I AM A MOTORWAY

“The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
If men lack knowledge and desire, then clever people will not try to interfere.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.”

TAO TE CHING by LAO TZU

Obesity does not kill. I am 10 stone overweight, I have shrunk to five foot six and at 82 I continue to confound the medical profession. Diabetes under control, alcoholism a distant but happy memory, liver recovered. Couldn’t wait to tell the doctor my glad tidings.

“Old news,” he told me. “Recent research has shown us there is no relation of obesity to mortality.”

Sometimes I think doctors enjoy watching us suffer on endless diets and denials.

That at the end of another Week Dolorous in which no orifice remained unplumbed.This picture is more a motorway map than portrait. The medical profession is at its happiest snapping away at my innards in pursuit of cancer camps. Now they have a new and thrilling quest: the Mystery of the Missing Blood, about an armful on the Hancock Scale. Wielding an intrusive camera, Dr Bloodhound left no bowel cranny unturned this week. What used to be my colon is now busier – and as often photographed - as the road from Benghazi to Tripoli.

And all this in the week when my rival the M25 had its 25th birthday.

Eager pharmaceutical paparazzi have once again photographed my every available tubular wall and some I had always hoped were unavailable. But no. They seek blood here, they seek blood there, those cameras seek blood everywhere. And that is not the worst of it. Ownership of a colonoscopy adds a fresh dimension of horror to the pre-op purging.

Nothing more to do but lie back and think of England. As so often at times of stress I went scurrying to the past. In this case to the Beaumaris Festival, my favourite time in my favourite town, where every year I interviewed the stars before a lovely audience.

So many golden memories. Asking the opera giant Geraint Evans how he got the ideas for his splendid make ups and being told, “If I had known you when I was preparing Falstaff I would have modelled him on you.” And then shortly afterwards getting a photo inscribed “From One Falstaff to Another”.

Telling the glamorous pianist Moura Lympany I had fallen love with her as a child because during austerity wartime she had worn such glamorous frocks. “Made out of second hand curtains,” she confessed. So I had fallen in love with soft furnishings, I told her, which amused her so much she invited my wife and me to stay with her in Rasigueres in the South of France. Alas, the proposed biography did not come off.

I usually insisted on one to one interviews but on one occasion I agreed to interview four. Alas that meant I only had time for a brief chat with soprano Rebecca Evans of whom I am a slavish admirer. She was still nursing in a South Wales hospital and singing in off duty moments and she too confessed she had made her own frock.

I have the fondest memories of Tito Beltran, a thoroughly nice man and supremely talented. Pursued by women who were to become his downfall. One persuaded a court in Sweden she had not consented to love making. Tito, the gentlest and most courteous of men, was sentenced to a term in gaol I am convinced he did not deserve.

Meanwhile back at the Blood Letting - or to put it more accurately Veins to Let - Dr Bloodhound is forced to admit failure. Intestine, intestine everywhere but not a drop to drink for eager vampires.

Dr Bloodhound is not beaten yet. He is sending me to another branch of the questing camera. This time in Kettering, where more of the Bloodhound pack has got a tiny camera housed in a capsule which I swallow. It enables them to draw coverts as yet undrawn in body parts unhunted. Truly a blood sport but as yet no word on how they are going to retrieve their camera. I don’t like the idea of it endlessly questing like some tireless vein vole.

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Tycoons’ salaries have leapt up 50 per cent and are rightly condemned by politicians who are refusing to increase their contribution to their own over-generous pensions.

WELSH SQUELCHED

In another life I was Welsh so I took last week’s World Cup debacle very personally indeed.

My rare Welsh bits are used to being upset. It used to annoy me that the Welsh were seen as narrow- minded chapel-goers, in suits made from the battered covers of old prayer books. I even took sides in the deep enmity which exists between North and South Wales. It can be virulent. The usually benign novelist Gwyn Thomas, a South Walian, said of the Northerners: “Their idea of gaiety is a purple spotted shroud.”

That is neither true nor kind. Rene Cutforth was nearer the mark with his “Mediterranean in the rain”. Certainly that is true of the 'gwerin', the working men and women I knew when I lived on Anglesey. It was the faux middle class who invented nationalism, largely to ring fence the good jobs on offer.

The Welsh gwerin is witty, funny, generous, and it respects scholarship. It would never occur to them to think of creative writing - as the English do - as a hobby. The Welsh peasants are quick witted and wildly generous. An eminent psychiatrist Dafydd Alun Jones once pointed out to me that 'spree' is a Welsh word (sbri in Welsh). It describes the actions of God-fearing farmers who disappear for days of revelry. Only getting home in time for Sunday chapel.

