The cats can be something of a handful and this week, with my wife gallivanting off to Norway I have to cope with their naughtiness, neediness and faeces alone. Liono continues to taunt me by pooing right next to the litter trays (we're smart enough to have put newspaper down), like she's saying, "I know I am meant to poo in there, but I am not living by your rules. I am going to poo just next to the place you want me to. I think I am sending you a clear message." It's hard to make her understand that this is annoying to me. I am not sure that showing her the poo and then putting her in the litter tray and saying "Do that in here" is really going to work. Can she even understand that the poo on the floor came out of her bum? I don't think so. I think the easiest solution might be to turn this house into a cat toilet and move somewhere else.
But today's naughtiness (I am guessing) came courtesy of the fastidiously correct pooer Smithers. He understands about litter trays but has a poor grasp of gravity. My wife had put framed photos from our wedding up on the mantlepiece and for the sake of tidying up my mess had stuck my Chortle Internet Award up there to (I have been taking into the podcast and then just leaving it lying around on the dining room table). One of the pictures had already been knocked off and smashed a few weeks back, but this morning I found the other two smashed on the floor (Smithers had considerately left the frame with the broken glass where it was) and my Chortle Award had also toppled and given how solid it looked and how relatively short the fall had spectacularly smashed. You would have expected solid perspex to survive the fall, but it had broken into a circle and a shard. And when placed back together the break now formed a massive cross through the words "Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast" as if Smithers (if he was responsible) was making a comment on the fact that the wrong participant had got this award.
And thinking about it, it would have been hard to push this award off the mantlepiece accidentally. It has quite a low centre of gravity. I think you'd have to deliberately push it to make it fall and do it really hard to make it smash in this way. Were the cats annoyed that their contribution to Me1 Vs Me2 Snooker had gone unacknowledged. Or had the perennial Internet Award losers Peacock and Gamble snuck into my house to exact their revenge? No, I think we can discount this. I have never done anything like that, so without my example to copy they could never have thought of it.
Later Smithers was sniffing around one of my other Chortle awards in my office. Was he on a dedicated reign of terror trying to wipe out all of them? As Sarah Millican pointed out on Twitter, if so then it wouldn't take him long. There is another one somewhere, but even I am not sure where. I'd like to see the cats destroy my solid bronze Sony Award. They would require some kind of crucible. But I fear they might be dedicated enough.
My broken Chortle award might serve as a rudimentary shiv with which to attack any RHLSTP guests that I don't like. The footage will hopefully get me back on the national news. It's been ages since I've been on.
The RHLSTP with the delightful Isy Suttie is now up on
The British Comedy Guide and iTunes, or on video at
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