An Important Annnouncement From Alfonso The Weevil

-embargo 9am Thurs 21st May 2009-

Over recent days, it has become abundantly clear to me that our parliament is no longer - in the current jargon - fit for purpose.

Pages and pages of newsprint detailing how, while we slept softly in our beds, our representatives snuck out to the newsagents and flagrantly bought toilet brushes and jumbo packs of Doritos at our expense. Allegations that individual members claimed properties in the East Midlands were their "main home", as if anyone would be so foolish as to admit that. And the holder of the most venerable office in the mother of all democracies driven from his golden throne with pointed branches and whips, stripped naked, doused in honey and feathers and left chained to the statue of Winston Churchill.

Your democracy is clearly in disarray, and once more, as history has so often shown us, you must turn to the line of Weevil for succour. And this Weevil, for one, is only too glad to make you that succour.

Which is why, as of today, I am formally announcing the revival of a long dormant but ancient political party. The Weevilists. The Weevilists - the party responsible for some of the brightest flames in the history of government - Weevil the Elder, Weevil The Younger, Weevil Chamberlain, Harold Weevilson- I could go on.

But I stand before you today, determined to draw a line in the mud, and announce a new future for our party and this country.

The Weevilist Party of today will hence forward be known as W2 or Weevil Squared. Squared, because we want to square the circle of the mess that we now find ourselves in.

We have some very clear aims:

1. The absolute ban on Doritos in all government owned buildings.
2. Toilet brushes to be provided free of charge to every man, woman and weevil.
2. The entire East Midlands region to be razed to the ground, and declared a No Go zone.
3. The whipping, tarring and feathering of the Speaker to be made an annual tradition, and televised.

I hope that this makes clear we will not shrink from difficult or unpopular decisions, or our collective responsibility.

I urge the Prime Minister to do the responsible thing, and to stop lounging around his swimming pool at 10 Downing St in his tight speedos, sipping on strawberry daiquiris, and to put down the Jackie Collins novels, and pick up the phone to call a General Election.

Because when he calls that General Election, he can be sure General Election will say "Hello? Who is this? And why are you calling me at this time of night?" And we need to be sure that the Prime Minister will say "Because we need you, General Election, and quick. I am running out of daiquiris." I could go on.

When that day arrives, you will have a very clear choice. To do nothing, and watch your personal bill for flavoured tortilla chips and toilet accessories literally go through the roof. Or, to stick your cross in my box.

Stick your cross in my box, and vote Weevil.

GOODBYE DORITOS. GOODBYE EAST MIDLANDS.

HELLO TOILET BRUSHES. AND A NEW BRITAIN!

Thank you very much

Alfonso the Weevil
(Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bladdersby and Chumnut South, Weevilists aka W2)

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Eight

Inside the matchbox was not, as you might have expected, a weevil of any description – alive or dead.

But there was a very small La-Z-Boy chair, dimly illuminated by a pool of light from a standing angle-poise lamp. At the base of the chair there was a small pile of weevil body-building magazines, and some empty cans of lager. The chair faced a miniature widescreen TV, which was playing “Joe Versus The Volcano” on a loop, with the sound turned down. A chest of drawers stood to the side of the TV, with the drawers all hanging out and ajar, as if somebody had been through them in a great hurry.

“That’s quite a matchbox”, said Chet.

“No weevil, though”, said Tony through his nose. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like to Chet.

“You’re good”, murmured Chet, “you know that? Fancy my job?”

He said it with a smile, but there was a menace in his voice. The greasy patron took a step back from the bar. Chet leaned over and with an easy swing of his paw grabbed Tony by his bowtie, and pulled his head down onto the bar with a thump that rattled the glasses, and made the matchbox jump a little in the air.

“I don’t know anything!” protested Tony, who really was speaking through his nose now.
Chet stuck the can opener into his cheek.

“This can opener is made of pure titanium. It can slice open a man’s skull in thirty seconds. And apparently, that really hurts. Do you want to find out how much?”

Tony grimaced, and spat onto the counter, except owing to the angle, it more dribbled out of his mouth and made him look mentally ill.

“I’m telling you nothing, you dumb cat”

Chet flicked a switch on the can opener, and the jagged teeth began to whirr furiously with a high-pitched whine. He inched it fractionally into Tony’s cheek, and a spray of blood hit the bottles on the back wall.

“Ok! Ok! Please! Don’t touch the nose!”

Chet turned the can-opener off, although the wheels continued to spin for a moment.

