We’ve been on the scramble for the scoop. The run down of just what happened in that fucking hospital. And they’ve closed ranks. Even the Middleton’s uncle Pauline wouldn’t say a bastard thing. Johnny and I absolutely barked questions at Witchell and plied the greasyshit with@_Ungagged‘s annual entertainments budget (a fucking tenner. There’s nothing entertaining about Ungagged!) Luckily the fucker loves Tonic Wine. Johnny and I polished off a bottle of Gordon’s as we drilled him, but to no avail. He just kept crying, “I was once a war correspondent! ” and was sick over his shoes. “Fucking get him more booze! ” I shouted, and Kirkwood the weather showed up just in time with the BBC. “I’ve pointed at weather pictures for twenty years,” petty cash cheque book.

The next thing I see are two walking Union Jack’s saunter into the pub, as if madmen like that are entitled to fuck with our brains! Johnny shot up, grabs a fucking dolly, YES A FUCKING DOLLY! from one of them, opens the door and throws it like he’s a fucking All Black. One of the horrors, grabs Johnny and starts shouting filth that sounded like, “Yoir aw fukin ripublicin muthdirin batathrd!”

The bar was in uproar. Witchell was sobbing, Kirkwood was taking the opportunity to grab a few bags of salt and vinegar and the Murdoch mob almost had their old chaps polished to nothing.

Weatherall, the barman with the wit of a fucking cow on Mary Jane, crashed through the plywood bar door, grabbed the screaming Union Jack Jock and threw him after his fucking doll. His little side kick squealed something Glaswegian and ran out. Thing is, he forgot HIS doll.

We are in lock down while we decide a course of action. More later. Out.

Next Morning…

Fuck. Things degenerated last night. The Prince Doll is in a secret location. Weatherall guarded the premises all night, while we debated our next course of action over three bottles of gin, a bottle of vodka, and many reviving euro-lagers. Let’s see how this plays out…

Later…

All taking turns watching the door. Shut-eye in the toilets only. Staying alert. The madness that has overcome the nation could be infectious. The Prince Doll owner has been seen again outside, grinning with other Windsor Worshippers. It’s only a matter of time. Witchell has been given leave to chase the next story. Could be a death, anniversary or birthday, WHO KNOWS? We plan to stake out the Albert Hall, The Mall and that fuckng hospital. And the brewery isn’t due for a day and a half. Ends. (More later, as it happens)

Much Later…

Prince Doll owner broke through our defenses. Weatherall had to open the cellar for a local plod – a few bottles keeps them from dispersing our late night journalistic plenaries.

I was on point, but had been reviving Johnny with one of those caffeinated alcho-fizz concoctions  – he’d fallen asleep during a particularly frantic description of the scrum around the Duke of Wessex opening ceremony at a state of the art traffic cone emplacement training facility in Hull, by Roderick, the intern at Halt! magazine, the industry publication for traffic diversionary logistics.

He missed the sorry tale of Wessex fending off questions about his great nephew. According to Roderick, Wessex seemed to know as much about the sprog, the mother and the father as he did traffic cones, and almost ran through the grinning mob of halfwit local press nine-to-fivers.

Anyway, as I was administering said pick-me-up, the union flag clad working-class chap walked across the fucking Rubicon River like a triumphant, cross-eyed, vacant looking version of Caesar returning from his victory over a fucking deer filled forest.

The chap walked unadulterated to the bar, annoyingly after 27 hours of our strategy and rotational keeping dick. Johnny immediately came round stood up and without saying anything, ran straight out of the bar! With Weatherall in the cellar, Witchell already digging for the next Windsor event, and everyone else fucking sleeping, I was left to deal with the threat! More later. ENDS

30 mins later…

London, 2018.

And a grown man dressed in a Union Flag three piece suit and tie, is sobbing into a pint of British Lager. He’s lost his doll. His baby doll. Not just any doll, but a Prince Windsor Doll. I have a dilemma. I need this scoop. I need to get to the heart of darkness.

But, I know who has the doll. I don’t exactly know where the doll is, but I know where the person is who hid the doll. He’s in the cellar, with a police officer. And I’m here, with perhaps the most dangerous Scotsman in London.

What would you do? I’m a journalist. I’ve got to understand. Or at least, I must report. I’ve got to find the facts. I’ve got to stay neutral. I’ve got to get on that dingy and navigate the Nùng and befriend this Colonel Kurtz. There is only one thing to do.

30 mins before…

I got up from the table and moved slowly towards the gammon dressed in a deckchair. He was grinning. They all grin. Or weep. Or curtsy. The Windsors think most of us do. Their public either chase them on fucking mopeds or weep, grin or curtsy. They really do think we are cunts.

The Dolly man walked over to the bar. And waited. Grinning. And I knew Weatherall and the officer were sampling a few Jameson’s.

“Yes?” I was trembling. I had walked through crowds of them at Royal do’s before.

But they are distracted at those. This was an isolated one, and we HAD to talk… I needed to find out. Where does this madness start? Is it dangerous? Can anyone catch this… This condition? “Ahm doon tae see tha we’an.” He spoke. He could speak.

“Do you like booze, my good man?” I replied.

I felt stupid. Somehow inferior. This man was here, displaying for all to see, all that he was. An honest man. And here was I, about to dissect him & read his entrails. He looked me up and down, and smiled wider.

“Yoo tha barman?”

