Gig 44. Forbidden fruit, City emblems and other bits of tat.

A good LLC on Tuesday, back to the old format, 6 acts with each of us introducing two of them. All the acts were good, ending with a great set from John Scott, and Cal Al and Myself all had pretty good stuff to do in the gaps. I tried this...

"I noticed that a new greengrocer had opened. And they've gone for that thing hairdressers do of using a related pun, you know- so there'll be a hairdressers called 'curl up and dye' - which works on two levels. So This greengrocer has tried to do that. And he's called his shop 'forbidden fruits' Which I think only works on one level really.

-I'll have a pound of apples please.

-Sorry mate- they're forbidden.

Unless Satan has set up the shop to sell the actual forbidden fruit from the garden of Eden. You go in the shop and there's just an apple tree with a snake wrapped round it. 'Go on, have one, they're fuckin lush.'

Yeah, I always have a problem with that Adam and eve story- because the apples are supposed to be the fruit of knowledge, they eat them and they know all this new stuff. And the first thing they notice is that they are naked. Which begs the question... How fucking stupid were these people in the first place? I mean I've got some thick mates- but they all know whether or not they've got clothes on!

I reckon god must have worked out that making this fabulous garden of Eden was too much work, and it was easier just to make Adam and eve so stupid that they wouldn't notice where they were.

GOD- Adam- do you like the paradise I have created for you?

ADAM- (In vague chav / manc accent.) Yeah man great, top one.

As he wanders round an abandoned sainsbury's car park.

Then one day, ADAM- top! Apples (munchity-crunchity) POSH ADAM-I say, I appear to be completely starkers, and what am I doing in sainsbury's car park?"

This didn't get a reaction, though it tickles me. I also did another bit on odd signs, pointing out that 'WARNING C.C.T.V.' is not only directed at criminals, but is helping them (by warning them.) My futher annoyance with designer milk came to the fore, when I challenged the claim of Cravendale 'It's filtered to make it purer.' (Im-bloomin-possible.)

I'm still not quite comfortable with the spontaneous banter, but I've been able to come up with things on the spot based on topics earlier acts have mentioned. Someone mentioned the emblem of the London underground police- a mole, because they work underground -with glasses and a white stick, to point out they can't see. (An aspect of the mole that you'd think the police wouldn't focus on.) Anyway, I tried to make something out of the unlikely choice of the seahorse as Newcastle's emblem. We're hardly inundated with seahorses are we? This got a bit of a titter, but it was only when I (unfairly) claimed they'd be dodging between fag-ends and old johnnys at North Shields that the real laugh came. So, nice to be able to come up with something on the spot. If only I could get close to Ross Nobel on a similar subject...

"Our national crest has a lion, right, and a unicorn. So that's one animal that doesn't even live in Britain, and one that doesn't exist. We might as well have a hippo and an ewok."