out there with my name on it.

I couldn’t face talking to the designer so I sent her an email. She still refuses to budge. I’m going to London in two days and I don’t know what to do. I’m honoured to be part of her show but it disappoints me that my point of view is being ignored. Am I even in the right to think that I should have a say in the dance I’ll be dancing? It’s her show but my thong. I just want her to listen to my suggestions. Is it so very wrong?

The Taking of the Chipster 123

I awoke at noon and for the first time in about a week actually felt refreshed. I still don’t know if it’s been a cold that’s been hanging over me or just mental exhaustion after weeks of constant work, but a couple of days away from the computer seem to have done the trick. I’m not throwing my thong around with particular abandon but it does seem to sit more healthily upon my hips and I will occasionally give a spontaneous thrust as I walk around the flat.

Tomorrow I hope to be back to normal. In the meantime, let me recommend a film to you. It’s something they’ve remade once and are remaking again but I rewatched it last night and realised how great a film is The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw are two of my favourite actors yet they share only one brief scene at the end of the film. Despite this, the pair of them hold this film together in a way that no modern film would try to attempt. There's little violence, no action that's choreographed to an inch of perfection. It’s all hardbitten dialogue, a brash soundtrack fueled by testosterone, and with performances by some often under-looked but gifted character actors such as Martin Balsam and Dick O'Neill. I must have a thing for films made between 1974 and 1976. The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, and Three Days of the Condor, and Pelham make up a quartet of films I never tire of watching.

Gabby loved it too. It’s the first time she’s seen it and was greatly disappointed afterwards to discover that Bangor doesn’t have an underground train system she could at ransom for a million dollars. Can there be any higher form of praise than that? I don't think so.

The Crate

On behalf of myself and my Romanian friend, I’d like to apologise to the passengers of the 8.32 express from London Euston to Bangor for the non-arrival of their train. Not that any of this is my fault, you understand. All I did was open the front door when the bell rang. The rest was merely the result of my being caught up in the maelstrom of history.

‘Delivery for Dale,’ said the thick set man from DHL. ‘You Dale?’

‘Big Chip Dale,’ I confirmed. ‘Thonglateer Extraordinaire, aka The Chipster.’

I only told him this because I’ve been expecting a large crate marked ‘THONGS’ to arrive from the manufacturer and I was already excited, anticipating an afternoon spent curing them. After a six hour soak in warm pineapple oil, each thong would have to be carefully beaten with a mallet until it became soft and pliable. Only then would I hang them up, still damp with oil, ready for the next performance. This, I think you’ll agree, is a detail of the stripper’s life that it’s rare to see portrayed in the media.

The delivery man’s eyes narrowed. Peas pressed beneath an iron heel came to mind. ‘This is for Gabriel Dale,’ he said.

‘There’s nobody here by that name,’ I replied, loudly enough to wake the sleeping Romanian, recently back from a night time commando training exercise in suburban England.

‘Wait, wait,’ came the excited squeal from the bedroom. The room shook and a door opened. ‘I Gabby,’ she said, racing to the door.

The delivery man looked down at her naked body and whistled.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘Shark attack. Well it wasn’t. Those are the scars if battle and unless you want to add to them, you’d better hand over the package and stop keeping her waiting.’

He stuck his pencil behind his ear and turned back to the landing. He returned a minute later wheeling a large crate. By then, I’d persuaded Gabby to get dressed and I was alone to help the delivery man get the crate into the apartment. It was a huge box, with straw sticking out between the wooden lats. Across it were written words in Romanian that I could not interpret except they seemed to have some relevance to the big red skulls painted on each side. I tipped the guy fifty pence and he smiled the smile of a man who didn’t realise how close he had come to mortal danger.

‘Well?’ I asked Gabby as she arrived from the bedroom and began to circle the crate. ‘What is it? Please tell me that you’ve not ordered another goat.’

‘Gabby get samples from Romania,’ she said. ‘She so excited!’

‘Samples of what?’

She whipped the knife from the sheath she keeps strapped to her back and began to work the lid of the box open. Then she stuck her hand into the straw and retrieved something the size and shape of a thigh and tapered at one end.

‘Fireworks!’ she screamed and began to skip around the flat, cradling the explosive to her chest. ‘Gabby decide we have firework party so I email my friend. She have key to bunker.’

Has there ever been such an ominous word uttered by a Romanian dancing with a firework?

‘Bunker?’ I repeated. ‘What sort of bunker?’

‘It not matter. Fireworks here.’ She stopped skipping and her eyes went wide. ‘We try out now?’

‘Not here, you’re not,’ I said, leaping after her as she went to the drawer where we keep our box of matches.

‘Oh, but Gabby want to see if they work.’

‘Go out somewhere,’ I said as I tried to pull the matches from her fingers.

‘The park?’

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ I said, just happy to see her away from the flat.

‘And Chip come with me.’ She released the matched and grabbed my neck in a inverted-shoulder twist hug with added thigh grip. ‘Gabby and Chip go fireworking!’ she screamed as she let me go and began to start skipping with something I was sure was meant to be handled carefully.

Bangor’s park was cold, empty, and green. Gabby had found a place well away from the small play area set aside for toddlers and a row of trees separated us from the concrete bowl used by skateboarders. Not that either places were being used on a day when a man in thermal thong was still feeling the cold. My nipples were harder than pennies.

‘This is exciting,’ said Gabby as she worked a hole in the frozen grass. The rocket was to be supported by a thin piece of wood which Gabby was now pushing into the ground. ‘Gabby think this good fun.’

‘Are you sure that’s strong enough?’ I asked but Gabby wasn’t listening. She’d got the rocket pointing vertically, give or take then slight lean where the stick was bending under the weight of the big Romanian munition.

‘I think we should have a gantry for something that big,’ I said. But it was too late. Gabby was busy trying to light a match. ‘Look, Gabs, I don’t think…’

The match flared.

‘Ready!’ squealed Gabby as she applied the match to the fuse which immediately began to spit flames as it trailed across the ground. Gabby came running back to where I was hiding behind a tree. And not just a small tree. I think I’d chosen the biggest oak tree in Wales.

‘Gabby love fireworks,’ she said, her breath clouding in the cold air. For a moment, I was sure the condensation was in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

The rocket ignited with a magnificent rush of flames that immediately incinerated the feeble stick holding it upright. This accounted for it’s first movement, which was from the vertical and to the horizontal. Fortunately, it fell away from us and more towards the toddler’s swing area, towards which it immediately began to fly.

‘No!’ I mouthed as took a turn towards the shed used by the pensioners for their crown green bowling equipment. Only some change in the rocket’s altitude took it above the shed and it span around and began to sail harmlessly away from the park.

‘Wow,’ said Gabby.

I had no time for wows. I had just seen the rocket change direction yet again and it was now heading towards the rail tracks.

At any other time of the day, it would have sailed harmlessly over the embankment, clearing it by a good twelve feet. Unfortunately, with the 8.32 London Euston to Bangor Express sitting there, waiting for the signals to change, the rocket impacted at the mid point of the lead engine. The noise was like a dull thump. When the smoke cleared, I could see daylight through the mid section of the engine and beyond it, the trail of the rocket still climbing into the far distance.

‘It’s gone clean through it,’ I said.

Gabby clapped. ‘Armour tipped,’ she said with evident pride at the quality of Romanian fireworks.