He said the reason his countrymen had so many religious revivals was that their eagerness to debauch was forever leading them to the edge of the Pit, from which the revivals dragged them back.

My mates were people like Hughie Bugail who was our village policeman. Well, that is what the Chief Constable thought. Bugail means shepherd and Hughie's main occupation was policing the flock of pedigree sheep he kept on Malltraeth Marshes, breeding and training sheepdogs, and the only crooks he collared were shepherds' crooks that were works of art.

Bob Ty Lawr lived in a barn with his long dog Fly. When he was refused a drink in a posh coastal pub, the Mermaid, he picked up a goldfish bowl from the bar, drank it, ate the fish, stamped out of the pub, jumped into the Menai Strait and swam to Caernarfon, where he had four pints in The Castle and then swam back.

Eddie Pont Dic was part cap, an oily plate that grew like a fungus from the top of his head. He observed of caravanners who rented his orchard: “Funny people the Sais (English). They eats in the garden and shits in the house.”

Owen Thief was a brilliant footballer. He had the talent of a young George Best. He was the only boy to be capped twice for the Welsh Schoolboys. Everton snatched him up as soon as he left school. An Anglesey boy who had barely crossed the Menai Bridge except to pay football, the bright lights of Liverpool dazzled him. On his first night he fell into bad company and discovered drink. Subsequently he was sent to prison where he shared a cell with Harry McVicar.

I once gave it as my opinion that Gwyn the Lift was the perfect name for the village taxi driver. I was deafened by snorts of disbelief. ”Don't leave anything lying about,“ I was warned.

Gwyn shared the wife of a farm labourer by whom he had a son. He blamed it on the black-out. Both he and his wife took a great interest in the boy's welfare and visited him weekly. The labourer explained to me: “I don't like what is going on but what can I do? I have got to have my shirts washed.”

The wife of an oyster farmer, Terry Barrack, moved in with the landlord of the local inn, The Groeslon. “It's terrible,” Terry told me, “I have to go all the way to Menai Bridge for a pint.”

Our councillor's husband Glyn Brownson, who was half Indian, was known as “Glyndustani”. An Indian pedlar who came to his door was met with a torrent of Indian. “Go easy,” said the pedlar nervously in a broad Welsh accent, “I'm from Cardiff.”

After dining with the script writer John Stephenson, I realised that I kept swerving to the wrong side of the road. I stopped the car at the nearest phone box.

“Who you ringing?” asked John. “The police,” I told him. ”I need a lift home.”

Horrified, he insisted on taking the wheel. I told Gwyn, our other bobby, about it and it was his turn to be horrified. “He had no right stopping you ringing me,” he said. ”That is how accidents are caused.”

My wife and I were under the protective wing of the village family of black sheep, called cruelly the 'cacau' (shit). The eldest, Trefor, asked me if I had any gardening jobs. Since it was December, I had none. So he went to the Groeslon, snatched the till and ran away with it. He got about five yards - and two years in prison.

His brother Raymond came to us every year for his Christmas dinner (we subsequently discovered he went to five other houses). Trefor had told me it was my fault he stole the till because I wouldn't give him any gardening. The logic was faulty but I still felt guilty. Raymond told me that because of a warders' strike his brother was being held in a police station cell in Wrexham. I had many friends there from my days as a freelance in Chester so I rang the custody sergeant to ask him to put Trefor on the phone so we could wish him a Merry Christmas.

The sergeant quivered with indignation: “You should know better, Skiddy.”

“Aw, come on,” I said, “who’s going to know?”

“It's not a matter of that,” said the sergeant, “he's not had his pudding yet. You'll have to ring back in half an hour.”

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STOP PRESS

Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, continued to dog the family from beyond the grave. On October 21, 2011, the Daily Mail published a startling exclusive.

“Downton's greatest secret: A lonely countess, an illicit love affair with an Egyptian prince... and an Earl who has no right to his title. The extraordinary claims about a real life Lord...

By CHRISTOPHER WILSON

“Now here’s a Downton Abbey storyline that writer Julian Fellowes would dismiss as too far-fetched: that the steely Earl of Grantham has no right to his title and should be booted out of the Abbey to make way for a distant cousin.

Yet, in real life, this could indeed be the case for the poor unassuming 8th Earl of Carnarvon, whose family history has been plundered for the storyline of the top-rated TV series and whose stately home, Highclere Castle, is used as its backdrop.

“For new genealogical evidence points to the uncomfortable fact that Lord Carnarvon’s grandfather may well have been the son, not of an English aristocrat, but of an Indian prince. Furthermore, there’s evidence that the family knew about it and covered it up.”

