Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Flan

People often say: 'We've read your blog. And this 'website'. We know your shtick. We're familiar with your so-called 'jokes'. We've seen you making unpleasant stuff up about people - people who aren't able to defend themselves due to their being dead or you blog not being famous enough to garner any notoriety newsworthy enough for them to hear about your tawdry lies. We know all about that. But,' they say, 'what about you? What about the real Richard Vivmeister, or whatever the hell your name is?'

Well, folks, in response I say this: 'Pipe that stupid racket down, because I now present to you some snapshots of my life. These pictures come to you, treasured reader, exclusively from the central photographic section of my forthcoming autobiography - "I Thought I Told You To Wait In The Car Of My Life" - in the hope that it might shed some light onto the fascinating, unyielding tangle of enigma that is... ME.'

My grandfather, Ebeneezer Vivmeister, made his fortune during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as many others did, in the world of street urchins. At its peak, his factory employed three thousand urchins. He hit on the novel idea that the bodies of those urchins in his keep who died - either of typhoid, overexhaustion or one of the dozens of severe thrashings they received daily - could be used as a source of nourishment for those urchins who had the reserves of strength and stoicism to remain alive. Thus his factory system - a staff of urchins whose sole occupation was using giant pieces of machinery to churn up their recently deceased brothers and sisters into a servicably nutritious paté on which they would later feed - was a unique, self-fuelling empire. That was until 1904, when an epidemic of 'mad urchin disease' broke out. Within a year urchins were extinct.

I was small as a boy. So small, in fact, that I was regularly goaded into having my photograph taken whilst holding everyday items for scale comparison. Here I am holding a button and a daisy.

The Vivmeister family. That's me on the right. Alongside me are my three brothers: (l-r) Gimpflake, Dotor Spunkfluffer and Pooing Goose. Also, in the centre, is my sister Diane. Or, as was known before she had her name legally changed, Tits Tits Tits Tits Tits Tits Tits. Some say our unusual names were down to the off-kilter sense of humour of our father, also in this picture. But look at his face! He was nothing more than a twisted, sadistic midget whose idea of entertainment was to staple dogs and cats together and fling them over the walls of a nearby nunnery - just to hear their screams!

Ah, here's Sylvie, my first wife. We really did love one another, but the fact that she was conjoined at the arm to a small dog was too much for us to get used to. Seriously, all that yapping and scratching; the endless weeing; and have you ever tried to make love to a beautiful woman whilst a confused, writhing dog pants his meaty Winalot breath into your face and constantly soils himself? Probably not. Well I have - it's no picnic, let me tell you.

Here's me with my second wife, Anita. This marriage was even more short-lived than its predecessor. - in fact we broke up immediately after this photograph was taken. As it perhaps indicates, her obsession with all things Victoriana was simply too much for me to handle. After three marital months of avoiding eye-contact, singing evangelical anti-masturbation anthems every sundown and pretending that the concept of God was entirely feasible, the act of sitting completely still for six hours in a starched wool suit waiting for the Daguerreotype camera to burn this image into its development plate was the final proverbial straw. Reader, I booted her down the stairs! Proverbially speaking, of course.

This is Whazzo, my estranged elder brother. Despite excelling at calculus, Latin and brain-surgery at school, his bizarre facial lesions meant a glamorous career in the circus awaited. Ironically, he's now dead.

This is one of the few surviving publicity shots from 'The Popefuherphile', a short-lived sitcom which dared to imagine a world in which the endemic culture of pederastic sexual-abuse in the Roman Catholic Church is coquettishly sent up when none other than Adolf Hitler, played by myself, is accidentally appointed Pope. Of all the episodes we shot, my own personal favourite was 'A Visit From Adolf's Identical Twin Brother'. In this episode the Popefuhrerphile's brother comes to visit. But wait - there's more! The brother is Hitler's identical twin, and a hilariously hopeless human-wreckage of a drunk to boot! The twin brother was also played by me, a feat which required both the full range of my dramatic acumen and some fiendishly clever camera trickery when it came to the shower-room spit-roasting scenes. Inexplicably, the show was never given a second series.

During my middle to later years I suffered numerous intense religious visions, mostly of Christ. Despite being initially thrilled to get to meet one of the most iconoclastic celebrities in the world, my excitement swiftly dissipated when I discovered that, as you can probably see from this picture, Jesus turned out to be a bit boring a bit creepy. Rather than telling my what God's like or what kind of drinks they serve heaven or even if Hitler really did have one knacker, he just banged on and on: 'don't do this'; 'do do this'; 'people are sort of like lilies in a way, aren't they?'; 'the world will be engulfed by Satan's tormenting hellscapes at some date or other'. What a gas-sack! And his breath - yeesh! I eventually convinced him to leave me alone.

Here I am meeting the Queen. She was lovely. The more keen-eyed amongst you will no doubt have noticed that I'm disguised as a nice-looking young lady. A hilarious jape! Or so I thought - those with eyes which are keener still will note that the Her Majesty herself also looks like a bit of a wrong 'un. Is she in disguise too? No she is not! She sent a lookalike. That's some capital japery, ma'am! She continued to do the same for three dozen subsequent re-scheduled meetings. As did I. In fact, although we never did meet, our two lookalikes eventually found love with one another. A romantic ending to a tale which was given a somewhat sinister epilogue some months late when it emerged they were mother and daughter.

Shortly after meeting the lovely Queen, I died. This is where I'm currently buried. There was a gravestone - a massive, impressive-looking one, carved to look like an inconsolable angel - but, due to a paperwork mix-up, it got cremated and scattered at sea. I've no idea where this field is, but it's fine: I like it here