We got home in time to hear the news of the explosion at the Army’s weapons dump outside Rhyl. No injuries have been reported at this time and the cause has yet to be determined. As for the hole in the 8.32 London Euston to Bangor Express, a migrating heron is thought to have been behind the mysterious hole. We all know quite different, of course, but for the sake of Welsh-Romanian relations, I’d think it best if we leave it there.

Gabby got home and ran straight to the crate to see if they’d sent another rocket. When it was evident they hadn’t, I sank into my armchair.

‘Let that be a lesson,’ I began.

‘Lesson? You mean bigger stick next time?’ asked Gabby standing up. In her arms was something three feet long with tail fins.

‘My God, what the hell is that?’

She hugged it to her breast. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is Romanian Strategic Cruise Roman Candle but I’m saving this for November fifth.’

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?

Awoken: A Ghost Story

Yesterday is simply too complicated for me to go into great detail and I don’t think any of you really want to hear what happens when a stripper manages to offend the whole of Bangor’s unwed mothers with a silly little remark about the cooking times of buns in ovens. It took me some time and a free demonstration of my skills as Wales’ top stripper to bring them back on my side and by the time 2 o’clock came around, all was well with the world. The ladies loved me again.

I got home late and in a strangely relaxed mood. I sat down for an hour and penned the following little short story which I’m considering putting up on the Telegraph blog. I’m not a man to go in for these literary competitions, though I often take great delight in completing the entries. It’s not that I hate the idea of losing, but I do worry about winning. Not, I’ve ever won a thing for anything I’ve written, but for the highly esteemed Blogpower Most Literature Wordsmith award, which has since become enshrined in the form of a tattoo. Not that I have a tattoo, you understand, but Gabby volunteered to have it for me. I don't know why I'm telling you any of this given that I'm sure you've all heard the story of how James Higham’s portrait was recorded for immortality on the left cheek of the cheekier of the Cheeky Girls.

I’m off to soak in the bath while you enjoy or endure my weak attempt at supernatural fiction for Halloween.

-------------

Awoken

I awoke to ghoulish laughter.

My mind strained against the lock of my eyelids, my neck against the numb hold of sweat that had soaked my hair into the pillow. My spirit was listless but my body awake, angry, confused, and when my eyes opened, they did so with an almost audible gasp that equated to vision.

The boy was standing at the bottom of the bed, his face contorted by laughter until he saw me wake and then it reformed itself into a look of calm bemusement. Ten years old, perhaps a little older, the boy was pale, fraught, nightmarish. I could hardly look on his face, marked as it was by sunken eyes like twin tender beds where dead bodies lay buried.

He was dressed for theatrics, wrapped inside a black cape and chewing on a set of plastic fangs, a grim totem of childish games and the role he had chosen to play. My attention seemed to change him and the teeth trailed saliva behind them as he spat them into his hand.

‘You’re awake,’ he said.

Just like that; bold and uncomplicated, as though a strange man waking up in his bed was nothing out of the ordinary.

I tried to speak but found nothing where I had last left my voice. Panic, fear, a sense of betrayal: they were coarse fibres, tangible like a noose around my throat.

‘I’m dreaming,’ I must have finally muttered.

‘You’re not afraid?’ he asked, looking down at the grin he held in his hand. ‘I guess you’re not. It’s not as though they’re like real teeth.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ I said. ‘But you need to tell me where I am.’

‘Lost,’ he said.

Lost? The question had to have been little more than a look in my eye but he seemed to know it by that alone.

‘This isn’t your place but I didn’t mind you resting a while,’ he answered. ‘You look sick. Mother always used to say that we help people who are sick or have lost their way.’

I could not bring myself to ask the easy questions. Where. How. Why. They sounded too direct when they formed in my mind. I feared that there might be an answer to each.

‘What is this place?’ I mouthed, feeling no better about the words I’d chosen.

‘This is where the undead make their home,’ he said in an assumed voice like that of a revenant spirit. Then he laughed and held up the teeth. ‘And you don’t belong here.’ He looked towards the door. ‘They’ll be here soon, so you’ll have to go back. They can’t see you. They can never see you.’

‘Go?’ I asked, raising myself. The movement sparked sensation in my body. I recognised it. Warm, languid, perhaps a touch of the opiate. For the first time, a thing made sense. There had been a time, a short time, when my problems had taken me by unawares. I had succumbed to temptation of the easy fix, the ten minute solution of the spoon and lighter. But that had been so long ago and a habit that I had formed and then unformed, even if I couldn’t remember how.

For the first time, I looked beyond the boy and at my surroundings. The room was familiar. I remembered that it had once been my bedroom. A toy aeroplane hung from the ceiling and twisted in an endless tailspin. The wallpaper, yellowed, had bubbled in places. Cold moisture saturated the corner of the room where I recognised the window, the recess where a seat overlooked what I knew was a garden, an apple tree, a place where a stream broke in a crooked line towards the house. In the recess sat a large pumpkin with a cruel razor slash of a mouth. Each, in a way, were the form if not the detail of something I remembered as my own childhood.

I wanted to ask if he thought he belonged to my world but he anticipated my question.

‘I’ll see you again,’ he said and before I could stop him he ran out of the room.

I struggled to my feet, more rolling out of bed than standing, but I found myself balanced on legs weaker than straws. I was in no condition to go after him, no condition to go chasing a ghost around a house it had taken for its own. Yet that was what I did… in a fashion.

The bedroom door fell towards me then the world rolled around to a small landing, stuck with the pall of gloom, bad wallpaper, cheap carpet, the familiar taste of dog in the air.

The boy had paused at the stairs.

If he was a fiend, he was a minor fiend with a touch of the amateur dramatics. He held his arm across his face, speaking from behind elbow and cape.

‘You’ll never catch me,’ he said before he took flight down the steps two at a time.

An imbalance of wall, banister, vertigo followed and I was at the top of the staircase.

‘Wait,’ I whispered to the figure below me, ‘you must tell me. Do I know you?’

But he did not stop. One. Two. Three. Three steps took him across the hall and he was at the front door.

He waited as I slowly navigated my way into normality. After the semi coma of a sleep, I was beginning to find myself again. I recognised the hall, though not the modern hat stand dressed in a pair of black stilettos, a pink umbrella, and a navy blue overcoat with a folded copy of the Daily Telegraph standing proud in its pocket. I didn’t wait as I lumbered past that prop body. I wanted to reach the boy who had stepped to the threshold of the house. I don’t know how but I knew that if he escaped, I would never catch him.

‘You have to wait,’ I pleaded. ‘Your name. You have to tell me your name. Prove to me who you are. What are you doing here? What did you want?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll see you again,’ he promised and returned the teeth to his mouth.

With a stroke of an arm, the cape caught the air and the vampire flew, the light exposing the thinness of the fabric that made up his cape and then the sun blazed as it touched him. Light evaporated his body as I too reached the door, swinging shut behind him.

I thought him gone until I then saw him running down the garden path, his cape flailing behind him as he played. But then I saw no more. The door closed despite my feeble attempts to stop it as wood and handle passed straight through my long dead immaterial hands.

The Chipster's Book Review

Her fist. My jaw. The rattle of china.

