A Birthday Poem for Andrew

Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!
It said it in a poem so I know it must be true.
This day is your birthday, and happy it must be,
Just make sure you don’t get so excited you wee
For now you’re a grown up you must stay composed
Even when circumstances aren’t what you supposed;
So if you open a present and find a dead rat,
Simply wear it as a party hat!
The day will fly by in a wild haze of joy
The world will shout "Watch Out, Excitement Ahoy!"
And when you get home you’ll be properly tired
But fear not! for your birthday has not yet expired
There’s still time to eat party rings, jelly and cake
There’ll be Cadbury Fingers too, make no mistake.
After all of that stuff you’re sure gonna be ill
You’ll spew and you’ll chuck and you’ll vomit until
You long for the sweet, sweet release of the grave.
Eternal rest is the ending you crave.
The tone of this poem’s become quite macabre,
So I’ll magic it happier: abracadabra!

On the dangers of birds

Once there was a man whose hair was red
And whereever he went the people said,
"Look at his hair! Look how it shines,
It falls from his head in exactly straight lines
Except at the end where it curls up a bit
Like a kitten that’s found somewhere comfy to sit.
It has to be flattened in a trouser press,
Or else you end up with a terrible mess.
Don’t come crying to me if you don’t heed my words,
You may very well find yourself hated by birds.
They often hold grudges, that’s how birds can be,
Their cutesy façade hides a long memory.
So beware! If you’ve ever had chicken tandoori,
If not properly cooked, it could make you quite poorly.
Sometimes it’s better to stick with a salad
That’s the real take-home message of this little ballad.
And it must be one Gillian McKeith would endorse
For the poo was well-coloured, and not at all coarse.

Trucky trucky shoe shoe

He knew it as soon as he opened the door,
And heard the chameleon land on the floor
With a thud, and a crack and a sad sort of squeak,
It was quickly dispatched in a gross fit of pique.
But anyway, sorry, it seems I digress -
The important thing is I must confess
To a terrible thing that I did to a duck
And the time that I stole a massive green truck
From Eddie Stobart's central depot
The lorry set off — where did it go?
It went to Leeds, it went to New York
It went to Iceland and partied with Björk
Then it went home for a nice cup of tea,
And a chocolate cheese slice and a biscuit or three.
After that it felt sleepy, so went for a snooze
In one of a pair of fine ladies' shoes.
The suede was all ruined! the insole was soiled!
The laces were frayed and the spring was uncoiled.
A normal shoe would have had no spring at all
But this one was bouncier than a beach ball.

On Being Edible

It is never easy being edible.
Insurance costs are just incredible.
You'll get no help from Go Compare
That singing man is not all there.
If anything the meerkat's worse,
I wish that he'd develop MRS-
A sickness from an unclean ward
Made a rampaging undead horde.
The zombies plied their evil trade
- selling pirated DVDs of Michael Grade
and some woman who was once on the One Show
Who stood on the sofa shouting "look at me now, though!
"I once was on Crimewatch, and once on the Bill
"And even Eastenders for a while, until
"I realised that wasn't in fact about crime
"But rather, a story of desperate rhyme
"Conducted by fools with no poetic skill,"
They did the new theme music for 'The Bill'.

Winning and Losing

I can never believe it when I win the lottery,
You'd think it was rigged, it happens such a lot-to-me.
I always pick seven, nine and forty-two,
Because that's what a sensible fellow would do.
But despite this, inevitably, I always lose
And forfeit my packet of fizzy fruit chews.
At least it helps me to look after me teeth
With the polish on top and the plaque beneath
They don't look too bad if you ignore the yellow
An easier task for a colourblind fellow
Like Hugh who can't truly deduce a true hue
All things to him look the colour of poo.
It's really a pain when defusing a bomb,
If all the material you can work from
Is that U2 album that says it will help
But in fact, it transpires, is useless as kelp
Or seaweed, as I think it's more commonly known,
And the rest you shall have to work out on your own.

A POEM by us.

