Bravery of our pub and club entertainers

PAV’S PATCH:

IN the wider scheme of things, I reckon there can’t be many jobs more daunting than that of the pub entertainer. You’ve got have some guts to get up in a pub, or a club, and to start singing or telling jokes.

I suppose the rewards must be good if you can make it but I really do wonder how the turns manage to motivate themselves.

What is it inside them that convinces them people will enjoy their act? Perhaps they mistake jeers for cheers.

A mate of mine from Eight Towns, the now defunct radio station at Tameside General Hospital, was convinced he was an impressionist but I’m telling you the truth when I say that his impersonation of Stevie Wonder was to close his eyes, shake his head, and warble “I Just Called to Say I Love You”.

He appeared somewhere in Hurst and when he began to be Michael Jackson, shouting “I’m Bad”, the reply was “yes you are. Get off” (or words to that effect). But he thought it was applause.

Over the years, I’ve been in places where the act hasn’t so much been jeered as totally ignored.

They’ve effectively been little more than background music, with people continuing to drink and chat while the artistes do their best to give an emotional rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings”.

Pub/club entertaining can also be dangerous. When I was very small I used to live next door to a man called Ernie who did some singing and compering. One evening, he introduced a sort of magician.

I can’t imagine the man caught bullets in his teeth — not in a Dukinfield working men’s club — but whatever his act was it went wrong and Ernie was hospitalised with a shot to the shin.

Free and easy — which involved ordinary customers getting up to do a turn — used to appeal to me.

In Hyde there was a bloke known as Jumping Jack who would start off slowly and then leap about the White Lion as he bawled “Those ... were .... the ... days ... my friend”.

Events like this were often attended by a man called Aunty Eric who, I believe, raised a great deal of money for charity.

Trouble is, he was camper than a row of tents and when I was 18, I was totally spooked whenever I was approached by a man in a dress and wig asking me to buy a raffle ticket for a fluffy toy he had hanging from his arm.

By the way, do they still have clubs where they play bingo?