There's no fun in Puglia - it's all here on Blue Ring Records
Monday, 15 November 2010
And if you don't believe me, read on: we have Mike Barnes, Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers, Panic and Snooky wookums on the bill this week. And there is also the final instalment of Wombats Over Dresden - rivetting extracts from The Wartime diary of Derek 'Digger' Digby.
But first - and, in life, sometimes it helps to go butt first - Live Music at the Whitmore on Wednesday November 17 features Mike Barnes and the Shady Blues Band.
Thusrsday night, November 18 is a mighty night at the Gilbert Street Hotel with Sweet Baby James Meston and Rob Eyers cranking out the double voodoo blues. Try the Gilbert's buffalo wings, rapidly gaining a high-demand reputation that has ruffled feathers in the chook world. Try the barramundi - I'd recommend that; leave the poor chooks alone. You've no idea the strain it adds to a chook's family to have to have to spoon feed their offspring and siblings because he or she has lost his or her arms to a buffolo wing chowdown at the Gilbert Street Hotel.
Friday... somebody send in a gig, if you have one. I know Acoustic Juice is doin' somethin' at the Convention centre but that's ... conventional. Send me sosmething funky!
Saturday Night November 20, it's pan!c at the Daniel O'Connell Hotel in North Adelaide. The Dan is a fine pub with great beer on tap and up the western end of the front bar, in a smallish boxed in area, you will find pan!c, the band. Not the highly irrational emotional state. pan!c the band is not like that; it's... it's ... It's more fun than sticking your toe in a duck's arse.
Sunday, November 19 and the Wine Underground proudly presents Someone! I think it's Snooks La Vie but I will find out for sure and let you know.
Now......this is the final instalment of the serialised Wartime Diary of Derek 'Digger' Digby; I promise. I’m am at least as fed up with it as you are but I started it so I’m finishing it. The final episode is entitled: 'How I took one for Winston'.
Derek 'Digger' Digby, on loan to the RAF in WWII, was Squadron Leader of the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Airborne Squadron charged with carrying out Winston Churchill's commands to bomb the shit out of the filthy murdering but largely innocent Kraut population. This episode is pretty late in the piece; if you want to know what went on before scroll down or do whatever it is you do when you're looking for porn pictures. Here we go...
“A white Vice-regal Wolseley 6/80 slid silently to a halt in front of the airmen’s mess. A door flew open and empty champagne stubbies, chocolate and cigar wrappings tumbled onto the tarmac. Winston Churchill fell out of the car and splayed himself on the ground.
“ ‘I need a piss. Help me to the latrine,’ he mumbled through his cigar-stuffed mouth.
“He was a little unsteady on his pins so I had to hold him up at the urinal. He was fumbling with his coat.
“ ‘Be a good chap and dig in my coat pocket, will you; you’re looking for a mouse on a string. Ah.. that’s him…. Yes, be careful, he’s fond of nipping.
“ ‘Mr Churchill…’ I ventured,
“What’s the mouse for?”
“ ‘Well, son, with the austerity forced on me by this blasted war, the veranda is now somewhat overhanging the lolly shop and I’ve not seen my tadger for some time. Can’t reach the blighter, can’t even get to it with face-flannel so it gets a bit cheesy down there. This little mouse is a search and rescue team on a string; he nips the cheesy bit, I tug on the string and me tadger pops out. Of course, me beaver cleaver’s getting a bit frayed around the end but Mrs Churchill gets serviced well enough by the butler so she doesn’t mind if the end of me smeg peg looks like Jughead’s hat.
“While Churchill played piss polo with the disinfectant lollies in the trough I thought I would take the opportunity to broach the subject of the Dresden Orphanage that was left standing after the bombing raid…
“ ‘Fuck the Dresden Dolls,’ Churchill snapped, 'I had another dream where a greater threat was revealed… a threat so horrible …'ang on, stick this mouse back in me pocket and help me to the officers’ mess, I’ve got a big announcement to make.
“ ‘Fly-boys, wombat jockeys and assorted non-descripts,’ Churchill began, with his trademark cigar dangling from a wire attached to headband, ‘… I fear I must give up eating an entire cheese fondue for supper, my dreams are becoming frightening – terrifying, in fact. My latest bout of hypnagogic hallucinations warns of a disaster of enormous proportion looming; one that will be spawned in the decade after this war; one we need to circumvent by shutting down one of our chief Northern towns.
