Thursday, March the 4th, 2004
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The television arm of the Hooting Yard Foundation is currently developing a drama series based on the detective stories of F X Duggleby. Fans of his fiction will know that DCI Gruesome is irascible, vain, hirsute, and mordant, that he keeps a colony of fruitbats in his attic, and that he invariably solves his crimes using a ratiocinative method similar to—if not wholly plagiarised from—M. P. Shiel's Prince Zaleski. (Duggleby goes so far as to have the DCI spend long hours loitering in a gazebo.) His assistant, Sgt Turgid—highly-strung, imprudent, bedizened, yet valiant, a keen Reader's Digest reader—bears a striking resemblance to Frankenstein's monster. In the first book of Duggleby's series, The Murder of the Murderous Murderer, he is described thus: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and his straight black lips. His voice, when at last he spoke, was booming and monotonous, empty of human expression and lacking any variation in tone or cadence.” I mention this because the casting director is completely stumped, having failed to persuade veteran Eric Sykes and Melvin “Mad Max” Gibson to take the lead roles. If readers have any suggestions, please send them in at once. Shooting begins next week.