SOME of the old lads who inhabit the Last of the Summer Wine corner down at the pub were in danger of having a coronary recently, they were laughing so much.

Someone told this tale of an old fellow sitting on a park bench alongside this youngster of about ten who was feeding his face with one bar of chocolate after another. The old boy told him that if he carried on like that he’d finish up grossly overweight with a spotty face and probably ill as well.

‘My father’s granddad lived until he was 101,’ replied the boy.
‘I bet he didn’t put away bars of chocolate like you’ve been doing,’ said the old fellow.
‘No,’ said the boy. ‘He did it minding his own business.’

I was reminded of that story when I read a letter in this newspaper not long ago from one James McCulloch, who hails from Chichester in far away Sussex.

Mr McCulloch appeared to be so concerned for the welfare of us crapauds that he was urging us to do all manner of things, including a unilateral declaration of independence.

According to Mr McCulloch, people living in the Channel Islands inhabit the only part of Britain that can force the government – I presume he means his government, rather than that lot in the Big House – to think of withdrawal from what he described as the corrupt European Union.

Before I continue with his tale of woe, I think I should point out to Mr McCulloch that actually we don’t live in Britain because, as this simple country boy understands the position, the United Kingdom’s formal title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – Britain being made up of England, Scotland and Wales – and we are most certainly not part of the UK, never have been and hopefully never will be.

Anyhow, what he is suggesting is that his objective – rather than ours, it would appear – could be achieved by that lot in the Big House making contact with something called the Commonwealth of Nations (I’ve never heard of them but I suppose they’re in the phone book) with a view to becoming an independent member.

We would almost certainly be accepted, he assures us, and once this has been done we could then tell Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg that if the Lisbon Treaty (whatever that is when it’s out without a minder on a wet afternoon) is legalised then we will unilaterally declare independence.

Well, there’s a mouthful to digest and I suppose we should be grateful to Mr McCulloch for giving us simple folk a way of divesting ourselves from what a mate of mine frequently calls the yolk of English oppression with which we’ve been saddled for the just over 942 years since we gave Harold one in the eye at Hastings – a place which our political adviser from Chichester should know well, as it’s pretty well on his doorstep. Now, to digress ever so slightly, and only for a moment, I’ve been banging on for a few months now to the aforementioned crowd in the pub about the wonders of computers, and particularly the internet, and how proficient Herself has become at finding out all manner of things, simply by typing in a few words and getting several million largely useless (but some nonetheless interesting) bits of information.

Actually, when she typed in James McCulloch Sussex she only got about 55,000 but for the purposes I’m writing about it was more than sufficient. You see, what our Mr McCulloch forgot or failed to mention in his letter was that not only is he a member of the United Kingdom Independence Party (its principal objective being, as I understand it, getting the UK out of the EU) but he has also been a UKIP candidate – an unsuccessful one, as far as I could make out, but I confess to not trawling through all 55,000 references – in various county and parish councils in his particular neck of the woods.

In addition, it seems that he likes writing letters to publications very many miles away from his home at Newlands Lane, Chichester, including not only this newspaper but also something called the Iceland Review – which I gather is not a disseminator of prices and special offers associated with a chain of retail food outlets but an English language magazine that presumably the good citizens of Reykjavik enjoy reading while huddled round the log fire when it’s a bit too nippy to go down to the Volcanic Arms for a swift half or something stronger.

Our Mr McCulloch wrote to them just two months ago – his postage bill must contribute substantially to the £900,000 a day Royal Mail are making after paying all the accounts – offering the good people of that country advice in much the same vein as he did to us more recently.

I must confess that I have neither read nor heard of any resulting political ripples from over there, discounting of course a few of the natives getting hot under the collar because some of their banks have gone pear shaped.
Being someone whose parents taught me to be polite to everyone, I shall resist the temptation to give Mr McCulloch a right mouthful – the sort of utterances rarely heard from crapauds – and instead I shall ever so temperately suggest two things.

The first is that if the national newspapers and news bulletins are anything to go by then Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg are in far greater need of his political pearls of wisdom than we are, not to mention Iceland.
Secondly, if he wants to live to a ripe old age – 101 perhaps – then he should read the first few paragraphs of this column.

And finally, while I have some sympathy with the view expressed by John Heys that worshippers should pay for church repairs, the legal fact of the matter is that parish churches are the responsibility of ratepayers.