“The entire audience was moved to utter, simultaneously:’ Ooower!’
“ ‘Well you may say Oooewer, my jolly chaps, for I saw that this horror was indeed home-grown. It is pervasive, insidious and persistent. In my dream I saw our great shipbuilding capital of Newcastle as the breeding ground of a one-man threat. I saw, first, the emergence of great working class beat groups, Rhythm and Blues champions who had coal dust in their blood, and steel-rust in their nostrils, but then, riding on the coat-tails of their success emerged another – a weak, soppy one, with chalk in his blood, one who sang with a squeaky voice, one who rises to prominence by standing on the shoulders of his far more talented associates, one who called hisself after a bee’s arse ….Sting! If the words: Do do do do, da dah dah dah don’t scare the crap out of you, then this will: The Dream of the Purkle Turtle, which marks the start of a solo career that should have been cut short by a road accident or accidental cocaine overdose.
“ ‘We must, at all costs, render the people of Newcastle too numb to fuck and the only way I can see is to take away the shipbuilding which makes them feel like they are all supermen on steroids. We will steer them into a misery that belongs to the future – computers and the internet, a dastardly diversion that will ensure the sperm of new generation will end up in crinkled tissues, not fallopian tubes.
“ ‘It took only one word from me, borrowde from Sting: … Rrrrrraaaaaacksanne…. and Whitehall made the decision to pretend the war isn’t on and let the Yanks have a shot while we shut down Newcastle. Once our last British Made warship has been sunk we’re only going to get cheap ones made in China; the Geordies can complain and march on us if they feel like it but my concern is for the far future. It would be most imperative to circumvent the recording of Songs From the Lavaratorinth.
“ ‘Now, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, Chaps, but the buggers and toads in Whitehall left it up to me to tell Hitler we’re going for a long tea-break. I can tell you now that Hitler wan not a happy chappie. He threw me out of his VW Kombi Camper van – his mobile headquarters – and threatened me viciously.’
“ ‘You said ve vas gonna play der var for funsies' Hitler spat. 'Zem fokken yanks vill shoot up everyzink and ve vill all be in the poo strudel.’ Churcill explained.
“ ‘Then the bad tempered little Bosch called me a fat bastard and told me to get the fok out of the camping ground and to be careful because he was sending over a Doodlebug with my name on it!’
“ ‘Calling me a fat bastard cut me to the quick, chaps. I acknowledge that I am a little overweight but, I blame that on the war; how many times d'you think I've had to go and play ludo with that bad-tempered, lonely little Kraut ratbag when Eva Braun had the painters in? That’s right every fukkin’ month, lads, since we started the scrap. And, here’s the rub, I’ve had to drink his stinking schnapps and eat his fukkin’ cream buns! It’s no wonder I’ve got more fat on me than a shopkeeper’s mark-up.
“ ‘If you want to do one last thing for me boys, rip the guts out the home of my misery – and put a stop to the manufacture of Berliner Buns. Are you with me?????’
“Of course we were all with Churchill. It was alright for us to call him a fat bastard but when a Kraut did it, it made us madder than a dog with an itchy quoit. A plan was drawn up, the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Squadron rolled out of the sheds and broke wind.
“The plan had two phases: the first was the fun part; we were to pretend it was a bombing mission and strafe the fuk out of the innocent murdering Hun civilians. The second part was the real mission – for Churchill.
“ ‘I was charged with dropping a bag of rat shit down the chimney of the Berliner Bun factory in order for the health inspector to discover the muck and shut the place down.
“We were strangely unopposed as we crossed the channel and broached Frog air space; then the tide turned. The Huns unleashed a swarm of Doodlebugs – V2 flying Bombs –all aimed at Great Britain . Then I remembered... one of them had Churchill’s name on it!
“I was on the horns of a dilemma; do I carry on with the ratshit exercise to stop the manufacture of Berliner Buns but at the risk of having him turned into sausage meat by a deadly Doodlebug – with his name on it! When, in truth, a bit of self-restraint and a calorie-controlled diet could help Churchill get back into his halcyon days’ Levi 501s.
“While I was debating my options I saw, in the edge of my vision, a dirty deadly V2 skitter past with a painted slogan on the side: Vinaton is a fat koondt!
