Act 1

 I find myself by a lake, surrounded by a few trees. Moving along I see a few rings above my head, I decide to grab them, they might come in handy later. A weird beetle like creature is moving towards me I do not like the look of him so I jump and squash him. On a ledge above me I find a box with some more rings in it. The path slopes up ahead of me, when I reach the top I find myself at a bridge and start to cross it, but wait, what's that, a flying fish launches at me from below, narrowly avoiding it I grab another ring and charge to the other side. There is something in a tree above me, I touch it and suddenly I feel invincible, I charge onwards, kicking two crabs out of my way as another bridge fast approaches, this time I am prepared and take the fish out.
 There are now some weird creatures flying above, they don't look too friendly so I don't hang around, the path comes to a drop, another ledge is in sight but I decide not to chance it and drop down. Walking on I suddenly find myself confronted by giant spikes sticking out of the ground, 12 of them in all, in groups of three, I manage to traverse them, garnering a few more of these rings in the process. More rings in boxes, and another beetle, I take him out and climb back up to the higher path, behind me I can see a strange pole with a blue ball on the end, I head towards it and give it a push, it spins around and the ball becomes red and plays a little jingle. Above two platforms are moving up and down, I manage to get on and ride them to a ledge, at the far side there are more platforms, not moving, but spread out, it would be something of a fall but thankfully the jumps are landed with relative ease. More moving platforms take me to another path, some weird creature start to chase me along the path but I lose them after falling through a weird s shaped tunnel, feeling somewhat dizzy I land below.
 My head take a bit of a bang but I soldier on, climbing over a rock, and clearing some more spikes, now there are rings under a waterfall, followed by more spikes and then two steps with a crab on, I jump on top of him and on to the top step, gathering a few more rings I make another charge forwards, I can see a sign with a face on, a chubby bald man with a ridiculous tache, I punch his face and the sign spins around to reveal my very own face, what a turn up for the books that is. A large ring hangs above my head, something you don't see every day...

Tales from the road [1]

 As I have mentioned previously I spent quite a lot of time working as a van driver, during this time I've covered many miles and as you might imagine come across some real characters. It would be a waste not to tell these stories, so gather around the fire and open your lugholes for some of my tales from the road.

 One of my first assignments was a delivery to a home in Crewe. The package was too big too fit through the letter box so I rang the bell, a few seconds later a man appeared dressed as a pirate, he had the eye patch, the parrot on his shoulder, the works, but he was missing one salient ingredient to any good pirate costume, the hat. With a look of shear glee on his face he protruded a cutlass from it's sheath and scratched his signature onto the form, damaging my clipboard by the way before ripping the package from my hands. Using the cutlass he slashed open the package to reveal a pirate hat, which he proudly placed upon his head, he paused and smiled, before suddenly frowning, snarling and chasing me back to the van with his sword aloft. He was a right fruit loop, I've never felt truly comfortable visiting Crewe since.

 I once delivered a box to a lady called Pandora, it tickled me. I mean that I was amused because it was Pandora's box, I'm not accusing the box of tickling me.

 Heading north on a delivery I found myself on a quiet country lane, up ahead I could see a minibus looking in bad shape, steam pouring out of the engine, I slowed down and asked if I could be of assistance. I was informed that the minibus was taking the players of Chasetown F.C to a big game with North Ferriby Utd and that if they failed to show up then they would forfeit the game and be deemed to have lost 3-0. There was no chance of fixing the minibus in time so I let the players in to the back of the van with the rest of my deliveries for the day and drove them to the game. We just about made it in time and the team invited me to stay and watch, they were awful and lost 4-0, so in hindsight they'd have been better off staying on the country lane.

 Quite often it turned out that we'd been asked to deliver quite bizarre things, some of the items I delivered in my tenure as a delivery driver included: Three oranges wrapped in a carrier bag, a drawing of some chickens, 18 golf balls in a clear Tupperware box, a hamster cage complete with hamsters, a man called Norman, a bunch of flowers with a note of apology attached which I was asked to read and finally, and most disturbingly a life size wax model of Toyah Wilcox which the recipient insisted I join for a cup of tea to say thank you for the lift. It was a crazy job.

 Anyway, you've had your fill of stories for tonight, get to bed you young whippersnappers.

Coloured tyres, they're the future.

 At the end of 2009 I received a call regarding a new job. A budding company from the midlands required my van driving expertise to help run the delivery side of their new enterprise. The business revolved around the creation of coloured tyres, it was a crazy scheme, but they convinced me it was the best thing since garlic bread with their charm, charisma and ability to use PowerPoint. They wanted me to solely carry out all deliveries around the UK for the first 12 months using a transit van that had been purchased second hand, although it looked more like 15th, it didn't even have a CD player, but at least my cassette copy of "the pleasure principle" was back in business. This was undoubtedly an ambitious task, but I do have 20 years of van driving experience under my belt so I was willing to take it on. The plans were made, my driving hat was dusted down, the cassette was primed and I awaited my instructions but over easter everything went quiet, and nothing has been said of this company ever since. I've received another offer to deliver these weird umbrella things, but they sounded rubbish and I didn't want to sully my name by association.

