Dog of the month – interview: Albi

Dog of the month – interview: Albi

After a life globetrotting with his owner Lavinia von Schneider, Albi the Staffordshire (right) is a permanent fixture of Brackenbury Village. Reporter Rufus Barclay (left) goes face-to-face with this popular and influential resident.

Q. You knew the Prince of Wales quite well, tell me about that?
It was nothing, we were in the JFK compound and I could see he really wouldn’t do.

Q. Explain?
Lack of fibre. No way that chap would stay the course – I knew. But I spotted a neat looking Cavachon, then she started yapping, ‘Leave that pooch alone, Mimi’. A stringbag if you ask me, and suddenly we were tangled up on the sofa: Wallis, Edward, MiMi, me. The constitutional issues were rather boring. But I liked her feet.

Q. Did you stay often at the Kennedy’s?
Only during the Cuban missile crisis. We travelled a lot and Jack needed the advice. He couldn’t speak a word of Volgoda-Kirovian patois: Khrushchev’s preferred dialect. That’s where the Countess came in. ‘He’s just a peasant’, she explained, ‘remind him of the keinerwasserstumpf gruel they force-fed him as an infant!’ You gotta hand it to her. He was a broken man…

Q. Where else did you go with von S?
I won’t speak of her heartbreak years. Traipsing from one faded royal court to another in the wastes of Outer Diptheria may sound amusing, but, dullsville or what! I have no idea what MI6 were paying her for. Even peddaling her London Taxi Cab for tourists on the Oregon Trail was more fun, and we were short on fares, and they tasted pretty samey.

Q. The Trump connection?
Don’t even ask. We taught him how to tweet after they met in an intriguing Slovenian medical facility. Or garage. It did robot-refurbishment. There was this model called the Melania saying ‘my man he haf short attention span’ on a loop, the solution was obvious.

Q. Did you know West Side Story was based on the gang rivalry between the Andover Arms and the Anglesea?
I was there, man. All started with the one affair, a couple of young lovers in rival pub-strips prancing down Cardross Street – and then, bam, gangfights! With more mayhem when the massed W6 trans-gender set joined in! Shakespeare didn’t have to contend with that – otherwise one would simply never get out of the theatre. Do you have a light?

Q. The Oscars?
My lips are sealed. But I’ll say this, that Faye has a fetching pair of ankles… there goes my phone again… oh hi Vlad… mind if I take this?…

Q. Catch you later?

Interview by Rufus Barclay. More online:
https://www.keepthingslocal.com

Click links to read about characters mentioned here:
Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, JFK, Jack Kennedy, Cavachon, Wallis Simpson, Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev, MI6, Donald Trump, West Side Story, The Andover Arms, The Anglesea Arms, The Oscars, Faye Dunaway

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