“I turned my wombat around, dropping the ratshit onto a French restaurant – it could only improve the taste, I thought – and gave chase. The doodlebug was travelling fast and we were over the green fields of Britain before we were neck and neck. As the doodlebug began its descent it flew faster making it impossible for me to catch and hold. There was only one thing that I thought would work. I remembered what the poms do with footballs. They’re so useless with their hands they can’t catch footballs; they bump into them with their heads! I knew then that I could deflect the bomb with a header, steer it up North where it will explode in Scotland and no humans will be involved.
“But just as I went to nudge the V2 onto a new flight path, my Wombat farted, shooting us forward and I misjudged the header; the bomb struck me in the temple and became lodged there. I had no option but to return to base and have the thing defused and removed.
“But it wasn’t meant to be that simple; the fuse had been compromised with some of my brain matter and it was too unsafe for the bomb disposal crew (just hang on, folks, we’re nearly at the end).
“It looked like I was stuck with that deadly piece of murdering Hun shrapnel in my head for life. On the bright side, Winston came to see me in hospital to wish me well.
“ ‘You silly old duffer,’ Winston laughed, ‘When Hitler said there was a doodlebug with my name on it, he was merely soliloquising in the rhetoric! That any doodlebug would hit me was rather more than a 58 million to one chance – at the time it was on its way to kill thousands of Britons I was hiding in a malt whisky cellar in Isle of Islay! How's that for irony, you pillock? You didn't realise how close you came to sending that cracker in my direction after all, my young fukwit. It’s a jolly good thing for me and Great Britain that it became lodged in your puddin’ basket! Eh, what?’
“How we all laughed at that. But then Winston’s face went dark.
“ ‘However, I have some bad news that might take some of the sparkle off this glittering occasion: Your cricketing days are over. You’ll never play for Australia against us for the Ashes. My boy.’
“I was stunned. And every face in the ward looked as stunned as I; they all looked like mullets that had been stunned. I played over those awful words in my damaged mind.
“ ’ But…’ I stammered, ‘…But… surely not! Cricket is gentleman’s sport – no English cricketer would be bounder enough to toss a bouncer that could hit a chap in the head? Would he?’
“ ‘That’s mighty white of you to say that, young feller,' Churchill said, ‘But between you, me and the bedpan some of our Pommie cricketers are right front bottoms – with the painters in! But it’s not that. No… it’s … it’s that the baggy green hat will no longer fit your distended and warped head. And you can’t play against us if you don’t wear the baggy green hat, laddie.’
“I took my lucky baggy green hat out of my overnight bag and attempted to put it on my head. It wouldn’t fit. How I cried…
“ ‘But, can’t I alter it to fit my gnarly cranium?’
“Churchill pulled out my blubbering bottom lip and ashed his cigar in my gob;
“ 'I’m sorry, sonny,’ he said, ‘… the baggy green hat is a sacred animal and cannot be altered by the hands of a mere mortar-headed mortal.
“I cried tears of disappointment. ‘Boo-Hoo!’
“ ‘Then I remembered I was an Aussie, not a whingeing Pommie poof. ‘Mark my card as: Retired, hurt.’ I said, sitting up precariously in the hospital cot. ‘And nurse,’ I shouted, ‘ I’m ready for my medicine and a bed bath... and you’d better bring an extra box of tissues for when you’re polishing me German helmet - me gonads are like two tins of Nestle’s condensed milk! Let’s get cracking!’
Here ends the wartime diary of Derek ‘Digger’ Digby; and I’m so fukken relieved I could cry, believe me!
Double Wammy, Sweet Baby James Meston and the Steve Brown Band
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
A fantastic weekend of roots music and low-brow entertainment starts right here - first you read the gig guide then you read the serialised Best Seller Blockbuster: The Wartime Diaries of Derek Digger Digby. Don't shake your fukken head - just read the shit...OK?
Friday November 12 Double Wammy whips up the punters at the Semaphore Workers Club to a froth of frenzy and frantic flailing with their trademarked Power Soul. There will be stomping and screaming, a rolling of eyes and a lolling of tongues, there will be a gnashing of teeth and a wringing of hands, there will be scratching of the armpits, a rending of the underwear and involuntary bowel movements. But it will be fun. Starts at 9 pm. See you there.
