The show must go on

Keith's Rambling is fast approaching its 5th Anniversary. I've been going back over many hundreds of posts and reading things I don't even remember writing! I've picked out a few that have attracted favourable comments and I'm going to be reprinting several of them over the next few days. This weeks prompt at Carry On Tuesday is 'The show must go on' and I've dug out a short piece I wrote in 2009 on that very subject.

The show was to start in just ten minutes time. The audience had been filing in and taking their seats for the last twenty minutes or so. There was a contented buzz filling the auditorium and the crackling sound of bags of sweets being opened. Not long to go and you could feel the excitement!

Then suddenly the lights went down, ten minutes early! The orchestra which had been playing a little light music suddenly stopped and frantically set about finding the music for the overture. There was a rustling of sheet music as the conductor raised his baton, then most of the musicians started playing.

Thirty seconds into the overture, the curtains swept aside, a hush came over the audience.One by one the musicians stopped playing and the spotlights flickered into life.

The stage was bare! At least it was until a little man sauntered on from stage left!

There, blinking in the middle of the empty set stood Ron the stage manager in his paint splattered dungarees with a hammer in one hand and a screwdriver in the other! The only sound from the auditorium was the thud of seats popping up as people stood to allow the latecomers to shuffle their way to their seats in the middle of the rows!

Ron looked left, looked right, looked up, and then down. Being a true professional he decided that as the curtains had opened, the show must go on. He shrugged,and the crowd started laughing. Ron laughed back and the crowd laughed even more! Then he produced a spanner from his tool belt and started his back-stage party trick – juggling with his tools! The crowd loved it!

Ron had always fancied the idea of being a stand up comic. Perhaps this was fate. Perhaps this moment was meant to be. Dare he? Well, nothing else seemed to be happening so he started telling jokes!

‘Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?” Laughter! ‘I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any’. More laughter!

It didn’t last long. The curtains flew closed leaving Ron half in and half out of the set. The audience roared for more, but that was it for Ron’s first public performance. A couple of minutes later the show that the audience came to see got under way.

But it wasn’t Ron’s last performance! Nowadays he appears in open mike sessions in pubs and clubs all around the area. He still wears his dungarees, juggles tools and tells corny jokes!

‘A recent survey was conducted to discover why men get out of bed in the night. Five percent said it was to bet a glass of water, twelve percent said it was to go to the bathroom and eighty three percent said it was to go home!’

Nice one Ron!