Only then did I realise we don’t own any china. It was my teeth, clicking and clacking like a domino world record attempt going wrong. It ended in a firework display of pain somewhere around my groin. I fell to the floor, the dull nausea of crushed gonads beginning to spread through the lower half of my body. I wouldn’t have believed reviewing a book could be so hard, let alone produce so much thong trauma.

‘What is Chippy doing with this book?’ demanded The Gab, holding up the quality hardback.

‘Reviewing it,’ I groaned, nose buried deep in the shag pile.

‘Likely story,’ she answered and spat on her knuckles as she prepared to deliver one of her haymakers.

I waved her off me as I scampered back into my office and closed the door. From there, I explained how the man with the unfairly mistreated testicles had been asked to review the book based on the internet blogging sensation of the same name. Only the name seemed to be Gabby’s problem.

‘What next?’ she screamed. ‘Is Chippy thinking of writing “My Girlfriend is a ****”?’

‘Well it does have a certain ring to it,’ I replied.

‘Misogynist!’ she screamed as her fist splinted the door and connected with my jaw. More china rattled in my mouth and I felt a crown dislodge and try to flee down the back of my throat. I wanted to follow it to safety.

Romanians, it seems, have a unique and not wholly healthy attitude towards swear words whereas we men of the thong appreciate a bit of earthiness once in a while. Not that this book is full of that. What you get for your £9.99 is a surprisingly polite and light-hearted romp through relationships and Belgium. (I hope you noticed how professionally I did that: you always have to get the price of the book into a review and use the word ‘romp’ at least once when writing about a comedy). You might have noticed that I mentioned Belgium just then and you might be wondering why. Well, Belgium is one of God’s finest comic creations and it is the perfect backdrop to Zoe McCarthy’s amiable ramble around her life.

The eponymous hero is her boyfriend and the book is written as a manual for living with him. I’m sure no other book deals as comprehensively with the subject, though I have to take McCarthy to task for claiming that it’s a guide for living with all men. She believes that all men share the same faults while I say that the Chipster is quite unique in his sins. I do not break wind in front of my girlfriend. Nor did I seduce her with a packet Cumberland sausages. In fact, to slip you a well-greased slice of truth: I’m nothing like her boyfriend at all. ‘My Boyfriend is a Handsome Welshman With A Love For Thongs’ would be a more accurate title, should she decide to write a sequel and should we have hitched up by then.

‘Hitched up?’ screamed Gabby, looking over my shoulder as I typed that line.

‘Metaphorically speaking,’ I said, trying to move the cursor back to edit it out. Only it was too late and my fingers were already shaking like those of a First World War infantryman who had just survived ‘a big push’.

‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss about a gentle little book which would make an admirable Christmas gift for the figure in your life you like to call your “loved one”,’ I said.

‘Chip wants me to buy him this book for Christmas?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’ve already read it during a chuckle-heavy session last night,’ I answered. ‘Besides, I already have my heart set on a refurbished Thora Hird heated foot warmer. But I do recommend that everybody else goes out and buy it. Make it a number one in the charts and prove that we bloggers are every bit as worthy of people’s money as every Rowling, Archer, and Vikram Solanki.’

‘Vikram Solanki?’ she screamed.

‘Or Freddie Flintoff. It really doesn’t matter. Cut your cricketer as you will, you’ll still find a best selling story somewhere about their gory whites.’

Gabby dropped the book and winced as it landed on her toe. 288 pages of neatly packaged hardback proves that you always get your money’s worth when buying something published by the good people at The Friday Project. And that’s not to mention the wonderful illustrations by Lucy Pepper.

‘Sure to be a Christmas smash,’ I said as I typed that line down. ‘Now,’ I said, turning to Gabby, ‘are you going to let me finish this review without any more of your violent insurrections?’

‘My Boyfriend is a swot,’ she sniffed as she licked my blood from a knuckle and left the room.

It was all too much for me. I crumpled over the keyboard. After all that trouble, the words wouldn’t come. I’ll have to sit down some other time and recommend this book to you. Sometimes I don’t think I have it in me to write reviews. Not when I have to write them in blood.

Fear and Loathing in Bangor

Agonised flares dive skyward, falter, then blister; their innards breaking through in an eruption of incandescence. Bangor dims and falls silent again. Minutes pass. A solitary scream hints at violence, corruption, deceit, or ecstasy. A dog wakes, howls its own sterilised cry; a city cry, a backyard cry of chains, water bowls, and cold concrete nights. Nobody replies. There’s nobody awake but a man writing long into the night and with only a silk dressing gown and a thermal thong to warm him.

And whisky. There’s always whisky.

The man is achingly handsome. His skin radiates life, as though lit from within by a divine illumination. Composed, refined, he is something more than the city. Something more than human. He is godlike in his every move. He shifts in his chair, gazes at the ceiling, scratches himself, sniffs his fingers, and savours the smell of pineapple or ambrosia that taints his nails. Only then does he reach for a glass and pour himself a drink. Liquid tops the glass lip and drains to his desk; a gin-soaked desk, whisky-savoured wood, and absinth-bled knots and whorls. It has known many drunken nights and even more words slurred over by a numb tongue and blurred fingers. Only these words tonight are different. They are clear. They are precise. The man has come to a very great decision and whisky has played only a moderate part in his making it. And how do we know all this? Because it is I: Chip Dale. I’m describing myself.

I inhabit these calm moments when the day’s troubles are rolled up in bed and dreaming sweet Romanian dreams to the sound of small arms gunfire played to a Euro-pop beat. It makes me understand the opportunities I have before me. I am a somewhat humble man, gifted in places between the hips, and ably supported by buttocks that the good Lord himself might have whittled from walnut. Yet I realise now that my greatness is diminished by my unwillingness to recognise it as such. It is greatness and damn any of you if you can’t see it for what it is.

At some point, a man serious about his career in print journalism learns that there’s little to be gained by wearing a cutaway muscleman vest with ‘Top Stripper in Wales’ stitched in purple sequins. He realises that he needs something more appealing to the intelligentsia of Kensington and Chelsea. What is a man to do when surrounded by blogging luminaries? If such people are to believe in a man, then he needs something more to hang on his wall other than his poster of Samantha Fox, circa 1981.

And how does such a man achieve recognition? How does he announce his greatness to the world?

That is the easiest part. He applies to become the new visiting professor of stripping at Bangor University.

Only that won’t be my title. I will be Professor of Ecdysiastics, which, I think you’ll agree, immediately gives the idea merit. It perks up the pecks, stiffens the nipples, and tightens the rear. This is a new Chip Dale I've today proposed to the good people up there at the University. This is a Chip Dale on the move, family friendly, eligible for grants, and likely to sleep through a conference by day before getting monstrously drunk at night when two hundred pounds of sexually active tweed will come alive and give chase to the slowest of the nubile postgraduates.

And if, for some as yet unknown reason, I don’t manage to become Professor Chip Dale at a Welsh University, I’ll look further afield. Manchester is rapidly becoming the place to be if you want some upward mobility in your career. Only last month, the University of Manchester announced that Martin Amis has become a professor at their new school of Creative Writing. Today, Salford University announced that Johnny Marr, the Smiths guitarist, is to become a visiting music professor. I’m sure they could fit me in once they realise how much extra research funding I could generate in a university accredited thong.