Saturday November 13 The Steve Brown Band will be rocking the foundations of the Bacchus Bar at Henley Square. When I say the Steve Brown Band I probably need to explain that Steve Brown was arrested for murdering a crocked-out old Bob Dylan song and he has been sent away to the colonies for corrective re-programming. He will be in New Zealand for a while where he will be forced to look at New Zealanders, talk to them and have his thongs stolen. But his band - the Steve Brown Band - will be at Bacchus - four pieces of rocking pneumonia and phlegm. Joint starts rocking around 9 pm.
Sunday November 14 go off to your church and kick the vicar up the arse for not telling you about the Church of the Rockin' Boogaloo at the Gilbert Street Hotel where Sweet Baby James Meston and Robert Eyers will be barking the gospel of da Dubbel Voodoo Blues. Starts somewhere around 2.30, bring some gold coins for the collection plate.
Sunday the 14th of November you can get Texas Bluesed at The Semaphore workers club by Hoy-Hoy!! Big Frank pulls out the chocks at around 5 pm and the walls don't stop rattling until 8 pm.
The Whitmore Hotel has gone entertainment mad. Check this out:
Tuesday, singalong acoustic jam; Wednesday Blues band (The Shady Blues Band); Thursday night: Celtic Rainbow session jam; Friday Nov 12 The Hi Rollers, One of Adelaide’s slickest rock n roll bands Sunday Nov 14, afternoon cabaret with Bygone Error that features songs on the old British music hall era.
Forward Planner. Now, if you're too stupid to successfully manage your life on a daily basis and need a forward planner just to ensure you get to the dunny for a poo every day, here's what you could do the week after this one.
Thursday November 18 has Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers at the Gilbert Street Hotel. Good food, great music.
Saturday November 20 there will be pan!c at the Daniel O'Connell Hotel, North Adelaide
Sunday November 21 has Hoy-Hoy!! at The Wine Underground in Pirie St.
AND..... Continuing the now getting-drawn-out-but-must-reach-a-conclusion-soon serialised wartime diary of Derek “Digger” Digby.
I Know, I know … and I’m sorry about this but, if it was good enough for my granduncle Derek Digger Digby to waste his valuable time scratching a wartime diary then it’s good enough for you to pretend to read it; the sooner you get started the sooner we get finished.
Here's an update: Digger was on loan to the RAF for the war effort and was the Squadron Leader of the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Squadron - the fearsome Flying Wombats. Newly returned from a bombing raid on Dresden that hoped to forestall the future emergence of the Dresden Dolls, the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Squadron was developing a secret weapon to use against the murdering, cheating, lying, spying Huns in the soon-to-be-released: Battle of Little Britain. Now read on – quickly - and see if we can’t get to the end of this before some of us die of old age.
The Battle of Little Britain, Part 2
“Wagons had been rolling into the Shire for weeks, each laden with crates and boxes all marked with the conspicuous ‘plummeting kangaroo’ rune trademarked by Gandolfo the Procurer – a black market customs-dodger who could supply the base with anything from vigorously laxative powdered eggs to a sub-atomic particle accelerator. Men worked round the clock in the secret weapons development hangar, only taking time off for a dump or a whizz, the occasional 5-course banquet, some rousing games of mah-jong and some long sittings of Wartime Monopoly, an exciting game where the property you bought gets wiped out by bombing raids and rent-collecting potential goes down instead of up as the game progresses. Suicides are unfortunate side-effects.
“On the eve of the opening day, a Vice-regal two-tone emerald green and cream Hillman Minx De Luxe pulled up in front of the mess hall with Winston Churchill at the wheel.
“ ‘Here, you…” he grunted to an airman, ‘…pull me out of here, will you, my guts is stuck behind the wheel. Ahhhhh, Ta, my good Chappie.’
“Once freed, Churchill used the handle of his umbrella to give his nadbag a good shake up…. ‘Phaww, that’s better; the old block and tackle had started to go numb. Lead on, old son, we have fly-boys to address.
“Mounted on the podium, Churchill guzzled a bottle of Moet; jammed a cigar up his arse, belched and began…
“ ‘The Battle of Little Britain opens tomorrow, starring all you chaps as Fokker fodder, and I have booked front row seats and bought two bags of peanuts. You have but one task, my good fellows: to make a mess o’ shit of those Messerschmits – and try to have it finished before I run out of nuts. I’m not going back to the canteen once I’m settled. Now, get on with it. 'Oy, you... where’s the wren who’s going to massage my prostate? Is that her? Christ! She’s not likely to get airborne, is she? I love the shoulder holster for the jack-hammer, My dear. Do you clean it after every massage? …. Etc & ect.’
