Let me get one thing straight from the outset - it wasn’t my tractor. I hired it from a see-through gypsy on a B road in Devon. I’ve tried to find the road, and the Gypsy, since. But they are both gone, if they were ever there. Which they probably were, considering. I was, after all, very drunk, and can't really remember anything about the day apart from what I have pieced together from CCTV footage and hypnosis.

It was a most perplexing day. Why, as Richard Clayderman, was I hiring a tractor? Well, it all started at a gig in Chesterfield. They’ve got this wicked church in Chesterfield with a bent steeple, and I had got a council grant to perch my piano on the top of it, and play Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto on it at double speed. This is the tune that made that weird bloke in that film, The Shining, go mental. But it's not that hard really. Not if you're ace at piano like me.

Anyhoohow, the vicar took me into his belfry after my concert (which no-one could hear, because the steeple was too high - but that wasn't the point, really, it was an art thing) and told me of his dark secret. He had a fondness for a certain kinky fetish. He loved it when people drove tractors up his arse. He asked me if I could help him, and my first thought was “What a curious request!” but when I saw the billions and billions of pounds in a satchel that he was offering, I choked back my pride and accepted. I did my sums afterwards, and I worked out that with billions and billions of pounds in a satchel, I could buy a grand piano so big that I would have to jump up and down on the keys like a big spoiled kid simply to play a note. Little did I know that the money was the whole of the Catholic church’s savings, and the Pope was already hunting me down with a GUN! Hoooobooy! The Pope never misses, of that you can be sure.

I drove to Exeter, first. There is a great pub I know in Exeter, it is full of shoplifters and drug addicts. However, it is also a popular haunt of Ralph McTell, who is so famous it makes me want to burst with pride when I am seen with him. I make a point of saying his full name in every sentence so that everybody knows I am with him. Ralph knows everything, and told me that they had stopped making tractors in the 1950s after one ran over the King’s foot. However, he gave me a magical parchment with a spell on it, that he told me would summon a Gypsy who could grant me any wish I liked, so long as it was about tractor renting, and I had a load of money that I was willing to spend on renting a tractor. The magic spell was 07961177535, ask for Todd Landers.

I summoned the Gypsy, and we met in a quiet B-road in Devon. He spoke like the Devil does (which I will tell you about another day), and I could see through his tummy. He was full off eggs, like those things you get outside shops in coastal tourist towns. So I gave him thousands of pounds and asked for a tractor, and he said mysteriously: "You're already driving it". I was about to say "Don't be crackers man!", but when I looked down, he was right. Before I drove off, the Gypsy turned around and let one of the novelty eggs pop out of his bottom. He handed it to me and winked. He said I would need it.

I started the long drive back to Chesterfield. 300 miles - that's a long way, you know. Even longer when you're driving a tractor, which is what I was doing. Going at 20 miles per hour, I calculated, it would take me YEARS and YEARS to get there. Anything would be faster than that, so I decided to take a short cut and drove into a field. Which proved to be a mistake. It wasn't a real field like you and I and cows know it. It was a dense field of absolute crap, like the highly localised fields of temporal disruption you get on TV programmes like The Bill, and Star Trek. Only there was no curling of time and space into a pretty vector bow, instead, it was just a load of rubbish.

here is mr clayderman driving a tractor for you in a futuristic land where love is currency .. dat ok?

I was curious for about two minutes, then I got so bored that I turned my tractor around and tried to leave. But the hole in the hedge I drove through had grown over with powerful brown membranes that looked - and felt - like a black man's leg. I bent my tractor's lip trying to drive out of it. After twenty minutes, I was really getting pissed off. For one thing, this field was just so unspeakably poo! And for another, my billions of pounds were waiting for me in Chesterfield, and I wanted some big jewels for my neck.

I thought like a scientist and drove my tractor in circles, until a whirlwind happened. That didn't work, so I tried doing it in reverse. This sent me flying dead fast into the air - I felt like a bird in a tractor. Even better, I could see Chesterfield's bent steeple racing towards me! This was my lucky day!

I arrived at the Church in Chesterfield - at last - only to find that the Pope had skinned and eaten the kinky vicar who wanted me to drive my tractor up his arse. The Pope levelled his gun at me, and said something in Latin. I knew that the guns of Popes were loaded with bullets that couldn't miss, because they were so big. Pope bullets are the size of houses, and they land on their victims with a "foomp!" sound. Then the Pope takes the shoes of his victims and fills them with dead mice, so that the person can never get into Heaven.

Then I remembered the egg that the Gypsy gave me. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a Pokéball, which you can use to capture wild Pokémon. Would it work on the Pope? Would I be able to capture the Pope and train him in battles against rival Pokémon trainers around the world? That would be minty cool, but I imagined that Popes were trained from birth to resist such attacks. So imagine my surprise when I threw the Pokéball at him, and caught him! I have given him the nickname Popus Khan, so hopefully if the church come looking for him they'll be asking for the wrong name. Like this:

"Excuse me sir have you seen the pope about at all?"

"No sir no popes here although young Richard did have a Popus Khan."

"No Popus Khan is not what we're after at all but thanks a lot for trying to help."

And that's how I got my Pocket Pope - we get up to some well bad adventures, I can tell you! We're always on the verge of making billions of pounds, yet somehow things never go according to plan. Maybe soon I will tell you about our dozens of adventures, which span three continents.