My Brother's Famous Bottom

by Jeremy Strong

  ‘Oh no,’ said Dad seriously. ‘Cheese’s bottom would be much too small for you. It wouldn’t fit. I’d stick to the one you’ve already got.’

  ‘Stop it!’ hissed Mum.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ the woman giggled. ‘He’s quite a character, your husband, isn’t he? I can tell.’

  ‘Can you?’ said Mum. ‘Well, please don’t encourage him.’

  The woman giggled again. ‘The thing is, I have a proposal that may interest you. I work for Dumpers, the disposable nappy people.’

  I looked at Mum and Dad. ‘We use them,’ I said.

  ‘We’re looking for a toddler to head up our new TV advert. To put it simply, we need a beautiful bottom to show off our new range of throwaway nappies.’ She leaned forward and peered at Cheese’s backside. ‘I’ve looked at hundreds of bottoms, but this child has the Mona Lisa of posteriors. We would like to use it in our advertising campaign.’

  ‘Really?’ said Dad, perking up considerably. ‘Would he get paid?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the woman. ‘Well paid.’

  ‘Fine. Fine. What do you think, Brenda?’

  ‘I suppose it might be a good idea. I’m sorry, but you never told us your name?’

  ‘Jingle. Jingle Trinkett,’ smiled the lady.

  ‘Jingle Trinkett?’ repeated Dad. ‘And you thought Cheese was an odd name!’

  ‘Cheese is an odd name,’ chorused Mum and Jingle. For a second they looked at each other in surprise.

  Dad put Cheese down as Miss Trinkett handed him a card. ‘Here’s the address for the studio. Perhaps you could come in tomorrow.’ She bent down to Cheese. ‘Bye bye, cutie-bottom.’

  ‘And the same to you,’ smiled Dad.

  Honestly! I can’t take my dad anywhere. You should have seen the looks he got from Jingle and Mum. It was a powerful mix of flame-thrower (Jingle) with ice cubes (Mum).

  I can’t wait for tomorrow. We’re going to be on TV! Well, Cheese is, at any rate. I might not be heading for film stardom but Cheese is, so I guess that I shall be the brother of a famous film star – which is almost as good as actually being one.

  8 Lights, Camera, Action!

  Brilliant day today! We went to the TV studio, in London. It was a huge building with an incredibly swish front. We had to give our names at the reception desk and wait for someone to collect us. There were loads of people coming and going. Dad reckoned he saw several TV stars. He even asked one for her autograph, and she was ever so pleased. She scribbled it down and then told him that actually she was only one of the cleaners! Mum couldn’t stop laughing – not until she spotted Dan Crumble, the newscaster. That got her so excited.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s him,’ she whispered to Dad.

  ‘That’s because it probably isn’t,’ Dad snapped back, scrumpling up his autograph and throwing it in a bin. ‘I bet he’s only the caretaker or something.’

  But Mum went over and asked for an autograph and it really was Dan Crumble! Mum threw her arms round his neck and kissed him! Mwah! ‘I spoke to Dan Crumble!’ she said breathlessly. ‘He kissed my cheek!’

  ‘He’s only a newscaster, Brenda,’ muttered Dad.

  ‘He’s only a newscaster, Brenda,’ copied Mum in a very mopey voice. She smiled. ‘And you’re only my husband, Ron.’ She threw her arms round him and gave him such a noisy smackeroo of a kiss that everyone turned and looked.

  ‘Gerroff!’ shouted Dad, trying to look cross and waving his arms at her, but he got a fit of the giggles and they both fell about… My parents get more embarrassing the older I get. I can’t take them anywhere.

  ‘Kiss!’ shouted Cheese.

  ‘Kissy kiss!’ echoed Tomato, puckering her lips.

  ‘Go on then, Nick,’ said Dad. ‘Give the twins a kiss. There’s a good big brother. Ah! Look, Brenda. Isn’t that a charming sight? Big brother is kissing little brother.’

  And you lot can stop sniggering too. Have you ever kissed a one-year-old? More to the point, have you ever kissed a one-year-old who recently ate a chocolate ice cream and still has slobby choccy mush all over his face? Yuk!

  Luckily I was saved from further tortures by the arrival of a tall, thin young woman, who looked surprisingly similar to a telephone pole. Maybe it was her wiry hair. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You must be here for the Dumpers trial.’

