Had an action packed night at “Sinatras” the other night, an otherwise wonderfully attentive and suitably engrossed audience of senior citizens were shaken to their core every few minutes by a vociferous Manchester United fan watching the widescreen television near the stage. I was warned before hand by the act that preceded me that he was in fact mentally handicapped which made it next to impossible for me to shout him down. So I, along with the audience had to grin and bear it as a series of joyous expletives echoed around the shocked arena every time they scored (they won 4-0). The first one was a shrill “Get in there you f×××××g beauty” followed by a bellowing “Oooooh you t××t!! – presumably aimed at the referee. I did my best to ignore him, but my god it was difficult.
At the end of my show I come out as Eric Morecambe and mime to “Bring me sunshine”, I immediately see a bloke sat in the front row with a haircut not unlike that of Ernie Wise only darker. I thought it would be a wheeze to lift up the front of his fringe as Eric would do with Ernie pretending he was wearing a wig. The only problem was that it really was a wig! – and although it didn´t come away in my hand exactly it definitely moved a bit, and I at once realized my error as the texture between my forefinger and thumb felt something akin to horse hair and the look of sheer terror on the bloke´s face rendered me rigid for a split second. I could see a look of complete helplessness in his eyes and a plea deep in his pupils which said “Please don´t do this” – I felt awful, - especially when it transpired he was Belgian and wouldn´t have had a clue who Eric Morecambe was, and thus rendering the hair tweaking meaningless to him. He must have just thought I´d spotted the fact that he was wearing a rug and gone for it to take the piss. – Sorry mate.
Meanwhile at the “Cumberland Bar” keyboard player Andy Davies has been packing em in on Wednesday nights. Only problem is some of the “Singers” need a small step ladder to climb down from their own arse, and one such elderly gent fitted snugly into this pigeon hole. When he started to advertise that his friend did a spot in a bar on the beach front and that everybody was welcome, Nigel - the owner politely requested him to refrain as we have our own karaoke of an afternoon and he didn´t want his customers coaxing away thank you very much. Our superstar friend didn´t take kindly to this and shouted something along the lines that karaoke is for lesser mortals who probably couldn´t sing properly in the first place and are a somewhat inferior breed of person altogether. This view was not universally accepted and resulted in much muttering in the ranks from our loyal members and when one of our regulars, Terry from Leeds got up to sing he gave a small speech. With piercing eyes and flared nostrils he directed his gaze directly at the irksome little turd. “Can I just say that my kids and grand kids come in here singing karaoke, they are made to feel welcome and have a great time. Also,I happen to know that Joe Longthorne one of the great singers of our time, spends hours on the karaoke, he loves it, says it brings singers of all types together..........................and I, er... don´t like your trousers neither!!” – ( he was sporting a pair of those comical creme slacks, the belt of which hangs snugly somewhere just below the nipples). – His response to this outburst was “Well, we should discuss this outside” and our hero Terry countered – “Yes, we can go outside – but we won´t be discussing it!!” – And we go on about the youth of today!
I must stress that I wasn´t present during all of this and Nigel recounted the events to me this afternoon as I started my shift – the “And I don´t like your trousers neither” line had me in convulsions.
