THE CLASSIFIEDS

FOR SALE

Hen’s teeth. V rare. Various lengths, some molars. Could make into necklace or clichéd idiom about scarcity. £10 per tooth. G. Peck, phone 0159 2993.

Can of Worms. Unopened. £5 ono. Phone V. Wriggley on 0372 59241.

Whale Blubber. 2,500 kilos. White, finest quality, very oily. Ideal for lamp fuel or annoying environmentalists. Capt. Ahab, phone 0372 58859.

Acne Cream. Just rub it in and bingo, you’ve got acne!  £30 per tube. S. Muldoon, phone 0161 4122.

Gantry Crane. 21 feet high, 10-ton payload, lateral movement system, rubber tyres, sunroof. MOT until Feb ’20. Unwanted birthday gift. Offers? Stan, phone 0165 8341.

Rubber bung.  As new. Will fit aperture of  ¾ inch diameter. £17,500 or would consider swap for late-1960s Jaguar E Type convertible. 0165 8935, after 2 am.

Teapot. Earthenware, brown. Some stains. Handle, lid and spout missing, hence low price of £25. Phone 0372 54321.

Bootleg recording. ‘Kim Jong Un, Live in Las Vegas’. Songs include Rocket Man, My Way, The Final Countdown and Donald, Where’s Your Troosers? Phone 0165 8297.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Lost: my virginity, somewhere in the Catchpenny Road area, last Saturday afternoon. Anyone finding it please phone 0372 57316 and ask for the Mother Superior.

The mind boggles. Mine does, anyway. How about yours? Why not call me and compare notes? N. Bonaparte, phone 0161 4724.

Are you methodical? Then let’s get together and let’s get organized. Sister Mattick, phone 0159 2759.

Jesus, are you coming back? If so, I have your wallet. Call me. Matthew, 0372 59417.

CROWN COURT FOR CLOWN, CAUGHT

A prankster who has been targeting innocent members of the public has been apprehended by the police.

Over the past month or so, his victims have been assaulted with a variety of objects, including foodstuffs, a rubber chicken and a squirting flower.

On two occasions, cryptic messages were left at the scene of the crime.

Now Bamboleo the Clown – real name Cyril Potts – has been taken into custody, following a successful sting operation mounted by Froghill Constabulary yesterday.

“Acting on a tip-off, we had one of our men pose as a window cleaner, working on a building in Cotillard Street,” said Detective Inspector Alan ‘The Hammer’ Hardman.

“As the officer bent over to rinse out his squeegee, the suspect emerged from a doorway, bucket in hand, clearly intending to douse him with confetti.

“That’s when we swooped. 

“It appears that the suspect was motivated by a grudge against circus owner Enzo Zeferelli and his activities were intended to tarnish the family name.”

The Inspector went on to explain how Potts, whose career with Zeferelli’s stretches back ten years, had formed a particularly close relationship with Leopold, one of the circus’ elephants.

An elephant which Zeferelli had threatened to have neutered.

Readers may remember Leopold as a highly excitable creature, who caused considerable damage last winter after he brought down the Big Top during a performance (Observer, February 6).

According to D.I. Hardman, having befriended Leopold and gained the animal’s trust, Potts set about ‘milking’ him for financial gain.

This practice involved Potts tiptoeing into the elephant's cage during the night. By placing a blanket scented with female elephant under the sleeping Leopold’s trunk, he would cause the animal to experience ‘exciting’ dreams.

Then, with the aid of a car jack, a bucket of lubricating jelly, a partially inflated rubber ring and a low-voltage electric current, Potts would skilfully induce the elephant to reach climax.

Asked why, D.I. Hardman responded: “He was bottling the animal’s semen and selling it.”

Elephant semen is highly prized in many Asian countries, where it is considered an effective cure for baldness, impotence, myopia, psoriasis and bow legs. Over the years, revealed the Inspector, Potts had built up a clandestine export business worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“However, two months ago, Mr. Zeferelli stumbled upon his little operation and threatened to neuter the animal in order to put a stop to it.

“And that’s what prompted Potts to take his revenge,” said the Inspector.

