I took a walk through Scunthorpe this morning, headed into the town centre for a look around, and passed a fast food outlet called Daily Kebab.
It says much about the gastronomic nature of this North Lincolnshire town that there is a premises for someone’s DAILY kebab fetish. I think it would be considered unhealthy to eat more than two kebabs a week, and so to indulge in seven would surely have such a detrimental effect on the consumers heart and gut that the local Health Service in Scunthorpe must have one of the highest obesity rates anywhere in the world. Worse than Texas….
Daily Kebab. I like the thinking behind naming a fast food outlet that. Perhaps the proprietors used to run another kebab house in the town called, say, Weekly Pig-out, and thought to themselves that they were limiting themselves by suggesting that people should only use them once a week to gorge their bloated faces. By calling their new store Daily Kebab, it would give people the message that their hard to identify meat should really be consumed on a far more regular basis. Or perhaps they had noticed a great many customers making their guilty way into the shop every day and thought that they should set up a speciality property just for them? It would not surprise me if the people of Scunthorpe’s vulgar eating habits were soon to be satisfied with a shop called Breakfast Pizza or Hourly Deep-Fry.
I travelled with Ronnie Edwards over to Grimsby by train, where we were both appearing tonight.
Again, it was in the function room of a hotel, this time called The Elizabeth. The show was undoubtedly one of the rowdiest I’ve come across, with a group of thirty men at the front hurling constant heckles at whomever was on stage. I was set to go on first and watched as the MC took the full force of their attentions at the top of the show. He accidentally mentioned “Doncaster�, a local and rival town and received a shower of missiles and beer mats, as well as a chorus of boos, for his slip of the tongue. This was going to be interesting.
He introduced me saying “I’m going to get a comic on to sort this out� and so I grabbed the mic and cheerfully introduced myself by saying “Hello Doncaster!� This caused a bit of uproar but good uproar in as much as they could obviously see I was making a joke of the situation, but also that I didn’t care for their opposition, nor for their approval. A couple of the main culprits down the front, in the group of men, (who were only 30 out of an audience of 200 or so) immediately started shouting at me and I used an age old, and slightly rude, put-down on them to test the water. “What are your names? Neil and Bob? Or is that what you do?�
This got a monumental laugh from the audience that lasted a full minute, but also, most importantly, had the offending group of men laughing heartily too. There was no malice in them, they had come along to a comedy night so they could sit in the front and shout stuff out in the hope the comedian would rip them apart.
The show was one of the most memorable I’ve ever done. Yes, the heckles continued spasmodically, but not to the detriment of other people’s enjoyment. The large group of men had simply made the mistake that they were the show. The gig was going really well when I was telling a story about a blackboard menu in a pub.
“Don’t you mean chalkboard?� said a black member of the alpha male group, pretending to be offended. This caused the audience to scream at the apparently awkward situation I’d been put in but I remained silent until they died down, smiling away, before looking my heckler in the eye and saying “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant BLACK board� which got roars of approval (not in a racist way) but at the insanity of political correctness.
From then on in, every bit of material seemed to have a purposefully racial tinge. A man walked past the front of the stage carrying a tray of drinks. I picked one up off the tray, and tasted it. “Hmmm. Bacardi and Coke… Nice drink… Although the wrong colour.�
Needless to say that racism isn’t funny, but this guy had thrown down the gauntlet by being pedantically and jokingly politically correct, and so I made fun of it by being as non PC as I could, without ever once being directly offensive. They loved it.
Gigs like this can so easily go wrong and indeed the group did get far rowdier and less intelligible for the second two comedians and basically the show broke down. People were walking out. It was a shame. I was very lucky to be on first.
I mentioned yesterday that Ronnie practices Raiki. Well he’d said earlier in the day that he could cure any ailment I had and so I mentioned to him I was apparently a terrible snorer, and that I do perspire far too much. Attractive, huh? So after the show he sat me down in an empty room and told me to relax. He stood behind me, or so I thought at first. I closed my eyes and voluntarily went into a very deep, very relaxing, almost… trance. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I felt asleep, but was conscious of a finger tip very lightly touching my neck or the top of my head every so often…. Presuming Ronnie was still standing behind me doing this, I then heard his voice say “Stanley… Stanley� and I woke up almost instantly to see him standing quite some distance away by a door. It was extraordinary.
I felt rather weak at the knees at first but the feeling soon passed. If this does work, and I am told I no longer snore, or no longer perspire so much, then I am going to hail Ronnie Edwards as some sort of God. I will let you know.
I went back to my hotel in the centre of down for a hopefully snore free night and reflected on another day less ordinary.
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