Hello, dears! Well, we’re in a taxi on our way to the Gnarly Street Buttoclinic, then on to Mr Wormwood's place of business to talk insurance. There's a little something in my handbag I’d like to share with you. Jod’s only been living in the flat for a month, and I’m having to have the carpets replaced (it's my fault - I ought to have put more effort into house training). Anyway, I made quite a find under the underlay…
OBITUARIES
Maybelline Burpfeld, legendarily dubious club proprietress and eccentric, was a magnet for the parched and the damned. Anyway, she's dead at 76. Good innings for a bent crone who was widely disliked and forever off her scrawny, grey tits.
by Glinda Gossip-Champion
Maybelline Burpfeld was born in the Cotswold village of Sodden-Gusset in 1904, one of seventeen spiritually orphaned children. Her mother, Grimelda, was present throughout her childhood - although she remained completely silent with her head in her hands, removing it only when there arose an opportunity to drag on a cigarette. According to Maybelline's sister, Fartina, the children would take it in turns to steal fags from friends and neighbours, wedging them between their beloved mother's fingers in the hope of getting another glimpse of her face.
Following the Great War, Maybelline woke up at Oxford. Unsure of whether she had enrolled or simply been jostled in at some point during a protracted bender, she shrugged and proceeded to attend lectures in ancient philosophy and classics. After reading Procopius's Anecdota, the young Burpfeld resolved that, upon leaving Oxford, she would open a nightclub.
Neither sent down nor allowed to remain at Oxford, Maybelline travelled to London and found work as a glass collector at several Soho bistros. Once she had enough, she put them behind a bar on Gerrard Street. Known for short changing, and fabricating the bar bills of those too pissed to remember, Burpfeld's Bar was quickly destroyed in a fire started by vengeful patrons. Reopening under the pseudonym of Mayfield's, and equipped with a water supply, the establishment thenceforth only ever suffered moderate internal fire damage.
Maybelline collected a motley crew of loyal and similarly bent staff, and she came to be known (one guesses not terribly affectionately, given her reputation for severely punishing prodigality) as "Ma".
Maybelline Burpfeld died in a tin collapse at a cash and carry in Crouch End. She is survived by friend and loyal skivvy, Oyster Binox.