Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

  In an otherwise lovely review of My Tutu Went AWOL the critic commented that though my vaudeville act was booked for Iraq and Afghanistan on a bill with stand-up comics, I included relatively little of their thoughts on being out in warzones.   Stand-up comedians being so known for having thoughts on things other than themselves and their material...

  Declan Forbes worked front of house at  Covent Garden when I did.  He was reading law.  He must have read it very keenly because these days when he travels for work he stays at hotels that have three-page pillow menus. Touring I have often stayed at a 'hotel'  that has three cork boards of mugshots.  Do not let these  characters onto the premises.  Police aware but  running scared. 

  My singing teacher listened to me reminding her that diets (she is always on one) have a shelf life, though, sadly, her Co-Op bought cakes never seem to.  'But I have to have cake,' she said.  'It reminds me of my mother's little smile of promise when she went out to the back scullery and would sing a bit of Liza Lehmann, and then come back through with cake or scrambled eggs with cream or, spread on a barm, the lovely congealed ooze with chewy bits in from under the previous Sunday's roast. Always a joy when she went to that back scullery.  Well, apart from this one time.  Our neighbour's eldest, Susan, seventeen, had been ill for a few months and kept to their parlour.  We all knew why, of course. Like sopranos of the nineteenth century having a nine month bout of twisted knee. And one Monday morning Susan called in at our back door, shouting through to us that she was just letting us know she was up and about now, not to trouble. So we didn't. ...

  Conductor Nicola Rescigno asked Maria Callas to demonstrate Bel Canto phrasing to the cor anglais soloist for the 1958 recording of  Anna Bolena.  Rescigno then asked her to explain why precisely she had phrased Anna's music that way. She answered, 'It has to be, because Anne Boleyn was the queen of England.'   Easter Sunday I recorded "Tom Bowling" for the audiobook of My Tutu Went AWOL .  James Lloyd, ex-band service player accompanying, commented on how musical my last take had been.  Nodding to that Callas story I said, 'It has to be, because of Tom's terrible death.  Where his solar plexus once was is now, incarnadine, a cannonball.'   James thought that, as with his five-year-old, I shouldn't have had all those e-number riddled Easter eggs.