Ahhhh, Oxford... home of the shoe. Inspector Morse, the famous detective ¹ lived there once, with his trusty side-kick, CS Lewis. Morse was able to work out who killed people just by doing the crossword, having a pint and shouting at Lewis. The man was a genius. Lewis, on the other hand, had all the look and demeanour of a rabbit that has suddenly and inexplicably been left in charge of a nuclear submarine. Morse just thought that Lewis was hopeless and never did anything, but he liked his aftershave ², so he let him hang around when he was doing the crossword or listening to Opera.

But Lewis knew what Morse thought of him, and he would get his revenge by shaking his head and looking at the ceiling when Morse's back was turned. The irony, of course, is that Lewis was smarter than Morse gave him credit for, and the double irony is that he was only a little bit smarter. In one episode of Inspector Morse, the TV programme, the body of an Oxford Don was found shot, strangled, stabbed, filled with balloons and buried with a pitchfork in his back. Morse drinks six pints and decides its suicide before driving his Jaguar into a tree. CS Lewis solves the murder in the meantime, by wandering around Oxford and asking in shops if anyone has sold ninety seven balloons or a pitchfork recently.

In another episode, a wealthy benefactor of the local Opera society is filled with Helium and tied to a flag pole. Morse drinks six pints and decides that it is anyone and everyone except the attractive but oddly depressed woman he has just met who keeps on gibbering about flag poles, helium and how much she hates Opera. Lewis eventually confronts Morse with a photograph of the new lady in his life caught 'at the helium pump' - so to speak. Morse denies that it is a photograph at all.

' Butt surrrrr ' says Lewis, exasperated, ' Of coooorse its a bleeedin' photie-graff! Its gut Koooodak an' all written there - on the side surrrr! Look, there!!! '

'Not now Leeeeiiiiwwwwwwwwwhisssssssssss' replies Morse.

'Butt its impieurtent surr.'

' "Tad impetum sot mericum la impotem hep ad astra"' replies Morse, without looking up from his pint.

' Surr? '

' Its Sophocles Lewis. Don't they teach you anything on those life drawing courses of yours? It means: 'Sometimes an orange stuck in an exhaust pipe is no bad thing''

' Hi dunt get ya surr.. '

' Whoever our murderer is, Lewis, they probably wanted our victim dead. That's our starting point, not these new fangled photographic emulsion plates. Now, then, seven across, furry animal with four legs that goes 'meaow'. Three letters, begins with 'C'. Hmmmmm, any ideas?''

Of course with all of this hassle going on, its no wonder that Lewis was desperate to get out of the police force. That's why he secretly wrote a book and sent it to the Oxford Publishing Society. I can exclusively reveal, here and now, the rough draft of this book:

'Stupidity by Moonlight' details an illicit meeting by two lovers from across the divide during World War 2. Their regular clandestine meetings under the full moon are regularly ruined by a series of mishaps due entirely to the couple's own stupidity. On one occasion they meet, having dodged enemy searchlights and traversed ravines, and then one of them suddenly wonders if they fed the cat, and then they're not at all sure they did, and then they can't remember. They might have fed it, but then they don't actually have a memory of having done so, but then again, but in the end... they have to go home again - where the cat sleeps contentedly after eating an entire chicken and some Munchies. On another occasion, they each go to the wrong mountain. In the end, the war is over, and they can finally meet, but they lose each other's phone numbers. One of the lovers, the stupidest one, is called 'Murse'.

Needless to say, the Oxford Publishing Society rejected Lewis' book with much laughter and derision. They also let him know that they were too busy anyway, working on Morse's new book, 'A History of the Phoenician Crossword Puzzle'. And so, there we may leave Lewis, stuck in his kitchen, chewing like a mad spanial on the cord of his electric toaster, out of sheer frustration at the unfairness of it all.

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