Snippets

Tommy Jenkins was so scared of ghosts hiding beneath his bed at night that he used to leave his head under the bed to keep watch while he slept.

Because he was such a scary ghost, nobody dared approach him to point out that, in light of his detachable head, not to mention his death ten years previously, he was in fact a ghost himself, and he remained convinced that his plan was a good one, because nobody EVER disturbed him.

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Moonrock Mike had a unique collection of moonrock, some dating back to the early NASA missions.

He was devastated that he had to leave his entire collection behind when his family were forced to move to one of the moon colonies.

“Look,” his mum said enthusiastically, “there’s moonrock here, everywhere you look in fact. You’ll be able to start a new collection.”

“It’s not the same, mum,” said Mike, but he never explained why.

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Tony the Great passed himself off as a magician, even though he didn’t really have any magical powers. His secret was that he had found a way to reach into the 4th dimension, which he used to conceal playing cards, rabbits and members of the audience, and from which he would retrieve them with a wizardly flourish, leaving the non-hidden members of the audience gasping in surprise.

He used it for other tricks as well. One Christmas, his older brother was putting on a pullover and Tony entwisted the sleeves of said jumper into the 4th dimension, so that no matter how hard his brother tried he could never disentangle it and had to remain jumperless for the rest of festivities.

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Marigold the sheep is just a sheep, with no backstory and is curious as to why she was considered suitable for this list.

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Jon and Samuel are identical twins. Jon is a Metropolitan policeman, one of the country’s leading detectives, and Samuel is a master criminal, responsible for many of the most daring raids in British criminal history.

Their favourite trick is swapping places for the day. They get up to all sorts of mischief and nobody can ever tell.

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Les is a taxitaxidermist, meaning that he makes his living stuffing deceased taxi-drivers. In his spare time he likes to not stuff taxi-drivers.