MY ASTONISHING ADVENTURES have led me to meet more than my fair share of reprehensible human beings; from filthy beggars rolling about in their own effluence, to dead-eyed murderers with souls as black as night and hearts made out of ice. But none of them – NONE! – have filled me with as much revulsion, disgust and sheer HATRED as one Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

EGAD! Even writing his name makes me want to vomit profusely ‘pon the page, and jab this quill into my eyeballs, such is my intense dislike for this blasted cove. Ne’er before has such a smug being strode so smugly ‘pon the earth, drawing smug breath through his smug mouth into his doubtlessly smug lungs. Heavens, I detest him so.

And how people seem to fall at his feet, heralding him as some sort of crime-solving genius! Genius? Geni-ARSE, more like. He simply ponces about the place, speaking a tremendous amount of cock, before stumbling across the solution quite by accident, whereupon he declares the whole affair as being ‘elementary’ and then flounces off to puff upon his pipe or have a quick fiddle. PAH! Has HE ever had to contend with an army of gun-toting prostitutes? Has he ever found himself at the mercy of a sex-mad beast with a todger the size of a man? Has he ever had to fend off a blood-thirsty boot-black intent on sawing one’s feet off? NO. More often than not he simply swans into a large house in the country, looks about a bit, and then buggers off again. The man is a CHARLATAN.

I quite like Dr. Watson, however. Now there is a good egg.

Anyway, I have had the great misfortune to run into this supreme toss-bag on no less than two separate occasions, of which only the second encounter concluded in a satisfactory manner, more of which in a moment.

The other occurrence occurred whilst I was investigating a rather intriguing mystery, involving a group known as ‘The Red-Headed League’, who had recently welcomed a Mr. Jabez Wilson into their fold, before swiftly disbanding in rather curious circumstances. This had troubled Mr. Wilson, who had naturally contacted me to help him get to the bottom of this matter. Upon hearing his baffling tale, I swiftly decided that the best course of action would be to go out into the streets, and thrash the living hell out of any person with copper-coloured locks until they revealed to me the details of this sinister-sounding organisation. It was while I was following this route of enquiry that I had my first run-in with the smarmy sleuth himself.

“Ahem,” Holmes said. “Excuse me, sir – may I ask exactly what it is that you are doing?”

“And who, pray tell, is asking?” I replied, as I continued beating a red-headed rapscallion with my cane.

“Sherlock Holmes!” boomed Sherlock Holmes. “Now answer me – what are you doing, sir?”

“Well, you are supposed to be the ‘great detective’,” I answered. “So deduce!”

Holmes went quiet, and puffed upon his ridiculous, bendy pipe. “It looks to me as if you are needlessly battering this poor chap about the head, in what I can only assume is a misguided attempt to elicit information about the shadowy ‘Red-Headed League’, of which there has been much conjecture in the press of late.”

I stopped mid-twat, and pulled myself up to my full height. “That is precisely what I am doing,” I confirmed, turning around to face the gaunt, thin face of this ‘legendary’ detective. “Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that you knew as much?”

“Not at all,” Holmes said, allowing a small, smug grin to creep across his hawk-like countenance. “But if I may say so, I rather fear that you have grasped the wrong end of the stick.”

“Nonsense!” I retorted. “This end is most definitely the right end of the stick, for the other end has a large knob on the end which is proving exceptionally effective for battering this cad.”

With that, Holmes shook his head in a terribly dismissive manner, and strode off. Later on, I was apprehended by police for assaulting several members of the public, while Holmes went on to ‘solve’ the mystery. I remain convinced to this day that Holmes had put the police onto me, probably because he had seen that I was making excellent progress in my investigation, and wanted me out of the way so that he could complete my hard work and claim all the glory. The SWINE.

Nevertheless, an opportunity for revenge presented itself a few years later, when I was holidaying in Switzerland with two delightful Swiss au-pairs whom I had befriended back in England. On one afternoon, we decided to pay a visit to a nearby natural wonder called the Reichenbach Falls, which to my great disappointment turned out to be nothing more wonderful than some water tumbling over some rocks. However, my disappointment turned to joy as my two companions began to frolic in the waters, making their clothing entirely drenched and fantastically see-through, leading to me becoming incredibly aroused, which in turn led to us all partaking in a particularly erotic threesome beneath the mighty falls.

It was as I was wildly hammering away at the backside of one of the girls that I happened to look up and notice a figure hovering about on one of the ledges above. Reasoning that some blighter was attempting to get a free show out of us, I vowed to go and confront the cad and register my great displeasure with my fists upon his face.

And so I promptly made my way up the nearby cliff, until I found myself on the ledge where the figure had been. Surely enough, there he was, still skulking about in the shadows.

“Oh-ho!” I cried, startling the figure. “So, thought you might enjoy a live peep-show, hmmm? Well, let us see how much peeping you can do if I punch out your peepers, sir! Have at ye, you cove!”

The figure spun around, revealing himself to be none other than that blasted arse-cavity, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, looking somewhat more haggard than when I had last seen him. “You!” he exclaimed. “I recognise you…you’re that scoundrel who ran amok on the streets of London attacking innocents with your cane!”

“Ha!” I snorted. “They were hardly innocents, sir. They were all red-heads, and as we all know, red-heads only have such oddly-coloured locks because the Devil himself has possessed their follicles. Thus, with Satan himself sewn into their scalps, they are all destined for a life of villainy and crime, and must be subdued at any cost.”

“What imaginative poppycock,” Holmes smarmed. “Now please, be gone from here, for I am in the midst of another investigation, one which is of a particularly perilous nature, and I do not wish harm to come to you.”

“PAH!” I roared. “I am Lord Likely, Aristocratic Adventurer and Gentle-Man of Action! Harm does not come to me, sir – I go to harm! And then…” I paused briefly. “…I harm it.”

“I know full well who you are, your lordship,” Holmes said. “I have followed your career with great interest. But you must believe me when I say that this investigation is particularly dangerous, for I am on the trail of Professor Moriarty, a man of such twisted cunning and terrible evil that he would not think twice of dispatching you in an instant.”

“BALLS!” I bellowed. “You are just afraid that I shall best him in a trice, and reveal you to be the useless pranny you so clearly are, Mr. ‘Shortcock’ Holmes. Well, you may have taken me out of the picture once before, but this time you shall not be so lucky!”

“Please, your lordship!” Holmes whined. “You MUST heed my words, for your own safety. I believe Moriarty is headed my way, and he shall not allow anything or anyone to get between him and my demise! A great battle between two intellectual heavy-weights is about to commence, a titanic struggle betwixt good and evil which – ”

“Oh, do push off,” I sighed, and with that I quickly pushed Mr. Sherlock Holmes off of the ledge. “Honestly,” I muttered as I watched the man disappear into the misty spray below. “What a simpering, whiny old sap. No spine! No sense of excitement! I can only wonder which school he attended in order to learn the fine art of adventure…”

The answer, of course, was elementary.

- Lord Likely.

DESPITE his wild ineptitude, Mr. Sherlock Holmes is the subject of a new dramatic production, wherein a group of jobbing actors do the utmost to portray the wretch as some sort of heroic figure. I believe it may be viewed in a theatre near you now, if you like that sort of thing.

FOR A far more accurate depiction of the alleged ‘super-sleuth’, may I suggest picking up a copy of Mr. Chris Woods’ most chuklesome tome, ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Underpants of Death‘, which does a fabulous job of showing Holmes to be the wholly incompetent dick-tube we all know him to be. HUZZAH!