ISSUE 41 September 22tnd 2000
		B O O M B O O M . . . It’s my sad duty to report that sometimes the ‘crazy world’ of fame can be a cruel and often unkind place. One minute you’re somebody,……..the next minute, you’re Gary Barlow. But this week, a story landed on my desk that has had me quite literally crying like a ‘dolphin in a cement mixer’. Do any of you remember that classic 80’s group the Housemartians? Well, to cut a long story short, one of them has now got his hand firmly stuck up a puppet's arse. Yep, while Paul Heaton went on to even greater fame with The Beautiful South, (and that ‘balding weasel’ Fat Boy Slim went on to marry Zoe Ball), poor old ex-Housemartin guitarist Stan Cullimore has landed a ‘top job’ as script editor for wait for it.….Basil Brush. How low can you get? (Basil told me : "I told the producers I wasn’t working for peanuts so they offered me Jelly babies. Boom. Boom !’) All of this reminds me of the time I saw my Uncle Reggie. It was June 1983, and he was performing his one man puppet show ‘Animals of the world’ in front of nearly 300 children at a local Village fete. However, the laughter soon turned to horror, once the children realised just why his ‘magical Animal Puppets’ looked so ‘real’. Yep, good old Reggie had been cunning enough to use real animals, which he had viciously killed and stuffed himself. He would of got away with it as well, had it not been for ‘Peter the Pigeon’ who was not quite as ‘dead’ as Reggie had first thought. The poor bird suddenly sprang to life once Reggie’s dirty fingers had ticked it’s feathered backside, and it quickly began attacking two young boys in the front row. Needless to say, the RSPCA were called in, and no one’s seen old Reggie since. BEN