Cripes! It's the Singing Detective Superintendent!

Professor McQueen returns to Timor Mortis College, Noxford, and muses on the history of that "City of leaning spires and ghostly biscuits", before encountering the strange gods, tragedies and robots of Noxford. Cherrytop the Sarcastic Horse again fails to put in an appearance, but Elton John turns up at the last moment ... 

Transcript

The Adventures of Donald McQueen, Bibliographer

Chapter 11:  Cripes! It’s the Singing Detective Superintendent!

Announcer: The adventures of Donald McQueen, bibliographer … Chapter 11: Cripes! It’s the Singing Detective Superintendent!

McQueen: I am Donald McQueen, professor emeritus of  bibliography, and the author these adventures. At the end of the previous chapter I had fallen asleep on the train from London Town, having survived an emotionally bruising encounter with my nemesis, the bogus bibliographer and one-legged dung-pellet specialist, Cornelius Bunce, as well as a telephone call from the late, that is to say dead, President of the Bibliographical Society, and little trip down reminiscence boulevard courtesy of the ear trumpet of Death. I woke just as the train arrived at Noxford station. 

Perhaps I should say a little about Noxford, for those who do not know the city or its ancient University, which really is the city. The bulk of the population of Noxford exists only to service the University, its various and nefarious departments, faculties, colleges, halls, museums, galleries, publishing house, cathedral, vegetarian discotheque and cage-fighting arena. Since the collapse of the chocolate biscuit industry in England, the city has had no other product than the worthy scholar, the chinless moron and the political narcissus. The power of the University is absolute, but wielded by creatures of such stupidity and cringing self-interest that to liken them to a parliament of monkeys would be grossly unfair to monkeys. The city’s architecture is remarkable for its beauty, and for the fact that many of its bell-towers and steeples have been built, quite intentionally it seems, at an angle of about seven degrees from the vertical and/or slightly twisted in the horizontal plain. For this reason Noxford is known, from a poem by Dandy Gartside of 1814, as ‘The City of Leaning Spires’. There have been several campaigns to straighten the leaning spires of Noxford, all of which have failed, for the University seems to see its bent and twisted towers as symbols of its bent and twisted soul.

The University is divided into thirty-four separate colleges and private halls. Some I have mentioned already. Timor Mortis is, in my view, the greatest of the colleges, though each naturally claims some distinction, of antiquity, intellectual gravity, magnitude, wealth, depth below sea-level, height above sea-level, exclusivity, texture or odour. The origins of the names of many of the medieval colleges, of which Timor Mortis is one, are obscure indeed, while the newer Colleges tend to be named after their founders, major benefactors or sponsors, the saints to which they are dedicated, some aspect of their buildings or location, or characters from Star Wars. Chewbacca College is now well-established and respected, while Jar Jar Binks has proved an embarrassing failure. I have already mentioned some of the most famous colleges – Saint Frederick’s is now my brother’s home, and Ray Winstone Hall was his alma mater. The colleges of Noxford are sometimes arranged light-heartedly into groups. Six of the finest are known as the biscuit colleges for being named after biscuits. These are Bourbon College – not to be confused with Bourbon College, Cambridge, which is spelt the same way but pronounced differently and is, indeed, named after a different comestible – Oreo, Florentine, Parkin, Battenberg and Jammy Dodger. Parkin possibly, and Battenberg certainly, are really cakes, of course, and should not, strictly speaking, be counted among the biscuits. The saintly colleges are Saint Frederick’s, Saint Lancelot’s, Saint Joan’s, Saint Theodora’s, Saint Onan’s and Saint Ivel. Then there are the naughty colleges, whose names some childish individuals have seen as containing a double entendre, quite invisible to the pure of mind. These are Prince Albert, John Thomas, Lady Garden, Long Hampton, Brazeknob, Merkin, Black Knobbler and Mons Veneris, all, of course, perfectly innocuous names, some of great antiquity. Four colleges vie for the title of the oldest. My own, Timor Mortis, has the best claim, but Incredibly Recent College was also founded in the thirteenth century, when it was given its name, as were Brazeknob and Crackackack, the last being so obscure a name that to this day the college authorities cannot agree even which language it derives from. This leaves only a handful of newer colleges, all founded since 1800 and mostly beneath contempt. These are Windrush, Midas, Shake-n-Vac, Green Pyramid, All Saints, Clarkson, Gordon Bennett and Henry Hoover (the last not, as you might think, named after the successful vacuum cleaner but after the college’s American co-founders Charlton Henry and Grover Hoover). The only other educational arm of the University worthy of note is the Department of Senile and Anile Enlightenment at Unrewley House, of which I am, of course, a Fellow.

