Most newspapers have one, make fun of one and need one to talk about behind their back.
It’s the wizened old hack, travelling on the final journey in his or her long and illustrious career.
They’ve been there, done that. They are more cynical than Jock McCynical of Cynicalville, USA.
They growl at young cub reporters as they trot on their way to the Golden Wedding couple, and they moan when their 3,000-word epic is scythed to a 200-word short.
Welcome to the world of Ralph D’Beeryget.

Did I ever tell you about the time when I exposed the Beast of Exmoor for what it really was, almost 20 years before the first reported sighting in the early 1980s?

It was in the Fall (If you’d ever worked on a paper in America, subs, you would know that’s autumn) of 1963. I was working on a national in London when I had far more hair and respect in the newsroom. I was on an early shift doing the hourly calls to the emergency services – why the hell I was doing that is another matter, I was an experienced senior journo, it’s normally the peasants who get this bum shift.

I’m not the best of early risers anyway. I remember every morning my dear mother had to wake me with an electrified cattle prod – mind you, it got the old ticker going and, because the electric current was still in my system, when I took a shower I would jerk around like a break dancer. Happy days.

But I digress. On the regional calls, I picked up an intriguing tale from the cops in the provinces about a sighting of a mysterious black panther roaming across the moors of Devon.

I alerted my news editor and suggested that he send me to St Tropez for two weeks so that I could prepare myself for the assignment, but he was having nothing of it.

Following a heated argument, I donned Wellingtons and camouflage gear and took a slow bus to Devon to meet my contact, an eccentric rat catcher-come-female-impersonating-cabaret-singer by the name of Arthur Cobbledick.

I was to meet him at a local pub called the Randy Old Goat. As I entered the establishment, the needle on the juke box scraped across Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits and the locals stared straight at me.

It was then I noticed a man standing at the bar wearing a pink cocktail dress and a beard the size of Plymouth, chuffing away on a pipe. Mr Cobbledick, I presume.

Following his cabaret act at the pub, which incidentally was a triumph, we chatted about going out onto the moors in search of this black cat. It was quite ironic really because at the time I smoked Black Cat cigarettes, but this is by the by.

The next morning, we set off across the moors, with myself feeling a certain amount of trepidation. Two years before, I had had a nasty encounter with a Bengal tiger in India which had bitten off part of my anatomy.

The wind was cruel and the rain lashed my face like a watery cat o’nine tails. After an hour’s walking, Arthur suddenly started to get very excited. He had found some paw prints in the mud about the size of a plate of haddock. The prints were unusual to say the least. One could make out from the main pad mark, the distinctive Nike swoosh logo – from this, Arthur deduced that we were not looking for a puma.

Moments later, another clue. Droppings. Arthur told me that the best way to tell if it was a big black cat was to eat the droppings. Naturally I refused, but Arthur took a taste and confirmed that they were those of a large feline. Curiously enough, he then proceeded to eat the rest. Anyone for a TicTac?

Shortly after this, Arthur was blown up by a Sherman tank, as we had inadvertently strayed into the middle of an Army training exercise.

I desperately needed to file some copy over to the office, so I hijacked the tank and used the radio to send over my 2,000-word think piece.

My hopes of spotting the beast were now waning and I deduced that the only way I would catch a glimpse was to lure it out of the shadows.

I strategically placed parts of Arthur’s blown-up corpse around a few rocks and then hid in a bush.

A day and a night passed by and not even a whisker. Deprived of sleep and booze and down to my last 200 cigarettes, I was about to give up when I saw two men approach. They proceeded to dress up in a two-part black pantomime cat suit. One of them then started making unconvincing growling noises.

They then started to gnaw parts of the strewn corpse, at which point I interjected and called the police. The two scoundrels were charged with cannibalism and impersonating a large feline.

Story in hand, I made my way back to Londinium and the simple comforts of clean water and Christianity.

As I arrived at the office, I was asked by this total cow on reception to sign the visitors’ book. I’m not a visitor! I’m Ralph D’Beeryget! You know, the man who keeps this crappy old rag in business, the one whose stories sell papers, the one who probably pays your bloody wages.

At this point, Security were called and informed me that I had been sacked. Apparently, the hijacking of the tank was considered tantamount to sabotage and I was now considered to be a Russian spy and MI5 were on my case.

At this point, it was a case of gamekeeper-turned-poacher. I bought a black cat suit and became the Beast of Bodmin Moor. In this new guise, it transpired, I got more stories in the papers than I did when I was a journalist.

Eventually I returned to civilisation, served eight years of a 10-year stretch and published my memoirs, Behind the Cat Flap – Ralph D’Beeryget – My Bloody Story. They printed a run of 1,000 copies. I’ve still got 997 left. Anyone want to buy one?

Back to the funny index

Do you have a funny story for us?
Ring the HoldTheFrontPage newsdesk on
01332 291111 x6022, or e-mail us now