“If this is true, it would mean that the present earl, Eton and Oxford-educated George Carnarvon, has no right to his title, and that the privilege should pass to an unassuming 39-year old Devon teacher, Alan Herbert.

“The author of a new biography of 55-year old Lord Carnarvon’s great-grandmother has unearthed explosive evidence which could alter the 218-year history of the famous title — and provide Julian Fellowes with some rich source material for the next series of Downton.

“William Cross, the writer, claims that Carnarvon’s ancestor, the 5th earl, was undersexed and showed more interest in photographs of nude women than in the real thing.

“His ‘sham’ marriage to heiress Almina Wombwell (they wed in 1895) was merely one of convenience — she brought with her a colossal fortune, just at a time when the family coffers were almost drained. The deal was, he got the money, she got a title.

“But Mr Cross says that Lord Carnarvon was not deeply attracted to his wife — nor she to him — and that sexual relations may have remained dormant long after their marriage.

“Carnarvon’s closest friend was Prince Victor Duleep Singh, a godson of Queen Victoria and the son of the last Maharajah of Lahore. Though a Sikh, he was welcome in the very highest echelons of society and was a close friend of Edward VII.

“Victor had been a friend of Carnarvon at Eton and, as they grew up, he led the young Englishman into ‘wild ways’. They gambled ruinously, and while on a trip to Egypt, Victor fixed up the young peer with a prostitute so he could lose his virginity. ’But Carnarvon contracted a malady from one of the whorehouses, and after returning to England almost died,’ reveals Mr Cross. ‘He retained for life the facial marks from the effects of the disease. Thereafter, Carnarvon was sexually blighted. His fall-back — with his valet Fernside as his confidant — was taking photographs of women. Naughty pictures became his passion, and at the height of his voyeurism he commissioned 3,000 nudes from a photographic studio.’

“If Carnarvon wasn’t interested in his new wife, ten years his junior, then his best friend was. Prince Victor practically lived at Highclere Castle, in Hampshire. ‘He had plenty of opportunity,’ says Mr Cross. Significantly, when the Countess — Almina — became pregnant, she made two sets of plans for the birth of her child.

“The first, official, plan was to have the baby delivered at the Carnarvon family home in London’s Berkeley Square. But she also rented another house — and for good reason. ‘She was terrified,’ says William Cross. ‘The safe house was her planned refuge — just in case the baby was born with the wrong skin pigment.’

In the event, she gave birth to a son on November 7, 1898, who turned out to be fair-skinned, for though Prince Victor had the dark skin of his race, his mother, Bamba, was a white woman.

“Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together, so as a mixed race man Prince Victor had a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin in his sperm — and so had the chance of having white offspring.

“In any case, the earl accepted the child as his own, and in so doing averted the inevitable divorce and loss of funds — for it was his wife’s fortune which was to allow him, in a few years’ time, to take his place in history as the man who uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Almina’s riches took care of that.

Regardless of the boy’s skin colour, the peer’s abiding concern was that if it became publicly suspected that he was indeed the son of Prince Victor, it would have had ruinous consequences on the Carnarvon dynasty, and call into question the whole future of Highclere Castle itself. His wife’s closeness with the Sikh had to be hushed up.

“And so it was — until about 15 years ago, when the then earl decided to commission a biography of Almina. The incriminating evidence was uncovered by the Reverend David Sox, an American academic.

“‘Just between the two of us,’ Sox wrote to a friend soon after his findings, ‘I’ve discovered (quite by accident in the archives) that the earl’s real father was Prince Victor. Victor was constantly at Highclere, as going through my visitors’ books indicates.’

“Until Sox’s startling claim, the 7th earl, a close friend of the present Queen and her racing manager from 1969 to 2001, had made well-publicised plans to publish the biography. But as soon as the awful truth was uncovered, the book was dropped and never mentioned again.

“Sox was regarded as a reliable historian, according to the long-serving Highclere housekeeper, Maureen Cummins. She says: ‘He came into the castle and did a lot of research. In fact, he was so knowledgeable that he was employed for a time as a guide. So it is highly unlikely he would have made the story up.’

“Aristocratic families, beady about their possessions and titles, have learned over centuries how to beat off predators who, throughout history have fed off the rich and famous. The Carnarvons would not want their lands and status to pass to a junior branch of the family — and so the scandal was hushed up, the skeleton put firmly in the back of Highclere Castle’s capacious closets.

“William Bortrick, executive editor of Burke’s Peerage, is unfazed by the revelations: ‘Throughout the history of the British aristocracy such circumstances did happen,’ he says. ‘Probably more often than people realised.’