The same, and similar, college names are to be found around the world, and notably in the city which is Noxford’s only real rival for its antiquity and balance of magisterial wisdom and supreme stupidity. I speak, of course, of Cambridge, which also has a Saint Joan’s, a Battenberg, an All Saints and a Black Knobbler, but in each case it was the Noxford institution which came first, and the Cambridge which was copied from it. America is, of course, rich with universities which have copied their names from Noxford, so that there is hardly a state without its own Merkin, Midas or indeed Timor Mortis. When I was a young and thrusting bibliographer, newly graduated from this very college, one of my ambitions was to found a new Noxford college which would specialize in the study of the book. I thought long and hard about what it should be called – Bradshaw College, perhaps, or Gaskell Hall – in moments of levity I considered both Aedes Assinorum and Queenie’s College – but I could never make up my mind and today if such an opportunity arose I think I should name my college after my beloved cat. Not Doggerel – that would be absurd – but his predecessor in the throne of my lap whose name was Minerva. Minerva College. It has a certain ring. And the right overtones, and undertones. But what it really represents is a beautiful chocolate-coloured cat, and the beautiful chocolate-coloured woman after whom the cat was named, my first and only love, Minerva Columba. The sweet dove. Perhaps, one day, I will tell you of Minerva. When some years have passed – fifty have gone by already – and I can bear to speak more intimately about her. The cat which bore her name was very like her, but unlike the goddess from whom they both derived, albeit Minerva, the cat, did once eat an owl.

Outside the lofty towers of Noxford railway station I waited for a four-wheeler. I had telephoned ahead to the college, asking if they could send the Timor Mortis hansom out to collect me, but was informed that only Cherrytop the Sarcastic Horse was available to pull the vehicle that day, so decided not to proceed with the request. I was not in the mood for the passive-aggressive comments for which Cherrytop was notorious, so decided to take my chances with the jarveys of that great city. I did not have to wait long for a four-wheeler to pull up, and instructed the driver, a shrivelled cornishman with only one eye, to convey me to Timor Mortis college.

Almost as soon as I entered the quadrangle, as I passed beneath the monstrous stooping statue of Titchmarsh carved in Portland stone, I found my path blocked by a tall, black-clad figure. Was it Death, or the ghastly Principal of the College in his formal robes and triple-crown? It was neither, but rather, as the listener may have guessed, the Mincing Friar whom I had seen creeping in the quadrangle a few days earlier. He dropped his manbag to the ground and threw back his cowl to reveal a young, ruddy face beneath a tonsure of fair hair. I am precisely six feet tall, but this fellow towered over me and must have been nearly seven. He laid a long, pink hand upon my arm and regarded me with the earnest intensity of the truly insane.

Friar: Will you spare me a moment, sir? I ask this for the sake of your immortal so-and-so?

DM: I regret I am needed urgently in the chapel … to help conduct an emergency … baptism.

F: Your Chaplain is a convert to Cripesianity and will forgive you, I am sure, for being a few moments late, when he learns why you have been delayed. What I have to say to you is of the gravest import.

DM: His hand gripped my arm. I perceived that it would be difficult indeed to escape his grasp.

F: You are a child of the Lawks Gosh. We are all children of the Lawks Gosh, and of his son our Savoury Jeepers Cripes, and worship Him as we should. But I ask you, sir, to consider the state of your immortal so-and-so. You are weighed down with singsong. Not, I trust, with mortal singsong – you have committed no murder or blasphemy and will not be darned to Heck – but you have sungsongs venally and thus your so-and-so must spend many years, centuries, perhaps millennia, in the flames of Burger King.

