‘Mar’in.’
‘Martin. Well, it’s nice to have you both with us. Sharon and Martin.’
The young couple shuffled about, Sharon on her six-inch wedges and Martin on his size-twelve Kickers.
Sid looked into the blackness of the moving, eating, talking noise. ‘Because tonight, ladiesandgennelmen, Sharon and Martin are here to celebrate their engagement. So how about a round of applause for Sharon and Martin?’
A table thirty or forty feet away from the stage whistled and applauded.
‘How old are you, Martin?’
‘Nine’een.’
‘Nineteen,’ Sid bellowed. ‘And Sharon, how old are you?’ he asked in a much softer voice.
‘Seveneenanaalf,’ she giggled.
‘Seventeen and a half.’
Sharon tried to hold Martin’s hand. Martin, embarrassed, slimed out of her grasp.
‘So what are you going to do with these lovely flowers, Sharon?’
‘Give’m to me mum.’
e’Give them to her mother,’ Sid told everyone. ‘What do you say to that, Martin?’
‘Sawrye.’
‘Well, we hope you’ll both be very happy. How about a big hand, ladiesandgennelman, for The Two Ronnies?’ Sid handed Sharon the bouquet. ‘Sharon and Martin, ladiesandgennelmen.’
The young couple headed towards the dark safety of the audience. Martin, in front of his future wife, suddenly stopped, while still on the edge of the bright circle of spotlight, and put both arms above his head and thumped the empty air in the same way he had seen football players do after scoring the only goal of the game with no more than thirty seconds left for play, including time added on for stoppages. He seemed to realize that this was probably the last time so many people would be watching him at one given moment. Then Sharon and Martin were enveloped by the blackness and the nothingness of the future.
‘Here, now listen,’ Sid said. ‘Have you heard about the Arab and the Jew shopping in Golders Green?’ He told his latest Arab and Jew joke. It got its quota of laughs. ‘And now, ladiesandgennelman …’ Without turning round, Sid pointed to the drummer, who gave a cymbal crash followed by three rim shots like a machine gun that only had three bullets left. Sid then changed his voice to a much lower and more serious tone, as if he was going to introduce Dean Martin at the Sands in Las Vegas. ‘The management of the Starlight Rooms, East Finchley, would now like to present …’ A slight pause; an attention-getter, an old pro’s trick to make the audience think maybe the star is coming on. A few heads turned towards him, still chewing their chicken-in-a-basket. ‘A special bouquet,’ Sid smarmed. ‘The last bouquet.’
The few heads turned back and tried to find their food.
‘I know it’s the last bouquet because it’s eleven-thirty and the cemetery across the road closes at eleven.’
The noise was getting louder because the punters were getting bored with bouquets. The bar at the back was packed with people trying to get all their drinks to take back to their tables to swim in while the star was on, because in the star’s contract there was a clause forbidding the bar to remain open while the said star was performing. The punters knew this. They even knew how much the star was getting and, in some cases, how much in ‘readies’.
Sid carried on, ‘To someone you all know and love. The ex-resident singer of the Starlight Rooms—Miss Shelley Grange. How about a big round of applause for Shelley ladies and gennelmen?’
Sid’s delivery was now getting louder and faster. It was almost like Kermit the Frog. He knew nobody out there was interested in Shelley Grange. Hell fire—she even talked off-key! He was now having to battle, but the management, Manny and Al Keppleman, had insisted he did this because Manny, unknown to Al, and Al, unknown to Manny, had both been having naughties with Shelley, known to everyone. So tonight she was being thanked publicly. Even the group was smiling, all except the drummer, as he’d joined after Shelley had left.
‘Come on up, Shelley,’ Sid said, putting his hands together as if in prayer.
Shelley made her way up from one of the front tables looking completely surprised, which made Sid think, She’s a good little actress as well, seeing that it was all planned yesterday.
The group was playing one of her songs, ‘I Did It my Way’. Shelley—her real name was Minnie Schoenberg—glided on to the small stage, her candy-floss hair so lacquered, it almost cracked as she walked. She had a good figure, leaning slightly towards plumpness. Her dress was a mass of silver flashing sequins, and as she made her way towards the stage she reminded Sid of a very pretty Brillo pad.
She was now on stage with Sid and the dutiful applause faded very quickly. A few voices from the area of the bar shouted incoherent ruderies, followed by loud guffaws of beer-brave laughter.
Sid boomed, ‘Welcome back, Shelley. It’s great to see you again.’
Shelley smiled at Sid and the audience. Her blonde hair crackled in the spotlight. She turned to the group, the Viv Dane Stompers, affectionately known as the V-Ds. The boys grinned back. In the wings, another blonde in a tight blue flashing dress watched Shelley. She was Serina, the new resident singer. They looked at each other with exposed teeth and four dead eyes.
Sid shouted, ‘Ladiesandgennelmen, we’ve invited Shelley back to the Starlight Rooms tonight because a little bird has told us that Shelley is getting married next month to a—’
‘Next week,’ Shelley said.
‘Why? Can’t you wait?’ Sid spurted out. He went on, ‘—next week to a friend of all of us, our own bar manager, Giorgio Richetti. How about a round of applause for Giorgio-Richettiladiesandgennelmen?’ Apart from Shelley’s own table, the loudest applause for Giorgio came from just outside the office door—Al and Manny.
‘Come on up, Giorgio,’ Sid shouted.
Giorgio was guided by his eight friends at his table, all men, all Italian, all in tuxedo suits, all applauding, all looking as if they were waiting for Jimmy Cagney to walk in and say, ‘Okay, you dirty rats.’ Giorgio was up there with Shelley and Sid. Six foot two inches, black shiny hair, black dress-suit, a full black moustache and a large black bowtie. He stood there looking like a rolled umbrella.
For all the audience cared, Shelley and Giorgio could be in Manchester. Waiters were trying to clear the plates off the tables, waitresses, in their bunny-type costumes, were leaning forward showing cleavage at the front and white, tailed bums up in the air at the back.
‘What was that, sir?’ one of them asked.
‘Four pints of lager, two large whiskies, one with American Dry, one without, both with ice. A dry martini and lemonade and … What’s yours having, Bert?’
‘A snowball.’
‘And a snowball for the lady.’
‘We haven’t got any snowballs, sir.’
‘No