Indeed, among the present ranks of the aristocracy there is at least one duke and an earl who are generally known not to be the sons of the men outwardly thought to be their fathers.

“‘The only requirement in law is for an hereditary peer, when he succeeds to the title, to produce his birth certificate to prove his identity,’ I was told by another authority. ‘If the certificate falsely claims he is legitimate, and nobody challenges it, he goes through on the nod.’

“And so Prince Duleep’s son became an earl and nobody blinked an eye.

So the question remains – who is the real Earl of Carnarvon?

Step forward Alan Mervyn Edward Hugh Herbert, a bachelor who celebrates his 40th birthday later this month. Mr Herbert descends in a direct line from the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, his great-grandfather (and the father of the under-sexed 5th Earl). This earl married twice, and his son by the second marriage, the Hon Mervyn Herbert, was Alan’s grandfather.

“There are no other male lines of succession in the family apart from Alan and his cousin, the present ‘Earl’. A shy and retiring teacher, he lives in a flat in the large and glorious Devonshire house once owned by his family, another branch of the Carnarvon clan.

“When approached by the Mail this week and told that he had a strong claim to be the rightful Earl, he greeted the news with astonishment.

‘Wow,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I was aware we had some kind of connection with the Carnarvons but that is all. This is a big surprise, I must say. I’d be curious to know more.’

“Such curiosity could open a hornet’s nest, since quite apart from the titles, there’s the question of Highclere Castle, the Carnarvon estates and a multi-million Downton Abbey legacy at stake.

“While it doesn’t automatically follow that if he proves his superior claim to the title, family possessions would pass his way — but they might.

Author William Cross asserts that Almina Carnarvon was made to sign papers attesting to her son’s legitimacy which may well have secured the family’s millions for the present incumbents of Highclere Castle, but often lawyers have a way of finding loopholes in such deeds, particularly if the truth had not been told.

“It is too early yet for the bewildered Mr Herbert to pursue his claim to the earldom, but the door is open for him to do so.

“‘As a matter of decency and courtesy it’s usual to wait for the death of a peer before making a competing claim,’ says Ian Denyer, a Crown Office constitutional expert based at the Palace of Westminster.

‘But there’s no reason, if he wanted to ruffle some feathers, why he shouldn’t go ahead now.’

“The difficulty facing Mr Herbert is that the crucial evidence naming Prince Victor as the father of the 6th earl resides in the archives at Highclere Castle, where biographer William Cross found it.

“Of course, modern science using DNA could prove the truth once and for all. Indeed, the Sikh historian Peter Bance, who has written a biography of Prince Victor Duleep Singh, says that hair from the prince and his younger brother was kept after their deaths.

“Matched with DNA from a member of the Carnarvon family, it could be tested to prove if Mr Herbert is entitled to swap his Devon flat for a stately home in Hampshire.

“Ironically, Mr Herbert has never watched Downton Abbey, saying: ‘I did hear something about it on the radio. It sounds like something I should watch.’

If he did, he might see the 1,000-acre estate where the serial is set and consider the fickle nature of the finger of fate.”

■ The Life And Secrets Of Almina Carnarvon by William Cross can be bought via http://lifeandsecretsofalminacarnarvon.yolasite.com

Which reminds me that today the Ferret and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary and I must go now and open the champagne, grateful that we do not know a single Indian Prince.

YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP

question I am most often asked is how I manage week after week to find topics about which to be scornful. Believe me, that is the easy bit. What is really difficult is to find comic incidents more bizarre than life offers unvarnished. I gave up writing satirical novels because whenever I invented a risible situation life itself provided examples that exceeded the fiction.

This week life beat me so comprehensibly that I am not even going to try to compete.

Here is the news:

We are hovering on the brink of a war of coloured skins. On R4. Woman’s Hour was doing one of those sensitive investigations into social ills which it does so badly, though not on this occasion by the Dolorous Dame Jenni Murray.

The subject was mixed race. Listeners were asked to ring in with their experiences. One said that she still hurts from being told to

“go home nigger”.

Shock horror in the studio and profuse apologies. Not to the poor woman to whom this terrible thing happened. The presenter was shocked to the core by the use on air of the word ‘nigger’. So affected was she that she twice, her voice throbbing with emotion, apologised with a lengthy explanation of how listeners would be upset at hearing the word.

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Capitalism is collapsing round our ears. More than a million are unemployed, most of them youngsters. We have just suffered our first teenage riot against which the police were powerless. The EU toy safety directive states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke. Party games that include whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or the chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.

Whistle blowers that scroll out into a long, coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

As well as new rules for balloons and party whistles, the legislation will impose restrictions on how noisy toys, including rattles or musical instruments, are allowed to sound.

