Potted Beef February 28, 2007 Sir, Can you print a picture of Dirk Thrust. I have a 1981 picture of him as he appeared on the cover of the Rhabstallion single, Day to Day, but it bears no resemblance to the ageing and corpulent person who regularly brings my grandmother, Mrs Edith Sutcliffe, a quarter of potted meat on Tuesday mornings. She assures me, however, that it is he. Kimberley Sutcliffe, Mixenden. We certainly can, and here he is: (above) Dirk Thrust (59)

My Lyposuction Horror! February 24, 2007 Rock Star tells of Near-Death Experience. A rotund but happy Dirk Thrust (59), ear-splitting guitarist with heavy-rock legends The Grimshaws, told reporters about his “months of pain and hopelessness” after a cut-price cosmetic surgery attempt to reduce his massive thighs and waistline went horribly wrong. “I’m lucky to be alive”, said the obese Thrust talking from his palatial home in Wheatley, West Yorkshire. “I might be fat, but when you have been as near death as I have been it’s the simple things in life – like my girlfriend - which seem important” Draping a gigantic arm around live-in lover Nicola “Jordan” Jordan, Thrust spoke movingly of his brush with death. His nightmare began when, depressed by his obesity, he answered a classified advertisement for “budget body make-overs” in Horse, Hound and Thrash Metal magazine. “It all came to a head”, said a tearful Thrust, his chins quivering with genuine emotion, “When the canvass straps on the lifting harness above the bath could no longer bear my weight”. I thought, “This is the final straw”. Two days later in September 2001, and after a deposit of £35, Thrust checked into The Bargain Botox Cut Price Clinic, Mixenden, Halifax, hoping to have his 53 inch thighs reduced by liposuction. But the plump guitarist became suspicious when the ‘operating theatre’ he was wheeled into contained only a Dyson ‘Wild Vortex’ vacuum cleaner, a length of garden hose and two plastic builders buckets. “I thought something was wrong at the time, said Thrust, “but I was so determined to restart my career as a rock legend that I put all thought of my own safety out of my mind."

Iron Age Bass Guitarist Found in Tescos February 24, 2007 Contractors excavating a 3 acre site for the new Tesco development in Birstall, near Leeds (home of the worst Premiership team in history) called a rapid halt to the digging when a workman came across what is believed to be the oldest Bass Guitarist ever to be exhumed in Western Europe. Experts from Leeds University Archaeology department are examining the find. Professor Wolfgang von Furstein, an expert in Paleolithic relics said, “Zis eez incrrrredibeel – Eef I hem not mishtakened eet eez zee bowdy of zee grrrrreat Vick Sinex, founder member of zee orrriginal I-Ron Aged Rocking gruppe, Ze Grrrimshowz." The petrified remains of the 2300 year old man clutching a huge mobile phone and cheap iron-age copy of a Fender Precision Bass will be on display in the window of Car Accessory World (near Swan traffic lights, Liversedge) until the end of March. Mr A Pickersgill, Dewsbury.

Sheer Joy for Grimshaw’s Fans February 24, 2007 If more proof were needed simply look at the expressions of sheer joy (below) on the faces of these Grimshaw fans at their recent sell out charity gig at The Wainstall’s Shuttlewinders and Bobbin Fettlers Hall, where Mrs Pickersgill and I were pleased to attend at the invitation of the President of the Grimshaws fan club, Mrs Edith Sutcliffe of Scrittins Street, Sowerby Bridge, and her adopted daughter, Charlotte (Nutto) McMadd, formerly of Watkinson Road. Grimshaw fans rocking in the free world. Left to Right: Edith Sutcliffe, Charlotte Mc Madd, Beatrice Garside, Doris Pickersgill, Dave (Shirley) Thompson, and formerly fat massage expert Nicola ‘Jordan’ Jordan.

Fabulous New Grimshaw’s Vocalist January 22, 2007 Belgian cabaret star, Mautice Locke will front the fabulous Grimshaws on their forthcoming British and European tour. Mautice, 67, formerly of Wheatley, achieved fleeting fame and some financial success with Jools Holland in the 1950s comedy duo Lump and Hammer. The duo would amuse hard-up northern theatre audiences with their spoof renditons of perfectly good soul and jazz songs finally culminating in the pair smashing a Steinway to pieces with their bare hands before eating a considerable proportion of the debris.