The Big Yaroo

Chapter 1

What Is Exhibit X?

That, for me, remains the big question of today – just what is it, Exhibit X?

But I believe I may have found the answer.

Which is as follows: John Brody, science reporter of the Daily Newsflash, goes to the village of Tolworth and discovers that the people there are influenced by a sinister machine – yes, you’ve guessed it:

Exhibit X.

Brody learns that Exhibit X is persuading the townsfolk to make copies of itself. These copies are seen as everyday objects – statues, ornaments, etc. – by those in its power.

Brody hurries back to London to report this disturbing ‘headline story’, only to find a copy of Exhibit X on the editor’s desk.

So I’d say that gave him a bit of an old jolt, wouldn’t you?

Ah yes.

There’s no doubt about it.

You know, these days, whenever I find myself looking back over the years – reviewing the various ups & downs of my life, as they say, I am always reminded of the number of people who have come up to me from time to time and said to me: Frank, what is the situation – who, of all the performers that you’ve seen over the years would you say is your all-time absolute & unqualified favourite, eh?

& which is a question to which I have always given the exact same never-changing answer – beyond all shadow of a doubt, Mr Jack Palance, wry star of City Slickers & fabled presenter of the legendary television programme, Believe It or Not.

Which, if you’re one of the one-and-a-half people in the world who have never happened to get around to viewing it, I suggest you get on your phone this minute & download as many series as you can.

For, beyond all shadow of a doubt, it is just about the most enjoyable show you are ever going to see.

Believe It or Not, ha ha ha!

With no end of bewildering & astonishing facts right there at your disposal – I mean, where else are you likely to discover that jellyfish in one day can eat ten times their body weight?

Or that jaywalking in Singapore carries a six-month term?

Truly amazing.

&, at the end of the day, every bit as good, if not better, than a lot of the other stuff available to citizens in this so-called digital age.

Such as David Attenborough, for example.

I mean, how many colouredy fish can you watch?

Because after a while, they all seem the same.

Exactly what I say in my TV column, which I’ve only just finished this morning, after working on it nearly the whole blooming night.

But it’s done now, anyway, so no complaints there.

& I have to say that it’s definitely looking good, probably the best article yet, I would think.

Ever since I started work on the magazine, I spend a great deal of time here in my office, always discovering amazing facts such as the above.

Not to mention the truth about Exhibit X, as I say.

Initially I had intended it just as a kind of amusement or pastime, but in more recent times have begun to consider that it might be something much more important. Joomag is the programme I use.

& which is described in the online ad as:

‘An easy access publishing platform for everyone, designed for heterogeneous interactive content creation.’

I genuinely never thought, at this stage of my life, that I’d be in a position to discover my true vocation.

But there you are – yes, here he comes, the man who finally blew the whistle on Exhibit X.

I’ve more or less done all the artwork myself – with a little assistance from my associate Ricky Shabs, if you could call him that.

Because I’ll tell you this – send out Shabs on the smallest mission, even to get you a Kit Kat, & you’ll be lucky if you set eyes on the frigger by nightfall.

But talking about Kit Kats reminds me of a topic I was only writing about last week – casually at first, & then it ending up covering well over fourteen pages, which is often the way with The Big Yaroo.

Chapter 2

Philately

Sweets, you just can’t be up to them.

I devoted a complete whole column to them this morning.

‘Lucky Lumps of 1963’, the piece was called.

Other confections popular during that particular period would have included another perennial favourite, the tasty Chiclet and not forgetting His Majesty Mr Choffee, Clarnico-Murray’s world-famous brand.

Which, as the name suggests, was a mixture of warm melted caramel covered in a delicious coating of the yummiest-tasting choc.

But they have long since disappeared off the market, so far as I know.

& which I have to say is a pity.

Still, that’s enough about confections now, for after all I have already written 15,000 words, so I think it’s time to give it a rest.

Anyway, I need a bit of fresh air – because it can get quite stuffy here in the publishing world ha ha.

So it’s off now with The Frank for his traditional afternoon ramble.

During the course of which, hopefully, I won’t have the misfortune to encounter that long-nosed interfering bastard Corrigan.

He’s been here for over a thousand years.

Well, maybe not quite – but he does look like something some unsuspecting farmer might uncover on his land, from round about the time of the Bronze Age.

A lot of people who have passed through here have been convicted of all sorts of really quite unspeakable crimes, including myself.

With some either shooting people or shoving the prongs of a graip through their chest, like Mattie McCrann who’s out in Portrane now.

Fizzbag was built in 1852, and like it says in the big fancy brochure they have printed about it, its Victorian features can be observed in every aspect, blah blah blah thirty-four acres of well-groomed lawns behind an eighteen-foot wall south of Dublin City.

Not that you could call it a mental hospital now, or an asylum for the criminally insane or anything – not really.

Seeing, like McCrann, as most of the residents have been shifted out to North Dublin, by the water.

& where they all, I’m happy to say, appear to have settled in well.

As a matter of fact, I had a phone call from Mattie only just this morning.

Over the moon, he was.

About the food and the way they’ve been treated, the whole lot.

