Who Wants to be a Gaylord?

I have been told there is a recession going on. Obviously, a man who has spent a lifetime in showbusiness like me is not affected by the collapse of the odd bank – but I know that most of you have already wasted the last of your saved up dole money on Gregg's pasties and scratch cards. Well don't come crying to me about it – we're all losing money. Even I accidentally donated to charity the other day (don’t worry: to make amends I punched an old man selling poppies hard in the kidneys). Loathsomely poor as you obviously are, it’s important for celebrities like me to put a bit back: I’ve sent a few signed boxed sets of Last House on the Left to the people of Haiti, for instance. I mean, even if they just put them straight on ebay they’d make enough money to pay for a few rounds of golf at a decent course. So, for the sake of my unemployed readers, I thought I’d tell you all about the lavish extravagances of my Hollywood days.

Back then, I had such vast reserves of wealth that I never needed to use most of my muscles. Waking in a king-size bed stuffed with the soft down sheared from new-born babies’ heads, I would simply bellow out commands until one of my team of servants brought me what I sought – usually a gold bucket filled with perfume, or a freshly-slaughtered polar bear. I frequently had meetings with top film executives back then, so I would remain in bed while it was winched onto the back of an open-top truck and driven through the streets of Beverly Hills to my destination. The bed, with me still in it, would then be carried up to the 80th floor of the Universal Pictures offices so I could conduct my meeting.

Later, having been lifted from bed and dressed in a brand new, almost obscenely transparent, sheet of silk, I would be wheeled around in a commode chair to the best restaurants in LA; this way, I never had to unnecessarily exert myself by getting up and walking to the toilet. I simply urinated and defecated to my heart’s content, knowing full well that someone else would clear it all up later. Looking back, I admit I may have been a little unreasonably demanding in some of these restaurants: there was that time I insisted the chef serve me his own terminally-ill wife's lunch wrapped in a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper. But when you are so rich that you have severe muscle wastage in your lower body, you do tend to lose a sense of perspective.

So while you are queuing for your dole money this week, just think of the times I used to clean up after my pet dog using wads of money and laughingly flush jewels down the toilet, and remember that someone somewhere is obscenely rich. It will really lift your spirits.