The Wonderful World of Charley continues. Aided and abetted by Dave Rowson, front seat wing man Dave Poole featuring guest appearances from Sonia and the branch pedant. This week’s episode we pay homage to Star Trek cleaners, primary school assembly and second hand goods but firstly the 3,000

What are your top 5 things Charley, people are waiting desperately.

Q: Which people are waiting desperately?

A: My followers, 3000 of them

Q: 3,000? What do you mean followers? Are you their leader?

A: Followers, people who are following me. All these people who like me.

Q: Who are all these people? Isn’t it all a bit weird, people who you don’t really know, following you around. Isn’t that stalking?

A: There’s 3,000 of them, all waiting to see what I do next. It’s an army of followers, hanging on my every word.

Sonia: That’s what happened with another famous Charley……. Charles Manson.

Rowsey: Just tell me what your Top 5 is

Front of bus: KFC

A: No, that’s not my favourite

Front of bus: Yes it is, Leicester Forest KFC. The best KFC in the world. Next question..

A: Okay, KFC then

Best job in the world

If you were an actor and got given a part on Star Trek, can you imagine, you turn up on the first day and they say, you’re part of the landing party. I’d just say, thank you very much and get up and leave straight away.

Q: Eh??

A: That’d be it. You’d never be on again. Really, if you were going for a part, you’d be in with with one of the favourites, and say, no thanks, I’ll just stay up here with Scotty and fix the engines instead. I don’t want to go down to the planet.

Q: Well, if your part was a name you never heard of, I suppose?

Q: And why is it you never saw anyone else in that engine room? Why didn’t Scotty have a team of people to help. Why did he have to do it all himself?

A: Probably cos they had all gone down in a landing party to the planet and got killed.

Q: Well what were the rest of the crew doing on this 5 year mission? I tell you what, it was always very clean on The Enterprise. There must have been a load of cleaners on that starship. Imagine that, going all that way into space, trip of a lifetime, just to spend all day cleaning a starship. It must have took ages.

A: Yes, 5 years. At least they wouldn’t have to go down in a landing party to the planet .

Hymns at the Hawthorns

Q: Did you see they had The Lord is My Shepherd on that stand?

A: Yes, they must be very religious there. But they probably didn’t need His help today, we were awful in the 2nd half

Q: That’s a hymn you know. When we were at primary school, we all had to sing in assembly because we were Catholics.

A: I think everyone had to sing in assembly in those days, even if you weren’t Catholic

The Chairman: We used to sing Morning Has Broken, in assembly, that was my favourite

A: Great choice for the morning

Dave Poole: I got done for not singing, I couldn’t sing. I used to mime it.

A: What’s wrong with just miming it if you can’t sing? That’s a bit harsh. At least you were making an effort

Dave Poole: Was miming the wrong words

Mucky books (featuring “Life on Mars is the best song in the whole world ever”, Mr Pedant)

I would never choose to read a book if someone else had already read it.

Q: Eh???

A: I just like the smell of a new book, turning the pages no one else has turned. You know what I mean?

Q: So you wouldn’t read a book that someone else has opened?

A: No I prefer crispy untouched pages.

Q: So you would never go to a library?

A: Well that’s different, but I haven’t been to a library for years. I don’t think there are libraries anymore.

Q: But you would never get a book from the charity shop?

A: No, because someone else has already read it

Q: What about church? What do you do with the hymn books?

A: I just don’t like it when someone has left grubby marks on the pages

The Chairman: Yeah books when all the pages are stuck together

A: I’m not on about those sorts of books Charley

The Chairman: No. I mean when you can’t turn the pages at the top because someone has wet them

Dave Poole: I hate it too, all those bodily fluids sticking the pages together, it’s disgusting

The Chairman: Sticky pages, when you have spend ages peeling them apart

A: Christ, I really don’t mean those sorts of books!

Dave Poole: I don’t know what you are all on about, I’m on about when people have sneezed all over them, what were you all thinking?

Oh the innocence of it all…..

Rantings of a madman continue with the next installment of Chairman Charley – the Puppet Years.

I know I have kept you waiting long enough. The audience has been itching for more helpings of wise words from The Teachings of Charley, served up with a healthy dollop of creamy goodness last night – with the help of front of the bus tagmate Mr David Poole (I  really cannot unhear what I heard!) and the irrepressible / repressed but certainly not depressed – maybe depraved ?, Mr Dave Rowson.

