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Your support makes all the difference.A golden, sozzled party guest
Hangs on for longer, by request.
As drunken sun commences climb,
The season goes to injury time.
The difference is, it's dark by eight
And evenings aren't content to wait
As autumn moves to stack the chairs
And shut the summer for repairs.
Ten million viewers can't be wrong?
A recent survey isn't sure.
The Changing Rooms team comes along
But would you let them in the door?
"Not on your life," the readers say
Of Homes & Gardens magazine,
Not wishing to parade their homes
In all their glory on the screen,
To suffer days of cameramen
And engineers with furry mikes
Who crouch in hallways, trying for takes
While tripping over children's bikes.
Meanwhile the owners, overwrought,
Have far more frantic chores to do,
Removing "objects" and the like
From bedside cabinets and the loo.
Best not to let those cameras in:
Our hovels are a private thing.
Imagination scares us all,
But lack of it's more frightening.
Your Happy Shopper laureate here
Will never win a Booker prize.
The novel's not my forte. Though
This week I had to sympathise
When Booker judges bleated that
They're paid a rather paltry rate,
Two-seventy an hour in fact,
To plough through novels less-than-great.
A brickie, say, can make far more
Then look back on the things he's built
And stand his round on Friday night
Untroubled by attendant guilt.
By scanning leaden yarns for gold,
These wretches earn their caviare.
Quite so, well, "It's a dirty job..."
Etcetera and, indeed, blah blah.
The Britpack artists, Tracey Emin,
Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst,
Exhibit in America.
It's controversial and a first.
We here at home are hardened to
The bullet-wounds, the chopped-up cow,
The lovers' names adorning tents;
They seem almost familiar now.
But in the mighty USA,
The threat of terror rears its head.
The gallery which hosts the show
Received a package, so they said,
Which smelled so bad they daren't go near.
Some local maniac on a mission?
Well, possibly, but I'd suggest
They try it in the exhibition.
Oh send me the Portillo that
You dream on in your Chelsea flat.
At least you can be sure the chap
Would never wear a baseball cap.
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