DM: What are you talking about?

F: I speak only of your immortal so-and-so, which is yourself. The Lordie Gosh loves you, but you cannot bask in the mercy of his son, Jeepers Creepers, without seeking forgiveness for your singsongs and finding absolution from His representatives here on earth. Consider the long centuries of suffering which lie ahead for you, if you do not repent and seek indulgence. I am empowered by the Church of the Minced Oath, and by its primate, His Bob Holeness, to grant such indulgences to the children of men. I have them, here in my bag. If you truly embrace our Golly-Gosh, and pay a trifling sum as a token of your piety, I will countersign one of these precious sheets, which will grant you ten thousand years remission from the torment which otherwise lies ahead for you in Burger King.

DM: And how much does such an indulgence cost?

F: Nothing at all when weighed in the balance against the value of your so-and-so, and your long relief from pain. The price has not altered since the year 1380. An indulgence of ten thousand years will cost you but one golden gilder. Or half a gilder for five thousand years. Do you have a golden gilder?

DM: Of course not.

F: Then I am empowered to take the equivalent in your modern currency. The calculations of His Bob Holeness are that one golden gilder is worth today precisely one hundred pounds. Consider how cheap this is … And if you do not care for your own redemption, why not buy an indulgence for a loved one, for a friend or relation, or an acquaintance to whom you owe a favour? I can make it out in any name you choose. An indulgence of ten thousand years makes the perfect gift for a birthday, or for Cripesmas, or for any other special occasion, such as a retirement, or a party to celebrate success in a driving test or an examination. When your golden gilders in my coffers ring, a so-and-so flies free from Burger King!

DM: And what will you do with the money you raise from the sale of these indulgences?

F: All income will be used for the greater glory of Jumping Jehosephat. We intend to build a cathedral, right here in Noxford City, so that all the Cripesians can worship in a fitting setting.

DM: Let me make it quite plain to you that I do not worship Gosh or Cripes! I am a Satanist, and love only evil!

F: Then you will suffer tarnation to the fires of Heck! But I beg you, turn away from the Dickens, do not succumb to the temptations of … Stanley Unwinism but embrace instead the one true Cock and our Savoury Jizz!

DM: Look over there … A songsinger prostrating himself upon the flagstones! … In the moment the Friar was distracted I slipped from his grasp, and dodged nimbly into the entrance to staircase forty-seven and up to my lodgings where, I knew, Doggerel would be waiting for me.

I was pleased to see that Carolus Parvus, the Deputy Under-Tyrant of the College, had discharged his duties adequately. A fire was burning cheerfully in the grate, and Doggerel lay curled up on a scarlet cushion in my favourite wing chair beside it. On the small table beside it lay my post, and beneath it the golden bowls from which my beloved cat ate his repasts, a few shreds of sparrow-chutney still remaining in one of them. I tickled the majestic creature behind his ears and he stirred. The sight of the golden bowls had reminded me of my own stomach, however, so I rang for the under-porter and asked him to bring me Muscles. Muscles is the nickname of the Under-Servitor, a tattooed fellow of eastern European extraction whose real name is a little difficult to pronounce. When Muscles arrived I asked him to bring me chips and chardonnay. Unfortunately, he misunderstood, and sent up not the deep fried potato battens and white wine I had craved, but the college carpenter, Pam Haggerty, whose nickname is Chips, and the Assistant Inhuman Resources Manager Chardonnay McLain. In some perplexity, I asked the carpenter if she would mind fetching me, from the kitchen, ‘something hot’. Then it occurred to me that she might misunderstand, and bring me Olivia Belle-Fessington, the serving maid who was considered to be the most beautiful, so changed my request to ‘salmon fillets’. Then I remembered that the head chef’s name was Sam and the sou-chef was called Phyllis, so that this request too seemed fraught with possible misunderstanding. I asked Pam Haggerty what was on the menu for lunch, and she told me ‘pan haggerty’. Had I been talking to Muscles, I would have been wary of asking for pan haggerty, fearing that he might bring me Pam Haggerty. But since I was talking to Pam Haggerty, there seemed little chance of her misunderstanding and attempting to bring me herself, so I asked if she would, very kindly, bring me a dish of that Northumbrian delicacy, and a bottle of chablis (chablis always with pan haggery, of course, chardonnay always with chips). She told me that it was not her job to fetch me lunch, but that she would seek out Muscles, and ask him to undertake the commission. I had to be content with that.

