The Hounds Of Summer

Good story: a mate of mine rang the week before last to see if I fancied going to Wimbledon. Never having quaffed Pimm's and nibbled strawberries while repeatedly performing step three of the Safe Cross Code in a seat beside the Centre Court before, I announced that I'd love to go along, before enquiring about the cost and availability of tickets. I was told not to worry about such trivialities, that we'd be able to pay cash at the gate. To the best of his knowledge, it'd only be a couple of quid.

"But then we'll only get to see the crappy matches!" I whinged, envisaging myself spending the evening nursing a plastic beaker of warm Robinson's Barley Water on court 176, that one famous only for its ankle-length grass and nettles.

"What crappy matches?" enquired my curious cohort.

"The ones on the outside courts with all the no-mark players nobody's never heard of," I explained.

A bewildered silence ensued, which was eventually broken by raucous laughter. His raucous laughter: "You thought I meant the tennis, didn't you?" he boomed.

"Of course I thought you meant the tennis — why else would you go to Wimbledon in July?" I enquired slowly, as if speaking to a mentally retarded child.

"The dog track, you stupid middle-class knob!" came the reply. "Wimbledon dogs is on this evening."

Ah, Wimbledon dogs. Silly me.

On the subject of Wimbledon dogs, Sue Barker...

Now, even if I do say so myself, the preceding sentence is clever on so many different levels that I'm loath to spoil it by finishing it. However, I am reminded of Frank Skinner's story on one of the final episodes of Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned, in which our hero was talking about an episode of A Question Of Sport which he had recorded a couple of days previously. Such was Skinner's confidence that a killer gag he had cracked during the Picture Board Round would end up on the cutting room floor that he decided to tell it on his own show instead, several days before the celebrated sports quiz went out.

It seems that having been invited by Sue Barker to pick a number, Skinner had to identify a photo of some female Eastern European diver posing on top of a cliff. By his own account, Skinner suddenly had a blinding flash of comedic inspiration, turned to Sue Barker and said: "You know Sue, I once saw a picture of you sitting on top of a Cliff..." Immediately, he said, he regretted it, thinking he'd gone too far even by his smutty standards. (Younger readers might want to ask their parents why this comment could be considered ill-advised.) To his great relief, however, the broadcaster and former tennis ace saw the funny side and greeted the Brummie stand-up's clever quip with one of her trademark beams. When A Question Of Sport went out a few days later, Skinner's quip was conspicuous by its absence. So too were those of his fellow guest, Chris Evans, albeit for entirely different reasons.

You may recall that it was reported in last fortnight's column that your humble correspondent had decided to stop smoking cigarettes indefinitely. Well, the disjointed nature and bizarre subject matter contained within this issue's equivalent should serve as proof, as if it were needed, that my nerves are still shot to pieces and I'm still off them.

I wouldn't harp on about it so much, by the way, except that Tara Palmer-Tomkinson has been off cocaine and alcohol for much longer and she still goes on about it in her Sunday Times column. However, as her most ardent fan, I feel that as long as I plagiarise her literary endeavours, I won't go too far wrong. And, much as I'd love to say that it gets easier with time, I must confess that I'm not enjoying my new puritanical existence one little bit. The trouble as I see it is that I know full well the first thing I'll do next time I get drunk is smoke. In order to avoid this happening, I've been abstaining from alcohol for the last couple of weeks as well.

This was bearable until recently, when I was invited to that most insufferable of social events, a dinner party. Never having been able to muster the enthusiasm to engage in pretentious babble about exorbitant house prices, Kantian positivism or the Harry Potter phenomenon, there are few things in this life that I find more excruciating than being forced into a situation where I have to sit around a table with other human beings. One of them, it transpires, is being forced into a situation where I have to sit around a table with other human beings only to find myself unable to make the best of it by pouring gallons of sweet liquor (eases the pain!) down the hatch before taking refuge in the midst of a giant mushroom cloud of impenetrable cigarette smoke of my own making.

On the plus side, however, I'm reliably informed by do-gooders everywhere that now I'm off everything, there's no reason why I shouldn't look forward to an extra-long and healthy life. That's exactly what I need to hear, of course, now that there's nothing left to live for.

In the name of God, kill me now.