This is an opportunity to say that Meadowcroft, Lord Bonkers' besmocked gardener, has long since ceased to be a portrait of Michael Meadowcroft. Muttering away in his potting shed, the gardener has acquired a character of his own.
As to Clarence 'Frogman' Willcock, he appears to be a combination of Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, the American rhythm and blues singer and pianist, and Clarence Harry Willcock, the Liberal who declined to show his identity card to a police constable in 1950.
Sunday
I was sorry to hear of the death of Clarence ‘Frogman’ Willcock. His hits ‘I Don't Know Why I Love You, But I Do’ and ‘I am a Liberal and I am Against This Sort of Thing’ could always be relied upon to get the young people up and cutting a rug at fundraising dances here in my Ballroom.
Talking of which, I have finally bitten the bullet and told Earl Russell that his father’s Big Band was not scattered to ‘the round earth's imagin'd corners’, as I may have inadvertently given the impression, but has been living for years on one of the islands on Rutland Water.
The aforesaid jazz musicians generally sport upon the shore in animal skins and play upon rude instruments of their own manufacture, occasionally accompanied by Meadowcroft (who can be pretty rude himself). Well, their next gig will not be on the shore but at the Royal Opera House, Oakham – I would have booked the skittle alley at the Bonkers’ Arms the other day, but there are rather a lot of them.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
I wonder, has the Liberator Collective or anyone else ever commissioned any merchandise (mugs, t-shirts, delivery spatulas etc) emblazoned with the clarion cry, "I am a Liberal and I am Against This Sort of Thing"? If so, put me down for a keyring and a mousemat.
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