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

                            Therese, soprano, never uses a library. ‘Oh, no, Iestyn. Unlike you, I pride myself on always buying my books.’ I agree with Helene Hanff, who said that buying a book you haven’t read is like buying a dress without trying it on. ‘How do you know the dress will fit, Therese?’ I asked. ‘I always know what’s going to fit me, book-wisely speaking. I tune into asking the universe what it needs me to read for the greater good, go into the bookshop and find that I’m drawn to a department, then a section of carpet, then the particular shelf and there will book the book, in a sort of outline of almost light picked out from the others around it.’ ‘But there are billions of books out there, Therese, in umpteen shops, divided into squillions of bits of carpet and…’ She was giving me her look: a nurse at my hospital bed telling me the prognosis was far from ideal. ‘Yes, but with me it’s narrowed down q...

                                                                 Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'.  Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.'  My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...

I overheard this on my walk earlier: WOMAN. Look, those cows are lying down because it's raining. MAN. Is that really a thing? WOMAN. Well, they're lying down, aren't they? MAN. Yes, but those other cows further up there are standing. WOMAN. I expect that's because they  want  to get wet.  #overheard#eavesdropping#life#funny#comedy#humour#humor#publicspeaker#talks#theatre#walks

We've had such a heatwave here, Ellen Marsden nearly started sleeping outside early.  Ellen is next door neighbour to Carl Frint, gardener at Longacres House.  He'll tell you, 'I can mark my seasons' clock by first hearing Ellen squidging around on her air mattress. I'll be taking  Penny out to do her business last thing, and Ellen will call over the wall - council still hasn’t repaired it: eleven years and counting - “Here’s me then, sleeping outdoors for the foreseeable”.  And I'll call back, being careful not to mention the obvious, "Well, you need to be comfortable".' The obvious being that Ellen weighs thirty-five stone. Carl has other season markers. Dahlias blackened by first frost, first car accidents due to dry ice, first ducklings mauled by Sadie and Buster, Lady Dawn's German Shepherds.  Those markers remind me of Halberdier Glass from Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. ‘Two of our platoon overstayed their leave this morning’; ‘Major ...

At the Turkish Barbers' Academy yesterday, I asked the stylist for a number three on top, two on the sides. He asked if my wife liked me to always have three and two? 'I'm not married.' 'Why not?  You're a man.' 'Are you married?' 'No.' 'But you're a man...' Later, during the Q and A after my Women's Institute lecture, a member asked me to lift up my tutu so she could see my knickers properly.  'No.' 'Well, please pirouette again, it flew up when you did that.'  'Then you've seen already, no?' Another wondered if I would like an extra piece of her (delicious) cake to take home to my wife.  'Husband, possibly,' I said, bemused. 'Well, I don't like to make assumptions.' The nurse at the NHS walk in centre thinks this kind of behaviour is a by-product of lockdown. 

What's on the touring talk circuit with me just now?  There are readings of MR James ghost stories, a biopic of Mata Hari to a surgeon giving a lecture on STDs. With slides. In the coffee break at his talks, nobody much fancies the garibaldis.  Let alone the Jammie Dodgers. Also a talk positing that, from His behaviour in the Old Testament, God is gay, bi-polar and a hoarder of bric-a-brac. There are one-man  Beowulf 's,  Tom Jones's  and  Under Milk Woods . Monologues on Lully's conducting accident, Beethoven's chamber pot spillage and I was Benjamin Britten's First Mr Squirrel.  The imagined spoken record of a Stonehenge mason, of Michelangelo winch-hanging under the Sistine Chapel ceiling and of Tracey Emin unmaking her bed. Audiences are being encouraged to play Twenty Questions, Clumps and Analogies to guess the identities of Bathsheba, Moll Flanders and Miss Marple. Mark Anthony, Van Gogh and Liberace. The Mad Hatter, Shivah and Hitler. And how d...

My Royal Marine mate, Stacks, once told me when he fires on anything, he visualises a bull's eye.  'Then I do what I'm trained to do, and take the shot. And the aftermath is in the elsewhere.'  I try always to visualise along the same lines.  But I can get distracted.  I've got an ear infection, and took myself off to the NHS walk-in centre for seven this morning. On the way there, to be fair to me, I did affirm, 'I Am That I Am ear-ily perfect. I Am That I Am in perfect health. I Am That I Am...' So far, so good.  But then I began to consider the elsewhere .  And thought I must include in my elsewhere-centric visualisation the (forthcoming?) receptionist at the walk in centre.  I based her on Lara, a receptionist I once encountered at a Golders Green dentist.  Here was Lara in real life: ‘You’re very beforehand.’  She was looking sternly at me. She was in Mao black. All her features were sharp. Even her lips. Next to her was another recepti...

