Author: peterplumb

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Sven Goran Eriksson

Blimey what a rammy about Sven giving it large to that bird from the FA. Can you Adam and Eve that they were going to sack him just for having a bit of extra time with a secretary? Bleedin crackers.

If they wanted to give him the boot because he couldn’t get his team to beat a bunch of waiters in the Euros then that would have been fair enough but not just for a bit of how’s your father. Look the bloke is Swedish, he can’t help himself. They are all it over there, nothing else to do is there? Blimey I’ve seen enough videos to know what they’re like.

If you’re brought up in the fjords, Abba records on all the time and nothing but porn on the telly then it’s hardly surprising that you are going to grow up and not be able to keep it in your trousers. The man’s only human.

England should be proud that they’ve got a manager who makes all that top totty want to get inside his tracksuit. For years there was blokes like Graham Taylor and Kevin Keegan who had all the sex appeal of a digestive biscuit. Saint Glen Hoddle was too busy raising the dead or what ever it was he did and El Tel always had his finger in pies but never cherry ones. As for poor old Sir Bobby Robson, by the time your average footballer-chasing slapper had strapped on the jump leads and waited for a bucket of Viagra to take effect he’d probably have wet himself twice. Blimey.

So let’s hear it for Sven. As a football coach he’s flippin rubbish — I give you two words, Emile Bleedin Heskey — but when it comes to pulling birds he’s a genius. He’s nearly bald, he’s got stupid teeth, he wears glasses and he always looks like he’s just sat on a hairbrush. Yet he pulls the toppest totty in totty town on totty day.

Okay Ulrikaka doesn’t really count because she’s had more footballers than Manchester United. If that woman isn’t a nymphocrazy then I’ve never added a little surcharge owing to the fact that I didn’t like someone. Blimey she’s looser than a van load of WD40.

But that Nancy Dell’Olliollio is a bit of all right. There’s something about Italian women that make you think of Spain, isn’t there? Ariba, ariba. That women could make a pan of pasta sauce boil over at ten paces. She’s a whole lot of woman but even that wasn’t enough for our Sven. He wanted amore.

I’m not sure about this secretary bird though. She looks dirty right enough but it seems like she’s done dictation for half the building. Would you really want seconds after the Greek bloke had dipped his taramasalata? Not bleedin likely.

Still, you’ve got to take your cap off to Sven. He might look like he should be lying on Tesco’s fish counter but he can pull birds like a man with a knife.

Just goes to show, never judge a book by its cover or a swede by its turnip. Even an apprentice who doesn’t know shit from chocolate knows that you can look at a cistern lid but you can never tell what’s inside. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Don’t sack Sven, give him his head. Oo’er missus.

Plumb on.

Peter Plumb.

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Bigot Ron Atkinson

Blimey, can a man not speak his mind these days without the politically correct brigadiers getting all hot under their collars?

Big Ron Atkinson, the working man’s microphonist, said a couple of things he didn’t mean anyone to hear and suddenly the poor bloke’s lost his job. Bleedin ridiculous if you ask me.

Okay, so he shouldn’t have called Marcel Desailly a f***ing lazy ni***r out loud with people listening but he was just making a private comment within the privacy of his own broadcasting booth. It’s hardly his fault it was heard in Dubai and Bahrain. I know he shouldn’t have used the ‘f’ word but it was the heat of the moment and anyways, we’re all grown-ups.

As for this business of calling black people coloured — or is it calling coloured people black? I can’t keep up — well Big Ron is just a man of his time. Look at it this way, he was brought up watching the Black and White Minstrel Show in a time when everything was black and white, there was no colour. Bleedin natural that some of it is going to stuck, innit?

Just because he looks down on black people and thinks it is okay to call them by some quaint old-fashionable names, that don’t make him a racist does it? Bigot Ron is just one of the lads and uses the kind of language that you would find any racist using down the pub of a Sunday afternoon.

When Bigot Ron was manager of West Bromwich Albino he had more black players in his team that anyone else. He wouldn’t do that if he was a racist, now would he? It’s like the old landowners in olden days who brought slaves over from Africa and gave them a job and a roof over their heads. Racists my arse.

Peoples are just too politically corrected these days and you can hardly find a programme on the telly any more where the black chap is the butt of the white man’s jokes. What’s that if not flippin racist?

