Cap’n Bradleigh Salterton of the Seahorse was looking for love. The pirate had not had a girlfriend since his tryst with female pirate Fakebeard had produced too many uncontrollable offspring.

To help him in his quest he’d bought a new parrot, who fancied herself on a television dating show, insisting on being introduced as “your host Miss Cilla Black”.

The matchmaking Macaw put Captain Salterton through interminable chat-up line training until, instead of issuing commands, he’d address his first mate , Israel Bones with lines like “Well number two, I’d love to let you open my chest and see my buried treasure!” or “If you pick me, I’ll definitely put the ARRRR back into romance!”. Bones hoped that his captain hadn’t taken a sudden shine to him.

Her teachings worked though and now whenever the buccaneer went ashore, he was mobbed by ardent young women desperate to hear his tales of derring-do. “Well captain Salterton” theyed coo, “I know you like parrots and I’m not averse to the odd cockatoo, so if you pick me I’ll prove Toucan play at that game!” But while his vanity was buoyed, if he was completely honest this was not what he wanted.

Fakebeard ruminated that any girls stupid enough to want him were welcome to him and wondered why it was always her turn to do parents evening? But against her better judgement his new status impressed her and momentarily she remembered first seeing him and thinking that if you wore an eye patch and squinted he could almost pass for Johnny Depp. She was disappointed in herself but felt a booty call calling.

Blackbeard, Eggbeard and Bluebeard meanwhile had grown jealous and resolved to capture the parrot that had made Salterton the “Heart-throb-of-Havana”.

That night, under cover of darkness the three bearded buccaneers arrived astern of the Seahorse in a dinghy. They were armed with a map to Miss Cilla Black’s perch. They scaled the side and climbed aboard. Blackbeard then performed his party trick, of setting fire to his beard, to appear more frightening, whereupon Salterton’s timid crew dispersed like mist on an autumn morning towards the lifeboats.

Oh Bluebeard! His parents had told him the importance to pirates of concentrating on geography in school but still he held the map a) upside down and b) back to front! With the fiery Blackbeard beside him he broke down the door to the wrong cabin and the burst into Salterton’s boudoir just as he and Fakebeard were indulging in a game involving some petticoats and a cat-o-nine-tails. A sight that once spied, could never be unspied. Blackbeard turned in furious embarrassment but his smoking beard set fire to curtains and a fire broke out.

The pirates including Salterton who was still in petticoats, made it to the dinghy just in time.

In the neighbouring cabin Miss Cilla Black had heard the bumpy goings on next door and was happily toasting her latest success with a small sherry.

“Lets see how our Bradleigh and our Fakebeard Gorron!” she cried, but these were her last words before the stricken ship descended to Davy Jones’s Locker.

Unlike Salterton’s other parrots she did not die in vain however, because, as they watched the Seahorse sink, for the first time in years, Bradleigh and Fakebeard were holding hands.