Jane Taylor's shaggy mouse story, triumphantly revisited

I think it would be fair to call this one a slow burner.

Back in May I reproduced a tall tale told by Jane Taylor, the award-winning singer songwriter, at the Bristol folk festival about the loss of her her mobile telephone and its apparent abduction by some genetically modified mice, which - she was led to believe - had escaped from the labs of the local university.

It might serve you well to have a look at the original story before moving on to its denouement...

For I rashly promised at the end of that post that I'd do my best to get hold of the mocked-up BBC web page that, more than anything else, convinced Taylor that her phone was being held by kleptomaniac rodents.

Yes. I know.

Weeks ticked passed. My original optimism that Lee, Taylor's partner, would come up with the goods began to wane. And I wondered a little bit whether the entire story had, itself, been a shaggy mouse tale.

Until last night.

Imagine my delight when, on the point of logging off for the evening, I found this email from Lee, the Geek god.

"Good evening Emma,

Firstly I must apologise for the delay in getting back to you on this. I am Lee (The Geek)! I have finally tracked down the image I knocked up regarding the mice. I didn't even put it on line, it was just sent as an image. I was actually shocked that anyone had fallen for it for more than a minute. You can imagine my inner chuckles going into overdrive when I realised I'd tricked the whole band for the best part of twelve hours to the point of Jane actually believing she was negotiating the return of the phone with the farmer!

Thanks for your interest and I apologise again for taking five month in getting this to you.

I'll give Jane a nudge to have a look at your blog as well.

Kind regards and best wishes,
Lee"

This followed eleven minutes later.

"Just remembered how grammatically illogical some of the sentences were in the article. Again, another reason to disbelieve the authenticity of the article!"

He also explained that among the reasons for the delay were that (1) they've got a two year old in the house (2) Jane is a musician (which appears to be shorthand for something or other) and (3) possibly most importantly, Lee's mum had had a terrible health scare in the intervening months, for which she'd received the all-clear the previous day, clearing lots of space in Lee's head to get around to admin that had been lying untouched.

So, excellent news about Lee's mum. And also excellent news for the rest of us. Because he included in the email a screen grab of his handiwork. So without further ado I give you *drum roll* shaggy mice playing chess.

It turns out that Taylor has a series of gigs coming up, including one in London, which you can read about here. And that there will also be a Christmas single. 

Guinea pigs roasting on an open fire?

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