Love it or hate it

I raise a toast or rather a slice of toast tonight to my fellow partner Cerryg Jones who led our legal team in acting successfully for Unilever in their court action to remove the marmite image from the BNP election broadcast.

Nothing like being on the side of the righteous.

I can only imagine how many kilos of the stuff I have spread on toast over the years. Some may say it is the cause of my masterful intelligence, winsome good looks, fine singing voice and athletic frame and others that it has brought on an early and irreversible delusional decline.

Hey ho must go watch the toaster!

A knock on the door

I was intrigued last night to learn that Teapot has been receiving emails from Nick Clegg. Mr Clegg is well known for his liking of the fair sex so I shall have to be on my best Timelord behaviour. I have had plenty of practice of late in dealing with her ex boy friends never mind having to fend off new ones!

Coming home tonight I see we have a personal message from David Cameron delivered to the door. We and thousands of others I guess as this one has Andrew Mitchell's photo on the back with a dog. Bad move there. Tiger is most put out. He also claims to have campaigned against the "rain tax". Now I must have missed something and perhaps that is the genius of the ultimate Labour government stealth tax but I have not noticed a new tax demand arriving every time it rains. Pity those in Manchester if it did.

So tomorrow Teapot may just be honoured by a visit from Gordon Brown to make it a complete trio. After all his troubles in Rochdale today I think she should invite him along anyway for a cuppa and a Timelord biscuit to discuss her views on the heir to the throne. He even might enlarge his vocabulary!

Pig Sick

Apparently Peppa the Pig is the latest star to abandon the Labour Party when she declined to join Gordon Brown at a Sure Start centre in London today. The Prince of Darkness alias Peter Mandelson said he was "pig sick". But may be Peppa was a little nervous of Gordon's twitching smile and more frightened of his infamous temper. Just a tad worried perhaps that one wrong word and she might find herself a bacon chop.

My friend Wesley has been bending my ear since the news about Peppa became a big story. He tells me that Sean the Sheep had also been approached by Gordon's apparatchiks before Peppa and was turned them down flat. Sean was threatened with lamb stew and hot pot if he breathed a word if you know what I mean. The latest story is that Bitzer the Dog might feature in the next party political broadcast if he can find his cloth cap.

Watch this space.

Don't mention the war!

David Milliband asks us to stop punishing the Labour Party for the Iraq War. A John Cleese moment if ever there was one. "Don't mention the war!!"

Well I have news for Mr Milliband. Nothing will persuade me to vote for his benighted party until his leader and all the rest of his cronies with their hands steeped in blood have been hounded out of office. I have not forgotten that just before the election was called Gordon Brown turned up at the Chilcott inquiry to say that he agreed with the War and the decisions Tony Blair made to take us into war. Condemned from his own mouth.

So I will vote again for the Liberal Democrats. I know they have some policies which are 6 raisins short of a fruit cake. I know that Nick Clegg is honest enough to say he is not a man of faith. (But look where the last man of faith who was prime minister took us.) And they had the courage to oppose the War.

And it just may be that this time the old ways of doing will be turned over as the political establishment in the Tory and Labour parties come to terms with the fact that we will not give either of them a majority.

I hope so.

Paddy Power....

Paddy Power has been offering odds today on the time the word volcano is first used in tonight's election debate. I timed the phrase "volcanic ash" at 8.27 pm. How many times will Gordon Brown say "I agree with Nick". Check the odds. Not once so far.

The betting craze has got to such a state that we can have odds on the name of Samantha Cameron's baby. How about Barack? Or Gordon, Boris or even Tony!

Teapot is worried that I have been spending a little bit too much time researching the bookie's odds. Yet without it I wouldn't be able to offer you the following hot tips.

1 Next prime minister - Winston Churchill 200/1

2 Rudolf and Robbie's super reindeer flying party to get more votes than UKIP 1/3

3 Gordon Brown to be scotch egged by Saturday 5/1

4 The next Icelandic volcano eruption to be on polling day 100/8

Let me know your tips!

