Elderado Dingbatti

Elderado Dingbatti is a character from the Coping With series of books by Peter Corey. He is usually a member of the team of experts hired to assist with the project of writing the book.

He has a strange appearance, with a head similar in shape to a baseball bat, and eyes very much out of focus. He wears a suit and grins constantly, bringing a hint of surrealism to the proceedings. He generally stays in mental institutions, prisons for the incurably insane, hospitals or abandoned branches of Toys "R" Us. Despite this, he is often granted very high positions of responsibility considering his 'condition'. For example, he was offered a chair at the English Department of Oxford University, but refused, since he had a very nice set of tubular ones from MFI.

Biography

• He confuses himself with the ill-fated TV show Eldorado, but on the plus side, this means you only have to put up with him three times a week for half an hour (he also occasionally turns up at other times, only to repeat everything he said last time).
• His worst nightmare is that, like Eldorado, no-one will pay him any attention and eventually he'll be killed off.
• He has a habit of falling in love with furniture, especially sideboards. He even has custom made Love Heart sweets to this effect.
• For fun, he once dressed up in a rabbit costume. While it was plugged into the mains. In a swimming pool.
• He finds 'Surveillance Equipment' very interesting and exciting, despite knowing nothing whatsoever about it.
• He used to be a bus driver, on a one man operated bus. He was fired after it crashed. Elderado claims it was not his fault, since he was upstairs collecting fares at the time.
• He can be homicidal, but was released from prison early. His social worker claimed it was due to good behavior. After all, he hadn't killed anyone for almost a week.
• His favourite drink is a mug of hot Coca-Cola.
• He once disguised himself as waiter at a wedding reception. However, his idea had three flaws:
  • He wasn't wearing a waiter's overalls, but a labcoat he had eaten half of.
  • He only served Spam sandwiches.
  • The vegetarian option was Spam sandwiches without the Spam (a Monty Python allusion).
• He plans to teach in a private school.
• Due to spending much time in medical institutions, he has undergone much plastic surgery. Unfortunately, this has worsened his condition, since now when he looks in the mirror, he thinks that he sees someone else.
• He spent some time in drag and carrying around a large desk lamp, having confused himself with Florence Nightingale. He was disappointed therefore to find that working for Peter Corey did not involve nursing or hospital work in Crimea. He also found a seance with Florence Nightingale deeply disturbing.

Quotes

By Elderado Dingbatti

• "Meet up a tree. Not by a tree or under a tree. Up a tree. Less suspicious."

About Elderado Dingbatti

• "I had to choose my words carefully. After all, even if he thought I was an alright guy, he was a homicidal maniac."
• "As tears rolled down his silicon cheeks (he had made a lot money testing plastic surgery in prison), I told him, tactfully, that he could not marry a sideboard, even by special licence."
• "He is no stranger to research projects like this. He is also no stranger to the insides of institutions that care for people who think that they are something else."

Books

Elderado Dingbatti appeared in several Coping With books.

Elderado appeared in:

• Coping with Parents
• Coping with Teachers
• Coping with School
• Coping with The Family
• Coping with Love
• Coping with the 21st Century

Similar characters

After Elderado's retirement, he was replaced by a nearly identical character, Ombago, a professor who dressed in a luminous chicken outfit. His advice on how to remember things, for example, went like this: "The best way to remember things is to try to not forget them!".