Lucinda Make-Piece Farthing lived in India and loved to ride an elephant,
but one day fell off into a pile of dung,
only to be consoled by a little man in a loin cloth.

He’d looked at her intensely, then declared,
‘I’ve watched you, and noticed that when our children approach.

‘Indeed, you are respectful when we point out,
that sometimes people have to follow their own path.

'For you ...

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‘I say, it’s Flinty!’ Shouted ‘Timmers’,
otherwise known as Flying Officer Timothy Tamford-Tittimus,
his voice ringing round Mandevilles’ Gentleman’s Club,
where I, Flinty Flood-Flanners was celebratinge the 1918 Armistice.

I was relieved to see my pals hadn’t noticed my embarrassment, 
engrossed as they were in re-enacting the Eton Wall game.
You see, back in 1915 Tim had rescued me in
h...

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‘You’ve got a bum and a tum now!’ Remarked an old flame,
who’d changed her profession from social worker to children’s magician.

‘You might be greyer of hair,’ she said with a wink,
‘but I remember when you were as thin as a lath,
and though your raggedy existence has aged you somewhat,
you’re now strong, like a put-out-to-grass ox, 
if you’ll forgive my back-handed compliment.’

She lau...

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Mary Delahinch was often seen with Pappeety,
her short-haired, long-legged Patterdale terrier, who,
possessed of a powerful nose, was sometimes used by Colonel
Buntingdon-Blythe to discover a rebel band’s hidden gunpowder.

For this cruel man knew her secret – that she was the illegitimate
daughter of Fletcher Christian, the notorious mutineer,
hunted on the high seas after he’d left his ty...

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Grandad Flanagan sat on his stool to tell the children a tale he called,
‘Where there’s a walrus there is a way’.

‘Young Dan from Ireland’s lovely Dingle was always in trouble at school.
But it all changed when he found Wally, an amphibian mammal,
who, due to pollution, wouldn’t enter Mallybotton bay,
and so found herself in some distress.

But a cruising dolphin asked a seagull to fetch...

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Well do I recall the day my wife and I visited a bar called The Misfiring Musket, 
nestling on the banks of Ireland’s river Boyne.

I, being a leading literati in the world of fictional adventure, groaned,
when at every alcoholic pit stop, she would boast about my latest comedy,
Love On The Little Big Horn, about a couple obsessed with General Custer
and his demise at that battle of the same...

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‘She doesn’t have a Beyoncé bum, that Miss Too-Good-By-Moonlight,’
my ex-wife said, referring to a woman with an odd pseudonym,
after accusing me of ogling a photograph-laden blog on the world-wide-web,
whose strands were spreading across my chest, saying,
‘What a flighty madame, pontificating on subjects she’s no right to discuss.’

I woke up with a start, then quickly asked for a drink,
f...

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‘I’m working on my memoirs, dear Mary Lou, recalling several
memorable days spent with yourself,’
I announced, but as usual didn’t receive an answer.

Bemused, I thought back to the day it all started, 
that day in Dublin waiting for the St Kevin’s Bus,
when we both tra la la lallied to a busker who sang, 
‘I Met My Love On St Stephens Green’.

This turned out to be prophetic, because it ...

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Did you go to that place of the timorous tiger,
and look in awe in at an elephant with a very long ear,
which, according to legend was faithfully followed by a cow,
mooing in tune to God Save The Queen,
that wistful sound echoing across those mist-covered hills from the army camp?
I asked the spirit of my great-granddad, regimental Padre Beauchamp,
derided by his family as a 19th century mis...

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You may wonder why I, a famous actor,
when interviewed on hit US chat show, Late Night With Maclean,
appeared with a mighty lump on my forehead.

It all came about when a producer wanted me to bubble for a TV show,
just to minimize the danger of covid.

But to complicate matters, it turned out to be a passionate scene,
but I had to do it with the ex-wife, bubble, I mean.

We were to play...

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As a young man I visited Galway on the island of Ireland,
with its massive bay, so famed in song, and set off on a trip
to visit those remote Aran Islands under the tutelage of our guide, a comedian called Tommy.

He boasted that he would just shut his eyes and ‘hope for the best’,
while driving a coach which seemed to hover on the edge of a great precipice.

We all laughed, except some Ame...

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I’m a Lancashire lad who raced in spikes and string vest, 
a good athlete on the track and cross-country,
but was a disappointment to my old dad,
who’d dreamt of his only son scoring for the Saints,
that iconic rugby team with the red V.

I said it was just as well, ’cos I would surely have
dropped the ball, being all fingers and thumbs.

‘But being a clever boy, I went up to Oxford, 
wh...

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'I am interested in the musings of the spirit Meade',
was the random thought that entered my sub conscious.

But it was quickly banished to that no-man’s land lying between
the front-line trenches of reason and despair,
those two enemies constantly at war.

