I’m a Lancashire lad who raced in spikes and string vest, 
a good athlete on the track and cross-country,
but was a disappointment to my old dad,
who’d dreamt of his only son scoring for the Saints,
that iconic rugby team with the red V.

I said it was just as well, ’cos I would surely have
dropped the ball, being all fingers and thumbs.

‘But being a clever boy, I went up to Oxford, 
where I impressed the athletic club with my running ability,
as well as a certain public school-educated Dorothea Diddle-Dashit, 
who loved to scrub me down after I got wet and muddy.

After hearing me play the banjo uke, she invited me to
join her radical folk group, The Berkshire Bums.
I brought her home to meet my grammar-school pals, 
and in a typical Lancashire pub, The Winsome Whippet,
we discussed ways of redistributing wealth,
espousing the cause of that radical economist Keynes,
and admiration for Beveridge, who improved Britain’s National Health.

When malicious tongues accused me of forgetting my roots,
Dorothea said that was ‘a lot of rot’,
as we shivered in my parents’ outside loo, the only place we could go for privacy,
for my strict mother watched us like a hawk.

I heard later Dot boasted how she’d onced done it in a privy!

I won’t bore you with the story of my failed romance,
but I smiled through gritted teeth when Dorothea and childhood sweetheart,
Lord Monty Middlechamp, were married.

She tried to console me by fixing me up with her pal Mavis, 
who whispered, ‘Try not to step on my toes,’ during a slow dance.

Feeling like a lost soul I moved to Wigan, where,
while working at Wadsworth’s Pickle Pie Emporium, 
I invented a revolutionary food additive, which destroyed an
unfortunate side effect of a famous delicacy.

Our chairman, Dashing Dai Daffyd, who'd come north to play
for the town’s famous rugby league club, 
said, ‘This young man has revolutionised our pickle pies.

‘When I came here, people said,

‘You chaps score lots of tries, and that’s why we all love the Welsh.’

‘But I didn’t like to say, “You should invent odour eaters,
for these pies don’t half make you belch.

'Now, thanks to our Oxford graduate I can kiss the missus and be assured of afters,
when I come home for my tea.’”

This elicited a scathing editorial in The Times from Beatrice Bountiful-Bunion,
who wrote, ‘Chairman Daffyd sounds like a typical northern fossil,
watching a game played by ‘Saints’ and ‘pie eaters’.

He should come into the modern world, leave that northern sport with
its early baths and up-and-unders, and watch football and rugby union.’

But Dashing Daffyd invited her to watch Wigan versus Hunslet,
and she saw Chariots Of Fire score from his own try line,
which got her thinking, ‘This is better than watching scrums that take
so long one has enough time to powder one’s nose and buy a drink.’

Using my fame as the chap who’d made pie eaters acceptable in polite circles,
her agent secured a television advert for us, 
with myself eating one of Wadsworth’s products,
and Beatrice sweating away at a stereotypical Lancashire kitchen sink.

Rising up the social ladder, her and I were rated, along with rock-music couple,
Nick and Francia Jongleur, in Tatler’s top 10 ‘cool’ couples, and how my light shone,
but inwardly my soul was dying, like a long-distance walker slowing with fatigue.

You see I was trying to fit in, and following instructions from Beatrice,
said I was from Cheshire, and not St Helens, while sitting in the VIP box at Chelsea FC.
But she gave me a stern look when I whispered, ‘Oh, to watch some rugby league!’

I was even roped into doing a televised charity 100-metre dash pitted
against a Bond movie villain and a rock guitarist, and I appeared in
upcoming Scottish band The Proclaimers pop video,
playing my ukulele, singing a slightly left-of-centre
parody of Bob Dylan’s Million Dollar Bash.

Then a chap called ‘The Voice Of The People’, writing in the Mirror,
accuused me of denying my roots, and I nearly hit the fellow,
when I tracked him down, in his Fleet Street haunt, The Scribbler.

