As some of you know I don’t actually live in Castle Lapselater. I live in The Dairies down the West Drive. It’s a little cramped I know, with just the 5 bedrooms. But thank God I’m not cooped up in the 120-roomed Castle with my brother Neville at the moment. He’s still chuntering on about the bloody Vettriano painting I bought. He’s banned it and me from the castle.

‘You’re not hanging that piece of soft-core porn crap anywhere in the Castle, Hugo. Now fuck off!’ He said when I suggested it go up on the Grand Stairs between the Monet Haystacks and Tracey Emin’s knickers.

They’re not even framed. And I said as much.

‘For pity’s sake Neville, you’ve got a pair of soiled panties that have adhered themselves to the Chinese Silk Wallpaper on the stairs, neither framed nor signed! Why not have a decent bit of art up next to them to balance things?’ Neville went completely bloody apeshit.

‘They are art, Hugo! Seminal art! The first piece of The Gusset Movement! I know you don’t know the difference between art and an unmade bed but at least try and learn!’

And that was that. So under the monstrous weight of my older brother’s condescending disapproval I took the painting and myself down to The Dairies and therein kept a pretty low profile. Licking my wounds feeling worthless. You know he really didn’t need to be quite so hostile. I mean, Neville’s been telling me to fuck off for a lot of years now, in a variety of styles – some quite artistic and imaginative.  This time, however, If he’d told me to fuck off with slightly less sputum in his throat I might not have felt so toad-like.

And bloody hell, the painting isn’t that bad, surely? It’s not even that big. It looks super in my sitting room between a couple of William Russell Flints. They’re super too – lovely watercolours of Spanish birds with their shirt-potatoes out. Some people scoff but actually he had vision. He presaged the cosmetic breast implant. Every tit he ever painted looks as though it’s about to burst. And he was painting in the 19whatnots. Did you know he lived on a turkey farm for a while? I believe he painted a topless turkey once but nobody knows where it is.

Anyway, I had to resolve this business of the unloved Vettriano and being excommunicated from the castle.  I desperately wanted the painting to hang in the heart of the Lapselater Collection.

Of course I couldn’t go and prostrate myself in front of my bloody big brother and beg – ok, he went to Eton and I went to Arsle Abbey but there are limits. So, I thought suggestions via E-mail might do the trick, and a small correspondence  ensued:

From hugo@okyahoo.com

To nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

Dear Neville,

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. I really, really, do think the Vettriano is a valid piece of work and could be hung on the grand stairs. However, as a compromise, I feel it would also go well in the cafeteria or near the public lavatories.

All the best,

Hugo.

From nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

To hugo@okyahoo.com

Hugo,

No. I’m not having it in the house especially in areas open to the public. Either keep it for yourself and we’ll forget the horrendous expense involved, or sell it, or give it away.

N.

From hugo@okyahoo.com

To nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

Dear Neville,

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. What about hanging it in the nursery? There aren’t any kiddywinks using it these days.

All the best,

Hugo

To hugo@okyahoo.com

From nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

Hugo,

No. Don’t be ridiculous. You seem to forget you have two sisters who both have children that still use the nursery on their visits. You also forget about Nanny Shilling. She uses the nursery as her day room and she would have a fit if she saw a painting of a man in washing-up gloves about to sodomize a prostitute. And Mama? What would she think?

N.

To nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

From hugo@okyahoo.com

Dear Neville,

Hi. How are you? I’m fine. Yup, sorry, I forgot. I think you’re being a bit hasty in judging the subject matter of the painting. And actually I think Mummy likes something a bit fruity.

What about the butler’s pantry?

All the best,

Hugo

To hugo@okyahoo.com

From nevillelapselater@castlelapselater.co.uk/admin/foundation

For God’s sake Hugo,

Do stop asking me how I am every 3 minutes and telling me you’re fine. At this precise moment I don’t give a tupp’ny fuck how you are.

The answer is still NO. That painting will never be part of the Lapselater Collection, period.

I am busy and so should you be. Start by calling in your dogs. As I write, I can see out of the corner of my eye, both Vodka and Tonic down by the lake spreading panic amongst the ornamentals!

N.