I tell you this, people go on about Love Thy Neighbour and say how it wasn’t funny but it was a flippin scream. I say bring it back, much better than some of the rubbish comedies they have on today like The Office or EastEnders. And don’t go thinking I’m a racist either, I used to really fancy that black woman that played the wife next door.

Bigot Ron is like me, just a man who speaks his mind. He is like your perfect microphonist because he says things so bleedin dolly that you think to yourselfs, ‘I could do that. I could say something as stupid as that if I had seven pints inside me.’

Now he has said one thing too stupid too far and they want to crucifix him. It’s like that film, The Passion of the Christ. Bigot Ron is Jesus and the politically correct brigadiers are the Romans. Or the Jews, whoever it was. And the ‘f’ word and the ‘n’ word are the nails. And his microphone is the crown of horns. And it’s nowhere near bleedin Easter. Blimey.

Listen, I always say that just because a washer has been used before doesn’t mean it can’t be used again. It can be resurrected and put to good use elsewhere. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Non-racist Ron will rise again and walk among us once more. I say we should start a campaign. Bring back the Racist One.

Plumb on.

Peter Plumb.

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Goldenballs

Blimey, I can’t believe all this locomotion about Sir David Beckham and this bit of Spanish skirt he’s supposed to have been knocking up. Can’t a man have any fun these days without it being plastered all over the bleedin papers?

This Loos woman who he’s been doing shooting practice with ain’t much of a looker but maybe she likes the tumble dryer on full tilt if you get my meaning. Many a man will tell you that if his smalls get a good wringing out a couple of times a week then it don’t matter if the dryer has to be hidden away in a cupboard. After all, you don’t look at the cistern while you are pumping the toilet, now do you? And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

So what if Beckham did give her one? Look he’s a fit, young bloke with normal bloke urges. His missus is away making music so he makes hay while the sun shines. And let’s face it, he’s in Spain so the sun shines all the flippin time. What does she expect him to do? Think of Gary Neville and hope it goes away? Course not.

Look the man is a bleedin demi-God and women are throwing themselves at him, luring him with paella and sangria and tickets for bullfights and all sorts. He may be a demi-God but he’s only flippin human. Listen, I’ve been to Torremo-bleedin-linos and I know what them sultry senoritas are like. Can’t keep their hands off us white men.

And anyways let’s face it, Lady McBeckham is hardly the kind of woman to keep a man happy is she? She’s so flipping arachnaphobic she makes the ladies of the Auschwitz dieting club look like Vanessa Feltz. I’ve seen more meat in a McDonald’s hamburger. Well, not really.

What is it with the mongrel press in this country? They can’t be happy just with pictures of Beckham’s latest haircut, oh no. They have to go printing the flipping truth all the time. Who’s interested in that? Makes me bleedin blood boil so it does. These tabloid journalists, these scumnalists, they should be strung up by their exclusives.

It’s high time the press in this country went back to the days when they kept things from the working man that they didn’t need to know. The old kings and the old queens used to be at it like rabbits and no-one was ever the wiser. The dear old Queen Mum once had the entire 3rd division of the Household Cavalry one cold winter’s night but you never read about that in the Daily Mirror did you? Instead we had proper stories about the price of bread, the suffering of the little Biafrans and the role of women in the workplace. Proper bleedin news, not stuff the likes of us don’t need to know. Blimey.

Look mate, if Beckham scores against the Froggies in Euro 2004 then I don’t care if he scores with every senorita between here and Barca-bleedin-lona. And what’s more I don’t want to read about it or see pictures of it. Well, unless the bird is better looking than that one he was shagging last week obviously. No offence meant.

And you know what? Do you? If Beckham isn’t absolutely flippin brilliant this summer then it will be the tabloid scumnalists’ fault for putting him right off his game. Bleedin treason so it is.

Come on you newspaper executors, get your act together. More stories about starving Biafrans. Less stories about Beckham’s nookie. It’s the patriotic thing to do.

Plumb on.

Peter Plumb

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David Kelly RIP

Well blow me down with a gift voucher from B&Q.

I was in this house in Argyll Avenue, up to my elbow in this woman’s waste pipe, when I heard the news on the radio. Turns out Tony Blair did nothing wrong in the whole David Kelly Iraq thingy after all. He’s cleaner than a Belfast sink on the 12th of July. Blimey.

