Last week I visited my eldest brother Gerry. He is great company and very witty indeed but on occasion he gets depressed. These dark moments usually come about for the strangest reasons.

For example, the time before last I visited we were chatting about the usual things when I offered him a Jelly Baby. Immediately his mood changed telling me to leave and to take my confection with me.

He rang a couple of days later and apologised offering no reason for his outburst other than I woudn't understand.

On last weeks visit I bought him the Dvd box set of the 'Planet of the Apes' as it was close to his birthday. This also didn't go down well and he through it across the room.

I began to see a pattern emerging 'Monkeys and Jelly Babies'. What was it about this combination that upset him so much?

After much digging and talking to other relatives the problem seems to stem from when on his 18th birthday our Aunty bought him a pair of giant plastic Monkey feet and some Jelly Babies. He was co-erced into dancing with his new foot attire in front of everyone including his new girlfriend. To top it all our laughing Aunty ate the Jelly Babies while she watched.

Next time I will bring Humbugs.

Every time I watch 'Top Gear' on the television it is with a deep sense of satisfaction and also sadness.

The reason for this is because one year ago I agreed to the challenge of driving the 'reasonably priced car' around a track. I was aware that my lap time would be put on display along with other celebrities and consequently I doubled my efforts. Also driving today was Sir Richard Attenborough.

The laps went well and I was by far the quickest, faster than 'The Stig' no less. Unfortunately this is when everything went wrong. Jeremy Clarkson kept embarrassing poor Stig calling him 'rubbish' and 'amateur' and dancing around him in a rather childish manner (poor form).

The Stig took the bait and ran to the reasonably priced car and sped off. After several laps The Stig still hadn't bettered my time and began to take risks on several corners, he was a man/woman possessed.

Then the inevitable happened, The Stig lost it on the final corner careering out of control and running over and killing Dickie Atenboroughs' pet Yorkshire Terrier 'Peter'.

Dicky was inconsolable and never did get to have his go.

For the sake of all concerned, especially The Stig, I decided that my time must have been a mistake and withdrew.

An awful lot has been made of the missing data disks and the woeful incompetence of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I would have thought it would be quite easy to lose a couple of CD's in fact I can vouch for it!

Because of my own complicated tax affairs I am forced to file my yearly tax return on CD (to post that amount of paper would be quite ridiculous) and the year before last I'm afraid to say there was something of a "mix up". I had been using Luca's laptop as Brian Cant had fouled the CD tray of my own computer during one of his drunken displays at a cheese evening and Gerald had sent it away to be "industrially cleaned". Anyway due to my mind being on other things I inadvertently happened to post a Simply Red compilation CD to the Inland Revenue instead of my tax return. Despite numerous requests the CD has not been returned and I suspect even now a senior tax official drives around all day listening to the ginger Mancunian warbler when perhaps he should be concentrating on more pressing matters. Just a thought.

Tax return	Shambles

You may be wondering why you haven’t seen me “strutting my stuff” on your television sets these last few weeks.

Well I can tell you that the negotiations for my participation in the current series of “Strictly Come Dancing” broke down for the most petty of reasons. We were able to get around the problem with my overall proficiency (I was deemed to be not “amateur enough”!) A blind eye was prepared to be shown to my long standing friendship with senior judge Len Goodman but we just couldn’t get around my “demands” for cheese.

The BBC in their infinite wisdom can quite happily pay Jonathan Ross £500,000 a month (yes that is pounds!) but would not agree to my having a smorgasbord of rare French, Italian and Filipino cheeses delivered fresh to my dressing room after each recording as part of my “rider”. We had, in fact even agreed a “fee” but could not get past this last stumbling block. I felt I couldn’t back down and so withdrew from negotiations and therefore the show.

My place was taken by my dear friend John Barnes who I had to cajole and flatter before he would don his figure hugging outfit.

I’m sure the show will still be a success but I think this whole sorry episode is indicative of the short-sighted direction in which the BBC is headed and I, for one find this a great pity.

"Rider"                       Goodman                          Barnes