13 March 2003
Jeremy very much liked tinned beans. He would often spend hours with a freshly opened tin, dipping his fingers in and licking them clean without actually eating any of the beans. He just enjoyed the flavour of the sauce.
Once, he filled a bathtub with beans and climbed inside, but it had been a bit cold, plus the beans got caught in his jumper. Well, you didn't expect him to climb into the bean-bath naked did you.
Many foods are unsuitable for baths. Champagne is good, but cold. Beer is bad, and cold. Soup is interesting, at least it's warm, but the lumps can be unpleasant, so it's best to go for a creamy soup such as tomato, rather than chicken noodle. Of course the best kind of food-bath is a jelly bath.
Jeremy had had a jelly bath once. He bought �50 worth of jelly, made up all the mixture and filled the bath, only to find that it wouldn't set.
To set a bathful of jelly, you need to put your bath in a refrigeration unit, of the sort they have in supermarkets. So Jeremy wheeled his bath (it was one of those comedy baths-on-wheels) down to the supermarket and left it in there overnight, as you do.
The next day, it had set almost solid, but as it was a sunny day, a few hours out in the open was all it needed to get nice and slushy. So Jeremy jumped in.
Unfortunately, the jelly was somewhat spoiled by the strands of hair from his jumper and the whole thing was quite inedible. In the end, he had to flush it all down the toilet. What a day that was!
Jeremy told me that he once invented a mass spectrometer. You know what a mass spectrometer is, it's one of those chemistry things that analyses substances to tell you what they're made of. It tells you exactly which atoms are in something, and in what proportions. So if for example, you put some water into it, it would say you've got two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen, plus traces of lots of other things, like metals and fish droppings.
Jeremy's idea was very simple - it was based on pigeons. The motivation for this was to discover the make-up of custard. Why, I don't know, I can't stand the stuff. But basically, he would feed the custard to a cleverly-trained pigeon, who would then tell by taste which elements were in it, and with its foot it would tap out the atomic number of each of them.
Of course, I told Jeremy that was ridiculous. You could never train a pigeon to remember the entire periodic table. What you wanted to do was train a different pigeon for each element you need to recognise.
So Jeremy went about training his atomic pigeons. Some of the elements, such as oxygen and nitrogen were easy. But it was very difficult to get a pigeon to recognise the taste of elements like arsenic, due to the pigeon dying before it had managed to learn them.
Jeremy eventually had to ignore those elements, and set up his experiment using the surviving pigeons before he got arrested for animal cruelty. The day came when he invited us all round to watch him.
It was a bright sunny day, and the sewers were overflowing with jelly. We arrived at his house where he had 70 pigeons lined up, each in a golden cage marked with a label such as 'Argon' or 'Strontium'. The 'Uranium' pigeon looked particularly unwell.
Jeremy opened a tin of custard and put a small piece in each of the cages, when the most extraordinary thing happened. Each of the pigeons ate the custard, but not one of them tapped their feet!
In shock, Jeremy declared that the only possible explanation could be that the custard was in fact made up of 100% arsenic, and that he would never eat it again as long as he lived.
I've been hearing about the war in Iraq lately. There's a lot of British troops out there, particularly, the Royal Horse Artillery, which contains some friends of mine. Personally, I've always thought it was a bit cruel to fire a horse from a cannon, but I expect they don't suffer too much.
It's like in Spain, where they throw donkeys off towers. That's a bit harsh. I can imagine them leading the donkey up to the top of the tower - 'Ey, Donkey, oop ye come' - then just tossing them off. I expect the streets of Madrid are lined with donkey bones. Maybe Madrid tramps can scavenge enough ass flesh to survive by hanging around tall towers in case the occasional donkey should fall.
I've always wondered what the difference between a donkey and an ass is. And why is donkey pronounced 'dong-key', while monkey is pronounced 'mung-key'. Why isn't it 'mong-key' and 'dung-key'?
It must be terrible to have haemmorhoids. I think the main problem with having haemmorhoids is trying to spell the word when you email people about them. Much easier to use the word piles.
Having never had piles, I can't really comment, but it must be like having a cheeky little monkey hanging from your anus with one hand. Imagine if you had some nuts in your bottom, and a monkey put it's hand in to grab some. But, the monkey's hand containing the nuts is too big to get out again, and the monkey is too stupid to drop the nuts! Now that's a problem.
But then, who stores nuts in their bottom. I know squirrels store nuts in their cheeks, but those are different cheeks!
Have you ever heard of gerbilling? Nasty habit, sort of thing Richard Gere gets up to, if you know what I mean!
So why is it I keep hearing of all these footballers with hamstering injuries? Disgusting habit!
I've always been a fan of Saddam Hussein's moustache. So thick and bushy! I think he's modelled it on Freddy Mercury's. Can just imagine Saddam in front of the mirror in the bathroom at his palace, holding a hairbrush like a microphone, singing, 'Mama, just killed a man'.
The Paralympics are great. Just like the Olympics, but with wheelchairs. They've got all the same sports as in the Olympics, but slightly different. So instead of the 100m sprint, you've got the 100m wheelchair sprint. Instead of the pole vault, you've got the wheelchair pole vault.
There are some sports, however, which have failed to make the transition to the disabled world. Wrestling, for example. I've never seen amputee wrestling, I'm sure it would be a joy to watch. Another sport which would adapt very well to the disabled would be medeival jousting. You could even have celebrity medeival jousting, with, say, Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking lined up against each other, big sticks tied to their wheelchairs as they clash in the heat of battle.
I met Stephen Hawking once, just before his ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic, where he aimed to be the first disabled man to reach the South Pole. He had his wheelchair modified to be pulled by huskies, and it all went really well until the third day, when his chair fell over and he was dragged along for three miles before help could reach him. Such a shame really.
He also mentioned his desire to be the first disabled man in space, but that was somewhat hampered by the amount of rocket fuel he could actually fit onto his wheelchair.
I heard that all men's nipples are 8 inches apart. It's true apparently. Try it if you don't believe me.
I measured mine, and sadly they only come up to 7 1/2 inches, which makes me feel slightly inadequate. Oh well, it's not as if it matters. It doesn't make much difference, they're still useless.
Wouldn't it be great if they actually did something. Imagine if you could see through your nipples. That'd be great. The only downside would be going to the opticians, where you'd be fitted with a bra with lenses.
He'd say 'Could you read the third line of the chart please?', and you'd be sitting there trying to focus your left cup.
Does anyone remember the 2001 British census? Remember that cheeky email that went round, saying that everyone should put down a joke answer for the 'What religion are you?' question. It was sort of like a protest against such a meaningless question. Remember, we all agreed to put down 'Orangutan' as religion. Well, I did anyway.
Since then, my door has been knocked on non-stop by Jehovah's Orangutans, trying to convert me. It's been pretty difficult, especially since they don't speak English, they just jump up and down a lot waving their arms in a monkeyish way.
Of course, they'd be insulted by the comparison to monkeys. They split with the Monkeyist church a long time ago, the Orangutans are far more fundamentalist. Interesting church services though - they distribute free bananas.
Wow! Is it just me, or is this war the coolest thing ever? All those weapons and high-tech bombs, I think I'm going to come. Of course, I'm sure it'll all be over really quickly, and hopefully the UN will mop up the mess. Now where's my Kofi Annan tea-towel?