The True Story of Tangerine Man Baby

Once upon a time, in the grand and glorious fruit bowl of life, there lived a peculiar citrus specimen known far and wide as Sir Tangelo Wotsit-Trumpington III. A tangerine of unnatural proportions, he strutted about with all the self-importance of a banana in a cucumber convention. His duck-like lips, smeared with gold dust (because he thought it made him look ‘posh’), puckered and preened at every opportunity, usually while he was spouting absolute bollocks.

Sir Tangelo was convinced he was the smartest fruit in the orchard. “I have the best words!” he declared, although most of them were just slightly mangled versions of things he'd heard other fruits say first. His policies—yes, he had policies, because he had somehow convinced a considerable portion of the fruit bowl that he should be in charge—were often spectacularly wrong.

“The lemons,” he announced one day, “are stealing our rind. We need a peel wall! And trust me, I know walls. I build the best walls. Some say the Great Wall of Pineapple is great, but folks, mine will be greater.”

Unfortunately, as any reasonable fruit knows, a peel wall is just a pile of discarded skin. And within days, it had started to rot and stink, attracting flies and the occasional drunk wasp, which only added to the chaos. But did Sir Tangelo acknowledge his mistake? Absolutely not. “No one has ever built a better peel wall,” he insisted. “Experts are saying this. Tremendous experts. The best experts.”

Sir Tangelo was also notorious for his ‘relations’ with other fruits. Being famous, he assumed he could just squeeze whatever citrus he pleased. He once tried to grope Lady Plum in broad daylight, and when she slapped him with a firm “piss off, you sticky little goblin,” he simply sniffed, licked his duck lips, and muttered, “She wanted it. All the fruits want it.”

Even the apples, generally a tolerant bunch, had had enough. “He’s a bloody embarrassment,” muttered Granny Smith, shaking her wrinkled head. “A proper soft little prat.”

Sir Tangelo’s arrogance was only matched by his ability to forget literally everything he’d said five minutes earlier. “I never said that,” he would claim, even when faced with a recording of himself saying exactly that. “Fake juice. You’re fake juicing me.”

One day, after making a particularly baffling speech about how he personally invented the sun and that rain was a myth created by jealous blueberries, the fruit bowl finally had enough. A grand council of fruit gathered, and a motion was passed to eject him. The peaches, led by the fearless Fuzzy Gerald, catapulted him out of the bowl and into the compost heap, where he promptly began shouting at worms.

“I was the greatest fruit of all time!” he wailed. “No fruit was smarter than me! This is a disgrace!”

The worms, being busy with actual productive work, ignored him completely.

And so, Sir Tangelo Wotsit-Trumpington III faded into obscurity, occasionally appearing in the nightmares of particularly nervous grapefruits. And the fruit bowl? It flourished without him, finally free to ripen in peace.