Mussolini_ His Part in My Downfall - Spike Milligan [88]
Jock Webster follows with a series of hoary old Scottish jokes. “Is anything worn under the kilt? Nai man! everything’s in perfect working order,” etc. etc.
To the great mock fight ‘twixt Deans and Robinson. They appeared in Long Johns and plimsolls. They had been rehearsing this mock fight for a week, but it was all pointless, as in the first few moments Deans took a right hander to the chin that had him groggy, and from then on Robinson had to nurse him along. The crowd barracks, “Kill ‘im…call a priest…send ‘im ‘ome…” The ‘fight’ went the whole distance and they were given an ovation, especially Deans who now had blood running down his chin. His parting remark, “You want blood, you bastards, well, you got it.”
Next, I and the mob in community singing. American officers were baffled by songs like:
I painted her,
I painted her,
Up her belly and down her back
In every hole and every crack
I painted her,
I painted her,
I painted her old tomater over and over again.
It’s BSM Griffin now, and he’s had quite a skinful and does a conjuring act that to this day neither I nor anyone else understands. He doesn’t even remember it; he sat hidden under a blanket pushing cards out through the slit asking, “What is it?” A member of the audience would identify it: “Ace of Spades.” He would take it back inside the blanket and from his obscurity say, “So it is.” I think he got booed off, and seemed well pleased with it.
Kidgell next, his old favourites, ‘Sweet Mystery of Life’, ‘Drigo’s Serenade’. He has a very good voice.
“He ought to have had it trained,” said Edgington.
“To run errands,” added Fildes.
Kidgell had announced himself, “I will sing songs you all know and love.”
Voices of horror from the back. “Ohhhh Nooo.”
When Doug had finished the same voice said, “I didn’t love or know any of ‘em.”
Behind the stage Sid Carter has opened a few bottles of wine to celebrate the show going well.
“We should wait till the end really,” he said, “but with this mob there might not be any bloody end.”
Edgington is at the piano playing his own tunes with that grim bloody look on his face, as if he expected a shot to ring out from the audience. One of the notes went dead on him and he brought forth laughter whenever he came to the missing note, as he stood up and sang the note himself. Next, from Liverpool, we have a real ‘Scouse’, Joe Kearns. He tells lots of Liverpudlian jokes like “My owd man’s got a glass eye, one night he swallowed it, he went to see the doctor, doctor said drop ‘em, bend down, and he sees this glass eye lookin’ at him out the back and he says, ‘Wot’s the matter, don’t you trust me?’”
After him the Band are on again. We play a favourite of ours, ‘Tangerine’, and what in those days was a red-hot number, ‘Watch the Birdie’. We didn’t go that well because the boys had heard us so many times at dances. The Finale was a send-up of Major ‘Jumbo’ Jenkins in Command Post Follies, in which we took the piss out of him in no uncertain fashion. He was fuming, but put a fixed grin on his silly face. We conclude with the cast singing ‘Jogging Along to the Regimental Gallop’ to the tune of Jenkins’ own favourite, ‘Whistling Rufus’, and by God, we got a mighty ovation at the end.
The officers came backstage to congratulate us, and with consummate skill drink all our grog. We all got pretty tanked up; long after everyone had gone to bed Harry and I sat on the stage drinking and re-running the show. It had been a great night.
“Now what?” said Edgington.
Now what indeed.
BOXING DAY, DECEMBER 26, 1943
News of Amalfi
As if Christmas had not been wonderful enough—out of the line, dry beds, good grub, visits to Naples with free Venereal Disease!—we get more good news. It was like hearing you’d won the Irish Sweepstake, the moment you’d just discovered Gold in your garden.