Brendan the Spy Part Deux: The Man From Kays Catalogue

‘The devil will rise in Sidley woods and the end of the world will begin there,’ so prophesised the bald Scotch sex pest and black magician, Aleister Crowley. He’d fallen on hard times and was living in a boarding house on the Ridge in Hastings and anyone who’s been to Sidley ever will understand why he picked that particular spot.
The only problem, to paraphrase dicky-eyed ex private Peter Falk, is that Sidley Woods is now mostly a Gateways carpark. Again anyone who’s been there for more than 15 seconds will know that if Death rode a Pale Horse into Sidley, locals’d have it up on bricks and be boiling up the hooves for glue before he’d had a chance to shout ‘Apocalypse Now.’

But if it did happen. There’s only one group of people to stop it.
The former employees of the independent cinema, sadly closed once again (just in case you’re interested, the Former Proprietor is still after the lease, though given his political aspirations he’d probably have to get someone in to run it for him – is this a job for the Ass. Man we hear you cry ? Or more likely weep. Not likely, the fat clown’s run away to France to avoid parental responsibilities and credit card debts). We’ve had experience of this sort of caper after the Stormtrooper job, so it’s not as if we don’t know what we’re doing. (Yes it is)

By Stormtrooper, I do of course mean we were wearing white disposable decorators boiler suits and half head rubber masks. We were also carrying plastic guns, for this was before the War on Terror. We were promoting a local laser tag business, that having been opened by Jon Pertwee no less, was now proving something of a second home to the local taxi firms. Our fee – a bottle of cheap vodka, ten quid and a free game each – not bad for dumping the leaflets in the bin and going to the beach. Two of our number were a little more zealous and thought they’d give out some of the leaflets before heading for the off licence and decided to start with the local jewellery shop (it was next door). Who thought they were trying to rob the place.

Now two of us had opted out of the diy stormtrooper look. HRH because he’d been given a ‘Darth Vader costume’ instead. Which was a full-head mask, a homemade black cape, and a lightsabre. Well, a stick that someone had painted neon yellow. No expense had been spared, no thought had been given. With the stick he looked a bit like a blind person, which given that the mask lacked eye holes, he was.

The second of our group to express himself individually was of course Brendan the Spy, clad in one of those jumpers with epaulettes and arm patches that were usually navy, this one was black. To top it off he was wearing a headset (that wasn’t plugged in), I have no idea to this day what he thought he looked like. You will be utterly unsuprised to discover that in between missions to the former Yugoslavia, France, London, the Pizza Pasty shop, fatso, prince of espionage had been pelted with eggs from a moving vehicle to the clarion cry of ‘oi blazer’ (he was sporting some sort of jacket and carrying an empty briefcase).

The mission such as it was ended in the way that such things do.
HRH, with the help of George the Coolest Soul produced three young ladies,having stolen their cauldron. George was briefly captivated by a well chested lady of inferior diction with a marked resemblance to a sulky bloodhound. One of her companions had a sharp face and a caustic manner but rapidly sussed that HRH despite being in possession of a beige leather jacket and a yellow stick had his own flat. Needless to say we were rapidly evicted as HRH pursued a short lived, non existent romance. One of our number, an unfortunately ginger ex Harrovian went off in pursuit of imaginary foreigners to fight. The rest of us found a beachfront shelter to smoke in. It was at this point that Brendan the Spy set off for the promenade, framed against the shore, like a catalogue model who’d really let himself go. He began to weep gently.
An hour passed. Bereft of nicotine someone asked him what was wrong. Once more with feeling:
‘You don’t understand I’ve got blood on my hands.’
Not again.
‘I don’t know if I can go on.’
This was new.
‘Well go and jump then.’
A pause.
Britain would not be so easily parted with her top, top secret agent.
Daft and tragic merkin that he was.

