Dan Poke looked around at his audience as if for the first time. “So who’ve we got in tonight? Well, I know we’ve got some people from Fethering, I can recognize them by that look on their faces – it’s called rigor mortis. You know how you can tell the corpse from the guests at a Fethering funeral? The answer is: you can’t.
“And I know we’ve got some people from Portsmouth in tonight.” His words were greeted by a raucous roar from the leather-clad brigade. “Bloody Middy crowd. I used to drink there. Used to be very rough – tell you, the tarts were so dirty they didn’t carry condoms for their punters – just masks. And God knows what the landlord did to the beer, but you’d get waterlogged there before you got drunk.”
The bikers continued to guffaw as the comedian went on. “Ah. Portsmouth. Happy times. You know, I lost my virginity in Portsmouth…Well, I say ‘lost it’ – I think, being Portsmouth, it got nicked. Of course, Portsmouth is a naval town. Funny word, isn’t it? When you hear it, you think of belly buttons. Mind you, I’ve never heard Portsmouth described as the navel of the world…though I have heard it described as the arsehole of the world!” Those members of the audience for whom rude words didn’t need to have jokes attached roared their appreciation. “Actually, that’s not my view, it was said to me by some git I met at a gig in Portsmouth. He said, “Portsmouth is the arsehole of the world.” I said to him, “Oh yes, and are you just passing through?””
It took some of the crowd a moment or two to get that one, but when they did, they screamed and burst into applause. Jude, who’d heard the line many times before, reflected again on comedy as the perfect examplar of recycling. No joke was too old to be pressed into service. Dusted down, freshened up with a topical reference, given extra punch by a four-letter word, and there was still going to be someone out there who hadn’t heard it before. Anyway, for fans of comedy, originality is often less important than familiarity. Many school playgrounds have echoed to bad impersonations and lines from The Goon Show, Monty Python, Blackadder, The Office or whatever the hit of the moment happened to be. And the people who buy all those comedy CDs and DVDs clearly have a taste for endlessly rewatching their favourites.
So Jude wasn’t at all surprised when at one point in his set, Dan Poke did a riff on dogs that could have been delivered by any comedian of the past fifty years – and probably longer. “I had a dog once,” he began. “Not a complete dog, you understand. No, he’d been neutered. Oh, come on, I believe in calling a spayed a spayed. And I took my dog for a walk in the woods – stopped between four trees. He was so confused he didn’t have a leg to stand on. But my dog liked walks – nothing he enjoyed better than going for a tramp in the woods. Made all the tramps bloody furious, though.”
And so Dan Poke’s gig at the Crown and Anchor, Fethering, continued.
Twelve
“Any time I can help out an old mate,” said Dan Poke unctuously, thrusting out his hand to Ted through the back window of the limousine, “you know I’m more than happy to.”
“Help out?” thought Carole, who was standing defensively close behind the landlord in the milling crowd. ‘Stitch up’, more like. She looked around for Jude, but they’d got separated in the mass of sweating bodies.
Ted looked very uncomfortable as he took the proffered hand. “No, it’s been great, Dan. Can’t thank you enough. We’ll meet up again soon for a relaxed beer, eh?”
The comedian detached his hand with a dismissive, “Sure, sure.”
“Hard to get at you through all your panting fans.” The new voice belonged to the tall man who was so infuriatingly familiar to Carole.
Dan Poke grinned. “Saw you in the audience, William, but didn’t get a chance to say anything.” At least she now had a first name for him.
The man called William chuckled. “Having heard what you said about other people, I think I got off lightly.” The line seemed so obviously a reference to Ted that the landlord looked even more wretched.
“Anyway, great show, as ever,” the tall man continued, oozing automatic bonhomie. “I must be on my way, but we’ll be in touch. Eh?” And he melted away towards his pale blue BMW.
“I’d better get moving too.” Dan Poke leaned forward and tapped his driver on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of this shithole. And be careful you don’t run over any screaming fans on the way out. That really would be bad publicity.” He grinned his crooked grin back at Ted. “Almost as bad as everyone getting food poisoning.” And the limousine’s electric window moved upwards as the car glided gently away from the Crown and Anchor.
Ted Crisp couldn’t hold in his feelings any longer. “Bastard!” he whispered on a long breath of pain. “Bastard!”
“I agree,” said Jude, who had caught up with them through the milling throng, “but look on the bright side.” She indicated the huge crowd, who still seemed unwilling to make their way home. None of the motorbikes in the car park had moved. It was as if their owners were biding their time until the moment of maximum annoyance for the residents of Fethering. “At least you’ll have made some money, Ted, from all this lot.”
“Oh yes?” he asked cynically. “I don’t think there’ll be much left when I’ve paid off Dan.”
“But I thought he was doing the show for nothing,” Carole objected.
“Oh yes, the show. No, the generous-hearted Dan Poke, television’s Mr Lovable, didn’t ask for any fee. Just expenses…”
Jude caught on to the implication of this before Carole did. “You mean, the limousine?”
Ted Crisp nodded savagely and turned towards her. Jude got a blast of Famous Grouse into her face. Oh no, had he tried to anaesthetize his humiliation with whisky? “Yes,” said Ted. “Mind you, the limousine’s only taking him to Brighton, where he’s booked in overnight at the Hotel Du Vin – apparently he’s got some woman set up there – and then the limousine will take him tomorrow morning back up to his pad in London. All that on expenses.”
“But how much is it all going to cost?” asked Carole, appalled.
“Certainly more than I’ll get for all the pints I’ve pulled this evening. And, of course, he’s cleaned up on selling all his books and DVDs and other tat. No, our Mr Poke is a very smooth operator.”
It was not Carole Seddon’s custom to use strong language, but she couldn’t help herself from echoing Ted’s “Bastard!”
They might have got further into the perfidious economics of charity work, but they were interrupted by the sound of a beer bottle smashing. Before they had had time to react, there was another smash and a great welling of feral shouting from the crowd. A fight had started. The bikers were pushing to get as near as possible to the action, and the Fethering residents as far away. They bumped into each other and more drunken blows were thrown. The steamy heaviness of the July day had erupted into full-scale violence.
“God, this is all I bloody need!” said Ted Crisp, before throwing himself into the mêlée. His intention was to separate the combatants, but the tensions of the day – not to mention the large amounts of Famous Grouse he had ingested – meant that he swung his fists as ferociously as any of them.
“No,” murmured Carole. “If Ted gets himself arrested for being in a fight, he’s finished.”
It was almost impossible to see what was going on. The outside coach lamps of the Crown and Anchor had been smashed as soon as the violence started, and into the strips of light thrown out by the open doors heaving masses of bodies swayed and rushed to and fro, arms, beer bottles and chairlegs flying. Windows had been smashed, window-boxes ripped from their fittings and hurled about. Shouting, grunting filled the air. Shafts of light revealed splashes of blood on summer T-shirts. Knives had been drawn.