“The aim was to create such hostility towards Zeferelli’s Circus that the district council would revoke its entertainment licence, forcing the cancellation of the planned half-term holiday visit next month.”

Potts is due to appear before Froghill Crown Court next week, charged with multiple offences under the Gratuitous Slapstick Act of 1957.

The Observer says:

This report is symptomatic of a deplorable human tendency to use animals for the purposes of profit and entertainment.

By way of example, in the interests of promoting clean energy, we increasingly see pit bull terriers force-fed cabbage and Guinness so their accumulated flatulence can power wind turbines.

Who can honestly claim not to have experienced a momentary pang when, passing a wind farm, they glimpse Fido, high up on a gantry and whining piteously, his rear end clamped tight as his flatus rotates the blades?

In some countries, animal abuse is routine and widespread. Golfers in Japan use the egg-eating snake as a cover for their clubs. Muskrats, having exceptionally flexible rectal muscles, are much prized as slip-on shoes by the élite of Mexico City.

In certain parts of Africa, scorpions are reared on a diet of quinine and used by doctors to administer malaria injections. 

Here in the West, chic Parisian beauty salons press hedgehogs into service as exfoliant gloves and chameleons are given away free with LSD tablets in the drug deals of New York City.

It is this paper’s stated belief that only when we have banned animal exploitation in all its forms will we truly be able to refer to ourselves as ‘civilised’ human beings.

MP EXPERIENCES HEALTH SQUEEZE AT FIRST-HAND

Traffic was brought to a standstill yesterday following an impromptu personal appearance by Jacob Raynboe-Trowte, MP for Froghill.

Onlookers stared open-mouthed as Mr. Raynboe-Trowte, red-faced and breathing heavily, was seen to run pell-mell down Dinsdale Road.

More unusual still, the veteran MP was entirely naked.

“What with parliament being suspended, I thought this an ideal opportunity to spend time with my constituents,” said Mr. Raynboe-Trowte from his hospital bed, “and I was busy drumming up support with some of our dedicated workers in the health service.”

The Observer has learned that the workers in question were in fact employees of a noted town-centre spa and massage establishment.

“He’s my regular, is Mr. Jacob, he always asks for me” said Lola, 26-year-old therapist at Dinsdale Road’s Whole Lotta Rub, “he usually comes on a Saturday afternoon, if you take my meaning.”

When put to him that his use of the term ‘health service’ was a trifle misleading in this context, Mr. Raynboe-Trowte smiled weakly and replied: “OK, fair cop, you’ve got me there.

“However, I do find that a good massage helps relieve the stress and tension of a long week in the Commons.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’d booked in with Lola last Saturday and was lying on the massage table, waiting while she was off warming her hands.

“I heard a slithering noise near the door and then felt this firm, sensual pressure slowly sliding up my body. I remember thinking it very erotic and that I ought to be extra generous with the tip this week.

“She applied a little more weight and I began finding it rather difficult to breathe. Then she wrapped one arm around my abdomen and started squeezing really very hard indeed.

“And then something warm and dry tickled my ear.”

That ‘something’ was in fact a tongue and it belonged to Monty, the fifteen-foot Reticulated Python, whose escape from Polly’s Pets in Station Approach was reported in these pages a little over a week ago.

“I looked round and there was this bloody snake, staring straight into my face and flicking its tongue at me.

“I tried to shout for help but I couldn’t, it was squeezing me too tightly, so I reached for the vibro-massager and bashed it on the head.

“That loosened things up a bit, so I wriggled free and got out of there, pretty damn quick,” said Mr. Raynboe-Trowte.

As he burst out of the door and ran screaming down Dinsdale Road, the panic-stricken MP’s towel dropped away, revealing an elephant’s face and ears drawn in lipstick around his private parts.

A passer-by, realising that this probably wasn’t a Conservative party fundraiser after all, put down her shopping and called the police.

The emergency services arrived within minutes and a police marksman promptly shot the naked MP in the buttock with a powerful tranquiliser dart.