It's All Over Bar The Smiling

Berk Alert: Happy Birthday Brendan the Spy

Well in honour of The Covert One's birthday (not that he remembered my daughter's, or has as yet managed to acknowledge her existence even in passing) I thought I would treat you, gentle friend, to a few recent words from the ribald larkmouth that is Codename H.17:

"whole heartedly agrees that breast feeding is healthy and natural, and that a woman should be able to do it anywhere. I would also like to point out that masturbation is also natural and healthy, not that you'd think it with the reaction I got on the number 9 bus this morning"

There is no number 9 bus you sorry berk, you live in France.
I'm afraid that's all we have stomach for from the newly Gallic humourist.

Morris Dancing Is My Life - Part 1

Yesterday I was mugged by the retail chain HMV. There was no violence, but it was definitely a mugging.
I bought a computer game. They’ve re-issued Goldeneye and I was lulled, by nostalgia and the desire to pretend to kill people from a distance, into buying it. It’s a good game. So the sleek and practiced thug who bags up my purchase nonchalantly throws in a bit of over the counter banter.
‘It’s only a pound to insure it for a year. In case it gets scratched.’
Now I never buy this sort of insurance since Lynn Faulds Wood
(mother of quintuplets Ben Folds Five) off of that Watchdog convinced me it was tantamount to fellating an uncircumcised incubus and not nice or good for me.
But it’s only a pound. And what if it gets scratched ?
So I hand over my shiny quid and slope off home to kill Oddjob.
Obviously the game doesn’t work.
There are rules to these sorts of things, and it follows that if I buy insurance for the first time, I’m going to need it.
Now all I need is the receipt. Which I had, of course, thrown away. A trivial matter to get it out of the bin. Except fate is conspiring this week, the stars are in alignment, Tarva and Alambil are in conjunction and Coriakin-invisible is taking a big thick piss in my mouth.

The Duck’s Egg’s Tale
I bought half a dozen duck’s eggs this week, from a farmshop. Big yolked, unpasteurised loveliness. It’s not much of an anecdote and you can see where we’re going. Now, I cooked four of them for breakfast, but two, because my fridge is a bit on the knackered side spontaneously froze. So I unsentimentally dumped the two frozen unfertilised embryos in the bin. They had gone gelatinous and by the time I threw away the receipt, they were a little on the ripe side, in a way that only an oriental gentleman can appreciate. Just to set the scene I also dumped half a dozen full nappies from a teething one-year old into the receptacle. Now she is an angel, so much so that her feet don’t quite touch the ground, but don’t let anyone tell you that their brown jewellery doesn’t smell just like everyone else’s.

Now there is a ray of light here. One I don’t deserve. The angel’s mother, herself a paragon of loveliness intercedes.
It is at this point Simon Bates should start playing the music from ‘Our Tune’ (itself the tune from Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet –the one with Michael York).
I pop out to buy some milk and when I return there is the receipt on the table. My wife smiles like the saint she is and I resolve to buy her some wings. I’d write to the Pope about her, but he’s a former child Nazi who’s become something much worse, and I don’t really want to court the favour of the invisible man with a beard.

All chipper I’m back to HMV to be greeted by a different sales assistant. She’s all cheery and has bright orange hair. At least she is until I explain my difficulty.
‘This game. I bought it here, yesterday. It doesn’t work. I keep getting an error message. Can I have a new one please ?’
She consults with her brethren.
‘Sorry. We’ve sold out.’
‘Well can I have a refund ?’
Pause. Hasty huddle around the cauldron.
‘Yes. You’ll need to sign here and give your address.’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘We can’t authorise the refund without it.’
So I get my refund. But there’s,in the words of Columbo,
“One small thing bothering me.”
The pound. That has not been refunded.
Now I know. It’s only a pound. But you see it’s mine.
I paid a pound for insurance for a game which I, through no fault of my own, no longer have.
‘You haven’t refunded the pound.’
‘We’re not authorised to.’
They say that Lucifer was a redhead.
I get a look that tells me it’s only a pound and would I please go away because I’ve interrupted their day enough. And I know it’s not their fault. But it is somebody’s and they’re going to pay. The very precise sum of one pound because it’s mine and I want it back. And I know how. Using Morris dancing.

