100 YEARS OLD AND STILL COMPLETELY INNOCENT...

WE ARE delighted to announce that a parliamentary inquiry has completely exonerated Beachcomber from allegations that he may have committed offences against good spelling, grammatical rectitude and even apostrophic correctness 17 years ago when serving as principal unpaid adviser to the Apostropher Royal, Sir D’Arcy O’D’Ath.

Sir D’Arcy, you will probably recall, died suddenly in 2000 of a surfeit of semi-colons. It was Beachcomber who found him collapsed at his desk and who arranged, with commendable promptitude, for him to be rushed to hospital for emergency semi-colonic irrigation, but sadly he could not be saved and his life came to a full stop.

As the last person to see Sir D’Arcy alive, and a man with almost unrivalled access to both apostrophes and semicolons, Beachcomber was questioned by the police but no further action was taken. Indeed, when Sir D’Anville O’M’Darlin’ was named as Sir D’Arcy’s successor in the role of Apostropher Royal, Beachcomber’s position as adviser was promptly renewed.

Earlier this year however a retired police officer who had taken part in the investigation of Sir D’Arcy’s death reported that errors had been found on Beachcomber’s abacus including a misspelling of the word “abacus” itself which it was alleged had been written with a double-b.

Beachcomber had always vigorously denied the allegations saying that they were unfounded and deeply hurtful and he had never in his life spelt “abacus” with a double-b. The word, he said, was in any case, on the frame of the abacus, not the beads themselves which should have been the sole focus of the police investigation as the abacus was looked at only for any evidence it may have held about the number of semi-colons shared between Beachcomber and Sir D’Arcy.

In his testimony to the enquiry however he admitted that his left-hand index finger may have fleetingly and totally inadvertently touched the letter B twice on an isolated occasion but if that had happened, he would have deleted one of the Bs immediately. He added that he would also, of course, have been deeply apologetic if this had happened and anyone had seen it, and he would have expressed the deepest regret if he had made anyone feel uncomfortable.

In an exhaustive report on their findings, the members of the parliamentary inquiry unanimously state that: “We have found no evidence whatsoever of catachresis, misspelling or any grammatical solecism to support the claims and allegations that have been made against Beachcomber on matters apostrophic or orthographic and even if he did spell “abacus” with a double-b, we should remember that it was a long time ago and for all we know that may have been the way they spelt it at the time anyway.

“We should like to add that we are deeply indebted to Beachcomber for reading this report before its publication and correcting several errors. Let him continue his good work without a stain, blemish or diacritic on his character.”