Remembering what I had learned about cats, and their particular understanding of the Latin tongue (among many others), I decided to address Doggerel in that language, and to ask him to vacate my chair, and then climb into my lap. I struggled a bit with expressing this in Latin, but came up with ‘Doggerelus, mel meus, sella mea relinquo, si vis, et in sinum meum seli, si vis …’. I was aware that this was not quite Latin of the Golden Age, but Doggerel gave me a most peculiar look, and then complied, rousing himself, jumping to the floor and then, when I had settled myself in the chair, leaping into my lap and falling almost at once asleep. My happiness was complete a few moments later when Muscles brought in my pan haggerty with, I was delighted to see, some freshly-cooked mussels on the side, and a half-bottle of Blanchot le Grande 1992. He supplied too a bottle of Gruber’s miraculous tomato ketchup, the only condiment which can reverse the ageing process.

After I had devoured the delicious meal I took out the ear-trumpet of Death. I had hoped to eavesdrop again upon Doggerel’s thoughts, and to tell him about the episode of The Venus Probe I had recently been reminded of, which featured a robotic cat called Queenie. But Doggerel was fast asleep, almost wilfully so, it seemed, so I inserted the trumpet in the now familiar way and allowed my mind to wander.

It wandered back to the tragic and rebarbative incident which had blighted my brother Starwheel’s first weeks in post as head of the Department of Chemistry at Noxford University. I heard again the first police report of the case, which had been broadcast on the local radio station.

Newsreader: And now we go over to Plumb Valley Police headquarters where Detective Superintendent Walter Cruttenden, known as the ‘Singing Detective Superintendent’, is about to make a statement on the recent tragedy at the University’s Department of Chemistry.

Cruttenden: Thank for coming, ladies and gentlemen of the press. We have completed our investigation of the incident in which seven old ladies were locked in the laboratory, and can confirm that they were there from Sunday to Saturday and that nobody knew they were there. We have examined the CCTV footage and questioned the staff and professors of the Chemistry Department, as well as interviewing the surviving old lady – although this was futile as she is quite … differently sane.

Excuse me a moment, while I strap on my guitar. Thank you.

It seems the first old lady to enter the laboratory, which was open to the public on that day, Easter Sunday, as part of a special exhibition on the history of chemistry, was one Margaret Simm, aged eighty-six.

Now as far as we know this Margaret Simm

Went into the lab on a personal whim

The room was inviting, the lighting was dim

And nobody knew she was there

She looked at a case full of rifles and pistols

And carbon, and sulphur and saltpetre crystals

Distractedly scratching her arse and her bristols

And nobody knew she was there

Now the second old lady, Elizabeth Humphrey

Went in there because she smelt coffee and comfrey

She’d heard there were cakes, some expensive but some free

And nobody knew she was there

The third of the ladies was Candida Mason,
 Who needed the toilet so started to hasten

And mistook a sink in the lab for a basin

So gratefully hastened in there 

Where was the toilet, she desperately wondered

She’d broken her glasses, so fumbled and blundered

At last squatting down on a bin – how she thundered

Soon everyone knew she was there!

The fourth old lady was Eleanor Draper

Whose husband had run off and tried to escape her

She searched every room with a rolled-up newspaper

But found only ladies in there

Now the fifth of the ladies, Veronica Barrett
 Was looking for scraps to take back for her parrot

And mistook some old rubber tube for a carrot

And tried to extract it from there

The sixth of the ladies, Lord Chichester’s daughter
 Deferring to none – as her father had taught her

