Lord Bonkers' latest diary

It seems that Lord Bonkers produced another diary while I was sampling the fleshpots of Norfolk and Suffolk. It is hard for me to keep up with the old boy these days.

Anyway, you can find his latest diary here:

These property taxes can be a terrible burden, as I have more cause than most to know, and we householders can be forgiven for making every effort to reduce their weight. When the council valuers comes to the Hall I generally have the West Wing hung with camouflage nets and have the fast-growing Rutland leylandii planted in front of many of the monuments which dot the park; I think in particular of the triumphal arch I had erected to celebrate Wallace Lawler’s victory in the Birmingham Ladywood by-election in 1969 and the statue of David Austick receiving the tribute of the captured Conservatives at Ripon.

Have you seen this programme Grumpy Old Men? I cannot imagine what the chaps at Alexandra Palace are thinking of. It consists entirely in a group of old men moaning about the way the world is going. Who wants to watch that? I simply can’t stand the thing. It’s typical of today’s society that we have to put up with such nonsense.

I remember with fondness those great ships of an earlier age: the Graf Zeppelin, the R101 and, here in Rutland, the First Lady Bonkers. The problem that saw the downfall of these graceful galleons of the sky was an uncertainty over what should be used to fill them. Some favoured hydrogen, but it had the unfortunate habit of going off pop at the most inconvenient moments. The choice therefore fell upon helium, but this gas had the effect of making everyone on board speak in a high-pitched, squeaky voice.