Vital Local Government Services

Engelbert Thermopylae was the UK's leading Local Government Toad Recognition Officer, performing this vital role – despite harsh spending cutbacks for almost three decades in the wild untamed jungles in and around the unexplored Walsall area.

Not only that he also won Toad Recogniser of the Year at the London O2 Arena in seven out of the last ten years, including the tense 2009 final when his 7 hour battle in the final with Uruguay’s Uplink Nailfile went down to the wire with neither of them daring to decide which was the toad and which was the zebra right up until bad light stopped play on the first day's play.

However, far away from the glamour of the international Toad Recognition circuit, Thermopylae was devoted to the art – and, some say, science – of toad recognition out in the wild. After all, in the heat of the moment how many of us have – in all honesty – confused a toad with say a crocodile, a geostationary satellite or a Post Office delivery van*?

Anyway, Thermopylae was so adept at recognising toads that he was correct a staggering 32.7% of the time, which - considering he was employed in local government - was a staggering rate of success, which – inevitably – caused a great deal of jealousy and resentment amongst his colleagues and resulted in disciplinary action by the local branch of the Toad-Recognisers and Allied Trades Association for bringing the trade close to dangerous levels of competence and thus putting the livelihoods of the other members of the union at risk.

Some say it was his own fault for venturing out into the wilds of Walsall on his own without backup. Others talk of darker conspiracies: some of trouble and dark words at the last union meeting, others of Uruguayan undercover agents infiltrating the Walsall area with booby-trapped toads (and a wired-up zebra, just to be on the safe side).

All we know is that, one day, Engelbert Thermopylae disappeared off into the Walsall jungle as normal with his lunch box, his net and toad bucket, and his Big Boy's Book of Toads and was never seen again.

*I know I have and what an embarrassing party that turned out to be for me. My wife still has to go to all the local wife-swapping parties on her own – well, so she says, anyway.