An interview with Danger Mouse
by Glen Passman.
A little backstreet cafe in London on a cold and frosty day in mid January. It's not the exact place you expect to meet someone who was once at the top of his trade. As a fine comedy actor, an intelligent special agent of the British secret service, and as a little white mouse. But it was here the instructions told me to go to if I wanted the scoop of the century. An interview with the one and only Danger Mouse himself.
It was a remarkable moment as I passed through the door to see the once almighty rodent sitting in front of me as large as life. He had soon disappeared completely from public life after the ending of his television contract and the dissolution of MI5's special rodent agency. Many rumours had formed about his disappearance, including that he'd joined forces with famed supercriminal Baron Greenback in a vain attempt at world domination, that he'd joined a strange rodent-worshipping cult in the middle of the Nevada desert, or that he'd been eaten up by a large ginger tom. DM himself takes up the story.
"Well, after the split of the programme, I tried my hand at other modes of fame, managed to get a recording contract with Sony which in the end came to nothing, wrote an autobiography that got censored by the MOD, stuff like that. In the end I have to admit I lost it. Went onto some heavy shit, you know, drink and drugs and stuff. In the end I started to have hallucinations that Penfold was in fact Satan's pet hamster sent to signal the start of Armageddon. When they found me by his bed one morning with a baseball bat and a box of hamster food, I think they realised I'd a serious problem and threw me into drug rehab. None of it made the news of course, they'd just started rerunning the show, and decided to keep it totally secret. Kept it from the tabloids too, dunno how they pulled that off!"
So, I asked DM, you mentioned Penfold there, do you still have contact with him?
"No, that wasn't the first time I'd tried to kill him and quite frankly he was getting a little pissed off at it all. In the end he got an injunction to keep me away. Last I heard, he'd settled in a nice postbox over in Surbiton with a wife and kid. And good luck to him I say. Of course, we send each other Christmas and birthday cards, but that's all for the past... ooh... three years I think."
What was Penfold really like? Was he really that timid little rodent everyone saw?
DM chuckled to himself. "Ooh, no way! Okay, when the cameras were on him he played them up. The cameras loved him! Okay, there was a rumour at the time that the cameraman also loved him, but that's a different story. Anyway, when the cameras were off, he was a right foul-mouthed blighter! Good grief, once the director called cut, he'd eff and blind like nothing you ever heard! And he had such a temper too! Production got him the wrong type of cheese once, he'd asked for cheddar, they'd got him wensleydale, and he threw an almighty tantrum! Half-destroyed the pillar-box, and took ages to sort out the mess. Cost Thames TV an absolute fortune, it did. I'm not saying he wasn't great fun though. Nights on the town were always a riot with old Penfold. He had this party trick involving a pint glass, a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and a cheap whore..."
Aaaaanyway, what about your boss?
"Oh, you mean Colonel K? Ooh, the stories I could tell you about him. They say he's got little walruses all over the place, he used to spread it about if you catch my drift. Used to boast about his 'accomplishments' too, once he claimed he laid three lasses in one night! He was a sex machine, that guy! Of course, his wife didn't see him much, it all came out in the papers, they divorced, and he just lost it worse than I did. He did the whole last series of Danger Mouse whilst out of his tree on this-and-that. We tried getting a stand-in for him. Cosgrove wouldn't have any of it though, said we needed to keep him in for the ratings. I still blame him for it all collapsing like it did. Haven't seen him or heard from him since."
I heard a rumour that there were some dodgy dealings between Colonel K and Baron Greenback...
"There was! You really think that we'd be able to beat Greenback all the time? I mean that Stiletto was a real hardcase, there was no way we'd get past him like we did. Yeah, Colonel K had a little 'slush fund' as he called it, kept some money aside in the department's budget, used it for backhanders to Greenback. Worked though. Some say it went on in a lot of the Intelligence services, although I can't vouch for it myself."
I lined myself up to ask him another question, but I was interrupted by a mysterious figure who tapped Danger Mouse on the shoulder. He was a rotund fellow, but the shadow cast by the hat he wore masked his face, although I could make out a green hue...
"I'm sorry," said DM, "Time's up, I can't answer anymore questions. I have... erm... things to plan as my lovely *choke choke!* secretary has reminded me... STILLET... erm... BODYGUARD! See Mr Passman to the door please, there's a nice crow!"
So, that was the end of that. A meeting and the truth from the one and only Danger Mouse, still a powerhouse by anyone's standards.
© Glen Passman 1998.
Danger Mouse and all connected characters are © Cosgrove Hall Productions. Not really used with permission, but hoping they don't mind use using them!
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