Vote for FreeLanceNerd

This Friday is St George's Day, the birthday of William Shakespeare and, not least, the birthday of FreeLanceNerd.

A big day and one of the biggest. I can remember still his being born in Portsmouth. Staying up all night with Teapot and going straight to work the next day from the hospital.

We will celebrate because he gave us so much and therefore we miss him so much and not least now when there is an election in full swing! FLN was up for the cut and thrust of political debate any day of the week and we often talk of how he would be in overdrive right now. I wonder if that GCHQ monitoring team are still regularly scanning the airwaves in the vicinity of Erdington! Sometimes I think that Teapot herself is on a special mission to gain the attention of the secret service but may be that is a matter for another blog ?!

So let's make sure of one thing that we all vote on 6 May in his honour so to speak. And as for me I plan to post a few blogs in the coming days before the poll a la FLN, touching on the topics that might have caught his eye or touched a nerve or simply provoked a rant.

You know what I mean.

Les grenouilles

I hear that frog poaching is now big business across the channel in Sarkozy Land ever since laws came into protect the common frog and the edible frog.

A gang of four can apparently earn up to 50,000 euros a month in feeding the black market. 3,000 -4,000 tonnes of frogs legs are eaten every year in France and lots of them come from Indonesia or Turkey. It is hard to imagine what one tonne of frogs legs looks like never mind 3,000 tones! End to end they would stretch round the equator dix temps!

Yet I have good news for mes amis au-dessus de la Manche. Teapot will arrive in June. Teapot from her earliest years has been a fervent collector of frogspawn. Many an enquiring mind has been set free on the love of nature and the exploration of science by watching tadpoles appear in the reception classroom under Teapot's watchful eye.

So this year she has decided to come out of retirement and answer the national emergency facing la France. Frogspawn has been collected. Fish tanks prepared. Curly Al's old quarters have been commandeered. Secret compartments have been sewn into the luggage. English frogs are normally decried for their lack of taste - but a spoonful of marmite will soon put that right.

There is just one problem. How many of the jumping jacks will hatch before she boards the plane on June 19

And in case you wonder what all the fuss is about. Here is a recipe

"Fry two dozen frogs’ legs in butter for one minute on each side until golden. Add persillade (a mixture of finely chopped garlic and parsley), salt and pepper before serving. Eat with your fingers".

Bon appetit.

Memories of the Godfather

Teapot has blogged a lot recently about her dad and rightly so. But I thought it time I said a few words about him. Conscious of course that one of my qualifications for entry to his family was the ability to say little. There were enough big talkers without another one so I did rather nicely. And he never confused me with one of Teapot's previous boy friends unlike Teapot's mum!

So here goes with some top memories:

1 Stories of his local government career on our trips to Manchester together before I went to university which had a big influence on my taking up a local government career myself. 40 years on I have still to meet a borough or city treasurer who can jump onto his desk from a standing start!

2 The desperate handshake he gave me at our wedding reception after a tour de force of a speech. I think he could not actually believe it that Teapot would be out of his hands at last!

3 His courage in WW2. Not that he would say so but the annotated divisional history recording the campaigns from D Day through the advance into the Low Countries and then across the Rhine is awe inspiring.

4 His love/hate relationship with cricket. He had no interest so he said. No interest meant watching the TV so keenly he allowed FLN in his toddler years to crawl unnoticed into the washing machine and writing a memorable piece about the England Australia test at the Oval in 1934 for a Lancashire magazine when he saw Bradman and Ponsford.

5 Telling stories for the umpteenth time as if you had never heard them before! How did he do it!

6 Crosswords. The bank holiday Times double cryptic crossword could be poured over for days.

7 Allowing me to read to him after his sight failed - especially Alistair Cook.

8 A time served Christian faith. His baptism was very special.

9 A fanatical love of the Rossendale hills which sometimes went as far as Bacup!

And there could be more but they will do. I will miss him greatly.