“Well?”

“This is all I know, I swear. A man used to come here. He said he had a weevil. He said he had some trouble with wood demons, who claimed the weevil was theirs. I told him-“ He paused.

Chet turned the can opener on again.

“Please! Damn your cat eyes! I told him I couldn’t help him. I told him the only person who might be able to was Big Al.”

Chet let go of his tie, and Tony slumped to the floor in a bloodied daze.

“You disgusting piece of filth. You set him up.”

“I never-“

But Tony’s words echoed to an empty bar, and the sound of his restaurant’s cat flap still swinging in the wind. Chet was long gone, quicker than the wind, hoping he might not be too late...

TO BE CONTINUED

The Case of Chet Millerby And The Missing Weevil- Chapter Seven

PREVIOUSLY ON CHET MILLERBY...Chet Millerby, the world's most famous cat detective, has been hired by a mysterious man in a yodelling costume to track down his beloved weevil, Alfonso. A mysterious match box has so far led the feline sleuth to Tony's French-Bulgarian Brasserie...

"So what's theez all about?", said Tony, wiping down the zinc bar with a white rag. "To what do I owe the pleasure, eef eet can be called a pleasure, of Britain's famous cat detective?" He hoiked some phlegm into a bucket at his feet, which made the noise of a bullet ricocheting around a bell tower.

Chet merely wrinkled his nose, and slid the matchbox the man had left in his office across the counter.

"Do you know what this is?"

Tony shrugged. "Of course. Our world famous free matches. You can keep it if you like."

"It's not mine. I have reason to believe it once belonged to a weevil."

The bar fell quiet. For the first time Chet noticed that a player piano had been churning out honky-tonk in the corner, with a gaggle of French dancers in pink crinoline gossiping and chirruping like birds around it - now they all stopped suddenly, and an old man accidentally fired his pistol into the air, bringing down a small section of ceiling in a cloud of dust and plaster.

"I don't know anything about no weevil", said Tony, drawing himself up to his full, ugly height."

"Oh yeah?", said Chet, gesturing with his can-opener. "Well how do you explain those then?"He pointed to the wall behind Tony.

And there, hung high on the wall, above the unwashed glass shelves cluttered with dusty, greasy bottles, above the antique mirror with the bullet holes, but below the wonky chandelier, were rows and rows of photographs.

Photographs you might not have given a second glance to were you but a casual drinker coming in here for some steak and frites or half a bottle of Absinthe and the can-can. But photographs that a trained cat detective immediately noticed, with his acute eye for the obvious clue.

Photographs of weevils.

There was Alabaster the Weevil, the mid-weight beetle boxing champ of 1916. Arlene Weevil, siren of the silent movies. Captain Algernon Weevil, RAF flying ace and amateur ventriloquist. Next to them, chipped but autographed- A Weevil and A Wig, the infamous weevil-earwig double act who entertained the gangland nightspots of the Fifties. A lurid colour snap of legendary music svengali Big Al Weevil and his lovelies splayed around an Antibes swimming pool. There was Arthur Weevil, the host of such radio panel shows as "Half A Crown? Mind Yer Bleeding Bob!" and "I'll Get Up When It's Over".

Chet put the date of that last photo as approximately 1979.Then- nothing. A total gap. Or at least he though he could make out some blank spaces where photos had once been.

And then the photos began again, nearer the ceiling still. A Weevil Is A Danca, the nineties rave act, flashing his bling at the camera with a gold toothed grin, and the first ever Weevil TV reality star, "Awful" Ajax the Weevil.

Tony didn't even bother to follow Chet's gaze behind his head. He didn't bat a muscle, or move an eyelid.

"I don't know about thees weevil", he said, jabbing a thick finger at the matchbox.

Chet realised in an instant the mistake he had made. Oh the things that stare you in the face, and you see right through. He was a good cat detective, probably the best, but even he could still be surprised.

He opened the matchbox.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Archive Hour Presents: Britain's Got Weevils with Alfonso The Weevil

Author's note: This story predates the current unfortunate mystery involving the disappearance of Alfonso The Weevil, and is included for curiosity purposes only.

I was having a long and pleasing dream involving Fiona Bruce and a potholing holiday in the Cairngorms, when gradually, Fiona's pleasant blandishments on the subject of corrective nipple surgery became drowned out by the sound of the most unholy torture. I came, drifting over the gentle waves of Lethe, to believe that donkey had been stapled to a pair of mating foxes, and the unfortunate trio slowly dragged through a wood chipping machine.

