Duckers & Diving: The birdman of Moseley

THIS week our celebrated columnist escapes a dirty bomb plot and wraps up the assailant

Old hack John Duckers is more known for enjoying a pint or three rather than chasing the birds.

But the other night he was spotted starkers, being lead a right dirty dance round the bedroom by a hard-to-catch chick.

Ooh, er, vicar!

Had a ‘dickie spell’ come over him?

Well, sort of, because the lady in question was a fledgling blackbird.

He said: “I had been working all day, gone on to a dinner with business colleagues and not got back until about 10.30. So, a quick read of the paper, and off to bed.

“Did my teeth, took my clothes off and put them in the laundry basket, went into the bedroom and was about to switch the alarm on when … what a shock I got.

“This thing fluttered up in front of me – I’m not sure which of us was more frightened!”

Duckers considers himself something of a nature lover and had watched intrigued over the past month as a pair of blackbirds had built a nest in a bush in the garden, incubated the eggs and made many trips to and fro feeding the brood.

They escaped the local magpies and finally fledged.

But taking up home in chez Duckers was a step too far.

“It took several minutes to corner it – it was flapping, I was flapping, a scene out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

“But eventually I managed to throw a towel over it, wrap it up and, after my wife had been cajoled to unlock the patio door, let it go in the garden.

“Thankfully darkness had fallen because I was still naked and the neighbours would otherwise have got a full frontal – not a pleasant experience. Could have produced complaints. Not much to see, mind you.”

The long-suffering Mrs Duckers is getting the blame for leaving the doors wide open in the heat, the speculation being that this allowed the bird to hop inside.

Our hero moans: “Thankfully I had avoided being crapped on which was more than could be said of the room. And guess who had to clean it up!”