This week (15th April) marks the twentieth anniversary of the premature death of Kenneth Williams, one of the funniest voices of British radio comedy. Those of us on the Network who are of a certain age should like to offer this tribute. On second thoughts, we’ll offer it anyway, whether you like it or not.

Horne: And now – Trends in Music. Folk music continues to make a comeback, so with us once again is that doyen of folksingers, that homespun folksy twit, Rambling Syd Rumpo. Tell me, Rambling Syd, why do you call yourself ‘Rambling’?

Rumpo: Because I ramble. I nark my fossets hither and yon, the sky my coverlet, the ground my bed, an old hedgehog as my pillow-oh, and naught for company but my guitar and this bird called Charmian what I picked up in a coffee bar in Golders Green-oh, well snargle me futtocks and a wurple-diddle-eye-do, crumpstrangle and a dingle-oh on the moolies-oh, and Johnny won’t come ’ome no more-oh.

Horne: I’m sorry to hear it. So, what are you going to sing for us today?

Rumpo: I be singing a plaintive lament for the Plurdlin’ of the Grummet-Nadger’s Scrode. The lament be plaintive on account of the fact that the Grummet Nadger, havin’ fettled ’is scrode, can no longer go a-plurdlin-oh.

Horne: Sounds fascinating. What’s the origin of this … er … plaintive lament?

Rumpo: The orgins of this lament ‘ave been lost in the grummets of time, abandoned to the winds o’ change-oh, buried beneath the gruntfondles of uncaring eternity-oh. I made it up special.

Horne: Any particular occasion?

Rumpo_: Well, Mr Horne, as a matter of fact there is. You see, twenty years ago this Tuesday, being as it will be the fifteenth of April-oh, the cordwangler of what I’m lamentin’ finally put down his Splod in an Alien PlaceWilliams, to go a-ramblin’ and a-rovin’ no more-oh, well a-frangle and a-wurdle me thunder-jugs-oh, fundle all me trusspots-oh, down in dingly dell, and similar expressions of rustic whimsy in a like fashion-oh. Oh.

Horne: Well, let’s hear it then. The sooner you start, the sooner you can stop.

Rumpo: [tunes guitar, clears throat] Well, it was on a Sunday mornin’ clear/ The moolies came to me / I scrunted up me microarray/ and dingled me Gilsons three/ I …

Julian_: Hello, I’m Julian, and this is my friend SandySandy.

Horne: an unexpected pleasure, I’m sure. What are you doing here? This is the wrong part of the show.

Sandy: ooh, he’s bold, in’t ‘e, Jules? Bold. You’d think ‘e wasn’t pleased to see us!

Horne. Of course I’m pleased to see you. It’s just that you’re interrupting Rambling Syd.

[Rambling Syd Rumpo continues to ramble in the background]

Julian: Sounds like we arrived just in time, eh, Sand? Dreadful racket.

Sandy: Oooh, yes, dreadful.

Julian: And did you ’ear that, Sand? ’E scrunted up ’is microarray, did you ’ear that?

Horne: Why? What’s wrong with that?

Sandy: Ooh, ‘ark at _’im_, Jules! Nobody scrunts up their microarrays these days.

Julian: That’s so last week.

Horne: How did you two get so scientific all of a sudden?

Julian: Sorry, Mr Horne. We quite forgot. We – that’s me and Sand ‘ere – we’re now in the editorial consultancy game. Let me introduce – Bona Science. We’ll take your half-baked old rubbish and drag it up lovely. Won’t we, Sand?

Sandy: That’s right, Mr Horne – just give us your huddled masses, your data sets from your teeming shore, and we’ll rewrite it so it gets into Nature.

Horne: Really? You can do that?

Julian: Of course. Money for old rope, ain’t it, Sand?

Sandy: Those Nature editors will buy anything. They’re desperate.

Julian: Great ’airy fool.

Horne: Well, I like that, I’m sure.

Julian: No, not you Mr Horne…

Sandy: Perish the very thought.

Julian: That Henry Gee. He’ll accept anything.

Sandy: So there we were, just trogging along…

Julian: Extras, we were, in this drama documentary, about J. Craig Venter. An Ome Of My Own, it was called. Very moving.

Sandy: And Mr Venter. So masculine.