After all, what is academia but a more socially acceptable form of lap-dancing? You shake your proposals in the faces of some funding body, who, if they like what they see, stuff a handful of cash down your pouch. There, you have in one easy to remember image, a metaphor for higher education in the UK.

As much as I’m looking forward to my rise to a Chair of Stripping Studies, I can see that there might be some of you who question the validity of my vocational qualifications. But celebrity professorships are nothing new. The only difference is that a person’s fame used to be incidental to their role within the academia. Professor Tolkien had a reputation as an expert in Anglo Saxon studies quite incidental to his authorship of The Lord of the Rings. The same is true of Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor Stephen Hawking, and so many more. Even Simon Schama was a Professor at Harvard, after a decade working at Cambridge and Oxford, before he gained intellectual credibility with his shows on the BBC after Gardener's World.

Some might scoff at those of us who call ourselves Professor, but does anybody really doubt the academic credibility of Dr. Raj Persaud who is ‘Professor for Public Understanding of Psychiatry’? I think not. People might point out that his professorship comes from Gresham College, but that college has been established for centuries and has an interesting history, even if it's not a university in the traditional sense of having students and awarding degrees. But look at what the man has achieved in curing people. This intellectual snobbery has gone on too long. Look at the relatively lowly Dr. Paul McKenna Ph.D. He hasn't even got a chair, though he's made many a man believe he was one. But even he was already the nation’s top hypnotist before he got his Ph.D. Are we to look down on a man just because he could make a woman bark like a dog?

And would you look down on that demi-God you will soon know as Professor Chip Dale from the School of Ecdysiastics, the University of Bangor? My thesis, ‘Hips, Ankles, Joined at the Knees: A Study in Leg Dynamics in Ecdysiastic Flexability’ will be published by Oxford University Press next month. I recommend you read it. It will be followed by a tour of the country’s universities afterwards, with full demonstrations, disco lights, and a chance to buy a thong with the crest of your favourite university printed on it.

Now just dim the lights, turn up the Barry White, and let the good Professor teach you a lesson...

The Romanian Gambit

Gabby had some interesting news for me yesterday afternoon.

‘Chip?’ she said, ‘I want to become a man.’

I dropped my lunch into my lap. ‘I beg your pardon?’

She put her hands on her hips, tears in her eyes. ‘Gabby wants operation to become man.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s what I thought you’d said,’ I replied when I came around in the ambulance twenty minutes later.

On the drive home from the hospital, the situation became more clear to me.

‘I read in paper that men have more chance to become rich and successful,’ she explained. ‘I thought, if I become man, I might become rich and successful.’

‘Rubbish,’ I scoffed. ‘This has more to do with your dream of getting into the SAS!’

She blushed and I knew I was closer to the truth. There have been recruitment brochures for the Parachute Regiment falling through the letterbox for days. It had got to the point that I’d been laying out smoke markers for them so they would know where to land.

‘So what if it is?’ she asked. ‘Can’t a girl have her dreams?’

‘But Gabs,’ I said, cradling her in my arms. ‘Do you really want to have your things altered just so you can be dropped deep behind enemy lines in Afghanistan with a kit full of knifes, guns, and booby traps? Is that what you want?’

‘But Chip, I want to fulfill my potential.’

The poor girl had me there. What’s the point in being trained to the highest level of combat readiness without having chance to try it out for real? All the years she’s spend learning karate and judo, the knife fighting lessons, the years she spend in the Romanian commando school become proficient in light arms. It is all to be wasted?

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. ‘You are clearly cut out to inflict the severest punishment on our enemies. But you wouldn’t be happy just to record another Cheeky Girls album?’

She shrugged. ‘Will you still love me if I become a man?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Well, now, you see… Of course, you know, live and let live. That’s my motto. I’m liberal, you know, and I believe that we should all have the right… you know, to… to you know… Ah…’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘well, now, you see… The thing is Gabby, much as I love you for yourself…’

‘Chip wouldn’t love me?’

‘Look,’ I said, trying to get my words out before the very unmanly tears began. I wasn't so sure they wouldn't be my own. ‘I’m certain there’s a way around this. There has to be a way to make you happy without the need for such drastic changes.’

It took the rest of the day, dozens of phone calls, and a last minute dash into town for an interview, but, before the sun set on a rather relieved Bangor, Gabby declared that she was happy to remain a woman.

‘This is wonderful,’ she said, coming to the breakfast bar this morning. ‘Do you like?’ she asked as she gave me a spin in her new uniform.

‘Without a doubt, you are the sexist traffic warden in Bangor,’ I said before I pushed a contented spoonful of Alpen into my mouth.

‘That’s good,’ she smiled. ‘I give you ticket for car parked on single yellow. You have twenty eight days or I come after you and I know where you live.’

A Question Nuance

Today I blatantly stole an idea from Dave Hill (and now a picture from The Spine).* I opened a blog over at The Telegraph.

Actually, I didn’t steal the idea as much as I went back and posted on the blog I’d registered earlier this year. I’m A. Aaron Esq, which as you’ll no doubt know is the name of my grandfather. I didn’t expect any replies to the small piece I wrote about Gordon Brown. Nor did I expect people to misunderstand me and actually accuse me of liking the man. So, in response, I wrote the following, which I’m also posting here so as to bore you all with yet more of my wise words about the great man himself: Mr. Bernie Clifton.

I opened a blog here at The Telegraph and people immediately misunderstood me. Did I really say I liked Gordon Brown? It seems that I did. Or I didn’t, depending on which comment you read in response to my original post. I don’t know where I went wrong. Things are never this difficult on my own blog. But there I’m usually writing about sling-backed thongs, stripping, and the North Wales exotic dance circuit. Do I really smell of pineapples and am I really the owner of the largest collection of thongs in Wales? Well, yes and yes. Do I like Gordon Brown? Of course I don’t. It’s a foolish thing to ask of a man who is often mistaken for Lembit Opik. It was a question of a nuance that some people just didn’t pick up.

Nuance. Can’t live with it. Can’t bash it on the back of a head with a spade.

Miscommunication has to be one of the less enjoyable novelties of trying to communicate on the internet. Irony doesn’t tend to work without a fat smiley at the end. Nor does sarcasm or anything that isn’t as blatant as: ‘I dislike Gordon Brown and wasn’t so hot on Blair.’ Yet out of it comes at least one interesting question. Who do I like? There’s so much negativity around, shouldn’t I begin by saying who and what I like? If we’re all going around castigating Brown, isn’t it good to know who we’d like to see in his place?

I don’t know if I have the answer to that question, but I do like Bernie Clifton.

I’ve been thinking a lot about him in recent days. Last week, I bumped into him in the local shopping centre where he was collecting money for charity. I’ve written about this elsewhere so I won’t go into too much length about him here, but things seemed simpler in the days of Crackerjack. Even now, people seemed to have so much faith in an old comedian with bad knees and dressed in a faded yellow ostrich suit. Yet it’s hardly surprising when we’re led by a man whose personality hasn’t been bypassed as much as it has had a ring road built around it.

It’s not that I want my politicians to act the buffoon, but I don’t seen buffoonery as being anathema to being serious. It’s a lesson that politicians simply fail to heed. Churchill recently came fifth in a poll of great wits. Does anybody think him a lesser politician because of it? The same is true of Einstein who once stuck out his tongue and it became one of the iconic pictures of the century. Groucho Marx’s aphorisms are routinely quoted as if wisdom and Chaplin is seen as a great artist making significant political films.

