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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

When you’ve got two Open University assignments due, a house move from one capital city to another on a TOTALLY DIFFERENT ISLAND, last nights out to plan, birthday presents to buy and all manner of packing to attend to, the only sensible way to spend a sunny afternoon in London town is working out the best - and crucially, the funniest - way to make a hand explode.

Of course, when I became embroiled in the tawdry world of show business, I was prepared for all sorts. The temper tantrums, the hissy fits, the endless preening and prancing about - he’s been kind enough to ignore all of these habits in me, so I’m willing to be patient with his endeavours. And honestly, if you find yourself at a loose end of a weekend, you could do much worse than traipsing around pound shops and DIY stores looking for ways to inflate rubber gloves that can be discreetly hidden up a sleeve until the crucial moment.

The basic ingredients, if you’re going to try this out - and you must, you really must - are a pair of marigolds (preferably pink), an industrial size can of shaving foam, some rubber bands, a lot of sellotape, a bucket and some very understanding flat mates.

The first time we tried it, I had stepped back towards the bucket, and was half way through the sentence “it’s not going to work” when it burst across the floor and I got a runner full of shaving foam for my trouble. I haven’t laughed so much since Bobby ran head first in to the window. The second and third explosions were of course purely to refine the technique. Which was fortunate, as the second time, due to technicalities and reasons, the hand didn’t burst so much as haemorrhage shaving foam, almost entirely covering both patio and He Who Only…

I was fortunate enough to have wisely remained in the shelter of the doorway that time.

[Post script: Three times it worked on the patio. Three times. In a row. With varying degrees of bursting. It was great. On stage, though. It didn’t work. It failed to go off. Nothing bloody happened. Darned tooting shame too, the audience missed a treat. I’m still intending to spend future weekends filling things with shaving foam until they burst though. That’s reward enough in itself.]

This entry was posted on 01 May 2005 at 3:56 pm. 0 comments

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