The raven in the jester's hat
Is playing poker with a cat,
It's not going too well, it's true
My entire body is turning blue
I'm sure James Cameron would be pleased
Since you can watch it in 3D.
Admittedly the plot is stolen
And many of the characters' limbs are swollen
And half of the parts will be played by robots
There's act-bots and prop-bots and yes-bots and no-bots
And sad-bots and glad-bots and straight-bots and slant-bots
And big-bots and small-bots and sock-bots and pant-bots
All of them marching in time to the tune
And watching the sheep by the light of the moon.
I never shall see such a fine sight again
It must happen less than one time in ten
I could attempt to prove that with a formula
But Paul keeps giving me impossible words to rhyme.

The Important Thing Is I Was Wearing An Onion On My Belt, Which Was The Style At The Time

I'll tell you a tale of a magical fox
And his magical shoes and his musical socks
And his whimsical friend, a rabbit called Phil
Who wears a bow-tie which he bought from the Mill.
It was 10% off and made out of pure silk
With a topping of crumble and carnation milk
And hundreds and thousands, and marzipan fruit,
And a few of those small silver balls to boot
With ball bearings mixed in for a frisson of danger
Like licking the earlobes of a total stranger.
Last time I did that I was stabbed with a knife
And that's when I decided to move up to Fife.
It's green here, and Scottish, and full of nice things
Like baubles with tartan and emerald rings,
Deep-fried, of course, because that's how they like it,
Assembled, by hand, from a mulberry pie kit.
Andrew keeps giving me lines about food,
He must be in a typically hungry mood.

Cheeses Saves

It's not easy being green, but it's harder being blue
Said the depressed yet jolly Giant, in a TV interview
Which went out a week last Thursday on Channel 65
We watched until Brian Blessed shouted 'Gordon's Alive!'
Which was sooner than any of us had expected
After all, Gordon Brown wasn't even elected!
On the other hand, Cameron's a waxy-faced ponce
And a cad, and an arse, and a fool, and a nonce,
And a slimy purveyor of - sorry, I'm rambling
I can't help it since I gave up gambling.
This was only one of my vices
Along with drugs, sex, murder, theft and chocices
Yes, it, crime and desserts, they comprise my top three
Things to fill time between dinner and tea.
I usually dine on fish fingers and rice,
But last night the cat cooked so we all had fresh mice.
We served them with cheese, and it tasted OK.
So in the end dairy produce saved the day.

Pea Sonnet

Shall I compare thee to an Easter egg?

Or are you really much more like Nick Clegg?

Or would 'You're like a shoe' be more astute?

Either way you'd look quite cute.

But don't decide in too much of a rush

Between peas served discretely and peas in a mush.

As fish supper accomp'niments, both have their charms

But only one leaves you without legs or arms.

It's never been easy to tell them apart,

But Inspector McGrew had it down to an art.

You could tell by the size and the colour and shape

It wasn't an ordinary man's kind of cape.

And that's when I realised he was Superman,

And with that my troubles all really began.

I was chased by a man with a thumb for a nose

Who could hitch a lift with his hand in his clothes.

He couldn't catch me because I'm so fast

He ran for a mile 'fore a second elapsed.

Doctor Who and the Laughing Bridge

A sculpture park visit would not be complete
Without three giant men with holes in their feet.
And writing a word in the dust on a sign
'Alone' was the word, but still he felt fine.
He continued his picnic, all by himself,
A crushingly lonely but well-fed elf.
At the lakeside he thought about ending it all
His lonely picnic had been too great a fall
From the dizzying heights of society life
He fell into trouble and fell into strife.
It was sad for Matt Smith, who had been a good friend
So he went back in time to that time last weekend
When they'd all had french fries with lashings of sauce
And hundreds and thousands, and gravy (of course).
When they had finished, they were all promptly sick
But two dozen aspirin soon did the trick
In twenty-five minutes they were back on their feet
And they went off to Greggs for a well-deserved treat.