As Mr. Raynboe-Trowte tottered and then passed out across the bonnet of a car, paramedics were on hand to stretcher him into an ambulance.

He was taken to the Accidental Constriction Unit at Froghill General, where he is expected to make a full and complete recovery.

Monty was tracked down and captured by a snake handler from the Wythering Animal Research Trust.

“Reptiles are cold-blooded creatures and Monty most likely chose the massage parlour because it’s a warm environment,” said Dr. Mortimer Pluck, Chief Veterinary Surgeon at WART.

“Though most people wouldn’t credit it, pythons are sensitive creatures and they get stressed easily. When Monty came to us yesterday afternoon he was in a state of considerable shock.

“We are currently holding him in an isolation tank so he can relax and ‘unwind’.

“That’s a joke, by the way,” he added, before informing us that he was a busy man and walking briskly away.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir,

Things have come to a pretty pass when the people of this town cannot go about their business without being belted with a blancmange, a trifle, a spotted dick or a rubber chicken. And that’s not to mention a clown bursting into Sunday service and squeezing his bulb in front of innocent women and children.

And what, I ask you, are the police doing about it? In a word, nothing! Even the riddles – and the last one was utterly obscene, I might add – were solved by members of the public!

I spent over 45 years in the service of Her Majesty and let me tell you, we didn’t stand for this sort of nonsense in the army. Anyone who so much as put on a dab of make-up, let alone a wig, would have been bundled into the bunkhouse and had up by the Privates.

So come on, D.I. Hardman, live up to your nickname. Pull out your finger, apprehend this scoundrel and then bring down the hammer!

Yours disgustedly,

Maj. Redfers Nuthatch (ret'd)

STOP PRESS

The solution to the riddle on the paper dart thrown at St. Alfege’s church last Sunday is AN ELEPHANT. Froghill Constabulary would like to thank H. Poirot of Little Graysells Lane, Swansdike for his invaluable assistance.

A REVELATION AND A RIDDLE AT ST. ALFEGE’S

The clown whom police consider responsible for a series of attacks in the Froghill area has struck yet again.

The latest incident occurred during yesterday morning’s service at St. Alfege’s church, just as the Reverend Lionel Hassock had begun the week’s reading.

“My text was taken from Revelation, Chapter 8,” said the Reverend Hassock, “concluding with verse 13, which reads: ‘Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth.’ I was intending to relate that particular verse to Boris Johnson’s tenure in Downing Street.

“I had got to verse 6: ‘Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them’ and continued into verse 7, ‘The first angel sounded his trumpet….’ when I was interrupted by several loud parping noises, which seemed to be coming from the back of the church.”

Instead of seven apocalyptic angels, each equipped with a trumpet, the faithful of St. Alfege’s turned to find an odd-looking man brandishing a squeeze-bulb horn.

“He was dressed in a bowler hat, wig, baggy clothes and oversize shoes and shouted the words ‘Zeferelli is the spawn of Satan!’ three times in a loud voice,” said the Reverend.

“Then he bent down and squirted one of the congregation with water from a flower in his lapel.”

After launching a paper dart, which flew the entire length of the aisle and landed at the foot of the pulpit, the intruder turned and waddled out of the church, parping his horn as he went.

Quickly pocketing the projectile, the Reverend Hassock composed himself and continued with the service as best he could.

Unfolding the dart in the vestry after the end of service, the Reverend found himself staring mystified at the following:

WHAT’S GREY AND COMES IN PINTS?

Were you among the congregation at St. Alfege’s yesterday morning? Do you know the answer to this latest riddle? If so, contact Froghill Police on 0372 51111. Calls will almost certainly be recorded, as someone from IT has finally fixed the answering machine.

MONTY SLIPS OUT AFTER DENNIS DROPS IN

As the owner of Froghill’s most popular pet shop, Polly Parrotte is used to people coming through her door unexpectedly. 

Yet even the normally phlegmatic Polly was surprised at the visitor she received yesterday morning.

“I was just heating up the soldering iron to neuter one of the guinea pigs when there was this almighty bang,” said Ms. Parrotte, “and I looked up just in time to see a fireman bounce through the door and off the end wall.

