fat ben elton

“You’re fat”.
“I’m not fat”!
“Yes you are”.
“No I’m not”.
“Yes you are”.

I have always enjoyed the depth of pantomime like debate that my friends & I participate in down the pub. Larry, I have called him Larry because somewhere Fat Larry’s Band seems to ring a bell & to call him Domino or Checker would be silly.

No, Larry will do. He has been a life long friend. He is a loyal husband & loving dad. I am proud to know him, however he is “a lad” & he likes to talk a good fight, larger than life & as the Americans would say “a real wise guy”. So as they say “alls fair in love & war”.

On the balance of probabilities I would say that Larry is probably fat. Well he kinda looks like a fat Ben Elton, FBE for short. That’s provided Ben Elton has not put any weight on recently in which case he would be reduced to a Ben Elton look-alike or BEL. Or indeed what if Mr Elton has become extremely overweight? Would that make Larry a Thin or Thinner Ben Elton, TBE?

“You look like a fat Ben Elton”.
“No I don’t”.
“Yes you do”.

Note to all celebrities. Please can you all remain the same weight so as not to confuse us non celebrity pub going intellectuals & render any “Mickey taking” pointless.

Anyway back to Larry or FBE. (In fact I can picture him reading this. “I’m not fat” he will say to his wife. “Well yes you are”. Say I) He periodically goes on health kicks. One of his more famous quotes, which myself & chums have had years of fun with was, “I’m giving up chips for Lent”. Now if I had a pound for every time he had walked passed a chippy without going in I’d have 13 pence. I even once witnessed him drop a kebab on the floor at the end of a drunken night. The look of disappointment across his face lasted seconds. Then came the “beer fuelled” reasoning,

“It won’t be to dirty down there” I hear him think. “…and after all nobody can see me I’ve been drinking invisible juice all night”.

Two girls stood in the queue for food are heard to say,

“Isn’t that Ben Elton over there, look he’s picking a kebab up off the floor”?

“No, he’s too fat”, says the other.

So as he bends over to pick up his temporarily displaced meal.

Crash. Head first, straight into the advertising board outside the kebab shop. Glasses smashed. Eye cut.

“It’s all right” I heard him shout from the floor. “I’ve saved me Kebab.

Result.

“I’ve started jogging”, was another excellent quote. & to be fair, he had & cycling. This brings me nicely to the punch line of my tale. Larry goes on a 50 mile bike ride for charity. (As previously stated he is a great guy).

So come the day he sets off on his mountain bike. Six hours in the saddle, eventually crossing the finishing line at which point he collapses to the ground. Lying on his back like a star fish gasping for air.

He is then approached by a couple of other participants in this event, they are more serious cyclists.

“We just noticed you approaching the finish line”, says one. “We are very impressed”.

“Yes”, said the second. “Remarkable! Such effort, all that way”!

“We have never seen anyone ride 50 miles with knobbly (off road) tyres on their bike before”, added the first. “Must have took you hours”.

“We almost didn’t recognise you Mr Elton” said the second as they walked away chuckling.

“I’m not fat”, choked Larry.

Average Joe (0) Local Bike Shop (2)