I didn't get where I am today ...

THIS COUNTRY has produced many literary geniuses: Jordan, Posh Spice, Will Self, Bridget Jones, Wayne Rooney, Jeffrey Archer, the man who writes the Vauxhall Zafira ads (“overtired”). Oh, and me.

But one author who has never really received the acclaim he deserves is a certain Mr David Nobbs, the brains behind Sunshine Desserts, the sometime workplace of one Reginald Iolanthe Perrin – possibly the finest comic creation of the 20th Century.

At Sunshine Desserts, in the office of managing director CJ, was a “flatulent” chair. You know the kind – squeaky, over-stuffed, leather-look plastic that makes an embarrassing noise every time you sit down or get up. Various acolytes (“Great”, “Super”) would squirm in this chair as CJ boomed at them the fact that he didn’t get where he was today by squirming in a flatulent chair. You get the picture.

But, as ever, life imitates art. This week in Bristol, an employment tribunal was told by Ms Susan Storer, 48, a deputy head, that it was a "regular joke" that her chair made embarrassing sounds, and that she frequently had to apologise to parents, colleagues and pupils.

She claimed that two other deputy head teachers, both male, were given new “executive-style” chairs in their offices while she was overlooked. The chair, of course, was part of a “catalogue of sexist behaviour that undermined her position”. She resigned from her £48,000-a-year post in September last year and is claiming constructive dismissal and sex discrimination. She wants … wait for it … a cool £1million for the loss of 17 years of earnings and pension.

I wonder what Reggie would have made of that?

IT’S BEEN a bumper week for scrotes, those people who aren’t politicians or public sector workers but who still manage to live off the labours of the rest of. Perhaps it’s the Festival of St Lidl, patron saint of the underclass, or something.

First up - and this is a cracker – is Mick Philpott (49) of Derby, a father of 14 who is demanding a larger house for him to share with his wife, girlfriend and eight of their children. Yep. Wife and girlfriend. Oh, and there’s another child on the way.

The fact that he’s only been on the waiting list for a month and already occupies the biggest available council property in Derby does not impress him. “They always come up with the same excuses,” Mr Philpott says of Derby City Council. “I love my country, but at the moment I feel ashamed of it. I think the country is going down the pan.”

Luckily, this country can still afford to pay the family £508 a week in benefits, so things can’t be that bad.

Enter stage left, 40-year-old Ellen Morris. She has 13 kids, claims £27,000 a year in benefits, smokes 40 cigarettes a day, and drives a Land Rover Discovery when not banned for imbibing too many of her favourite vodka and cokes.

Ms Morris was picked up by the scrote radar this week when she appeared in court for driving while disqualified, pleaded poverty to avoid a fine and also managed to get £1,800 of existing fines written off by agreeing to stay inside the court building for two hours in a token punishment.

“I’d like another couple of kids,” she said afterwards. “It’s not easy making the money stretch. They all want the latest gear and Nike trainers and I like Lacoste jumpers.”

So there we have it: The incontrovertible link between shelling out vast numbers of feral children and the amount of money they earn you, and straight from the horse’s mouth as well.

IT’S TIME to welcome back a couple of old friends. Remember Amy Crowhurst, who had her first child at the tender age of 12? Well she’s at it again, having popped out baby Destiny Renee a fortnight ago.

Amy lives with her 46-year-old mother, whose ninth and latest baby is the product of a liaison with a married Gambian man who has since flown the madhouse and gone back to his wife and kids. She’s been told that she’ll get her own council house – and her own benefits – when she turns 18. Job done, then.

Meanwhile, Miss Tracy Fulthorpe of Leeds, who featured in this coloumn back in 2004, has increased her output and accumulated 11 children. Sadly her latest child, a girl, died in a cot death incident last year. But no matter. Tracy is pregnant again and expecting a replacement in a couple of months.

According to my informant, she still smokes like a chimney and spends her spare time (apart from creating children) drinking Special Brew. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

SO WHO would win in a fight between The Wombles and The Clangers? I ask because in a poll to find the nation’s favourite children’s TV programmes, these two heavyweight contenders tied in sixth place. It seems only right and proper that they should slug it out to a proper conclusion.

I think the Wombles would have an early edge (you don’t survive on Wimbledon Common without knowing how to handle yourself), but if the Clangers called in the Soup Dragon, it would all be over by lunchtime.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone who doesn't think that Cherie Blah murdered Humphrey, the Downing Street cat, of anyone who wasn't mesmerised by those otters taking on a crocodile in Planet Earth, or of anyone who can explain to me how my man Whittaker has managed to add a whole family of rare, black-eared marmoset monkeys to his growing menagerie. The baby penguin has quite taken to them.