All teddy bears meant for children under the age of three will now have to be fully washable because EU regulators are concerned that dirty cuddly toys could spread disease and infection.

An EU official insisted that safety experts knew best. "You might say that small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, but not anymore and they will be safer for it," said an official.

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Meanwhile officials running Telford Junior League have refused to record heavy losses - to spare young players from embarrassment. Scores are limited to 1-0 victories and 0-0 or 1-1 draws across 20 divisions in age groups from the under-10s through to under-16s.

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Under yet another EU ruling posters showing ladies in lingerie must not be posted on billboards near schools.

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BURNING poppies or abusing soldiers may no longer be illegal under plans unveiled yesterday.

Ministers are considering making it legal to use insulting words or actions to avoid "criminalising free speech".

Yobs can currently be nicked for being "threatening, abusive or insulting".

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, was charged last year after burning poppies and five Muslims were convicted for shouting insults at a homecoming parade.

GREAT TRUTHS

From my panchromatic chum Colin Gower:

If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-- Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-- Thomas Jefferson

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-- Aesop

And consider this...

What one person receives without working for,.another person must work for without receiving.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL

When we stepped through the door I thought I had arrived in some celestial butcher's shop. There, in proud array, came cuts of beef which had been hung so long they came with a pension book. Sausages? Paddington sausage which is flavoured with marmalade, black pudding sausages - sausages in short with all the flavours of the Indies. HOME CURED back bacon, plus bacon steeped in molasses and ribs of beef like gargantuan dockers hooks. Opposite, a counter of gourmet gins and liqueurs of every conceivable fruitsweat. On again to sausage rolls where the flaky pastry struggles to contain the meat; home made pork pies in which only the jelly of pigs' trotters is permitted to bind the meat; and pastry fit to make teeth weep with joy. Lucious lasagne; home made steak and ale pie in which the ale would, in the words of Beaumont and Fletcher, "make a cat speak".

Did you mention cheese? TWENTY different varieties including Black Bomber and Snowdonia Bouncer. All meats are grown on the farm and locally slaughtered is the boast.

"Not ALL the meat," I carped, waving my stick at today's specials: haunch of crocodile, bear ragout, python steaks, emu, venison
etc."

"Look out of the window," advised a kindly butcher with cheeks of rosy red. "That's the crocodile house over there and you can

just see the emus behind the deer herd. I regret that we buy in python and bear which require special management skills."

And then I saw it. A tray of Barnsley Chops. Can there be a soul so dead it is a stranger to the Barnsley Chop? A palate so starved of joy it has never felt the caress of meat so sweet it could flavour cake? Surely not. The Barnsley Chop is lamb's stout response to a T Bone steak and in happier days it came with its own kidney, hanging coyly from its under belly. In Doncaster next to the pie and pea shops (another loss to civilisation) every butcher worth his saveloy offered Barnsley Chops.

But stay.....these are pale imitations of the Barnsley Chop. Where is the kidney? The Barnsley Chop does not come with kidneys, I am told. Heresy. No chop would be allowed to leave his mother's side unless accompanied by a kidney chaperone. I emailed a chum with whom I grazed many a Barnsley Chop, sluiced with quantities of Barnsley Bitter.

He wrote back: "Have had the same experience as you. The butcher sold me a Barnsley Chop and I wanted to know where the kidney was. 'No kidney in a Barnsley Chop," he said. And he was adamant. Some years earlier I had been to a restaurant in Barnsley (I think it was called Brookfield, or something similar) especially to have a Barnsley Chop. They claim to have originated 'the B-chop' dish and I remember there was a kidney on my plate. Very nice too. But when I got your note I asked the village butcher the question and he said no kidney in it. So I got in touch with the Barnsley restaurant today, spoke to the chef and he said no kidney in a B-chop. He said the dish had been originated from their kitchen many years ago. 'How come I had a kidney in my B-chop?' I asked. 'You probably had the B-chop dish which includes a kidney but it was not part of the chop.' he said."

Back to the Heavenly Butcher's shop where I threw the question open to the massed butchers. One older and wiser than the rest told me I was quite right. As I might have guessed, it's that pesky EC and "'elf and safety."

"Blame the Meat Inspectors," he told me. "They heartlessly separate kidney and chop in the abbatoir. It's the same with pork chop," he reminded me. "Always came with a full complement of kidney but no longer."

I suppose we are lucky they leave on the fat which protects it against snaw and blaw.

Can there be a more compelling reason for joining the clamour to leave that luckless body?

And while we are on the subject consider this:
Pythagoras' Theorem: 24 words
Archimedes' Principle: 67 words
Ten Commandments: 179 words
US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words…
… Europe's Problems Summed Up!

