Let's get ready to er, erm... you know.

Three days ago we had an earthquake at the Leeds facility for Smart-Arsed Fish. It made me drop my milkshake and my porcelain otter collection rattled on the shelf which made them look as if possessed by evil, vengeful otter poltergeists.

Having done a quick inventory check, it became apparent that the little colourful fish, the nasty case of crabs and the twelve salmon were all unhurt... except for the three salmon i ate during the inventory checking...to keep my strength up, you understand.

What could have caused the earthquake though? I'm a simple fishy and don't understand these things. I've put it down to a few possibilities which are as follows:

Vanessa Feltz had fallen out of her water bed and managed to level half of Kent.

Two hundred angry squirrels had decided that 'enough was enough' and had planted explosives in the muesli factories.

An angry god had decided to smite us for making jokes about Jeremy Beadle's little deformed hand.

Two elephants were continuing their illicit affair and were having casual sex on top of a Ford Fiesta in a local car park...'cos elephants are dead classy like that.

Monsters from the planet Jellytot 5 had attempted to land their spaceship nearby but had forgotten to bother to check how big the planet was. In a huge error of judgement, they realised that the entire Earth was small enough for them to pop in their mouths and suck on like a fizzy gumdrop. They quickly scarpered off and turned their stereos down in order to be more discreet.

The planet's tummy rumbled while deciding whether or not to eat a small Danish girl for being too sparkly. After twenty minutes, the planet made the decision to open a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch instead.

Oink!

Many of the youth's pop-beat combos split up and then reform. Groups like The Spice Girls and Take That and even Pink Floyd have ended their extended retirements usually at the exact same time that a huge fat wad of cash is deposited in their bank accounts by a greedy, no talent music publicist.

One duet who wont be coming back, however, are Pinky and Perky. Yes, we all remember their beautiful high-pitched squeaky piggy voices singing our favourite tunes like a miniature angel who's genitals have been caught in a series of kitchen appliances but what happened to them after the music ended?

Their career was beautifully realised in the lyrics of Don McClean's American Swine and there has been many biopics and books but for those who are musically inexperienced, let me remind you of their downfall.

Pinky was, of course, famously arrested in 1979 for goading wolves into 'blowing his house down' - a sexual act so sinister that i simply cannot find the words to describe it. Needless to say, it involved a wolf, some 'huffing and puffing' and a piggy that squealed 'whee whee wheee' all the way home.

After his subsequent release, Pinky devoted himself to working with the starving children of Africa which went well for over three months until one of the children ate him.

Perky was the quiet one. He would often go to market and enjoy roast beef from time to time. It was rumoured that he invented the hula-hoop but this is unsubstantiated. After the music dried up and the fans moved on to other top animal pop acts such as Keith Harris and Orvile and Crazy Frog, Perky became restless and embittered and, on June 19th 1984* he took his own life by roasting himself in an oven at gas mark 4 for about 2 hours to ensure that his pork fat was extra crispy.

He was later served with apple sauce and roasted potatoes and eaten by the last 3 members of the Pinky and Perky fan club.

It's what they would've wanted.


*happy birthday Garfield

The Big V!!

10 things that you might not wish to say when picking up your valentine date:

What, you're wearing THAT?

Maybe i should go alone...

Have you gained weight recently?

Come on dragon face, let's roll.

I've got my granny and three of her bingo-friends in the car. You don't mind if they join us, right?

I think you should get a blood test....

Have you always had that mole???

Let's get this over with.

What? The yellow spot thing? Well the puss has stopped seeping now so i think we're good for another hour before it flames up again.

I hope you brought cash cos i'm hungry...

Roy

It might surprise you to learn that my favourite film isn't The Sound of Music or even Tarka the Otter (though that IS a close second), but in fact Jaws.

Sharks are a bit stupid and so any film that spends two hours planning and then killing one is obviously going to thrill me more than a day trip to a WeaselWorld theme park.

As we all know, sharks spend their time intimidating smaller fish (which should only be done by dolphins), looking a bit scary in wildlife films and also drawing male genitals with an Etch-A-Sketch...though that last fact isn't widely reported.

In the film Jaws, three men set off on an adventure to kill the evil willy-sketching, fish-bothering meany and along the way have a few arguments about the best way to do it while guzzling beer.

Mr Hooper is a furry, soft-handed scientist type. The only thing he manages to kill is the atmosphere in Chief Brody's dining room. He enjoys showing other men his instruments and scrunching plastic cups.

Shark killing ability: 2/5 - He doesn't kill a shark but he does manage to shove an air tank in a shark's mouth making it look like Clint Eastwood in those western movies.

Quint is a psychopathic loose-toothed nutjob who probably owns only own pair of undies. He knows over 28 ways to tie knots and over 2,904 dirty jokes about nuns. Has a tattoo which he claims he got in the military but everyone suspects that it was probably a picture of Betty Boop holding a squirrel.

Shark killing ability 1/5 -Manages to fire a few shots at a shark but eventually gets eaten by one that should probably enter next years 110 meter hurdles dash.

Brody is a chief of police who hates the water more than kittens in a sack. Knows hardly anything about sharks (not even that Etch-A-Sketch thing) and spends most of the film throwing rotting fish into the sea while daydreaming about old Pink Panther episodes.