“Battle of Little Britain Day, curtain call. Teams of observers were on hand including the future movie stars, watching their designated character so they could play the roles properly. The ones that really bothered us were those who set fire to themselves and smashed into the ground. But maybe they were playing Krauts in the film.
“The doors of the hangars opened and the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Airborne Squadron - the fearsome Flying Wombats – ambled out to the tarmac and assumed launch formation. What an awe-inspiring sight. Perched atop every war wombat was a life-like dummy pilot, each one shielding a cuddly Koala bear. The wombats’ feet thundered on the runway, their cloacas belching fire and smoke, and one by one they became airborne, creating a black, hairy, gamey-smelling cloud that darkened the sky from Wednesday till the following Monday.
“Rumbling like thunder around a loudly-erupting volcano with an earthquake below, the mass of squinty-eyed marsupials broached the Channel to make contact with the dirty, murdering, greasy, lying and spying Hun air-force, the so-called Laugh-woofer. Little did the Krauts know, they would shortly be laughing on the other sides of their block heads and through many other soon-to-be-violently-acquired blood-spurting orifices.
“Two dark, menacing clouds drew nearer to each other over the slate grey English Channel. The Kraut’s first sighting of their enemy was one to strike fear into their hearts – thousands of brave British fighter pilots, grim-faced and fierce, astride stout, bullet-proof flying wombat. A thousand Kraut sphincters quacked an involuntary fart. Let the battle begin!
“At the moment before the first Hun machine gun spurted hot lead, the entire wombat squadron – like synchronized flying swimmers, rolled their massive shoulders and thousands of stuffed pilots tipped sideways and fell, revealing the soft, cute cuddly koalas, steadfastly clinging to the beasts’ backs.
“The secret weapon was unveiled and was about to be the Krauts’ doom.
“ ‘Ohhhhh, Mein Gotten Himmel, Looken at der kootsie-wootsie koala bears… Ohh, Ho, Ho. Das is wunderbra,’
“And from right across the Hun horde came the joyful laughter of simple happiness. At odd times a po-faced koala bear might fall from a wombat only to bring more gales of childish Hun chortling….
“ ‘PHsaww…look….. Zat is the legendary drop-bears, ho der ho, der ho.’
“The Huns couldn’t stop laughing, tears filled their eyes till they couldn’t see, then they started crashing into each other and plummeting to their death. How my ears rang with joy to hear the hilarious laughter turn to hideous screams as Fokker after Fokker plunged to a fiery death.
“ 'Mein Gott,’ shouted Generalfieldmarschnell Schtinkymudflappen, the leader of the flying Third On The Reicht, ‘Ve are beink duped mit der cuddly toys. Raus, Raus. Ve must kill der koalas or ve vill die laughing.’
“He gathered a bunch of the more heartless Krauts around him and drove his wing into the middle of the wombat squadron. But he had not counted on the secret secret weapon – one of my own devising. In the centre of the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Airborne Squadron was a tight knot of wombats, guarding a precious cargo. When Schtinkymudflappen came hurtling out of the sun, his finger sweating on the trigger of his machinen-gunnen, the wombats on the outside of the bunch peeled away to reveal the cutest furry koala of them all, wearing a Groucho Marx face mask - the glasses, the eyebrows, nose and moustache.
“ ‘AHHEEEEHAHHH! How fokken funny!!!!’ screamed Schtinkymudflappen. ‘Heil, heil all you Fokkers, Look.. it is der little Jewish entertainer koala… ho, ho, ho. Kum unt zee zis…..all off yous’
“How they laughed as they all crowded around to see the cute little Groucho koala - and that was their undoing. They did not realize that we also had a Fagin Force of flying Pommie Pickpockets that skittered around behind the German squadron, deftly stealing their wallets which contained their Laugh-woofer fuel cards.
“Now they were done like a Sunday roast. When the refuelling MotherZeppelin arrived to fill up all the little fokkers with petrol so they could keep flying there was nothing she could do but refuse them service and watch them plummet to the sea, their empty fuel tanks coughing and gasping comically. Nothing could be done, the MotherZeppelin had been bred by Hitler himself to have no feelings, and that means no maternal instinct – she wouldn’t give the little fokkers nothing for free - 'Var or no fokken var! No fuel card for der flying-machinen poppenzoomen juice - no poppen zoomen no more. Raus, yous are der kinder vat iss needink der lesson in der flyink business management!'
