For the next decade the songwriting team of Ben and Glam produced many more classics, including Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", “Riot in a Bowl of Raspberry Blancmange”, "Rubber Ducky" and “Fanfare for a Daft Generation". We were invited to all the best parties, which quickly become the worst parties when Ben had one shandy too many and performed his notorious Dance of the Dead Butterfly, or had one shandy too few and glued himself to the ceiling growling at the women.
During this period Ben extended his interests to other areas. He released his own range of hair care products, which ushered in the fashion among the haute monde for shaven heads; started fights with prominent politicians, and finished them with a sledgehammer; surfed the tsunami that drowned Atlantis. He was often asked to give lectures on his experiences to such bodies as The League Against Cavalry Twill, The Royal Society of Eudemonists, and the Milton Keynes Townswomen’s Guild. Whatever the requested subject, he would give the same talk; the one about his Theory of Blancmange, which involved in its proof stapling a tramp’s ear to a lamp-post, smearing him with pineapple jam and telling him dirty jokes. There did not seem to be any blancmange involved.
Ben’s musical career came to an end when it was revealed to the world by an ambitious journalist who had won his confidence with promises of twine and broad beans that, despite his phenomenal success, mountains of chocolate money and bizarre dress sense, he remained, as he had been since birth, pathetically bewildered by fish. Unable to stand the embarrassment and the taunts of small children in the street, and of course my own relentless mockery, Ben faked his own death with the aid of a lawnmower and a couple of sacks of straw in a hat, and disappeared from mortal ken. He was 46, I was 23.
*
Ben re-entered my life during the height of glam rock as a scarred old pirate captain. He walked into my boutique (Satin’n’Tat, Fashion for the Discerning Rock Fan, We Don’t Do Cardigans) brandishing a plastic cutlass and demanding I supply him with a Vegemite and sawdust sandwich. Fortunately I had this very item with me, as I had earlier that morning attended the Surrealists’ Guild Skittles night which was held every walnut, except when there was a tree in the obstetrics, and handed it over.
“Ha harrr!” he proclaimed, taking a bite, “This ‘ere foodstuff ‘as a definite tang of Avery Standard Label L7163! Oi don’t like anything but Avery Standard Label L7162 in moi sandwich! Prepare to feel the slap of moi plastic cutlass against yer thighs, me fine young wench that y’are with yer long leggity legs an’ yer jewelled melons!”
It was obvious from this that he hadn’t recognised me, possibly due to overdoing it in the eyepatch department. He was wearing five of them, and the law of averages dictated that at least two of them would find an eye to cover. It was fortunate, then, that I had seasoned the comestible with a sense of sudden realisation.
“’Ere, ‘ang about,” he said, raising one of the patches. “Why, it’s me old mucker Glam, so it is! Even under all that glitter and slap I’d surely recognise me old mate Hagerty!”
I had not the heart to tell him he was talking to one of my dummies, so sneaked behind it and threw my voice. It landed in the spittoon, so I decided to leave it there and instead use one I had accepted from a customer in exchange for a pair of pink satin loons the day before.
“You haven’t changed a bit, old friend,” I ventriloquised, “I’d recognise you everywhere, even under all that frazzled beard and joke shop scars with a meerkat on your shoulder.”
"This is no mere cat," he replied, "This is a rare spangled ocelot from the Ivory Coast up a lighthouse down by Battersby Bay."
"Sneer!" I sneered, "So no sooner have you reacquaintanced than you choose to show off your knowledge of felines! I'll soon settle your hash browns!"
With that, I whipped out my emergency herring from my herring holster and waved it before him.
"Why, it is a common Speckled Herring! The adult Speckled Herring can be anywhere from three inches to five miles long, when it is no longer a sprocket but is known as a flange. It prefers to nest in a shopping trolley and has an interest in small bits of wood. If domesticated, it can often be used as a ceiling rose."
I was dumbfounded, not to mention… well I didn't mention anything, because I was dumbfounded.
"Ha harr!" He reverted to his previous buccanner vernacular. "Ye don't swash yer buckle across the briny for seventeen years wi'out learnin' a thing or two about fish!"
Ben had conquered his lifelong deficiency in the marine biology department at the grand old age of 3 anna half, due to a lengthy excursion in the Bermuda Triangle. I was 23.
*
And so we come to the present day. Ben now lives in a wardrobe at the top of a telegraph pole in Booga Booga where he writes endless reams of drivel, some of which escapes through the auspices of the internet, and has published a best-selling book which can be found in the racks and bins of airport lounges and washed up on beaches everywhere. Yes, I can now reveal that Ben is Dorothea LL Flangebucket, author of "The Epsilon Kappa Pi Factor", winner of 3 Hugos, 5 Wendys and a Terry. He is 23. I am 632.
Long may he moulder.