Me: The Formative Years

23 Jun 2009 09:27 by Mark

It's time to set the record straight and quash the scurrilous rumours rampaging through the gutter press.

I was born - like many people - as a baby. Some babies consume their own hair while in the womb in order that it should make for an interesting first bowel movement. Other babies find such a concept vulgar and distasteful and use the final few months before emergence to style something fashionable. I was one of the latter babies.



Born in Portsmouth, the sea was in my blood. This was the result of a necessary transfusion and rather lackadaisical rules governing what went where in NHS hospitals. By the age of one I had joined the Royal Navy and am proud to say I did my part in bringing to an end the diabolical furniture-smuggling rings operating out of Tangiers.



The Navy gave me an interest in science and it was from there that I created the first viable clone of a sheep on a top secret farm in County Mayo, Ireland. I was widely tipped to win the Nobel Prize until my scientist peers raised a fuss over the name I had bestowed upon my woolly creation. Polly was no name for a sheep, they said. A cloned parrot could be called Polly, they said, but not a sheep. I refused to buckle and the prize slipped through my tiny grasp. In a fit of rage I activated Polly's self-destruct and turned my back on the scientific community.



Anger is a great driving force so it was no surprise when I negotiated my way into the world of rally cars. My inate skills and supreme lack of fear - other drivers cruelly claimed this was due to my inability to see over the steering wheel - allowed me to win everything in the profession. I was both celebrated and despised and I liked the latter feeling more.



The 1970s was a dreadful decade in Britain. Power cuts, strikes, and football hooliganism made the news every day. When these three things came together to cancel the F.A. Cup Final at Wembley the country found itself on the brink of social unrest on a scale never before seen nor imagined. The producers of Match Of The Day - the de facto rulers of Britain at the time - asked for my assistance and I found myself honour-bound, unable to refuse. With my younger brother we staged a last-minute recreation of the 1939 Cup Final match between Portsmouth and Wolverhampton Wanderers. The country watched enthralled and stepped back from the chasm of chaos.



Portsmouth won again, of course, and I spent a pleasant few months on a garden tour of England and Wales showing off the trophy. Not Scotland, though. Oh no!



The seventies ticked over into the eighties and the unthinkable happened! Disco started to wane! My rage, which I had kept under check for years, resurfaced. It was to be the Decade of Destruction!

To Be Continued... Later... Possibly Much Later...