The Windhover

Lunch with the old lush (Helvin) on Monday - bonkers as usual! Told me of the time she was stranded in Madrid with only a Portuguese man-o-war and a packet of polo mints for company! Martin Clunes arrived with Janet Street-Porter in tow and, well, the afternoon was made to happen.

Speaking of Vendredi, my old Merci Beaucoup, I was flattered to received an invite from Ms Row-The-Boat (of boat rowing fame) to join a little organisation called "The Trumpington Set". Alarmed by my lack of either (a) an Alsatian or (b) a PhD in astrophysics, I thought that I was no good to be a Trumpingtoneer, but I was pleased to learn that, within an hour, my application process had been put into the cardboard wheelbarrow and turned into an Egg!

Off to Michael Parkinson's house on Thursday - spoke at length of the Westminster expenses scandal, until I realised that I had to make it back to London for a dinner party with Mr and Mrs Pitt in order to discuss a new project - The Life and Times of Tom Conte. I have been earmarked to play TC and, for one, can tell you I AM THRILLED! Megan, foxy by name, foxy by nature was not far from my thoughts, when suggested who would play Pauline Collins in the Shirley Valentine fragment, but, alas, I was told that the role would be played by either Oprah Winfrey or Luther Vandross!

Parkey texted at that point, with the news that my leg had fallen off! I smacked the waiter in the mouth at the news and broke several teeth in the process. The Pitts wrestled me to the ground and the Chef de Hotel summoned the constabulary and one was banged up for the night for an affray! Michael Douglas came and posted the usual bounty and I was out by Christmas morning in time to open my presents with Christopher Biggens and Mel C!

Ahoy! As they say in Czechoslovakia!

Nige

Saturday found us larking round at the Egyptian's again. A most glorious feast provided, as usual. He was talking about the time that Idi Amin visited him in his retreat in Port Stanley - Amin was a most uncomfortable houseguest and it seemed that the Egyptian would never get rid of him. Fortunately, one of the Egyptian's servants proposed trout for dinner and, with the expectant thrust of a nobleman at the waist of a young wench, Amin promptly took flight and headed back to Uganda on the presidential flight!

We were ensconced at Abbot's Bar on Sunday with Martin Clunes and chums for lunch, when Noel Edmonds and his entourage arrived. Sir Christopher Jawkins Q.C. spoke in favour of the motion ("This House contends that you should open the box, Sir") and Dame Judy Dench spoke against. Colin Firth made an honest (but useless) junior to Jawkins Q.C. and the well-honed barristerial skills of Mr Clive Anderson provided Dame Judy with a much capable assistance. When the House divided at around 6.20 pm, Members were most refreshed of a good debate and pleasantly watered with fine wines and ale. The "Noes" had it and the money was taken!

Profoundly displeased by the outcome of this particular spectacle, Edmonds challenged yours truly to a milk race in the car park and well I was just about to lay claim to the sack of spuds when the constabulary arrived and we were charged with causing an affray! Michael Douglas pitched up around midnight, La Zeta Jones in tow, and posted the usual ₤ 5,000,000 bail!

Garden news in brief: the halitosis is coming out a treat this year. I put it down to all the fine mornings we have enjoyed in May!

Next week I'm off to visit President Lech Kaczynski of Poland, no less!

Toodle pip.

Greetings from Kraków. Oh yes, I am here. In glorious sunshine I moonbound tinkered into the station, known as "Big Head". I burned a timid falcon and sidelined a bottom poker by smashooning it into a penjangle foundation. Nine ten and then eleven, I managed to smirk some shapes into a rhombus by spooning tesco into boing boing under a car fashioned old Mallard.

Goodnyghte.

Darling, really, it was such soggy pleasure. Oh, really it was.

Gloria Estefan came rolling out of the garden gate in her roller-skates, she took a swing with her brass handle at the passing Minster of State for Cars and shook a bag of turnips into next week. Beholding this sight, I, who had previously been sitting in a mulberry bush took my shoes and began trampling on the fixed gibbons we had planted last summer in a fit of rage.

Martin Lewis, oh kindly newshound he, put protruding teeth into a jar and flummoxed a pheasant who was basking in the golden sunshine with a glass of beer for a pillow.

Imagine my surprise when the constabulary turned up and we were all pinched for causing an affray!

