As Johnny Depp once said:

"I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it."

No, really, he did... But the poor bugger still has to sit on a big pile of money $400 million high and repeatedly have sweaty, monkey sex with Amber Heard (The blonde girl off of Zombieland) 

Amber Heard

So I'm guessing that he considers his life a massive failure. What with all the fame and the money and having to spend 14 years gettin-jiggy-wid French popstrel Vanessa Paradis previous to that.

Vanessa Paradis

I mean, just look at the quality of his taste in available women, the poor little fellah.

But anyway, enough of comparing myself to this professional pirate impersonator.  Let us concentrate more on our differences...

I was going to do a table and be all scientific and stuff, but I wrote it out on paper first and... to be honest, I couldn't read what I'd written after most of the ink had been washed away by my uncontrollable tears.  But suffice it to say, I am not 'Best buds' with Tim Burton, I do not have Alice Cooper on speed-dial and I do not own a vineyard in St. Tropez.

But the main difference is that I would love to be famous.  I know it changes you. I know that there wouldn't be a portion of my life that was private anymore (<remember this bit for the big reveal later)

And I don't mean fairly famous... I'm pretty sure that I'm 'fairly famous' already - I mean, you guys have all heard of me, Michael Sheen (Yes, THAT Michael Sheen) wished me Happy Christmas last month. I also count Yvette Fielding, Dr. Karl Fielding and Rufus Hound as close, personal friends (As long as you don't tell them about it - I'm not sure that it's 100% reciprocal - I mean, they like and retweet a lot of my stuff... Well some of it... maybe a couple each, tops... I'm so alone.)

and Scott Page, the saxophonist from Pink Floyd, thinks I'm cool - No, really he does.

But I want a gold plated helicarrier with a giant naked picture of myself on the bottom, I want Vin Diesel to walk everywhere behind me just punching his left fist into his right palm every time i talk to anyone, whilst wearing the sunglasses from 'Pitch Black'. I want whistling lobsters as shoulder-pads.

Am I ever going to be that rich?

Not on my own, no... What I need are followers (No, not 'Drink the Coolaid' type followers - put that straight-jacket down) I mean, like a regular audience who can spread the word and increase the numbers of the Dandy Nation.

To that end, I have done the unthinkable... From tomorrow, 28th January, to 1st February 2016 All three of my Chimping Dandy books will be FREE to download onto your Kindle, or Kindle compatible device from Amazon.

Here are the Links:

Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin - My First book... Read the reviews if you're unsure as to whether to download it FOR FREE - All five star, all of the time

The Pangolin Yodels - My second book... All five star reviews again (except the one four star review). You don't need to have read 'Mumblings' before you read this one - But you know, there's no reason not to because you can download it FOR FREE

And finally...

Do you have children, are they of an age where they're not so easily scared and/or overawed by life on this big ball of snot that we call 'The Earth'? Do you read them bed-time stories, or throw a book at them and say "Read this until you fall asleep"? Well, if you do, then you should totally get this:

The Collected Children's Pangolin Primer - This is a collection of volumes 1 and 2 from above, but with all the drugs, sex and swearing taken out (I think it might say 'bugger' once... But it's used as an expletive, not a verb) - It has a picture of my Son on the front... It's pretty dim, it's a bit like those 'The longer you stare into the fog, the more zombies you will see' type thing, but he's definitely there. This can also be downloaded FOR FREE

So, if I want to be rich, why am I giving my books away?

Well, in all honesty, I'm trying to get you hooked, so that when my fiction books come out (And the Pangolin books contain some of the stories that they're based on if you need a sweetener) you'll dive onto them like an extra from 'Breaking Bad' dives onto anything blue and translucent.

Just think of me as your friendly neighborhood drug dealer - only hairier, and possibly fatter with a slightly less casually racist Hispanic name.

But seriously Buy... I mean, GET FOR FREE, my books, make me famous, I'l buy you a chinchilla or something when I am. Totally, you will probably have to remind me though.

Remember when I said that I wouldn't be worried that none of my life would be private? Well, if you get these books, you'll know pretty much everything there is to know about me anyway - And that's got to be worth at least nothing at all... Hasn't it?

Yes Miss, erm, I mean... Mum.

Some of you will have read a couple of my 'What I would do if I won the Lottery' or 'Things I intend to do before I die' posts.  But, in real life (I do have one you know - The Chimping Dandy is just my evil alter-ego, established to try and protect the innocent from my waffling opinionated diatribe) there's one thing that I said I would do if I won a decent amount of tax-free cash... It would need to be £25 Million or more to make it worth while.

I would yank the Dandylets out of school and 'Home School' them.

No, wait, stop laughing... Sit down, dry your eyes, put down that fire extinguisher and listen.

This year's UK Education Budget (for schools, not Further Education) is just over £77 Billion, and there are around 9.5 Million kids at school, or who have at least signed up for school, they may be sat in a pool of their own urine playing age-inappropriate games on a stolen PS3, doesn't matter.  So, a bit of entirely in my head maths gives us a figure of £8,200 per child per year or £43 per day.  And that's assuming that every school and every child gets the same amount... But they don't, the chunk of the money-pie that your kids' school gets varies wildly.  There are all kinds of factors, how deprived the catchment area is, how popular the school is, how many 'Special Needs' kids the school has - All sorts of things, your mileage will almost certainly vary.  And unbelievably, I used to be a School Governor, so I know these things.

Then the little snots actually have to listen whilst some adenoidal, gimlet-eyed jackanape with a degree in Media Studies drones on about crop rotation in the 18th Century for an hour every Thursday afternoon and turns them away from learning as if it were a low-quality DVD of their parents conceiving them at a Duran Duran reunion gig in Northampton in 2003. (If it were the late 80's - Early 90's now, I could have done a cracking Jethro Tull tie in - Damn this living in the future business! - And 5 points to the first person to pick up the cleverly hidden hook there...)