Simon Fox is the CEO of HMV, he lives with his wife and three children in Berkshire. And he owes me money

Short & Sweet

Well, it is father’s day today,
and I have a badge. Which pretty much makes me the happiest person alive. Ever. So my thanks to Tarquina Superba and her mother (there was a card too and I’m grinning all over my daft face.) and for those of you who have no interest in the sprig of the Blancmange line – a recipe for chocolate brownies.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
3oz/85gr self raising flour
9oz /250g caster sugar
6oz/175g butter

1 tbspoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 mars bar
200g cooking choc – dark chocolate at least 75% cocoa solids

1. Whisk the eggs and sugar until they are pale and thick (like the son of my mother’s second husband)

2. Melt 175g of the chocolate, the cocoa and the butter together in a bain-marie (look it up)

3. Add the results of 2. & 3. together, add the vanilla essence, fold in the flower. Add the chopped up pieces of Mars Bars

4. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking tray. Pre-heat the oven to 150-185 (Gas Mark 3-4). Cook in the oven for 30 minutes.

5. Now turn the oven off and leave it for an hour. Take it out of the oven and leave to cool.

Time for bed. Icing tomorrow. Good night all.

Actually tomorrow is now today thanks to the miracle of editing- so here's the icing.

Very simple: 1/3 butter to 2/3 icing sugar and add 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder.
You might like a lot of icing or virtually none. The two important things are:
i) Get the ratios right so it doesn't end up too gloopy.
ii) Make sure the brownie has cooled,otherwise the icing may melt.

Mix it all up, apply icing and that's it, you're done.

Brendan the Spy Part 1: Ass. Man & The Lezza.

BRENDON THE SPY
I met him, when, as young men, we both attended the same 6th Form College. He was retaking his GCSEs in between acting as a secret agent for Her Majesty’s Government. Some of you may have been a mite more credulous about such a revelation, but really his credentials were impeccable. He told us everything (perhaps the only clue that these stories were not of the first truthfulness). So brilliant were the deceptions that he even had cover stories for his lies:
Brendan the Spy was recruited by MI 6 at the age of 17 owing to the skill he demonstrated at Cooden Air Pistol Club at the age of 9.
His explanation for such an unlikely turn of events, “well you see, it’s the last thing anyone would think of.”
Another version was that he responded to an ad in Friday Ad. ‘Wanted Spy. Must be British,’ or somesuch.
His explanation for such an unlikely turn of events, “well you see, it’s the last thing anyone would think of.”

In several evenings of drunken sincerity he told a number of people how he had acquired a scar on his leg.
1. He parachuted into France, landing on the edge of an old airstrip somewhere in Normandy. The government was using trainee spies because foreign governments would have no record of them, making them ‘Perfect Spies.’
Unfortunately all of them were killed in a firefight, except Brendan, who managed to shoot his way out.

2. Using the codename H.17 he parachuted into Bosnia. With the rest of his team he abseiled up a building (yes) and killed everyone in an office.
Unfortunately all of them were killed in a firefight, except Brendan, who managed to shoot his way out.
That story was told to us by his then girlfriend. As he told her, he wept and punched the wall, all was silent outside Errols Kebabs except for his anguished cry, “I’ve got blood on my hands.”
I know what you must be thinking, how on earth does he have a girlfriend ?
I had first met her sporting a t-shirt that he had had made for her. It had a passport photo of them both (thankfully small, for her sake) with the immortal words ‘Yum Yum, He’s The One’
He wasn’t it turned out. You may be surprised by this, after all he had a pet name for her, ‘the Lezza.’

