Dear reader, as you may well understand the staff of pcbycp find themselves in a Dickens of a situation. Clarrie is almost dead, he’d lost the lot, a sacrifice made to get us home. No sooner than we got home we were imprisoned, set free by an anonymous donor. Then re-imprisoned, sent to Manaus, and then dumped in Port Moresby. But Clarrie, phlegmatic to the last cheered us up a bit when he reminded, us, ‘jeez, we could’ve got off the train at Castlemaine and just been killed in Australia’. We thought about it, he had a point. 

As fate would have it, we were in New Guinea at a particularly sticky point in trade negotiations between the Chinese and the PNG Government. Australia had come the raw prawn for not just giving the PNG government shitloads of cash, (a standard in fiscal responsibility) and in frustration  they’d gone to the Chinese who were only too willing to help them out. But the problem was, after the Maserati’s and the Lamborghini’s  had been sold off to relatives and mates of the PNG Ministers, they knew they had an image problem. And image is everything in PNG. The public were getting cranky, and the Raskols had run outta expensive stuff to sell, and couldn’t find a buyer for Clarries iron lung. And when the Raskols get shirty, the government is in trouble. 

This is where we come into it They wanted to sign the deal and the Chinese wanted them to sign the deal, but they needed a strong man. A man who would be respected. And if you’re thinking tribal, a man with strong magic and special powers. Though Ces had gone ‘Strong Man’, he wasn’t big enough. What they wanted was almost a God. ‘For a tin pot country they’ve got a lotta front’, Clarrie said. By now he was grey, only the tip of the ciggy to illuminate him. 

‘I dunno’, (I said glumly), we turned to our surgeon, ‘we’ve run out of aces Ka-ching, (that was his name) even if we had aces of spades the packs been dealt and we’re rooted’. 

‘Aces’! Ka-ching ejaculated..

“Aces’?  We replied.. Flummoxed 

“Hold your horses mate, this aint Sky or Crown”,  Cec quipped, but Ka-ching could not be settled, 

“You have King’!. And he pointed to “Us”.. 

“What the, we’re a fucking parliamentary democracy, and the supreme being who governs us is her Majesty’! We paused for extra gravitas, “Queen Elizabeth the Second, God Bless HER’!, At the mention of her name the rooom, a concrete cell, suddenly felt warmer, and more homely. 

“No No No”, Ka-ching remonstrated:  “You have King who RULE”! And making a sweeping gesture he lauded, “ all over you”.. 

‘Fuck me, what’s he on?’. Ces clearly had quite enough. 

“I dunno”, (I replied) , and then Ka-ching made it self evident. “You get KING we Pay”. And sooner than you could say ‘Royal Flush’ out he flashes a photo of some crabby old bat with a bouffant of red hair. 

‘I don’t think much of your taste in sheilas’,  quipped Clarrie and paused to throw it in the bin, Then just as suddenly, he paused and studied the crumpled piece of paper, 

There was no doubt. 

It was Fergie. 

In a flash we had the strategy tied up. 

“Get a call to Fergie” Ces cried,  and for the price of a foot massage, the Chinese were onto it. They had unlimited funds, “Get prince Andrew to stand in as GG, and the deal is done”. 

WE had the Palace on the line, they were playing the Rolf Harris classic ‘Two little Boys’, and after a short delay we had Andy on the line. 

All he wanted to know was when he could leave the UK, and did PNG have an extradition treaty with the West Indies  or the US? Quick as a flash our kind Chinese surgon said “Nup”, and the deal was done. 

We’d pulled it off. A diplomatic tour de force. Found a new head of state for PNG with Strong Man credentials. A man  who could work with the Chinese, and smooth the waters with Australia. And the bonus was,  on the way over, the Prince was dropping in on a re-education facility in Uighurstan, to pick up a spare kidney and liver, half a spleen, and heart valve for Clarrie, . 

We couldnt believe out luck, and hi-fived till it hurt. 

WE asked Ka-ching; “might you tell us who the anonymous donor was’?. He suddenly turned pale and pointed to a picture of Winnie the Pooh. Whilst he put a finger across his throat. 

We knew then, we were destined for big things, and perhaps as the Cantonese street seller is fond of saying, “we were out off the rice paper and into the wok”. Whichever way you look at it we were on the wrong side of the Yangtze river, in a barbed wire canoe, without a rice paddle. Or as Clarrie said “A shitsu short of the Pekinese”. 

Will our heroes escape from PNG with their testimonials intact?

Will they be summoned by a higher authority?

Wil they be summoned to Beijing?

Or will they procure for a man who would, could have, might have been , a KING?

Stay tuned to our next enthralling episode, as PCBYCP unravels the mystery of international strategy, high level diplomacy and the secrets of whatever it is that Prince Andrew does for a living.