However as the noise became so acute that it looked even Fiona might ruffle a hair in that perfect coiffure, I woke up to find that in fact Alfonso was practising the violin on my chest.

"Alfonso", I said, looking at the clock, "it's four thirty in the morning."

"Just tell me what I've got", he demanded.

"Insomnia?" I volunteered, but he prodded me in the clavicle, with his special weevil bow, strung with purest My Little Pony tail hair.

"No, tell me what I've got"

I tried to go back to sleep.

"Tell me!"

The things I have to do to get a decent night's sleep.

"All right, Alfonso. You've got talent."

"Yes! I knew it!" He bounced off my chest. "And you", he said, "are queuing with me outside the Apollo from 7 tomorrow."

"But it is tomorrow Alfonso..."

****

We did not make it on stage till the very end of the day. The judges and we had endured what could best be described as a parade of inmates on day release from Dr Moreau's Island. And that was just the audience. As for the acts there was the purportedly talking cat which literally shat on the mat, the special needs transvestite who could sing the whole of ”Fiddler On The Roof” backwards but nothing else, and the class of schoolchildren in fluorescent cycling garb performing synchronised sewing.

It was late, and the theatre was stifling hot, and the atmosphere in the auditorium was brooding, hostile, restless, like a boxing match in its final moments. A perfect atmosphere for introducing a new performer.

Alfonso strode on, clutching his violin.

The man with black hair and white teeth yawned and said with magnificent disinterest

“So Alfonso, tell me, what’s the ambition? Where do you want to be in five years time?”

Straight off the bat, Alfonso replied

“I would like to be as big a star as James Galway was in the mid-Eighties.”

“But he played the flute”, said the man. “And you’re holding a violin.”

Alfonso did a little wiggle. “Yeah, we’ll see about that, Simon!”

The audience bayed like hyenas over a rotting bone.

Alfonso began to play, on the violin, the delightful hiking song from Cabaret, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”, over a drum and bass backing track.

Six hours later, when he had finally finished the various remixes and alternative endings, he took a short bow, to utter silence.

“That was”, said the man, “the worst thing I have ever heard in my life.”

And for once, I had to agree with him.

But later, on the night bus home, Alfonso was not remotely downcast. Far from it, he was leaping about the seats like a mad thing. “Look at this! Look at this!” he kept yelling, brandishing his iPhone. “15 million hits on YouTube already! Just think of the franchising opportunities! Weevil cookware and fashion ranges, here we come baby!”

So, dear reader, I squashed him. But he’ll be back….

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Six

Outside it was a beautiful spring day, the pale blue sky above dotted with the merest wisps of white cloud. As Chet bounced merrily along, his eye was drawn to the sparrows and pigeons leering at him from behind the relative security of the park railings; but he reminded himself that whilst it appeared to him the kind of perfect day just designed to be spent in a leisurely outdoor killing spree, that perhaps somewhere else underneath the huge blue sky, a safe was being sliced open with an electric power saw, elsewhere still a stiletto was being twisted under someone’s ribs in a crowded medieval street, and hopefully even further elsewhere a fully loaded passenger plane was just seconds away from disaster , ready to explode down out of it and wreck the peace for everyone. No, he firmly told himself, a cat detective’s work was never done, and there would be other sunny days, and other parks.

If the gentle rays of the spring sun had bestowed some carefree sense of unlimited possibility upon the young Chet, they had clearly not penetrated the penumbra of Tony’s Brasserie-Bistro, 112 The Street, City Village. Nor indeed, the furrowed, furry brow of its eponymous maître de, who stood glowering in the gloom of the staff entrance, situated down a shady side street, along with some overflowing catering bins and squashed cardboard boxes.

Tony, who was Bulgarian, had the permanent upturned mouth of a Frenchman, with a very French cigarette dangling flakily out of the corner. Chet wrinkled his nose. He hated any kind of cigarette which wasn’t Turkish with a passion. Unfortunately, it appeared Tony hated any kind of detective who wasn’t human with a passion.

He took one look at Chet, spat the remains of the cigarette out and smeared it under his shoe, before smoothing his greasy hair down, and wiping his hands on his burgundy waistcoat.

“I don’t like cats”, he said. “Cats are not good for ze business. Ze say you catch mice, but –“ he shrugged his shoulders, “all you do all ze day long is drink cocktails and solve ze stupid mysteries no one else cares about.”

