Monday night soon came round, their first professional performance together, here at ‘Carsnooty’. Maidie went on first, to be joined by Chic in harmony, then a spot of yodelling (at which he was uncannily adept) and then, Maidie having exited to warm applause, there he was, centre stage, tweed-suited and tartan-bunneted, jacking up the microphone to his height. ‘I got up this morning,’ he intoned, ‘I like to get up in the morning. It gives me the rest of the day to myself!’
‘Jesus Christ,’ a squirming, freaked-out Maidie exclaimed to herself from the wings ‘what the hell is he playing at?’ She silently beseeched him, ‘Oh, please, please, Chic, stick to the jokes we rehearsed together!’
But it was too late. Chic was in full flow.
So I dressed, actually I always dress. I like to be different, but I think undressed you’re a bit too different. I went down the street, went down the front – oh, you can go down the front, there’s no law against it – and I was walking in my usual way, one foot in front of the other, oh yes, that’s the best way. I’ve tried various methods, I suppose. I remember once, I tried a series of jumps. I heard someone say, ‘Look at that Australian!’ I didn’t answer. I just wagged my tail.
Perhaps it was Chic’s reflections on absurdities, or the sheer surrealism of his humour to which the audience had never previously been exposed, but for whatever reason, silence prevailed in the audience and Maidie just wanted the agony to finish. He batted on . . .
Then I met someone. [Pause.] I knew him, otherwise I’d never have spoken to him. He was sitting on top of a horse with a briefcase, bowler hat and wellington boots. I said, ‘What are you doing on top of that horse?’
He said, ‘I thought you’d say that.’
I could have cut my tongue out! I wished I’d never mentioned it. I thought – if I’d only just said ‘Hello’ and never mentioned he was on a horse – or ‘Fanny’s your aunt’, or anything. I should just have passed him as if it were an everyday occurrence.
At this juncture, the audience began to get a shade frisky, showing their impatience as one or two stamped their feet. This provoked a heckler to bawl out ‘Gerroff! Rubbish! Give us Maidie.’ Chic stared in the vague direction of the barracker but swiftly regained his stride; Maidie, by this time, was ash-white and shitting herself. Chic continued,
Then he said, ‘As soon as I saw you, I said to myself, he’ll say, “What are you doing up on that horse?”’
Of course, I was awfully embarrassed – and to hide my embarrassment, I patted the horse. I said, ‘This horse has a flat head.’
He said, ‘You’re facing the wrong way, you guffy!’
Chic pulled a face, muttering,
I did wonder why it had refused a sugar lump!
He had begun to crack it! All over the theatre, ripples of laughter broke out and Maidie’s demeanour brightened to some degree. There was no stopping him now!
I gave the horse a thump on the rump and it reared up. He looked down and said: ‘If you’re coming up beside me, I’m getting off,’ as he slid, helplessly, down the horse’s neck, landing on his head. Luckily the pavement broke his fall.
More mirth followed with Maidie praying he would get off while still ahead. Not a bit of it!
So I hung about till he recovered. It was the least I could do. After all, I was the last one to talk to him. So when he came to, I said, ‘That was a dreadful thing that happened just now.’
He said, ‘Just now! It happened five times this morning already.
I said, ‘What are you doing on that horse in the first place?’
He said, ‘Ah! That’s another thing that’s infuriating me, I don’t know.’
I said, ‘You don’t know? How’s that?’
He said, ‘I can’t get my briefcase open to find out.’
I said, ‘I’ll have to go now, half the summer’s gone just talking to you.’ He led the horse over to a wall so that he could remount the animal. I said, ‘Now, now, don’t get on your high horse!
This gag was well received. It gave Maidie a chance to cue the conductor as the instrumentalists struck up with ‘Painting the Clouds with Sunshine’. Behind clenched teeth Chic vented, ‘I hadn’t bloody finished.’
‘Finished! Finished!’ Maidie protested behind smiles for the audience, ‘You bloody nearly finished me!’
They returned to their dressing room, Chic looking as pleased as Punch. ‘Well, Maidie, how did that grab you? The audience loved it, you know,’ he said, with more than a touch of hyperbole.
Maidie was still overwrought from the torture session he’d forced her to endure, ‘Why on earth did you have to come out with that daft story? Why couldn’t you just have stuck to the jokes?’
‘Aw, look, Maidie, say what you like, the jokes were bloody awful, just crap. I decided to throw the lot in the bin and then I wrote my wee story in the pub. I didn’t like to mention it to you. You’d just have worried all the more. Anyway, it still went okay in the end, didn’t it?’
There was no time to reply as the door opened and, unannounced, in came the producer of the show. ‘What the hell was all that about, then?’ Jack Barton demanded.
‘Oh, I was merely serving up what the public wants,’ Chic said dismissively. A faint smile flickered and vanished on account of Chic’s hauteur.
‘Well, try modulating it a bit!’ he said, leaving as quickly as he’d arrived with a congratulatory door-slam.
Maidie persuaded Chic to write out his new routine in longhand there and then in the dressing room. Chic obliged but left his script bereft of a single punctuation mark. Studiously, and using a deep well of experience (having listened to some comic ‘greats’), she broke up the script by inserting ‘Ha-Ha’ to indicate pauses where, hopefully, the audience would react with laughter. So how did this singular comedian perform an hour or two later at the second house? Well, he stuck to his script, but with one important addition: ‘I like to get up in the morning,’ he began, ‘it gives me the rest of the day to myself.’ Then his shoulders commenced to rise and fall as he scornfully uttered, ‘Ha-Ha!’
‘Oh my God!’ thought poor Maidie, ‘don’t tell me he’s going to repeat every “Ha-Ha” I put in? I just can’t believe he could do this to me!’
Chic continued, ‘So I dressed. I always dress. I like to be different but I think undressed is just too different. Ha-Ha.’ It dawned on the wee heroine that her worst fears were about to be realised. But her misgivings, thankfully, were misplaced . . . what she had done with her best intentions, and what Chic, with his oblique look at life, had had the vision to anticipate, was that from there on in, there was to be a riot of laughter. The ‘Ha-Ha’s gave the audience time to recognise a new form of humour and every ‘Ha-Ha’ became eagerly awaited by the audience. They triggered the laughter. They multiplied the enjoyment. Pavlov would have been proud of them! In reality, Chic was beginning to master the control of his audience. It was as if he was saying, ‘You will laugh when I tell you – Ha-Ha!’ Now, with the punters enthralled, Maidie had the good sense and judgement not to interrupt Chic in full flow.
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