99 YEARS OLD AND STILL JAM-PACKED WITH RAMS...

THE furore continues over conflicting claims concerning available accommodation offered to travellers at peak times, with a leading figure maintaining that he was forced to crouch on a squalid floor as nothing else was available. The owner of the floor in question however has released pictures apparently showing that there was plenty of unoccupied room.

The incident happened near the Carmarthenshire village of Bethlehem, where the man, referred to only as JC, had travelled when, according to him, he and his pregnant wife had to spend the night in a stable because, as he put it, “There was no room at the inn”.

The owner of the Dick-Branson Inn chain of hostelries however has now produced pictures in support of his claim that JC and his wife could have had a room if they had asked for it.

“These pictures,” Mr Branson said, “cast great doubt on the customer’s claim that no rooms were available which must also raise questions about the veracity of the later film Life Of Brian which was supposedly based on the incident. Had we known that JC’s wife was heavily pregnant, we would, of course, have given them the Virgin Berth, specifically kept for such emergencies. But as the pictures show, she was outside parking the camel when he came in to ask about the possible availability of a room. We’re sorry, incidentally, to have taken so long to release the pictures of JC, his wife and the baby and indeed the hotel register but you know what it’s like with painters. What with their fuss about artistic values and waiting for the oils to dry, it always takes ages.”

“Did you say ‘parking the camel’?” we asked. “Why didn’t they come by train?”

“You’ll have to ask them that,” he replied; so we did.

“Whatever Mr Branson says,” JC insisted, “the place was ram-packed.”

“Surely you mean ‘jam-packed’,” we commented.

“No,” he said: “ram-packed. The stable was packed with sheep. Not just rams but ewes too. You can see them in some of the paintings.”

“According to the innkeeper, you left your wife outside parking a camel. Is that correct and if so, why didn’t you come by train? The best medical advice warns that it is inadvisable for pregnant women to ride camels.”

“There was no room on the trains either,” said JC. “It was Christmas.”

That claim has also been contested in a statement by three men who had travelled to Carmarthen by train the same day and arrived shortly after JC’s wife gave birth. “There were plenty of seats available. If JC had been wise like us, he’d have booked in advance and made considerable savings. Funny really, we thought we were following a star to Bethlehem, but Tom Jones wasn’t there at all.”

Seeing JC’s wife happily rocking the baby to sleep, we asked her what name they had given him.

“We were going to call him Jezza after his dad,” she said, “but we thought that might be confusing, so we called him Brian instead.”

And the rest is history.