4 star review of my brand new show at the Brighton Fringe Festival

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Health & Safety

Amateur daredevil and water sports fanatic Mike Finesse couldn’t have regained control of his speedboat at a more fortuitous moment. At the last second he swerved to avoid a ferry containing the incomparable Swedish ladies beach volleyball team, one pristine looking member of which was so impressed by Mike’s breathtaking near miss that she decided simultaneously to jump ship, desert her compatriots, abandon any hope of Olympic medal glory, and leap spectacularly into the lap of the still calm and collected Mike Finesse.

“You were so brave when you nearly crashed into the ferry,” said the smitten Swede, running her fingers over Mike’s torso as if it was some kind of chicken-taffeta hybrid. “Do you handle a woman the way you handle your boat? If the answer’s yes then let’s make love; wild, dangerous, irresponsible love, as if there was no such thing as tomorrow or a health and safety procedure.”

“The answer’s yes,” said Mike Finesse, “I just need you to fill in this form and put this helmet on, then we can drive back to terra firma, get married on the beach (once I’ve had a chance to ask for your father’s blessing, of course) and from then on we can do it as much as you like.”

Laurels

Alfred J Hammock the 473rd, of the relaxing, reclining, oft tied between two trees, laidback, easy-living dynasty, spent most of his time, if not all of it, sitting, if not lying, all over his ancestors’ laurels. The plight of the over-privileged: poor Alfred J, he did not even have his own to sit on.

Julian Bean and his mournful suspicious wife

Julian Bean was famously capricious. That’s not to say he was famous because he wasn’t but if he had been, it’s surely his capriciousness that he would have been famous for and this made his wife Morwena Bean more than a little bit suspicious.


As with all people noted for their capriciousness, sometimes Julian Bean wasn’t capricious at all. But it’s like he said more often than was necessary: “Hello and welcome to my world. My name's Julian Bean and I’m characterised by and subject to the forces of whimsy, I’m as unpredictable as a sea monkey at an improvised comedy workshop, but I can’t always be capricious, can I? Would you like to dance?"

Julian Bean enjoyed very much welcoming people to his world, which he considered with a swath of superiority to be more original, more fun and generally better than other people's worlds. This firmly held conviction was objectively unprovable (of course) but what was no matter of debate or opinion was the fact that Julian Bean couldn't dance. He could do a fair number of things, he was a zesty conversationalist, an enthusiastic climber and a dab hand at spotting a rare bird when it behove him to do so but he was intrinsically, woefully incapable of moving his body in any vaguely rhythmical fashion.

Because Julian Bean was defined by his wild and sporadic changes in mood and behaviour, it came as no great surprise to those who knew him when he suddenly passed away for no particular reason.

"Capricious through and through", said the vicarious vicar at Julian's impromptu funeral which was held on a tugboat in Monkton Park, as part of the Chippenham River Festival. "Julian Bean was at a loose end for the first time in his life and it would appear, incomprehensible though it may seem, that this, understandably, is why he finally snuffed it."

His mournful and suspicious wife carried on living after Julian's death right up until the time of her own, but she always slept in fancy dress, as Greta Garbo one night, Attila the Hun the next, in the vain hope that her dead husband might capriciously one day come back to life.

The autobiography of Winston Shoehorn

Perched in his garret, Winston Shoehorn, waiting for inspiration, Winston Shoehorn, tried to think of a word, just one word to get the ball rolling, open the flood gates through which the creative juices would endlessly flow. But … Winston Shoehorn couldn’t think of a word, not one, not even a letter that might eventually give birth to the formation of a word. “I’m fucked,” he said to himself, trying not to sound defeatist. “I can’t think of a single bloody word, there’s nothing else for it.” He put down his pen (a nice ballpoint - perfect for writing, containing as it does an internal reservoir of ink, which is dispensed via the point of the ball when the ball starts to roll), stood up from his desk and flung himself out of a nearby window, in the mistaken belief that he, Winston Shoehorn, would only realistically achieve the recognition that he, Winston Shoehorn, felt he deserved after, as in not before, his death. Winston Shoehorn died instantaneously upon impact, leaving behind as his literary legacy, the only evidence that he had ever entertained artistic ambitions, however modest or misguided; the one longwinded and rather clunky autobiographical paragraph that you, the reader, have just read.

