Not – as Bob Hope remarked of For Whom the Bell Tolls – a lot of laughs in that. Ever since Bridge Farm started selling E coli flavoured ice-cream it has been shunned by everyone except the press, who are almost tiresomely attentive. You never saw a family further down the drain than Tony and Pat Archer. Peering down into the dark, you can just see their tiny, tear-filled eyes blinking back. As Jazzer, the pig man, put it: "There's an atmosphere you could drown kittens in at Bridge Farm."
I hope, come Christmas, to publish Jazzer's bons mots as Pearls From the Pig Sty, an affordable stocking filler. "There's nae room for three on a tandem" – that's another of his. So is "Mair fun than setting fire to your eyebrows". Jazzer, I should mention, is Scottish, adding another layer to the rich seam of accents that is Ambridge.
As no one will buy anything with the Bridge Farm label, a change of name does seem indicated. Suggestions of a clean yet cheery nature are solicited. Imagine, if you can, a comic without the rude words. Tom Archer, who handles the pig end so to speak, has already dropped Bridge Farm from his bangers and is working on a jolly video of footballing pigs for the internet. A cleaned-up chorus of "Who ate all the pies?" would, one feels, be an appropriate soundtrack.
Meanwhile Clarrie, the innocent cause of this hoo-ha, is wandering around like Yosser Hughes, looking for work and losing her wits.
I don't want to complain, but I will. All this makes life very difficult for me. It is, as Wodehouse said, difficult to descry the bluebird. Looking on the bright side, Joe Grundy has turned 90, proving, if proof were needed, that the good die young. The Bull laid on a celebratory game of cribbage, which he won. Though, as the aim in cribbage is to peg out, I wonder if this was the ideal choice.