But he bought me a pint and advised I take a reality check,
after I confessed I'd been asked to do another advert, this time to promote soap,
dressed as a coal-covered miner with hobnailed boots.

My old dad was not impressed, saying I looked ‘A right fool’,
cosying up to celebrities, by ‘playing your banjo uke’.

Then one fateful day, strolling through Hampstead Heath,
who should I see but my old love Dorothea, sitting on a bench looking forlorn.

‘Oh darling,’ she cried, ‘how I’ve missed you!’

‘Isn’t married life with a lord suiting you then?’ I asked, with a hint of scorn.

‘No,’ she answered bitterly, ‘as soon as we donned our skis he fell on his arse,
and had to stay in our hotel for the whole honeymoon.
I returned one day to find him turning down the sheets
with a chambermaid from Belfast, Mary McAfluke.

‘It seems they had a fling at Cambridge, and she was making beds to pay for her PHD!’

Then to my delight, Dorothea exclaimed, ‘Take me back to wherever you’re from, 
wasn’t it some town peopled with flat caps and whippets?

‘I jest – but seriously, I know it’s some place where rugby players,
unlike my daddy’s team, Henley RUFC, form an uncontested scrum.’

‘But darling! I cried in an unconvincing voice, ‘I’m engaged to Beatrice;
you know, The Times columnist.’

‘Oh you fool, she’s using you to make her look politically correct.
Where is she now, I wonder?’

I looked at Dorothea suspiciously, ‘She’s covering a Ski Hotel conference in Biarritz,
listening to boring talks on discount package-holiday deals.'

She laughed, ‘And guess where my husband is?’

Realising I’d been duped by a scion of the fairer sex,
I cried, ‘Oh, we were so happy, under Oxford’s dreaming spires
playing music and running across the dew-laden fields.’

Then I listened entranced as she sang Ewan MacColl’s
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and I fell in love again,
listening to her falsetto voice.

Next week, tuning into BBC Radio 2’s folk music programme, 
my old dad gasped when he heard the host, Mark Radcliffe,
interview a band about their new single,
a parody of the Strawbs’ hit, Part Of The Union, 
penned by my good self and wittingly entitled, 
You Won’t Get Me I’m Part Of The Illusion.

‘We sing about real people...’ Dorothea, the lead vocalist, 
declared, ‘We’re not a ‘cool’ indie band, exploring teenage angst.
Rather, we sing about scarlet-coated riders failing to catch a fox, 
while maidens dance around a maypole.

'Why, we even turned down an invite to do Top Of The Pops.’

‘Hang on!’ My aged parent shouted at the radio, ‘I know that voice.
It’s my son’s ex, Dorothy or Dorothea, summat like that!’

He listened entranced as she continued, ‘All the band have
one thing in common – we don’t conform.
For example, Percy our bassist prefers men to women...’

At which the aforementioned shouted, ‘Last night I was mocked
by a chap with a huge beard, drinking real ale,
who accused me of batting for the other side,
during a rendition of John Barleycorn.

‘I told him I wasn’t like him, a stereotype of English life, 
and the audience laughed, even his wife.’

Dorothea laughed, ‘Indeed Percy – where was I?
Oh yes, I was too influenced by my jolly hockey-stick chums, 
and allowed them to steer me away from Mr Right.

‘That’s why we’re here, with you Mr Radicalstife, 
for it is him who suggested we reform The Berkshire Bums...’

The radio host then looked embarrassed as she gazed into my eyes.

‘...Then I realised what a resourceful chap my husband is – why,
he used an Oxford degree to invent non-windy meat pies.’

Shortly after me and the missus were celebrating in my dad’s local pub,
The Faltering Fullback, when the old chap said to her, ‘Welcome to the family.’

‘Thanks,’ she laughed, then putting on her public-school voice, said,
 ‘I’ll have a pint and a Wadsworth’s meat pie.’