Captain Birdseye, pictured here with unnamed parrot, died yesterday aged 86. He was an honourable old sea dog with a clean, neatly trimmed white beard, a ruddy complexion and cheeky grin, and a liking for breadcrumbed cod digits. Often criticised throughout his career for press-ganging more than 6,000 children and making them work as unpaid crew on his ship, Birdseye was no more than a simple salt in the thrall of his sinister paymasters, The Bird’s Eye Company, who shipped the press-ganged kids off to sea with the promise of a better life on a tropical island filled with boiled sweets and puppies, when in reality they were to be turned into chicken dippers in the company’s huge floating offshore abattoirs. In his later years, the Captain took on an Oskar Schindler-like role, freeing as many children as he dare and delivering in their place cunningly disguised cardboard cut-outs, until in 1998 the quality of Bird’s Eye’s chicken dippers dropped below acceptable standards and he was found out and retired to a home.
Captain Birdseye — R.I.P., you old homo.
