Dinsdale! Dinsdale!
And now here comes Vivian, Vivian to insult the waiter, and he is heaping abuse on him, and he is humiliating him, there and he’s gone into the lead. Simon’s not with him, no Vivian’s in front of him at the bar.
Where’s the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?
You don’t understand, they don’t want to debate about it. They feel the humorous impact would be… somewhat dissipated by the prolongation of this item.
Barley sugar injections. Calm you down. They’re compulsory - Board of Trade.
What’s all this, then?
If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?
Well, yes, I’ve been on package tours many times, so your advert really bought my eye. Yes, you’re quite right, I’m fed up with being treated like a sheep, I mean what’s the point of going abroad if you’re just another tourist carted round in buses, surrounded by sweaty, mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their ‘Sunday Mirrors’, complaining about the tea, ‘Oh they don’t make it properly here do they not like at home’ stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney’s Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White’s suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh ‘cos they overdid it on the first day! And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses and Bontinentals with their modern international luxury roomettes and draft Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they’re acrobats, forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging in the queues and if you’re not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel is a bloody cabaret in the bar featuring a tiny emaciated Dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners. And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel, and once a week there’s an excursion to the local Roman ruins to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin’ Watney’s Red Barrel, and one evening you visit the so-called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl who keeps singing ‘Torremolinos, Torremolinos’, and complaining about the food, ‘It’s so greasy here isn’t it!’ and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic and Dr Scholl sandals and Tuesday’s ‘Daily Express’ and he drones on and on and on about how Mr Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards of places they don’t realise they haven’t even visited, ‘to all at number 22, weather wonderful our room is marked with an “X”. Food very greasy but we found a charming little place hidden away in the back streets, where they serve Watney’s Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays “Maybe its because I’m a Londoner”’…
Ah. Very interesting.
I didn’t really call you “Eddie Baby”, did I, sweetie?
Simon’s got to get under this bar and this is extremely difficult, as it requires absolutely expert co-ordination between mind and body. No, Vivian isn’t there. Here we go again and Simon’s fallen backwards. Here’s Nigel, he’s tripped, Nigel has tripped, and he’s under and Simon fails again, er, here is Gervaise, and Simon is through by accident. Here’s Gervaise to be the last one over, there we are, here’s Nigel right at the head of the field…
I…am an enchanter.
You did say 46 Horton Terrace?
And now he’s going to shoot the rabbit, and these rabbits have been tied to the ground, and they’re going to be a bit frisky, and this is only a one-day event. And they’re blazing away there. They’re not getting quite the results that they might, Gervaise is in there trying to bash it to death with the butt of his rifle, and I think Nigel’s in there with his bare hands, but they’re not getting the results that they might, but it is a little bit misty today and they must be shooting from a range of at least one foot. But they’ve had a couple of hits there I think, yes, they’ve had a couple of hits, and the whole field is up again and here they are.
Stand and deliver!
What’s this, then? “Romanes Eunt Domus”? “People called Romanes they go the house”?
Booming out of the pages of history comes a story of three men and one woman whose courage shocked a generation.
(The contestants approach a line of shop-window dummies each wearing only a bra)
They’re coming up to the debs, Gervaise first, Vivian second, Simon third. And now they’ve got to take the bras off from the front, this is really difficult, this is really the most, the most difficult part of the entire competition, and they’re having a bit of trouble in there I think, they’re really trying now and the crowd is getting excited, and I think some of the twits are getting rather excited too.
O Lord, please don’t burn us.
Don’t grill or toast Your flock.
Don’t put us on the barbecue
Or simmer us in stock.
Don’t braise or bake or boil us
Or stir-fry us in a wok.
Oh, please don’t lightly poach us
Or baste us with hot fat.
Don’t fricassee or roast us
Or boil us in a vat,
And please don’t stick Thy servants, Lord,
In a Rotissomat.
There shall, in that time, be rumors of things going astray…erm…and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are…and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before…about eight o’clock. Yea, it is written in the book of Cyril that, in that time, shall the third one…