Mind you, we are fighting back.

A Texas businessman decorated a 9-foot-tall tree last Christmas in the lobby of a JP Morgan Chase Bank branch as a favour to the manager. There were protests from On High and the branch manager was told the tree had to go. Wiser counsels have prevailed.
Chase has changed its policy for 2011 and will now allow branch banks to display Christmas trees in their lobbies.

Friends, we are slowly winning the "War on Christmas", says the businessman, but the work is not finished. We must continue to show retailers and national companies that "It's OK to say Merry Christmas." The local paper there is running a campaign offering Christmas protest buttons. Ideal with a Stetson and snakeskin boots.

King Tut and Queen Tut Tut

I am not writing to the Jockey Club, nor even the Guinness Book of Records, but the Ferret is claiming to everyone who will listen that I am the first man in history (here she usually adds ‘it would have to be a man’) to overdose on Furosemide, the well-known diuretic. My point is that I cannot make a claim because it was accidental and not carried out under supervision or in the presence of authorised time keepers under racing conditions. .

Anyway, I have things to ponder which are rather more worrying. I think I got the wrong blood in the transfusion of recent date. I think they filled my tank with the Rhesus Negative of Count Dracula. I haven’t slept for a week, I have gone off garlic sausages and I cannot see a window without wanting to fly through it. Either that or the man in the next hospital bed who howled all night was at my windpipe in the wee small hours of the morning. I have been on E-Bay but not an ounce of Transylvanian soil is to be had, even for ready money.

Talking of people eating, Julian Fellowes, the chap who wrote Downton, the TV series, enjoys nothing more than a quick snack on the hand that feeds him. He has had the grace to apologise for his latest rebuke of fans of the series who have pointed out anachronisms, but the sin remains.

Time, I think, for the hand to bite back. The whole wonderful series is based on a massive misconception. The eldest daughters of the landowning classes are not human beings: they are bargain tokens to be exchanged for land/money/rank. No horny young man would have attempted to seduce one when there were younger daughters on hand. True, there was a Turkish diplomatic mission in Britain at the time in which the play is set. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling. One of the Sultan’s personal guards, an Albanian, had declared Egypt an independent state. Two America missionaries started a literary society in Beirut where the only subject on the agenda was nationalism. There were secret societies by the dozen. The Sultan urgently needed an alliance with a Western power and England was the first choice. But for the intransigence of Churchill an alliance could have gone ahead and possibly World War One avoided.

There is no way a young diplomat would prejudice the outcome of those talks by seducing his host's unmarried eldest daughter.

A new chum of mine William Cross has just published a fascinating biography of Almina, the 5^th Countess of Carnarvon, who lived at Highclere at about that time. Now there is a lady crying out for a series. And that is not all she was crying out for.

She was fond of a Mellor Moment. When she felt the urge for horizontal gardening she had an arrangement with one of the gardeners at Highclere. She later told a friend how she would stand away from her desk in one of the windows and that was the signal to summon him. She was nothing if not ecumenical. Shortly after her marriage to the 5^th Earl she began an affair with his best man, an Indian Prince.

Almina was the natural daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, who bought her an aristocratic husband, the earl, with a dowry of £400,000. The Prince, who was at Eton with the groom, came at no extra charge.

In fairness, Almina was a generous lady. As in the TV series, she established a hospital for wounded officers at Highclere. She was very strict. When she caught a nurse in bed with an officer in the Scots Guards the nurse was given a severe reprimand. She told her: “That sort of thing puts a severe strain on the patient’s heart and he might have died as a result.”

The hospital had a profitable sideline. Socialites could use it for abortions. No wonder the king sent along a gift of 120 bottles of port, sherry, claret and burgundy.

Anyone was fair game for Almira, even friends of her son. Her most public affair was with Colonel Ian Dennistoun, the husband of her best friend Dorothy, whom she stole and married. Almina insisted that she had sought permission from her husband to start the affair (he at the time was busy excavating the tomb of Pharaoh Tut).Dorothy responded by suing her ex-husband for £13,035 and 18 pence in alimony. In court she claimed he had made her sleep with General Sir John Cowans, the Quartermaster General of the British Army who was involved in a number of similar scandals and must have had a busy war. In return Cowans promoted her husband. The new Colonel wrote to her: “Oh girlie, I hate you using that lovely body of yours as a gift.”

The jury found for Dorothy but in a reserved judgement the Judge dismissed their findings. Despite winning, Almina was ruined by the publicity. Things went from bad to worse. When she died in Bristol in 1969 all Almina’s money had gone and she was renting a terraced house in a semi slum.

