FROM SOUP TO NUTS: THOUGHTS OF A VICE - SHEIK. (3)

 by Vice-Shiek Steve O'Connor

 From time to time we all find ourselves out of our natural environment and bedded down in lodgings of one kind or another. For Laurel & Hardy a permanent home tends to come with a wife, and temporary lodgings with financial embarrassment. The landlord is of course a natural enemy of The Boys. Charlie Hall plays the role most frequently, but Edgar Kennedy, Billy Gilbert and James Finlayson also take a turn at hosting these most challenging of guests. The landlord may be the angry authority figure but we can perhaps sympathize with their tribulations eg: a goat, 'Angora Love', a chimp, 'The Chimp', an explosion, 'They Go Boom or, for the landlady in 'You're darn Tootin', a mere 14 weeks back rent.

Still, my own experiences with landlords/hotels leave me very much on the side of our heroes. As a student I once returned to my awful digs to find that the landlady had knocked an elderly resident unconscious with a chair leg. Apparently he had tried to get 'fresh' with her and she kept this item of furniture handy for just such occasions. Recently, on a trip to England, I took a room above a seemingly respectable pub. I had a busy day lined up and asked the landlord if I could have breakfast at 7.30 the next morning - "No problem mate". At the appointed time I turned up for my grub to find not the landlord, but a rather confused Australian girl. After deciding that I was not one of the 'nutters', she explained that she was staying there but had got up to find all the doors barred and no way out. She was now over an hour late for work. I searched around until I found the landlords bedroom - and explained the situation. He struggled to lift his head off the pillow, "Let her out the fire es

cape mate". He then collapsed back into his drunken stupor - I never did see breakfast.

The big prize however, has to go to an hotel in County Fermanagh. Some years ago I booked a few friends and myself into this august establishment. On arrival we were told that the rooms were not quite ready and would we mind waiting a little while? So, we waited and waited and then we waited some more. At one point we noticed staff members scurrying by with mattresses - things did not look good. Eventually, we were shown to our rooms. Workmen were still peeling masking tape off the walls in the hall and the rooms had only just been painted. The rooms were so small that it was one step from the beds to the shower cubicle. The 'small' TV sets were set so high on the wall that you could not watch them without getting a crick in the neck. The smell of fresh paint was so overpowering that we all decided to retire to the bar for a game of pool. This proved difficult as each leg of the table was on a castor ,(I am not making this up), and each shot was fraught with danger as the table gracefully

slid from under you and headed off somewhere with you clinging on. We returned to a room for a goodnight chat only to be startled by a delivery boy screaming through the ground floor window, "DID YOUSE ORDER A PIZZA?" He won't do that again in a hurry. Finally we drifted off to sleep lulled by the paint fumes and the on-going arguments of the charming family in the next room. Next day the owner asked if we had had a nice stay. She won't do that again in a hurry.

So, if ever you find yourself feeling sorry for a Laurel & Hardy landlord - don't!

As a special treat I will finish off with not one but TWO Laurel & Hardy moments. No need to thank me, it's ok.

From The National Post, Canada: "I'm amazed he survived," Dan Swerhone of the Canada Waste Services told reporters at a landfill site in Saskatoon, "because they usually don't come out alive. When you think about it, it's a fourteen-foot drop onto a steel floor, and then you are squeezed in the steel crusher, which compresses the loads to one-fifth of their original size. It brings up the question, how many don't we find?"

Mr. Swerhone was speaking after the discovery of a man who had been compacted and dumped at the city's landfill site. "I couldn't believe it when I heard the cries," said Derek Silbernagel, one of the workers who had found the man. "At first, I thought it was an animal or something. There was lots of moaning, so we dug some garbage away from around his head and found him still conscious. He was confused, but he told us that he'd ' had a few drinks' last night in the southwest district, and had climbed into a garbage bin for shelter. He fell asleep and must have been picked up by a rubbish truck at about 5am, and slept right through it, because next thing he knew, he was being tipped into the compressor. He says that he shouted and banged on the bin, but the compression process is noisy, because it's metal-on-metal, so nobody heard him. He was more concerned about having a used diaper wrapped around his head. But I'd say he's pretty lucky to be alive".

The unnamed man was taken to hospital, where he was diagnosed with fractures to his jaw, arms and ribs. He was otherwise unharmed.

From the Tiverton Gazette: "It was a moment of madness," admitted farmer Dave Phillips, as he recalled the low-speed police chase which he had precipitated in South Molton, Devon. "I was driving my tractor along the A361 when the police spotted me. I didn't have number plates, so when they pulled me over I thought 'what am I going to do?' When they asked me for my registration number, I just started talking Spanish. I don't actually speak Spanish, but they didn't either, so I kept on talking a loud scribble language and making big hand gestures for about ten minutes. Then I don't know what came over me, because I suddenly turned the tractor around and headed off across the fields.

"My tractor has a top speed of 22mph, but I knew the ground was boggy, and police cars aren't built for that, so I just kept on going. For three hours I went on, with them behind, over field tracks, across streams and through hedges. I even criss-crossed the river Yeo to try and shake them off. Eventually I dumped the tractor and made for the house of a gamekeeper friend. He told me off for being so stupid, and took me for a drink at the Black Cock Inn, near Molland, and arranged to hand me over.

"I don't really know why I pretended to be Spanish. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I think the police thought I was an illegal immigrant that's why they took it so seriously. They're sending me a traffic summons in the post, which is a pity, because I was hoping they'd deport me back to Spain. I could do with a month in the sun".

There are a lot of them out there… Hope to see you all in Comber. It's a great cinema and like any cinema it looks and sounds best with a full house. So, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…