The cabaret girls in the strip club in Stepney were lapping up their pease pudding as Alf drew reflectively on his cigar.
Big, burly and bland, he hadn't changed much in character since he and My Friend Harry had belted around the London dirt-tracks together as youngsters. Now he was middle-aged, bald and ran a strip club. Just goes to show.
"Pease pudding," chuckled Alf. “The girls love it. Did I ever tell you about young Herbie from Ipswich I once met on holiday?"
"Herbert?"
"Yes. Right nutter he was. Had a little BSA with handlebar mirrors and legshields. The lot. Said he was coming to London for the first time for the Motorcycle Show. I told him to look me up. Never expected him to, of course, but sure enough he arrived one evening, complete with girlfriend as I was leaving home for the club. I told him to dump the bike in my back yard shed and go to the Show by Tube. Be quicker for him in the long run, seeing that he didn't know the way."
Alf dragged on his cigar. "What a carry on! They got as far as Cannon Street when his girl remembered she'd left her specs in the motor bike's pannier. Herbert decided to nip back for them and told her to go on to Earls Court and wait for him at the entrance. Back he came, only to find my place locked up, of course, So he knocked next door and met Joe. He couldn't help because I had the shed key. Then Joe told Herbert that as he was popping over to the club himself, he'd take Herbert on his pillion. Joe and his wife run a fish and chip and pease pudding shop just round the comer and Joe and his wife deliver pease pudding for the girls every night. It goes in a container on the back of Joe's bike."
Alf had another drag. "When Herbert called, it so happened that the container wasn't available, so what Joe did was to fill a plastic bucket with pease pudding and get Herbert to sit on the back of the bike with it. “You'll be OK,” he assured Herbert. “I'll take it easy.” And had it not been for a mechanical miracle, all would have been well. But when they got near the club, Joe dabbed the gear lever to change down from top. Only he got bottom gear in one go."
"Impossible," protested Harry.
"I know," agreed Alf, "but Joe swears that's what happened. Anyway, the Triumph slowed from 45 to a brisk walk in a couple of feet and Herbert got a bucketful of pease pudding in his lap. I didn't see all this because I was having a drink in the pub next door to the club. The club doorman didn’t see it, either, because he was inside changing the gramophone record.
"Joe, being a resourceful chap, pushed young Herbert into the club, sat him in the changing room, pulled off his trousers, told him he'd get his wife to sponge and iron them and would bring them back-with another consignment of pease pudding-in half-an-hour. Then off he went."
Alf was lost in thought for a second or two, and then he went on. "A few minutes after Joe had left, in comes Zaza, the one with the big ...."
I said I remembered Zaza.
Zaza nipped into the changing room, whipped off her mac and saw a skinny bloke sitting there in a crash helmet and no trousers and raised the roof. That brought the doorman in with his fists swinging. Herbert skated out through the fire exit, darted down the alley - and there he was, out in the street. Well, he couldn't walk about like that and he couldn't go back into the club, so what did he do?
"You tell me," suggested Harry.
"Well, he spotted a big sidecar attached to an Ariel and he darted inside. There he sat, hoping Joe would arrive with his trousers before the owner of the sidecar turned up."
"And did he?"
"No," grinned Alf. "The sidecar belonged to Big Ben, Zaza's manager. He used it to run her from club to club for her five-minute performances. So, you can imagine the hullabaloo when Zaza opened the door of the sidecar and saw this same geezer in a crash helmet and no trousers waiting for her inside. Big Ben yanked him out and started clobbering him. Just then, Joe arrived with his missus on the pillion with some more pease pudding and Herbert's trousers.
I came out of the pub just as Joe tore into Big Ben, Zaza tore into Joe and Joe's missus upended the pease pudding over Zaza.
"Everybody was shouting and swearing and punching and kicking and scratching when the law appeared on the horizon, so I pulled Herbert into the club, closely followed by Joe, Joe's wife and the doorman. When all was quiet, Joe went out for Herbert's trousers, only to find they weren't there. Somebody had nicked them. So, I gave Joe my keys, told him to pop home for a spare pair of trousers and come back. Joe and his wife went off and not only did Joe bring back some trousers but he remembered to collect Herbert's girl's specs, too.
"My trousers made Herbert look decent, but that was all. He was skinny and I'm getting on for 15 stone. Still, we put him on the Underground and reckoned that was that."
"And was it?" asked Harry.
"Far from it. Herbert's girl got worried after standing around at Earls Court for so long and came back to see what had happened. Naturally, she found nobody at home at my place, but someone suggested she should ask at the fish-and-chip shop down the road. Joe’s wife had got back by then. “Herbert?” she said. “Yes, he's at the strip club. He's lost his trousers.”
"Well, that was it, of course. The girlfriend went home by train, howling her eyes out. Herbert arrived for his bike at three o'clock in the morning after getting the police out to look for her."
"Busy evening all round," commented Harry.
"Turned out all right for Zaza, though," said Alf. "She found Herbert's girl's specs in the changing room where, in the general panic, Herbert had left them. She became the only stripper on the circuit wearing specs. Very sexy, the customers reckoned."
Comments