Summer holiday, mid 80's
In the mid 80's when I was about 9, I went on holiday with my grandparents to Blackpool for a week. For the most part it was good, loads of sweets, arcades and playing darts with my granddad. However, they also took me to see three shows at the Winter Gardens*.

We went to see Cannon & Ball which was ok but they closed with an interminably painful rendition of I Believe That Children Are The Future, well they might be if they don't have to suffer that.

Then we went to see Jimmy Cricket but he was ill so we got Stu "I could crush a grape" Francis instead, he wasn't too bad. He said, "Aren't there a lot of gay bars in Blackpool" and someone shouted, "How do you know?". Oh how we laughed.

The real lowlight was being taken to see The Grumbleweeds, a sorry bunch of northern comedians who did sketches and songs that were invariably shit. Halfway through their show, I was bored to tears and desperate to leave when they started a rendition of Rock Me Amadeus by Falco and invited the audience to sing along (basically, this involved singing Amadeus Amadeus over and over again). No-one joined in, and one of the 'weeds asked, "Why aren't you singing along?", a very frustrated little me shouted out "Because we've forgotten the words". A few people laughed, the Grumbleweed came over and called me a cheeky monkey and my gran told me to shut up and smacked me around the head, hard.

What a great night that was.

* Apologies to those of you who don't know or remember 1980's light (shite) entertainment on Saturday evenings pre X Factor, Ant and Dec and Celebrity Goat Farming on Ice.
( abefroman skating on the thin life of modern life on, Thu 2 Aug 2007, 15:43, Reply)