Brendan (the Spy) quickly decided that GCSE Maths and English weren’t for him, he was (as he often told me), “such a smart bloke” so qualifications were largely irrelevant.
He had got a part time job which became a full time career, working at the local independent cinema, he was rapidly promoted to Assistant Manager,or Ass. Man as he insisted we call him without irony. The Proprietor of the cinema would routinely empty the till and spent the day in the pub avoiding creditors. Brendan in a gesture of lofty patronage would employ a few of us: someone on the till,an usher, whilst the Ass. Man put on the film. He didn't really know how the projector worked, and it was not uncommon for the film to get shredded whilst we drank snakebite on the roof. There is some sort of moral to this tale about not leaving your livelihood in the hands of a seventeen year old and his mates but it was lost on us. The owner eventually and inevitably lost the cinema, last time I saw him he gave me some speed and told me of his elaborate plans to ‘get it all back,’ that was a decade ago. More recently I heard he ran as the BNP candidate in the General Election last year.
Some evenings he and Brendan would drive up to Galley Hill, “to watch the gays.”
I recall BtS sauntering into the cinema one day clutching an envelope bearing the legend O.H.M.S.

‘See,’ he said proudly. It contained a letter from H.19 (Robbo) to H.17 (Brendan the Spy). It confirmed that his ‘transfere’ was approved. He was going to Europe, Switzerland most likely, so he and the Lezza could stay together when she had a year abroad at University. I was puzzled, the letter was written on tracing paper. “Easier to burn,” he informed me sagely.

The Lezza went to University then moved to Paris. She is fluent in French and German, with a passable knowledge of Italian. She is always rather vague about what she does.

Brendan, for a long time, worked in a series of mobile phone shops. After some months each would close and he would move on. He did go to France in the end, leaving behind debts, an estranged wife and a young son who gets into trouble at school. The boy’s teacher thinks he would do better if his father was in England. It is just another in a long line of sacrifices Brendan the Spy has had to make for Queen & Country. Defende Regnum young man, Defende Regnum.

Marc Singer Sideways Acting Masterclass

I have known actors, maybe you have one downstairs, it’s possible you may be one yourself. It’s not important.
But this is.


The Beastmaster.

It is the incredible tale of a young man, Dar, son of Zed, brother of Tal.
It is a world where only women, villains and animals have names longer than one syllable.
Owing to a prophecy that Ma-ax (High Priest of Ar –played by a young Rip Torn – you know, he plays an old Patches O’Hoolahan in Dodgeball. The young Patches is played by Hank Azaria from the Simpsons, and Huff, and Grosse Point Blank) will be killed by ‘Zed’s unborn son’ , one of Ma-ax’s witches teleports him pre birth from his mother into an ox, then teleports away (cackling). She gets killed before she can sacrifice him by a balding merchant. Just before she dies she is suddenly, briefly naked before putting her clothes back on to leap into a fire. When she dies, she cackles too.

The young man grows to young manhood. In the mean time Zed despite being held by Max for all that time has somehow managed to sneak out of the pyramid where he is being held hostage (did I mention he’s been blinded) and father a second child. He then sneaks back into his cell. The old devil.
Dar becomes a man, for some reason (maybe to do with being in the ox) he can talk to animals, like Dr Doolittle. It’s not long before he’s got a small menagerie – a panther,an eagle and 2 ferrets.
He uses his gift to see through their eyes to spy on girls bathing in a pool (in the Director’s cut they’re bare-chested – one of them, Tanya Roberts, was a Bond girl from Living Daylights). There are some fights, one of the ferrets dies biting May-Axe in the nuts and then exploding. Another witch turns into a dove. She cackles when she dies too. It might be a family tic
The Beastmaster’s younger brother is made king , wearing a big nappy. The city rejoices.

It’s a great story only made better by Marc Singer’s unique approach to acting. Marc you may remember was cameraman Mike Donovan in the original V (he also played an emerald miner who was Bobby Ewing’s friend from college in series 8 of Dallas (the one that was a dream) – he has used the powerful acting technique that he developed in all his work. It is very simple but incredibly effective; wherever you are supposed to be and whatever you are doing, always present your side profile to the camera. Whilst it isn’t the most natural pose in the world it does ensure that the audience can always see all the acting you are doing with your face, all the time.
Of course the technique has its detractors, Al Pacino was famously dismissive, ‘I never heard of that,’ his eyes seemed to say.
But for the naysayers amongst you, including local actor Stephen Yardley (Ken Masters – Howard’s Way not Streetfighter), I suggest you look at the results of what happens when Marc doesn’t use the technique. It isn’t nice.








Not Nice.