At least that’s what Lord Betty Hutton says and what with him being a proper lord and all, who are we to disagree? Here was me thinking that Tony was in as much doo-doo as I was but no. Lord Betty says he’s innocent and that’s good enough for me.

Seems old Doc Kelly didn’t know his arsenal from his elbow and he topped himself after blabbing his big mouth off to that blubberguts from the BBC. The four-eyed fat boy reporter then made up all these nonsensicals about sexing up the dossiers just to get old Tony Blameless into bother. Makes me bleedin blood boil so it does.

The leftie bean eaters at the Beeb are no better than the scumbuckets that work for The Sun or the Mirror. They both make everything up but at least the tabloids have the decency to fill their pages with pictures of Jordan getting her bazookas out in the jungle. You can just about forgive a paper full of old horse droppings if it also has photographs that help the working man pass his lunch hour.

Lord Betty says that Tony didn’t order some beneathling to beef up the weapons report — that was just a figleaf of Andrew Gilliguts’ imagination. Saddam had all these weapons alright and in 45 minutes he could have found them in the holes he buried them in 10 years ago, dug them up, brushed out the sand, found some German scientists to put them back together, do a few tests so they didn’t blow up in his moustache then point them at the west and destroy anyone within a 20 miles radius. Them’s the truth whatever way you cooks your apples.

Betty also made it perfectly bleedin clear that there was no way Blair murdered old Doc Kelly. No way. He didn’t actually rule out Blair ordering fat boy Prescott to take Kelly down the woods, dope him up and give his wrist a slice. But then he didn’t actually say he did either. Ipso quod escape routus.

You see the bottom line — and if anyone knows the importance of the bottom line it’s a plumber — is that old Saddam the Sadist needed sorting out. Tony knew it, George Dubya knew it, even Mrs McGillivray in Ronald Place knew it and she’s as mad as a cheese roll. The plonkers at the BBC knew it too but oh no, they had to play up to the vegetarians and the Save The Whale crowd. “Oooh, show us proof.” Proof? I’d give them proof till they couldn’t sit on a cushion for a month.

That blubbery traitor Gilligan should be taken out into the streets and stuffed with meat pies till he bursts on national telly. That’s the only language these people understand. You see Gilliguts is the sort of bloke who has low self-esteem on account of him being fat and four-eyed so he makes stuff up to make himself important and get on the telly. I saw it on Sky once when I was waiting for a late night artistic movie to come on. It’s called Baron Munchhorses Symphony or something. Lying towrag if you ask me.

I’ve always said if you go throwing shit around then you better make sure the wind doesn’t change or your face will stick like that. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Now I’m not saying that Blair wouldn’t go making stuff up — I’m a plumber but I’m not that bleedin dolly. But the thing is, if he did then he would have been making it up for a good cause, right? And anyways he’s too flippin clever to get caught out by a fatty like Gilligan. If Blair was a bit ecumenical with the truth then Gilligan wasn’t going to see it. Blimey he can’t even see his own feet.

No, we can all sleep easy in our beds tonight knowing that British justice is as safe as it ever was. As long as we have men like Lord Betty looking out for the better interests of the empire then we know things are all right.

Plumb on

Peter Plumb.

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Tight Squeeze

I was rigging up a dishwasher for a family down Ronald Place last week. Don’t know why he couldn’t just have bought her a pair of pink Marigold gloves and saved himself a few quid but who am I to argue.

In fact he’d have saved himself a good few quid more if he’d been there instead of his missus. Moaned from start to flippin finish she did. My rule of thumb is add another 20 knicker to the bill for every time someone gets up me nose and this witch cost herself a fortune. I think she must have had the painters in.

Not that she really had the painters in because doing that at the same time as the plumber would have been silly. No, I think she was on her mental cycle. It’s the only think that could have explained her being such a pain in the Jeffrey.

Imagine getting on her high horse just cos I ran a lead off the washing machine and her smalls ended up cleaning her knives and forks. Picky mare.

Mind you she did also have the teenager from Hell’s kitchen living with her as well so it was no wonder she was intemperated. The bratling was this skinny blonde thing with a hankie making do for a skirt. Blimey such a short skirt would have been all right if she filled out a bit but I think she was that arachnaphobic way. Terrible so it is but I don’t see why they can’t just make her eat some pies.

