Over tea the other day - or dinner if you consider yourself to be on the other side of the North/South divide - we were chatting about the little things we remember about people. For example, I remember my grandma for her habit of always revealing the end of a film half way through; and I remember my Uncle Charlie for his, far from limitless, stock of corny jokes that he recycled throughout our childhood. We then got on to party pieces: my Auntie Hilda could recite the whole of Stanley Holloway's Albert and the Lion and delivered it in a highly entertaining dramatic oratory style; I had a phase of regaling colleagues with my renditions of popular songs in the style of the pub singer - my version of Shirley Bassey's ode to the vegatable: A Yam What A Yam, had to be heard to be believed; and I could not help but mention a colleague who, after several glasses of brandy, would suspend a large brandy balloon glass from his masculine appendages (I have had many fascinating colleagues over the years).
Later, idling away a couple of spare moments on YouTube - or as I later described what I'd been doing to Mrs C: research for creative writing - I happened across this lovely audio clip of the original Albert and the Lion; it's worth a listen and best of all, because it's not a video clip, you get on with something else whilst listening to it.
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If you had happened across my office a few weeks ago you would have heard Albert and the Lion coming out of the very fancy sound sticks that are attached to my very fancy computer! Among others, Mad dogs and Englishmen, a sketch by Joyce Grenfell and on and on! Part of a CD set of British Comedy Classics.
There are occasions when out of my 8 year old's mouth comes the phrase......" yon lions 'et Albert" before dissolving onto fits of giggles. Do you think I've warped him?!
is there a video clip of the brandy glass and appendages?
Nurse Myra: fortunately not! This particular colleague, now gone on to other things, was noted for his ability to fill rather large brandy glasses in this manner; unfortunately this was about the limit of his talents!
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