  ‘Trial? I thought we were making an advert,’ said Dad.

  ‘Oh yes, but it’s just the trial ad today, to see if your baby is good enough.’

  ‘Good enough?’ repeated Mum. ‘Of course our babies are good enough.’

  The young woman was flustered and she was turning red. ‘I didn’t mean your babies, I mean – oh! I’ll start again. Today we are making a trial advert. We are trialling other babies too. Then we choose which baby we think will be best.’

  Dad’s head slumped forward. ‘I thought this was going to be it,’ he muttered into his beard. ‘This was going to solve all our problems. But it’s just a trial.’

  ‘You will be paid for your time and travel costs,’ said the young lady brightly.

  ‘Oh woopy-doo!’ muttered Dad. ‘Rich beyond our wildest dreams, I don’t think.’

  Mum patted his knee. ‘Don’t get so down. It’s not over yet. We still have a chance.’

  I grabbed the pushchair and we all followed Miss Telephone Pole. We went through the security barriers and into an enormous lift and up several floors. Then we walked along miles and miles of corridors.

  ‘We are now in the recording area,’ whispered Miss T. P. ‘The studios showing a red light above the door are recording programmes, so please don’t make any loud noises. The big screen outside each studio shows what’s going on inside. As you can see, Studio Six is where the news broadcasts come from. We shall be next door in Studio Seven.’

  ‘Can I have a peep?’ asked Mum. ‘I got Dan Crumble’s autograph earlier.’

  ‘It is utterly forbidden to enter a studio when the red light is on,’ warned Miss T. P., ushering us into Studio Seven.

  Amazing. It was like another world. The lights were huge and brighter than the sun and so hot! There were three cameras on whopping great stands, and people everywhere – cameramen, lighting engineers, producers, directors, dozens of them! You’d never have thought it could take so many people to make one little advert for disposable nappies.

  A big, cheerful man came rolling across the studio floor. ‘David Dumper,’ he announced. ‘Head of Dumper Disposables. These your kids? Cute. Heard a lot about them.’

  ‘Really?’ queried Mum.

  ‘Sure. Jingle was quite taken with them.’

  Dad perked up a bit when he heard this.

  ‘So, let’s get down to work,’ said Mr Dumper. ‘We’re doing a test shoot to see how it all looks on screen. We want a shot of your baby crawling across the floor, plus a second shot of the kid walking and wearing our latest product, the Bumper Dumper. Got a fantastic new jingle: Oompah, oompah, stick it in a Dumper! Isn’t that great? OK everyone, let’s get on with it!’

  9 What Happened Next

  Mr Dumper strode off, clapping his hands and shouting at everyone, while cameras wheeled into position. A make-up lady came over. ‘I’ll just get the little one ready,’ she said.

  ‘He needs make-up?’ asked Dad. ‘They’re only going to film his backside.’

  ‘That will certainly need make-up,’ the lady pointed out. ‘I’ll powder his skin so it isn’t too shiny…’

  ‘Are you suggesting my son has a shiny bottom?’ asked Dad, trying to look miffed, while Mum sniggered into her sleeve.

  ‘No, but…’

  ‘He’s not Rudolf the Red-Bottomed Reindeer, you know.’

  ‘Just ignore him,’ Mum told the make-up lady.

  I went with her to help keep an eye on Cheese – he is such an escape artist. Anyhow, we got him all powdered up, which he thought was great fun, and while that was going on Miss T. P. came back and said Mr Dumper wanted Tomato to be trialled as well, so she came
in for powdering too, and while that was going on Cheese was taken away to be filmed.

  Things were happening so fast we didn’t know where to look and it was all so fascinating, what with the cameras and the lighting and people shouting things like ‘Take!’ and ‘Cut!’ and yelling commands at each other.

  They filmed Cheese over and over again, doing exactly the same thing – well, it looked like the same thing to me. Then Mr Dumper asked for Tomato and they began filming her. She was being a bit of a handful and kept crawling off in the wrong direction. We were so busy watching her that none of us realized that Cheese had gone missing until Mum suddenly cried out, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s James?’ Talk about a mad scramble! We searched everywhere, but couldn’t find him.

  Then Dad suddenly gave a shout. ‘Some idiot left the studio door open. He could be anywhere!’

  We stumbled out into the corridor but there was still no sign of Cheese. My heart was pounding – again. One day my baby brother would give me a real heart attack, and not just something that felt like one.

