Lord Bonkers' Diary: Richard Dimbleby's penis gourd

I returned home from holiday to find the latest Liberator waiting for me. So it is again time to catch up with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

This time his lordship has eschewed a strict daily account of his affairs and employed a looser format in its place.

Nice.

Lions pad across the parched grassland as a Paramount Chief of the Zulus hefts his assegai.

Yes, summer has come to Rutland. The days flow into one another – hence the rather freehand nature of this Diary. I am modelling my literary technique upon the “stream of consciousness” pioneered by Virginia Woolf (or was it Ruel Fox?)

It has not rained for quite some time; hence the dry grass. I shall certainly be selecting a second spinner in home fixtures until further notice.

The lions? I always suspected that we had not crated up all of them when the Bonkers Safari Park was obliged to close so suddenly. (I still maintain that those nuns were the authors of their own misfortune.) For years there has been a tendency for fielders at deep fine leg to disappear when the bowling is from the Pavilion End, but this summer they have grown tired of lurking in the undergrowth and they now wander about the old demesne as though they own the place. (They don’t of course – I have consulted my solicitor.) Still, their very visible presence does serve to discourage Health and Safety inspectors and Conservative canvassers.

And the Zulu chief? He turns out to be quite a big cheese: as far as I can make out his role in Africa is something like their equivalent of being Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire (without, one hopes, the cannibalism). He is here to make a documentary about the Dimbleby family, and when he first arrived at the Hall I had to explain that in primitive societies – and the BBC is a good example – positions are awarded not on merit but on a strictly hereditary basis. Because Richard Dimbleby commentated upon every occasion of state from the launch of the Queen Mary to the conception of Princess Anne, today it is impossible to turn on the moving television without seeing one of his many sons. (They do, however, wear lounge suits, rather than the penis gourd their father favoured.)

I have ever been one to rejoice in giving hospitality, but there is a particularly fat bluebottle in the ointment. My Zulu friend is a little overfond of blowing his vuvuzela. Normally, I would simply adopt a smaller calibre of ear trumpet, but when Meadowcroft heard him playing he took the Chief by the shoulders, hurried him to the potting shed, took out his clarinet and staged a “jam session” that went on all night. Its plangent tones could be heard for miles around.

They are planning another one for this evening. I shall set up my base camp in the Bonkers Arms.