So the question on the lips of The Chairman last night was…. drum roll please….

Q: How is it that no one ever noticed that Jeff Tracy bloke built a pool with a moveable lid for that rocket ship to come out of?

A: It was a brilliant camouflage. Do you mean Thunderbird 1?

Q: But didn’t anyone notice how much money he spent doing that? It must have cost a fortune, what were the authorities doing?

A: He was a billionaire Charley, he owned the whole island

Q: But he had that space centre as well, right in the middle of space – didn’t anyone notice that he must have spent a fortune getting all that stuff up there. The government should have said something?

A: The guy owned the whole island, Charley – I don’t think they were bothered as long as he paid his tax bills. He also had Thunderbird 2 and the underwater one.

Q: But someone should have been keeping an eye on all of this expensive stuff that he was spending his money on?

A: I genuinely don’t think they were bothered, plus Lady Penelope was minted anyway

Q: Yeah, someone should have been looking into her affairs as well

A: You do know this was just a puppet show don’t you, and not real life?

Q: But she had that big pink Rolls Royce and her own butler, Parker, swanning about all the time to these exotic places. How much would that have cost?

A: She was loaded, I don’t think it bothered her

Q: She had the lifestyle of the rich and famous, that one

Enter David Poole

Charley, it was just a puppet show on TV, it wasn’t real. How did you think that they could get away with it? They were all just puppets, not people. But I bet you fancied Lady Penelope didn’t you? I bet you had pictures of her which….

…and that, my friends ends the PG 15 of the Teachings of Charley ,folks.

As much as the Disclaimer on the website does what it is supposed to do, the rest of the conversation is over 18s only

I asked The Chairman if he wanted to write a few words about a very eventful trip to The Big Smoke and the preceding events leading up to it, but nothing yet. So I decided to do it for him instead.

Went to Millwall. Got stuck on the way down on the A14 because of the roadworks. There was a bridge but it was clearly broken. Didn’t have a very long pub stop. It took forever to get to the ground. We only just got in before kick off. Had a pie in the ground. We drew one all. Fell asleep on the way back and slept through the terrible traffic, missing the 4 lanes going down to 1 lane on the M1.

here is the link to the roadworks which cost us so much time

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/a14-reopened-massive-new-bridges-15158477?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

The End

The Chairman was on form over the festive period. No doubt many of you have seen the footage on You Tube etc. so I won’t bore you with the details. Here are some wise words which were shared with Mr Rowson over the last week or so. They aren’t quite New Year Messages, but they are the best The MPO could do at this short notice. There will be more after the monthly branch meeting on Sunday 14th January.

Again, The Chairman tells me that this is the photo of the famous T shirt from the 90s.

According to The Chairman, many people have enquired about this particular T shirt over the years. The picture below was taken in Benidorm in 1985. It was also worn to the Bournemouth game in 1990 on that particularly hot day where he was unfortunately burnt to crispy critter. The Secretary tells me that The Chairman is still bearing the scars of that game. If anyone wishes to see these scars, I believe they are on his shoulders somewhere. I am pretty sure if you are brave enough to  ask The Chairman to show you his war wounds, he will oblige. Sadly, I do not know if this T shirt still exists in any shape or form. If it did, it would be interesting to see what exactly that yellow thing on the front is the champion of. I can’t remember what 80s product the T shirt could possibly be promoting, answers on a postcard please….

After another successful rummage through his drawers, The Chairman has found some delights from his fabled adventures in Bamburgh in 1982.

For anyone who hasn’t heard the tale, The Chairman went to Bamburgh and learnt to windsurf in a week, whilst he was in between jobs. I have asked The Chairman for the photo evidence of him on said windsurf board, which hopefully he will be supplying in the near future. In the meantime he has supplied us with the two photos below, sporting the very fashionable v neck sweaters, which were all the rage at the time.

The first is of himself and the windsurf instructor, a Mr Peter Hinson. The Chairman tells me that Mr Hinson was a Bamburg White in those days.

The second is a picture of Marjorie Ann, who was from Craster. The Chairman tells me that the photo was taken in the Lorde Crewe Arms in Bamburgh.

As with all the information that The Chairman supplies me with, I do not know if these details are completely correct, they are correct according to The Chairman.