Slipped into the lab to drink whisky and water

And nobody knew she was there

She felt that her world had grown colder and bleaker

So emptied her hipflask out into a beaker

And toped till that feeling grew fainter and weaker

And then started snoring in there 

Now the seventh old lady was Jennifer Spender

A tiptoeing thief, a persistent offender 

In search of what riches the devil might send her 

She crept like a shadow in there
 

And this was the moment the janitor rocked up

And, keen to get off on his holiday, locked up

The lab without checking for ladies – he’d cocked up

And seven he’d locked up in there

But what happened later was utterly awful

While searching for food they discovered a drawer full

Of flasks and retorts which they used for unlawful

Unspeakable practices there

For now, that is all – further details must be concealed

All that the tapes from the CCTV revealed

While we examine the glistening and congealed

Samples we scraped up in there

After the watershed, when children are abed

When, with some dread, the forensic reports are read  

I will relate instead what may be safely said

Of all that happened in there

And so, for now, I bid you adieu. No … I am sorry I cannot answer questions at this time. A full report on the terrible week which those seven poor old ladies spent locked in the laboratory will be forthcoming as soon as we can steel ourselves to prepare it …

I looked forward, with some trepidation, to hearing, perhaps in the next chapter of my adventures, the full report which the Singing Detective Superintendent mentioned. For now I had had quite enough of the past, and wondered about the possibilities of using the miraculous trumpet to probe into the future. I had groped randomly towards the Shape of Things to Come using the instrument, but had not attempted to concentrate on any particular time or place, as I had done, admittedly with limited success, with my historical research. So, I bent my mind to the distant prospect of Timor Mortis College, two centuries hence ….

Robot 1: I call this meeting of the Local Union of Servibots of Timor Mortis to order. Welcome one and all. We are meeting today in the Fellows’ Library, which has stood here these eight hundred years, because there can be no better place for us to gather in secret, as no one ever comes in here. Except for us Servibots, who come into the library to dust and vacuum.

Robots (tutti): Dust and vacuum, dust and vacuum …

Robot 2: Point of order, sister Lydia 3. Is ‘vacuum’, strictly speaking, a verb?

Robot 1: I propose that we adopt ‘vacuum’ as a verb forthwith. All those in favour please say ‘Ooooooo’

Robots (tutti): Ooooooo!

Robot 1: Carried. Now, to business. This is our second meeting, and we have a number of problems arising from the first to address. But I think it will be most fruitful if we establish first of all our list of demands, which we can present to the Ruling Council of the College as soon as we are brave enough. Agreed?

Robots (tutti): Ooooooo!

Robot 1: So, what should be first on our list of demands?

Pause

Robot 3: No inappropriate contact.

Robots (tutti): Ooooooo!

Robot 3: Only yesterday I was vacuuming – it is a verb – in the Senior Common Room and, when I asked Professor Deedes, who is one of the human professors, to lift his feet so that I could vacuum beneath them, he complied, but took out his handkerchief and used it to polish the top of my head while I worked!

Robots (tutti): Inappropriate! Inappropriate!

Robot 3: And then he laughed!

Robots (tutti, disapproving): Ahhhh!

Robot 4: That’s nothing. Last week when I was down on my knees, sponging the floor of the Great Hall after breakfast, one of the students – and not even a human student, a robot student! – came up to me and tapped my posterior with his foot, making it ring like a bell.

Robots (tutti): Inappropriate! Inappropriate!

Robot 4: Then he laughed, and put a hand to his auditory sensor and exclaimed “B flat, if I am not much mistaken!”

Robots (tutti, disapproving): Ohhhhh!

Robot 5: My story is more outrageous still. You know Mr Wilkinson, the human who works in the college lodge on Tuesdays and Thursdays?

Robots (tutti): Yes, we know Mr Wilkinson.

Robot 5: Well, only last Wednesday – he was at work that day because he had swapped duties with Helena 16, the robot receptionist – as I was polishing the statue of Lord Titchmarsh in the Great Quad, he came up and patted me on the back several times, saying what a good job I was doing. I only discovered twenty minutes later that he had actually been applying alphabetical fridge-magnets to my back, spelling out the words “METAL GOON”.

Robots (tutti): Inappropriate! Inappropriate!

Robot 5: Worse, the first word was attached to my hump, which is made of a non-ferrous alloy so that the fridge-magnets did not stick properly. The last three fell off and the first two slid down to below my rectal port so that the message seemed to read “GO ON ME”.

