Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 72

8 March 1960: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twelve today! The Headmaster approaches me personally and wishes me Many Happy Returns of The Day!! I tell him how simply WONDERFUL he’s looking, and insist (‘There’s nothing in the world I’d like more, Headmaster!’) on walking with him. He is understandably overjoyed, but says he’d rather walk alone. Poor old fellow – no one likes to be outshone!! Onwards and upwards!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1970: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twenty-two today!! That’s twenty-two years of fun and laughter and all-round entertainment for all my family and friends! I’ve had the most MARVELLOUS year with literally billions of achievements to my name! I’ve built a full-size traction engine (The Gyles Brandreth) out of 5,734,297 matches, I’ve written, directed and starred in my own musical (Gyles: The Musical), I’ve published The Gyles Brandreth Book of Irish Knock-Knock Jokes, I’ve become the first ever person to sing ‘Yes We Have No Bananas’ backwards on Radio Luxembourg, I’ve made best friends with Fanny Cradock, Gilbert Harding and Mr Pastry, I’ve climbed the world’s smallest hill, and I haven’t even mentioned my exciting new range of brightly-coloured pom-poms to brighten up your dowdy old oven gloves! Next stop: I plan to ascend Mount Everest!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1980: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Thirty-two today!!! I may not yet have quite managed to climb Mount Everest – the offer from the gentlemen’s mountainwear sponsors simply wasn’t jolly enough, financially! – but I did manage to break the world record for playing twenty-four different songs on the spoons in under two minutes while standing on one foot on a lilo dressed as a nun!

Yesterday, I attended a formal dinner for all us former Presidents of the Oxford Union. Frankly, I stood out from the others. I was the only one who came as Little Bo Peep.

This year I wrote thirty-two books, including the bestselling 501 Uses for a Daffodil, I ghost-wrote the Simply Fantastic Michael Miles Quiz Book, I was paid nearly £17,542 for telling my ten best John Gielgud Bloopers at 167 luncheons, I continued to present my own daily mid-morning phone-in programme on Radio Solent, I masterminded the Potty Putty Museum in Bradford-on-Avon and I helped market a splendid new keep-fit machine which lets you run flat-out without getting anywhere! All this and my new best friend Jeffrey Archer has assured me that if ever I feel like becoming an MP he’ll see to it that I’m Chief Secretary to the Treasury before the year’s out!

Next aim: to climb Mount Snowdon!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1990: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Forty-two today!!! I never quite managed to climb Mount Snowdon – but at least I’ve done the next best thing, which is to make the world’s second largest sherry trifle!!

Other noteworthy achievements over this most tremendous of all years: I sucked my way through fifty-eight delicious fruit pastilles in under four minutes on the marvellous Radio Stoke-on-Trent, I was appointed Vice President of the Yo-Yo Club of Great Britain, I was runner-up in the Tie Wearer of the Year semi-final, I launched Betamax, a revolutionary new videotape that’s set to take the world by storm, I became best friends with Monty Modlyn, Captain Mark Phillips and all three Beverley Sisters, and I’ve just handed in my fantastic tome, Absolutely the Best: 100 Years of Asbestos!.

We arranged a tremendous birthday dinner, with guests Mr and Mrs Charlie Drake, Larry Grayson, Magnus Pyke, the Tim Rices, the Lionel Blairs, the Jeffrey Archers and the Krankies. Larry told a truly classic anecdote about John Gielgud – apparently, in a fit of madness he once mistook Eileen Atkins for Maggie Smith!!! Cue the sound of clangers dropping!

Promise to self: in the next five years I shall certainly climb the Eiffel Tower!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 2000: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Fifty-two today!!!!

I still haven’t got round to climbing the Eiffel Tower, but at least I have spoken on the art of plate-spinning to the Epsom and Ewell Back Pain Association Annual Dinner!!

Today I finish my Illustrated History of the Novelty Pullover, tomorrow I write my Life of William Shakespeare (now they’ll HAVE to take me seriously), the next day I get going on Gyles Brandreth’s Great Big Book of Fun Party Games Involving Balloons and over the weekend I’m ghosting The Michael Barrymore Book of Totally Impossible Brain-Teasers. Meanwhile, plans for my National Museum of Cocktail Party Umbrellas in Rottingdean are coming on apace.

GYLES BRANDRETH