Jimmy Rice was born in 1949 in the Market area of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Jimmy doesn’t believe this but there you are. His first childhood memories were that he knew himself to be an alien tourist, a traveling tuber from the far distant Planet Potato located somewhere in the marvelous and mysterious Mashy Way Galaxy. His most vivid nightmares as a child were his parents and other family members - who all heartily hated him - discovering his secret life as a spud and then peeling him, slicing him up, and frying him in the chip pan. Jimmy was inexorably drawn into the war that began in Ireland in 1968 and took up an active part in the armed resistance against British Rule. This led to Jimmy being jailed for several years in the early eighties. In a famous case Jimmy was imprisoned for throwing several hand grenades at the Security Forces who were chasing after him and trying to kill him at the time. Well all the time really. Not one of the grenades went off – in fact they were east European rubbish and incapable of exploding. The grenades were so victim friendly that the cunning and dastardly Security Forces – here and ever after to be known as The Bog – gathered them up and took them to the state forensic laboratory at Bog Castle where they were examined in great and minute detail. And what did the Bog find? Jimmy’s fingerprints on the grenades! Caught bang to rights even though they didn’t go off! At Jimmy’s trial his barrister argued - how could Mr. Rice be charged with possession of explosives if the grenades are utterly incapable of exploding? These harmless devices are filled with very bad quality marzipan me laud. And how can Mr. Rice be charged with attempted murder if the devices cannot kill anyone?
