The Well-Tempered Clavier

Cheery Christmas greetings to one and all - or, as I have trained five-year-old Dexter to say, "God Bless us every one!"

Now - a very mild confession. A few weeks ago, I put into effect some of the more reprehensible tactics that I have learned from my publisher, Idle Tom.

What happened was that my wife Margot had a Noel Coward evening in memory of her dear old dad Chris. It was a sit-down do for 60 people and seeing as I can neither sing nor act, I was largely downstairs doing the cooking. I’d prepared an immense stew and we had in five gorgeous students to help out with the waitressing.

But my problem, my big, big problem, was how to upstage the performers.

There were a couple of great singers, Margot the compere, as well as a professional pianist and Maguire crowing away as Coward himself. All great stars.

But how … how was I going to be able to steal their thunder?

Well I thought about it long and hard, and then I remembered an oft-quoted line of Idle Tom’s: "When in doubt, bring on the lovelies …"

And from Idle Tom’s favourite adage, I developed the kernel of an idea.

All I had to do was wait for the end of the show, wait for all the stars to take their bows, wait for all of them, all of them, to quit the stage, and THEN I’d make my grand entrance - along, of course, with my five stunning waitresses, who were all to stand flanking me as I trotted out my thank own very personal thank-yous to the real "stars" of the evening.

Simple - yet effective.

And so it was that I, also, had my moment of glory. They lapped it up.

Care to look at the terrific pix taken by my good friend Angus McLean? Just click here

I talked it through later with Idle Tom. "Good stunt," he said. "I like it. But if I’d been you, I’d have got the girls to wear Playboy Bunny ears.

"You are one sick little puppy," I replied. "You’ll be telling me next that you’d have given them the same treatment that we used to give the Page Three girls."

"And what was that?"

"We’d give ‘em T-shirts that were made for five-year-old kids. Literally. The result was not only were the shirts incredibly tight, but they only reached half-way down their mid-riffs."

"Wow! How did they get their heads though the hole at the top?"

"Tom - you always ask one question too many."

"Do you think these girls … do you think these girls might be around for your next Waterstone’s signing?"

"Get ‘em all wearing T-shirts which say, "I’m Well-Tempered"?

"I think I might have to come up for your next session -"

"Really, Tommy, I’m more than able to do very well indeed without you - "

"No. I want to come up. I think it’s important that as your publisher I occasionally show  up to these things -"

"Tommy, let me tell you one thing. You won’t get a look in with these girls. They’re really classy."

"But I’m a publisher!"

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Well-Tempered Clavier. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.