It was dark outside when Donald answere the door. She had said she would be there at 6 o clock but now it was more like 9.00. She was a fishwife from Bolton and asked if she could gut his goldfish for sale in the morning.

For a moment he thought she might be slightly deranged. But she didn't seem quite as psychotic as most of the people he'd met latelty so he handed over his beloved pets on a silver tray.

Donald made a living nowadays as a abattoir cleaner.

.............

She spent days trailing around after him, collecting video footage for her net site and listening to stories about the time Shiela Tequilla and he had "been too much for Naples".

The pantomime developed loosely around the tale of Cinderella. Donald was Donald, the Prince was a dense Greek, the Sista a computer programmer and Buttons a n old queen

It all went well until the night of the performance, when, after drinking the free vodka, Donald came over all funny

She hallucinated enormous spiders and spent the rest of the night staring at the toilet bowl intently

and the hotel fire alarm went off at 5.00am in the morning. They all looked dog rough, except for Donald who had matching blue cotton Pyjamas.

They never found out "who done it" but the goldfish are all in heaven now.