Whoops!

My 7 years of bad luck continue to rumble on without mercy. Honestly, ever since I broke that glitterball at Susi Quatro’s house in 2003 I’ve had nothing but misfortune. Last week was no different. I was due to play the part of a referee in a new BBC thing (turned out quite well without me. See here.) but put my back out playing twister with my barista, Dan Tang. Dan confessed that he’d never seen anyone stitched up so badly by a ‘right hand, blue, left foot blue, right foot blue, left hand red combo as I was that day but still insisted on his trademark victory dance as I writhed in agony on the floor. A visit to Doctor Hugh confirmed the worse. Not only did I have a “spasy back.” The muscle trauma was so hideous I was at high risk of shitting my pants at any given moment. Doctor Hugh sent me limping home with a prescription for 1 neckbrace and 24 rolls of Andrex. That night I got a call from my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz, to be honest I thought it was a prank at first as I could hardly make out what he was saying. Turns out Bernie had cracked a tooth on Mrs S’s Flambe duck and was suffering terrible speech restrictions due to a quick fix oversized temporary crown. After a while I became accustomed to his cluttered speech pattern and accepted his invitation to accompany him to the funeral of his old friend Ray Sparks. Ray was one of the old school entertainers and came up through the ranks with Tarbuck’s mob. Sparks was a controversial character and once famously called Prince Charles a F*cknut at the Royal Variety performance line up. His death had come as a shock to the entertainment world and even though the coroner reached a verdict of ‘death by mis-adventure’ the industrial lube, ‘specialist mags’ and Henry the hoover found with and in Sparks’ body told a more detailed story. I knew when Shimshelwitz picked me up the next morning that it was going to be a difficult day. Firstly, I was hoping that lying on my back across the back seat of Bernie’s Volvo would calm my twitchy back down but as he had arrived in a pimped up Cinquecento I knew this wasn’t a goer. Apparently the Volvo was ‘doomed’ after Mrs S had bottomed out on a hump back bridge the day before trying to outrun the paparazzi who had apparently mistaken her for Gary Glitter. The Cinquecento belonged to one of Bernie’s ‘associates’ in the adult entertainment industry. The image of a half naked glamour model on the bonnet suggested that the car was part of his marketing machine as did the words ‘Are you horny?’ running down either side. The car was not ‘funeral friendly’. The extent of Bernie’s dental shocker was immediately evident as the mis-matched crown made it impossible for him to close his mouth giving him the appearance of an extra fro The Hills have Eyes. He was clearly dosed up to the eyeballs, counteracting his allergy to the painkillers he was necking with antihistamine tablets and Pernod. I had no choice but to let him take the wheel as the neckbrace I was wearing afforded limited driving vision. It took me a good 10 minutes to painfully lower myself into the passenger bucket seat after which it was plain to see that Bernie was in no mood for hanging around. He was giving the “porno pocket rocket” a proper ragging and by the time we reached the motorway the revs were off the dial. It was only when I suggested that he change gear that it became apparent that Shimshelwitz had no idea that the car was a manual drive. We had to stop at a florists on the way to pick up two floral tributes Bernie had ordered, one saying ‘RAY’ and the other ‘MISSED’ but when we arrived it was obvious that Bernie’s enforced speech issues had conspired to stitch him up. The florist, who had attempted to interpret Bernie’s instructions to the best of her ability, presented him with a single arrangement that read ‘RAPIST’. My agent looked at me with the expression of a man that expected nothing less and I returned the gesture. 4 minutes later we were back in the sexed up motor heading towards the church with the word RAPIST written in flowers on the parcel shelf. Defying all rational possibility things then took a turn for the worse when Doctor Hugh’s prophecy regarding my bowels came to pass. I felt a twinge in my back followed by an immediate desperation to find a lav. Bernie had no choice but to drop me off right outside the church and left me to find a loo whilst he reversed parked behind the hearse. I minced inside and frantically scanned the packed church for signs of a bog. Taking pity on my plight the vicar directed me to his private chamber at the back of the church where the age old conflict between good and evil reared its head as I evacuated my guts. When I emerged, it was clear that the stink bomb I’d just dropped had taken its toll on my fellow mourners. I could tell from Ray’s widow’s reaction that this was not the sort of turn out she was expecting. I sheepishly joined Bernie and his RAPIST at the end of a pew and as my agent gargled with the Pernod from his hip flask I quietly cursed Susi Quatro’s glitterball. Roll on 2010.