Here are a few letters which Chris Morris broadcast on his Radio 1 show in 1995.
Dear Chris
I know you don't usually do requests, but I hope my circumstances will move you to exception. I am 38 years old. I live by myself, and while I do not entirely lack for company, I have no friends of more than four years standing, and prefer to spend my time, particularly weekends, alone with my memory, for that is where my true friends are. Four years ago I was a key witness in the trial of a Whilpshire death-ring. Several men were given life, but in the process my own existence became threatened. Threatening messages on my pager and pig-blood in my milk told me that I had been marked by the gang, and when I awoke one morning and found a skinned swan in the toilet, I applied for police protection. They obliged, but advised me to move from Blackburn to Kilburn. They also said I would not be safe unless everyone I knew believed I was dead, so with their help I disappeared and headed South. Everything about me had to change, including my name. You may just have heard of me - between you and me, but not for broadcast, it used to be Cholice Ketteridge. I used to run Hot Biscuits, the record shop off Calder Street. I also took the precaution of altering my face, so that I would be completely unrecognisable even to my family. Alas, they, along with my true friends and dear wife, Alice, could only exist for me in my mind and heart.
The first few weeks in London were interesting, as a sort of challenge, but to be honest, the longer I spent in my new, strange environment, the less I desired to meet new people. They're alright, but the bonds you make after 30 are so superficial, frankly. It was Alice I missed most. By this January, I could feel my wits beginning to end. Then, just six weeks ago, something happened that split my brain end to end.
It was a Sunday, and I was purchasing some fittings at an all-week furniture store, when there, arranging the display in the mid-tone bedrooms, I saw Alice. I knew it was her at once; every curve, every gesture. I just stood and gawped - no words, just a tennis ball in my throat. She saw me, a staring stranger, and looked away, embarrassed. I ran out.
For a week I returned every day, making enough purchases to avoid suspicion, at the same time, lurking and peeping as much as I could. She had noticed me again, and smiled. Had she looked slightly too long? Christ's fat cock, how I ached. By Wednesday, I had gathered she was still unattached, but had three suitors who would contrive to visit her during the day, making her laugh and blush with their vacuous flirting. How men become ridiculous at the hands of lust.
One of them, the stupidest but most forward, asked her out. I seethed from behind a rather unpleasant shelf. I wanted to shout, "Alice, I love you! Help me!" - I couldn't, of course. So I scrawled it onto the back of an Oddbins receipt, and pushed it deep into my pocket. I was being eaten up. By Thursday, she was playing them off against each other. She said she wanted to go to the lakes for the weekend, with whoever could guess the whereabouts of her birthmark. I knew she was just amusing herself, trying to forget me, but still I felt the full bowelling in my gut when she said that. But I also knew she had given me my chance. No-one could guess about the small, violet disc in the warm pink of her mouth. But I knew.
The answer had to be written down and placed in an envelope. They would be opened on Friday lunchtime in the park outside the store. All morning I loitered on the grass, wishing I smoked, muttering at squirrels, until, at last, the improbable foursome emerged, excited and chattering. I watched with growing glee as first one, then two, and finally three faces failed, despite their smiles, to fully disguise their disappointment. Alice laughed and tossed her hair. This was my moment.
I ran forward. I thrust my envelope into her hand, and said, "Open it, please. Trust me, you must open it." They laughed. They pretended to take me seriously. Alice slipped her finger under the flap, and drew out my note. She read it - and read it again. She looked at me, aghast. She looked at her suitors, who were now no longer smiling, searching for some clue. "But who?" "Cholice," I said. "Cholice Ketteridge, and I love you. I'm not dead, I had to run away, but I don't care if they kill me now, I want you back."
After an aching pause, a tear rolled onto her cheek. "Cholice," she whispered, and leaned forward to kiss me. I shut my eyes, but never felt her lips, because at that moment she was transfixed by a spear of frozen liquid waste from an aeroplane toilet facility. I will never forget her face, as she lay pinned to the turf. The look of stunned incomprehension, tempered still with a slight sensual anticipation is pop-riveted to the scarred bonnet of my memory. But you would bring back happier moments if you played "Horse With No Name", the cover-version, by David Essex.
Dear Chris
I know you don't usually do requests, but I feel this story will make you do it. I'm a musician, though more than seventy percent of my income comes in from the guitar shop I run in the arcade. I play the keyboards. We sell them. My main public performance outlet is through the two-piece dance combo I comprise with my business partner Andy Everett. Gigging extensively at up to four nights a week throughout East Anglia, we are known as Love Net.
About a year ago, I was enjoying a quiet morning in the shop. No customers were in there so I was working out a variation on Huey Lewis' Happy To Be Stuck With You, with "bossanova" setting and tremolo, when I noticed the slender, stockinged legs of a quiet-looking girl with glasses, but sexy like the effect that glasses can have on Kim Basinger's face when they make her look sexy underneath in some films. Our shop is in the basement, which is why I saw her legs. To be honest, it was not the first time I had seen her, but it had never struck me before how pretty she was, but now it did, and my left hand kept laying down the walking bass up and down while my jaw dropped open because I was suddenly really into her look. I am actually quite shy, but I had to get her attention. I turned the volume up, and hit the bass riff with both hands. She slowed down, and actually stopped. I turned up the volume so full that the window panes rattled, and I kept stabbing at the key note in the bass, and then changed the rhythm setting to "disco". The thudding was incredibly loud, but sexy like the "Relax" riff. I was jumping up and down with the effort, when Andy appeared in the doorway with a puzzled face. But suddenly it was another face I was looking at - hers, looking through our pavement window. She was smiling. She raised her finger to her lips, and went "Shhh....," and laughed, and walked across to a bit where I couldn't see. I knew I had to meet her, but I didn't know quite what I would do. I was sure my best chance of a pull would be onstage, because some girls had said that I reminded them of Jeff Lynne.
