List of Peter Simple's characters

• Julian Birdbath — perennially unsuccessful writer and "last citizen of the Republic of Letters". Performed astounding feat of literary detective-work by discovering a fourth Brontë sister, Doreen Brontë, and ghostwrote the autobiography of General "Tiger" Nidgett, but, as always, never received the recognition or payment he deserved. Finally retired to a lead mine in Derbyshire to work on a biography of Stephen Spender with only his pet toad, Amiel, for company.

• Trevor Dimwiddie — "underwater motorcycling ace" of varying age, appearance and origins. See also Sir Sid Ballpoint.

• Mrs Dutt-Pauker — immensely rich and privileged Hampstead socialist, admirer of Stalin and rumoured lover of the East German communist leader Walter Ulbricht. Mother of Deirdre Dutt-Pauker, grandmother of precociously bearded Maoist toddler Bert Brecht Mao Che Odinga (or Mao Banana) and employer of Gjoq. Resembles Margaret Hodge and named after the communists Palme Dutt and Ana Pauker.

• Doreen Gaggs — trend-crazed tabloid and women's magazine journalist and wife of Jack Moron.

• Sir Jim Gastropodi — conductor of the Stretchford Municipal Symphony Orchestra and obsessive admirer of Mahler, newly discovered symphonies by whom he insists on playing, to the disgust of Ron Spheroyd. Inspired by Sir John Barbirolli.

• J. Bonington Jagworth — leader of the militant Motorists' Liberation Front and defender of "the basic right of every motorist to drive as fast as he pleases, how he pleases and over what or whom he pleases". Suspicious of his Marxist chief-of-staff Royston Cylinder but good friend of Rev John Goodwheel. Anticipated Jeremy Clarkson by three decades.

• Jack Moron — tabloid journalist and husband of Doreen Gaggs. Writes aggressive articles demanding progress and change or warning of foreign peril.

• The Earl of Mountwarlock — the eight-foot, cyclops-eyed owner of the monster-infested Mountwarlock Estate near Stretchford. See also Phantomsby, Mr Dis, MacAnguish and Ghoulman.

• Lieutenant General Sir Frederick "Tiger" Nidgett — retired leader of the Royal Army Tailoring Corps and maker of inspirational speeches full of fatuous rhetoric. His autobiography, Up Sticks and Away!, was ghostwritten by Julian Birdbath. Alleged mentor of Tony Blair.

• Phantomsby — butler and factotum of the Earl of Mountwarlock and "one of the few practising werewolves left in the Midlands". Has a sharp-toothed but infectious smile.

• Old Seth Roentgen — scientific farmer who grows money and share-certificates directly from the soil and regularly disturbs or even kills his neighbours with agricultural experiments. Father of buxom, dark-eyed, lab-coated Hephzibah. Not to be confused with Old Seth the Wasp-Keeper.

• 'Wayfarer' — expert on London byways. Continually discovering lost communities of Anglo-Saxon washerwomen, whirling dervishes, Incas, Mongols, et al visited in their time by authorities such as Samuel Johnson and Thomas Carlyle but now usually reduced to one aged representative living in reduced circumstances "behind an ordinary-looking pet shop in South London's Turgis Hill High Street".

[edit] Minor

• S. J. Barstow (1886-1929), the only hydro-electrical engineer to be a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Took part with D. H. Lawrence at a combined poetry-reading and hydro-electrical engineering demonstration in Oxford, where he was introduced to Lady Ottoline Morrell. His letters to Leonard Woolf requesting payment for repairs to a table lamp are profoundly moving and foreshadow his later suicide by auto-electrocution.
• Blazeaway — column's shooting correspondent. Lists bags of left-wing student, ecologist and social scientist, some of whom end up on the tables at the trendy West End restaurant Au Petit Coin Anthropophage.
• Dr Kev Burst — headmaster of Stretchford Comprehensive School. Runs extensive car-hire, pornography and other businesses with the labour and cash he extracts from his huge student community.
• E.S. Canister (1886-1980) — litterateur who was "the first to leave a rusting bedstead on the summit of Scafell Pike". His later works include "Vandalised Grand Piano and Two Tons of Toffee Papers on Ben Nevis" (1920) and "Four Tons of Miscellaneous Litter on the Sierra Nevada" (1927). Inspiration for the Friends of Litter.
• Jeremy Cardhouse — originally a "progressive" Conservative Party MP, later defected to the Labour Party and became a Peter Mandelson-worshipping Euro MP. Compared by A.N. Wilson to the present Conservative leader David Cameron.
• Dr Abdul Ngong Castrumba — "freelance, all-purpose revolutionary leader". Based on Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba and other 1960s revolutionaries.
• Chocolate Meringue Narthex — A highly successful rock group.
• Attila Craggs — ruthlessly resolute chief of the Television Licence Evaders' Liberation Army, or TELELA. Oversees his fanatical Telelistas from a secret hideout "somewhere in South London" and speaks a special and sometimes confusing dialect of commercial Spanish.