Gordon Brown would never countenance an ostrich outfit. I don’t imagine at any point in his life he’s ever donned a pair of yellow stockings and feathered shoes. But then, can we imagine him sticking out his tongue, saying anything witty, or even making a significant political point on anything? I don’t suppose it means I should dislike him any more than I already do but it certainly doesn’t make me trust him.

And that’s why I like Bernie Clifton. It’s all a question nuance and seeing the absurdities in ourselves. Life seems so much more healthy that way.

*Thanks to David at The Spine for letting me use the picture.

Chip Dale's Underwear Tips, Volume 28

‘Underwear for big genitals’!

Doesn’t that just say it all? Months or writing this blog and it has become the top search destination for people unnaturally blessed below the belt line. There are days when I seriously consider abandoning this blogging lark. Days when I think there aren’t enough people reading. There are days when I wonder if the people who are reading are quite understanding what they’re reading. But never have I imagined that I’d become the authority on surgical supports, trusses, and ‘underwear for big genitals’. Do I really want to be read by a person who’d type that into Google? What can I say except I hope they found what they were looking for?

As worrying as this development is, it does raise an important questions. Does this blog really cater to those of us who keep more in our pockets than our car keys and a rolled up copy of the Exchange and Mart? I think it's only right for every prospective leader of the Liberal Democrats to say where they stand on these important issues. Is a thong big enough? Where can the larger man (or indeed lady) purchase generously proportioned thongs? What kind of tonnage can a thong take and does it put unnatural stresses on the buttocks? Clearly, Sir Ming could never answer any of these questions and that’s why he had to go. I can, so perhaps I should stay.

We should begin with the basics. The well-stressed pouch applies a force of forty two Newtons per square inch of silk across the buttocks on a normally sized man. It's a key figure in the mathematics that follow. Times that by the square root of your droop and you'll have the coefficient I like to call Mildred. Mildred to the power of ten is approximately the right width of your pouch, which, when raised to the power of twelve, tells you how much stretch you will require in your downward bounce.

In the larger gentleman, the droop figure tends to be a multiple of seven. So, for every additional centimeter you must times it by two, add pi, drop it down a deep well, leave for a month, and then sprinkle with crushed black pepper. You then have your thong adjustment ratio, which you can take to any licensed thong maker and they will be able to make you a thong that won’t unduly stress your hips, nor indeed your buttocks. Thong makers are listed in your Yellow Pages, but due to government legislation which we thong wearers are still trying to get overturned, they are listed under Surgical Supports.

Now, beat that Chris Huhne.

The Campaign Starts Here...

While I get my mind together over a cup of coffee, here's the official Chip Dale For Leader desktop. Send it to all Lib Dems you know, install in on every computer you can, and we'll see if we can get my leadership campaign off to a flying start. With the right organisation, some tasteful thong sponsorship, and a prevailing wind, I might yet win this.

Happy Birthday Big Chip Dale

Rather hard to believe, isn’t it, that this dapper young Goth with slight acne and a mild fungal toe infection would later become the Welsh stripping sensation known as The Chipster? And it all seems so many years ago now. Long before I damaged my spine lifting that overweight traffic control officer at her hen party. Long before I met Romania’s answer to Combat Barbie. And before I began to tell you all my stories here at Chip Dale’s Diary. Not all of you have been with me along the way, so I think it falls to me, as the longest serving resident, to be the first person to wish myself a very happy birthday.

Happy birthday, Chip, old sport!

Since it’s my birthday, I’m sure you’re all wondering what to get me. Perhaps you’re thinking of something in fur, large in the pouch, and with a couple of straps the width of dental floss. Well, you can forgo the expensive gifts unless the seats are in leather and it goes from nought to two hundred in nine seconds. Can money buy love? Well, I suppose it can if you happen to play in the right of midfield for Manchester United. However, here are Chipster Central, I want simpler things. A few comments would be nice but some success beyond my stripping career would be even better.

I’ll be out of communication range for much of the day as I’ll be hosting a little drinks party for a few friends at the local. Feel free to drop in if you’re in the area. Not only will you get to meet some of the biggest names in Welsh thongdom but, of course, the drinks are on me!

Thonglateer Extraordinaire Chapter 1, Part 3

Eventually, my relationship with Flora waned and we went our separate ways. We had, by that stage, got to know each other on a very intimate level, though with the python always in the room I’d say the sex was good but not great unless you were into wildlife. The end slithered into view once I told her that there was one too many pythons involved in our relationship. She took it as an insult to her pet. I just claimed it was justifiable pride in my body.

Now the years have eased the hurt, I can see that so much of my success is owing to Flora. Without Flora, the stripping phenomenon known as The Thonglateer might not have happened. Flora was the first person to teach me that stripping is an art. Some argue that wiggling your hips and waving your genitals at an audience doesn’t take that much skill. The same people have never tired to make a living out of it or they’d know how easy it is to take an eye out. The physics involved in matching your hip thrusts to the natural swing of your testicles would make Einstein pale. Not that I suggest that Albert ever waved his pipe at an Austrian audience but I think you get my drift, if not my swing.

Stripping isn’t easy, even for a young man born without a single natural inhibition. You might even say it was more so until Flora who taught me that the tease is more important than the nudity. For the rest of my skills, however, I owe a huge debt to the second important person in my professional life.

‘You must have a mentor,’ said Flora after she’d come back off stage one night shortly before we parted forever. She was naked and the glitter of stardust rode the sweat slaloming down the twin inclines of her breasts.

‘I have you, don’t I?’ I said, helping to uncoil the python from her shoulders.

‘I can’t teach you everything,’ she answered as though bothered by my presumption. ‘You need somebody who knows the ins and outs of male dancing. Here,’ she said, thrusting a piece of paper in my hand. ‘Go to him. He’ll teach you everything you need to know.’

The name on the paper was that of Tony ‘One Eye’ Buchanan, one of the old school dancers who had fallen out of fashion with the rise of the techno-strip. Flashing lights, the return of disco beats, and advances in smoke machine technology: they had all led to a new breed of dancer who replaced those who still practised the traditional form of the strip. Men like Buchanan had fallen foul of the new tastes. A man had to have something more than a couple of glittering baubles. I hadn’t heard of him in many years and doubted if he was still alive. I was sure his baubles no longer glittered.

A day later, I said goodbye to Flora at Bangor station and headed south to Cardiff where I intended to find the greatest stripper in living Welsh history, the ‘king of the testicle swing’, Tony ‘One Eye’ Buchannan.

My search didn’t begin well. On a damp, unbecoming morning, I was mugged outside Cardiff station and had my belongings taken from me. I had tried to fight back but it was another hard lesson. Knowing how to strip like a karate master doesn’t mean you can fight like one. Two guys roughed me over, took my notebook full of ideas, as well as three pairs of my best training thongs. It took all of my resolve not to drop my shoulders, walk back into the station, climb on a train, and return to the safety of Flora. But something in my heart had been stirred by the very thought of being taught by a stripping legend. Picking myself up, I checked that I still had my money rolled up in the security thong I always wear on long journeys, and with the scrap of paper still lodged in the deepest corner of my pocket, I set off, walking to the outskirts of a grey and unwelcoming Cardiff.

