The Reluctant Vampire. Eric Morecambe

      It was January in the year of seventeen ninety-nine. The sky was as wet and as black as a bottle of ink. A shaft of blue lightning suddenly lit up the seven-hundred-year-old castle on top of a hill. Small yellow lights flickered from behind a barred window in the highest room of the highest turret. For a few seconds before the lightning went out, the castle was silhouetted against thick, huge clouds, fat with rain. The wind bent double the tallest trees on the hill. They almost creaked with pain. The moon could occasionally be seen flying through the clouds at what seemed an incredible speed. Suddenly, it threw a few seconds of yellow light on to a thin ribbon of road leading up to the drawbridge of the silent castle.

      On the road was a small coach being pulled by a very frightened horse. The driver was Doctor Plump. Although his name was Plump, he was the thinnest man you could ever imagine. He was six feet six inches tall but when he wore his top hat he was seven feet six inches tall, and when he was on horseback he was well over ten feet tall.

      Doctor Plump was a humourless man with lips as thin as a grasshopper’s legs. A large Roman nose – almost large enough for a Roman to sit on – hung between his small, piggy eyes. His eyes were so deep set in his head they looked as if they had been put there with a Black and Decker.

      He had been summoned to the castle urgently. His poor horse was wet through with rain and perspiration. The fear showed in its eyes as they rolled round faster than an old woman’s birthday. Doctor Plump urged the animal forward with the snap of a long whip that stung the horse like an injection from a blunt syringe, and they sped towards their goal, Bloodstock Castle, overlooking the small village of Katchem-by-the-Throat in the tiny mid-European country of Gotcha.

      The ‘Gots’ were an unhappy people with no king of their own or even a president to rule them. They were ruled by the Vampires of Bloodstock Castle and had been for the past four hundred years.

      The horse clattered over the wooden drawbridge as it took the carriage and Doctor Plump inside the courtyard. The Doctor pulled the horse to a halt, jumped off the coach and with his black doctor’s bag in his hand, ran towards the massive iron and wooden door, leaving the tired, bewildered horse covered in a cloud of hot steam.

      He pulled hard on an iron bar with a handle attached. A bell sounded inside the castle loud enough to awaken the dead and their friends, the undead, who are like their dead friends but can come back to life again.

      Dr Plump waited, wrapping his long, black scarf closer around his thin, scrawny neck. The echo of the bell died down and then the only sound was the rain hitting his top hat as loud as the chattering teeth of an Eskimo with flu.

      From inside, the Doctor heard bars being drawn to allow the great door to be opened. It opened, but no more than a crack. He looked into the one black eye of Igon.

      Igon was as ugly as it was possible to be. In fact, uglier. He had only one eye, hence the name Igon. A glass eye hung round his neck in a pouch but he only used it on certain occasions such as reading the paper. He would sometimes put it in his trouser pocket to see how much money he had left.

      The Doctor spoke.

      ‘Doctor Plump,’ he wheezed.

      ‘No, I’m not. I’m Igon,’ said Igon and slammed the door.

      The Doctor was left in the pouring rain, the driving wind and the dark night. He thumped as hard as he could on the great iron door.

      ‘Igon!’ he shouted against the door and the wind.

      ‘Who is it?’ said a voice from the other side of the door.

      ‘Doctor Plump,’ the wet doctor shouted.

      ‘He’s not here,’ Igon shouted back.

      ‘No. I’m Plump.’

      ‘You should go on a diet then,’ said Igon, who wasn’t the cleverest person in the world.

      ‘Please, I’m Doctor Plump.’ He put his mouth closer to the door. ‘I’ve been summoned.’

      After a second or two the iron bars were once again removed from their sockets and the door creaked open a little. The same, single, black eye peered out.

      The Doctor spoke very quickly. ‘I’m Doctor Plump and His Most Gracious Vampari, King Victor, sent for me to have a look at His Serene Vampary Prince Valentine.’

      The