By Jove and gadzooks Missus…..(The Professor enters stage left wearing a striped blazer, a flowing evening gown and football boots. He is carrying an upturned Homburg hat full of popcorn)
I’m just back from the theatre, ahh yes, the wonderful world of make believe.
All the world’s a stage, I know missus, but my favourite bit is our very own Empire.
To think the great Laurel & Hardy once trod that stage, now they are running the council.
“ Well, here’s another fine dock full of stunned fish you’ve gotten me into”
By Jove yes missus, where would we be without the theatre?…enjoying ourselves.
Every time I rise at the end of a production, I am reminded of those wonderful lines from The Tempest, “Our revels now are ended” so I always take a bag of malteasers as well for the bus home.
King Cotton!
That’s where I’ve been….take an extra bit to stick in your ears.
Ha ha by Jove, It’s me own fault, being near Christmas, I thought it was going to be a panto, like Snow White or something…well I did have Sleepy sitting two rows behind me and quite a few in front.
Turned out that Sleepy, was none other than Roly Joe Riley. Apparently he had been up since dawn watching a demonstration by the culture company on hitting fish on the head with small mallets or was it somebody hitting the culture company over the head with small mullets….? Anyway, they must have mistaken Joe for a little bloater and he got several whacks as soon as he walked in….hence he ends up in the Empire….wait for it missus….as a Kipper!
By Jove the school of fish comedy paid off. As a boy I was lucky to get in…it was a gills only school you know.King Cotton, I really should have checked beforehand…I saw the stuff about big bands and thought it was a show about the great bandleader Billy Cotton.
If only it had been…somebody running on stage every 10 minutes shouting: “Wakey WaaaaaayKey” was just what the audience needed.
All credit to Jimmy McGovern. If you need a quiet kip in the centre of town…it’s cheaper than the Adelphi.
Now why hasn’t anybody written “The Adelphi - The Musical” Hey?
Martine MeClutchgone would make a wonderful Ida Downey..wasn’t that her name?
Oh no Eileen, yes Eileen…Imagine the set…the Adelphi dining room packed with famous celebrities and Ringo, all waiting impatiently for their dinner…Brian shouting “Just cooook will ya” and as they begin the meal they all start singing “ Come on Eileen” accompanied by Dexy’s Midnight Runs later that night.
There you are Jimmy…write that!
My advice to Jim, is never write sci-fi as it often includes references to the 5th dimension so you need to get past the 2 dimensional first.
Is it true that Howard Goodhall changed his name to Howard Sodall-Todowithit so he was taken off the credits?
Only joking Jim, it was a very enjoyable evening apart from that bloody Salvation Army band playing outside.
Ashton Under Lyne… Ashton leaving under a blanket, so I hear!
The most inspired part of the show for me was how the action transferred to a bar, lulling the audience into thinking it was the interval but it was in fact the showdown between the self appointed representative of the oppressed and enslaved, against the sleeping scribes who document history through the echo of capitalist and cultural lackeys. “Fat, fat fatty” he cried to the sleeping dog patrolling the civil war, who in response fired a Brookside, causing him to lash out with the words: “Baldy, fat fatty… I’ll get you sacked and write a play about the injustice of it, and guess who will play you?…..Sinbad!…..with his head shaved!!! Cos he’s fat as well!”
Yes missus, it was the classic Jimmy Mac, we all love, back to the glory days of those wonderful poetic lines from his early career.
Who can ever forget lines like, “Arrr ay Sheila….” and “Petrochem just don’t want me, Annabelle. We have to live with the scum now.”
And “Ar ay, Terry, where’s ahh Barry? Norron the bog is he?” or “Druuuuuuuuuuuuugs, Billy” and my all time favourite storyline: “ Free Jesse Jackson”
Oh no, it was George Jackson, a hapless fireman who was completely out of his depth and lost in a warren of intrigue and incompetence, ends up getting sent to the slammer….....ha ha, as if!???!! Well all I can say about my night at the theatre missus is this, and it’s in the form of a little poem, just like you get in the Echo:
“That old King Cotton
Is best forgotten
Music’s nice
But the script is rotten
An epic story of Lancashire mills
Who all faced a famine and couldn’t pay bills.
As the fight against slavery is depicted on stage
It causes the author to get in a rage
The snoring of critics gets him fumin’
Then comes a letter sung by Randy Newman.
It says Old Hack Joe is a total disgrace
By the invisible man
With Frank Bough’s face.
Joe is suspended
Put out of reach
So much for culture
And the right of free speech”
By the way missus and all you avid Bloggerers, if you support free speech, then lend us your mobile phone.
Ha ha by Jove.
(His musings now ended, the Professor drops exhausted into a large leather armchair as a cat screeches and darts from under his ample posterior. He nods off relaxed in front of a roaring fire, forgetting it is all central heating. As alarm bells ring everywhere, a handsome young fireman tries to wake from his nightmare as the curtain begins to fall…….probably around May 2008)
Tatty Bye everybody, Tatty bye!
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