'Is it Kosher?' Mike asked me again as I handed him his full English breakfast. 'Always pal' came my quick response and I headed back into the kitchen to collect more English breakfasts. 'What does Kosher mean?' I asked the head chef. He laughed at me saying 'It's Mike again is it?' I never did find out what it meant.
Mike was head of entertainments and part of his 'entertainment' involved asking whichever waiter happened to be handing him his breakfast whether or not it is Kosher. I didn't find it funny but a couple of his entertainment minnions who sat at the breakfast table with him would always laugh at his jokes.
He was a strange man to me. I'd never met anyone like him in Wigan. I was new to Devon and new to the holiday camp experience. Mike was old school. He used to be in a very famous TV entertainment program in the UK called 'The Black and White Minstrel Show'. Incredibly this show, where the male minstrels would 'black up' their faces to sing and dance, attracted over twenty million views per episode in the 1960's. How times have changed.
Mike reminded me of John Inman who used to play a very camp character on another TV show called 'Are you being served?' I really didn't know what to make of this chap. He seemed extravagent and massively gay. As far as I knew at the time I had never met a gay person before. The only other person I'd ever seen that I thought might be gay was a young lad who used to walk past my school sometimes. He looked like Robert Smith from The Cure and every time he walked past my school, a gang of lads would chase him and beat him up for being different. I hated them for it. This was 1991 and homophobia was rife. I wasn't afraid of Mike. I was afraid of what I would do if he happened to come on to me or something similar. It was all very new and confusing for a lad from a macho town like Wigan.
It was the start of a new season on the holiday camp. Mike and his staff were in the stages of preparing their entertainment shows for the upcoming season and I fancied myself as a bit of an entertainer so I enquired as to what they were up to.
It turned out they were planning a magic show and I was invited to be part of the cast. I was delighted. From then on I would rehearse the show with them for a few hours a couple of times a week until we had the performance mastered.
The performance involved UV lighting. The whole room had to be in total darkness for the magic to happen. The curtains had to be taped to the walls to ensure not even a peek of light could enter. Someone had to guard the doors to ensure no one entered or left during the performance. Just one flash of light from anywhere would ruin the illusion.
Three of us wore black clothing from head to foot and we wore a see through black bag over our heads. The bag allowed us to see on the stage but the audience could not see us. This allowed us to move objects around the stage without being seen. The objects would have strips of reflective material sewn on to them, allowing them to stand out in the UV light. It appeared that shiny objects were floating around the stage.
The show started around June and ran to September. We performed every Friday night. It was a massive success. Everyone loved it and the show became Mike's pride and joy.
The two main performers, Mike and Kate were dressed in reflective clothing. Mike would wave his arms around as myself and the two others moved objects around for him in this seemingly magical fashion. One of my props was a brightly coloured umbrella which I would slowly spin around as I opened and closed it. Long tassles hung from it and it was supposed to look like a sea anemone swimming around in the ocean.
The men in black were myself, a waiter called Paul who wandered around with a shiny fish and a lad called Graham from the pot wash who had the job of shoving a black, wheeled chair around the stage. On the chair sat Kate, the main female lead. She sat on the stool with her legs crossed, dressed in a reflective Harlequin suit wearing a lime green reflective mask. Graham would push the stool around giving the appearance of Kate floating across the stage as Mike waved his arms around barking out magical words.
When Graham reached a certain point on the stage I would move in behind with a piece of black cloth and a false head with a lime green reflective mask on it. I had the head under the cloth. At this point Mike would stand right in front of us and in a carefully coordinated move, Mike would take the false head as I covered Kate's head with the black cloth. The resulting illusion was that of Mike lifting off Kate's head and waving it around as he held it. Paul would then take the head from Mike and wander around with it. While this happened, I held the cloth over Kate's head as Graham shoved the chair around the stage again.
It took some time to get used to being on stage fooling people like this. For the first few performances it was hard to believe that the audience couldn't see me. I could see the front couple of rows fairly well. It felt foolish and amateur but I enjoyed it.