Now I reckon if Fellowes had used that for a plot it wouldn’t have mattered if the houses in Downton had been festooned in TV aerials. No one would have noticed.

Sick Note

A bear however hard he tries/ Grows tubby without exercise/ He takes what exercise he can/By falling off the ottoman.

I do know how the bear feels. After a month of committed falling over onto various surfaces, I decided to consult the doctor. The NHS has a new miracle cure. By the time you get to see the doctor you're cured and when I went I felt fine. The doctor did not share my view. He said, 'You're dying again.' Apparently I was down to a blood count of six when it should have been 12. The practice phone was hot as he tried to contact a gastric surgeon and I was rushed into our new, as yet unpaid for, hospital in Peterborough for an immediate blood transfusion. That was two days ago and I'm still waiting.

Although the hospital seems reluctant to give me blood they are very enthusiastic about taking it. I have had half-hourly blood tests since I arrived. Now it's taking rather longer to find blood than it did to find the Constock Lode. I can't help wondering why they bother prospecting for more blood. Empty veins suggest I'm already dead. But they appear to be enjoying themselves so much it seems a pity to spoil their search.

I've suggested the nurse should grow her two side teeth and wear a cloak, that they might hire a bat on favourable terms or, alternatively, pour some blood in before they take any more out. I await their decision.

As always, the legions of nurses fluttering around my bed have been the soul of kindness and concern. The male nurse is currently on leave from Afghanistan where's he's a Queen Alexandra Nurse with the T.A. He has been twice blown up and once shot. Under the circumstances I am reluctant to complain. Food first class, doctors a delight.

The new hospital was built under the PFI scheme so we'll own it about the time the world ends. It is a monstrous waste of money. Though luxurious in the extreme – patients have their own alcoves or are in multi-purpose wards for four where each patient can be curtained off and each bed has a free TV – the waste of space stultifying.

Coming in, you enter a vast atrium in which you could rebuild classical Rome. It is lined with bookshops and cafes of every description. The nurses tell me the super-wide corridors are endless between departments and they feel as though they're walking 35 miles a day.

It is designed as a leisure centre rather than a place of caring for the sick.

Yours sincerely,

Dracula's Little Helper – and go easy on the garlic when reading this.

P.S. No flowers. Blood sausages appreciated.

PPS. Escape Committee Minute 24/11/11 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Skidmore I , local acting sergeanr retired had his escape plan approved by the cttee at1300 hours. He will leave Stalag at his convenience by any means.

Grounds for escape (Priority ONE)

; A Polish patient put in the next bed of Friday 23, howled incessantly until Sat 1200 hours which was very eunnerving for patient involved in blood transferrance. Nurses unable to quiet Polish patient who continued to howl in unknown tongue.. One nurse of Carribean extraction and pleasing contours asked at 2 am if he would like a piece of cake, a cure obviously much pracised by her in family emergency.. Polish patient demurred and continued to look longingly at Skidmore I, local acting sergeant (rtd)

Committee approved temporary escape returning Monday am to keep appointment at Endoscopy Unit (Special Measures) where torture is arranged with internal photography; wearing hospital identity tag and pretending he has come from ward.

(typed in heste.eat after reading)

IS IT STILL 7/11

I am indebted to Lord Trefgarne who charged the discredited Libyan Government £940,000 for offering to organise a prison break for the Lockerbie Bomber. As I twitched my way through another sleepless night I thought how much I would have liked a slice of that to sprinkle on my porridge.

Then it struck me. President Obama could use the stratagem to pay America’s debt to its landlord, China. He should put in a bill to Al Qaeda for PR services publicising its successful terrorist campaign blowing up, or down, the Twin Towers; and I am going to suggest he puts in a bit extra for frightening the world with the threat that there was another terror attack on the way. It must be the ultimate PR coup to dominate the world’s Media agenda for a week with a ten-year-old story using old pictures to illustrate it. The possibilities are endless. Think of the money we could save by cancelling the entire defence budget. For the foreseeable future we are going to be fighting an endless world war with an enemy using hand guns and dynamite, the weapons their grandfathers used on the North West Frontier in the Flashman Wars.

It will be a relief to escape from our cells in cyberspace to an earlier more less demanding age. Alas, there is little chance of that happening.

This week I have been trying to plumb the workings of the new security cards being issued all over the world to customers of the Hong Kong Bank of China. Think of it... Small, plastic electronic cards issued by whom? The Bank of China. Made in China is an oxymoron. I have drawers filled with electronic plastic gadgets made in China, none of which work.

These security cards are something again. I have ruined two cards and sent three intelligent Pakistani call service youngsters scurrying to darkened rooms where they are now making endless objects of Origami. Fitfully.