Gathering all my strength, I pushed it away,
though it would, like a schoolboy exploring
London’s seedy district of Soho,
occasional...

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The following is a report by BBC Wildlife campaigner Sir David Attenborough,
addressing the Royal Society for The Protection of Wildlife

‘Contrary to popular belief, the magical ostrich Awesome Ozzie possesses a large brain,
and is regarded by naturalists as a freak,
helping drought-stricken villages when the clouds refuse to precipitate.
However, he is outdone in that department by Percy T...

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Little Lucy was a hit on the South American
city of Guatemala’s shanty-town cabaret,
somersaulting across the stage singing,
‘I was raised in the shadow of Mount Montezuma,
and am proud to call myself by my native name,
Lucian Allamandas, the last remaining Guatemalan Apache Indian.’

‘As a girl,’ she declared to travelling musician Monty Bullingham,
whom she met when they shared a dense t...

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When Susan emerged from the womb, her tiny lips beamed a smile,
wide enough to light up the rain-soaked African plains.

Her mother knew she’d reared a mischievous child,
by the way she winked when sucking her thumb,
attracting envious glances when running through the grass playing skip-along games.

But by morning’s light she was studying her textbooks,
in the hut that served as a classro...

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I like to think I’m posh, so like Billy Bunter in those books from my boyhood ,
I always said pater instead of father, mater, instead of mum,
and dreamt of attending an educational institution such as
the fictional Greyfriars whose 'master's educated Bunter Minor.

So, it was with a heavy heart I walked through the gates of Mulchester Marton,
a public school favoured by those who pursued the...

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Have you heard of my love, cute Claribel,
the singer who, her voice soaring above the chalk Downs,
from Devil’s Dyke to Balham Cove, became known
as The Brighton Belle?

It was she, who when asked where
she was from by a devoted fan,
one Miss Mary MacVeagle, of county Clare,
answered, ‘Hove, a posh district, west of Brighton.’

Mary commented, ‘Oh, I went there on my honeymoon.’
It was ...

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Those Cumbrian mountains, Glaramara and Scafell,
which stand like mighty sentinels guarding the approaches to Cumbria’s coast,
once echoed to the sound of the Hairy Hipnochroids,
those huge horny cattle, who with their huge teeth,
make a mighty ‘chomp, chomp!’ noise,
chewing tough heather and thistle, then roaring ‘Mac Mullett Moose Maa!’,
meaning ‘Our neighbours prefer us up here, as we’ve ...

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A TV producer told me I didn’t look like an athlete,
when I was cast as a competitor in the Middington-Fiddle Village Big Mudder race,
in an episode of that corny popular drama, Country Constable,
during which, you’ve guessed it, a murder or two inevitably takes place.

‘But I used to do!’ I protested, to no avail.

So my mind harked back to when I ran through mud so deep, 
a tractor was u...

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I arrived early at the Copper Steampot,
the tea rooms with an authentic olde worlde ambience,
which I’d chosen as ideal for meeting women from that new dating site,
Easy Romance For Little Pence.

An old pal had encouraged me to move on, saying,
‘It’s time you got off the fence, you’ll get a sore ass.’

As I waited I reflected on this sage advice, repeatedly glancing at the clock.
You may...

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I’m a Lancashire lad who lives in Harrogate,
that pleasant spa town beloved of Victorian gentry.

I tried to convert the locals to black puddings,
tripe and George Formby, but gave up,’cos unlike my favourite rugby league club,
Twiddlewick Tykes, I know when I’m beat.

They ruled the roost in the Northern Division,
and though he received his share of abuse,
Charles Bunty-Bushworth became ...

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One night, nestling in my exotic greenhouse,
with its climbing vines, orchids and tropical bougainvillea –
a veritable menagerie of plant life, I remembered a song by some pop star,
inspired after he, in a vain attempt to resurrect her image, stole his lover’s looking glass.

It went, ‘I am but a fool for you,’ and struck a chord with my troubled soul,
brought low by a silly drunken pass to...

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Those who remember that enigmatic fellow, Johnson O’Pouncy,
were told by those who knew him in the old West,
that, though he appeared to be of limited means,
he’d amassed enough funds to take over a shack
just outside Horsetrough City, in Texas, which wasn’t worth a hill of beans.

Neighbour Jebadiah Jenkinson remembers meeting this tall,
enigmatic man with his dog Cactus, and wondering wha...

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Rising out of the Ulster coast, I, the mountain God Slieve Donard, 
greeted you when you returned as a young man, 
saying, ‘Welcome, the faery sentries below warned me of your approach.'

As a child, you laughed when told magical creatures
inhabit the mountains of Mourne, my mountain land.
You came once before from that torn city, Belfast, 
limping along like a wounded warrior, disillusione...

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