Reply #21: Baldrick's epic navel and magnum octopus

[Xipe Totec]

B: Perhaps your book really isn't any good.

E: Oh, codswallop! It's taken me seven years, and it's perfect. "Edmund:
A Butler's Tale" -- a giant rollercoaster of a novel in four hundred
sizzling chapters. A searing indictment of domestic servitude in the
eighteenth century, with some hot gypsies thrown in. My magnum opus,
Baldrick. Everybody has one novel in them, and this is mine.

B: And this is mine (takes a small piece of paper from the front of his
trousers). My magnificent octopus.

E: (takes it) This is your novel, Baldrick? (unfolds it)

B: Yeah -- I can't stand long books.

E: (reads) "Once upon a time, there was a lovely little sausage
called `Baldrick', and it lived happily ever after."

B: It's semi-autobiographical.

E: And it's completely utterly awful. Dr. Johnson will probably love it.