The Clockwork Times

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Fire Union chief Andy Gilchrist stirred controversy yesterday by eating his nine-year-old son, Jeffrey. Mr Gilchrist, still smarting from claims he sat on the face of a jockey, devoured his first-born after losing a bet about the duration of last week’s Fire Strike. When pressed for comment, the FBU leader explained, “These things happen. I’m not proud, but must look forward to the future. This is not the issue. The point is, when will all those hard working firemen and women get the increases in…” The interview was then cut short as Mr. Gilchrist coughed up a small hand.

“Look Ma, I caught a Fraggle”

Jeffrey is not the first victim of a union boss’s insatiable appetite for human flesh. In March 1985 Arthur Scargill, then campaigning against puffin abuse, ate a milkman, three tourists and a cocktail waiter he had met in London’s West-End.

“Dixit dominus implevies venit”

Mr. Gilchrist will have difficulty shaking this slur off though, especially at this crucial time in ACAS talks. Only yesterday, Fire bosses and the government were on the verge of agreeing that fire fighters would be allowed free access to “Paul Royal’s Royal Pool” in Tichfield and a discount
Looking for: Seventeen shrews. (Must be in a line) Contact Dr. Ricky Lapel, 2 The Gables, Shrewsbury.
on hake at all branches of Mr Chippy if they agreed to abandon plans for further strikes, and accepted a 40% pay cut. “Those plans have been shelved” said Deputy PM John Prescott, 71, this morning. “I’ve put them behind the Frosties where the kids can’t get to them”.

TELL SOMEONE!
Perhaps you have a funny story? Perhaps you’d like to raise an issue that intrigues you? Maybe you have a strong view about something. Whatever your reasons, why not share your thoughts & views with the CT in our tailor-made thoughts & views section?

Peninsular Pretensions

Dear Sir,

I can’t get enough of the adventures of Major Richard Sharpe and his elite band of Chosen Men, in their fight against the evil dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte. Their exploits are so heroic I always have to jump on the sofa and cheer!

Richard Sharpe wasn’t always a Major. He had to rise from the ranks. In one of my favourite episodes, Richard Sharpe is insulted by an officer who says, ‘you’re not a gentleman, Sharpe’. Richard Sharpe hit him on the nose, which made me laugh! Another of my favourite episodes involved Richard Sharpe and a mysterious Spaniard.

My favourite Chosen Man is probably Sergeant Patrick Harper, because even though he is quite a rough character, you know he will always be brave and loyal to Richard Sharpe and the Chosen Men. I like Harris as well, because he’s quite a clever person, who’s always able to decipher secret instructions so that Richard Sharpe can beat Napoleon. When I’m at home watching Sharpe, I like to pretend I’m Richard Sharpe. I pretend the cushions are Napoleon and his evil army, and I throw them out of the window! Also, I get on the drinks trolley and ask my wife to push me around.

I’d love to meet Richard Sharpe and the Chosen Men. I think I’d be a good Chosen Man because I always knock the coke cans off the wall, just like they would, and I’ve got a green jacket that I bought from Country Casuals. I wear it in the Park when I’m playing Richard Sharpe with my friends.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Blair.

Can’t Bear It

Dear Sir,

I have always had a horrifying fear of bears. It doesn’t matter how big or how small they are; I simply can’t abide bears. I am fully aware that there are no bears in Stotfold, but an irrational fear is a fear nonetheless.

My complaint is this: many people seem intent on making a mockery of my pain. I sprained my ankle last week, and the doctor asked me how I was bearing up. I had no electricity or running water for a month, and my neighbour told me I had to grin and bear it. I saw my grandchildren at the weekend, and they were running about in the garden completely bare. This may seem trivial to someone who likes bears, or doesn’t mind them, but to someone with my condition it is pure torture. And I am sick of hearing jokes about Old Mother Hubbard and her empty pantry. If I have to endure this misery for very much longer, I will knife someone.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs. Gladys LargeCarnivorousMammal-CommonlyFoundInCanadaAndInManyPartsOfThePolarIceCaps

No Nuts for Me   

Dear Sir,

I am allergic to nuts, and have been for a long time, in fact since before I was born.