The buttons you have to press are tiny. When I eventually got the hang of it the operator made a short, formal speech of congratulation. He may even have bowed, and I swear I heard a ripple of applause go round the call centre. The main problem is racial. My friend the mathematician Garho Tong estimates that I weigh as much as the average Chinese family. In consequence mine is not the slim, tapering finger of Fu Manchu. I overwhelm Oriental press buttons, never covering fewer than two. When my moving finger writes, the buttons move on to get out of the way, the numbers on the buttons being so small. I have more cataracts than Niagara and I am deaf to the Indian calls, love or otherwise, and in consequence can’t hear what the call centre is telling me.

This week I have posted to readers with some reluctance a clever method of bypassing those charming people in far off call centres. They are not methods I would employ myself. I am a devoted admirer of these Children of the Raj.

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Wales is a Limited Company run by a small group of families, however much the Welsh Government preens itself. Sinecures come in dynasties so it is no surprise to learn that Rhodri Talfan Davies has been appointed Controller BBC Wales, like his father and his grandfather before him. I worked for all three of them. I also worked for a cousin who ran the biggest publishers in the country.

Interviewing me was the first broadcasting job given to Rhodri’s father before his meteoric rise. Not an arduous job. The interview only lasted three minutes and the producer, clearly in no doubt which side of his bread sheltered the butter, insisted we have a rehearsal. When I said I had been speaking most of my life and had pretty well got the hang of it, he said, “It’s not for your benefit. If the interviewer doesn’t know what you are going to say he won’t know what to ask you next.”

Talfan had been getting work experience in Border TV where he was known as “ Gerry”. When he came to BBC Wales he was Geraint.

He brought a friend as his deputy who spent much of his time writing plays for the competition - ITV. So it was no surprise to learn that the new Talfan doesn’t even live in Wales.

Broadcasting chum Mike Flynn writes from Thailand:

“I wonder if you may have missed this milestone in Welsh media. Responding to ‘sniffy’ comments about a Talfan Davies dynasty, given that his father and grandfather both held top jobs at BBC Wales before him, Mr Davies said: “I don’t worry about it too much. Inevitably people may scratch their heads and say how is it that he can be appointed.......”

In fairness, the Talfan clan were a pleasure to work for. They didn’t interfere and spread their considerable charm where-e’er they walked, so does it matter that the BBC is a family business?

I hadn’t listened to the station for years but when I heard from Mike Flynn I tuned in. It was like listening to the Rosetta Stone. Its message hasn’t changed since grand-dad ran the shop. It is still largely a home for orphaned gramophone records. The presenters still have voices like cheap scent and the women aren’t much different either.

It’s a great puzzle. The Welsh are generally speaking the wittiest, funniest and sharpest of ‘this septic islanders’. They produce the best actors, the finest commentators and singers and the funniest writers. But even with two languages to go at, the nearest they have got to a decent programme in their broadcasting history was the wartime ”Welsh Rarebit” which cannot have taken a lot of thinking about.

The kindest thing to say about Radio Wales is that it isn’t as bad as Radio Cymru, the Welsh language barrel of laughs. Mind you, the Black Death wasn’t as bad as Radio Cymru. Its programmes, in a Welsh few of its listeners can understand, attract audiences so small it would be cheaper to send the actors round to act in their living rooms.

This is probably sour grapes because the times they are a-changing. Noel Whitcomb, the legendary Daily Mirror columnist was tested for writing ability the hard way. He was handed a clipping from the Lancet about a patient who was writing a letter in his bath with the ink bottle on the floor beside him. The soap slipped out of his hand and went scuttering along the floor. He stepped out of the bath to retrieve it, slipped on its trail and sat on the ink bottle which disappeared up the nearest orifice. Noel was told he would get a column if he could make that into a story usable in a family newspaper. My test for a column in the Sunday Pictorial was to sanitise a story about a customer who was castrated by a whore whose fees he disputed.

Johann Hari won a job as columnist on the Independent when he came down from university and wrote two features in the New Statesman. His subsequent work won him the Orwell Prize.

He has had to give it back after admitting embellishing quotations from other writer’s works, plagiarism and using a pseudonym to attack his critics.

A sackable offence ? Not really. He has been suspended for four months without pay. He will only get his job back if he takes a course (at his own expense) in journalism, including ethics, IN THE UNITED STATES - which merits a hollow laugh. He has had to promise in the meantime not to blog or tweet for the Independent.

In return he will be allowed to go back to work for the paper and the report on his conduct will not be published, as would be the case with any other miscreant.

And they say getting jobs in the Media is