“At the end of the day, the English Channel was overflowing with busted up Kraut flying machines. After the sharks and crabs cleaned up the rotting carcases we organized a working-bee which gathered a zillion tons of scrap metal out of the sea and donated it to the Vauxhall car factory which used it to make their most famous rustbucket of all - the Vauxhall Viva.
“I took great pride in my part in the downfall of the laugh-woofer and was rewarded by Churchill himself with a handful of cigar ash.”
Next episode: How I took one for Winston, and then it stops, I promise. I've had enough. I wish I'd never started the fukken thing!
Blues, Roots and Rock 'n' Roll - It's all here
Monday, 01 November 2010
Win or lose on the Melbourne Cup you still need to get out and have a good time. This week's rocking gigs feature Don Morrison and the Rank Outsiders, The Cat's Pyjamas and Sweet Baby James Meston.
But first, we have Mike and the Shady Blues Band at the Whitmore Hotel on Wednesday night, November 3.
Friday night, November 5, you do not want to miss Don Morrison and the Rank Outsiders at the Semaphore Workers Club. In between rolling out hit after hit off of his new hit album Random Notes, Morrison will regale the audience with steamy readings from his new hit sex novel, This Could Be Big - if only you have a little one, honey. I might have some of the facts about that wrong but who cares - it's going to be fun! Live music kicks off around 9 pm.
Sunday, November 7 is a day for Rock 'n' Roll at the Wine Underground with the Cat's Pyjamas. Strap on your dancing shoes and get along to the Wine Underground, 121 Pirie Street the City to cut the rug with great Old Skool Rock 'n' Roll music. The Joint starts rockin' around 5 pm. Bar snacks are available.
And also, on Sunday, November 7 you can stomp along to hear SWEET BABY JAMES & ROB EYERS at the Semaphore Workers Club, (5pm).
Now.... gettting back to the Wartime Diary of Derek 'Digger' Digby, a hand-written tome I found under a metre-high pile of ancient reading material in the dunny. It's an exciting read so I'm back in the dunny to pick up where I left off. Briefly.... Derek ‘Digger” Digby was on loan to the RAF for the war effort and was the Squadron Leader of the the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Squadron - the fearsome Flying Wombats. Newly returned from a bombing raid on Dresden that hoped to forestall the future emergence of the Dresden Dolls, the 32nd Australian Heavy Marsupial Squadron now has to undertake a new task for Great Britain's brave but morbidly obese wartime leader, Winston Churchill.
The Battle of Little Britain, Part 1
“Marvellous Statesman that he was, Winston Churchill had a secret weakness – he was poor at foreign languages. The RAF base had run out of Jacobs Cream Crackers after a fairly heavy training session for the Inter-Forces Soggy Biscuit Cup when who should pull up in front of our huts, in the dark blue Vice-Regal Austin A30, but Churchill himself. Bolted to the back of the Austin was a smart Vice-Regal 3x3 trailer almost erupting under a green army issue tarpaulin.
“ ‘Righto, my Jolly Fly Boys,’ Churchill said, giving his ringpiece a lusty four-finger scrudge, “There’s enough crackers here to last a month – the Soggy Biscuit Challenge is back on!’
“A cheer went up from the whole base until it was discovered - when everyone had their cocks out and ready to be shuffled to a froth - that the crackers weren’t jolly old Jacobs. Churchill had mistakenly appropriated half a ton of Swedish Knäckebröd – with poppy seeds!
“ ‘Sorry, Chappies,' he humbly apologised, ' ... but I can’t read Swedish – it looked to me that the label said ‘knacker-bread’, which I thought was custom-made for custard canapes. But I understand that nobody in their right mind would eat spoof-covered crispbread – with poppy seeds! You’ll just have to hang on to your baby gravy until the Jacobs plant is rebuilt after the bombing and gets back in production.
“ ‘Meanwhile I have good news and bad news….The good news is…We’re going to have a big fight with the murdering Hun. Well, you are. I’ve had a chat with the Krauts and we all agree the War is getting a bit bogged down so we decided to introduce a bit of excitement; we’ve booked The Battle of Little Britain. That’s right, we’re going to have a jolly old bish-bash over the English Channel and it’s going to be a lot of cracking good fun.
