The image above was posted in the large few days of 2024. It shows one of the less visited locations in the Bonkersverse: The Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness. Think of it as Les Quatre Cent Coups with added shingle.
But let's see what Rutland's most popular fictional peer has been up to this year.
February
Shocked by the number of Tory placement at the top of the BBC, Lord Bonkers called for a traditional arse-booting at Broadcasting House:
The Chief Commissionaire, traditionally a former RSM from one of the Guards regiments, boots the miscreant the length of the longest corridor at Broadcasting House and out through the revolving doors. That corridor is lined with BBC luminaries, who tut and look disappointed in the bootee. You might spot, for instance, John Snagge, Grace Wyndham Goldie, Alvar Lidell, Franklin Engelmann, Katie Boyle, Moira Anderson, William Woollard, Angela Rippon, Lauren Laverne, Richard Osman, the Frazer Hayes Four, the more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys in the throng.
March
When Ed Davey urged Keir Starmer to visit Canada to show support for Mark Carney in his stand against Trump, I was able to report:
Lord Bonkers tells me that when Queen Victoria was once urged to visit Canada, she replied: "We are not a moose."
I also mentioned the old boy in posts about about otters arriving unbidden on Rutland Water and about one of the models for the Bonkers Arms being mentioned in a an Evening Standard article about "The Notswolds".
April
Lord Bonkers found his tender-hearted Cook "manifestly in charge" of the wrapping of food parcels for the US state of New Rutland:
“No, that Stilton’s not too ripe, my girl. Foreigners like strong flavours. And make sure you screw those jars as tight as tight – we don’t want to give the poor Americans salmon-error and bolshevism. And write the contents on the parcel or the customs and exercise men will be after us.”
He also found time to object to talk of "the first all-female space crew" being launched:
I well recall that a British rocket took off from Woomera 56 years ago almost to the day. Its crew?
Marguerite Patten
Helen Shapiro
Pat Coombs
Marion Mould on Stroller
Still in April, I found plentiful mentions of Lord Bonkers' old friend Violent Bonham Carter, the gender-fluid gang boss of the Sixties both on the net and in books. See?
June
“First he came for our steelworkers and carmakers. Now Donald Trump is coming for our world-leading British film industry. Will the PM make it clear to him that if he picks a fight with Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's, he will lose?”
July
“I’ve been looking at the money people pay artists and writers. It’s only a few thousand quid each, but it adds up, and my plan is that it should go to me instead. I shall help myself to the artists and writers’ work and feed it into a computer, which will jumble it up and produce versions of its own. Obviously, I’ll make these versions free at first, but when all the writers and artists have given up, I’ll be able to charge what I like.”
September
When fire broke out at what was slated to be the venue of the Lib Dems' annual conference, my employer entertained dark suspicions:
When I heard there had been a fire at the Bournemouth International Centre, I naturally assumed it was the latest ruse by the party’s high-ups to justify the cancellation of our Autumn Conference. In recent years this gathering of the Liberal clans has been canned because of, variously, the Covid pandemic, the death of Her Late Majesty and a threatened bombing campaign by Isle of Wight Separatists.
November
I cleave to the words of the great Clarence 'Frogman' Wilcock: "I am a Liberal and if you ask to see my card again I’ll fetch you one up the bracket."
December
I once had a shot at it myself; all went well until I sat down to pen the final chapter, only to find I had not included a butler among the cast of characters and thus had no murderer to reveal.
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