The Eleventh: "Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism"

It took the longest proper word in the English Dictionary to describe our shortest and worst episode to date, and by happy coincidence, the same word also describes an inherited disorder in which short stature may be present.

For two hours we droned on and on about such matters as Andy Murray's chances of winning the Australian Open having been cruelly sabotaged by Chris Hoy, the sadly poetic Coronation of Barack Obama, and whether Sooty, the close friend of Prince Charles, actually looks like the famous British hand puppet called Sooty.

It wasn't pretty. At one point, we even found ourselves singing 'Cover Girl' by New Kids on the Block. So to protest against two things, the UK media's incessant urge to talk us into recession, and the mass hysteria from our baying mob of listeners who seem convinced that we're nothing but comedy machines, we decided to wipe much of what we'd recorded and leave you simply with the introductory ramblings from two tired, aimless podcasters in need of a break.

Brought to you with the greatest of apologies, if you're reading this with the benefit of the image we put up, you'll see that for one night only, in the purest of tragicomic direction, laughter has left the building.

Best laid plans

Once again the promise of a special bonus recording falls by the wayside, like a victim of a protracted and no doubt unjustified war.

Our mate Jim was home for a short break from his duties in sunny Afghanistan, and the initial plan had been to spread his voice like runny melting butter over the airwaves, the new toast of cyberspace, in a special podcast in which the three of us would combine as allied forces and defeat the scourge of comedy in its own backyard, a precursor for Step Two of Operation For the Love of G...lasgow, the secretive inter-governmental trade and foreign policy mechanism put in place under the pre-emptive Protocol 124585b/08 to secure petroleum pipelines, refineries and terminals in the Caspian Basin, cloaked in a masterfully appalling podcast designed to distort public perception, warp the reality of comedy until the laughter stops completely and the oil exploration contracts are all signed in silent resignation, there being nothing left in life but to sell your soul.

That was our plan.

Instead, we went out and got drunk.

So Jim's now back where he belongs, fighting the good fight for the Taliban, and you're left with myself and Alan, two young dudes in the prime of our lives, wondering with furrowed brows just what happened with Episode 6 after all that glorious work we produced in the Fifth. My first thought is that as with many young dudes in the prime of their lives, we peaked early. That it's all downhill from here.

You'd think that with such a conclusion in mind, we'd just call it quits. Save all those unsuspecting new listeners from the pain of listening to what may only be described now as like two baby boys vomiting over themselves, screeching and screaming and farting for their mothers, tugging at the pet dog who in turn howls incessantly into the night whilst scraping its claws down a chalkboard as it's too stupid to realise that it's not a door, all in a room energised by the Crazy Frog ringtone of a mobile phone vibrating its annoying existence without pause, and the drill of a dentist heaving its evil way into the mouth of a fog-horning, petrified patient.

Well, that's what the podcast sounds like to us anyway.

But either way, I'm sure we'll keep on plugging away however badly it sounds, for whose benefit I just don't know but what does that matter?

We'll record the Seventh. We'll upload it. People will download it. They'll refuse to comment. Alan will get upset. We'll stop doing it. And the whole thing will pass indifferently into the dusty annals of time until years from now, when the world has righted itself again under the guiding influence of our Almighty Overlord Obama, we'll resurface, reband, reform.

Just like Boyzone, Take That and New Kids on the Block.

And there will be rejoicing in the streets.