Amanda Quorn

Amanda Quorn was a devout and voracious carnivore. Indeed she loved poultry and game and once tried to get off with a moose (low in fat and higher in protein than beef or goose).

Although the Quorn family history could be traced back several generations (long before the advent of the dubious micro-protein based alternative to meat with which Amanda shared her name), very few people bothered to investigate her genealogy, and it was widely assumed that Amanda Quorn was a treacherous and perverted charlatan; a duplicitous and fraudulent sham, who would hoodwink the butcher at the drop of a yam. 

"I'm Quorn by name and name alone!" Amanda would declare from the rooftops, the blood of a boar dripping from her chops, but it was to no avail, the universal taunting would not stop.

Until one day she decided enough was enough and Amanda Quorn checked into the local asylum, where she was tragically mistaken for a fruit and swiftly turned into jam, (something she herself would never ever eat given therein the complete lack of meat) and despite the human rights protestations, her family's grief and abject disbelief, it was surprisingly tasty and higher in protein than goose or beef. 

Jacob Mansize and the lady with the beautiful mouth

Jacob Mansize, wildlife fanatic (otters mainly) and bearded barber, was snoozing in his chair, dreaming of the woman of his dreams when a butterfly flapped its wings in Papa New Guinea and set in a motion a chain of events that would dramatically change the course of history for a very short period of time. Or was it merely a cosmic coincidence that a butterfly flapped and moments later on the other side of the world a lady walked out of the wind and rain and into Jacob’s barbershop on Balham High Road (Tooting end), jolting Jacob out of his fantastical slumber, and requested an impromptu trim?

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” said the lady, stylishly ushering the words out her mouth, which was beautiful, the sort of mouth you might see in a toothpaste advert, a new kind of amazing toothpaste that promised to do all manner of things that no other paste (tooth or otherwise) had ever done before, like turn back time or make you look like Grace Kelly in her heyday even though you actually look much more like Matthew Kelly on a bad day, perhaps one involving an erroneous police arrest on suspicion of stealing a hot cross bun.

Jacob Mansize stirred in his chair and rearranged his body parts into a form and posture befitting the presence of a lady with a beautiful mouth.

“No matter,” said Jacob, his words bumbling out of his mouth and onto the hairy floor. “I was just taking a little nap, it’s been a busy morning – how can I help you?”

“Do you cut ladies hair?” said the sodden, weather-beaten lady.

Jacob was about to say no, I don’t, this is barbershop, are you completely out of your mind of course I don’t - when he noticed the mouth on the face of the lady standing in front of him asking him the question. He was struck, nay, walloped by its beauty; he fell back into his chair, clocked the uncanny resemblance of the lady to the female protagonist in his recent reverie, decided on the spot he was in love with the lady purely on the basis of just one of her physical attributes, albeit an important one, and declared: “But of course, I cut ladies hair, and I would love to cut yours, it would be an honour and a pleasure - when do you need it done by?”

“Are you free now?” said the lady, who in addition to her beautiful mouth, possessed an irresistible pair of hands. “I have a date this evening and my regular hairdresser has gone on a silent retreat to Billericay - lastminute.com apparently, more like massive-inconvenience.com...”

The beauty of the lady’s mouth slipped off her face like a cheap mask half way through the ball. A new kind of ugliness crept up in its place and settled in immediately like a squatter with unparalleled staying power and no desire to see the world.

Jacob Mansize was no longer in love. He fancied the pants off the lady before him on account of her mouth and hands but that was all. She had a date already and said things like “massive-inconvenience.com”. This was a most unattractive trait and Jacob knew for certain they could never be together. Jacob pretended he had just remembered something very important which meant he wasn’t free after all and he showed the lady out of his shop.

He shut the door behind her, and locked it. He climbed back into his chair and resumed his snooze, this time dreaming not of womankind but of the otter sanctuary he hoped one day to open and run, not realising this venture would remain a far off fantasy if he continued to refuse to cut people’s hair.  

As Jacob Mansize nodded off for the second time that afternoon, another butterfly flapped its wings many miles away and consequently, a few moments later, nothing happened.