HOMEOPATHIC CLOTHING

Let me take you back to the year 1988. Thatcher was still in Number Ten, Kylie's "I should be so lucky" had just been knocked off the Number One spot, and Reading Football Club were officially the 43rd best team in England. On a good day, with a following wind. I remember standing on the terraces at Elm Park during a dour 1-0 victory, singing "You must have come in a taxi" to the visiting Shrewsbury Town fans, who - it transpired - had come in a taxi.

But then, the team that was doing nowhere except to the old Division Three did something extraordinary. Reading Football Club went to the old Wembley Stadium, and returned home with the ludicrously-named Simod Cup, beating top-flight Luton Town 4-1 in front of 67,000 people. Within a fortnight, crowds were back down to three men and a dog, the dog coming along to support the away side.

Not being allowed to keep any items of the cup-winning players' kit for posterity, the club historian instead bottled the water that was used to launder said kit, and ate out for some years on the fact that he possessed the actual blood, sweat and manly juices that contributed toward Reading FC's (until then) greatest triumph.

What the man didn't realise was that he had the very distillation of gladiatorial triumph in those old pop bottles, which diluted, shaken, diluted, shaken, diluted, shaken and served up in pill form to the Reading Football Club of today would make them completely and utterly invincible.

In short: Homeopathic Victory, backed up by 100% genuine SCIENCE*.

I say this because, in a recent investigation into where lost socks go, one of my stalkers said they always assumed they were dissolved by the washing machine, instead of simply skipping into a parallel dimension as proven by genuine SCIENCE*.

He may or may not be correct, but it stands to reason that any water from a washing machine contains the very distillation of clothes, which diluted, shaken, diluted etc and served up in pill form can only mean one thing: HOMEOPATHIC CLOTHES.

Instead of getting dressed in the morning, you just take one of these tiny sugar pills which contain the homeopathic memory of your best jeans and T-shirt combination, and you are all ready to hit the street, HOMEOPATH STYLE!

Of course, some people (for example officers of the law, those with some sort of high-fallutin' education) might say that you are buck naked. They are dead wrong, for you are clothed from head-to-toe with the proven SCIENCE* of Homeopathic Clothes, and no jury in the world would ever convict.

I understand that to mark 25 years of their Simod Cup triumph this season, Reading Football Club will play on the date closest to the anniversary (which just happens to be an away match at Arsenal) in a specially-designed homeopathic football kit. Mark your diaries. Can't wait for Match of the Day that night.

* No SCIENCE at all