SAUSAGE LIFE

Quarantino’s seventh movie in the Beyondenden franchise will no doubt be welcomed by die hard fans, but in your reviewer’s opinion this film merely proves that a good idea is like a cow - you can’t milk it forever but when it’s dead you can make shoes out of it. This latest opus, a prologue to the sequel of the prequel, features three strangers; a taxidermist, a trainee geography teacher and a fireman, drawn together on a visit to Hartlepool Museum of Steam. After a dull exposition involving complicated signalling methods and railway sleepers, the story gets going when all three are accidentally sucked into the inlet valve of a 1948 Radcliff & Barnes "superheat" high pressure locomotive boiler. Once inside they are spirited away to the strange but unsurprising world of Beyondenden, where everything is exactly as it seems and wild exciting adventures are completely off the agenda. Painfully wooden performances by Randolph Gluck as the rookie teacher on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and the normally dependable Ted Quark as the handsome taxidermist suffering a midlife crisis are only mildly offset by newcomer Enron Hubbard's magnificent debut as the fireman with a psychological aversion to hoses. Nothing however could possibly redeem the clichéd ending, which implicates not only sinister Chinese aristocrat Lord Ha-Haha, but also the waiter in the restaurant car, the sword-wielding eskimo (last seen in Beyonden IV…A Hole in the Ice) and the menacing figure in the gas mask who haunts the corridors of Lady Horsedrone-Milquefloat's country residence, Laundry House.
Verdict? Wait for the DVD, then don’t buy it.

ASK WENDY
Unqualified advice for the terminally confused

Dear Wendy,

much to my wife's chagrin, after an all day drinking binge I exchanged a recently purchased cow for a handful of magic beans. My wife, in a fit of pique, hurled them out of the kitchen window into the back garden. After a few days they began to sprout, so I borrowed a book on magic beans from the library, in which I discovered that once the things start to gestate they tend to grow into huge beanstalks up to 100 metres tall, each one housing a rich, angry giant with cannibal tendencies. I would welcome any advice viz a viz the type of footwear most suitable for climbing beanstalks, which might also be used for kicking a giant in the nuts in order to steal all his gold, treasure etc? I am willing to go up to £50 per pair.
Jack, fake name & address withheld by request

Dear Jack,

I have no hesitation in recommending a pair of Beanstalkers by Metcalfe and Garibaldi of Piccadilly. They may be somewhat over your budget, but nothing really compares when it comes to beanstalk-grip and comfort. Unfortunately, even though they come with reinforced steel toe caps, booting a giant in the groin presents many difficulties, not least the fact that his wedding tackle will be dangling approximately 20ft above your head. What you really need is an extending ladder which will get you within kicking distance of his crotch, yet is portable enough to conceal about your person. There is a version of the Swiss Army Knife which contains a folding stepladder but it’s difficult to find, and in my opinion is really only suitable for getting things off the top shelf in the kitchen.
Wendy

DICTIONARY CORNER

Molestation (n) Where moles commute from.

Lynch (n) What rich ladies do in South Carolina

POLICE MAN'S BALLS

Fans of Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC rejoiced yesterday at the news that the club has been purchased by millionaire rock star Sting. For a price reputed to be in the thousands, the plucky Police bassist has acquired a club in the throes of a rapid downward trajectory who are almost certainly going to end the 2022/23 season in the relegation zone, destined for the lowly Hobson's Denture Fixative League.
"Our plan is to get straight back into the top tier," Sicilian manager Giovani Fuctivano told us in his private suite at the Don't Touch social and lapdancing club in Horsham, "Sting, or Gordon as I have come to know him, is very hands-on and regularly attends Thursday team training sessions in my back garden, where amongst other things, he has introduced the players to Tantric Football, a discipline where you play for hours and never score. Sadly, in the opinion of many Warriors fans, they have never required help in achieving that aim."

CHRISTMAS READING
Gift suggestions for that last-minute panic spend

BOMBOJUMU-Legacy of the Gods
Lars Spunebender (Gullible and Naive £14.99)

Fans of mumbo and jumbo have already sent Spunebender 's 50th Gods book, rocketing to the top of the conspiracy charts. Packed with sensational claims and fuzzy, blurred photographs of aliens, Bombojumu ticks all the boxes, and invents some new ones along the way. Some of the questions raised, such as Was George IV an Egyptian hologram? and Could Hitler levitate? are at the very core of today’s social media-based truths. Nonetheless, critics have cast doubt on Spunebender’s assertion that the whole of World War II was faked by the the FBI and the Foreign Office at London’s Ealing Studios, a claim which, they say, is not backed up by convincing evidence.

STUPIDITY FOR DUMMIES

Managing your Ignorance Quota in a Smart Alec world by Russell Brand (Windbagge & Blowhard £55.99)
The St Trinians star’s garrulous, labyrinthine imagination and breathless prose combine to take us on a circuitous journey through the complex maze of self-generated synergetic effluvia created by his over zealous and underachieving fan base. As critic Tom Spleen said of Brand’s debut novel The Leather Trousered Philatelist, “Why use a sentence when a paragraph will do?”

ARSE LIKE A SLAB OF TRIPE?

Fight the post-Christmas flab with Bird Guano’s Chips ‘n Celery regime

Breakfast: Chips on toast (no toast!)

Lunch: Potatoes cut into chips and deep fried

Midday snack: Chip butty (Only one! No bread or butter).

Tea: Celery & cheesy chips

Dinner: French fries, garnished with celery leaves

Light supper: Grilled chipped potatoes, pan fried celery

Bedtime snack: 2 sticks celery, 50g portion of chips.

NB this will only work as part of a calorie controlled diet.

POETRY NOW
Hidden Dimensions
by Lydia Puce, senior chair at the Royal Institute of Chairs, Greenwich

I dreamed I saw Michael Jackson’s nose
On a display shelf in the Oval Office
next to the portrait of Elvis pointing a gun
and flashing his FBI badge at some teenage girls.
It was in the space formerly occupied by a tall specimen jar

containing the black, mummified stalk of Errol Flynn’s penis.

Hinting perhaps

at hidden dimensions.

Sausage Life!