Craig Brown - The Lost Diaries

Just yesterday, I was being driven along by my chauffeur in our $463,000 limousine. I was in the back with my plastic surgeon Roger, who was just putting the finishing touches to my new toes (sorry, but you’ve got to have six on each foot these days if you want to be noticed). Suddenly, we hear this fucking yell from the river. A boat had capsized, and there’s five people in the water struggling for their fucking lives, bless ’em!

Call me a great big softy, but I couldn’t just leave them to drown, I’m sorry, that’s not the kind of person I am! So I get the chauffeur to park near the river, and I get out the old mirror and make sure I’m looking fan-tastic – I’d never let the fans down, they want to see me at my best – then I squeeze into my $3,000 stilettos and walk ever so sexily down to the riverside, where there’s just the one lifebelt to throw them.

The five of them are still thrashing about in the river, all fucking soggy and that, hair all over the place, only now there’s only four, bless, because one’s gone under! ‘Sorry guys, I can only rescue the one of you!’ I announce, as sweetly as possible, because I truly care about them all, and I’d dearly love to be able to save each and every one of them from drowning.

‘So which of you lovely young people is it going to be?’ I ask them. They look so adorable, all shivery and panicky and cuddly, thrashing about in the river and that. By now, they’re all so desperate, they’re screaming for help at the very tops of their super voices, they really are! Yes, they love me!

‘Decisions, decisions!’ I say, flashing my trademark smile. ‘I only wish I could save you all, you’re all so truly fabulous!’

By now another one’s gone under, and there’s just the three left –but it doesn’t make my choice any easier! ‘Ho-hum!’ I say. ‘This is one of the toughest decisions of my life. It’s truly momentous! You know what, guys? Sharon’s going to have to have herself a little sit-me-down before deciding.’

You could almost feel the tension in that river! So I have’s myself my little sit-me-down, and check on my make-up – but when I get up again, the last three have disappeared below the water!

Yes – I’d left it too late! Story of my life! I’ll never forget those young people’s faces. I’d made their day! They looked so thrilled to have met Sharon Osbourne before they drowned. I walked back to the limousine with a lovely warm feeling in my heart. See, when you’re in my position, you’ve got to put something back, you really have.

SHARON OSBOURNE

I hate pineapple. It should be banned.

GERMAINE GREER

A hectic week ahead. After church, Mr Lucian Freud, who is a painter, arrives to paint another portrait.

He is quite old.

When I ask if he likes corgis, he tells me he does.

Good, I say. I ask him if he has been painting long.

He tells me he has.

How interesting, I say.

He doesn’t reply.

Otherwise precious little small talk. He tells me he paints pictures, mainly. A lovely hobby, I say.

I might have asked him if he wouldn’t be awfully kind and paint over that crack on the bathroom ceiling, but I forgot. They tell me he can be desperately expensive, so I think we got off lightly!

Freud: not a name you hear very often.

HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Let’s face it – we are at a watershed in world history. And like all watersheds, it’s full not only of sheds, but of water too. Yup, this shed is full of water – and we’ve got to do something. So let’s be brutally honest. You can’t store all that water in a shed without something dreadful happening. First of all, the water could spill out through the gaps in the walls. Look, I don’t pretend to be an expert in watersheds, or how they’re constructed. I’m an artist. But what I do know is this. If there’s too much water in the shed, then it doesn’t matter how many people you’ve got guarding it, or trying to plug the holes. That shed is going to burst.

And then we’ll all get soaking wet.

Our clothes will be ruined. Our hair will go all flat. And there’s no point even talking about highlights in a situation like that. It’ll all be totally unmanageable.

And that scares the shit out of me.

GEORGE MICHAEL

8 March 1960: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twelve today! The Headmaster approaches me personally and wishes me Many Happy Returns of The Day!! I tell him how simply WONDERFUL he’s looking, and insist (‘There’s nothing in the world I’d like more, Headmaster!’) on walking with him. He is understandably overjoyed, but says he’d rather walk alone. Poor old fellow – no one likes to be outshone!! Onwards and upwards!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1970: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Twenty-two today!! That’s twenty-two years of fun and laughter and all-round entertainment for all my family and friends! I’ve had the most MARVELLOUS year with literally billions of achievements to my name! I’ve built a full-size traction engine (The Gyles Brandreth) out of 5,734,297 matches, I’ve written, directed and starred in my own musical (Gyles: The Musical), I’ve published The Gyles Brandreth Book of Irish Knock-Knock Jokes, I’ve become the first ever person to sing ‘Yes We Have No Bananas’ backwards on Radio Luxembourg, I’ve made best friends with Fanny Cradock, Gilbert Harding and Mr Pastry, I’ve climbed the world’s smallest hill, and I haven’t even mentioned my exciting new range of brightly-coloured pom-poms to brighten up your dowdy old oven gloves! Next stop: I plan to ascend Mount Everest!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1980: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Thirty-two today!!! I may not yet have quite managed to climb Mount Everest – the offer from the gentlemen’s mountainwear sponsors simply wasn’t jolly enough, financially! – but I did manage to break the world record for playing twenty-four different songs on the spoons in under two minutes while standing on one foot on a lilo dressed as a nun!

Yesterday, I attended a formal dinner for all us former Presidents of the Oxford Union. Frankly, I stood out from the others. I was the only one who came as Little Bo Peep.

This year I wrote thirty-two books, including the bestselling 501 Uses for a Daffodil, I ghost-wrote the Simply Fantastic Michael Miles Quiz Book, I was paid nearly £17,542 for telling my ten best John Gielgud Bloopers at 167 luncheons, I continued to present my own daily mid-morning phone-in programme on Radio Solent, I masterminded the Potty Putty Museum in Bradford-on-Avon and I helped market a splendid new keep-fit machine which lets you run flat-out without getting anywhere! All this and my new best friend Jeffrey Archer has assured me that if ever I feel like becoming an MP he’ll see to it that I’m Chief Secretary to the Treasury before the year’s out!

Next aim: to climb Mount Snowdon!

GYLES BRANDRETH

8 March 1990: Happy Birthday Dear Me! Forty-two today!!! I never quite managed to climb Mount Snowdon – but at least I’ve done the next best thing, which is to make the world’s second largest sherry trifle!!

Other noteworthy achievements over this most tremendous of all years: I sucked my way through fifty-eight delicious fruit pastilles in under four minutes on the marvellous Radio Stoke-on-Trent, I was appointed Vice President of the Yo-Yo Club of Great Britain, I was runner-up in the Tie Wearer of the Year semi-final, I launched Betamax, a revolutionary new videotape that’s set to take the world by storm, I became best friends with Monty Modlyn, Captain Mark Phillips and all three Beverley Sisters, and I’ve just handed in my fantastic tome, Absolutely the Best: 100 Years of Asbestos!.