For those readers unfamiliar with the preceding installments in the adventurous (some would say "reprehensible, nefarious, venal, Just Like a Man, rakehellish squanderings of a ruling-class pig"… and, mind you, this chronicler has heard it all at one time or another-but they're all Politically Correct or smugly moral carpers, so who the bloody hell cares what they think?) life of our heroic, if somewhat lazy Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, allow me to fill you in on some of the highlights of his curriculum vitae.

Epiphany Sunday, 1763: Born a bastard. (Now there's auspicious onset for you!) St. Martin-in-the-Fields Parish, London, of Elisabeth Lewrie, son of Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, Captain of the 4th Regiment of Foot, The King's Own. Mother died soon after, and the infant was raised in the Poor House, employed as an oakum-picker and flax-pounder, which showed his nautical bent before he was out of "nappies" in support of H.M. Dockyards.

1766: Rescued by his father (since he had discovered that the last viable Lewrie heir to a positive flood of guineas was none other than our lad Alan) and raised as a gentleman in St. James's Square.

There followed the usual hellish childhood, and a disappointing series of schools in which Alan Lewrie excelled at both his studies, and the inventive (some would say inspired) creation of mayhem, one example of which in 1779 resulted in the total demolition, by use of explosives, of the faculty stables and coach house at Harrow.

1780: Arranged to be caught in bed with his half sister Belinda Willoughby so he could be exiled, and never know that he was on the verge of being the last male Lewrie, due that aforementionedgolden shower of "yellowboys," and shoved into the Royal Navy as a midshipman before he could even learn to say "Jack-Ketch."