One day Mike gave each of the performers a video cassette. It was a recording of one of the performances. He wanted us to experience the show from the audience's perspective. I have to say I was mightily impressed. The show looked great and I had no further worries about being seen on stage.
As the season progressed, the show got better and better as we all mastered our roles to perfection. It was a slick performance. All of that, however, was to change on one fateful evening in August. It is a night I will never forget.
Everything was going as it always had done. The cabaret room was packed full of holiday makers, all eager to see this show that Mike had spent the whole week building up. Mike was waving his hands and barking out magical words as Paul wondered around with the false head. I held the cloth over Kate's head as Graham shoved her around the stage on the chair. The gasps were the same, the cheers were the same, the applause was the same. And then, everything changed as the lights came on.
We all stood frozen on the spot for a second wondering what was happening. I looked out at the crowd through my black bag and realised that they were pretty much doing the same thing but seated...and without the black bag. I thought about taking the bag off my head but didn't want the audience to know I was involved with this shambles. Instead I simply walked off stage left taking my black cloth with me. Paul followed with the head and Graham, bless him, pushed Kate off stage with the chair and her newly reappeared head.
Backstage we took the bags off our heads and asked each other what was happening. Poor Kate was a bit upset about it. She wandered off somewhere leaving myself, Paul and Graham in the tiny backstage changing room. As soon as she left we looked at each other and all burst out laughing uncontrollably. As we began to gain control of our laughter Mike walked in the room. He was not best pleased to say the least. 'I don't know what you lot are fucking laughing at' he frothed at us before kicking the shit out of a chair. Graham was a little shocked but myself and Paul were finding it almost impossible not to laugh at him. We tried our best. Mike then topped off his hissy fit by swinging a rubber baseball bat at the chair but instead of hitting the chair he hit the fluorescent light fitting on the ceiling bringing the whole apparatus down on his head. That was it...Paul and I couldn't control ourselves and we were both in hysterics again. Mike disappeared and we changed out of our black clothes and headed for the bar to find out what had happened.
Keith had the answer. Sabotage. Keith was the night security guard. He was a burly Welsh jiu-jitsu expert in his late fifties. He had seen two people running from the building just after the lights came on. The lighting was controlled from the DJ box, a small room with a window in the wall overlooking the cabaret room. Keith said he had seen two people exit the DJ box and flee from the scene through the main entrance. He hadn't gotten a good enough look at the culprits to identify them and it remained a mystery for the remainder of the season and indeed further subsequent seasons.
Over the coming days, weeks, months and years people would talk about that night in the hope of finally discovering what happened. Many people thought Keith was the culprit. They didn't believe his story, choosing to believe that Keith was in the DJ box watching the show when he accidentally turned on the lights. He fell under the suspicion of most of the staff for quite a while. Keith had been the only person to see these two mystery saboteurs.
Many years later. About five or six years ago now, I was back in Devon sitting at a bar chatting with an old work colleague from back in the day. I brought up the subject with him and it turned out that he knew exactly what had happened.
A waiter and a waitress from the camp had decided it would be a good idea to sneak into the DJ box during the show and have a little fun. They weren't saboteurs, they were horny. During their act of passion in the box, my waiter colleague had picked up my waitress colleague and sat her on top of the lighting panel in the dark causing the lights in the cabaret room to switch on. The two of them quickly made their way out of there and Keith had indeed seen them. Much to Keith's credit though, he decided to let them escape and cover for them. The poor fella had been under all sorts of suspicion for so long and he never grassed on the passionate pair.
It took a few days for Mike to calm down about it all and the following weekend we were all in position again ready to dim the lights. The rest of the performances were done under the watchful eye of Keith as he manned the DJ box to keep away any further acts of sabotage. It never happened again.
Thanks for following my stories, I hope you're enjoying them.
Until next time, may your bare arse not ruin the show.
STEEMONKEY