  ‘There he is!’ cried Mum. ‘Look!’ Mum was gawping at the big screen outside Studio Six.

  Dan Crumble was sitting behind his desk giving out the news. What he couldn’t see was that down in front of his desk a baby with a bare bottom was crawling past and gurgling, ‘Wetbot! Wetbot!’

  ‘Oh no,’ groaned Dad. ‘Here is the news: Cheese has got a wetbot. This will ruin everything.’ Before anyone could stop him Dad went crashing through the studio doors.

  ‘But the red light’s on!’ wailed Miss T. P. ‘You can’t do that!’ And she hurried after him.

  Mum looked at me and sat down on a big, plush sofa. ‘Come and sit here, Nicholas,’ she suggested calmly. ‘I think we’ll just stay put and watch this little disaster of a soap opera unfolding in front of us. Oh look, there’s a clown in the news studio… No, it’s not a clown; it’s your father. How could I be so mistaken?’

  It was true too. There was Dad, striding across the studio floor, while Cheese went scampering beneath Dan Crumble’s desk. Miss T. P. came racing after Dad. He dived under the desk to get Cheese, who somehow managed to scramble up Dan Crumble’s legs and on to his lap. Cheese’s cheerful face suddenly popped up above the desktop, while down below Miss T. P. had grabbed one of Dad’s legs and was trying to pull him out from underneath.

  ‘Hello,’ said Dan, a bit surprised to find a baby on his lap.

  ‘Wetbot!’ cried Cheese.

  ‘And that is today’s news,’ Dan went on evenly. ‘We have a wetbot situation. This is Dan Crumble, Channel Half News. Good day.’

  Miss T. P. finally let go of Dad, grabbed Cheese from Dan Crumble’s lap and carted him off. Dad crawled out sheepishly from beneath the desk, pulled a pained face for the camera, stood up and followed her. A moment later Miss T. P. burst out of Studio Six and thrust Cheese back into Mum’s arms. ‘You’d better leave,’ she said stiffly. ‘You’ve caused quite enough trouble. Mr Dumper’s had to go and lie down with an ice pack. Go on, go. Shooo!’

  I grabbed Tomato and we headed for home. Nobody said a word all the way. (Apart from Cheese and Tomato who gurgled and laughed for the whole journey.)

  10 Mrs Wobbly Green Jelly to the Rescue

  Dad’s down in the dumps again. He says we can’t ever get anything right. ‘The whole world is against us,’ he told us at breakfast.

  ‘It’s just a bit of bad luck, that’s all,’ said Mum.

  Dad raised a finger on his hand. ‘One: we’ve been dumped by Mr Dumper. Two: we owe the bank even more money than before. Three: I’ve got a big pimple coming up on my nose.’

  ‘There’s something else, Dad,’ I began. ‘Rubbish has stopped giving milk.’

  This was true. I had tried to milk the goat that morning but she kept putting both her back feet in the milking bucket and looking at me with an expression that seemed to say, No milk today. Milk’s off. She’s probably stopped because she doesn’t want any more of her milk blown up. She was still eating everything in sight. In fact she’d eaten one of Tomato’s nappies. (It was a clean one.) But she wasn’t producing any milk and, to tell you the truth, I was worried. I’d grown very fond of Rubbish.

  Dad buried his head in his hands. ‘Oh great,’ he muttered. ‘Now we’re all going to die from a yoghurt famine.’

  ‘Don’t be so gloomy,’ said Mum. ‘Let’s take a look at her.’ We went outside and stood in a little circle round Rubbish. ‘See if you can spot what’s wrong,’ said Mum.

  ‘Have you tried shaking her?’ suggested Lancelot. ‘Sometimes one of the bikes gets a blocked carburettor. If you blow down it and give it a shake it sometimes clears.’

  ‘I don’t think you can blow down goats,’ I said.

  ‘How about if I put her under one arm and give her a good squeeze?’ he offered.

  Granny punched him playfully. ‘You daft clodpole. She’s not a pair of bagpipes!’

  A voice drifted across from next door. ‘What’s up with her, then?’ It was Mrs Wobbly Green Jelly. (I gave her that name when I was about six. It’s because she nearly always wears green and she’s rather large – and wobbly, of course. I quite like her really. She’s not at all like her husband.)

  ‘She’s stopped giving milk,’ I told her.

