A bucket for Monsieur

I was sat in the pub with a very good friend of mine last night and something appeared on the TV in the bar that brought up the subject of 'Bucket Lists'.

A Bucket List, for those of you who've never heard the term, is a list of things that you'd like to do before you die. It usually comprises of things like 'Swim with dolphins' or 'Write the next Great, British novel' - Generally a list of things that are possible, but very unlikely.

Mine, as you can probably imagine, doesn't contain those things... It does however contain one that appears on a lot of people's lists, even though it's more of a wish than an activity. It's the 'trigger' that would enable many of the others to come to fruition, so I'll start with that one:

• Win more than £100 million on the National Lottery. This one causes a bit of contention in the Dandy household, Mrs Dandy is a great believer in the idea of 'having enough' - She'd like to win the lottery, but just win enough to live comfortably and never have to worry about money ever again. Maybe just a couple of millions. I however would like to be so obscenely rich that it caused fish to spontaneously combust if they swam within 500 yards of me.

• I want to own a house, with a private lake, that had a Captain Nemo themed, victorian cast-iron conservatory under it. So I could sit in a sunlounger, watching my killer whales swim by overhead.

• Ah, yes, I want to own a breeding pair of killer whales (Maybe this should have been higher up the list.)

• Over the years, I've developed quite a list of people I'd like to go for a beer with, these include, but are not limited to: Nathan Fillon, Sir Patrick Stewart, Kevin Smith, John Rezig, Robert Carlisle, Danny Trejo, Denis Leary, Hugh Jackman, Richard Dean Anderson, Jason Bradbury, Adrian Edmonson, Rufus Hound, Al Murray, Felicia Day, Peter Dinklage, Samuel L Jackson, Rob Brydon, Neil Patrick Harris, James May, Henry Rollins, Anthony Bourdain, Ron Perlman and obviously, Guy Martin - If any of you know, or indeed are, any of these people - feel free to get in touch. (You'll notice that there is only one young lady in that list, this is because I said 'go for a beer with' not 'Git jiggy wit' in a Hall Pass stylee.)

• I want an 18th century pirate ship, and crew, with which I would sail around the pacific firing broadsides of chocolate and cream cakes at passing cruise-liners. I would call it the HMS Old Jamaica, and operate under a letter of Marque personally given to me by Bertie Bassett.

• Have a fully working F302 (Google it) and use it as my day-to day transport.

• Buy a brand new Lamborghini, in cash, from the dealership on a busy Saturday afternoon, then chainsaw it in half on the forecourt whilst dressed as Pennywise from Steven King's IT and laughing maniacally.

• Build a branch of Domino's Pizza in my house.

• Have a set of bespoke combination spanners made and tuned so that they played different notes when struck, I would then hang them in my twelve car, centrally heated and carpeted garage and have Sir Patrick Moore brought back from the grave holographically (Like Tupac) so that he could teach me to play the Imperial March on them.

• I would buy a horse, a narwhal and a marabou stork and have a repatriated Nazi scientist combine them to make a unicorn pegasus, which I would then name Teal'c and train to stand on my F302 and act as a kind of 'lifeboat' in case I ever got into trouble whilst in the air. He would also have to be trained to say 'Indeeeed' and wear a space-helmet (presumably with some kind of hole for his horn).

• Have a combat - ready AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, painted in the Louis Vuitton brown & gold luggage pattern and provide a vigilante traffic enforcement service, whereby I would blow up any car that seemed to be driven badly, by a chav, or pink...

• And lastly, the thing I saw on the TV that fateful night, that started off this whole mad idea - I would like to render a midget unconcious with a single karate chop to the side of the neck. (Maybe Peter Dinklage could help?)

There are many other things that I have thought of that might one day make their way onto this list, but a lot of them will probably never happen, so I thought I'd just put down the ones that were most sensible and achievable.