So I had the moaning mother moaning in one ear and Lolita stick insect squawking in the other. How’s a man supposed to do a proper job when he can’t hear himself think about ways of turning the VAT into ready cash? I’ve got professional standards to meet you know.

Next thing the mother disappears and the teenager starts asking me how big my wrench is. Flippin eck — there’s no way I want to end up doing backing vocals for Gary Glitter and Pete Townshend so I told her it could slip through a 5/8 washer and she slung her hook. My old gaffer always told me never to put something too big inside something too small or you would end up in more hot water than you can handle. And, as I always say, if it’s true in plumbing it’s true in life.

Anyways, about the thing I wanted to tell you about. Once Lady Macbeth and the six-stone slapper pushed off out of the way I got into the trap under the kitchen floor to feed up the strainer basket. Blimey if I didn’t find five hundred knicker in used readies hidden in the hole. Result. Merry Crimbo, Mrs Plumb. I couldn’t have been more surprised if Saddam Hussein had popped his head out and sang Take Me I’m Yours. Actually that’s not so unlikely when you think about it.

My first thought was they might be drug dealers but there was woodchip on the walls and no bling bling round the arachnaphobic’s neck so I ruled that one out. Best guess was the old man had won it on the nags and was hiding it from the old cow so he could spend it on someone who moaned less. Or more.

He’d never miss it for months and what’s more he could hardly go tell her about it now could he? Anyways theft is nine tenths of the law.

So I’m thinking Mrs Plumb might just get that diamante thong she wanted after all. Then I’m thinking an extra large sets you back a good few more spondulicks and a monkey doesn’t go as far as it did. So I’m thinking about following the geezer’s example and putting the entire monkey on a pony. Investment.

I pick out this nag called Tight Squeeze. Can’t lose I reckon. Then I see this tip for an animal called Jack Pot 2. Kiss Me Kate I thinks to meself, must be fate. A second jackpot is just what the optician ordered. Flippin third it was.

Oh well, easy come easy went. A pair of Marks and Spencers cotton finest for Mrs P. Blimey.

Plumb On

Peter Plumb

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Princess Diana and the Paparazzi

It’s enough to make me bleedin blood boil, it really is.

Three froggie paparazzi have just got away with taking pictures of our Princess Diana, God bless her, on the night she died. It’s flippin misbelievable.

These so-called photographers chase the poor, lovely woman to her death, hound her into an underground grave, and they don’t even get their cameras taken off them. Sick, that’s what it is. To make things worser they didn’t even show us the photos. Just makes the whole thing a waste of time, so it does.

Trust the flippin frogs to let the craparazzi away with this kind of intrusionism. Them judges probably did it just to noise up old Mr Al Fayed because he’s English-ish. If he’d been another frog they’d have locked them up and thrown away the secret password.

I mean to say, what’s the world coming to when a lovely lady like Di can’t go out for the night without some geezer shoving his long lens in her face? Did they expect her just to swallow that? Course not, she’s a lady. Well, she was.

These photographers, these snotarazzi, they just don’t care about people’s privacy. Diana never asked to be famous, she just wanted to marry a prince, go to film premieres, clear landmines and generally be an angel to the world. And maybe a saintess. She never asked anyone to take her photo. Well, not often.

But oh no. The craparazzi took her picture whether she liked it or not. And they didn’t always take her best side like she asked them to neither. Drove her to the grave they did. Well technically the blotto froggie chauffeurist drove her but you know what I mean.

They should have been up for first degree homicide if you ask me. Guilty as charged your honour, on with the black cap and off with their heads. Treason is still a bleedin hanging offence and that’s what it was. Don’t give me any rubbishness about them being Frenchies and so it doesn’t count. Our Royals is royals everywhere so treason it is.

Hang them up by their camera straps, gag them with one of James Hewitt’s old jockstraps and beat them about the back with a pair of Will Carling’s rugby boots. Let them dangle until they smell — they are Frenchies so it shouldn’t take long — then feed them to a pack of slavering foxhounds that haven’t had a good meal since the lefties banned hunting. Then shoot the buggers.

It may sound harsh but it’s no more or lesser than they deserve. You can’t go around taking pictures of everyday famous people and make their chauffeurist drunk so that they crash their car and not expect to get shot. Stands to reason.