“ ‘We’ve already sold the film rights and hired that actress bint with the three-dick mouth - Susannah York. I tell you, my jolly Wombat Jockeys, It’s going to be bigger than Queen Victoria’s minge mat.
“ ‘The bad news is: I’ve been tipped orf from Whitehall that there is a dirty murdering German spy over here trying to discover your Secret Weapon. I must ask you to be vigilant and not to trust the chappie standing next to you. Now, I’ve got a Grand Slam stuck in the bomb bay and it’s cost me an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears in the toilet trying to shift the bugger. I’ve gargled a gallon of castor oil to lubricate the hinges and right now I have to warn you – clear a path to the WC or die… It’s bombs awayyyyyy!
“Poor Winston, that giant turd stretched his ringpiece so big it wouldn’t fit back in his trousers and had to be strapped onto the trailer to get it back to Downing Street. Meanwhile we had our own problems. First… we thought our ‘secret weapon’ was secret but, like Burt Reynolds little secret – it was out! So we knew there was a spy – probably in our very midst. And I was the first person to have our suspicions in the matter upgraded.I was digging turnips down at the base’s garden allotment behind the Secret Weapon installation when I saw someone suspiciously using a telephoto camera. I challenged him: ‘Gidday mate; 'ow yer goin, orright?’
“ ‘Vat? Eh, Himmell, Oh Yeah…mate, I am goink all der rights,’ the bloke replied.
“ ‘Goodoh. What are you doin then?’
“ ‘Vell…I vas… er…making der fotograf of … of er... der cabbages.
“ ‘ Photos of cabbages eh… what are you goin’ to do with ‘em?’
“ ‘Vell…I am going to ... er… to cook them….’
“ ‘What? Cook photos of cabbages?’
“ ‘Yawol, I mean yess, I vill cook dem in der fotos of der saucepan mit der fotos of der winegar and das bacon….. for eating. Yum Yum, eh?’
“ ‘I doubt it, mate. I’ll stick to turnips. See you later, eh?’
“ ‘Yawol.. err, yess, I vill be seeing you at der later time.'
“ ‘You can bet your monocle on that’ – I thought, because nobody likes cabbages except…Krauts. That was something to think about.
“Having upgraded my ‘suspicions’ to ‘sneaking suspicions’, I outlined a plan to the Base Commander. On the next Saturday night, we scheduled a cabaret at the mess to announce the winner of the K.P.I. Competition for the Secret Weapon Development Program after a rousing song and dance floor-show, one I that I had specially arranged and rehearsed.
“Everyone knew it was going be a grouse night and we sold 572 tickets to the blow-out. There was something fishy about that number – it looked like one too many… and so it looked to me like our plan was working.
“The floor show started when I hit the stage dressed as a witty raconteur: “Gidday Fly-Boys, Ground Crew and spies – ha, ha…. You know…comedy is a funny thing,” I opened with… "Some people get it; some don’t. Hey, can anybody tell me how many Dutchmen it takes to change a light bulb? Hmm. No? Well, I’ll tell you … hundreds of them… because it takes many Hans to make light work.
“The room erupted with laughter, the men roared till they cried… but I wasn’t basking in the glow of self-satisfaction, I was busy listening. I reckoned there was only 571 blokes laughing because from one samll part of the audience came the sound of silence. One man was not laughing and I knew it had to be a Kraut because, as every schoolboy knows: Krauts have no sense of humour.
“I was ready for the next part of the show. I whipped off my M.C. jacket to reveal the body of Mae West scantily clad in a sheer and glittery frock. The men went wild -- eyes goggled and tongues drooled and fly buttons popped like corn in the popping machine at the flicks. Then I unfastened my brassiere and let loose my generous, jiggling bosoms for all to see. There was a mighty intake of breath; a gasp that silenced the room. Then, with all eyes watching, I began to rotate the tit tassle on my left nork counter-clockwise, and then the one on my right nork clock-wise. The trick was greeted with thunderous wolf whistles, neck slapping and foot stomping. But when I rotated my norks around the shaft of the mike stand the lads all shot their bolts in a tidal wave of pent-up jism that washed over me and flooded the floor.
“Now that I had their attention, I went to the climax of my act. I jumped up on a table and flung away my frock to reveal my next outfit: an alpine hat, brown brogues, long hiking socks and leather lederhosen. Slapping my rump vigorously, I cajoled the men to jump up on the table with me and sing that rousing drinking tune: The Sweaty Kipper Polka. Of course, I knew what would happen. One and only one person threw off his uniform to reveal a pair of lederhosen before jumping up to participate -- The Kraut!