–What more could anyone want? he says, Frank – eh? Answer me that! The best of materials has gone into the building of it, and it right slap bang by the side of the sea. Did you know that there’s even an ultra-modern gym? I’ll send you a couple of snaps just as soon as I get settled. Ah boys, but it’s a terror all the same the way things change – to think that only a week or two ago we were stuck in that auld dump where you still are, and the golden strand just out there beyond your window. I’ll bet you’re fucking sorry you didn’t agree to come now, are you Frank?

They’re always at me – with Dr Cecil being the absolute worst, to forget about Fizzbag Mansions and pack my bags and become one of the ‘Portrane Team’.

& part of me, I know, would definitely like to.

But I’m sorry to have to say that, in the end, it’s always the same – at the very last minute I decide to change my mind.

& come right back in to my room here in Fizzbag and start unpacking my cases once more.

As if it’s my very first day on the block, like it was in 1963.

&, you know, I really would like to able to say that I miss them so much, Mattie McCrann and all my old colleagues & that sometimes it can really prove difficult to get through the day without them.

But that, I’m afraid, would be a total pack of lies – particularly where that old Mattie is concerned, always coming up to you & asking you questions.

–I say there, Frank! That’s all you ever hear when poor old McCrann is around, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Frank!

Ah no, I’m sorry to have to admit it, but there’s powerful peace with McCrann having gone vamoose – even though he’s a thoroughly decent chap.

Unlike some of the scuts that you’ll find around here.

Or used to.

With the great advantage being that now they’re all gone I’ve been pretty much appointed Cecil’s loyal second-in-command, granted permission to wander as I will, provided of course I don’t scale the wall.

Not that I have any notion of escaping, at least not right at this very moment.

Seeing as I’m way too busy to be bothered – what with the magazine & everything.

Speaking of which, I was thinking of including a showbiz column – or do you think that these days I would be wasting my time? I mean, it’s not as if there isn’t enough out there already, with no end of gibberish about celebrity chefs & food & drink, not to mention X Factor Cowell & c’mon and we’ll all enter Dancing with the Stars.

Maybe, though, an article about some forgotten pop idol from long ago in the mists of time.

Such as Terry Dene, perhaps – I wonder did you ever hear of him – kind of the Cliff Richard that never was, I suppose.

Or Tuesday Weld.

I came upon a load of stuff about her there the other day, completely by accident.

& must have spent six hours reading it.

Apparently, she was born in NYC in 1943 and began acting as a child. Her performance in Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! impressed executives at 20th Century Fox who signed her to a long-term contract. One of her most successful shows at Fox was Return to Peyton Place, in the part played by Hope Lange in the original.

Hope Lange? I remembered her.

Because I used to always watch Peyton Place through the window of the front room in Nugents’.

Before it all went wrong and all the rest of it.

After that, Weld was cast in a role in Lord Love a Duck along with Roddy McDowall, Harvey Korman and Ruth Gordon.

The film became a cult success.

Which doesn’t surprise me – not in the least.

Because the more I think about Tuesday Weld – I mean, what a smasher!

So I downloaded all the pictures I could find, even from the most obscure television series, and stuck them up all over the office.

With the result that you could hardly see yourself for Tuesday Welds.

But I mean, I’m sure there must be an appetite for interesting facts about people like her – out there, among the kids I mean.

Who must be getting fed up with the likes of Simon Cowell & Beyoncé & Rihanna & all the rest of them by now.

Because I can tell you this – I know I fucking am.

Maybe a little piece about the old-time foods Cowell liked.

But then, when you think about it, they might just as quick turn around, laugh their holes off.

& say – what on earth is he blathering about now?

That poor old Frank – Fizzbag Mansions is still the place for him, just make sure & keep him there.

Yeah, I reckon they could just as easily say that.

OK then – what about Michael Parkinson, maybe something about him?

Yes, a light-hearted feature, perhaps concerning the subject of the one & only talk-show champion of the seventies, yep, good old Parky – for when it comes to it, there wasn’t one to touch him.

& I always made sure to make it my business not to miss him, each & every Saturday night.

Nine-thirty on the dot, snug as a bug in my telly lounge chair watching as the spotlight swept & picked out Mike, grinning as he swung and tented his fingers.

I’m still a devil for the telly, you know.

Sometimes I’ll watch maybe six or seven programmes.

& which is why I find it more or less great being alive these days, what with Amazon Prime, Netflix & all the rest.

You could watch a dozen series in a row if you wanted, & there’s no one here that’s going to stop you.

Welcome to the world of the internet, I say.

Where, anything you want, you can get it on eBay – man alive, the stuff that’s on there for sale!

I’m going to include a free gift with the mag.

That should soon shift a couple of copies – I’ll advertise it all over the net.

Ladies & gentlemen, welcome to the pages of The Big Yaroo, complete with our readers’ own special free gift – The Magic Spinner!

Cracker-Banger! or whatever.

***

Maybe, even, a special book of stamps.

On second thoughts – don’t be talking to me about them.

Because I think I’ve had more than a bellyful.

