Jeffman has been in the wars of late, suffering cracked ribs and a bout of flu with enough of a kick to incapacitate a randy mule. But he doesn’t want sympathy! Jeffman is crafted from hardy, all-weather materials, and always bounces back to fight another day. So please, save your goodwill and comforting words for someone who’s in greater need of them.

Gordon Brown, for instance. The poor lamb.

Jeffman’s better half even commented on how he looked as though he’d had a stroke, and she never has anything bad to say about anybody, my good self excepted.

Not that falling victim to a stroke is an indictment on anybody’s character, but I could detect from the tone in her voice that this was more of a comment on his increasingly shabby appearance than concern for his health or well-being. I’m quite astute like that, see?

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Three cheers for Dickie Davies. He is the cut of chap that harks back to a more elegant and – dare I say? – a more innocent era. A time when a gent was well within his rights to pepper a young ruffian with buckshot, happen he was to catch such a delinquent youth loitering upon his grounds. Without fear of prosecution, one might add.

This was a time when a cad, and indeed, a bounder was readily accepted into the homes of the troublesome Proles each and every Saturday afternoon, simply because they were aware of his superior breeding and quite rightfully showed the respect that was due.

But there was more to Dickie Davies than just an exemplary bloodline. He was the quintessential English gent and the erstwhile presenter of a World Of Sport. Immaculately turned out at half past midday every Saturday, when the nation’s lower orders were staggering blind drunk out of their public houses and speakeasies, his crystal clear delivery of the Queen’s own English was only matched by a sartorial elegance that was second to none. Even if his perfectly maintained coiffure did give the impression of a man who had just finished painting the ceiling.

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You may have heard of the Stanislavsky method of acting, studied by students of the greasepaint, the length and breadth of the globe. Or there’s the equally influential Lee Strasberg Institute, where greats such as Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, the recently deceased Paul Newman, and Arthur Mullard learnt their craft.

With this firmly in mind, it is with the utmost of pride that Not What it Used to Be can reveal that we have been exclusively chosen to announce the opening of The Brian Blessed School of Acting – ‘Where the Beard Outweighs the Performance‘.

For those of you unfamiliar with either the man or what is known as the Blessed method of acting, allow me to elucidate a trifle further.

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God help us!

Is Frank Spencer the only hope left for the Labour movement? If so, I’m resigning my post forthwith and buggering off to live on some distant uninhabitable island, where I’ll be only too happy to take my chances amongst the nests of poisonous spiders and malignant coconuts. It beats chavs and treacherous politicians any day.

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Although not a fan of the species myself, I concede that women have a place in the world. After all, how is a chap going to water, feed, and clean his immaculate self without a woman there to do it for him?

But what fresh hell is this? By the deuce! It has come to my attention that there are murmurings among those of the female persuasion that they consider themselves the equal of the far superior chap.

Such lunacy can only have sprung forth from the mind of a woman and is evidence, if evidence is at all needed, that such murmurings should be treated with the all around contempt that they deserve. The foolish creatures are clearly unhinged to consider themselves of a similar cut and stature, or even to believe that they share the same capital mindset of the sporting gent.

Since learning of this blatant affront to all that is good in Her Majesty, the Queen’s, god-fearing land, I have visited my local library – where nowadays they not only allow the poor through the gate, but let them handle the Jackie Collins – and boned up a little on the subject. It did not for pleasant reading make.

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Putting aside any differences that may have arisen following his inaugural address upon these pages, Lord Thackery Fotheringay-Fanshawe has kindly agreed to surrender some more of his valuable time to once again tell us what is wrong in his world.

By Jove! The Sun newspaper has a bally lot to answer for. A bally lot!

It would seem that a chap can no longer spend a week or four holidaying in one of Her Majesty’s fine seaside towns, without finding himself in the unfortunate position of having to rub shoulders with the manner of fellow he would normally only retain for building work, maintaining the grounds, or a spot of shooting practice.

