Major General Glutus Maximus rode his horse into a circus, to impress his fiancée, Aurelius Gentilitius.

Part of the Roman military elite, he went where his fancy took him,
and being particularly fond of theatrical performances, would often annoy impresarios and their audiences.

But on this occasion, alarmed by clowns and roaring lions, the nervous animal threw him onto the sawdust, where h...

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When I was a lad, I ran around the hills and fields of my native county, now when I think about it, I feel sick, ’cos they were full of manure.

It has many beauty spots, does Lancashire.
Rivington Pike, guarding the Lancastrian Plain, Stonyhurst College, that public school at Hurst Green, which produced Sherlock Holmes' creator Conan Doyle, and my favourite, the Bowland fells.

But none was ...

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Tenerife is calling, I can see Mount Teidie,
its mighty peak steeped in volcanic ash.

Can I land there, astride a balloon,
fuelled by my ego’s hot air?

I look down to where I used to parade myself,
among my old flames on that volcanic beach,
in flip flops and Armani shorts,
wondering why I’d consigned myself to the bachelor shelf,
trying to look cool, then crying ‘Ouch!’
when the sand...

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He was the ‘comical’ artiste formerly known as Bill Bottom,
who was politely applauded at the ‘open mic’ night at Blackpool’s Dirty Blondes bar.

However, the reviews were savage, for crude jokes can only get one so far,
and he had chosen a silly pseudonym.
After critic Eric Leopard-White described Bill's act as ‘puerile,’
he set off for the English Lake District, to revive his creative spir...

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