Suzy & Mickey’s Blog – January 2026

Suzy Wood: Word on the street is that you had a race over hurdles.

Monansunu: Yes. It’s a bit of a weird thing to do, isn’t it?

S: Not really. Only a weird horse would find it strange. This is not the first weird thing that you have said whilst denying any weirdness in yourself.

M: And it was too muddy as well. Mud is good for rolling in or making hole digging easier, but I am not sure that it helps with running. The good thing was that I could then have a few days off to digest what had happened.

S: And what did you conclude?

M: I think that my next race should have the words “Gold” and “Cup” somewhere in the title.

S: What, something like “Watch the Cheltenham Gold Cup on RTV Hurdle?”

M: You may scoff…

S: I may and I will.

M: But he who laughs last, laughs longest.

S: Which is something equally true of the deranged, that they laugh longest.

M: If you keep making these insinuations, I will head over and join in with the conspiracy of chesnuts. With or without Mel Gibson’s assistance.

S: OK, sorry. But you are a step behind most of us in terms of races with things to jump over, and as a responsible adult, I would not want you to give the emerging youngsters an incorrect impression. Luckily for you, the list of horses here who have never jumped in anger is quite short.

M: How short?

S: It reads “Dougal” and he is quite an impressionable sort, so it would be best if you could avoid passing suspect information onto him.

Dougal: Don’t worry, I wasn’t listening.

S: Good. Don’t let it happen again.

M: I have noticed that when we make a list about something, Dougal is usually the only horse on it.

S: This is what is called mentoring. It is the added value that we bring to the yard.

M: Do the dogs mentor?

S: Yes.

M: The cats?

S: Hard to say, because they are both from the same litter.

M: Chickens?

S: No, they just make a racket.

M: I may teach the cats to mentor the chickens.

S: Before there is a risk of any progress with that or some form of chicken protest, we can move onto this month’s question. It comes from a Mr A Nierob of California. He writes “I am Mel Gibson’s publicist. Will you kindly stop encouraging his wilder flights of fantasy, as my job is hard enough at the best of times. Thank you very much.”

M: I have two points to make about that.

S: Is one of them that Mel keeps writing to us? We are definitely not doing anything to encourage him.

M: It is, although rather “definitely not,” I would say “usually not.”

S: Is the other that Mr Nierob mentions wilder flights of fantasy, so does that mean we can encourage the moderate to light ones?

M: Yes, that is exactly how I would interpret it too.

S: So we are in consensus.

M: To kick it off, one of my opponents last time was Herbygoesbananas, One of the actors in that film was Vito Scotti, who appeared also in the film, Loaded Weapon I, which is a spoof of Mel’s franchise of Lethal Weapon films. That looks like an incredibly suspicious dig at Mel Gibson.

S: You knew that?

{No, he asked me to look it up. I used AI but did check manually that the answer was correct – Ed.}

M: That rules you out of a job at West Midlands police.

S: Ha ha! Anyway, I think we can just write back to Mel with that info and see where he heads with it.

{I would add that you would not believe how many of the cast of Herbie Goes Bananas had guest roles in The Munsters – Ed.}

M: Really? How many? And what is “The Munsters?” Finally, what is a banana?

S: Right, stop the blog for this month before it all gets too irrational.