Although, to be honest, whenever I was young, I couldn’t hear enough about Monaco, the Gold Coast & all those other places that were famous for printing spectacular stamps – indeed, anything at all to do with philately, as my father called it.

As a matter of fact, I always had four or five albums on the go at once.

All stuffed to the gills with hundreds of magnificent, serrated rectangles and squares, steamed off envelopes from everywhere you could think of around the world.

With humungous triangles, squares and diamonds to be collected from countries whose names you could just about pronounce and no more.

Inavunky, Blaggo-Blaggo, all these different principalities – most of which were ruled by the British, with King George on the top where Queen Victoria had once been – but without his body, just George’s head looking tasty in gold leaf.

Another good place to collect from was Tanganyika, I remember.

Boy, did those folks know how to decorate an envelope.

With huge big geometric shapes displaying images of what you could only describe as Paradise – with no end of toucans and parakeets and beautiful, steaming palm trees, swaying beneath the blue, limitless dome of the sky.

–As good as a hundred and fifty Bundorans! Wee Pat Casey used to say.

And that’s exactly what I used to think it would be like – & which was why I sent away for my book of approvals.

Where – if you accepted the terms – you could find yourself collecting no end of ‘philatelic wonders’ all ready to be dispatched ‘to your door’ in an enormous transparent cellophane bag.

With the only obligation being that you had to send them a letter with your signature on it and make sure & promise to return the chequebook-sized booklet containing 32 pages of ‘Conditional Approvals’.

& just so long as you made sure to inform your parents of just what it was, exactly, you were doing.

In which case, providing you abided by that one essential condition then you could order all the stamps you wanted, fill up your house with them till it burst.

And which sounded like a very good proposition to me, I have to say.

Yes, absolutely.

Terms I considered most ‘excellent & reasonable’, on offer from the Bridgnorth Philatelic Services, from somewhere far far away – Warwickshire, in the United Kingdom.

The booklet itself was also an attractive little item with a shiny purple metallic cover and a picture of Queen Victoria right up there, looking sombre in the corner.

With her soft pudgy hands like little animals there on her lap.

‘The World-Famous Penny Black’, it read, front, worth

£££££££’s.

That, however, was just the beginning.

Because, when you read on down, this is what you found – with

more

&

more

&

more,

after that.

PLUS the 1953 Cape Triangular Facsimile (originals worth £45) plus a genuine dealer’s mixture of 200 unsorted stamps (catalogued over 30/-), all ABSOLUTELY FREE! Just ask to see our new approvals and enclose 3d. for postage (please tell your parents).

Buy this, buy that, everything said.

I mean – just how persuasive is that to a ten-year-old boy?

So, to tell you the truth, I’d have bought the lot – exploding cushions, x-ray glasses, you name it.

But, as my father, God rest him, used to always say – never buy anything unless you have the money.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

No. Never buy anything unless you can absolutely one hundred per cent afford it.

This is what it said: that you were allowed to hold on to the approvals for a fortnight – and maybe that might explain why I became complacent.

Because when you’re ten, fourteen days is a complete eternity.

I’ll send them back tomorrow, I kept saying.

& definitely did mean it.

But then what happened? I went and lost the fuckers.

& as soon as I realised, tore the place upside down.

Without success.

& then gradually, both in the day and in the night-time, finding myself becoming consumed by all these worries.

Yes, eaten up by all these thoughts of strange policemen you had never before seen in your life in the town, arriving from Warwickshire in the dead of night, with their long grey coats and pulled-down snap-brim hats – braking at the door in a great shiny Wolseley saloon, falling out onto the street without uttering a word & then banging the knocker and bawling away as they stood there at the door:

–Is this the residence of the Irish stamp-thieves, do you mind me asking? Is this the home of a certain confidence trickster, eh?

The exact same as you used to see in the picture-house, all these black-and-white one-reelers filled with alleyways and people running away, & always presented by Edgar Wallace.

Yes, that, I’m afraid, was exactly what it was like in our lane now, with the neighbours trepidatiously beginning to arrive, still clad in their nightclothes – blinking anxiously under the streetlight and shivering coldly as if to say: ‘Ah yes, so here we are once more – with them up to the very same old carry-on as before.’

I wonder will they ever learn, you’d hear them say.

Meaning: that crowd, of course.

But with it all turning out to be a lot of old phooey.

Just my imagination taking a hike & running away.

I still can’t believe that I did it, though – mislaid the book of approvals, gone and made such a fool of myself.

Knowing how important it was to take care of them.

–I must have left them in the chicken house, I said.

Being almost one hundred per cent certain as I made my way once more down the street towards the square, and then back up by the barber’s towards the henhouse.

Repeating to myself as I nervously chipped some stones with my toe: very soon, it will all be over.

& the approvals book will once more be back where it belongs, tucked safely inside the pocket of my corduroy shorts.

No go, I’m afraid.

Even though I spent three hours there, turning the whole place up & down.

No, not so much as a single thing did I find, getting myself all worked up as I started into it all over again, examining this and triple-checking that, standing there under the sloped wooden rafters, in the dry dead air & dust that would choke you – with no end