“No, but I can get you booze,” is all I could reply.

My mind was all over the place, and it’d been half an hour since my last gin.

Fucking war correspondents? Fuck them. War is predictable. Soldiers, drones, terrorists even-they have physical laws.

A Scot dressed in a Union Jack in Ye Old Cheshire Cheese is something the late Stephen Hawking could never have predicted. More later… ENDS.

Continued…

Nature’s gentleman. Le bon sauvage. Here he was, standing, a human labarum. The very essence of all Royal Propaganda, since Julius Caesar and before, had created. This was not a man, but the epitome of the fealty Aristocracy ventured to create since the legions finally left the Britons, defenseless and ready for exploitation. I poured him a Lager.

“Do you dress like this every day?” This was me dallying around the edges. But I had to work around the circle to find a gap in the defenses. I needed to know his purpose. His raison d’etre.

What culture was this? Was there a place where such nobility roamed?

“Aye man. Me an ma da, we are Sco’linds biggest Royal fans, man.”

I was in danger territory here. I could tell this warrior could turn on me if I pressed the wrong keys. I could sense this man was highly tuned. His senses were on alert. He knew the doll was here. At this point, I have to tell you, it was not my intention to torture this soldier. My intention was to help. And giving him the doll was not a kind thing to do. And I knew.

He was playing with me. This could end in violence. I almost collapsed with the weight of what was happening. It had to stop.

“You are here for the doll,” I said, unwavering from my mission. I had been deserted by the corps. But I was going to take out the machine gun myself.

“Aw pal, hae ye saw it, ye ken whurr it is, like?” His language, his sentence structure was unfamiliar, but I was getting the gist. His eyes bore through to the back of my head. This gladiator was close to winning. I was sweating, and almost ready to cave in. But I pushed on.

“There may be others who do. But I am not obliged to say, dear chap.”

I turned away. I couldn’t bear his fucking eyes! Heavy, empty, like the blackest part of the universe, sucking in light, but unseeing. I poured something into a glass. Fuck knows what it was, but I downed it.

“Ye ken whurr tha babbie is?” I was trembling. I poured something else and downed it.

“ITS DEAD! THE PRINCE DOLL IS DEAD!” I turned & looked at him, ready to grab the ice bucket in my defence… And the fucker cried.

This was a weapon I had not thought about using.

This was a man with an armoury like the Tower of London, and he chose his weapon well.

“FUCK!”

I thought about throwing up down my shirt. I thought about pissing myself. I thought about playing dead. But none of these could out manoeuvre his globular tears splashing in the pissy British Lager.

And then Witchell walked in. He looked as if he’d been wrestling with Katie Melua’s new album. His brow was pinched like a dehydrated pugs anus. And he spotted the sobbing wild man at the bar. It was too much. I tried to shout,

I WANTED to shout, “NO! THINK OF THE SCOOP!” But Witchell was on him like Trump stuck in a lift with Macron. Only the passion was played out through Witchell’s long nails, gouging, scratching, ripping at the bust mattress that had been Scotland’s only Royalist.

As they clawed, screamed, slapped and flapped, I knew I had to wait. Witchell was the professional. If anyone knew how to get to the essence of the story, it was him.

The name of every Royal baby in living memory has been announced by Witchell.

His disappointment this time is so great in being involved in another story that, this time, will go with him to the grave. Louis was not to be his. This was given to the new boys on the block The Sky News Sharks. The propagandists employed by Putin. CNN. The wannabe Jennie Bonds of the Alternative Media. Breitbart heiled a new leader of men, Buzzfeed proclaimed the name ten minutes before Kate was told she came up with it.

And Witchell was behind bars, sobbing the name “Louis,” like a dying Charles Foster Kane.

How did it end like this? Well, the Royalist Scottish walking Union Jack wasin Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, searching for his baby doll. I was raiding the bar, unable to carry out my duties as an investigative reporter. The fucker had defeated me like no one since Diana had.

This symbol of Royal power-the essence of power- the axle around which the whole British system turns, stood crying into his pint knowing the rest of us had to turn as he did. No power in Britain would exist without this man and his doll. And he couldn’t have it. This man denied the chance to demean himself, kissing and caressing this battery operated Prince “Louis” Doll could bring down the whole institution of hereditary power.

Or not.

We knew this was a test.

But, Witchell, frustrated by the younger, e-journos beating him to Royal announcement after Royal announcement was too much. He saw his scoop dead, drowned, shattered. And there in the bar, stood the diversion, the image that encaptured all that was wrong with the succession of new media “journalists” sitting on his rightful throne, the one he had taken from Sergeant Major Jennie Bond after she had retired.

He grabbed Union Jack Jock by the neck and pulled him off the barstool, just as Weatherall walked in from the cellar with Constable Barns, who was grinning from ear to ear holding the fucking doll aloft!

 Everyone froze.

I’ve never heard a silence like it.

Almost as quiet as the News of the World Christmas do, 2016.

I ducked behind the bar, saving the nearest bottle of something, unscrewing the lid and glugging  something sickly sweet down my gullet.

When I awoke, Weatherall was brushing up glass, and the bar seemed to have lost the seige atmosphere.

“What happened?”

“They named it Louis.”

“Fuck.”

“Mr Witchell, the doll man and the doll are in custody.” And bail was posted by a Mr Cambridge, showing how our press, our public and tat are bought, recycled and trussed up by our betters.

ENDS