So, you've got schools that can't afford to make education interesting, and you've got kids that don't want to learn because it's boring, and you've got parents that whinge and whine about having to give the school a fiver once a year so that little Chablis and her surprisingly non-similar looking brother Leroy can go on an all-expenses paid, fully chaperoned day trip to a theme-park of their choice, travel, insurance and a limp ham sandwich for the coach driver included.

The obvious thing would be, if you cared about your kids education, and their usefulness as future citizens of the world, to say 'thanks but no thanks' to the State Education system and teach them yourself.  Right?

No, completely wrong.  Not most of the time, not for most of us.  OK, it could be that the parent in question was a qualified teacher.  But most of us aren't.  It could be that the parent in question has a huge ring of friends who have children of similar ages that they are also home schooling who are geographically close enough to ensure the daily social interaction required for healthy emotional growth.  But most of us haven't.  It's possible that the parent that did the bulk of the 'schooling' would be open-minded enough to not present their mal-informed opinions as 'Gawd's Honest Truth' and give the child a full spectrum of ideas and let them pick their own opinions.  But deep down, how many of us can say we'd do that? - I mean, the Mini-Dandy already hates the French, and I'm not sure she's ever actually met one (although it does make me proud and a little bit dewy eyed).

I know, and when I say 'know', what I actually mean is I occasionally breathe some of the same air as, a couple of people who Home-school their kids.   And they're not teachers, not in any definition of the word... I mean, I wouldn't trust either of them to try and teach a dog to bark. One of them has a kid with, what are now called 'Behavioural Difficulties' that she regularly shouts loudly and colourfully at him for.  The other's child is clingy to the point of me wondering if her Mother was involved in a medical trial involving in-utero injections of Octopus and Velcro DNA - Nice enough kid though, just tends to shadow her Mother, or her single, similarly aged friend at a distance of 3/4 of an inch at all times.

They can't be products of a well rounded education can they?  I mean, I'm only looking in from the outside and I've got a distorted view, choc full of pre-conceived ideas and bigotry.  But on most occasions when I see them, I do the whole sharp intake of breath thing, shake my head and say something like 'Poor kid!' slightly too loudly than is generally considered polite.

That's why I'd not try it myself, not unless I had access to almost limitless funds.  I certainly couldn't do it if I worked for a living, what with teaching being a full-time job and everything.  But if I did, if we won big, how would I go about it?  Well, I'd have to generate some kind of curriculum I guess.  I'd probably try to make everything tie together with real world examples.

Things like:

English:  Onto an easy gig here, both of the smaller Dandies devour the written word more voraciously than Kerry Katona wolfs down Iceland Frozen Prawn Rings - In fact, we often have to cover up the labels on the sauce bottles so the Micro-Dandy will stop reading them and eat his Dinner at night.

Art:  We would fly by customised 4-seater Apache Gunship, once a week, to the major galleries of the world, The Louvre, Vatican Museums, Musee D'Orsay, British Museum, Reina Sofia, Pergamonmuseum and Guggenheim would hold no secrets from us, I'd get Fortnum & Mason packed lunches delivered and we'd all have a go at re-imagining the Old Masters in the style of Roy Lichtenstein

Physics:  I would take everyone to the Grand Canyon and we'd throw water balloons off the edge, film it all with high speed cameras and whoop uncontrollably whilst we reviewed the footage, playing it backwards and forwards.

Chemistry:  We'd watch re-runs of Breaking Bad and NOT cook Meth at all, ever, because that would be illegal.  Might be fun to try some of the other stuff that Walter does though...

Biology:  The rain forest would probably be the best place for this, wander about a bit, look at the pretty butterflies, maybe take a detour to the Galapagos Islands, ride a few turtles, poke a couple of marine Iguanas, let them sneeze salt onto us whilst we feed them exotic flowers.

History:  I've always thought of wandering through France, looking disdainfully at the populace, muttering the word 'Vichy' under my breath every time I received poor service (So, like, probably quite a lot) and then buying a tank and driving it into Belgium to visit places like Ypres and Passchendaele.

Geography:  Simple - You buy a big globe, spin it around, get one of the kids to stop it and buy four first-Class plane tickets to wherever their grubby fingers are pointing - Then spend a week speaking loudly to the natives in clipped Estuary English, adding 'O' to the end of every other word until they understand how to make a decent Martini.

Metalwork/Woodwork:  I've always fancied a decent workshop, this would be the perfect excuse.  There'd be hand-tools of every shape and size.  Steam-powered machine-tools from Britain's Golden age and Japanese electronic marvels of 3D printing and Robotics.  I would use them to make a matched set of Iron-Man suits, made of Ivory seized from Namibian poachers who disappeared shortly afterwards under unexplained circumstances.

Music:  Metallica would play in one of the upstairs bathrooms every Wednesday,  After which Kurt would give everyone Guitar Lessons, Rob would teach us all the Bass, James would show us how to growl without hurting our little throats and Lars would sit in the bath with a towel over his head being a bit of a cock.

Economics:  I would leave the entire finances package, including foreign exchange rates, hotel bills, fines, tolls, restaurants and general household bills to the kids.  In fairness, they'd be hard pushed to make more of a hash of it than me.

Once, in the dim and distant past, the now Head-Master of Mini-Dandy's Senior School said to me 'I think you'd make a great teacher... As long as you found yourself somehow mysteriously transported to 1850.'  And I'll take that both as a complement and a vindication of my qualifications.

Anyone want me to educate their children for them?

No?