Michael Douglas came to the rescue posting the usual five million pound bail, and we were free by lunchtime on Saturday. That is when the penguins visited with their ottoman horseshoes and things have not been the same since.

Tennis was invented last Thursday by William G Stewart.

FILM NEWS

Armstrong Coconut in Cannes

I am sat on the boardwalk sipping a disgustingly expensive cappuccino and pulling hard on a Gitanes. The sun slinks sexily into the sea like Scarlet Johansson into silk sheets. The opulence, the elegance is everywhere.

I can be in only one place - CANNES.

Everywhere is dripping with film. Actors parade full of fame, false fame, hopes and false hopes. Directors drip dastardly plots into the stratosphere of the stars, producers eye executives like forlorn prom princesses searching, in vain, for their king.

Everyday is night, every night is a first date: full of that tingle that frisson of excitement that you might, just might, before dawn, before the pulsating quick burst of fortune's fever get, yes, just for a minute before the clock strikes twelve and your shoes, the costume, everything, becomes a wash of dreams and made up insincere moments of unrequited love, a kiss.

Oh, my God, THIS IS CANNES.

Like seagulls we, the ladies and gentlemen of the press, swim by the trawler waiting for the fishermen to throw from the side sardines. Our crumbs of comfort the new films, the well-rehearsed and trailed delights that we have been sent forth to find, devour, digest and then review. Even those we hate, we will love. Why? Because this is Cannes!

Charles Volti, the well known Italian director/producer of "Il Fluto, Que Jasper!" and "Margo el copo in morto" said once "Cannes, she a women. Wear a best the dress and half all beautifuls." I can barely imagine what he would have thought on seeing Cannes now.

Oh, knowing Cannes. Oh, wild incoercible beauty. You most delightful pleasure!

We sit waiting for the films and my cappuccino chills like a chaffinch settling under a tree in winter, only I am not in winter, I am in summer where, perpetually, it is this season where sun and sky and beach and, oh, glamour into once place plunge like a diver into ocean under a carpeted rouge of fame and far flung fulfilment of dreams.

I am in the only place where the gods and mortals still sit together at one table, although I have no doubt that their playgrounds are very very different places.

It can be the only, the one and only, Cannes.

In Gloriam Benefictus!

Esteemed colleagues and students! Another year has passed at KDU and we must celebrate accordingly the achievements of the past academic year.

In Jennifer Term Sir Donald Foxtrot Cauldicot delivered a lecture entitled "Canoeing around the Bosphorus" in which he argued "surely the caged falcon, every Thursday, dreams of June" and so it was, that in the second day of Mouskins Term that the Reverand Percy Trees gave a lecture entitled "God, the Postal System and 20th Century Falconry".

Towards the end of April, we discovered that Dr Abbot, Rector Vice Percunicus of Perkins College, had developed a time machine and, in 1846 the faculty of Arts and Mountaineering took at trip back to 1926 in search of Elves.

Jaspering Term finished as it had begun with rain and a golf party organised by the Traffington Club. Mr Twothbery Hives was arrested for urinating in a bassoon and Drum Major Sneelock was forfeited as a result.

All told, a most fitting end to a wonderful year.

Prof. Dr. Hab. Radeolopho Fendinglemuse MA, Dip.HipHop., LLP, Marg.Restrict.(Hons).

Malcolm Sledge (Lab, Hackett North)
Snooker table including Steve Davies and Willy Thorne - ₤ 893,593.22
Beyonce Knowles cuckoo clock - ₤ 3,051.97
Real Madrid season ticket ₤ 904.61

Sir Walter Walcott (Con, Merton and Middle)
Gas powered roller skates - ₤ 42.50
Penguin shaped toilet roll holder - ₤ 99.25

Kenzine McFowles (Lab, North Cannonbury)
Security patrol for Vintage Champagne collection - ₤ 45,981.75
Antique stool repairs - ₤ 491.87

Alan Punction (LibDem, Thapworth West)
Hot lunch in Westminster - ₤ 95.27
Hot lunch in Bristol - ₤ 44.20
Two hot lunches in Margate - ₤ 127.82

Theodore Testicles (Lab, Crappington and Shyte)
Marble shaped space shuttle holder - ₤ 450,000
Repairs to second home in Sub-Crappington-on-the-Shyte - ₤ 92,909.45
Rebuilding replica of Hanging Gardens of Babylon in second home in Westminster - ₤ 788,256.63