Well, really! It was a bit bloody ordinary to change the subject and drag my dogs into it. But, I’ll have to think again…

Oh God! Neville’s face when I showed him the painting – I’ve never seen his moustache wilt like that. He was already seriously pissed off with me because I’d missed the Giacometti by about £63,980,000. Well, really. But I thought I’d made amends…

It all came about because the ‘MacLapselaters’ (The Scottish Lapselaters) decided to have a belated Burns Night up at Scorne Castle and Uncle Callum invited me along. Now I don’t hold with this preposterous notion of reciting gibbersh poetry to a plate of chopped up lungs and sphincters wrapped up in a sheep’s colon but Uncle Callum takes Addressing the Haggis very seriously. So I play along.

Besides I have to keep in with the MacLapselaters because they have the most fabulous fishing – The Tay, The Spey, The Helmsdale and The Brora. They even have rods on the Ooty! Of course you haven’t heard of it. It’s the most exclusive river in the highlands. Bloody Hell, even the salmon have to pay to spawn in it! And there’s a waiting list.

So you can see, I’ll put up with any amount of talking to offal for some decent fishing. Trouble is, this particular night I did get rather P-diddied before dinner began. Bloody single malts! Always my downfall. I felt as if I’d been drinking quadruple malts by the time I sat down with 150 other diners and heard those first lines…

“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,

Great Chieftan o’ the pudding race…”

…those lines always move me to tears. Probably because I know there’s so much more to come. The other lines that stick in the mind are;

“Your hurdies like a distant hill,

Your pin would mend a mill…”

You see ‘hurdies’ are buttocks and the ‘pin’ is a skewer in this instance!

So quite apart from the whole dirge sounding like a mentally defective Norwegian trying to speak English, there is a hefty homo-erotic subtext going on. I mean, really. I had no idea Rab C. Burns was a kilt-mole. Can one fancy a haggis? Sexually, I mean?

But it was well before those particular lines that, almost choking on my tears, I decided to sneak outside for a cigar. I managed a fairly discreet exit not withstanding a brief rumba with a 15^th century suit of armour in the hall.

Anyway, while I was enjoying the ol’ mummy’s dick, I was approached by a pasty-faced fellow. He introduced himself as Jack Vettriano. We got chatting and he said he was a painter. Next thing he’s invited me back to his studio. Well, I felt a bit disloyal despite being as drunk as a judge’s fart, but anything was better than listening to Uncle Callum hawking up phlegm in the name of poetry, so I went gladly.

The Minging Butler. copyright Jack Vettriano

In his studio he showed me a print of his most famous painting, The Minging Butler. It’s of a posh couple on a beach with what appear to be staff holding umbrellas aloft in rather shitty weather. Now, when he told me he had sold the original for £750,000, I thought bloody hell! This fellow could be good for business.

‘I like a narrative in my paintings, Hugo.’ He said, ‘can you imagine a story in this painting?’

‘Yes I can,’ I said. And I gave him the following version of what the characters in the picture were saying. I was feeling thoroughly uninhibited so I used my best Scottish accent

WOMAN IN RED DRESS: Darling, can we go in now? It’s raining and you know how depressed I get looking at the North Sea.

MAN: But darling, the staff have their brollies up.

MAID: Fer fuck’s sake! It’s blowin’ a hoolie and I’m freezing me tuts oaff!

BUTLER: (Coughing violently) Aye, is that a pucnuc in yon bag? I cud do wi’ a wee dram.

I thought that was rather sweet – just came clean off the top of my head – but Jack seemed rather upset.

I didn’t want to upset him at all. So to offset the upset I told him I’d like to buy a painting to hang permanently in the Lapselater Collection.

Well he lit up. And he told me how he couldn’t get into any collections in Scotland but sold like a tart’s fanny in a brothel’s happy hour. I felt rather sorry for him; I mean being able to sell paintings for almost a million quid but only being able to exhibit permanently in Kircaldy Post Office must hurt.

I reassured him the art market was completely bonkers down south too, and how Neville had bought a pair of soiled M&S knickers for £150,000.

He showed me all sorts of rather saucy pictures! Scantily clad birds getting shagged up against walls, that sort of thing.

‘I work long hours,’ he said, ‘sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about my painting’.

‘I bet you do,’ I chuckled, ‘then what do you do? Crack one off into a Kleenex?’

‘No. I go back to work’

They can be quite dour, these Scots. One particular painting caught my eye. It was of a woman in black lingerie tied face down over a table with her visage turned to a wall. By her head was a packet of 20 Lambert and Butler and behind her was a man in a suit pulling on a washing-up glove.

