Independent on Sunday, The: Captain Moonlight

Goodness me! Can Sunday have come around again so soon? Good news for you, of course, as you will have been counting every second until your next generous helping of this column's unique attitude to the exhilarating voyage through waters smooth and rough, bracing and choppy, that we call Life. Indeed. Actually, that bit about attitude reminds me. There's a joke with a punchline involving the phrase, "it's not my 'at he chewed," but I can't remember it. Can anyone help? Meanwhile, Mr Creaghan of Durham wonders if, on your travels, you have encountered a Transylvanian antelope called Vlad the Impala. Oi! All right, all right, steady. But I read, nevertheless, that, "Midlands folk are Britain's top jokers, with 60 per cent of them telling at least eight gags a day." Crikey! Halesowen, Wednesbury, Cradley Heath, Redditch and the rest: your Captain needs you! Let's be having any left over, please! Forward!

Fantastic fashion news from Milan! Cardigans are back! Get out there and wear yours with pride! Extra marks for leather buttons and suede front panels! Some of you may even feel bold enough to get out the ones with collars and zips, but I'm not sure the Captain is brave enough for that just yet. On!

Well, I'll Go To The Foot Of Our Stairs With Captain Moonlight! And that magician chap doing Russian roulette live on the telly was using, it turns out, blanks! Well, etc! Who would have thought it? The Captain advises you to brace yourself for these further astounding revelations: 1 What goes round, comes round. 2 A stitch in time saves nine. 3 On the whole, voters will have little difficulty choosing between a Hollywood film star and a small grey man called Gray. 4 Sven stays calm. 5 Every 24 hours, a light period gives way to a dark period. 6 Norfolk doesn't overly undulate. 7 A good man is hard to find. 8 At the end of the day, it is around midnight. 9 On the other hand, I have five fingers. 10 You're never alone with a Strand. Thank you. Proceed!

Arresting Headlines, an occasional series. The Captain was rather taken by this front cover of Chat magazine; see what you think: "I Chopped Your Dad's Head Off ... that's why I had to give you away. Can you forgive me?" Indeed. Readers of a sensitive disposition may prefer to go on to the next item rather than learn about another Chat article also flagged on the cover: "My doctor yanked an ovarian tumour out of my nose!" Goodness me. Next!

Hot One! The world's oldest fossilised genitals, dating back 400 million years, have been found in a rock near Aberdeen! Next!

Lift! Doors closing! Contain yourselves, stare straight ahead, purse your lips and hum something tunelessly under your breath: today is the last day for the Captain's phenomenally successful series, I Shared A Lift With A Celebrity! So come in, Mr Platt of Trowbridge: "Captain! In 1977, I shared a lift in a Bristol hotel with Cary Grant. Unfortunately I was young and innocent, and didn't really know who Cary Grant was. I remember that it impressed me more at the time that I also met Julian Pettifer in the same hotel, though we did not share a lift." Excellent, Mr Platt! Please accept a bottle of British bubbly, provided by those Titans of the native grape, New Wave Wines of Kent. On!

Sorry? Whose genitals? An ancestor of the daddy-long-legs, actually. The great great great squared grand daddy-long-legs of them all, I suppose. Anyway, there's one there to give you some idea. On!

Lift! There's another! Ms Evans of St Mellion and Larry Grayson in a Plymouth department store! And another: Ms Varney of Nottingham and Blake from Blake's Seven! Sorry? No, I'd rather leave that one hanging. Oh, all right, then, no, Larry didn't say, "Shut that door!". Next!

Pieces of Eight! This, as you know, is the column that really cares about parrots. So I was very excited to read that one is about to make a court appearance in Alexandria, Virginia. Yes. A Mr De Groff claims that the parrot, adopted by a Ms Weaver from an animal shelter, is in fact Loulou, his 11-year-old pet, missing since a guest at his home, who wasn't wearing her glasses at the time, walked into his balcony door, smashing it and thus allowing Loulou to fly away. Mr De Groff hopes to prove that the parrot is his by getting it to say, "Daddy's got to go to work," one of Loulou's top catchphrases. Well. A high-risk strategy, I should have said. Tricky birds, parrots. Loulou, if it is indeed her, might respond to "Daddy's got to go to work", with, "That, I have to say, Mr De Groff, is entirely a matter for `Daddy', whoever he might be. Next question!" Or, "That would certainly make a change." Or, "Jeez! What sort of fruitcake is dis guy? Ms Weaver, get me the hell outta here!" Or, "Nonsense! I saw you murder Daddy and dispose of his body in a bath of sulphuric acid. Arrest that man!" Next, quickly!

Big! A week has now passed since the formation of the new Moonlight pressure group, Fir For All, established to support the poor leylandii, a pretty regular kind of conifer that is the innocent victim of what can only be described as rampant deciduism and pernicious pines envy. But wait, what is this? An email from a reader, Mr Wills of West Molesey! Mr Wills? "Captain! The leylandii is a tree I view with some ambivalence. Until a year ago, we had a specimen that provided excellent summer shade. When it grew somewhat taller than the house, I removed the top 12 feet. In gratitude, the tree spread sideways at an alarming rate, and had to go. The tree surgeon said nobody knew how high they grew as they had only been around for 50 years, and certainly hadn't stopped growing in that time (50 years, foot a year, 50 feet, etc). In a hundred years, perhaps all our suburban villas will be lost in an impenetrable forest of leylandii, like Sleeping Beauty." Thank you, Mr Wills, for that inspiring thought and vision! On!

Lift! And Mr McNickle of St Albans has returned with further and better particulars: Robert Mugabe was in a lift in St Mary's, Paddington. Mr McNickle also confides that a friend once employed an urinal adjacent to that of Enoch Powell, but I'm not sure about that sort of series, particularly when we've got Mr Lee of Leeds, who has just seen Helen Baxendale, top TV actress, at the Odsal Stadium watching the Bradford and Leeds clash. So that's it: I Shared A Rugby League Ground With A Celebrity is your next challenge! Forward! Half- back!