I've been away a while...

So, you’ll be wondering where I’ve been. Well, after I failed to get the old cast and crew back together for revival of ‘Kiddie Fiddler on the Roof’ there were few Edinburgh Fringe opportunities left and my agent, Bernie Schimshelwitz was seemingly concentrating most of his efforts on his newest client Vicki Michelle (and who can blame him?)
So, I decided to recharge the old batteries both physically and mentally and I enrolled on a month long retreat with specialist firm M T Promises. The idea was for me to spend the first week learning some transcendental meditation techniques and then a further three weeks in a remote cave somewhere, cut off from the outside world; mobile phones, computers, Moto Service Stations etc. The first week went well despite my tendency to snore and cry out for Lorraine Kelly during the lengthier meditation sessions and then it was off to my cave. In an unusual twist they blindfolded me before driving me for some three hours to the secret location in order, they said, to begin the disorientation process. I was given a knapsack full of Peperami and Capri Sun and told to get in touch with my inner self. Well, my inner self made a pretty rapid appearance after I discovered one of the Pepperami had been a good eight months out of date and, to be honest, it was down hill from then on. I tried hard to use meditation to find inner peace and tranquillity but my mind was quickly haunted by a blood curdling and terrifying screaming. The terror was constant and seemed to shake the very ground with it’s intensity. Three hideous weeks soon turned to six and, finally I could take no more. I crawled out from my subterranean tomb and balked at the daylight. I was approached by a young man in a luminous tabard crying out “It dangerous under there you dicksplash!”
To summarise; I had been duped. M T Promises were a bunch of Eastern Oriental chancers who’d gone out of business just days after cashing my cheque. They slung me in the back of their Nissan Cherry and dumped me under the Thunder Mountain ride at Alton Towers on their way to foreign climbs. I was cold, I was hungry, but who was there, who was there? My old friend and agent Bernie Schimshelwitz with a promise of an audition for the part of Charles Hawtrey in the biopic ‘What do you mean you didn’t know?’ Bless you Bernie, and strike Cheddar Gorge off our list of Xmas do venues.