Lay your bets in the Browning chicken stakes
Birmingham banker Ben Browning is back in the poultry game.
Bought himself some ex-battery hens about a year old.
Saved from a life of misery. The hens that is.
Well, sort of. It seems the battery people get rid of them about that age because they are then past their egg-laying peak.
But apparently they will still produce far more than his previous rare-breed flock.
They sadly were mostly eaten by the local foxes along with the turkeys destined for the Christmas tables of Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby and Bright’s vicar on earth, John Duckers.
But this time Browning has a cunning plan.
He has invested in a new “hi-tech” electric fence backed up by a loaded .22 rifle at the window.
Anyway, there is a betting slate on the survival chances of these chickens:
2/1 They make it through the first month
5/2 Browning’s pet Labrador Horace – now incidentally firing blanks after being dealt with following over-amorous sessions with bitch Dorothy – gets them.
7/1 The foxes are back and even more hungry.
33/1 Browning blasts off at fox and hits hen by mistake.
1,000/1 Browning accidentally shoots self.
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Birmingham businessman John Matthews tells me he has been delving back in time … and doesn’t like what he sees.
It seems he was horrified when perusing some old photos of himself as a young man.
And I had thought Matthews’ life had been based on the film, The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button.
Certainly he seems to get younger as he gets older.
But Matthews is having none of it and plans to “seal up” the attic where the offending pictures are kept.
“I’m going to put a lock on the trap door,” he quips.
I don’t know … it worries me these types who have stayed forever teenagers in mind, if not in body!
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I pop into the Rajdoot restaurant in Birmingham and who should be there but council leader Mike Whitby and wife Gaynor.
It’s apparently their regular curry haunt and I have to say that I totally agree with the choice.
Excellent food.
But after a bit of gentle banter as the
couple were preparing to leave, the great man made the ultimate political sacrifice to ingratiate himself with Bright.
He gave up his last Mint Imperial.
And I never thought he liked the Fourth Estate much.