Shark killing ability 5/5 Doesn't just kill the shark but actually blows it into 23,518 little fishy bits using just a rifle and a kick-ass line of dialogue. This makes Brody the poster-boy for every dolphin and a role model to us all, right?

Hail to the chief, baby!!

Slicey Slicey

When you human types aren't killing each other over who's got the best god or who likes oil the most, you also like killing each other over love. I adore otters but have never once wanted to kill anyone preventing me from using my season pass to the local otter sanctuary. Not that anyone would dare.

Anyway, this murderous streak is witnessed in all its lovely detail in the latest Tim Burton movie 'Sweeney Todd' which also carries the subtitle 'the demon barber of Fleet Street' in case we were confusing him with another Sweeney Todd, perhaps.

Personally i think there were many better titles that could've been used instead and i've compiled a list of a few alternatives:

For Your Pies Only

Mr Knife Guy

Live & Let Pie

Conan the Barber

The Wrath of Balm

Foam Hair to Eternity

I Love Stubble

Pies Like Us

In God We Crust

Eat The Parents

Half Baked

Cutthroat Island

Beard Science

I think you get the drift. I'll stop now because i can sense you lost interest after that Wrath of Balm one.

Smy Hard!

Just how many action movies have there been? I'd say at least 41. You bipeds really seem to enjoy watching other bipeds blow stuff up, don't you?

In the case of the ones Ive seen during my monthly barnacle-removal-treatment, there appears to be a set of rules that run through each of them which MUST be adhered to without fail.

First, our hero character must be 'burnt out'. He must smoke like a kipper, have a particularly vindictive ex-wife who has not only taken all his money forcing him to live in his car or a trailer or a scuzzy apartment but she's also taken custody of his kids...and probably *gasp* taken custody of his custard too. Our hero must rarely change his clothes and will probably need a shave (but will never grow a beard) throughout the entire film.

Our villain MUST be European- probably British or German and have a nasally voice or a lisp. A facial scar is also a bonus. He will show a complete lack of empathy for his fellow criminals in his gang and will probably kick a small puppy or spit at a photograph of Fozzie Bear in order to establish just how nasty he is. Loves Jazz and Classical Music, hates long walks on the beach and is most likely a Gemini.

Our hero will wish to work alone. In fact he'll insist on it to his boss. He'll also show a slight bitterness to modern liberal viewpoints before being shown his new partner who will be a lesbian/paraplegic/es panic/Jewish/hippy/left-handed.

The Hero's boss will be black (if the 80's) or fat and white (if the 90's) and will be just three outbursts away from a heart-attack. The Boss will usually have his office door knocked in (this is NOT a sexual euphemism, you flippin' perves!) by the hero at least twice who will harass the boss into either getting him off the case/demanding a warrant to search the villains lair/requiring 'more time' than the given deadline/getting the D.A. 'off his ass'

Despite all previous meetings with the villain, our hero will not arrest or, more likely, kill the bad guy until 102 minutes into the film regardless of how many crimes he's personally seen him commit. The villain must have had his gang shoot at the hero, blow something up, had a speedboat chase before grabbing a hostage at the end while laughing cruelly and saying something like 'eet seems that once again you are a fly in my ointment, you feeeelthy flat-foot!' or 'Thith time you will not thuctheed in dethtroying my dreamth, mithter politheman!' before attempting to make his last getaway.

Since all of the above is 100% accurate, why doesn't the hero simply get his partner to do all the required stuff then simply turn up at the 101st minute to make the arrest? He could visit the local Otter Sanctuary or make a paper maché womble or something equally productive.

Pringles!!

Once you pop, you can't stop. Well, that's what it says on the advert but if that's true, why do i always feel upset after I've put a tear in my beach ball after a particularly aggressive bouncing session?

The most fabulous thing about Pringles is that they arrive in a tubular package. If, like me, your diet consists mainly of small terrified fish and the occasional bit of chewy seaweed, you'll probably discard the crispy contents of the packaging almost immediately. This will leave you with a fabulous multi-purpose tubey thing!

'But Smylexx, you delicious and fragrant fishy love machine, whatever shall i do with it?' you may be asking.. well, here are my top suggestions:

1. Pop out the bottom of the tube and peer through it. See? It's an incredible telescope but, unlike normal, boring telescopes, this one doesn't magnify anything and potential causes eye-strain! Amazing!!

2. Put a series of linked tubes together to create an escape tunnel for Prisoner of War Otters who are still trapped in ferocious Nazi Weasel controlled camps in Berlin.

3. Sellotape 6 of them together and place a haddock inside one of the tubes. You now have your very own unique version of Russian Roulette. Take turns to spin the tubes and, if you're very lucky, find the haddock and eat it in one big gulp!

4. put a fluffy cover on the tube and thread some elastic through one end and turn it into a dolphin beak warmer for those frosty mornings on the oceans.

5. Use the tube as a jelly mould. When you have around 8 or 9 tubular jelly shapes, you can fashion them into a jelly Caterpillar...or a jelly tower....or a jelly sausage-link... or a jelly eel or maybe limb transplants for jelly babies with missing arms and shins. Or something.