Barry Andrews

Win A Night Out With A Well Known Paranoiac

We could rendezvous in a country pub I know in the heart of rural England where the landlord sports moustaches just like Jimmy Edwards and the crisps and pickled onions on the bar are numberless as the stars at night.



We're just about to order scampi in an Elizabethan basket when two neckless men in blazers and cravats approach our table and say - "sorry - this bar is exclusively for the use of Nobel prize winners, latter day saints, people who have seen God and selected relatives of our dear Queen, and furthermore, you worm, there is mud upon your plimsolls". I reply that I am a member of most elitist cliques you care to name and the blood which courses (at an ever increasing speed as it happens) through my veins belonged once to the Cuban royal family, but, they don't listen and they just pour my drink down the sink and say "this is not what we mean".



In this life, one is either U or non-U and if I were you I'd make myself bloody scarce. I even try to show them my credit cards but unmoved they say "OK sonny, it's time you were taught a lesson and there's only one thing that your sort understand".



Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid



At an Iberian eatery in the west end, we could gaze at each other across saucers of yoghurt and bits of crusty foreign bread - and then - I could order a carraffe of Asti - we could have so much fun. We could discuss things like communism and chart positions with the lack of inhibitions that separate the truly liberated from the herd - but - I should mention that I talk quite loud as a casualty of inexpensive foreign wine and neither am I unaware of the restive noises from the party sitting close by. But as I'm in the middle of my funny story about the Arab and the underwater toilet, I can't stop now cos I'm in too deep, as I'm coming to the part where I say (in my best joke telling voice), "so the Arab says to the attendant, right..."



Of course as we know five thousand pounds of pressure can suck out almost anything, it all goes quiet and here a little girl is saying, "Daddy, what a horrible man" and Daddy replies, "don't worry darling cos I've just made a phone call to your crypto-fascist Uncle Roger and he'll be here quite soon, and make quite sure he doesn't upset any little girls... little girls any more."



Win a night out with a famous paranoiac

Win a night out with a well known paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid



Lying in your crumpled bed on Sunday morning, you said your Mum and Dad had gone away to a conference in Bath and I believed you like a fool. Now you get up, go to the window and you turn a pot plant round. I study your naked bottom with a twinge of lust but I'm not twigging that something's going down. There is a sound of the heavy boots upon the stairs and the door crashes open and in comes your Dad with some faithful retainers and some ex-Army mates from the Conservative Club. And I figure they must have been waiting all night because your Dad is clutching two reels of infra-red film and he's looking dangerously pale as he shows me the microphone under the bed, and I'm just about getting the message: all is not too groovy.



As you stand there in your dressing gown laughing at me, then in comes your Mum in her nylon house coat with her hair hanging loose like a suburban Harpy and she advances towards me with an army surplus bush knife, clearly bent on wreaking havoc down below the navel and she's just about to get stuck in when I wake up... and yeah, it was all a dream.



I'm really in a hospital bed. There is a smell of formaldehyde in the air, and a couple of doctors with swastikas on their arm are doing something to the brain of a sheep and in the corner is a huge zinc bath containing some sort of reptile and the nurse is saying "be a brave boy and drink it all up". And I realise I can't feel me legs and the shape in the bed isn't my shape at all and I wanna cry out but I can only bleat.



Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out with a well known paranoiac

Win a night out with a famous paranoid

Win a night out...

Win a night out...