Captain Birdseye has died, and a nation mourns the loss of one of its greatest naval heroes.
The jovial character served a family of four with distinction from 1967 to his retirement in1998, when he was replaced by an unconvincing impostor.
Captain Birdseye – Britain’s most-recognised naval commander after Captain Cook, the TV chef - distinguished himself by sailing his ship, crewed only by young fussy eaters, on a series of daring exploits. The first man to sail up Everest, the intrepid navigator, explorer and coiner of terrible puns also discovered America, was the first to sail around the world via the North and South Poles, routed the French at Trafalgar, discovered a lost civilisation 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, swam back up them again, single-handedly evacuated the entire British Army from Dunkirk, sank the Bismarck, raised the Titanic, froze the Atlantic, and saved the whale.
Yet the white-bearded captain always remained a modest and humble enigma, concocting a delicious range of rectilinear seafood and delivering it personally to his juvenile ratings in their own mess - the filthy swines.
In later years he conducted his own robust defence against UN allegations regarding his employment of child sailors, saying: “Kids love the taste of my cod fish fingers. Arrr.”
Conflicting reports are still coming in about the manner of his passing. Some say he was hunted to extinction by merciless Spanish drift-net trawlers, while others suggest he was brutally flensed to death aboard a Japanese factory vessel. Some men say that he is not really dead at all - but will rise to Britain’s defence, in the hour of its greatest need, from his slumbers in the spawning-grounds of Avalon. Take your pick.
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