The Elephant Man of Chalfont St Giles

xI am not an animal...

...but I know someone who isx

x

Graham Edmonds

The latest episode in the harrowing tale of the Chalfont St Giles Elephant Man begins on Saturday, May 29 1999, on the gentle slopes of Little Kingshill in Buckinghamshire....

Like John Merrick, the Chalfont St Giles Elephant Man seemed normal at birth (coincidentally, neither of them share the same birthday as Andrew Hardy). However, at the age of two his parents first discovered that something might be amiss when they took him to McDonald's for the first time and he ate four Big Macs, two cheeseburgers, fries and a chair. At around about the same time the young Graham also displayed the first symptoms of his later illness, when he hit the side of his head falling out of his cot while inebriated on fermented breast milk.

Edmond's teenage years were relatively quiet medically, aside from various intense bouts of "Chalfont Fisting" (first mentioned by Milton in Paradise Bloody Well Lost Again, Sod It), where the sufferer has the uncontrollable urge (and ability) to insert the whole of one fist inside the mouth whilst simultaneously eating a kebab and whistling the theme tune from Starsky and Hutch.

Billed variously as "G-man", "Dances with Donuts", and even the outrageous "Graham" while performing with the travelling Chalfont St Giles Sunday XI, Edmond's condition continued to deteriorate until in early 1999 doctors decided to operate. In a marathon 8 hour operation, two feet of hair was removed from the back of the scalp, and after a long recovery period characterised by heavy drinking, all seemed to be going well until a bad hangover left him unable to see out of both eyes. Unfortunately, this coincided with a bizarre set of circumstances which saw Edmonds standing at the non-strikers end at Little Kingshill when a ball was hit directly down the wicket by a team-mate, leaving him no option but to intercept the ball with the right-hand side of his face. And the rest, as they say, is history....