It took me three hours walking through the rain before I finally reached the house. It was a huge disappointment. Standing on a dingy corner at the edge of the city, the house was more like a mausoleum in a city of crypts. It resembled the home in the TV show ‘The Munsters’. In the wet murk of an afternoon in early Autumn, the house carried foreboding as though it were a mere undercoat to the more overt threats it possessed. I wondered if this was what became of all the great men who personified dying forms of art. Had all the great silent comedians retreated to similar decaying houses in unvisited corners of cities?

A pizza box packed against the gate leaked old cheese and grease over the hinge but did nothing to prevent the yawn of metal as I pushed the gate open. I walked up the overgrown path, my feet sending a brown ale bottle rattled across the concrete before it rode the cushion of lawn’s unmown edge.

The door opened before I reached it.

‘Who are you?’ shot a voice.

I barely recognised him. A grey vest, a body that had grown slack with age and abuse. His six feet six inches were no longer the embodiment of male power. They were a testament to how tall men can sometimes dwindle horizontally. He was stick thin, the flesh nagging his bones like wraps of wet cloth.

‘Are you One Eye?’ I asked.

He looked at me with his bright blue instincts shining bright in the dying light. ‘Nobody had called me that in nearly five years,’ he whispered. His voice recovered with a lean spring to volume. ‘What do you want? I ain’t doing gigs any more, if that’s what you’re after. And I don’t care how many bottles you’re offering me this time. And if you come again, I’ll report you to the RSPCA and tell ’em what you’re wanting me to do to those poor donkeys. I won’t do it again, I tell you. I won’t do it again!’

‘No, no,’ I said, hastening to explain myself. ‘Flora Betteridge sent me. I’m Chip Dale. I want you to teach me to become the best stripper in Wales.’

The figure wavered as he examined me.

‘How old are you, son?’ asked One Eye, finally, his mouth in slack lipped amusement.

‘Seventeen,’ I said. ‘I’ll be eighteen in October and I want to be ready.’

‘Ready?’ he laughed, revealing teeth once perfect but now chipped as though they had been chewing on bottles for too many years. ‘You want to be ready for what?’

‘Ready for the ladies,’ I answered truthfully. ‘I’m going to dance for them on the night of my eighteenth birthday and I want them to know that I’m already the best stripper they’ll ever see.’

The skin on his arms rippled as he laughed.

‘They’re tear you to pieces, son,’ he said and moved to close the door. ’Go on. Clear off and don’t come back wasting my time.’

I stepped forward, full of that indignation that had sent my old career’s teacher to a life in Bangkok brothels. ‘If you won’t teach me,’ I said, ‘I’ll dance on my own. It might take me years and I might make mistakes, but I’m going to learn to dance the old way. And I’m going to become the best stripper in Wales.’

He leaned on his door and sucked air between a gap in his teeth. ‘Sheesh,’ he said. ‘You know I was one considered the best dancer and you have the guts to come to my door and tell me that!’ In a single motion, he pulled a set of dentures from his lower gum and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. He then rubbed the teeth clean on his vest as he inspected me. The teeth returned to his mouth with an audible liquid sigh. ‘You’re too damn cocky to teach.’

‘I can be humble,’ I said. ‘But if you won’t teach me then I’ll…’

He waved down my protests and looked to the street. It had started to rain again and my already wet clothes had begun to repel more moisture.

‘Come on inside,’ he said. ‘If I’m going to interview you, we might as well be comfortable and dry. You like pizza?’

‘I’m watching my weight,’ I said, thinking it a good thing to say.

‘You’re full of the right answers, aren’t you kid?’ said One Eye, closing the door behind me and pushed me on through the house.

‘So, you’ll teach me?’

He stopped and gaze me the eye as though taking my measure. ‘You might have something about you,’ he said and nodded me through to the front room.

The interview was the oddest I’ve ever had in my life. It took place in One Eye’s living room, a museum to the old days of male peelers, as we men of the thong were known in the old days. Bill posters were tagged unevenly on all the walls and over the windows, and various props of the stripper’s trade littered the room. The were workman’s helmets, cowboy outfits, a full set of plumbers tools. A faded Zorro mark was hanging from a mirror frame, and a Red Indian costume was moulting in the corner of the room where it would die now that Rain Dance routines are no longer considered acceptable in the days of the modern Native American.

A full length photograph of One Eye, mid strip, caught my eye, hanging above the fireplace as if providing evidence of what this shambling mess of a man had once been. His hair having thinned and gone grey, One Eye had lost nearly everything that had once made him the dream of every Welsh housewife. Only his eyes remained, those bright blue pools that rarely showed warmth but had convinced so many women that he was the answer to all of their dreams, if only for a night.

‘Sit yourself down, Chip,’ said One Eye, settling himself in a seat in front of a large TV screen. ‘You like The Bill?’

I said that I didn’t own a TV.

‘Best show on the box,’ he said and smiled as though waiting for me to add something. ‘Well, you’re not here to talk D.C. Lions, are you? You want to be a stripper and you want old One Eye to help you. Is that right?’

‘I want you to be my mentor. I want you to teach me everything you know.’

‘And what would I get for doing you this very great service?’

I felt in my thong where I had five hundred pounds. He seemed to misinterpret my gesture.

‘You’ve come to the wrong place if you’re into that sort of thing, my lad,’ he said. ‘I’m always been one for the ladies and nothing else. Not even donkeys, though the money was good and I was a little drunk…’

‘No, no,’ I said, pulling my money from my trousers. It was the only money I had in the world and looked so miserable in the glow of his TV screen. ‘I can pay you, if that’s what you want?’

‘Money?’ he laughed and raised his hand to the room. ‘Why would I want money? I’m happy with everything I’ve got.’

‘Then teach me and prove that you did it right all those years,’ I said, inspired by the room and the posters. ‘If you teach me, I can show the world that there’s still room for men who can dance sexy and don’t need smoke and mirrors to entertain the ladies. I can prove to the world that baby oil and a plumber’s wrench is all that it takes.’

He nodded as I gave my speech and at the end of it he reached down to the side of his chair and brought out a bottle full of clear liquid. He pointed it at his lips, paused as he noticed me watching him, and them casually tossed back a swig of what I later discovered was vodka. He immediately yawned and his eyes began to water.

‘You have to know what I want before I agree to teach you,’ said One Eye his lips pulled tight into a grimace. ‘You understand this isn’t going to be easy? I ain’t no schoolteacher. You live here with me. I work you hard. You learn hard. And then when you’re done learning, you work to pay me back. You work to tidy this place up. Make it look respectable again.’

‘You want me to do your housework?’ I asked, feeling insulted that the skin that I had worked so hard to keep tender, even during my geological days, would be jeopardised by manual labour.

‘If you want to be the best dancer, you’re going to have to work for it. And I’ll be wanting you to fix my plumbing. And any odd jobs. The roof needs repairing and then there’s the drains that need cleaning.’ He laughed as the disgust began to register on my face.

‘You think that’s a bad deal?’

‘It doesn’t sound good,’ I replied.

‘Well if you think that, you got no right to claim to be the best stripper in Wales. How do you think you can strip like a plumber if you’ve never worked as a plumber? You think you can take off your clothes and look like a grocery delivery man if you ain’t delivered groceries? No you can’t. It’s impossible. Not until you’ve gone out and walked the beat can you even begin to pretend to be a real policeman.’ He nodded his head. ‘I’m going to teach you, Chip, and by the end of my training, you’ll have wished you took some easy job working in a bank. You’ll come to hate me but when I’m done with you, you’ll be the best male stripper in Wales or my name ain’t Anthony ‘One Eye’ Buchanan.’

