Big news! If the discerning reader chooses to take every story that appears in The Mirror at face value, then a hypnotist recently created mass hysteria in a London park by making a gaggle of fully-clothed volunteers believe that they were ‘naked’.
Immediately, my worst recurring nightmare comes back to me – the one where, desperate for a wee, I’m sitting on the only toilet available. There are no cubicle walls to hide my ablutions, and I can by anyone who just happens to be looking my way, i.e. just a worm popping its head out a nearby burrow.
How embarrassing!
Hence my joy at reading ‘The Midnight Gang’ by David Walliams, and laughing along with a ninety-something-old-stark-naked lady laughing her head off, as she takes a birds-eye tour of London – held aloft by a bunch of balloons!
What fun it must be to be so old that any sense of what other people might think about one’s dress-sense, or lack of it, has completely gone out of the window. So old that the word embarrassing is no longer applicable!
Fortunately, my passion is for dressing-up, rather than down! And, as I’m now at mid-life, I have no sense of shame on this one!
Seriously though (okay, so I’m never serious), then this never-serious book is well worth a read. Everyone with, or without, a heart will fall in love with wonky-faced Thomas, the Porter of the Lord Funt Hospital – the fairy godfather who makes the dreams of sick children come true.
Yes, the publishers may have been aiming for children as the target audience, but just take a look at the author, David Walliams, i.e. don’t we all of us grown-ups have a silly streak? And, in spite of being a middler, this is by far the best book I’ve read in the last year (apart from ‘The Fing’ and ‘The Demon Dentist’ and ‘Ratburger’ and ‘Jay Cool’s Great Escape’, all but the latter also by the great man himself!).
David, with all this effort I’m putting into promoting your books, on behalf of Waterstones, why didn’t I get past the second round of Britain’s Got Talent? Why didn’t I even get past the Director’s Panel? All I wanted was to fulfil my lifetime dream of being booted off the stage by Simon Cowell! It’s really not a lot to ask – is it?
Perhaps I need to fake an illness and have a word with the Porter of your ‘Lord Funt Hospital’. Thomas would know what to do! And, I’m with the old lady on this one: Why should it just be the sprogs who have all the fun?
Oh dear, I seem to feel a migraine coming on ….
Ambulance?
Copyright owned by Jay Cool, August 2019
Yes, I have read all of David Walliams’ masterpieces (lie: I haven’t yet finished reading ‘Grandpa’s Great Escape’ having got sidetracked halfway through with my grand idea to write ‘Jay Cool’s Great Escape’, but I’m getting there!)!
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The Silly-Savvy Salopian in Suffolk: read, believe and write ... 