Imagine if I was putting in a new sink for old Mrs Grant in Bell Street and decided just to take a photo of her as she was coming out of the shower wearing nothing more than a smear of shampoo. Actually don’t, it’s too bleedin horrible. But she wouldn’t be flippin happy would she? Nor me come to that, blimey.

But my old gaffer always told me that if I was going to stick my nose in somewhere it shouldn’t be then I was likely to get it covered in crap. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life. The snotarazzi have stuck their noses in where they shouldn’t be so they should get their apertures cut off. Stands to reason.

Diana for saintess. Photographers for the Bastille.

Plumb on.

Peter Plumb.

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George W Bush

Just yesterday I was fitting a new s-bend for a woman in Richmond Place. I say ‘new’ it was actually a bit second hand and had spent the previous ten years of its existence in a flat round the corner. I say ‘woman’ but I’m not completely bleedin sure it wasn’t her husband in an Irish jig and her best Dorothy Perkins frock. I was a bit suspectful from the off but the toilet seat was up and the room smelled like a Turkish whore had spent the previous night drinking Guinness. People these days.

Anyways, this customer — either Mrs Morgan or her light-loafered man — was telling me how it was a flippin disgrace that President George W was coming to have tea with the Queen. On account of him being a murdering, warmongering, cheating, lying son of a murdering, warmongering etc etc.

Now I wasn’t having any of that. The customer may always be right — that’s complete bollocks obviously — but I wasn’t going to sit there making a five minute job last just over an hour while someone slagged off the man who saved us from Saddam Hussein and his 45 minute boil-in-the-bag nuclear weapons.

All this bollocks about President George being a war mad daftie who doesn’t know his nuclear arsenal from his elbow is a bit unfair. Okay so he’s not Brain of Britain, well he couldn’t be could he, but he isn’t a complete idiot. Not really.

Okay so he’s not so hot on geography or history and he has a hard time speaking English proper but then it’s not his first language. He’s American, you know. But he’s not a complete buffoon. I bet he’d do really well on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Well, The Price is Right at the very least.

And the loopy lefties like Mr or Mrs Morgan can moan all they want about President George blowing the bejeezus out of Baghdad but where would they be today if he hadn’t? Well, okay they’d be in the same place and nothing would be different except a lot more people would be alive but that’s not the point. Sometimes democracy means you have to kill a lot of innocent people whether there is a reason or not.

So I told all this to Mrs Morgan — and probably to Mr Morgan as well — and she/he ranted on about how George had made up all that stuff about Saddam and his weapons. Well, so what? If he’d told the truth then obviously no-one would have wanted to go to war with the towel heads so he had to make it up. That’s what politics is all about. I’m afraid Mrs Morgan was just too stupid a man to understand all that though.

She kept banging on about democracy as if that was something available to the likes of him. But there’s always a price to be paid for democracy and in Mrs Morgan’s case it was a hundred quid surcharge for being a prat. That’s not quite how I phrased it on the invoice of course, cracked soldering or something.

You see what the likes of Mr Morgan doesn’t understand is that America is the greatest democracy in the world. And the 47 per cent of Americans who voted for President George will testify to that. So although Mr Morgan may say that size doesn’t matter (Mrs Morgan probably has a different view) it surely does. As my old gaffer used to say, never use a small mallet when a flippin great sledgehammer will do. It looks good, scares the crap out of anyone watching and you can charge five times the price for a clean-up operation. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Plumb on President George.

Plumb on.

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Channel 4

Did you see that Derren Brown geezer do that Russian Roulette thing on Channel 4 the other night? Flipping brilliant it was. The only slight disappointment was that the smug git didn’t blow his brains out but you can’t have everything.

You’ve got to hand it to Channel 4 though. They may be purveyors of porn and servers of smut but they’ve got their faults as well. How’s this for a bit of TV scheduling? Death of a Scientist (about Dr David Kelly killing himself) followed by Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live. Brilliant. I’m sure Mrs Kelly would have been tickled at their sense of irony.

You know what’s coming next though. In the fine tradition of Channel 4 programming we can soon expect Celebrity Russian Roulette. If it worked for Big Brother, Fame Academy and Survivor then why not personalities shooting themselves?

It will be a riot. Six celebrities, one gun, five bullets. Last man standing gets the Christmas Number One and a new chat show. The other five get their old programmes repeated and a celebrity funeral.