I went through a month of expecting her to be at every gig, until I got so used to it I thought she wouldn't come, but she did as soon as I thought she wouldn't on the next gig. It was a five-hundred head marquee bash with a laser lightshow, and we were top of the bill. We'd been playing for half an hour, when I saw her on the floor. She had some real nice twists in her body. I nodded to Andy, and we hit the plan, which was to pull out of Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride", and then Andy shouted, "Hey girls, you like a man with a moustache?" I keyed in a sound effect of a huge crowd roar, and slowly nodded. I could feel my huge moustache nodding with the rest of my head. Then I slammed into my thunder bass riff. Andy gave me great support on Fender bass. The volume was bloody loud, and I felt like I was growing bigger with each beat. The bass drum was cracking the speakers, and slowly everybody in the hall stopped, and soon they were all staring at me because I was starting to sing.
The words had started coming out of me as soon as I saw that she was looking right at me. "This is our song," I roared. I set the keyboard on repeat, and started chanting the word "love," very loud, and very fast. I jumped off the stage, and stomped rhythmically towards her, increasing my voice volume. Suddenly, I was surrounded by faces, but the only sound I could hear was my own love song, which I changed to a throaty growl as I now rolled along the floor. "I am a love worm. I am a love worm," I repeated, and writhed around until I was at her feet. I slowly looked up, and her lovely eyes were laughing along with the rest of her face, and she clapped. She kept saying, "You're a very funny little man." The keyboard stopped. "But I really do love you," I said, without the mike on, standing up and looking at her, because she was taller than me. "It's just that I can't say it very easily." She suddenly looked very different - serious, but gentle, with a small smile. This was the best look I'd ever had from a woman. I wanted it to last like a sustained chord. She opened her mouth to speak, but as soon as she had said the word "I -" she was pierced by a spear of frozen liquid waste from an aeroplane toilet facility that plunged through the roof into her head.
The expression of polite horror on her face as it fell past mine, plus the sound of air whistling out of the top of her head made me feel really crap. But, Chris, you would remind me of that month of happy longing if you would play "Have a Nice Day", Guy Mitchell's comeback record of 1988. It's the only record I listen to now, and it cheers me up because of it's happy message.
Gavin Cash
P.S. I wasn't invited to the funeral, but I hid in the trees of the churchyard, and pretended to myself I had been her husband. I did this by shutting my eyes and wanking.
Dear Chris
I accidentally heard your program last month, and wondered if you could do me a favour. I know you don't usually do requests, but I still think your will could be bent by my story. I am forty two years old, and consider myself intelligent, educated, but unlucky. Last winter, I was working as a council street sweeper. It was my age, I suppose, but I had become resigned to the daily drudge of heaping slimy newspapers, dead pizza boxes and other yuck into my large plastic barrow. Occasionally, when my route crossed the park, I could linger for a few moments in the lovely green spaces, and watch the men from the parks and recreation department blowing leaves around with their special under-arm machines.
One day, as I emerged into the street, my attention was caught by a cold shower of mud, thrown from a puddle by the wheel of a bus. My mouth opened to curse, but no shouts passed my teeth. Instead, they were stopped by an invisible plug made out of the fact that the bus driver was a woman, and what's more, she had the most beautiful face. Not in a classical way, Chris, it was somehow more arresting than that - one moment, perhaps, prettily bovine, the next majestic, like Anjelica Huston. That night, I vowed to woo her. It wasn't going to be easy; I'm shy and useless at approaching people with words. I'm pretty useless all round, in fact. I only have one real tactic, and to be honest, it had never really worked before, even when I was younger. So why was I even thinking of using it now? Something in her noble face told me that it might just work this time.
The next day, I was ready to act. First, I needed some leaves. An hour before I entered the park, I phoned the department and reported the leaf-blowers for attacking a rose bush with their machine. It worked. By the time I got there, they had all been apprehended on a vegetable abuse, and I could have all the leaves I needed. Feverishly, I started laying them out in a huge ring on the ground by the bus stop. Using more leaves and some other detritus from my barrow, I created a large cross shape joined to the ring, thus forming the biological symbol for females. Seconds later, the bus appeared. People were already staring, so I felt confident their gaze would funnel her attention in my direction. It worked.
She turned and looked. Immediately, I started jumping about on my barrow, pointing enthusiastically, first at her, then at my giant woman sign. Then I held her eye, and leapt into the ring. Here, I threw my arms open into a gesture of welcome and stared straight into her eyes, jumping up and down on the spot, and roaring the word "Yes!" over and over again.
I'd always known this to be a risky tactic, but I felt it so much more keenly now that she was staring straight at me. It seemed to last forever. Then, ignoring the loud horns of the surrounding traffic, she suddenly opened the driver's door and stepped into the road. I advanced. We met. "I love things like that," she whispered. "Ah," I replied. "Good." All the cars had stopped, and switched off their engines. "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she rejoined. I couldn't believe my luck. "Excellent," I both thought and said. Everything seemed to go silent. I shut my eyes, and knelt to kiss her hand. Then, somewhere I thought I heard a sparrow fly into a brick. Suddenly, her fingers jerked from my lips. I looked up, to see her catapulted into a weird back-flip, her head transfixed by a spear of frozen liquid waste from an aeroplane toilet facility. She bounced off her own windscreen and lay quite dead on the road. To this day, Chris, I have been unable to erase the last, awful sound she made as her body hit the ground - imagine a man singing with a knot in his neck. But you could help me recall happier, carefree times by playing Jimmy Tarbuck's version of "I Should Be So Lucky".