The sterling role that Rupert Murdoch and the News International Group played in the eradication of socialism within our borders was undone in one fell swoop when one of those journalist Johnnies over there at Fleet Street, or wherever the deuce they fetch up nowadays for whatever it is they call work, took complete leave of his collected senses and came up with the idea of the so-called ‘Sun Holiday’.

Henley Regatta! My flabber was indeed gasted, old bean, when I chose to take one of my rare holidays at a little caravan site I know in one of the more tranquil parts of God’s fair land, and found it to be overrun with the type of tattooed oik I usually have no hesitation in giving both barrels.

Primarily my thoughts were that I’d taken a wrong turning and inadvertently driven my Cushman Truckster into a gypsy encampment, Heavens forbid. There were toothless crones aplenty with hair scraped back and golden hoops adorning their ears, the size of which I had never seen before. But the absence of any burning tyres and the obligatory bear-pit drew me to conclude that this was something far worse.

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Recorded on a battered Sony TCM-200DV dictaphone on 27/08/08

Another depressing bus journey home. The same cast of faces that would stop a clock at fifty paces (my own included); the same air of demoralisation; the same legion of identikit kids worshipping the cult of chav.

And whilst all this goes on, the slope becomes slippier. If, like me, you believe everything you read and hear, then we’re plummeting into a recession that could spell the end for us all. So where is our rudder? Our chosen champion? The one to guide us through the coming turmoil and out the other side without so much as a hair out of place.

Whilst the nation burns, Gordon Brown fiddles. This time in Beijing, kindly informing the President of China that the 2012 Olympics will be an equally successful event. I’m afraid that if I could be bothered enough to care, I’d be failing to share his confidence. Not with this bunch of chancers in charge, anyway. The Millennium Dome and Wembley are obvious examples that spring to mind, but it would be far too easy to liken such fiascos to what might occur in the next four years. So I won’t.

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The day well known free-thinker, scientific gadabout town and outrageous beard-wearer, Charlie Darwin, risked damnation and hellfire by publishing his renowned airport novel On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life; he could not have foreseen just how far the human race would evolve in the intervening time.

True, we may still be land-bound bipeds, no closer to flying, breathing under water, or speaking without opening our gobs than we were 149 years ago, but take a look around and you’ll see the spoils of evolution everywhere.

Tis true, I tell thee. You only have to switch on your TV set to be greeted by upstanding members of the evolutionary scale. Those fine individuals that result from generations of predecessors fighting hammer and indeed claw to eliminate weakness and brain defects from the gene pool, ensuring that not just they, but all of us, are blessed by their almost superhumanly talented legacies.

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We here at Not What it Used to Be are fortunate enough to be graced by the presence of the incorrigible Lord Thackery Fotheringay-Fanshawe, who has so generously agreed to give up a portion of his valuable time to speak at us all on a subject he nurtures close to his own good heart.

By Jove! Whatever happened to the working classes?

There was a time when a chap of certain breeding could lay back in his favourite chaise lounge, take in the summer air, and dwell on a fine summer’s afternoon in the safe knowledge that his income was being maintained by the lower orders doing what it was they were born to do.

A Lord, like one’s self, was kept in the manner with which he was accustomed by the legions of drones that were ready and willing to forfeit their free time in the pursuit of contributing to the upkeep of what is the divine right of all members of the higher orders, one’s self in particular.

But by the gads! They suddenly stopped working.

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In these heady days of lenient sentencing and punishments unfitting of the crime, isn’t it reassuring to know that there’s one judge out there keeping his feet firmly on the ground?

In doing so he flies in the face of popular criticism levelled at the modern judiciary by issuing sensible sentences that cock a proverbial snook at the barking mad stereotype Judges presently enjoy.

I refer, of course, to the eminent Judge Lord Matthews, who this week dealt with a mad Glaswegian who’d strangled his wife to death after she refused to give him any beer money, by banning him from going to the pub.

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