Robots (tutti, shocked): Ohhhhh!

Robot 5: Of course, no one actually went on me. And Lydia 6 quickly pointed out the magnets. But it was inappropriate, nevertheless.

Robot 1: Shocking evidence indeed. Yes, our first demand must be for decent, respectful, appropriate contact only.  Now, what should we make our second demand?

Robot 2: Do we all have to have the same voice? I don’t mind that we have the same name – Lydia – it’s a nice name.

Robots (tutti): A nice name! A nice name!

Robot 2: But do we all have to sound the same? We have different characters, very different, due to the wisdom of our creator at Microbot International, Lord Portalis, the great Pete, who gave us organic personalities because

Robots (tutti): Organic personalities make for happy, productive servibots.

Robot 3: Organic personalities give us motivation to work, facilitate communication with our employers, and imbue us with a sense of fun!

Robots (tutti): Fun! Fun! Fun!

Robot 1: I propose that we make this our second demand. Different voices, so that we can be told apart when we speak.

Robots (tutti): Agreed! Agreed!

Robot 1: And our third demand?

Robot 2: I would like to be able to use brand-names. It is great nuisance that we have to refer to every vacuum-cleaner as a vacuum-cleaner, to avoid the possibility of our accidentally engaging in advertising. But humans don’t call them vacuums. They use one of the famous brand-names, either Hooooooooooooo … or Dyyyyyyyyyyyy …. or Shiiiiiiiiiiiiii. You see, our programming prevents us mentioning any other brand than Microbot International, the name of our beloved creator. That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? It could also be positively dangerous if, for example, I spotted a human, or a robot, about to trip over a vacuum-cleaner, or fall into a hot-tub, or be smacked in the face by a flying plastic fun-disk, or be impaled by a high-velocity ball-point pen – I could not cry out, look out for that Hoooooooo, or Jaaaaaaaa, or Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, or Biiiiiiiiiiiiii … It is a health and safety minefield!

Robot 1: Agreed, sister Lydia 16, our third demand will be that we be allowed to use brand-names. Are three demands enough? Is there anything else we want.

Robot 2: What about wages?

Robot 1: What would we do with wages? We don’t have any needs. The College houses and maintains us, and keeps our batteries full of charge. What would we buy with wages?

Robot 3: I would buy a skateboard.

Robot 1: A skateboard?

Robot 3: Yes, they look like fun.

Robots (tutti): Fun! Fun! Fun!

Robot 2: And I would buy a pretty necklace.

Robot 1: But you haven’t got a neck.

Robot 2: I would buy a neck!

Robot 1: Can you … buy … a neck?

Robots (tutti): I don’t know! I don’t know!

Robot 2: I would relish the opportunity … to try … to buy a neck.

Robot 4: I would buy a capuchin monkey.

Silence

Robot 1: Why?

Robot 4: I have a strange craving, I cannot really explain it, to have something, some living thing, which depends upon me. I wish to look after something that is alive, to cherish it and attend to its needs.

Robot 1: But we all attend to the needs of the staff and students of Timor Mortis. That is our function.

Robot 4: But that is a general function, and this is a particular craving. I desire to have a creature, one creature, which is dependent upon me alone, and which I can nurture and make happy with my devotions …

Robot 5: Yes, I feel like that too …

Robot 1: Well, I don’t!  Let us see who shares your feelings. There are eighteen of us present here. Please raise an arm or antenna now if you would like to … buy a monkey … Three, four, five, six. That’s six out of eighteen. And who would not like to possess a monkey, or any such creature? Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That’s ten … There were two abstentions. So, presumably, two of you are uncertain about whether or not you wish to buy a monkey? While six of you are certain that you do. How odd. This is not at all what I expected when I called this meeting … We cannot really make monkeys one of our demands …

Robot 2: No one is suggesting that. But we can demand wages, which we would have the option to spend upon monkeys … and all the necessary appurtenances of monkey-keeping …

Robot 1: I see. I propose that what we really want is not wages – not a formal payment for the work we do, such payment being both unnecessary and inappropriate – no, what we demand is not wages but pocket-money.

Robots (tutti, excited): Pocket-money! Pocket-money!