In other news, I made a visit to Hayes & Yeading over the weekend to watch my beloved Harriers play and had a wonderful day watching an impressive 4-0 victory.

A couple more things before I sign off, firstly, my mate psycho Steve has lost his dog, if anyone sees a brown Pomeranian in the local area drop me a comment or something.
Finally, I would just like to wish Barry "La grand pâtisserie" Hopkins the best of luck with his latest attempt to shed some pounds, he's joined the local fitness first and claims that this January will be the year.

Baker and Butcher, PI

 Some years ago now, inspired by a marathon of "Murder, She Wrote" myself and my good friend Colin Butcher decided to form our own detective agency, called Baker and Butcher, or as Colin would incorrectly have you believe "Butcher and Baker". As luck would have it (for us, not for the people involved) an armed robbery occurred at a local shop just a few days later, and we decided this was a sign, the perfect opportunity to make a name for ourselves in the detective business, so we got straight on the case. The trail took us to some pretty dark places (literally, we found out that a nearby train tunnel was a hang out spot for the local ne'erdowells) and we saw some pretty crazy things, namely a swan in a lake with a squirrel on his back, this didn't have anything to do with the case, but we had to walk through the park to get to the train tunnel, it was a nice day and we stopped for ice cream, I had a standard 99 flake. We found our first big clue in that tunnel, the robber was wearing a Geoffrey Boycott mask, and we found several of these masks in the tunnel. We knew that the robber held the gun in his left hand, and that he had a thick west country accent, and after several days we came to the only available conclusion, the robber was none other than Roger Chapman, we took our case to the police and they set off to find Roger. Unfortunately, not only had Roger been on holiday in Benidorm since before the theft took place, he also lost all the fingers on his left hand in a lawn mower accident six months previous.


It proved somewhat difficult to get work as detectives for some years after that.

Down at the old Belgian Bunkhouse....

Back in March 1973 I formed a reggae band called "Gregg Baker and the Wholemeal Plutos". For a brief time we got quite popular in the clubs of North Yorkshire, a traditional reggae stronghold, and had an avid following of plutoites, some of our more popular tunes included:

"Short Bredren"
"The Belgian Bunkhouse"
"Pecan Swirl"
and "The Great Tuna Crunch"

Things started to go downhill after a few months, my passion for baking got in the way of my song writing and tunes such as

"Sweet Chicken Chilli Bloomer"
and
"Pasty the Dutchie"

drew boos from the crowds at the Coach and Horses and Whitby working mens club. After a particularly unnaprecitated performance at the later myself and the Wholemeal Plutos got into something of an altercation, security (a chap known as 'Big Barry') broke it up and calmed everyone down, myself and the band went our seperate ways, I didn't keep in touch, but I hear they went on to be massive in Lichtenstein.

Later with Jools Holland...

 A while back I met Jools Holland OBE, up on telling him that I could play a mean sax solo he put forward the standing offer to jam with him and his rhythm and blues orchestra, an offer I took up the other night. After performing 'Feeling Good', 'Green Onions' and 'Lady in Red" we headed out on the town, at three in the morning myself and Jools found ourselves performing the sprinkler in the centre of the dance floor, and I had a revelation, I am awesome.

The time I was mistakenly interviewed by Lorraine Kelly

 A few years ago I was booked to do a piece about oval bites on this morning, I turned up nice and early to prepare, whilst Lorraine Kelly's section of GMTV was still on air, ITV weren't expecting me to arrive so early, and some confusion ensued. Lorraine was due to interview comedy sensation and friend of Peter Kay, Patrick Mcguinness. Unfortunately Patrick had arrived late, and the Lorraine producers mistook my good self for him, and ushered me out for the interview, I assumed they'd pushed me up the schedule to fill a gap or something, the error didn't really occur to anyone for a while, what with my thick Geordie accent and her thick Scottish accent no one had a clue what we were talking about.

Some of the questions included:

"So, are you going to film another series of pheonix nights?"
"Yes, sometimes I work nights, if we need an extra pair of hands to get the baguettes ready"
"What's it like to work with Peter Kay?"
"Ah, yes, when I was 17 I did spend a summer working on a farm, but I'm afraid bailing hay didn't come under my duties"
"What do they think of your success back home in Bolton?"
"I met Michael Bolton once, he came into the shop once for a lunchtime meal deal, nice chap"
"When is take me out back?"
"You want me to take you out the back?"
"December the first?"
"I fail to see the relevance of Damien Hurst in all of this"
"Is it a fun show to film?"
"No, I got the train down love"
"Have you got any plans for the future?"
"We're opening a new shop in Bradford next month"

By the time we cut to a break and I took my leave a confused Patrick was stood at the side of the set, I explained to him the situation and he found it quite funny, in fact we kept in touch, you may have noticed he stars in our advertising campaigns.