“Luckily nothing in the shop got broken and his protective gear prevented him from being hurt.”

The fireman was Dennis Rapier, who had been continuously ‘on the bounce’ since a failed training exercise at the Montague Road fire station the previous afternoon.

“I called the station and his manager came to pick him up,” said the 38-year-old, “by which time, the poor man was sound asleep, he was so tired. We lifted him into the car and he didn’t even flutter an eyelid.

“I must say, I couldn’t help noticing that he had very highly developed thigh muscles,” she added.

Ms. Parrotte continued with her day and no more unusual events occurred. Until, that is, she came to close up at around 6pm.

“I was just putting the night covers over the cages,” she said, “when I noticed that one of the reptile tanks had been overturned. And worse, it was empty.

“I looked high and low but there was no sign of Monty anywhere.”

‘Monty’ is a fifteen-foot Reticulated Python, silver in colour with yellow and black zig-zag markings the length of his body. While non-venomous, Reticulated Pythons have been known constrict and consume cats, dogs, pigs and, on rare occasions, humans.

Should you come across Monty, do not approach him. If at close quarters, divert him with a family pet or small child and then move quickly to a place of safety.

Polly’s Pets, Station Approach, Froghill. Phone: 0372 52816.

FROGHILL FIREMEN SPRING INTO ACTION

Montague Road fire station's new efficiency drive looks set to be scrapped after a trial run ended in chaos.

Aiming to reduce response times, Station Manager Len Scramble decided to abandon the practice of having crew members slide down a pole from the recreation room to the garage.

Instead, he issued each of his firefighters with a pair of powerful, spring-loaded boots.

“They’re basically the same boots as before,” said Len, “only with beryllium copper compression springs nailed to the soles.

“I got them cheap from a friend of mine who’s in the business.”

In an emergency, the plan was for crew members to jump through the hole in the rec room floor and then use the recoil from the boot springs to bounce into their allotted places on the fire engine.

“I was hoping this would have the men ready to move out much faster than before,” said the 55-year-old Len.

However, trials carried out yesterday resulted in a crew of four ending up everywhere except where they should have been.

First through the hole, Crew Manager Gary Blake’s 18-stone weight saw his springs pushed to maximum compression. Instead of slotting him neatly behind the wheel, the rebound saw him clear the fire engine entirely and knock himself unconscious on the opposite wall.

Close behind came second-in-command Dennis Rapier, who bounced through an open skylight and onto the street outside. He was last seen describing large arcs down Montague Road, holding his crotch and shouting incoherently as he cleared several street lights.

Next to jump, crew member Colin Snoad was catapulted vertically back in the direction he’d just come, forcibly colliding with colleague Keith Slocum, who had just begun his descent.

Both men were rushed by ambulance to Froghill General. They were admitted to the Critical Entanglement Unit, where their condition is described as ‘uncomfortable’.

Asked by the Observer whether he would be pursuing the new boots initiative any further, the beleaguered Len told us: “I really can’t say right now. 

“At this moment, our sole priority lies in trying to locate Dennis.”

Then he smiled ruefully and added: “but, on the whole, I think you might say that I'm not exactly full of the joys of spring.”

STOP PRESS

The solution to the riddle left at the scene of last Friday’s rubber chicken attack is ZEFERELLI. Froghill Constabulary would like to thank Bob Plant of Squinting Lane, Swansdike and Margaret May of Helvetica Close, Cheetingham for their invaluable assistance.

DAYLIGHT RUBBERY – BUT WILL THERE BE POETIC JUSTICE?

Police are stepping up their investigation into a spate of attacks in the Froghill area after an incident in Traubert’s Heath yesterday afternoon.

Minnie Cooper, proprietor of Minnie’s Mini Mart in St. Herbert’s Road, was stocktaking behind the counter at around 5.30pm when the incident occurred.

“I heard a noise behind me,” said Ms. Cooper, “so I turned round, thinking it was a customer waiting to be served.

“Looking straight at me was a clown. I barely had time to register the fact before he raised his hat, smiled and then hit me on the head with a rubber chicken.