                                                                                                                               Madame Galina backstage at the Blackpool Grand I would visualise and visualise my character-comedy character, Madame Galina, on tour. London and Blackpool, wearing a fur, dragging a trunk, staying in old-school theatrical digs, being partnered by either Michael Nunn or William Trevitt, Royal Ballet principals.  About  to move back to London from Aldeburgh, I was walking past the Sue Ryder shop when volunteer Janet banged on the window.  Looking furtive, Janet dragged a blue trunk out of the stockroom.  'Don't  open it ...

Rather than my mother’s pilot fish. I have always challenged Eirwen, my narcissist  ne plus ultra  mother. And, as we often must when dealing with a narcissist, I have fought to be my own shark rather than that pilot fish mooching along at the shark’s gills. NB — we have Royal Marines Commando, Stacks, to thank for that analogy. Eirwen was an unreasonable, raging, physically violent mother. I read and re-read  Charlotte’s Web . One teatime Eirwen, leering, simpering, was telling family friend Connie  Practically Bedridden  Presland how Charlotte famously spun words into her web. ‘Words such as “splendid”, “magical” and “brilliant”.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Charlotte spins “Some Pig”, “Terrific”, “Radiant” and “Humble”…’ Connie’s features shrunk on my behalf. Eirwen shouted at me, ‘I’ll thank you — snivelling fatso — not to question your elders and betters.’ ‘“Some Pig”, “Terrific”, “Radiant”, “Humble”,’ I repeated. ‘I beg your pardon. This is Eirwen Silcox you’re arguing...

Here’s my audiobook for you.   Will you buy? Click here It’s self-narrated: with songs, adlibs and bloopers as standard. ‘Achingly funny!’  Daily Mail ‘A book unlike any other, of a story unlike any other. Totally mad, very funny and highly recommended.’ ***** Dr Adam Kay, author of  This is Going to Hurt:  the Nation’s Favourite Book  Guardian ‘One wanted more of his rather lovely singing!’ Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii.  Here’s the story… I sang in private formally for the late Queen on HMS  Victory , and then accidentally auditioned to take my drag ballerina act out to entertain troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In full tutu. When I realised my mistake, I thought I’d go anyway. Cut to: with tutu and tiara in a Primark bag, me arriving bedraggled in Basra. As Stacks, the Royal Marines Commando, commented: ‘Being flown out to one of the big two — Iraq and Afghanistan — is like you’ve been beamed down off the Starship Enterprise, and this ti...

I rang Traveline North Wales to ask if getting to Mechlyn Spa, North Wales, for a seven-thirty curtain-up next Saturday would involve kayak, farmer’s cart or donkey cavalcade. Nerys, helping me, sighed;  I heard  typing noises, and she gave me the time of a bus from Aberystwyth to Mechlyn Spa leaving at two-fourteen on that Saturday afternoon.   And I didn’t ask for a second opinion as I have done with all call centre advice since a phone-psychic wished me luck with my third pregnancy. Moiling off the train and down the hill to the Aberystwyth bus station, I found that the bus Nerys had highlighted only ran at two-fourteen on market day: every alternate Wednesday.   In three days, ten hours and fifty-six minutes time. Stranded in Aberystwyth.    Frazzled from touring as Madame Galina Prima Ballerina. Chronically sore where ligaments in the foot I favoured for pirouettes were trying to tunnel their way out via my Achilles. Two-hundred-and-forty-seven pounds ...

I came here, to Zakynthos, as a late addition to a cabaret show at the Peligoni Club. I was so excited - the beauty, the glamour; the club owner's personal insistence I fly out. 'We're lacking an act just like yours.' Ooh! The accommodation was a taverna with rooms. Basic, but clean and with an incredible view.  The receptionist at the taverna with rooms took one look at me as I arrived to check in and said, 'I think the very first thing you must do is climb the mountain - there - to the church.' Oh...  #zakinthos#greece#peligoniclub#peligoni#holiday#cabaret

                                                                The bakers were on tenterhooks... ‘Right. It's time. Terry - put his blindfold on again...' The following example of my mother's narcissism has stuck with me all these years - decades - because I was powerless. There could be no remedy. Nothing I could have done better. Nobody to reassure me.  It may seem trivial - possibly comic - but it was nevertheless symptomatic of Eirwen's condition as a whole.  So, here we go - Terry has put my blindfold on again, as instructed... It was Eirwen's big moment. 'Come into the bedroom, Iestyn,' she called, a leer in her voice.  'Right...keep your head still and shoulders down, tidy...'  Eirwen slipped something over my upper body, then took off my blindfold. 'Stand up straight! Now, out you go again into the si...