It can be a terrible affliction. Last night I went out to a restaurant, and nearly ate a nut by mistake. It had somehow got into my Mango sorbet. I think the waiter was carrying the sorbet and some sort of nut-pudding in the same hand; one of the nuts must have worked it’s way loose and been transferred across the gap between the two puddings, perhaps on the back of a small fly. I spotted it just in time, partially concealed beneath a sliver of imitation lemon rind. I didn’t blame the waiter, because I felt it was an accident that could have happened to anyone. But perhaps more care is needed when dealing with nuts and people who don’t like nuts?

I avoid watching adverts on the television in case one comes on for Snickers. I saw a Topic wrapper in the street last July and screamed.

Yours sincerely,

Commander Alwyn Cranberry (OBE, KCVO, NUTS)

Monkeying About

Dear Sir,

I write in the hope that one of your readers can help me; I am at my wit’s end. Last Christmas my wife and I purchased a monkey from a travelling gypsy. The vet told us that, whilst the money would be fun for a while, when it grew older it may become savage. We laughed this off, thinking that the vet was jealous that we had a monkey and he didn’t.

The monkey went savage last Saturday. It pulled off my wife’s arms and now carries them about in a Gucci bag. It drowned all of our children and flushed the cat down the toilet. Then it sent me out to buy ice cream.

I’d forgotten that we’d invited Ken Jones and his wife around for a barbeque. The monkey let them in, invited them to sit down while it got some nibbles, pretended it had to go to the toilet, and then poisoned their Pims.

It’s sick!

I am hiding in the airing cupboard as I type this; I think I may be able to plug my laptop into the telephone port if I can hook the cable with a coat hanger…I can hear the monkey!

The monkey’s coming! Someone hep me!

If you have any interesting things you’d like to Tell Someone, please send them to the Spoon’s highly competent editorial team
(The Clockwork Times reserves the right to change what you send us to make it funnier. If you feel this humiliates you in any way, please send your complaint to: Tell Someone, The Clockwork Times, 7 Ladle Buildings, EC1)

“Spadulorum!”

Be amongst the first to see Charles Schwing’s latest musical blockbuster, Spadulorum!
Four children from Hackney buy a faulty kettle, and are catapulted into the fantasy world of Spadulorum! where the evil ruler Wazguard has banned camping, except with caravans. Together with their new-found companions, Miffo the talking stoat, Lupinia the Wonderbra, and a prawn-sandwich called Patrick, the four must do battle with Wazguard’s Pillow-Men to bring justice to the people of Spadulorum who can’t afford to invest in a motor-home.

“Some of the songs are quite good” (Evening Standard)
“I liked the bit near the middle” (The Times)
“Evocative, powerful, deeply tragic and immensely moving; the finest Les Mis yet. Sorry, I went to the wrong theatre. What’s ‘Spadulorum’ then? (The Daily Telegraph)

Spadulorum! is showing at the Children’s Theatre, Stoke Newington, until 3rd June.

Wazguard revokes Daisy Poppet’s HGV licence, in a scene from Spadulorum!

“The Secret Life Of Rosie May”

David Yemming brings Anne Spudly’s wartime romance vividly to the stage, in this exuberant production.

Rosie May is an orphaned eighteen year-old, living in the slums of Whitechapel in 1943. But her life changes for the better when she is adopted by Lord Malory St. Simon, and taken to live in his country seat in deepest Worcestershire. There, she begins a romance with the Lord, whilst at the same time being wooed by his youngest son, Tristram. But her life is complicated by the arrival of Sir. Sydney Duckington, and his elder brother, Everett, with the latter’s butler, Mr. Puffington also taking a shine to the inexperienced young girl. Rosie’s misadventures ultimately lead her to her true love, Captain Alistair Ransom, via the gardener, the stable-boy, the milkman, the parish priest, the local PC, the cook, the gamekeeper and Lord St Simon’s sister, Brenda. But just as she finds true happiness with Captain Ransom, he reveals a terrible secret…

“Bloody hell. I never thought I’d see that sort of thing on the stage” (The Guardian)
“Brave isn’t the word for Yemming’s production; even ‘raunchy’ doesn’t cover it” (The Independent on Sunday)
“See this before it gets banned!” (The Observer)
“Flipping ‘eck” (Evening Standard)
“Absolute filth; I’m going again tonight” (The Daily Telegraph)
“Me too, but don’t tell the wife” (The Times)
“Wa-hey!” (The FT)
“Vulgar and rude” (Woman’s Own)

The Secret Life of Rosie May is showing at The Peephole, under Holborn viaduct, until probably sometime tomorrow afternoon.