And let’s face it there’s no shortage of giant egos who are just dying to get their faces on the telly — even if their faces will be covered in blood.

What about Barrymore? The old singing shirtlifter can’t get a gig anywhere else on television so I can’t see him turning down the chance of a comeback. He keeps telling us he’s had a bum rap (oh no, that was the bloke in his swimming pool wasn’t it) so let’s get him on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me the Empty Chamber and see if he can dodge another bullet.

And how about that poncey designer bloke, that Laurence Llewellyn Bummer. Oh how good would it be to see that lanky streak of pink put a gun to his girlie hair and pull the trigger? Better than a clearance sale at B&Q. Even if he did spray the walls with his blood and brains it would be better than the colours he normally chooses.

They normally have a sportsman on these celebrity things but if we can’t manage that then get Tim Henman on. This time we could happily shout “Come on, Tim” and really mean it. Of course you know what would happen, the sap would get through to the last four then cack himself like he normally does.

We need a woman as well, if only to make the tea and keep things tidy. I’d suggest Mrs Plumb but she’s not a celebrity and anyway you’d never hear the gun go off over the sound of her nagging. I reckon that fat cow Clarissa Dickson Wright would fit the bill. Did you read that she is going to be in Absolutely Fabulous and said she’d be a sexy blonde in a white basque. Nearly lost me flipping lunch. Give her a gun.

My next choice would be that Welsh newsreader bloke with the stupid ties. You know, that Huw Edwards. Can’t understand a bleeding word he says. Yakki da, bang, now here’s the weather. Anyway, he always said he wanted to be the next Jill Dando.

But they should really pull out all the stops and get Tony Blair to complete the line-up. They should put no bullets in the gun and have him swear blind that there are loads of them. But funny as that would be it would be much funnier if they put a bullet in every chamber and see if the slimy git can worm his way out of that one. I swear if they put that on the telly I might even pay my licence fee.

You see, it’s all about giving people what they want. Any apprentice still wet behind his arse will tell you that if the bloke in number eight wants a new angle stop then you give him a new angle stop even if it’s his diverter which has gone pear-shaped. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Come on Channel 4, pull the plug on Countdown and give Richard Whitely the bullet. The public will love you for it.

Plumb on.

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Jeffrey Archer released

Wasn’t it nice to see Lord Archer being released from prison on Monday? The poor man should never have been locked up with common criminals but at least now he can indulge in his own pleasure rather than her Majesty’s.

To put a proper lord like Lord Jeffrey away for trying to pervert the course of justice is an outrage.

Just because the man jumped a rather ugly prostitute doesn’t in itself make him a pervert. Clearly he has the sexual drive of a natural athlete and Lady Mary, being a proper Englishwoman, doesn’t think it right to cater for his every need. So where else is his lordship going to relieve himself other than his secretaries, social acquaintances, young party workers, prostitutes and the occasional roll with Iain Duncan Doughnut? He’s only human.

Then they try to give him a hard time for trying to make some money. He’s a millionaire —making money is his job. Imagine where I’d be if I went round fixing people’s plumbing for free. Actually don’t imagine it, it’s just too bleeding horrible. Okay so when Lord Jeffrey raises money for charity he keeps a few million quid for himself, so what? How do you think he got to be a squillionaire in the first place? Those moaning gits with cancer or no legs should be grateful that a man like Viscount Jeffrey spends his time raising hundreds of pounds for them.

The people who are hounding Baron Archer are just jealous and to be fair there’s a lot to be jealous about. He was an Olympic athlete and would almost certainly have won the 100 metres if they hadn’t insisted on him starting at the same time as everyone else. He was a fabulously successful businessman until some prat ruled embezzlement was illegal and he had to start again. He was irresistible to the most beautiful women that money or prescribed drugs could buy until their husbands or the national press found out. See what I mean, jealousy at every bleeding turn.

And his books, fantastic every one of them. Many a time I’ve locked someone out of their own bathroom while I read one of Sir Jeffrey’s books while occasionally hitting a wrench off something noisy. You can’t beat an Archer at £75 an hour. Sometimes I’ve even read them right to the end without skipping a few chapters or thinking that I’ve read this somewhere else before.

