There was an old man with a beard/

Who said it is just as I feared/

Those CIA blokes/

Put bombs in my smokes/

And other stuff even more weird.///

So farewell Fidel Castro. I did a new version of the same idea here partly because the one in There Was an Old Geezer Called Caesar (p 103, A Close Shave) was too long for Twitter. Also I didn’t use the ‘man with a beard’ treatment in the book because I’d already used it for Marx. Though the disadvantage with the one above is that it doesn’t allow me to include the details of the beard plot, involving depilatory cream. So here’s the limerick from the book. Take your pick:

There was an old man named Fidel

Whom agents attempted to fell.

Their schemes were quite weird

Like spiking his beard 

And cigars that would blow him to hell.///

And here are a few of the plots:

The straightforward: large bomb discovered under podium in Panama where he was to speak.

The subaquatic: bomb concealed in brightly-coloured shell for when he goes scuba-diving.

The ‘smoking kills’: exploding cigar.

The seductive: former lover with poison pills concealed in cold cream jar.

The skulduggery: poison-pen syringe.

The silly: depilatory fungus introduced to his socks to make his iconic beard fall out.