Just Desserts

‘CHRISTMAS is coming and many of you will be looking forward to experiencing the sweet taste of citrus as your boss hands you the traditional gift of a slice of ripe, tropical lemon.

‘What am I bid for this self-portrait?’

What you do with it is up to you, of course, and we suggest locking it away somewhere safe until you have enough ‘segments’ to make an entire fruit with which to impress yourself and your friends.

Some of you might like to do as the Queen does and suck on the lemon rind for hours at a time, or follow the example set by Her Ma’am and mix the yellow treat with a blend of ‘gin waters’ to make a long life-giving drink.

But whatever you do, do not try to sell it because doing so would be wrong, and if the Royal household is our guide – and it is – a sacking offence.

The Mirror reports that Buckingham Palace worker Ben Church has been unceremoniously dismissed from his job as a property administrator for offering up last year’s gift from the Queen to her staff for sale on the Internet auction site, e-bay.

As a Palace spokesman says: ‘Disciplinary action was taken against a member of staff following an incident where a Christmas pudding was placed on e-bay. There were other supporting documents to show it came from Buckingham Palace.’

And this, as the Mail says, represented a severe breach of security.

In offering the £6.25 pudding for sale with a reserve price of £20, Church might just as well have thrown open the palace gates and let in the terrorists, looters and revolutionaries.

It will not do, and to prove it we armed ourselves with a machete and some dark thoughts about Prince Edward and began to search for the dessert on the world wide web.

We typed in ‘Royal’. We typed in ‘Pudding’. We typed in ‘Fruit’. And lo and behold if we didn’t get an offer to buy Paul Burrell’s soul, put up for sale by the Sun.

Assuming the butler-and-tell merchant is still in possession of this ‘damaged’ asset – and has not lent it out to another for safe-keeping – all we need to take ownership of it is to outbid the current top offer of 2p.

The Sun is keen to sell off this living antiquity, but how keen?

We’re not sure and will hold fire until the offer is upped – after all, what use is a bared soul unless it’s fully dressed in one of Di’s old cocktail dresses and a tiara..?’

Posted: 17th, December 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink