Excuse me for interrupting the flow of this modern disjunctivist autobiography but my publisher Wuhan Wet Market Publishing (WWMP) insists, and they have the contractual right to do so, that I not delve into significant details as to my name “Penniless Pensioner” in the early parts of the autobiography. My view dear reader is that you should know so I now have permission to impart some basic details only. Quite frankly I do not know how I have been saddled with this name.
It is my “collaborator” and friend Robert K. Stephen who created my name and given that I am not a pensioner nor am I, at least at this moment, penniless I had to pick his brain for how he derived this cockamamie name!
OK you’ll find out later that I worked as counsel (one amongst many) for Bernie Madoff. I will remind you that I cleaned up a few “questionable situations” for him but only when the chips fell where they did was it apparent to me these situations were questionable. Sort of like Robert Duval playing the role of consigliere in “The Godfather”. There are no horseheads in my bed I assure you. And listen to me carefully no charges against me “stuck” and neither was I disbarred! Legally (and perhaps morally) I did nothing inappropriate.
However Robert K. Stephen in his wine reviews needed a figure or concept to write about his low cost wines and he created me in innocence and good fun as a fictional character but somehow it took off and I am saddled with the name. I have to swallow the lumps with my gravy and the gravy is this book and a tentative movie bearing the name “Penniless Pensioner” which will if it goes ahead star John Travolta red hot off his last film “Paradise City” agrees to play me.
Mr. Stephen says in his mind “Penniless Pensioner” was a logical choice since Bernie Madoff (Not Bernie Saunders) supposedly fleeced pensioners but if they were pensioners they were filthy rich so a loss of a few hundred thousand hardly made them penniless. Yet the moniker “Penniless Pensioner” has a certain cache, doesn’t it? I will suffer the humiliation thank you Mr. Stephen for that but my financial return will be great! If Mr. Stephen was not my friend I would sue his ass off! Yes he has a 50% cut on the sales of my autobiography and the film should it be made. I suppose a shark needs a remora.
OK back to the story and all this crap about the bambino I once was.
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