Hovis Presley

Yesterday I spent a good four hours sitting in traffic. Fucking south circular. The journey to my grandma's house is only 20 miles across London but if I manage it in two hours I feel like Lewis Hamilton. I might as well walk.
Anyway I soon tired of all the music stations (note to London radio stations. Can you please stop playing Timbaland’s stupid track Apologise every ten seconds. Enough already) and turned to the more cerebral Radio 4.
I got there just in time to catch the tail end of a wonderful little documentary about a northern British comedian I had never heard of. Annoyingly I only caught his first name – Hovis. However, I am a journalist, so, determined not to be beaten by the 8000 pages of Google containing mentions of the bread brand, I tracked him down.
And so, dear readers, I present to you, the late, great Hovis Presley. And courtesy of him the most lovely poem I’ve read in a long time:

I rely on you

I rely on you
like a Skoda needs suspension
like the aged need a pension
like a trampoline needs tension
like a bungee jump needs apprehension
I rely on you
like a camera needs a shutter
like a gambler needs a flutter
like a golfer needs a putter
like a buttered scone involves some butter
I rely on you
like an acrobat needs ice cool nerve
like a hairpin needs a drastic curve
like an HGV needs endless derv
like an outside left needs a body swerve
I rely on you
like a handyman needs pliers
like an auctioneer needs buyers
like a laundromat needs driers
like The Good Life needed Richard Briers
I rely on you
like a water vole needs water
like a brick outhouse needs mortar
like a lemming to the slaughter
Ryan's just Ryan without his daughter
I rely on you

© H Presley 1994

Of course after about five minutes of this charmingly obscure little cultural interlude the show ended and Gardeners’ Question Time started. I’m relieved to report that I’m not THAT old. Yet.