Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [76]
“I think the driver’s dead,” says Bill Hall — it must be a second opinion. On the road I help the bird get her boobs back into her dress, give them a squeeze and ask would she like a quickie. The colonel is gaining consciousness and saying ‘Darling, you were wonderful’ to Bill Hall, who agrees with him. An American Police Patrol jeep screeches to a halt. They leave one policeman and the other speeds off for help — he will ‘alert the British Military Police’. In no time the whole mess is cleaned up, the ambulance whisks off the colonel, the lady and the dead driver. A giant crane lifts the wreck away and whoosh! all gone. All that’s left are the six British idiots, alone in the dark with the top half of a van. “Let’s play look for the wheels,” says George Puttock.
We are waiting for the ‘Alert British Police’ — one hour, two hours, three hours — shall we start walking? No, we should have started walking hours ago. It’s gone four o’clock. Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Prince Albert had also gone, everyone had gone but us. As morning in a bowl of light was putting the stars to flight, a fifteen-cwt truck with two Military Police arrives, followed by an ambulance. My first words were: “Where the fuck have you been?” A tall red cap cautions me. “Now, now Corporal,” he warned, “that kind of language won’t get us anywhere.” Oh, would he like it in fucking French then? He was not endeared to me.
“Where are the injured?” he said.
We are the fucking injured, I said, but we’re all better now.
“We were told that your driver was dead.”
Oh? We didn’t know that, otherwise we would never have let him drive.
Enough is enough. We get into the fifteen-cwt and as the sun was rising, drive down the Royal road to Naples.
“Two hundred, three hundred,” Bill Hall is recounting his money. Another foot and that car would have killed us. “Three hundred and twenty…”
Nice Surprisey-Poo
You are very lucky fellows,” says Reg O’List, who is now not singing ‘Begin the Beguine’. Why are we lucky fellows? We have been chosen to appear on the bill of the Finale of the Festival of Arts. This turns out to be nothing more nor less than a Military ‘Opportunity Knocks’ and, after all the contestants have done, while the summing up is going on, there is to be entertainment by the ‘professionals’. Any extra money? No. Sod. OK, the Pros are Stan Bradbury, a song-plugger from the UK, the Polish Ballet, ourselves and HELLLLLPPPPPP Gracie Fields and her singing! It’s too late now, we’ve said yes and they’ve aired the beds.
“You’ll only be there for forty-eight hours,” said Lieutenant, O’List. That would be long enough for me to carry out my solemn promise to Maria Marini that I would come back and marry her from the waist down.
“Grade Fields,” said Bill Hall, like he’s announcing the Doppelgänger.
“Don’t worry,” says Reg O’List, “I’ve put you on before her, so if you hurry up you can be out in the street before she starts singing. I’ll try and keep the theatre doors shut so that the sound doesn’t get out.”
Secombe, he’s coming too, it’s about time he came too. Is he going to fill the stage with soap? No. “I’m on the spotlights,” he says, through his chattering, screaming and farting. Secombe on the spotlights?? That’s like putting a man with epilepsy on a tightrope. Secombe can’t keep still, he can’t concentrate on anything except screaming, shaving and farting. We’ll see. “I’ve been specially chosen to put the spotlight on Gracie Fields in ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’,” he says, like the Captain of the Titanic.
Yet again, the charabanc takes the chosen to the Holy City. This time it’s just the Trio, Secombe, and a few spare wanks who will do ‘odd jobs back stage’. I have no idea what odd jobs back stage are. Massaging curtains back to life?