2003-11-06 - 1:39 p.m.

I think I may have posted this before, but what with it being Guy Fawkes night and all (er, yesterday) and my not having posted an obituary for ages. We are in the very very early stages of trying to adapt them for an animated series. Or radio series. Or something. Anything.

Ritchie Ciccone (1570 - 1604)

"Good morrow to thee, men! Making secret plans?" So were disturbed the secret plans and shadowy mutterings of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators one rainy arse of an evening in the Dog & Pustule in London's Strand. Little were they to know that the unwelcome intrusion was to mark a largely unwilling and painfully lengthy association with one Ritchie Ciccone, a tiresome clodhopper who routinely wore his tunic back to front, and was the most eager criminal of his times.

Ciccone was a common enough figure around the scrotal depravity of London's underworld, though no-one knew much about him. Despite his strangely healthy appearance, it was assumed that he was just another malodorous guttersnipe who had somehow avoided the debilitating bouts of Rat Pox and Seeping Lurgy that had otherwise cut a swathe through the toothless hordes. He was in fact the second richest man in Umbria, and growing up had enjoyed all the luxuries that shameless wealth bought, such as a strict diet of endangered species and weeklong baths in the heated tears of nubile harpists.

Enamoured with what he saw as the seedily glamorous existence of wanton thievery, Ciccone moved from Italy to London, set on reinventing himself as a ruthless, mercenary and slang-spouting ruffian. He was utterly unconvincing, and most of his attempts to ingratiate himself resulted in repeated hefty blows to his nethers, or �peacock�s feathers�, as he, and only he, called them. After endless pestering, the Gunpowder conspirators let him join their ranks, eventually coming round to the idea of recruiting a witless patsy.

Ciccone was laughably keen to raise hell, but his incessant wittering of "Gosh, me old china cups, I feel like doing something really illegal today!" and "When are we going to do some bad things?" caused the gang much embarrassment at the hands of the criminal fraternity, who saw their association with Ciccone as a sign of weakness. The notorious Bow Street Garrotters would often drop their britches at them in sheer contempt, and Lenny Three-Lips from the Holborn Scabs pinned a manuscript reading "I couldn't blow up a blazing tinderbox" to the back of Guy Fawke's cape.

This insult spurred Fawkes into a frothy-mouthed snit, and he dispatched Ciccone to buy gunpowder with which he would bomb his way into history. Ciccone returned to the gang�s hideout sometime later looking pleased with himself, unknowingly having been palmed off with eighteen kegs of what turned out to be low grade oregano.

Fawkes had a debilitating phobia of common herbs, and this unforgivable act of buffoonery pushed him over the edge. Despite his pleas for mercy and promise that he �just wanted to fit in with dangerous zealots�, Ciccone was punished in the first recorded instance of death by seasoning. Having been first doused in pig fat, Ciccone was dipped into each keg until he was completely covered, and then forced at knifepoint to consume what remained.

He was then paraded through the streets as a show of power, his bloody but aromatic form causing an annoying amount of vague disinterest from all who saw him, even when Fawkes had him set him alight and started to point and shout �Look at the herb-covered clueless chancer!�

Ciccone�s charred remains were found some weeks later in Richmond Park, and he was eventually returned to Umbria, where he became a prime exhibit in a museum dedicated to garnish-related deaths.