List of Peter Simple's Characters - Major

Major

• Julian Birdbath — perennially unsuccessful writer and "last citizen of the Republic of Letters". Performed astounding feat of literary detective-work by discovering a fourth Brontë sister, Doreen Brontë, and ghostwrote the autobiography of General "Tiger" Nidgett, but, as always, never received the recognition or payment he deserved. Finally retired to a disused lead mine in Derbyshire to work on a biography of Stephen Spender with only his pet toad, Amiel, for company. Mr Shuttleworth, a poultry farmer and part-time literary agent, is Birdbath's nearest neighbour, and sometimes relays items of literary news by shouting down the mineshaft.

• Trevor Dimwiddie — "underwater motorcycling ace" of varying age, appearance and origins. See also Sir Sid Ballpoint.

• Neville Dreadberg — avant-garde artist and self-publicist and husband of Pippa. Writer of the "classic documentary television plays" Serviettes of Death, Blood Orange and Monsters in Blue, dealing with crime, corruption and cannibalism amongst the white Rhodesians, Ulster Protestants and the British police, respectively. Anticipated Harold Pinter and Will Self.

• Mrs Dutt-Pauker — immensely rich and privileged Hampstead socialist, admirer of Stalin and rumoured lover of the East German communist leader Walter Ulbricht. She is the mother of Deirdre Dutt-Pauker, and the grandmother of the precociously bearded Maoist toddler and noted political theorist Bert Brecht Mao Rudy Che Odinga (or Mao Banana). She employs the Albanian Maoist au pair girl Gjoq. Lives at a palatial Hampstead mansion called "Marxmount", but also owns a house called Leninmore in the west of Ireland, bought at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Named after the communists Palme Dutt and Ana Pauker, she is based on leftist pundits such as the Toynbee family. She anticipated Margaret Hodge.

• Alderman Foodbotham — "the 25-stone, iron-watch-chained, crag-visaged, grim-booted" Lord Mayor of Bradford and "perpetual chairman of the Bradford City Tramways and Fine Arts Committee". Officially died in 1928 but local legend says he "lies asleep in a mountain cave near Northowram", waiting the summons "to save his city in its hour of supreme danger".

• Doreen Gaggs — trend-crazed tabloid and women's magazine journalist and wife of Jack Moron.

• Sir Jim Gastropodi — born in Poggibonsi, conductor of the Stretchford Municipal Symphony Orchestra and obsessive admirer of Mahler, newly discovered symphonies by whom he insists on playing, to the disgust of Ron Spheroyd. Inspired by Sir John Barbirolli. Also from Poggibonsi are Giovanni Botulismo, proprietor of the popular Salmonella restaurant, and the late Giuseppe Fittopaldi, composer of the operas 'Le sorelle Brontë', 'Bramwell' (sic), 'La Fanciulla del Riding Occidentale', and 'Alderman Foodbotham di Bradford', all to libretti by an unidentified author.

• J. Bonington Jagworth — leader of the militant Motorists' Liberation Front and defender of "the basic right of every motorist to drive as fast as he pleases, how he pleases and over what or whom he pleases". Suspicious of his Marxist chief-of-staff Royston Cylinder but good friend of Rev John Goodwheel. Anticipated Jeremy Clarkson by three decades.

• Dr Heinz Kiosk — psychoanalyst who believes "We are all guilty!"

• Jack Moron — tabloid journalist and husband of Doreen Gaggs. Writes aggressive articles demanding progress and change or warning of foreign peril.

• The Earl of Mountwarlock — the eight-foot, cyclops-eyed owner of the monster-infested Mountwarlock Estate near Stretchford. See also Phantomsby, Mr Dis, MacAnguish and Ghoulman.

• Lieutenant General Sir Frederick "Tiger" Nidgett — retired leader of the Royal Army Tailoring Corps and maker of inspirational speeches full of fatuous rhetoric. His autobiography, Up Sticks and Away!, was ghostwritten by Julian Birdbath. Alleged mentor of Tony Blair:

'Lovers of oratory have often remarked on the abiding influence on Tony Blair of Gen Sir Frederick ("Tiger") Nidgett, supreme orator, veteran war hero and creator of the Royal Army Tailoring Corps'.

• Harry and Janet Nodule — traffic-jam fans of Brassgrove Park in south London and always on the look out for a "good snarl-up".
• King Norman the Good — future head of the Royal Socialist Family. Husband of Queen Doreen, son-in-law of the Queen Gran, father of Princes Barry and Kevin and Princesses Shirley and Tracey, brother-in-law of Duke Len of Erdington.

• Phantomsby — butler and factotum of the Earl of Mountwarlock and "one of the few practising werewolves left in the Midlands". Has a sharp-toothed but infectious smile.

• Albert Rasp — lethargic, goal-conceding goalkeeper of Stretchford United.

• Old Seth Roentgen — scientific farmer who grows money and share-certificates directly from the soil and regularly disturbs or even kills his neighbours with agricultural experiments. Father of buxom, dark-eyed, lab-coated Hephzibah. Not to be confused with Old Seth the Wasp-Keeper.

• Dr Spacely-Trellis — progressive Bishop of Bevindon in the Stretchford Conurbation, where his domestic chaplain is the mischief-making Rev. Peter Nordwestdeutscher. Anticipated and strongly resembles David Jenkins, Richard Harries, Rowan Williams and many other Anglican clerics.

• Sir Herbert Trance — head of the British Boring Board of Control based at Lethargy House. World-famous bores competing in competitions organized by the BBBC (and chronicled by Narcolept) include Antonin Bvorak from Czechoslovakia, Jean-Pierre Cafard from Canada, Grant Coma Jr from America, Shloime ben Chloroform from Israel (aka "Glorious Shloime") and Ron Stupor from Australia.

• 'Wayfarer' — expert on London byways. Continually discovering lost communities of Anglo-Saxon washerwomen, whirling dervishes, Incas, Mongols, et al. visited in their time by authorities such as Samuel Johnson and Thomas Carlyle but now usually reduced to one aged representative living in reduced circumstances "behind an ordinary-looking pet shop in South London's Turgis Hill High Street".