He turned to go back in but found his way blocked by a very definite paw.

“Oh yeah?” said Chet. “Well I’ll tell you what also isn’t good for business. A blocked fire exit, a kitchen full of imported Bulgarian bush meat masquerading as organic chicken, enough rats to put the Pied Piper out of business, and a surprise visit tomorrow from the Environmental Health- that’s what’s bad for business. And since you’re asking, mine’s a milk and champagne on the rocks. Now move it.”

Tony didn’t need much more encouragement, but just in case he did, Chet prodded him along with his gold can opener, wittily engraved on the back –“To Chet- I didn’t kill no-one guv XX Curiosity”

“How deed you know all zat?” grumbled Tony, vigorously pumping the cocktail shaker from side to side, “You never been ere before.”

“A cat sees many things”, said Chet mysteriously. And then, less mysteriously “Especially when you leave all your illegal meat packaging out in an alleyway, standing in a fire exit, with a rat crawling around your ankles”.

“What rat?”

“Nothing”, said Chet, wiping his lips innocently.

TO BE CONTINUED...

THE CASE OF CHET MILLERBY AND THE MISSING WEEVIL: Chapter Five

For a moment, the man looked quite downcast, almost crumpled - as if he was about to implode in upon himself. But he drew in a sharp breath, and recovered with a fury.

“Well you clearly don’t think that I am the person who I think I am. I think that I am the person I think I am, and if you don’t think that, you clearly don’t know what you’re thinking.”

Chet, the cat who was also a detective said, “I can see what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.”

“In that case, I need waste no more of my time or yours. Good day to you, sir”.

With that, the man tipped his loden at Chet, yanked open the door behind him, and as the little bell tinkled gaily, walked straight into a rusted garage door.

“Sorry”, said Chet, “you have to leave by the way you came in... through the kitchen...sorry about the mess.”

The man didn’t say anything, but pushed past the cat and his desk, bounded up the stairs, and was gone.

The basement office was at peace once more, and as the dust gently settled over his desk in the beam of the solid gold angle poise lamp (inscribed around the base with the note “To Chet- one helluva’ an adversary. Find me! Macavity”), the world’s greatest detective marvelled once more at the vanity of humans.

“And to think”, he said to himself, “that they actually believe time is theirs to waste.”

He curled up into the shape of a comfortable furry kidney, and was about to settle down for a hard day’s nap, when something caught his eye. In his fluster and hurry to leave, the man had not noticed something fall out of his pocket onto the floor. Something small and white ...a matchbox.

Chet picked the box up and examined it carefully.

“Hmm”, he said to himself, as he was wont to do when there were no other characters around to help him vocalise the narrative link formulating in his head, “Tony’s Bulgarian-French Brasserie Bistro, 112 The Street, The City Village.”

It could have been anything. It could have been unintentional advertising by his previous visitor in exchange for a commission. It could have been a red herring, or what cats preferred to call a blue chocolate, as red herrings invariably ended well for them. It could possibly have been a clue.

“But in the end”, he mused, “what it mainly is, is a good place to start”.

He grabbed his hat, his raincoat, and his can opener, placing it firmly in his holster. You see, cat detectives never need to carry crude armaments like guns, or coshes, or blades. But you will never see any self respecting cat private investigator without a can opener, for obvious reasons. And as shall become clear, Chet’s was no ordinary can opener.

Dressed and armed, he took one look around the office, opened and shut a filing cabinet drawer for effect, and in the flip of a flap, was gone.

Announcement: Chet Millerby & Alfonso The Weevil Productions Inc

Owing to technical difficulties with our server (he dropped the tray), we will not be able to bring you a Chet Millerby or Alfonso the Weevil story today.

We apologise for this interruption to your service, but in the meantime, please enjoy this message from our sponsor:

LEWELLYN'S WELSH EGGS

Do your like your eggs nice and fresh?

Then you must like them Welsh!

Nothing can rival Welsh eggs for freshness.

Our sheep are all free range and allowed to roam the mountains at will.

At night, they return home to our special sheep coop, and are fed nothing but the finest organic rhubarb and custard, before they settle down and lay those famous Welsh eggs. (As seen on BBC 4's The Book Quiz!)

Perfect for breakfast, or as an after tennis snack.

NOW AVAILABLE IN A VARIETY OF COLOURS! Please check stockists for details.

*Lewellyn's Welsh Eggs asks you to eat your eggs repsonsibly. Nobody needs to die because of an egg, least of all one laid by a sheep.