“ ‘Gotcha, you murdering sneaky Hun,’ I shouted holding him up by his braces. ‘This is our Kraut spy, Chappies. And what do we do to Kraut spies?’
“ At that there was the sound of 571 service issue revolvers drawn and cocked, each one loaded with six slugs. Then, at my command, the murdering syping Hun received a 3426 bullet bukakke.
“When the smoke cleared there was nothing than left of him that was bigger than a sausage knot except the Reichsadler insignia off his hat, and even that had the arse shot out of the eagle.
“I had been shot 66 times by the Yank flyboys in the squadron but because they were Yanks the bullets all missed me and killed instead three doctors, a team of nurses and civilian medical orderlies who were usually on hand to pick up the ‘drop-downs’ at the end of a night in the canteen, and the janitor.
“With the murdering spying Hun out of the way, we went back to our Secret Weapon training program….. the Battle of Little Britain was opening in less than a week and we had to be ready.”
I'm pretty keen to get on to the next ....... Holy shit, there’s a spider in here with me! I think it’s a huntsman..... EEEEEEEEEKKK! Help, help there’s a spider in the dunny. Somebody throw me a thong, HELPPPPP!!
But first - and, in life, sometimes it helps to go butt first - Live Music at the Whitmore on Wednesday November 17 features Mike Barnes and the Shady Blues Band. 
Thusrsday night, November 18 is a mighty night at the Gilbert Street Hotel with Sweet Baby James Meston and Rob Eyers cranking out the double voodoo blues. Try the Gilbert's buffalo wings, rapidly gaining a high-demand reputation that has ruffled feathers in the chook world. Try the barramundi - I'd recommend that; leave the poor chooks alone. You've no idea the strain it adds to a chook's family to have to have to spoon feed their offspring and siblings because he or she has lost his or her arms to a buffolo wing chowdown at the Gilbert Street Hotel. 
Saturday Night November 20, it's pan!c at the Daniel O'Connell Hotel in North Adelaide. The Dan is a fine pub with great beer on tap and up the western end of the front bar, in a smallish boxed in area, you will find pan!c, the band. Not the highly irrational emotional state. pan!c the band is not like that; it's... it's ... It's more fun than sticking your toe in a duck's arse.
Sunday, November 19 and the Wine Underground proudly presents Someone! I think it's Snooks La Vie but I will find out for sure and let you know.
Friday November 12 Double Wammy whips up the punters at the Semaphore Workers Club to a froth of frenzy and frantic flailing with their trademarked Power Soul. There will be stomping and screaming, a rolling of eyes and a lolling of tongues, there will be a gnashing of teeth and a wringing of hands, there will be scratching of the armpits, a rending of the underwear and involuntary bowel movements. But it will be fun. Starts at 9 pm. See you there. 
Saturday November 13 The Steve Brown Band will be rocking the foundations of the Bacchus Bar at Henley Square. When I say the Steve Brown Band I probably need to explain that Steve Brown was arrested for murdering a crocked-out old Bob Dylan song and he has been sent away to the colonies for corrective re-programming. He will be in New Zealand for a while where he will be forced to look at New Zealanders, talk to them and have his thongs stolen. But his band - the Steve Brown Band - will be at Bacchus - four pieces of rocking pneumonia and phlegm. Joint starts rocking around 9 pm.
Sunday the 14th of November you can get Texas Bluesed at The Semaphore workers club by Hoy-Hoy!! Big Frank pulls out the chocks at around 5 pm and the walls don't stop rattling until 8 pm.
Friday night, November 5, you do not want to miss Don Morrison and the Rank Outsiders at the Semaphore Workers Club. In between rolling out hit after hit off of his new hit album Random Notes, Morrison will regale the audience with steamy readings from his new hit sex novel, This Could Be Big - if only you have a little one, honey. I might have some of the facts about that wrong but who cares - it's going to be fun! Live music kicks off around 9 pm. 
Sunday, November 7 is a day for Rock 'n' Roll at the Wine Underground with the Cat's Pyjamas. Strap on your dancing shoes and get along to the Wine Underground, 121 Pirie Street the City to cut the rug with great Old Skool Rock 'n' Roll music. The Joint starts rockin' around 5 pm. Bar snacks are available.