Mr Fluffy

Although Donald Pleasence shamelessly tried to steal every scene that he shared with Mr Fluffy, and despite  the incredible decision of the film company not to dignify such a central character as Blofeld's white cat with a name nor the feline thespian with a credit, he became a legend.   What no-one knew was that Mr Fluffy was not acting.   He was not, of course, CEO within SPECTRE - SPECTRE is after all a fictional organisation, but he was, even at this early stage, Lotte Lenya's Controller and an embryonic megalomaniac.

Emerging from Pinewood Studios sadder, wiser, yet with pockets filled with sovereigns, Mr Fluffy (He was still known as Young Fluffy back then, but not for long.) bought into the Cleethorpes Gazette which was on the brink of closure.   Specialising in lurid tales of the seedier activities on Cleethorpse's sea-front and searching exposés of corruption amongst local councillors the Gazette was soon outselling every local newspaper in Lincolnshire and, at least in Grimsby, outselling some of the less popular nationals too.   The time was ripe for expansion.

Buying newspapers had merely been a matter of flashing enough cash, television companies could be absorbed or broken with ease, but radio proved a tougher nut to crack.   Even today there were, he suspected, subversive elements operating within the bowels of Broadcasting House.

With practically the whole of the British news media in his hands Mr Fluffy acquired the defunct Black Cat Factory, which was lying derelict amidst the overgrown and neglected communal gardens of Mornington Crescent and, in one dark and thundery night, the air crackling with static and pavements wet with typesetters' tears, abandoned Fleet Street and moved his entire operation under one roof.   The magnificent Art Deco Egyptian Revivalist edifice, temple in equal parts to the cat goddess Bastet and the capitalist god Profit in his most concrete of forms, dominates surrounding Camden and surreptitiously stretches predatory claws out into the neighbouring landscape.   From the camera obscura on the rooftop terrace Mr Fluffy can look out onto the teeming mass of humanity below and know that he owns them all; bought or cowed they all dance when he plucks on their strings.

...over the pathetic corpses of your newborn!   These insufferable strikes and the economic crisis they have wrought, have forced the Government, against its will, to close Libraries, Hospitals and Old Peoples' Homes!   Un-affordable fire-engines and ambulances have had to be offered on e-bay!   This insurgency must not be allowed to continue - who are these unelected enemies of commerce, these self proclaimed assassins of Statehood?   Sign up for action today - crush the subversive pandemic before it overwhelms us all!

"I found this in the Press Tent, next to the Guinness counter." 

The gang were all gathered in Ginsbergbear's bell tent behind the Literary Yurt, observing yet another broadside.   They were seated in campaign chairs at a green baize topped campaign table, intense sunlight through the fabric of the tent cast red stripes across the scene, mugs of half drunk tea cooled neglectedly.   The Great Patriotic Festival was drawing smaller crowds since the strikes had begun to spread out from the East End, though the Steam Fair was still popular and Ginsbergbear's poetry readings had a small, but faithful following.

"And it is being reproduced in all the national newspaper and on the television; I know it is Slasher again.   The lefty stuff he was aiming at the workers has tailed of since the strikes began though."   Phoebles was frowning as his mind wrestled with complex and conflicting thoughts.   

"Word on the street is that he was pivotal in triggering the ship's cat strikes and has been seen in the company of several of Les Chats Souterrains."   Boz had been doing some serious investigating.

Ferdy appeared distracted, "But the Chats Souterrains are real wronguns, he can't be in with them." and Ginsbergbear leaned over to him with a sympathetic gesture, stroking the tip of one wing. 

"What's the matter, old pall?"

"Oh, it's nothing to do with all this.   Aunty Stella is upset.   No-one has seen Googleberry since we left him sunbathing on the lawn and that was a couple of days ago.   It's not like him to miss meal times."

Everyone agreed that Googleberry was not the type to get into any trouble and assured Ferdy that he would soon turn up, but the gentle dodo was not to be comforted.

"Les Chats have also been seen directing rats in the looting of the docks.   There's too much double dealing for my liking.   I can't get my head round what's going on." chipped in Phoebles, returning to the problem in hand.

Strawberry was frowning.   “Is Aunty Stella really worried?   Googleberry’s my friend…”

“OK.” from Boz, “Ferdy, whiz Strawberry home in the Cierva and come straight back.   Strawberry, organize search parties for Googleberry, there’s enough cats back there to be thorough.   But no one goes off alone and try not to lose anyone else.   The rest of us are going to have to corner Slasher and ask him straight out what he’s up to.   The whole situation is getting out of hand.”

“Does anyone else think contacting McGoogs might be a bit dangerous?”

Meanwhile strikes were spreading out from dockland.   The Clarkenwell printers were out over the arrest of one of their own; there was a lock out at Billingsgate which was depriving the local chippies of supplies just when there was a flood of idle, hungry cats into the neighbourhood; and now there was pressure on long dormant socialists and trades' unionists around the country to support the industrial action.   For the baying Press the flying pickets were the last straw.   Not that, for the most part, they did much flying.    One group did have the use, where appropriate, of a Dragon Rapide loaned by a sympathetic pilot from Duxford, but mostly they were utilising a small fleet of  ex- YANKEE COACH LINES INC. GAR WOOD  Model EFI motor coaches, liberated from a stranded container ship in Tilbury Dock and reinforced against police truncheons.