I
recently took part in a well-known T.V. show at the behest of my 82 year-old
Dad. Now my Dad has always retained his South African, easy-going charm
and generally positive outlook on things, unlike his wife, my mother,
who is altogether a much more complicated kettle-of-fish, although
basically cheery. Now that's an expression you don't hear a lot these
days, and it's probably even offensive to some. My mother would say
that she's not at all complicated, wherein lies the first complication.
I love John Cleese for instance, my mother cannot abide him! We
both love Billy Connelly, even though his live shows contain liberal
amounts of cursing, somehow she is able to 'forgive' him. I don't think
she would give Eddy Izzard the time of day, even though I told her I
had 'shared' the same 'gig' once-upon-a-time. If anyone knows Tobacco
Dock then you'll know that this is a conversion-job down the road from
The Tower of London, which was meant to appeal to shoppers and tourists
alike. It's a sad fact that it was just in the WRONG LOCATION, CHAPS! .
. . I mean, what a bunch of pillocks! Lovely old building,
converted into a Covent Garden-style notion, without the 'covent' or
the 'garden', so quite naturally they hired street-entertainers from
the afore-mentioned place to come and perform. I think it's about the
only time I almost fell asleep at the wheel so to speak! Whereas Eddy
got all his 'customers' in one bunch, (ah, the advantages of comedy), I
managed to spread mine out throughout the whole day! Fourteen of them.
SO...! I got desparate and started counting!! That was probably
the mistake. Have you ever counted sheep in slow motion?!
Anyway . . In
these kinds of situations you take the money and RUN!
We
got paid reasonably handsomely as this was the early nineties/post
eighties recession and people were willing to fork out for some
things... still.
With
the advent of Labour, we have had ten lovely years of misery, bless
them, they are humourless, which is always the way with
socialist/communist types. They really do not know how to enjoy
themselves in public. They are deathly boring and totally Stalinist in
their approach to life, the universe and everything and controlling
EVERYTHING that lives and breaths. In private however, they are mostly ALL into orgies and such like . . . I've heard, which of course makes them rampant hypocrites!
Having
come off the point somewhat, and in brief: 'BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT' is
the programme that 'invited' me and 138,999 others to take part in what
turned out to be a charade. Sure I got through to the third round but
they could have spared the last 800 of us an exasperating trip to
London just to hang around and be told a few hours later in batches of
five to seven, that we had not progressed to the last 40, who
apparently were ALL semi-finalists. You see, at this point I part
company with life as we know it. Semi-final I think still means FOUR
people, but I expect that over the years of the television industry,
like everything else, inflation has taken it's toll. (Talking of which,
have you ever thought about the fact that INFLATION is actually a form
of taxation.?! )
Sure
- I got to 'slag' off the great man himself (Simon Cowell), who
had been busy pulling me to pieces. Funny that, but I felt remarkably
in control and not at all 'gotten at', whereas Amanda Holden was
extremely nice to me and called my performance 'beautiful'. This was
amply compensated for by Pierce Morgan, who I never knew everyone hated
so much, and there are stories of people laying hands on him, and I'm
not talking some sort of healing position! Dear Pierce hated me so much
he thought I was Spanish! I had to correct him, pointing out that the
song I had just hacked to death (nerves, you know) was actually by one
Gordon Sumner, the same place Ant & Dec are from (who were standing
in the wings giggling!) He proceeded to aplogise for his 'musical
ignorance'. Yeh, right! Simon, on the other hand, wasn't having any of
it and hated my 2-and-a-half-thousand-pound P.A., which I had bothered
to take and set up, under extremely difficult conditions(!), just to
get a reasonable sound on this friggin' stage!! He called me
pretentious and the 'coup-de-gras' was his final statement that I was
infact, a not very likeable person up there! This being the Millenium
stage in Cardiff's Millenium Hall. Well . . . I sat there, and
then a feeling came right up from the pit of my stomach somewhere, and
I quite frankly, agreed with him, saying that really,
I was not a very likeable person . . and from some place
that only lives in 'performer's paradise', the words escaped my lips
that, that was one thing at least, we, him and myself, had in common. .
. . . . lo and behold if I didn't in fact get a wee wry
smile out of him! He then proceeded to vote me back in, as his rather
previous, and noisy interruption of the delicate and 'tiringly slow'
introduction to 'Fragile' with a rather loud buzzer, had not succeeded
in putting me off. Round Three turned out to be a day out for the wife
and kid. I now know what that is all about, and can either play up to
it or lead a more interesting existence . . .
Well,
first up with Page 1, is Mr. John Cleese and something
I got the other day, a year or two ago, from my sister in Oz...
oh yes, you'll get credits unless you want anonymous.... no
money, just internet fame!