When I started out performing stand-up, I once arrived at a club having, foolishly, not eaten since breakfast, 12 hours before.
Standing in the wings, light-headed and nauseous, I turned to the promoter and said, “I feel funny”. He replied, “Well get on before it wears off”.
Lesson learnt, I’ll get on with this while I still feel funny.
Last Saturday, as I was just about to walk into a supermarket, a lady approached me.
Middle-aged and well-dressed, she had the demeanor of a model and the suspicion of a moustache.
She said, “Excuse me! Are you local?” and I gave her a friendly smile and replied, “Well, that depends on where I am at the time”.
Unfazed by my brilliant shaft of wit, she asked, “Is there a B & Q in Ammanford?”
I said, “No. There’s two As, two Ms, an N, an F, an O, an R and a D”.
When she explained she urgently needed cream paint, I said, “Matt?”. To which she replied, “No, my name’s Gloria”.
When I told her I thought the supermarket had cream paint on aisle 5, she thanked me and wandered off.
After I’d finished shopping, I stood in the queue at the check-out and couldn’t help but notice that the man standing immediately in front of me was covered from head to toe in baby oil. He was plastered in the stuff.
Being British, I naturally didn’t make eye contact with him, speak to him or react to the unmistakable odour wafting across from two feet away.
After he’d paid for his purchases and was well out of earshot, I said to the lady at the till, “Do you know that man who was covered in baby oil?”
In hushed tones, she replied, “No, I’ve never seen him before. But if you ask me, he’s a bit of a slippery customer!”
Then the lady who wanted cream paint came up to me again and said, angrily, “The cream paint wasn’t where you said, you plonker! You sent me to the aisle of white!”
You just can’t help some people, can you?