The whole thing was rather sensitively rendered.

‘What’s it called?’ I asked

‘Sunday Morning Love 2.’

I asked if he’d done Sunday Morning Love 3 or 4 yet. I fancied knowing what happened next. Was suit man going to do the washing up? Was stockings ‘n’ heels woman tied up to help her stop smoking? Intriguing stuff.

We chatted a little more and a deal was struck.

I can’t tell you how thoroughly ‘up’ I felt as I walked out of his studio with Sunday Morning Love 2, tucked under my arm. He’d wrapped it carefully in pages of the Dundee Courier and a fertilizer bag. I felt Neville would be thrilled with this latest addition to the Lapselater Collection. I couldn’t wait to see his face…

…Hmm.  But you know about the face.

I’m in a doghouse within a doghouse.

We’ve had a Trapping in the family for aeons.

The rotund and wheezing Bob Trapping is our gamekeeper. His father was our gamekeeper. And his father was our gamekeeper. And every last one of them has been a pretty miserable and lugubrious type.

Then again, every last one of them has been shot by a Lapselater, or guest, at least once in their career. So it’s not surprising. Luckily only two of the incidents were shooting accidents. Bob’s great-grandfather was shot deliberately by my great-grandfather. A sort of end of contract shooting. Those were the days.

I only mention this as we had our last shoot of the season a couple of days ago. Really, really bloody good fun. Although Bob Trapping nearly got shot again.

Obviously Neville was shooting but the rest of the guns were chums from my Arsle Abbey days.

There was Rupert Fairley-Buting. Do you know the Fairley-Butings? Super family. From Kent. And Rupert is a super chap. He was Captain of Insouciance at Arsle Abbey. And no ordinary captain at that. We only beat Eton once at Insouciance at that was down to Rupert pulling off a Triple Disdain in the last Fritter. Astonishing.

Dicky Chevalier rocked up in the old 911. Do you know Dicky? Bloody hell! Lock up your daughters – and your mothers, not to mention grandmothers and any woman with a pulse come to think of it. Seriously if you’re going to introduce a girl to Dicky make sure her uterus is fitted with twin airbags! Are you sure you don’t  know Dicky? Grease ball. London.

Crispin Trouting turned up in his new Range Rover.  Well, it was newer than the other 4 that were there. Bloody Hell! We had really good sport with his personalized number plate. CONT 15. I kid you not. His full tag is Crispin Oliver Nigel Trouting and this was the best number plate he could get for under £4,000. Of course, Rupert immediately pointed out that it looked like ‘cunt’ from a distance. So for the whole day we were all calling to Crispin, ‘ Come in, cunt No. 15. Your time is up!’ It was really, really funny. And he took it in the right spirit. I mean, he knows he’s a cunt but he doesn’t care. By the way, do you know the Troutings? Super bunch. Hampshire.

Richard Slaughter-Rose was there as well. He of the pained expression. At school we called him ‘Richard caught-a-dose’. But never to his face. Ferocious bugger. Bloody good No. 8. He went straight from the Leavers’ Service to the army. He won honours with the SAS, which cheered him up for a few years.

They say, in the First Gulf Romp, he was parachuted so far behind enemy lines that he thought couldn’t find anyone to shoot! Ha! So, as he put it, he ‘took out his frustrations on a herd of goats.’ I’m not sure if that means he shot them or shagged them!

Do you know the Slaughter-Roses? Boorish bunch. West Yorkshire.

And that was about it. There we all were. All admiring each other’s Range Rovers and all bleating about bonuses. Well, Neville and I weren’t – we were born all bonused up! Ha!

Talking of which, Neville came back from New York with the news that the fellow who ‘attacked’ our Picasso in the MOMA was a banker! Absolutely. A Goldman Sachs man who was overwrought because his Christmas bonus had been slashed to 3 million dollars! Awful. His wife had left him for another banker who’d got a smaller bonus and a sense of perspective. Brutal!

Poor sod. Neville persuaded the Museum not to press charges. It was a cry for help. A strange one, granted. I mean, what was he trying to say by drawing a knob on a priceless work of art and signing it, ‘Bart Simpson’. They’re bloody funny, these Yanks.

Sorry. Gone off message. The bag was; 147 pheasants, 20 partridge, 3 duck, 1 peacock (Don’t worry, I bollocked Rupert.) and the equanimity of 1 gamekeeper.

It was really bloody good fun…