The New Catalogue Arrives

You find the Chipster in the mood for litigation. As you can no doubt see, my complimentary copy of J.D. Williams’ new Autumn and Winter catalogue landed on the doorstep today. What else can I say except that promises were not kept by the industy leaders in the larger sized gusset. I never wanted you to see me like this. It’s somewhat humbling, especially since I thought that I’d had a zero-Y-front clause written into my contract.

The picture was taken when I was much younger and in a bad place. It was actually a few months ago when I was stuck on the corner of Poverty and Flat Broke. There’s a well worn bench there where my cheeks regularly rest. The last time I found myself struggling to raise cash, I agreed to do a little male modelling to help pay the bills. I’ve done catalogue work before but it has usually been for high quality menswear or the occasional bit of crotch work for ‘Thong Monthly’. Most of the pictures of the lower half of men’s torsos you see in that magazine are of me. Most of the buttocks too. I’ve also done other work for Argos and for all of the major retail catalogues. That’s me you see in shots of tightly packed swimming trunks. It may not be as well known as being the Face of Avon but being the Speedo Crotch is still a kind of fame.

As is usually with the J.D. Williams gigs, I had to travel up to the studio in Manchester where I spent a day changing in and out of different items of clothing, striking random poses, and having my picture taken. It was towards the end of the morning session when we did the underwear shoot. I’d never before worked for Keith, the photographer, so I was a bit hesitant when I came out of the changing room in just a vest and pair of high band y-fronts.

‘How do you want me?’ I’d asked him as I took my place on the set.

‘Just point into the distance as though you’re hailing a bus,’ he replied, barely bothering to look up from his camera.

I peered over my glasses. ‘As though I’m doing what?’ I asked.

‘Hailing a bus.’

‘In my underpants?’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked.

I thought about an old Groucho Marx line. ‘What a bus is doing in my underpants, I’ll never know,’ I said and wiggled an imaginary cigar as I did the Grouch walk. I can’t imagine how I looked. Or looking at the above picture, perhaps I can…

Keith just gazed at me, the huge camera resting on his hip. ‘Are you going to point like I tell you to or do we have to get another model?’

I hitched up my underpants which had sagged at my Groucho. I said I would do what he said but it went against all my instincts. There might be little I’ve not done wearing just my thong but I would be seen dead signalling for a bus in a pair of Y-fronts. Not even in Manchester where that sort of thing isn’t frowned upon as it should.

‘Look, Chip, love,’ said Keith, ‘I am the photographer and you are the model. If I tell you to stand as though you’re being given an enema by a midget, you will stand as though you’re being given an enema by a midget. Capiche?’

I did more than capiche. That was the sort of instruction I could work with. ‘Oh, like this?’ I asked, hitting the slightly mannered pained look.

‘Perfect!’ he cried and shot the photograph you see at the top of this post.

It was only at the end of the day, as we looked through all shots, that I noticed how well I had indeed caught the look of being given an enema by a midget.

‘Oh, that’s much too realistic,’ I said, pointing it out on the digital lightbox. ‘And I’m beginning to regret allowing you to shoot me in those pants. They don’t do the Chipster a bit of justice.’

‘Perfectly good shot,’ Keith replied, though I was beginning to think he was growing tired of me.

‘But I look too much like I’m being given an enema by a midget. That’s not how I’d like my many fans to think of me.’

He sighed and raised his glasses to prop them on the top of his head in that way that all creative types sometimes do. ‘Look, you don’t like it. Fine. We lose it.’ He clicked on the picture and dumped it into the Mac’s wastebasket.

‘You are a true gent,’ I told him as I picked up my coat. I shook his hand and was on my way.

Since that day, I’d heard nothing until this morning when Gabby found the catalogue.

‘What Chip doing?’ she howled and fell backwards reeling with laughter.

I picked the catalogue from her fingers and saw my picture.

‘He was a very bad photographer,’ I explained. ‘And to make matters worst, they can’t even spell “briefs” correctly.’

I dropped the catalogue to the floor but Gabby rescued it before I had chance to stamp on it.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘We keep it. We show people what Chip looks like in underpants.’

‘I’m sure people aren’t interested,’ I said.

‘Chip,’ she said, smoothing out the page. ‘You look lovely. You look just like you being given enema by midget.’

Tony Curtis's Pineapple Chunks

Because I consider myself a professional, I rarely talk about my life on the stage. To you, it might seem exotic, but for me, it’s just a well hung normality dressed in a leopard-print thong. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it (and there, I think, you have a most perfectly appropriate euphemism for the tools of my trade) the business of stripping is pretty routine.

I get to the club about half past nine at night and go straight to my dressing room where I strip off and rub myself down with pineapple oil. Then I choose an outfit for the character I’ll become for the evening. It usually depends on my mood and what kind of humour I’m in. I know that if I dress like a postman, I’ll have plenty of remarks about pushing envelopes into slots, delivering packages, or filthy comments about the size of my sack. My plumber outfit doesn’t get half as many comments and the policeman’s fewer still. My traffic warden gets the least, with the ‘you can write my ticket any time’ being about the best I can expect.

At five to ten, I usually go and stand behind the curtain at the edge of the stage and watch the end of the warm-up’s act. As it get closer to my moment to perform, I begin to feel the familiar sensation of nerves. It’s not the fear of failure as much as the anticipation of mediocrity that worries me, but as soon as I hear the first strains of the theme to The Persuaders, all my doubts disappear. The adrenaline hits my system like a drug injected strait into my thong. I’m suddenly the most confident man in the room as I run out to the sound of female glands snapping open to release the pheromones that rise above the crowd like a great cloud of animal musk.

Over the years, I’ve got my act honed to perfection. The Chipster’s magic is in the detail. So, as was the case last night when I was dressed like a cowboy, I’ll run onto the stage, pull out my imaginary pistols and point them at a few ladies at the front of the crowd before blowing smoke from my fingertips. The ladies love that authentic cowboy touch. As I say, it’s the details that are important. Only then do I begin the slow and elaborate dance number that will end with a thong flying into the back row ten minutes later.

In that respect, last night was pretty much like a normal night. Even when I was stood waiting behind the curtain, I could hear that the room was buzzing, loud with the excited ladies of Bangor’s income tax office, all waiting for The Chipster to make his usual 10PM appearance. I didn’t disappoint John Barry’s Persuader’s theme put me straight into the zone. Adjusting my cowboy hat one last time, I jumped out into the spotlight and my hips hit the rhythm straight away, swaying to those great sweeping strains. In my mind’s eye, I was Roger Moore about to dance with a bald Tony Curtis. And there, I think, you have another most perfectly appropriate euphemism.

So, I danced. My hips swaying, my hips thrusting, my thong swinging, my buttocks clenching. It was a typical routine expertly performed and the ladies loved it as the ladies always love it. After ten minutes, the thong had gone and our old friend, the oily Tony Curtis, was bouncing around and loving being the centre of attention.

Then it was time for me to end my routine and get Curtis out of the room.

