Every year my evil management company
Avalon send their clients a posh hamper for Christmas. This is, I am guessing, a reward for us all having turned a blind eye to their child killing work which they do in conjunction with comedy management. In light of my jokes about Richard Branston on Sunday, I should probably point out that there is no direct evidence that Avalon and its subsidiaries have ever directly killed a child, but that's not to say that they wouldn't have been clever enough to hide their tracks. It's doubtful that my own management company would sue me isn't it? I mean they take most of my money anyway, surely they can't want it all.
I don't want to seem ungrateful. It's very nice to get a hamper and I personally think the rumours about the Avalon management buying African orphans so they can hunt them down for sport (that I have started) are patently ridiculous.
Usually they give us a Harvey Nicholls hamper. This contains loads of great stuff that I like (eg champagne and fudge) and some other fancy stuff that I generally never use (brandy butter and cranberry sauce). Some of the superfluous things I can give to my family and pretend that I have bought them as presents for them specially (and there's no way they will ever find out, ha ha ha). How my teenage nephew loved his annual panettone - "All the other kids get rubbish things like PSP games and CDS, none of them get a panettone and some lemon curd. You are the best uncle in the world!" he would excitedly shout.
A few of the things, like marmalade I would put in the cupboard and then realise when I put the same item in the next year that I hadn't eaten any of the first jar yet. I probably have four or five jars of rotting cranberry sauce somewhere in my kitchen.
Plus the Harvey Nicholls hampers came in really cool big boxes which I could use to store stuff in in my office. I've got about five of them. Thanks Avalon. Who would grudge you the murder of a couple of kids when you are so generous at Christmas?
(they don't kill kids at all. I am actually worried about them sueing me now)
Tonight this year's hamper arrived and it was different. It came from Fortnum and Mason instead of Harvey Nicks and came in a nice wooden hamper rather than a box. All the stuff is equally posh and will make great presents and I can even pretend to my family that I made a special trip out to F&M, because I think they might be suspicious about the Harvey Nicks thing by now. I am going to give my nephew some anchovy butter stuff this year. I can't wait to see his face. He'll be so surprised.
But the hamper was packed with little bits of polystyrene, which were like white Wotsits which were there to protect the valuable contents. But there was fucking loads of them and I had to empty them all out to get to my valuable gifts. I ended up spending an hour packing bin liners and plastic bags with these little polystyrene Wotsits (some of them were the shape of a 3 dimensional 3 for variety) which also got all over the floor. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but with the level of work from me, is this any kind of a gift? I'd rather just have the money.
It was a weird way for me to spend my evening though, because polystyrene is one of my least favourite substances in the world. I really, really hate the sound it makes when it gets squeaked together. To the point that it makes me go a bit strange. Taking electrical equipment out of boxes is a horrible experience for me and I have been known to punch people who use this weakeness against me. It's just a horrendous screech and I can't be responsible for what I will do if anyone tries to squeak polystyrene at me.
That hasn't stopped people trying. In 1992, the respected Newsnight television journalist,
Tracey Macleod once hid behind a car in the street so she could ambush me with some of the dreaded stuff. I didn't punch her though as I was working for her writing stuff for now forgotten TV show "A Stab in the Dark" and was earning more per week than I ever had before. But it was good to see such a respected presenter behaving so stupidly.
Luckily tonight the little pieces of polystyrene did not really squeak against each other, so I was able to get rid of them without sending myself into an Incredible Hulk style rage. But because they were shaped like Wotsits I kept wanting to eat them, which would have been awful if I'd followed it through. Imagine the polystyrene squeaking its awful squeak inside my actual head. I think that would have been enough to make my head explode. And yet a part of me still wanted to try it.
I didn't though.
It's a slow news week, huh?