There really should be laws to stop the press talking about Earl Archer the way they do. To call him a liar, a cheat, a crook, a prossie jumping pervert, an oily little creep who you would happily see burning in eternity with an umbrella up his jacksie —it’s just wrong. How can they get away with saying he is a lying, pompous, shag-anything-that-doesn’t-move, arrogant little shit who should be stoned to death by nuns with bad breath? Surely some of that is libellous?

Imagine where I’d be if people could just write that I’d overcharged for fixing a tap, or took six days to fit a washing machine just because the lady of the house looked like she might offer more than a cup of tea, or said that I might occasionally have charged for fitting some nice new parts when actually I put in some fittings that I’d reclaimed from the job before? Actually don’t imagine it, it’s just too bleeding horrible.

Sir Jeffrey is now a free man and can now enjoy the things that the rest of us take for granted — like fresh air, a walk in the park or bending down in the shower without worry. Everyone should now get off his back.

I’ve always said that a rule of fitting a good shower is that you should be able to reach for the soap without fearing that you might be over-stretched. And if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Plumb on.

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Moral Decline of a Nation

Is nothing sacred?

The festering politically correct lefties that are ruining this country are at it again. You can’t open a door for a woman without someone accusing you of being sexist, you can’t respect a tradition without someone trying to tear it down and you can’t call the towel-heads terrorists without being accused of racism. What’s the world coming to?

Last week they stopped tennis players bowing in front of the Royal Box at Wimbledon and now we’ll have all sorts of sweaty, ungrateful colonials walking past the lovely Duchess of Kent without so much as a tug of their forelock. You let these people take part in the world’s greatest sporting tournament (apart from the World Cup, the Olympics, the European Championships, the Commonwealth Games and The Embassy World Dart Championships) and they throw it back in your face. Instead of being proud of appearing in front of our Royals and paying due respect to them, they just want to pick up their free towels and Robinson’s Barley Water and hurry back to get their nails done. And the women are just as bad, they can’t wait to get inside for a spot of “leg over-Navratilova” if you know what I mean.

Next on the lentil crunchers hit list of institutions is bingo. Okay so it may not be your highbrow opera or ballet but it has been a staple of British life for generations. And if it keeps Mrs Plumb and her mother out of the house for three nights a week then it’s fine by me.

Obviously I don’t play bingo, I’m a man, but I remember many happy days at the seaside winning packs of ciggies and half bottles of vodka just for shutting wee windows over numbers. Lovely. Clickety click. Legs eleven. Sweet sixteen, never been kissed. Those were the days.

But oh no. Two little ducks, no more. Tom Mix, no more. Burlington Bertie, no more. The Bleeding Britpop Brigade have decreed that bingo names are old-fashioned and have come up with a list of new-fangled 21st century names. Old-fashioned? Is Big Ben old-fashioned? Is British justice old-fashioned? Is the class society old-fashioned? If you want to change traditions then hop on a plane to Iraq and stop women wearing masks over their faces and men wearing tea towels. Leave bingo alone.

How is Mrs Plumb’s mum going to cope with all this rubbish? For a hundred years she has lived quite happily in the knowledge that 71 means “bang on the drum”, now she is being told that it is “J-Lo’s bum”. Not bad enough that they are changing it but they have to bring in the derriere of some Cubanist-American pop star. If they need to bring bums into it then why not Kylie? Much nicer in my opinion and she’s more or less British.

So now we have Gareth Gates number 8, which doesn’t even rhyme and anyway there is absolutely nothing wrong with garden gate. We have Jimmy Choo 32 — I’m told he makes shoes — so how is that better than buckle my shoe? Go on tell me that.

These people should just leave well alone. What would happen if they started changing u-bend to w-bend or s-bend to t-bend? Well you’d get a lot of confused plumbers and water all over your floor. My old gaffer always said that everything should be left the way it is except crap on the floor. And, as we all know, if it’s true in plumbing then it’s true in life.

Next thing you know you won’t be allowed to smack your kids, smoke in public places or drive your car down the road for free. They will be scrapping the House of Lords, getting rid of red phone boxes, allowing women to referee snooker matches and changing the name of the Post Office so many times that Postman Pat’s head will explode. Oh hang on, they’ve already done that.

I hardly know this country anymore. Today bingo, tomorrow Buckingham Palace. You mark my words, this is just the beginning of the Trotskyist revolution. When The Duchess of York and the Countess of Wessex are being beheaded on the Mall, just you remember — Two Fat Ladies. That’s how it all began.

Plumb on.