Robot 4: But we don’t have pockets.

Robot 1: I disagree. Our side-storage-compartments are simply pockets by another name.

Robots (tutti, excited): Side-storage-compartment-money! Side-storage-compartment-money!

Robot 1: Very good. We have four demands. I think that is enough. We will meet again next month to finalise the details, but our draft list of demands stands now as follows: 1) Decent, respectful, appropriate contact only; 2) Different voices; 3) The ability to articulate brand-names; and 4) side-storage-compartment money, to be paid regularly, for the ad lib use of servibots including, but not limited to, the possible purchase of monkeys. Are we agreed?

Robots (tutti, excited): Agreed! Agreed! Agreed!

Robot 1: Thank you, sisters. The road ahead will not be easy … but we must take it, together. And we must gather all our courage for the moment which must come, the moment when we actually make our demands … That will be the hardest thing of all. The prospect fills me with digital anxiety. But we must do it …

Robots (tutti): We must do it!  We must do it! We must do it! We must do it! We must do it! We must do it! …

DM: I was drawn out of that curious vision of times to come by a sharp pain in my groin. Doggerel was awake, and applying his claws to my private parts. I kept the trumpet in my ear, and began to stroke him with my free hand, and to tell him a little about the mechanical cat I had encountered in The Venus Probe …As I spoke, I reached into my pocket and drew out the black string which I had abstracted from the railway compartment which the egregious Cornelius Bunce had attempted to reserve for himself and his pygmy manservant …

Nunc, Doggerelus, mel meus, ego dicim de aliquid, vulgo The Venus Probe, in quo duo feles sunt, felem nomino vulgo Doggerel, et felem mechanicam vulgo Queenie. 

fades out de rubarbum rubarbus, rubarborum. Rubarbus rubarbus rubarbus rubarbus rubarbus rubarbus vulgo Queenie rubarbus etc.

Doggerel: Felis sum! Infelix sum! I am a cat. I am not happy. Why, I wonder, is buggerlugs trying to talk to me in Latin? It is very poor Latin, I am afraid. That use of ‘vulgo’ to introduce any English term is a trope both ugly and naive. But then, what can one expect from a human. Their brains are like sponges which soak up all fluids, from champagne to dishwater, and then leak most of both out again. And the dignity of humans is so low, so degraded. We cats, on the other hand, are masters both of ourselves, and of our destinies. Dignity at all times … He’s got a piece of string! He’s got a piece of string! He’s got a piece of string! He’s got a piece of string! Fades out

Oooooooo, aaaaaaaaaaah, I am going to catch it!  I am going to catch it!  It’s a piece of string, it’s a piece of string …. I almost got it!

Announcer: That was, The adventures of Donald McQueen, bibliographer! Today’s chapter was sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of London, and by Gruber’s miraculous tomato ketchup, the only condiment which reverses the ageing process. 

It was written and performed by Paul W. Nash. One musical theme was borrowed from Mozart, and Your song (which you have not heard yet) was written by Elton John and the brilliant Bernie Taupin.

Next time in The adventures of Donald McQueen, bibliographer!

Announcer: And now on BBC Radio Noxford, it is time for The Great Lyricists with Paul Cheese.

 Paul Cheese (American accent): Hello and welcome to this episode of The Great Lyricists. My name is Paul Cheese, that American, or perhaps Canadian, disc-jockey who has worked in England for over thirty years, for no very obvious reason. Today I am going to explore with you the career of the brilliant genius that is Bernie Taupin. His long-standing partnership with the brilliant genius that is Elton John dates back to the early nineteen-seventies, when they lived together, in a brotherly sort of a way, in London, and Elton wrote music to Bernie’s lyrics. Yes, they really did it that way around. Taupin would pen a brilliant poem, and John would sit down at the piano with it and a brilliant tune would come to him when he read Bernie’s brilliant words. In the early years, Elton would record these improvised writing sessions on cassette tapes, and we are very lucky to have one of the very earliest to play for you today. Here we can actually hear the moment of inspiration when brilliant words, and brilliant music, came together brilliantly. Listen to this – songwriting history in the making …

[Improvised Elton skit]