Ode To Easter

Eastertime, chocolate eggs and wine
Doctor Who travelling through time
Creek in a windmill and fresh hot cross buns
Its theme music that everyone can hum:
De dum, de dum, de dum de dum, de diddly diddly dum de-dummm
From nowhere, there came a cry - "Your Mum!"
The whole room descended into deathly quiet
And he said "Oh yeah? Then let's see you try it."
But try it he did, and even succeeded:
A simple device was all that was needed.
Made up of gaffa tape, knickers and string
(Now that's precisely my kind of thing -
Oh, pardon me, I'm getting distracted...)
Your little speech became rather protracted
I stopped listening after you said 'seventhly...'
There is no way to end this line elegantly.
Suffice it to say that no animals were hurt,
When it turned out the virus had long been inert.

A Simple Tale

He knew at a glance that this wouldn't end well

- He'd started detecting a corpsey smell.

But shrugging this off, he continued to dig

Until his hole was very big.

A simple pursuit for a simple man

With a simple house and a simple van

And a simple hat and a simple wife

And a simple house and a simple life

And a simple cat and a simple dog

And a needlessly over-complicated frog

Whose legs were made out of Fermat's Last Theorem

And whose screams were so loud that the Eskimos could hear 'em.

It took them a while to discover the body,

For professional detectives their work was quite shoddy:

Too many doughnuts; too little forensics

But never mind that - are you able to lend six

Grand to my wife, as she's really quite sick

So shut up and get her to hospital, quick!

The Murderer's Last Supper

Oh how I wish I were a bee
It would be super, you'd agree.
Communicating facts through dance
A crowd was watching, in a trance
Mesmerised by the swirling movement
Threatening to engulf all humans.
"It rhymes" cried the poet, "don't say that it doesn't"
"And anyway, there's no time like the present."
And with that he was off in a big puff of smoke
A strange exit for such an ordinary bloke.
It just goes to show that you never can tell
You've got a corpse until it starts to smell
- If it is hidden underneath the stairs
Behind the piles of eggnog and chairs
And fish finger butties and caribou horns
With custard and mustard and black peppercorns
He ate it all down and declared it amazing
And so the tale ended with all guns a-blazing.

Definitely Libellous

The day had started badly for the Pope -
Caught buttering a stolen antelope
And splashed across that day's Vatican Star
Was the scoop that the Pope decked someone in a bar.
For the Catholic Church 'twas a PR disaster
When it turned out the Pope was really the Master.
He  was evil and mental and played by John Simm
(No other actor could quite portray him).
Suddenly it transpired he can kill you with lightning
And what had been a boring day turned quite exciting
As I sidestepped the lethally charged forking ions,
I was mauled by a pride of starvation-fuelled lions
Who left me alone when they saw I was ill
Leaving flowers and grapes upon my windowsill.
Happily though, I recovered quite soon
(Unless you believe that lying bastard Geoff Hoon
and his partner in crime, the damnable Harman,
the tortoise, the hare, the Queen and the barman.)

Cliffhanger

My Uncle Brian has super powers:

He can turn lanterns into flowers.

Useful when there's an abundance of lighting

Or when the celeb on the train is alighting

Before you went over to wish them `good day'.

You started to wish they'd just all go away.

But this was impossible, sadly, because

It was ten times the size that it usually was.

No-one was sure what had caused it to grow,

And suddenly John shouted "Look out below!"

For it was so huge it had toppled right over,

an impressive feat for the White Cliffs of Dover.

An embarrassed red hue crossed their chalky façade

As they said "Oh, my dear, you are such a card!"

Attempting to conceal their genuine feelings

Beneath a huge pile of potato peelings.

The effort was feeble, and quite soon it failed

And into the sunset the two of them sailed.

The Ballad of Fry & Glover

'Eat poo, you cat!' threatened the evil dog
When suddenly there descended a cloud of smog
Blocking out the sun, and most of the sky,
A saner man would run from the Collosus Pie.
The pastry was thick and the filling delicious
But alas, the intention behind it malicious.
For the pie had been poisoned, a murder most foul
And the only suspect was a suspicious owl.
'Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!'
An owl trading from a car boot
He's not the one from Harry Potter,
Who wrote evil lies in an A5 jotter
About how Stephen Fry and Danny Glover
Shot up a bus stop, two tramps and each other.
It made all the papers - it made the front page!
It sent the Express readers into a rage!
But next day it was just wrapping up fish and chips
And the news had moved on to the solar eclipse.