The way I usually finish my act is to choose the one lady who has looked the most enthusiastic throughout my performance and to reward her with a special shake of my hips. Tonight I picked out a woman in the front row who had a most unbelievable look of rapture in her eyes. She couldn’t stop staring at me.

I slowly wiggled my way over to her.

‘Show the Chipster some love,’ I said as I took her hands and placed them on my hips.

‘Oh!’ she squealed suddenly, her eyes not blinking as they took in the sight but her hands immediately squeezing my hips. ‘Shake if for me honey. Show Shelia the good stuff.’
And then, as is usual, her hands slipped down and grabbed hold of my buttocks.

That happens most times and I’m used to having my behind pawed. I just think of it as a massage and the ladies usually enjoy it. she smiled as the ladies always smile. Only unlike most woman, who usually look to their friends for encouragement, this woman couldn’t take her eyes off the little bald headed monster called Curtis.

‘You go the moves, honey,’ she said, giving me another squeeze.

None of this stuck me as being all that odd. I was in a familiar role and I was only too happy to dance at bit longer for somebody who seemed to have a particular thing for the Chipster.

Only, I must have been grinding my hips for a minute or so before I noticed something moving at the side of her chair. I didn’t give it much mind at first, it being so dark in the room, but then it moved again and I saw a head pop up beside the woman’s lap. It was a dog. A big, dumb, friendly-looking dog!

Now, there’s a strict ‘no animals’ policy in force at the Green Dragon. Not that we usually need to stop people bring pets into the place, but you never know with some of these lonely women. Sometimes ‘Little Fifi’ can’t stay at home without ‘Mumsy Mummy’. Only, this wasn’t the sort of dog you’d call Fifa. It was a hefty beast, a bit bedraggled, and, besides, it had a jacket on.

I say it was a jacket. It was actually more like a bright yellow sash with reflective patches.

That’s when I realised that it was a guide dog. And the woman who had been nose to chin with Tony Curtis for the last few minutes was obviously its owner. It was no wonder she’d be starting so intently as Curtis. She didn’t even know he was in the room. The woman was completely blind.

I looked down at her smiling face, a bit shocked at my predicament. It altered my plans. There was no way I could just pull myself away from a blind woman who was so clearly enjoying herself. And she had quite a grip on my buttocks. I doubted if I could get away if I’d wanted to.
I looked around at all the other woman who were shouting, whooping, and enjoying themselves. What could I do? I looked at the dog and the dog looked at me. That’s when I thought I better make the most of a difficult situation. I thought I’d show a bit of kindness to her dog and use that as my chance to run for the stage.

I gave the dog a friendly pat on the head and the dog, all friendly, licked my fingers and carried on licking it until I pulled my hand away.

Only now, of course, my hand is all wet and I’m still trapped in the grasp of a woman who could see neither me nor Curtis. I thought I’d give it another minute of dancing, so I looked to the ceiling, took a deep breath and started on some hip thrusts which just made every woman in the room scream even louder. All that is except one. She just kept on staring. And then she started to tickle me.

I don’t know how to describe this politely except to say that she was tickling the balls of Tony Curtis’s feet.

I know what you’re thinking and I thought it too. Tickling a man there, even a stripper, is such an odd thing to do. In fact, it had never happened to me before. A lady might occasionally try to touch something that shouldn’t be touched but that’s part of the business. Rarely do they tickle the balls of Curtis’s feet. What made it odder was that all the time she was tickling me, she didn’t take her hands from my behind.

That’s when I realised that there was no way the woman could have been tickling me.
I suddenly went cold. I could barely bring myself to look down, fearing what I might see. But as the tickling before more enthusiastic, I realised I had no choice. I had to look.

I immediately saw what had happened. In moving her legs apart to pull me closer to her, the woman had left a large gap through which her guide dog had pushed his head and was now busy, down below, licking me clean of pineapple oil.

I really don’t know if I can go on…

This is getting into areas where I never thought the Chipster would go. This is the stuff you hear about from friends who ventured into the wrong newsagents in Amsterdam. You don’t expect to see a stripper dancing for a blind woman while her guide dog licks pineapple oil from a stripper’s business accessories. Or at least, you don’t expect to see it going on in Bangor. All I do know is that strippers have lost their licenses for doing lesser things with animals.

I was in a precarious situation. Not only was I facing profession ruin, I didn’t fancy pulling myself away from the animal too quickly. If you’ve ever tried to take a bone from a hungry dog, you’d know that they’re likely to take a last nip at the departing meat. It made this one of those situations in which legends are born. Unfortunately, it was also the sort of situation in which legends die. Or at least have something bitten off.

I decided the best policy was one of negotiation.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to the woman.

‘Oh, you’re not going?’ she asked, her hands tightening on my behind.

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I was just thinking – and I know this is an odd time to ask you this – but do you happen to own a dog?’

‘I do own a dog, yes, why?’

‘And did you bring your dog with you this evening?’

‘I did,’ she smiled.

I nodded as I tried to concentrate. ‘And did you leave your dog at the side of your chair?’

‘I always do. Macca’s never far away.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘I think it’s your dog that’s currently licking me.’

‘Licking you?’ she asked. ‘Licking you where?’

I struggled as I tried to concentrate. ‘Higher than my knees, lower than my nose,’ I said, thinking that the situation was bad enough without being vulgar about it.

‘Oh,’ she said, apologetically, ‘he can be so naughty.’

My hips froze. ‘He?’

‘Of course he’s a he. That’s why I call him Macca,’ she explained. ‘I named him after Paul McCartney.’

Things could only have got worse if was actually the ex-Beatle licking me clean down there. I felt my stomach clench and my hips slow to a gentle grind.

‘Well, he seems to have a taste for pineapple oil,’ I said.

Her face peeled apart as a smile spread across her face.

‘He loves pineapple,’ she said proudly. ‘I always give him pineapple chunks in his bowl. He loves pineapple chunks.’

‘Yes, well, there are two chunks I hope he doesn’t fancy chewing.’

She suddenly looked impatient as I tried to ease myself back.

‘Oh, don’t stop now,’ she said, ‘I’m enjoying this.’

I felt like crying. ‘Is there anything else he likes except pineapple?’ I asked.

‘He loves chocolate drops.’

‘Well he might get an extra big chocolate drop if he doesn’t let me go,’ I said, feeling my nerves get the better of my stomach which clenched and made my bowels shift uneasily. ‘I don’t suppose you have chocolate drops in your bag?’ I asked.

Her hands slid from my body but by now I didn’t dare more.

‘I think I do,’ she said, feeling for her bag. ‘Here you go,’ she finally said, handing me a small bag of milk chocolate buttons. ‘What you going to do with them?’

I ripped open the bag and filled my hands with the chocolate treats.

I barely looked down. I didn’t think I could bear to see what the dog was doing. Instead, I lay my hand next to the dog’s head and waited.

I seemed to wait an age before he moved. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tony Curtis look as happy as he did when the dog went for the nibbles. I grabbed Macca by his collar, took his owner’s hand, and placed one into the other. And then, with the briefest wave to the crowd and ran to the stage. I didn’t even stop to pick up my clothes.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Stan, the stage manager as I flew past him. ‘You were a while out there.’

I couldn’t explain. From somewhere below the stage, a dog gave a long mournful howl, as though regretting the biggest pineapple chunks never to have graced his dish.