Julian: I played a technician …

Sandy: … and I was a big-pharma rep…

Julian: … and our eyes met over a crowded lab…

Sandy: Jules took ’is part lovely.

Julian: So we got this idea. Anyone can troll out this old rubbish.

Horne: Well, as a matter of fact, you might be able to help me.

Julian: What ’ave you got?

Horne: [hands over manuscript]

Julian: [cackling] You can’t call it that!

Horne: So, what’s wrong with A Blatant Self-Advertisement For Soliciting Yet Another Grant From NIH and The Release of Calcium from Intracellular Stores?

Sandy: Ooh, no. There’s no … there’s no … what would you say, Jules?

Julian: Mystique.

Sandy: That’s right, Mr Horne. No mystique. You ’ave to make it so no-one understands it…

Julian: But no-one’ll ever admit that!

Sandy: … so your Nature paper is as good as published.

Horne: What should I call it, then?

Julian: How about …

Gruntfuttock: … On the positively negative interaction between one abbreviation and another abbreviation, conditional on the negatively double-negative interaction between a third abbreviation and one or other of the first two abbreviations.

Julian and Sandy: Fantabulosa!!!

Horne: Ah, it’s our old friend, Dictator J. Peasemould Gruntfuttock, King-Emperor of All Peasemouldia, who has chosen to grace us with his appearance.

Gruntfuttock: I am no longer Dictator Gruntfuttock. I am Principal Investigator Professor J. Craig Peasemould Gruntfuttock, F. R. S….

Horne: ‘F. R. S.?’

Gruntfuttock: ‘Futtock of the Royal Society’.

Horne: As you were saying, Professor…?

Gruntfuttock: Yes, Professor J. Craig Peasemould Gruntfuttock, Director of the Peasemouldia Research Institute.

Horne: Impressive facilities you have here. How far do they stretch?

Gruntfuttock: The campus goes from Railway Sidings, Hoxton, to the pub halfway up Buttermole Street.

Horne: So what does the Peasemouldia Research Institute do?

Gruntfuttock: we’re trying to find a way of fusing futtocks with grunts. First we take the ovum of a grunt and enucleate it. Then we suck out the nucleus of a futtock stem cell, put it into the grunt cytoplasm, and – bingo!

Horne: Has anything developed yet?

Gruntfuttock: No, but it’s a great way to get grants. And Nature papers, you know.

Horne: How did you get the idea?

Gruntfuttock: There I was, staggering home from the Empress of India, thinking about the release of calcium from intracellular stores, and I was just outside the ‘orsemeat shop in the Balls Pond Road when I heard the voices, you know. Yes, the voices. ’Gruntfuttock, my child’, they said. ‘Gruntfuttock, my child, gird up your loins’, they said: ‘gird up your loins, and unlock the secrets of nature! And get us a box o’ Kimwipes© on the way home’.

Horne: Not much of a grant proposal, is it?

Gruntfuttock: But thanks to my vision and energy, it seems to have worked. That and my small army of graduate students, and my redoubtable postdoc, Buttercup. Say hello to Mr Horne, Buttercup.

Buttercup: HALLO PROFESSOR CHEEKY FACE!

Gruntfuttock: Ah, must be the long hours on low pay and no career prospects. Go on, Buttercup, you’ve another ninety-six wells to fill before lunchtime.

Horne: This science game sounds like a bit of a lark. A game anyone can play. So there I was, in the lab, after hours, putting my feet up on my new Zeiss 9600 Douglas-Smith, when the phone rang. Filling three Gilsons with my right hand, plating out a culture of Batrachochrytium dendrobatidis…

Dougls Smith: Bless you.

Horne: … thank you, Smith. Now where was I. … a culture of whateverit-was with my left, and pulling up the fume hood with my teeth, I cradled the receiver up my left nostril.

Haverstrap [on phone]: Haverstrap here, University Admin. I’ve got brown horrocks on my extension.

Horne: I think you can get a cream for that.

Haverstrap [on phone]: No, Horne, I meant Professor Brown-Horrocks, Vice-Chancellor.

Brown-Horrocks [on phone]: Ah, Horne.

Horne: Ah, Brown-Horrocks.

Brown-Horrocks [on phone]: Get over here right away, Horne, we have an emergency. There’s a Douglas-Smith leaving your building in three minutes. Be on it.