A man was arrested yesterday for behaving like a complete cad, a court was told this morning.
A jury at the Old Bailey heard how Mr. Cecil Wilmington-Pubeck, of Spivington Mansions, London W2, approached a young lady on Friday evening and proceeded to act in a wholly un-gentlemanly fashion.

BOUNDER
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck’s mobile telephone began to ring as he was talking to the young lady in question, Miss. Audrey Cartwright-Bullock, at around half-past eight. Upon answering, Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck announced to the caller that, no, he was not inside a drinking establishment seeking the company of ladies; he was in fact looking for a particular strain of tweed for his friend Maurice, at Jock McSporan’s Tartan Emporium, Lower Regent Street, and the noise she could hear was coming from the latter’s portable gramophone. Miss. Cartwright-Bullock’s suspicions were further aroused when Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck terminated the call by addressing the caller as ‘Uncle Bernard’.
“I was sure he was talking to another female”, she stated to the court. “I remember thinking, ‘this gentleman may wish to toy with my heart before casting me aside’. I knew I had to be careful”.

JACAKANAPES
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck, it is alleged, next attempted to solicit currency from Miss. Cartwright-Bullock. “He told me he hadn’t a tosser to his kick, and needed a bit of shrapnel to purchase his elderly aunt a new pussycat, as hers had lately been blown away”. Miss. Cartwright-Bullock handed over ten pound notes to Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck, who then mysteriously disappeared in a cloud of monocles. The court was told how she later found him propped up by one of the dicing tables, spraying champagne at a portrait of Neville Chamberlain, and smoking a large cigar in an “extremely reckless manner”, at one point setting light to Lady Gwendolyn Charmley’s newest crinoline ball gown.
PC Arthur Rump was not surprised. “This is not surprising,” he said. “A ne’er do well such as the gentleman in question does not care whose costume he chars with his thoughtless capering”.

MOUSTACHE
But Miss. Cartwright-Bullock’s ordeal did not end there.
At around half-past eleven, she noticed Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck in the company of a young female of obvious ill repute. Upon confronting the scoundrel, Miss. Cartwright-Bullock was at once force-fed a large meal of dishonesty. “He told me that the young woman was his sister, Myrtle, and he had not seen her for seven months as he had been serving in the Punjab. But the manner in which his moustache bristled led me to conclude that this lady was no relative”.
Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck next aimed his drunken whiskers at unfortunate debutant, Miss. Eliza Volkswagen-Chuffadder. “I sincerely believed he was going to try to marry me,” said a distraught Miss. Volkswagen-Chuffadder from the witness box. “Then I would have had to act the dutiful wife whilst my errant husband cavorted about London like a fly-by-night, gambling and canoodling with the hoi-polloi, and shaming myself and our young infant son, Freddy, with his cavalier manners, inappropriate anecdotes, and humiliating misquotations of Byron”.
But Mr. Wilmington-Pubeck merely staggered forward, sang three verses of ‘Whoops, there go my Braces’, and fell headfirst into a potted Aspidistra.

SPATS
In passing sentence, the judge, Mr. Justice Goolie, remarked that never in his long career on the Bar had he encountered such brazen knavery. He was swift to impose the maximum penalty of five shillings. In addition, Her Majesty’s Government also confiscated the offender’s spats and topper. Commenting on the decision, PC Rump said he believed the severity of the sentence was fully justified.
“Young gentlemen today must be made aware of the consequences of their actions. Many a poor female has had her hopes and dreams dashed by these woeful miscreants and their rakish behaviour. This ruling gives out a very clear message to any future jack-a-cock-a-hoops: we intend to be tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”.