Fossils and my brother

My brother works at the Natural


History Museum in London. He’s a


fossil. No - sorry, I got that wrong.


He looks after the fossils.


Looks after the fossils? What sort


of job is that? I mean it can’t be very


hard, can it? They’re just stones.


They don’t jump at you, like if you


were looking after a tiger. Imagine


that, you come down in the morning,


there’s a tiger. You go up to it, and you


say, ‘What do you want to eat?’ And the


tiger says, ‘YOU!’. That would be hard.


No, my brother looks after fossils. I went


into his room forty years ago and there


were four fossils sitting on a shelf. I said,


‘What are you doing Brian?’ He said,


‘Looking after the fossils.’ I said, ‘They’re not


going to jump off the shelf, are they?’


He said, ‘You never know. That’s what


I’m here for.’ I went to his office the other


day and the four fossils were still there.


On the shelf. I said, ‘Brian, the fossils


are still there!’ And he said, ‘Yes.That’s


because I was here.’


If ever you find a fossil and


you don’t know what it’s called,


you might pick it up and


shout at it: ‘Dave!’ ‘Melanie!’


and it doesn’t answer - then


you can take it to the Natural


History Museum in London and


you go up to one of the people in uniform


and tell them you’ve got a fossil


and you don’t know its name:


‘Dave!’, ‘Melanie!’ - see it doesn’t


answer, and they send for my brother,


Doctor Brian Rosen. He lives in a cave


underneath the museum, he wears


a leopard skin bikini and he’s got a


great big club, and he comes up


from down below the museum, you’ll


hear him coming, ‘Ooof!!! Oooof!!!’


and suddenly the big double doors open


in front of you and there he is in his


leopard skin bikini and you can go up


to him and say, ‘Hello. I’ve found a fossil,


and I don’t know its name: Dave!


Melanie! See it doesn’t answer,’ and my


brother takes a magnifying glass out of


his leopard skin bikini bottom and it’s


one of those little ones, and he puts it


in his eye and it makes his eye go really


big and he studies it very hard and then


he says,’No, that’s not Dave. It’s not


Melanie, that is an ammonite.’ Or maybe


he’ll say, ‘That is a belemnite.’ and you’ll


be very pleased. And if it’s a really, really


good one, do you know what he does


then? He nicks it off you. Because if it’s


really, really good, it doesn’t belong to


you, it doesn’t belong to him. Do you


know who it belongs to? The Queen.


And if you go to Buckingham Palace


you’ll see that it’s stuffed full of old

fossils.