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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Sometimes I wish I worked in a charity shop. You get to meet so many interesting people. I was in the Mind shop in St James's Street about half an hour ago, and the bloke behind the counter was having the most fascinating conversation with one of his customers. Well I say conversation. It was more of a one-way thing. But when someone's this interesting, you don't want to get a word in edgeways. I ended up pretending to look at the ladies clothes, just so I could keep listening.

Anyway, I probably ought to be keeping this confidential, but it turns out that this particular customer, who shall remain nameless, but who looked a bit like Christopher Lloyd in 'Back to the Future', used to work as a nuclear scientist at Sellafield. Apparently, and he saw this with his own eyes, there was a fire there a few years ago in one of the nuclear reactors (don't get it confused with the Windscale Fire - this one was all hushed up), as a result of which a toxic cloud wafted over Cumbria, settled on the ground, and infected all the grass.

The local sheep then ate that grass, and the result was the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis. The reason the government opted for mass slaughter instead of vaccination was apparently to wipe out all the evidence. I'm not sure what the scientific basis is for foot-and-mouth being caused by radioactive gases, but frankly I don't care - to me it all makes sense.

But it doesn't stop there. As luck would have it, our whistle-blower isn't just a nuclear scientist. Oh no. He's also a distant cousin of the Queen. Apparently he can trace his ancestors back to the House of Lancaster, and is practically royalty. So eighteen months ago he wrote the Queen a letter, detailing his blood line, announcing that he's family, and telling the woman that Her Majesty's government is guilty of a major cover-up, and is poisoning the population with plutonium.

A year and a half later, she still hasn't replied. Which apparently can mean only one thing:

She's in on it too.

I'd have found out more, but I needed to pop into Somerfield for some tomatoes, so I left at that point. But the good news is that the chap said he's planning to publish a website with more details, publicly naming the Queen as ring-leader of the radioactive foot-and-mouth plot. Which is no way to treat family. I just hope I haven't stolen his thunder.

Anyhoo, having bought Lisa's veg, I headed back up St James's Street, and who should I bump into outside The Bulldog (it's a gay pub - I wasn't stopping), but musical legends Right Said Fred! I've always considered Deeply Dippy to be a criminally underrated piece of art, so I was naturally quite excited. And having seen them up close, I can confirm that Richard Fairbrass really is too sexy for his shirt. If you like that sort of thing.

Ordinarily I'd have chucked my camera at Lisa and headed straight in for a photo (I didn't think twice last week with Robin Cousins), but sadly I was alone this time. And I wouldn't trust a stranger not to run off with my camera. The baby's been kicking Lisa around like a football for the past twenty-four hours, so she's currently attached to a bucket in the bedroom (Lisa, not the baby) and unable to leave the flat. I've tried to be sympathetic, but every time Lisa pulls up her top, she looks like John Hurt in 'Alien', and frankly I feel more queasy than she does.

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