This is your timely reminder that wor Kev was famous well before he entered the fray of the ‘Beans.

Kev’s career started early. While the rest of us were lying on our backs with bottles and dummies in out mouths, he was out in the street rounding up the local cats in the neighbourhood to organise a delivery service to rival the Royal Mail. Dem kitties were strapped with all kinds of packages and sent out into the world. Very little returned but it gave the lad a head for business.

When he started primary school he saw potential, not for education but for racketeering. It was only a matter of time before he was patrolling the playground shaking down wimps for change and bottles of milk, no no, a sip was not enough for him. His empire stretched all the way from the swings down to the football pitch and across to the gates by the main road.

He grew tired of this though, it was all too easy. Kev wanted a challenge and he found this in amateur dramatics. There wasn’t a part he couldn’t play: Julius Caesar, Moses, Othello, Rhett Butler, Gary Wilmott, Bruce Forsyth, the list was endless. Success was around the corner and he could smell it. A local talent scout saw his production of Pinter’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and immediately cast him in a new children’s television programme about a boy who made a fortune.

‘Matt’s Millions’ was based on the book by Andrew Norriss about a boy who writes a successful video game on his home computer while ill and off school, and earns over one million pounds for his troubles. Kevin, of course, played the lead role of Matt, struggling to deal with the trials and tribulations of a pre-teen swimming in money. Does he go off the rails, knee-deep in clunge and blow? Of course not, he’s only eleven.

Though it only lasted for four episodes, Kev took his role very seriously and prepared for the part as only a professional would. He organised a meeting with Alan Sugar and shadowed him for a few days followed by a week with Donald Trump, wiping fake tan off his clothes every half an hour. He went deep into everything. When the series finished he had to take a few months off from the business because he was convinced he was a millionaire and expressed open disdain for his parent’s house only having three bedrooms and no pool.

These days you’re more likely to find him sticking abb dabs into cable wires and various other IT-based activities rather than on the telly or stage. Though the world mourns the loss of a world-class thug, entrepreneur and actor it celebrates his ability to cleanse the soul of a computer or whatever it is that IT people do.

Bridlington has a lot to answer for.

You know when people meet up and agree to do exciting things together in a different part of the world and then you pack all your stuff up and hop in a car to drive several miles (or hundred miles in some cases) in order to get to a place where you can all meet up before the big meet up and then you exchange pleasantries in someone’s dad’s kitchen perhaps chase the cats about a bit and then, when the time is right, you all hop in another car and start driving along the road that leads you to the place where the big meet up is going to happen and you look at cows as you keep going and the weather seems overtly nice and you crimsonly waltz up the M sixty something or other until you get to the coast and everything seems great and even though you’re as far East as you can go and the only entertainment is some drunken berks and possibly some bint with a piano in a social club that has about as much charm as a pubic louse and in the morning, with a glint in your eye and a song in your heart, you step outside to greet the world and finally FINALLY try to start doing all those exciting things and…

This happens.

We’ve clearly been having too much fun. The world doesn’t want us to be about and so, without wanting to sound too bitter, we’re shutting this gin joint down.

No, no, turn around my friend, you’re not welcome here. You’ve been spoilt with the sheer volume of content dripping from our collective pores and someone has to turn the tap off. Maybe when you’ve come to understand that, much like Bridlington, occasionally things have to shut the fuck off these pages will once again be strewn (STREWN I say) with all the juicy content you’ve been clamming for.

For now, well, let me close this chapter on a very hackable and mostly quiet October.

Death chases us all. How it follows us at every waking moment, waiting for a mistake or an accident. It lurks in the shadows, it stalks you through your dreams and like two young men on zero hour contracts standing outside Morrisons with clipboards and cheery dispositions, desperate for you to change your energy provider it will never leave you alone.

You would think given how many souls he has now Death would be quite bored with the whole scenario. You really want to throw my bits into the great steaming pot with the billions possibly trillions of others? What do you get from this, Death? Did nobody ever buy you a bike for Christmas? If you’re looking for hobbies, origami is very relaxing (that’s a big lie.)

This is Derek.

We don’t know if that’s his real name because he’s dead. His body was discovered by me a few weeks ago when I was tidying up. Perched upon a picture frame in Reuben’s bedroom, Derek appears to have had a tiny heart attack. He’s not upside-down or smashed into a magazine smear on the window so it must have been natural.

There he stares, with his staring eyes, out across the field. Was it what he saw that caused the trauma or did it happen suddenly, his little light snuffed out without any word of warning? We will never know. For now let us celebrate the brief life of Derek who, by leaving us so early, left the world with one less fucking fly to deal with.

Might update it tomorrow…

I wanted to get in on this action because it’s all very well and good doing a joke once but it’s even better (?) to repeat it a second time in the same month. Spoiling Kev’s plans? Yes please.

I’m joining in then, throwing my hat into the ring on that dusty trail. I have consulted my Kev-prediction robot and it has come up with these potential future posts that now won’t happen now because I’ve altered the future. If he does write a post about these things then I will have been right and nobody wants a world where I’m right. There would be chaos. So sorry everyone, you’ll never see posts about the following:

Bees

The Boston Tea Party

Wireless abbabbs (or some computer bollocks I’ll never understand)

There. Happy to start enjoying my new hobby. I feel as though this has been a very productive five minutes of my time.

During lockdown many of us have taken up new hobbies, many of us have refined existing ones and some of us have just tried to get through it without murdering everyone in close proximity due to extreme cabin fever.

In our house the conservatory has become the kids ‘art & craft studio’, by which I mean its the easiest room to hose down when all the paint and play dough is finished with. Its also where the kids love of doodling and colouring has been honed throughout lockdown. Last week I decided to clear up the massive pile (about 2 reams of papers worth) of doodles, drawings and scribbles that have amassed in the box that has pens and stuff in. It was long overdue.

Most of it went in the bin, I saved the choice articles, the pictures which showed real flare and effort, but in going through the pile I rediscovered some gems from not only the kids but me and Sarah too. This week I present to you… Dr. Lips.

I have a vague memory of drawing Dr. Lips, but I have no idea of his backstory. I also have no idea why he’s hanging out with Mr Strong and one of the Chuckle Brothers.

Do you know Dr. Lips? Perhaps you met him in an Aldi carpark once? Maybe he checked you over that time you though you had herpes? Let us know in the comments.