Who's Foolin' Who?

Just a few weeks to go before April Fool’s Day, that time of year when I kind of get away with my visceral stupidity by claiming “I was only joking”. It’s the only day of the year when I don’t look a complete idiot, just a work in progress.

So, have you planned ahead? Got some innovative ideas that will have them falling about with laughter and hiding with embarrassment, or are you going to fall back on the old faithfulls like cling film over the toilet bowl and washing up liquid in the cistern?

Toilets do seem a ripe area for April Fools. While my academic record at University may make my genius less like Michaelangelo and more like Michael Angelis, the voice of Thomas The Tank Engine, I will always be proud of the day I visited an old school pal’s student flat for the first time. I left a twelve inch length of dental floss floating inside his toilet bowl and showed him that he had left a huge tapeworm behind. My cries of April Fool didn’t help in any way, perhaps, on reflection, because it was, and I imagine he’s probably still in therapy. Once you plant an image like that, it stays for life.

I think I’m already ahead of the game this year. I have ordered a box containing a new capsule that has just been launched, and I may end up buying crate loads. It’s called Puck - probably because the reaction you will get may sound a lot like that – and the idea is that you go to someone’s house and ask to use the loo. Once there, slip a capsule in to the cistern and then say nothing. For about a week afterwards, no matter how often they flush, the water will remain the shade of yellow that artists may call ‘lemorange chiffon’ but you and I will know better as ‘three day old wee’.

The best practical jokes take a bit of setting up. Chocolate covered apples with sticks in make lovely treats. Chocolate covered onions, however, look exactly the same and are the present that keeps on giving – every time the recipient gets wind for hours afterwards.

Some April Fool jokes can be cruel. One couple I know were expecting their first baby and had already decorated the nursery and installed a cot. They hired a babysitter and went out for the night, telling her not to disturb their nonexistent child as she had just fallen asleep. After an hour in their favourite restaurant they rang home and asked the sitter to check how the baby was doing. I’m told the hysterical report back that the baby was missing had them in stitches. Me? I thought it was mean.

I also didn’t much appreciate the thinking behind last year’s call to our local large grocery superstore on April 1st when some idiot had obviously ‘phoned in and asked for a call to be put out for his friend. Over the PA system a woman steadily announced “Would Al Kyder please go to customer information. That’s Al Kyder to the front desk please.” You don’t have to be a terrorism specialist to find that a bit stupid. Clever, but stupid just the same.

These April Fool tricks are usually great when done to someone else but, for some reason, I don’t find them hilarious when aimed at me. I still harbour a grudge against the school pal who put those sticky plant seeds in my gym kit many years ago, making me itch for days. I’m not happy either with another pal at my gym who swapped my deodorant for Ralgex heat spray, nor my old school pal Robin who stayed with me just before I got married and hard boiled all the fresh eggs in my fridge one day when I was out, before putting them back in their box.

So, let’s get our thinking caps on this year and come up with something new and different. If you have any ideas please let me know. A lot rests on this, remember. It’s my day to shine and make people forget I’m just a sad idiot every other day of the year.

There's No Business Like Showbusiness

I’ve been going to the theatre a lot over the past few months and I must admit that this, for a modest, unassuming person like I am, can be a bit difficult. You see it’s hard for me to sit and see someone else up on stage getting all the attention and, unlike my real life, never stuttering or being stuck for a good exit line or wracking their ageing brain for what word comes next. Also, I envy their happy endings and exciting lives. You never see anyone on stage stuck in queues or trying to park at B&Q do you? And they don’t ever do mundane things like dig the back garden or clean the toilet.

The way that I’ve found is best to handle my envy of all this is to quickly stand up at the end of a show and pretend the riotous applause from the audience is for me. This only works for a moment as it leads to everyone else getting up and the cast receiving a standing ovation, but I’m sure they know it’s all really for me and that it’s my caring nature that is letting them share.

I only realised this week that my trips to the theatre have involved seeing too many musicals recently like Wicked, Jersey Boys, Dreamboats and Petticoats, Oliver, etc, and so a “proper” play now takes me by surprise. The realisation came to me when I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice last week and wondered where the songs had gone and where the orchestra was hiding. If the bard had been really savvy he could have written a tune or two in his time and Shylock could have burst in to a ballad when demanding his pound of flesh. Maybe First Cut Is The Deepest?

I heard that my love of theatre is shared with The Queen and Prince Phillip who sneaked in late to a West End show last week, climbing over everyone and sending tubs of Maltesers flying as they fought to get to their seats. I’d hate to be the poor soul stuck sitting behind Her Majesty though. After the initial nudge, nudge excitement, you can’t exactly ask her to take her crown off as it’s restricting your view can you? And what’s the etiquette? Can you ask her to sign your programme? Do you offer to buy her a choc ice at the interval?

Hopefully she would turn down the offer anyway as a programme and choc ice in theatres today cost roughly the same as the upkeep of Balmoral for six months. I often think the best actors in the theatre are the usherettes who put on a wonderful welcoming smile as they hand you one triple chocolate Ben & Jerry’s and say “that will be fifty pounds please. Have a good evening”. To make legal theft look so innocent and appealing takes some amount of acting.

The toilets in all theatres are tiny and look like they were built for royalty – King Arthur that is – and that’s why there are always queues outside these antiquated, quaintly aromatic, stalls. Perhaps when it comes to loos our current monarch has someone who does it for her – the queueing that is, not the actual sitting down bit.

I think it’s important for the public to support theatre, a tradition that obviously stretches way back to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre days and even further, perhaps back as far as Bruce Forsyth’s first gig, so I fervently support my local theatre even though it is often half empty and puts on shows that are too arty with a capital “F”.

I find that supporting your local theatre is a bit like following your local football team in that you know it will always be a minor player, never win out on the big day and will always be unloved by others. I imagine it’s a bit like being a Liberal Democrat.

So I urge you to be that unfashionable supporter of your local theatre and all its silly ways and Victorian charm. It needs you if it’s going to survive. Just get along and support. But make sure you go to the loo before leaving home.