Apples & Pears
Those of you who know me, will know I’m always up for a good joke, however sometimes reality is way funnier than the joke itself… not making myself clear? Let me explain….
I was staying at a London hotel in the early ‘Cord Promotions’ days, … and in our party was the late John Chapman,… ‘Johnny’ was forever the joker and told the following joke…. However, to set the scene, Johnny took over an hour to tell this joke…
Now the Joke itself is not that funny, you had to be there, watching his impressions, and as always, Johnny had got us all in the mood for ‘one of his jokes’ and needless to say, we were all in stitches…
The funny bit comes with the reality… much later…
So, here goes…
“… A guy goes to the doctor complaining of a pain in his arm (queue Johnny in a ‘lisp’ voice)....
#1 “Doctor, My arm hurts”
Dr “What have you done to it?”
#1 “ I was round at my mates house playing Apples & Pears”
The Doctor examines & X-rays the arm and says “Its broken in 2 places” Plasters the guy up and sends him on his way. The next patient says the same thing only this time with his leg
#2 Doctor my leg hurts
Dr “what have you been up to?”
#2 “ I was round at my mates house playing Apples & Pears”
After the X-Ray the doctor plasters the leg and calls in the next patient….
This goes on all morning until curiosity (and the need for it to stop) gets the better of the doctor, and he asks the final patient “So where do you play this ‘Apples & Pears’ game then”?
The patient tells the doctor the address and even invites him round to watch, the next round was indeed that night at a huge stately home. As the doctor approached the big double doors he is greeted by another member of the gang and shown inside. Looking around, the doctor notices two huge staircases curving around a Christmas tree in the hallway that grew from floor to ceiling.
In every alcove up the stairs and even on the branches of the tree were hanging more gang members…. Finally a gong is sounded and the host shouts up to the guy at the top of the tree…
“Bartholomew… you’re first”…
The tree rocks a little as Bartholomew launches himself from the branch shouting…
“I’m RIPE”…
As I said… its not that funny when Johnny isn’t telling it but…
A few weeks later the crew were around at my place for the weekend, Alton & Neil, some good friends of mine decide to go up into one of the bedrooms, strip off, climb out onto the porch roof and launch themselves into my garden shouting “I’m Ripe”
The rest of us, sat in the lounge, were rolling around in fits of laughter as all we saw were two naked bodies drop past the window shouting “I’m Ripe” as we remembered Johnny’s Joke…
It wasn’t until later we noticed Alton hadn’t got up, he had in fact smashed his vertebrae on impact… we all felt bad for him as he was carted off to hospital, but when asked how he had done this.. He had no choice but to reply to the doctor..
“I was round at my mates house playing Apples & Pears”…. Classic!!
Donner Say It Will Be Alright
I can’t remember how far back this story goes but it has to rate as one of the funniest of all times. It must have been in the early 90’s and I was on a stag do in Leicester city centre with Rob Wibberley and Simon Alton (Wibbs & Alt) I don’t even know who’s stag do it was, just that we regularly went out for a session if other ‘Rob’ (Wibbs) had got a new job or lost one. As a welder, this was pretty often…
One night we went out to celebrate him getting a new job, got so drunk he fell over walking home, broke his shoulder and was off work for 14 weeks… when he went back to work he got fired for lack of attendance…. And we went out on the piss once more… simple times!
This night however we got split up trying to get into the club the stag party had entered… or so we thought.. I had just started working in promotions and knew a trick or two to get into clubs, so skipping the queue I got into Ritzys in Leicester without any trouble. Wibbs & Alt however were nowhere to be seen. A couple of beers later and I decided, this was no fun, I wanted to leave.
We didn’t have mobiles in them days so there was no way of contacting the lads, which was a shame because I had no money left… or very little anyway.
Digging in my pockets I managed to scrape together £2 in loose change, enough in those days for a taxi home OR a Kebab… but not both. I pondered my predicament for a few minutes and formulated a plan… I was at Point A, the Kebab shop was at Point B, and the Taxi Rank was at Point D…… And in between was a cash machine… HA! Point C!
I popped into the Kebab shop and purchased a Large juicy Donner doused in chilli sauce, thus using up my £2 and leaving me with nowt… that’s ok, the cash machine was between me and the taxi rank, I’ll get another £5 out and a good night was had by all.
If only my plan had worked…
I got to the said cashpoint, placed my unopened (thus still piping hot) kebab down and inserted my card, entered my PIN and joyfully tapped the £5 button (yes I know but you could still get a minimum £5 from these new-fangled machines in those days)…. And for those of you who can remember those machines will also remember they used to have a plastic cover that came down over the keyboard to protect against the elements…..
You can see whats coming next… Yep, the machine ate my card ‘Insufficient Funds’ what's worse, it closed the plastic guard…. With my kebab behind the screen!
Now I have No Kebab, No money, No Card, No Taxi home, No mates… its 3am 4 ½ miles from Wigston, and it starts to rain…. I wish I’d had half a pack of cigarettes and some sunglasses to make a quip… But alas…
If only my troubles had ended there… the bank decided to charge me £35 to clean the cash machine as mine was the last card entered … and the keyboard was gunged up with greasy kebab from the night before!
And people keep on telling me I’m a lucky person…. Mmmm….. yeah. Lucky Eddie Me