• Senator Patrick Flannely — keen American supporter of the Irish Republican Navy (IRN).

• Jon Glasse-Derkeley — arts critic and "cultural entrepreneur". Chronicler of the Nerdley Scene during the 1960s.
• Len Gollip — General Secretary of the Associated Union of Hole-borers. Presides over record votes of up to 2,379,801 in union ballots, despite the Union having only 65,785 members, many now dead.

• Angelo "Tiny Tim" Grotto — weedy, sickly, near-dwarvish Mafia Boss. Wore an "outsize, steel-lined" fedora from beneath which his weak, watery eyes "missed everything". Was eventually slain by Francesco "Big Jock" Busoni with a poisoned 4-lb tin of his favourite sweets, Uncle Joe's Mintballs from Wigan, after a failed assassination attempt with an explosive teddy bear.

• Rex Hickfield — journalist who describes visits to the ageing Oliver and Connie Mellors (née Chatterley), formerly of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
• Brian Hohenzollern — brilliant film director at Piledriver Films (cf. Hammer Films) whose series of horror movies star Bruce Braganza as Ludwig Wittgenstein, with co-stars Stan Bourbon Parma, Kay Wittelsbach and Ted Capet, costume research by Shirley Porphyrogenitus and music by Bing Karageorgevitch.

• Clare Howitzer — socialist agony aunt. Based partly on Claire Rayner.

• Dr E. J. Multimer — angry young astronomer and sex-pest at Stretchford. Based partly on Fred Hoyle.
• Elvira Mutcliffe — "Cleckheaton-born diseuse and devotee of solid pottery and eurhythmic dancing" who leads a well-respected witches' coven in the West Riding. On good terms with Satan, who often appears to her coven in the form of the Great Black Goat of Mytholmroyd, and guardian, with her chief warlock, Cllr Albert Gogden, of the Trilby Hat of Invisibility.

• Rev Bruce Nethers — Vandals' Padre and incumbent at St Atilla's church. See Supergoth.
• Dr. Ngrafta — president of Gombola and the only African head of state who is both a witchdoctor and a graduate of the London School of Economics.

• Marylou Ogreburg — born in Dissentville, Ohio, now runs the "People's Bread and Marmite Street Dance Theatre Workshop" in London, giving politically awakening and socially relevant performances for ordinary folk unable to escape in time.
• Gillian Paste — left-wing television producer and presenter of Sneer with Mother. Close ally of Mrs Dutt-Pauker.

• Rentamob (originally Rentacrowd) — mammoth consortium supplying semi-automated, slogan-shouting demonstrators wherever they are required. Was particularly in demand during the Apartheid era.

• Peter Simple himself — benevolent landowner and upholder of the traditions of England. Family seat: Simpleham. Wealth: substantial but not excessive, deriving in part from slave-labour on South American latifundia. A regular reader of the Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald, from whose thoughtful leaders he frequently quotes. Protected by two giant bodyguards, Blohm and Voss.

• River Stretch — chemical-vapour-wreathed river believed to be "the most polluted" in Europe. See Stretchford.

• Major E.J. Tannoy — "chief roarsman" of the Friends of Noise based at Pandemonium House.
• Royston Vibes — 18th-year sociology student at Nerdley University. Claims to be head of an Aztec community that conquered Nerdley in the Dark Ages and demands ever-increasing concessions and benefits from local government, including the inalienable right to commit human sacrifice on subsidized step pyramids.

Category: Lists of fictional characters by author