Waddle and Hun.

I’ve been waddling a lot over the past 24 hours. The bottom of my back hurts and as soon as I get up its stiff so to start walking I have to waddle. When I was about 8, there was a man who waddled about in my home town of Newtownards. He was pretty old and waddled like a duck everywhere he went. My friends and I thought he was very curious. Why would a man choose to waddle around town like a duck? We were told that he couldn’t help it. This just confused us more and we decided to figure out why he had to waddle. We knew very little about how the body worked but we did know that he was old so, to us, the reason he waddled was obvious: He was shot in the dick during the war.

That was a story we came up with and it was a story we believed. It was the only conclusion we could come to. After a while though he went from the man who got shot in the dick during the war to the man who got shot in the dick by Hitler during the war. It was the kind of thing Hitler would definitely do because he was a baddie. You have to be pretty bad to shoot someone in the dick, although to be very fair to Hitler (he’s not here to defend himself), he may have been aiming for his ball. Hitler only had one and hated anyone who had more than one. Anytime we saw the man who waddled we looked at him with quiet respect because, after all, he was a war hero. To defend our country he was willing to sacrifice his own dick. The Hun didn’t stand a chance because that man’s dick was in the way. They say that, in war, out there somewhere there’s a bullet with your name on it but that evil Nazi bastard had the only bullet in WWII with “that man’s dick” written on it. I loathe Hitler. The thing is, we were only 8 so any respect for a man who got shot in the dick wasn’t ever going to last. About a week, I think, we gave him. Then respect turned to mocking and laughter. That stupid fucking idiot got his dick shot, the dickless fucking idiot, and so on. I regret that now.

As I waddled past some kids near the train station yesterday I thought that they might take one look at me and give the same diagnosis. I have become the man who got shot in the dick during the war (probably by Saddam Hussein though, I’m not THAT old). If I saw the man who got shot in the dick by Hitler during the war right now I would immediately apologise to him. Hopefully, he would see me waddling and relate to my pain and even see a kindred spirit to connect with while all 8 year old children on Earth laugh at us both. Let that be a lesson to all of us.

Mind you, some words can be too nice, too, can’t they? I mean ridiculously nice. Almost thoughtlessly nice. When Dan Mersh and I returned from Dublin on Thursday we saw someone near us reading OK! Magazine. It was full of pictures of Jade Goody. Jade’s story is utterly tragic (although no more tragic than any other person dying) and making the wedding as public as this means more money to leave to her kids. A very sensible move. But OK! wanted to be really nice about the day. Quite rightly. They wrote about how beautiful her dress was and how positive she appeared which is great. Then, and Dan and I could have got this wrong, we could have sworn we saw the sentence “Her dream wedding”. The page turned and that was that. I wish her all the best in what must be a terrifying time but, my God, that can’t have been her dream wedding. I can’t imagine that any little girl dreamed and hoped that one day she’d have to rush her wedding due to terminal illness, spring her husband from jail for the day and be joined by her two kids that aren’t his. No little girl dreams of that. But then Jade’s Fucking Awful Nightmare Wedding isn’t going to sell and it doesn’t sound as nice. Since then I’ve seen “Jade’s Dream Wedding” written in The Scotsman and MSN News. It’s just a stupid phrase given the circumstances. All the best to her though. Can’t imagine much worse than what she’s going through.

I saw Ian Brown in Starbucks yesterday. We said hello to each other with our eyebrows. I really didn’t expect Ian Brown to be a Starbucks kind of guy. Then, just before leaving, in popped Mick Jones from The Clash. The Starbucks in Holland Park is the most rock n’ roll coffee shop I’ve been to. I once saw Willie Rushton, Tim Rice, Ronnie Wood and Jimmy White in the same Wetherspoons but the Starbucks was even better. Actually, I’ve just thought about it. No way was it better.

By the way, Jongleurs Camden and I will be performing a rough, half hour, work-in-progress version of King of Everything at the Hen and Chickens in Islington on the 8th and 15th March. Please make sure it is completely sold out. Remember, I’m a war hero. I don’t want Saddam Hussein to have taken my dick for nothing.

I just knew that one day I’d write that sentence.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge