AS well as having their reputation tarnished by the likes of Jimmy Saville, Huw Edwards, and Rolf Harris, the BBC havealso created some top-quality content throughout the years.

You may not agree with the licence fee or Gary Lineker’s face, but what we can all agree on is the Beeb have never been indirectly responsible for someone nearly drowning before.

However, Abergavenny man Johnny Turnip has made the dubious claim that a BBC film crew on the Mon and Brec towpath caused him to lose control of his push bike and go flying head over heels into the water!

“I’m not saying they’re completely responsible in the sense that I’m going to launch a lawsuit and sue them for a million bucks kind of way, but if they hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have lost my focus and ended up in Thomas Dadford’s locker!”

Turnip told the Chronicle that he was out for a leisurely ride during the recent heatwave when his path was blocked just after Crickhowell by a bunch of people with cameras, microphones and “some weird types in fancy dress!”

“As I slowed down, my first thought was that it was a bunch of types down from London shooting an adult film!” He explained.

“There was a middle-aged couple who looked like swingers all dressed up and sat at a table drinking wine.

“The one looked a bit like the chunky goth bird from Gavin and Stacey but with a little less timber and new hairdo, but the guy was a bit nondescript. “Which made me think it was probably a porno.”

Turnip explained that as he drew closer, someone yelled “Bike!” And the film crew graciously stepped aside.

“As I rode past I was about to scream ‘You disgusting perverts! What do you think you’re up to? Coming down here and getting up to god knows what on our beautiful canal! You needn’t think you can ask me for a cameo in your squalid little project!’

“And then I noticed that their cameras and a few of the jackets were emblazoned with the BBC logo and thought better of it.”

Turnip added, “Now I’d like to state for the record that I’m no fan of the BBC. If I walk into a room and Strictly Come Dancing is on I feel the urge to thrust my head in a bucket of ice cold water and silently scream.

“Give me Channel 5 any day of the week. It boasts vastly better quality documentaries and superior Christmas content. However, I respect both the history and free to view ethos behind British Broadcasting House, and so I just gave a few members of the crew some stern looks to let them know they were trespassing on someone else’s patch and moved on.

“The only trouble is, as I weaved my way through bridge after bridge at Olympic level speeds I began to feel like I had missed a potential break. It’s not everyday you meet a BBC film crew on the canal and it was the golden opportunity to have pitched them about an idea of mine that’s been germinating for some time.

“It involves me hosting my own show called, A Turnip in Time, where each week I would investigate famous supernatural cases from history and at the end of my extensive research I would deliver my own verdict, Jerry Springer style, if they were a happening or a hoax.

“With my natural charisma and vast experience of the supernatural, it was bound to be a hit. Big Tony and Puerto Rico Paul would be my hapless stooges and provide the comedy element and I’d be the no-nonsense, hard-boiled, and philosophical figure who always gets to the bottom of the most depraved depths and to the foundation of the finest facade.

“I just needed the investment and a platform, and the BBC had both. They’d surly now a good thing when they saw it.”

Turnip explained that giddy with excitement he planned to turn around and find a producer amongst the BBC film crew to pitch his idea too.

He told the Chronicle, “I slammed on the brakes but as it turns out, that was a big mistake. Lost in my daydreams of being the next Derek Acorah and hosting the Welsh version of Most Haunted, I had failed to realise how fast I was going, or how close I was to the canal’s edge.

“To compound matters, the bike’s back brake wasn’t working all that well but the front one certainly was. And as EL Bastardo bucked like a wild horse and upended me, the bitch threw me over the handlebars and unnervingly high in the air.

I
That’s no Turnip! It’s a spaniel! (Abergavenny Chronicle )

“As it tends to in such situations, time slowed to a crawl. And as I hung suspended in mid-air over the canal, as helpless and pathetic as a tattered teddy bear thrown out of the backseat of a car by some tyrannical thug of a toddler, I realised I was not only going in the dirty and polluted water but going in hard.

“This was an underwater job. I was going to a place where the boat people’s waste went, where bloated corpses of diseased animals floated, where oil gathered, where rats swam and where bacteria such as Leptospira lurked and waited for dickheads like me to fall in before pouncing.”

Turnip added, “All this and more crossed my mind as I fell like a dead-weight into the slop. My last thought before I made contact was a vague memory of how Fast Eddie in his teenage years had fallen into the canal drunk while walking home to Govilon from Abergavenny. Eddie had got stuck in the mud, and he had managed to crawl to the side and hang on for dear life for hours. If memory serves, the poor bastard had to wait all night for a dog walker to spot him and ring the fire brigade who winched him out with a crane. Heresay has it that he almost lost his legs, but I think that was just a cruel rumour started on the account that he’s technically a dwarf.

“Anyhow, all that was rendered obsolete as I went under and found a lot more than I bargained for.”

To be continued….