No sooner has the new thrupini sticker collection Famous Graves: Dorset 2018 gone on sale than speculation is rife regarding this season's rarest and therefore most collectable sticker. Could it be the notorious but unlikely Radisson Parker Knowles+ ?
Hardly the most attractive (or edifying) monument Dorset has to offer, it may, nonetheless be the most sought after this summer as children of all ages (and some adults too!) tear each other to pieces to secure it for their collection.
Radisson Parker-Knowles, husband of Tottie (née Flappersham), father of Robin and Sparrow and father-in-law of Stringbonefellow manageress and former lap dancer Drusilla Likhtarovich famously abandoned his family when he met Drusilla's cousin Saskia in 1998. He was then 70 and she 38. The family were never reconciled. Radisson and Saskia set up home in Tarrant Monkton, some distance from the Parker-Knowles estate.
Radisson died in 2004 from "unnatural causes", though a police statement at the time made clear that foul play was not suspected. "He died in his bed", the statement read, "though what he Ms Likhtarovich were doing in it was not entirely natural". The coroner's verdict was Death by Overadventure.
A campaign by Tarrant Monkton locals to have Ms Likhtarovich's name added to his Beer Hacket headstone on her death in 2016 was only partially successful. The family declined to contribute and a fund established to compete the task raised only £4.38p.
Neither Mr Parker Knowles nor Ms Likhtarovich were available for comment at the time. "serves them right" said an unnamed member of the "real" family. They then, says local sextant Andy Shovel "decided to mark her passing in their own way".
So far reports suggest there have been two muggings, one shoplifting charge, a death threat and a public order offence directly linked to acquisition of the sticker. thrupini declined to say how many copies of the sticker were in circulation. "That is highly sensitive commercial information and not the kind of thing we would disclose" said Head of Marketing Hiley Zenzitiv.
Is this 2018's must have sticker? Sales of thrupini Famous Graves: Dorset 2018 stickers are said to be high. Branches of Edna's in Pamphill, Peacemarsh, Pentridge,Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Pilsdon, Pimperne, Plush, Pokesdown, Poole, Portesham, Isle of Portland, Poundbury, Powerstock, Poxwell, Poyntington, Preston, Puddletown, Pulham, Puncknowle, and Purse Caundle were all said to be out of stock as collectors descended on them in the mistaken belief that a Parker-Bowles sticker was more likely to be available in larger towns and cities beginning with a "P" than one beginning with any other letter. [See Tommy Rott, Sticker Collecting: Myths and Superstitions (2014) The Threadbone Press]
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