Horne: I lost no time. Bolting on my goggles, loosening the bolts in my neck, I climbed aboard my Douglas Smith bench centrifuge and pulled up outside the Vice-Chancellor’s office with a screech. Smith, you know know what to do.

Smith [resignedly]: Oh, very well. ‘Whirr whirr whirr clunk’.

Brown-Horrocks: Ah, Horne.

Horne: Ah, Brown-Horrocks.

Brown-Horrocks: Fancy a spot of lunch?

Horne: Don’t mind if I do.

Brown-Horrocks: Excellent. There’s a spot of soup on my tie.

Horne: On second thoughts … what seems to be the trouble?

Brown-Horrocks: well, it’s like this. Someone has been breaking into all the lab’s online publications and inserting random abbreviations.

Horne: How dastardly.

Brown-Horrocks: Exactly. The papers affected have become so difficult to understand that they’re attracting citations at an alarming rate. It’s starting to look suspicious. Horne, go and find out who’s doing this – and stop them.

Horne (aside). He looked at me quizzically. I looked at his quizzically. Then he straightened his tie, put his nose to the grindstone, his shoulder to the wheel, and fell out of the window. Alone again, I smelled a rat. In fact, I smelled several rats, quite a lot of mice, a tank of Xenopus, a bag of fruit well past its sell-by date, and a coypu. If only Brown-Horrocks didn’t have his office across the hall from the animal facility. Time flies like an arrow – but fruit flies like a banana: I knew what I had to do. Only one person was capable of scientific mischief on such a large scale. I rushed down the stairs and donned my Douglas-Smith…

Douglas Smith. Oh, if you must. ‘Whirr whirr whirr clunk’.

Horne: Thank you, Smith.

Douglas Smith: A pleasure, Sir.

Horne: We were at a crumbling warehouse round the back of King’s Cross Station. Disguising myself as a manuscript in an envelope marked ‘Proofs’, I sidled through the door. There, at the desk, was the lovely Ramona, Mata-Hari of Microarrays. She saw through my disguise in an instant. She ripped the envelope from my rippling body (I used to be an ice-cream cone). Her mouth was a scarlet wound, exactly where I expected it – underneath her nose. Our lips met…

Douglas Smith: Three days later…

Horne: Three days?

Douglas Smith: The script is hardly my fault, Sir.

Horne. Oh, very well. That was Douglas Smith, who is currently appearing at the YMCA, Tel-Aviv. Where was I? I freed myself from Ramona’s passionate embrace, and, dashing up the stairs, burst into the arch-villain’s office. That was painful. Next time I shall use the door.

Chou-En Ginsberg: Ah, Mr Horne.

Horne: Ah, Chou.

Chou-En Ginsberg: Bless you.

Horne: You won’t get around me that easily, Ginsberg.

Chou-En Ginsberg: But Mr Horne, a gentleman like you would not dispense with the traditional courtesies? I shall summon Lotus-Blossom, most beautiful of all my geishas, to entertain us. Lotus Blossom, where are you, light of my life, flower of my soul?

Lotus Blossom [gruffly] I hendeavour to do yore biddin’, cock.

Chou-En Ginsberg: Lotus Blossom, sing us that heartfelt lament of young princess in love with Sun God who impregnates her with clone army of mutant zombies clad in pastel shades.

Horne: How revolting.

Lotus Blossom: It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

Chou-En Ginsberg: Ah, they don’t write them like that any more.

Horne. Just as well. What’s the meaning of your little game? Adding abbreviations to online papers?

Chou-En Ginsberg: Ah, Mr Horne! No journal will accept my papers, not even PLoS One. So I must get my revenge. All papers will henceforth be about SH2 Src homology domains. The glory will be mine! MINE! Publications! Citations!

Horne: You won’t get away with it. Take that!

Chou-En Ginsberg: Aaaah!

Horne: … and that!

Chou-En Ginsberg: Aaaah!

Horne: … and that!

Chou-En Ginsberg: No thanks, I’ve already got two of those.

Horne: But Ginsberg is always villain enough to know when he’s beaten. He drew himself up to his full height (2’6") and launched himself through the window into the canal, where he was picked up by a waiting junk. As he fell, he screamed -

Ginsberg_: You may have beaten me this time, but you haven’t heard the last of me, Dr Chou-En Ginsberg, MA, Failed – *_GOODBYE!!!*