IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!

Deadlines are closing in on me on a couple of projects and having lost virtually a fortnight through preparing to speak at and attending two funerals and a memorial service (I shall shortly be inviting investments in my latest company venture – Eulogies R Us!) there's been little time for blogging...

So, with profound apologies, this is by way of a being a kind of make-weight lifted from a recently-uncovered copy of a Writer's Notebook that I started with confidence 22 yers ago but never got beyond page 4!

In 1992, I appeared on a Radio 4 literary panel game entitled Slightly Foxed and the participants were asked to write various pieces about themselves in different poetic forms.

There was a limerick and mine went:

Sibley's better-known radio plays
Featured hobbits and Elves and their ways
Some listeners liked Tolkien
Some found it revoltien
And a lot were left in a daze.

There was  also (less well-crafted) a clerihew:

Brian Sibley was tireless
When speaking on the wireless
And he was one of the very few
Who could also write a clerihew.

Finally, in this piece of shameless showyoffness, we were invited to suggest some titles for our autobiography. I offered three, beginning with two that like the show's title, Slightly Foxed, parodied second-hand bookseller terminology:

DOG-EARED BUT STILL DESIRABLE

SOMEWHAT THUMBED BUT INGENIOUSLY RESTORED

and the one I would still probably use if I ever (which I won't ) wrote the story of my life:

THE VARNISHED TRUTH.

(In case you wondered in the photo at the top of the page, I am wearing one of the Vicar's African hats!)