  Mrs Tugg leaned on the fence and studied Rubbish carefully. ‘She doesn’t look happy, does she? Maybe she’s stressed.’

  ‘Stressed?’ repeated Dad. ‘Are you crazy? All she has to do is eat all day and sleep all night. How stressful can that be? Huh! I’d love to have a goat’s life.’

  Mum smiled. ‘I think that would be a very good idea. We’ll leave you out in the back garden all night and day and every so often we’ll throw you a few scraps.’

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ha ha,’ he muttered and he went stamping back indoors.

  ‘Animals do get stressed,’ said Mrs Tugg, ‘very much like us. People come to me with stress. I give them an aromatherapy and massage session and they go away all relaxed and happy.’

  ‘Don’t think that would work on goats,’ I said, but what I really really wanted to say was, Why don’t you do it to Mr Tugg? He’s the most stressed person in the universe! But of course I didn’t say it… Granny did.

  ‘You should try it on your husband,’ Granny declared.

  Mrs Tugg burst out laughing. She did! She wobbled from top to bottom. ‘Wouldn’t touch him,’ she chuckled. ‘Aromatherapy doesn’t work on volcanoes. It might work on a goat though. No harm in trying, is there? Shall I?’

  I swallowed and nodded, wondering what I’d let myself in for – or rather what I’d let Rubbish in for. Ten minutes later I found out, because Mrs Tugg took us into her aromatherapy room. It smelled wonderful – a whole mix of different scents like pine forests and flowers and sea breezes. It was cosy and dark too, apart from all the candles. I counted at least thirty twinkling away.

  Rubbish stood in the dark, looking rather lost and confused. No wonder – I don’t suppose she’d ever had aromatherapy before. I stroked her flank and murmured into her ear. ‘It’s all right, Rubbish. You’re going to have a massage.’

  ‘Now then,’ said Mrs Tugg softly. ‘You come here, my beauty.’

  Granny stepped forward. ‘Not you,’ laughed Mrs Tugg. ‘I’ll do you later if you like. Let’s start with the goat.’

  I got Rubbish to lie on her side and Mrs Tugg began to massage her with lavender oil. After about ten minutes she rolled Rubbish on to her back and started to massage her stomach.

  Mr Tugg appeared in the doorway. ‘What’s going on!’

  ‘Ssssh!’ we chorused. ‘I don’t believe it – you’re massaging a goat! You’re all bonkers!’ I suppose it did look odd.

  Rubbish was on her back with all four legs sticking up in the air and a blissful look in her sleepy eyes, while Mrs Tugg stroked her belly. She spent fifteen minutes working away. Then she said we should leave Rubbish to recover for an hour and after that we could try milking her. ‘I’ve no i
dea if it will work, but at least we tried,’ she said, fixing her gaze on Dad.

  Dad looked straight back at her. ‘Bonkers!’ he mouthed silently.

  But the thing was, an hour later I got Rubbish back on her feet, took her to our garden and put the milk bucket beneath her. I worked away with my fingers and soon her milk was flowing better than ever before.

  ‘Hey! Come and look!’

  Even Mrs Tugg was astonished. ‘I never expected it to work,’ she confided. ‘I just thought it might help everyone feel a bit better.’

  Dad went across to Mrs Tugg and gazed happily into her eyes. ‘Mrs Tugg, you are a magician. If only you could work your magic on that old goat you live with…’

  ‘Who’s an old goat?’ roared Mr Tugg, his face appearing over the fence.

  ‘You are!’ Dad roared back.

  ‘I’ll get you,’ yelled Mr Tugg, trying to clamber over the fence.

  Heaven knows what would have happened if Mum hadn’t come rushing out of the house shouting at the top of her voice. ‘Come inside quickly! You’ve got to see this. Hurry!’

  11 Cheese Does the Business

  You’ll never guess in a hundred years – we’ve been on telly! Well, not exactly us. Just Cheese and Dad. There they were, on the news, watched by millions. They were showing the bit where the news was interrupted by Cheese crawling across the floor. Apparently it wasn’t the first time they had shown it that day either. There had been so many requests from viewers wanting to see it again they’d had to show it four more times. Cheese and Dad were stars!

  Not only that, but Mr Dumper was on the phone almost immediately afterwards. ‘That news item has been such a huge hit we’re going to use the footage for the advert,’ he told Dad. ‘You and your baby are going to make a lot of money.’