Hudd - A Fart in a Colander

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Michael OMara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

This electronic edition published in 2011

ISBN: 978-1-84317-634-3 in EPub format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-635-0 in Mobipocket format

ISBN: 978-1-84317-494-3 in paperback print format

Copyright Hudd Enterprises 2010

Every reasonable effort has been made to acknowledge all copyright holders. Any errors or omissions that may have occurred are inadvertent, and anyone with any copyright queries is invited to write to the publishers, so that a full acknowledgement may be included in subsequent editions of this work.

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Im writing this letter slow because I know you cant read fast

Oi, Harry! You forgot the piss pot!

You silly bugger!

Are you as funny as you look?

Brilliant young comedian requires new material

Step onto that stage and youre done for!

I can hear the whisper of wheelchair on Wilton

Where the Gusy Gungle Gees Are Gusy Guzzing

I only just met her in the car park!

Tell me, Mr Hudd. Didnt you used to do comedy?

Congratulations. Itll be good experience for you

It was a cold, bright day in November and the clock was striking thirteen.

You prat! I shouted.

No onell notice, came the reply.

Really? I said, Every single kid in the world knows the clock strikes twelve times!

I was directing a pantomime, Cinderella, and the drummer was imitating the chimes of the Palace Ballroom clock. Pantomime has been an obsession of mine since I sat with my Gran in the gallery of the Croydon Empire watching my first. It must have been Dick Whittington, because the Cat made a huge impression on me. In fact, for the following fortnight I asked Gran to serve all my food and saucers of milk on the floor. Just how important this lady was in my life you can guess from her not batting an eyelid at this request. She plonked the plates on the floor and carried on singing and cleaning up the house. Its just a phase, she said to amazed aunties watching me trying to lick my backside. Little did she realize that its a phase I am still going through not the backside bit, but wanting to be something Im not.

All my life I have been, and still am, looking for things new, different ways of escaping being stereotyped. I didnt want to be the child who was a swot, a goodie-goodie, but I didnt want to be a complete tearaway either. Perhaps a child who swotted up on how to be a tearaway! I didnt want to be a rebellious teenager but I didnt want to be in the Scouts or the Church Lads Brigade either. I wanted to be an actor, but I wanted to be a stand-up comic, a researcher, a singer and a variety turn too. Still do. I wanted to be married but play the field an all. I want to be a dear, lovable old grandad and a rakish rou as well.

Those are the reasons why this book is called A Fart in a Colander. The phrase was just one of many memorable ones used by my Gran, Alice Mary Barham. She was the lady who was lumbered with bringing me up, for all sorts of reasons. No one could have had a better bringing up, and I have to say, given the choice, everyone should be brought up by their grans. She knew exactly when to quote from her years of experience, when to defend me and when to give me a real earole bashing and she had the unique ability to make her point and then, without even pausing, make you laugh. I do love women who make me laugh.

From the earliest days of our relationship I was always trying different routes out of the mundane, always noisily enthusiastic, animated and never sitting still. One evening, after a particular burst of exhibitionism, she said, For Gawds sake stop it. Youre like a fart in a colander!

This did stop me. Id never heard her say fart before and, even today, it is the one word guaranteed to get a laugh out of most children from two to ninety-two. It got a laugh out of me, but it did nothing to cure my constant search for a different way out.

The following words will, I hope, chart in an amusing and entertaining way, my adventures in the colander.

Im writing this letter slow because I know you cant read fast

I remember hearing a radio programme about memory and the person who could go back the furthest was Sir Compton Mackenzie, who had memories of his life when he was one year old. I thought, I can top that. My earliest memory was of being held up above my aunts head la Roots and being told, Now look at this its something youll never forget. Then being taken to the bedroom window, at 5 Neville Road in Croydon, Surrey, to see a huge red glow in the sky. It was November 1936, and the red glow was the Crystal Palace burning down. I was six months old and Ive never forgotten it.

But do I remember it actually happening, or do I just remember being told about it? The event certainly always comes back to me whenever I play in Cinderella. Theres an obligatory line in the scene where the Ugly Sisters are trying on the slipper. One of them shouts, Me! Me! Ill get my foot into the crystal slipper! To which her sister replies, You couldnt get your foot into the Crystal Palace! So many directors, quite correctly, insist that gag is included. Todays kids havent a clue what it means, nor have many of the grown-ups, but it was a great topical gag in the 1850s.

I do like the pantomimes that obey these old traditions: never speak the last two lines of the goodnight doggerel until the first performance; always ensure that the goodie enters from stage right (Gods right hand) and the baddie from the opposite side.

But back to World War Two. I definitely do remember it breaking out, and the first air raids. I had a little three-wheeler Mickey Mouse tricycle and I remember my Mum calling me back home I could hear her from two streets away, even with the siren going full blast! I pedalled furiously homeward and turned the corner of our road so fast I rounded it on just one wheel. I loved it. So much so that I went back and did it again, while Mum shouted even louder, Roy! Come and get down the shelter!

We had an Anderson shelter in our garden and this was a magical place to me. To be in there, in the candlelit gloom, with the sirens wailing as Evalina, my mum, tried to calm me while at the same time frightening Gran with gory ghost stories, is a very special memory. How all kids love to be frightened and how they love to see old uns frightened. The first stirrings of acting, I suppose, made me pretend to Gran that I wasnt the least bit scared and that I would see she came to no harm. I was four.

Dad, Harry Hudd, was a carpenter and joiner, but we didnt see that much of him. It was rumoured that he spent most of his time at the billiard hall in Katherine Street in Croydon.

My Mum was always called Evie by her sisters and family, and it was only recently that I found out her name was Evalina. Where did Gran find that one? Probably the same place she found her youngest girls name: Snowdrop! I always used to say to her that Grandad must have been sloshed when the vicar asked the childs name.