Youp van ‘t Hek (59) had a fever and dreamt strange dreams. 

It was my birthday last Thursday. I was ill and spent the day in bed. My voicemail recorded the congratulatory messages and I didn’t get to read the nice text messages until the next day. According to my older friends, 59 is not that old, while my younger friends said I am now officially a sad old bastard. I believe them both.

A flu-induced temporary coma is quite nice. Every once in a while I opened one eye and saw a lot of sad old bastards licking the ring of another sad old bastard. Oldie porn, I thought and quickly went back to sleep. Why is this stuff even broadcast here? Is anyone still interested in these perverts? I couldn’t care less last Thursday. It just sent me to sleep.

In my dream I saw Piet Moerland, on stage in Carré. Piet is boss of the Rabo bank and he was very disappointed in the syringe-wielding, pill-popping cyclists he had sponsored for so long. He was telling the audience of his grief at their deception and how they had cheated the Dutch public as well. He had them rolling in the aisles. His air of wounded innocence was just perfect. He hadn’t known. His colleagues at the bank hadn’t known. Nobody knew. Boogers had always said he wasn’t using anything and who were they not to believe him? The audience loved it.

Piet Moerland loved it, too. It had been a difficult week and he could do with a bit of a fillip. Kicking out 3,000 people to safeguard a bonus is something bankers do but that’s not to say they enjoy it.

Then Catherine Keyl launched into a routine about her dildo. Max, she called her motorised friend. The audience almost choked laughing. Catherine made her way into my dream because I had read her column about the warm relationship between her and Max. Poor dildo, I thought when I read it. Where is its privacy? You’re in the Telegraaf before you know it and soon everybody will know about your professional whereabouts.

I then dreamed that someone had made a documentary about my romantic holidays on the beach of Torremolinos, just me and my blow-up doll. I’m 79 in the film and completely gaga.

Will a documentary like this ever be made? Maybe. A slightly famous friend of mine was asked by a broadcaster if she would agree to be filmed for a week with her father, who has Alzheimer’s, in the nursing home where he lives. ‘Behind the geraniums’ the series was to be called. I wonder how many stars will say yes, unlike my friend who didn’t even bother to reply. Perhaps it will be fun to stick the elderly parent on a sledge with their famous offspring and let them career down a mountainside, or push them off a high board.

I’m better now, still a bit wobbly, croaky and woozy. I liked my dreamlike state where everything and anything was mixed up. Although sometimes it happens in real life. In sweltering Dubai there is a covered ski piste and people are flocking to it. But maybe I just dreamt it. I hope so.

Youp van ‘t Hek is one of the Nehterlands best-loved comedians and writers