Stanley’s ambitions

Stanley is showing a remarkable flair for marketing. Having caused a minor stir with the mugs (he insisted I recycle that pun on his behalf), he was rather taken with the idea of featuring on the front of a t-shirt. His preference, for some reason he refused to divulge, was for one worn by a female, so I think the illustration will not be to his liking, which, of course, in his world means it WILL be to his liking. Anyway, once again, he’s seeking to tempt you with his merchandise to such an extent that I’ll no longer have to write about his exploits.

(By the way, the wording on the shirt is an addition of mine - to acknowledge the hero of Looking for Eric. The words were spoken in the movie by the great Eric himself, with 'Cantona' instead of 'Stanley'.)

In fact, there are already seven Stanley stories, which is convenient because, with six more to appear and six more grandchildren in line for dedications, there’s a pleasing symmetry about the whole enterprise. The trouble is that, by the time the seventh is published, I’ll have written more – and I certainly don’t want any more grandchildren; Christmas is already horrendously expensive. The other trouble is that, with Stanley threatening to sue me if I step even marginally away from the truth of his words and actions, I may have difficulty maintaining that willing suspension of disbelief needed to sustain the reader’s interest.

One thing I should have added before, when I posted the shot of his mugs, was that Stanley’s image rights belong not to him, as he insists, but to Melanie Chadwick who first sketched his portrait. The fact that she made him (according to him, anyway) far less attractive than he finds himself, is irrelevant. As well as suing me, he intends to ‘take her for everything she has’ (his words) for whatever the visual version of libel is. He even used the words ‘bearing false witness’ before I reminded him that that was in one of the commandments and represented the word of God, not the word of Stanley. But all that did was start him muttering about the parables he could tell.

In the end, Mel and I might need not just a lawyer but an exorcist, too.

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