One winter’s evening found me compering an event in a local hotel alongside TV favourite Ricky Tomlinson.
The Royle Family star is also well known as a very talented ukulele player and, he told us, his night in Hartlepool had turned sour because his prized instrument had been stolen.
Apparently, during the sound check, he’d popped outside because one of his companions needed a smoke.
As always, he took his ukulele with him because it never left his side.
It was particularly prized because it had been a gift from a recently departed relative – and it was also worth a lot of money.
While chatting outside the Grand, Ricky had put the valuable instrument down near his feet.
Ciggy completed, they’d then headed back inside just as a diminutive female was coming out into the street.
The second he got back into the ballroom to complete the sound check, Ricky realised that he had left his prized possession outside.
He raced out of the door but it had gone.
Distraught, he phoned the police, who asked him when he had last seen the apparently stolen item.
Ricky replied, “It was leaning on the lamp-post at the corner of the street when a certain little lady walked by.”
Younger readers may have to google the name of ukulele legend George Formby to get the full impact!
The splendid deadpan delivery of apparent bad news took everyone in splendidly.
There are times, though, when dry humour is not there when you think it is!
Some years ago, I was compering a splendid evening at the home of Huddersfield Town Football Club.
Their function room is huge, but very long with a low ceiling.
The musical cabaret that night were the Bachelors, a very successful Irish singing trio in the Sixties and beyond.
These days, there are only two in the trio, if you see what I mean, but their act is really good.
They were wonderfully self-deprecating too, opening their set with a question to the audience, “Hands up who thought we were dead!”
This was followed by “Hands up who wishes we were dead!”
During the afternoon, their sound engineer was setting up their public address system, which was simply superb.
He’d rigged up a long bank of six top quality speakers to cover the full room which held a huge audience.
Once set up, he played a brilliant test tape which sounded like a group of jet fighters in formation racing from one end of the space to the other.
Spotting a chance, I asked him to keep the tape handy for when the night started.
When the evening began, luckily for me, it was pouring down outside.
Deadpan, I was able to tell the audience that, for health and safety reasons, the weather meant that we’d had to cancel a planned fly-past by the Red Arrows.
I told the audience that the pilots were so professional that they’d offered to perform their famous formation routine inside the building.
At my signal, double doors at each end of the room were opened and I asked the audience to put their heads on their tables and pull down the blue and white balloons.
The noise which followed was earth-shattering and it really did sound as if a squadron of jets had raced over the heads of the cowering audience.
There were many laughs and a great round of applause, and we went on with the evening.
About half an hour later, an irate looking lady came to berate me for being so irresponsible in letting aircraft fly indoors.
I grinned, thinking I was meeting my match in deadpan humour.
I wasn’t –she meant it.
If I ever get a coat of arms, I think it will include Red Arrows – and a ukulele.
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