“Then he ran out the door laughing.”

 The 37-year-old shop owner was shocked but otherwise uninjured in the attack.

Police say they are looking for a man of around five feet six in height, dressed in a bowler hat, orange wig, white pancake make-up, ill-fitting clothes, size 23 shoes and carrying a candy-striped cane.

“We are treating this incident as significant,” said D.I. Alan ‘The Hammer’ Hardman, “and we are now convinced that it forms part of a related series of assaults.

“The use of the rubber chicken represents an alarming change in tactics and means that it’s no longer just desserts,” he said, “though of course we hope that’s what the perpetrator will get.

“His just desserts, I mean,” the Inspector added, somewhat awkwardly.

Discovered at the crime scene was a crumpled piece of paper, on which was written the following message, reproduced here with police permission:

“It was me all along, Mr. Hardman, with the pie and the trifle and the dick.

And if you want to know what made me do it, you’ll unscramble this riddle right quick.

My first is in gaze but never in look,

My second in Bible but nowhere in book.

My third, if you try, can be found inside ‘found’,

My fourth is in earth but never in ground.

My fifth is in ribs and in revel and rent,

My sixth in the time of year we call Lent.

My seventh you’ll find if you look into hell,

And my next one is hiding in there as well.

My last is in window, willow and wait,

The whole spells the name of the people I hate.”

Anyone with any ideas should contact Froghill Police on 0372 51111, as they have absolutely none of their own. Calls may be recorded and might even be taken seriously for once.

DIGGING THE BEAT IN WYTHERING

Roadworks in Wythering High Street are to remain in place for longer than expected after workmen stumbled across a big band playing under the tarmac.

A section of the High Street, between the Use Your Loaf bakery and chic bistro Le Pétomane, has been closed for the last ten days due to a fractured water main.

The work was due to have been completed this Friday, September 6, according to Froghill District Council.

However, the discovery of a subterranean ballroom containing an orchestra in full evening dress has brought proceedings to a halt.

“Me and the lads thought we could hear music above the noise of the pneumatic drill,” said FDC maintenance operative Bob D. Bilder, “and it seemed to get louder the deeper we went.

“Then suddenly, the drill went through into nothing and we could hear the words of Button Up Your Overcoat, coming up clear as anything.

“So we opened up a space and there they all were. I don’t know who was more surprised, them or us.

“Unfortunately, as the drill went in, one or two of the musicians got knocked unconscious by lumps of falling earth and stuff.”

When questioned, bandleader Johnnie Lyttleton told the astonished workmen that they’d been down there since 1938.

“He asked if Hitler was still Chancellor of Germany and what Chamberlain was going to do about him,” said Mr. Bilder.

The Observer has subsequently learned that this is not the first time that live musicians have turned up beneath the nation’s roads.

According to Caroline Treesmold, spokesperson for the Wythering Amateur Geological Society (WAGS), such discoveries are far from uncommon.

“In 2015, a barbershop quartet was dug up from under the A6 outside Leicester,” she told us.

“The following year, a Mariachi band was uncovered after local residents reported hearing music coming from under the B 284 in Epsom.

“Last March, the Lothian and District Light Opera Company were discovered performing selections from HMS Pinafore beneath the Tollcross Junction in Edinburgh and, in June, a man with a moustache was found playing a saw during resurfacing work on the M6.

“Perhaps the most comic find to date was a new wave trio, who were interrupted while rehearsing in a drain beneath the A 320 in Woking, back in 1976,” added Ms. Treesmold.

When asked by the Observer why this was particularly amusing, she replied: “Because they were playing Going Underground at the time!”

She then burst into uncontrollable laughter and had to be helped to the toilet by one of our staff.

MISPRINT

Due to an editorial oversight, a misprint occurred in last week’s edition of the Observer. In a news item entitled Schoolboy Ear Wax Candle Bonus, we described Ronald Frobisher, of Holly Lane, Froghill, as having "a face like a sockful of spanners”. That should, of course, have read “a sackful of spanners”. We apologise to Mr. Frobisher and his family for any offence caused.