Her Ladyship is standing in...

My errant husband, Reggie, tells me that he will not be posting today. He attended a dinner at his old college last night and ended up with friends at their house near the village of Madingley. They offered to put him up for the night, but he was having none of it. He demanded a cab explaining that he had a blog to do - or so I am told. Then he swiped a bottle of Grahams 63 port from a cabinet and managed to polish it off in the back of the taxi whilst sporadically poking his head through the window and shouting at passers by, "Have any of you lot seen my blog?" The frazzled cabbie set him down outside at half past four in the morning and demanded a hundred pounds, plus tip, which yours truly had to pay.

Apart from the fact that I no longer find such behaviour attractive in a gentleman of Reggie's years, I fail to see what this obsession with 'blogging' is nowadays. I am only writing this 'post' because he begged me at five o' clock in the morning not to 'let the side down'. However, I can honestly say that it is the first and last time that I will engage in this activity. And I really rather wish that he had stayed put in Madingley - I could quite easily have fulfilled his request without all the early morning jiggery pokery. But then I suppose, boys will be boys.

I took a peek at some of Reggie's notes earlier this morning to see whether I could 'stick to the spirit of the blogeology' (another one of his sozzled requests). But from what I can tell, he was determined simply to write another one of his articles slating 'this shallow and pointless nation of ours' - which he refers to as 'Fool Britannia'. It seems that his post was going to focus on what he terms the 'twin nematodes' of British Arts and Media - Simon Cowell and Damien Hirst. He claims that no parasites have done more to lower the tone in Britain circa C20 than these two.

Whilst, I am bound to agree with the sentiment, were I writing this article myself I should want to go a step further and consider why these chaps have been so successful. Their work has undeniably gripped the nation. Simon C has everyone glued to their seats, whilst Damien H has 'art-lovers' glued to his perpex. I know that one could claim that these two impressarios are engaged in nothing more than a cynical branding exercise. But then again, what branding!

So my view of it all? Well, as the old saying goes, twenty million dung-loving insects cannot all be wrong... Where there's a swarm, there must be form... Flies always know the 'coolest places to hang out'... I could go on. But I won't, for fear of boring Reggie's regular readers. (Does he have regular readers...? Any readers?)

But anyway, the point is this: These 'ghastly parvenus' as Reggie labels them, have identified how to part stupid people from their cash. And let's face it, if that means plumbing the depths of human nature, if that means 'dumbing down' then all you can say is: Where there's muck, there's brass! Cheesy fellows like Simon Foul and Damien Cursed are definitely on to something.

There's another well known saying that people use to define shallow, soulless showmen like Mr Cowell and Mr Hirst...They are laughing all the way to the bank! That is something that one most definitely cannot deny. They have cleaned up (metaphorically speaking.) Although of course whenever I repeat this 'laughing all the way' saying to Reggie, he always responds: And they are crying all the way to the banks of Hades, my love! (One of his Classical allusions, I suspect.)

Anyway, back to my usual Saturday morning chores: Cultivating the female flowering heads on the cannabis plants! Her Ladyship's work is never done... When he was in his cups earlier, Reggie mentioned something about Boris Johnson coming to dinner this evening. I think that this is rather unlikely. The poor fellow is far too busy nowadays managing London. But who knows? Reggie is always springing such surprises on me.
By guest blogger Lady Trencherman