By George, he’s still got it

“There’s an Aer Lingus plane ’bout a hundred miles from Dublin,” the fat, drunk man on the Dublin-Portlaoise train is telling his fatter, drunker pal. “And the pilot says to the co-pilot, ‘Jaysus, I’d love a pint an’ a ride. But he doesn’t know the intercom is on so the whole plane hears him. So a hostess runs up the plane to tell him to switch it off and when she’s halfway there a little man stops her an’ says: ‘You’re after forgettin’ his pint’.”

That almost made up for the unexplained, unapologised-for ten minute late departure from Heuston. Off then to the dining car where a young man all tuckered out (presumably from sawing up the cardboard the sandwiches were made from) served me a couple along with a plastic container of ‘coffee’. It’s nice to know you can get a meal like that and still have change from a tenner.

When I get back my friends have been replaced by a brace of very drunk Limerick teenage boys with the distinctive pizza with extra pepperoni complexions that bespeak an unfamiliarity with unfried foods. The sixteen bottles of Holsten on the table, mostly empty, reveal that no time has been wasted and soon the carriage is treated to a spirited if tuneless chorus of “It’s only words, and words are all I have, to show that I’m a gaaay”. A line so ingenious that they treat us to it fifteen times.

So it is really quite a relief to get off at Portlaoise and ramble around looking at things until it is time to go along to the Dunamaise Arts Centre where George Melly is due to launch the first ever Laois Arts Festival at six. As it is now only four I have little time to look at things indeed. One of the first things I wish to look at is the interior of Ramsbottom’s, where I expect to encounter a quiet grocery store cum bar and engage in some civilised conversation with the old party in the brown apron who presides over the taps and Persil.

Judge of my horror therefore when on passing the unchanged fascia I discover that someone (possibly the Taliban) has gutted the interior and redecorated it in Doris Day gothic, piped muzak, TV sets, and a cigarette machine. I reel off to Humes bar (founded 1868), knowing this will be all right because a very drunk little man (founded 1868), staggers out, hand-rolled cigarette sparking and adhering to his lip, and speaks to me as follows: ‘They’re all scumbags in there son. Fuckin’ scumbags”. As it turns out the citizens referred to were merely prison officers enjoying a well-earned break and some very interesting things they had to say too except I can’t write any of them here.

Winding my own way to the opening after witnessing much horse-racing (the television in Ryans always seems to be tuned to horse-racing) I am glad to see Mr George Melly looking so well and wearing a green silk suit that goes admirably with his surroundings (i.e. Ireland). After ingesting as much of the red wine as the welcoming committee see fit to disburse, I speed off to the Montague Hotel to catch George and John Chiltern’s Feetwarmers. As I grab a front seat George, now seventy-five (“Though I think you’ll agree, ladies and gentlemen, that I do look eighty”) is telling the capacity crowd that Viagra has been getting a bad name in London. “It gives old ladies headaches”.

He sings from an enormous armchair, a benevolent Bacon pope. He is both Maxes, Ernst and Miller in one. He is everyone’s favourite uncle and after one lighthouse smile the audience eats out of his hands. At first he almost recites the numbers and the band’s doing the donkey work but slowly the machine cranks up and he turns into his heroines, so that for a moment he’s Bessie Smith or Gertrude Rainey. And out the favourites roll: ‘I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl’, ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, and a wonderful ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’ that almost recalls a night twenty years ago in the Olympia Theatre when an audience ranging from punks to their grannies were spellbound for the duration of ‘Mississippi Water Tastes Like Sherry Wine’.

And, of course, between numbers come the oldest bluest jokes in the universe at which everyone laughs as if they’d just been minted. Because this is music hall and this is its last great exponent. “D’you know the meaning of the word ‘funky’? It means smelling of stale sex. Yesterday I heard a DJ referring to a ‘funky little number by Cliff Richards’. I doubt if he’s ever smelt of any sort of sex at all”. And then he sits right down and writes himself a letter, the stabbing finger making us believe it came from us. And we do love him of course. And don’t want him to go which of course he has to, plugging the band standing for the last number and then tipping his hat and twinkling away.

He puts his arm on my shoulder coming out of the gentleman’s. “Blow your mind on peppermint candy,” he says. How did he know I was a viper? So I shout at him about the surrealists and Alice In Wonderland and so on. And he chatters away signing photographs and posters with a big, black marker and, like lots of deaf people, oddly able to hear the bits he wants. I ask John to take our picture and George pretends to be surprised. And I give him a big bear hug and ask him to keep

playing. And I ask John, “Doesn’t he realise how much he’s loved?” And George says “What’s that man saying about gloves?”. But I think

he heard.