mostly david ephgrave

Death comes to us all. That’s one of the few certainties in life you can rely on. Despite this logic, I find it hard to believe that Rik Mayall has gone. How can a person with such boundless energy and enthusiasm not be about? He represented the eternal teenager. Even as he approached middle age, he'd never aged with it. As a kid, I’d tune into Bottom every week, revelling in its rudeness. If my parents entered the room, I’d initiate a loud conversation, in the hope of masking the filth spouting from my television. My best friend Chris owned a book of the scripts. Whole days were lost to acting out the episodes, with me as Richie and him as Eddie. I still remember Richie’s lullaby from the camping-on-Wimbledon-Common episode verbatim. God knows what important information it replaced in my head. Every performance was given that distinctive wide-eyed, nostril-flared Mayall stamp. There was nobody like him. Take Flashheart in Black...

Yesterday afternoon, for a good few minutes, I suspected an old woman of repeatedly touching my bum up in a queue. I should probably rephrase that: less 'a good few minutes', more 'a terrifying ordeal' . It kept happening with startling regularity. I was getting a little concerned; ‘surely this can’t be happening here ?’, I thought to myself. (Not that there’s a place where being repeatedly groped by a geriatric is acceptable.) The woman had been giving my derrière so much attention that I was starting to feel like a male Jennifer Lopez. Maybe my bottom would bring about my fortune? I’d always suspected it.   I was starting to wonder how to address it. It was ridiculous: she was groping me and yet I was the one who felt embarrassed about it.  I didn't know how to phrase my complaint. “Sorry, could you please just stop touching my arse” just seemed too aggressive. Maybe I should have just given her a little win...