Anyway, back to my brilliant theatrical career.
The variety show at the Folies Bergère was quite eclectic. There were exotic dancers, certainly, but also novelty acts: the Gadjodildos, for example, a troupe of lively Romanian acrobatic dancers who bounced about the stage in their red boots and embroidered tunics, slapping each others' faces in time to the music. Le Grand Byard was a conjurer, or prestidigitateur as they say in France, who worked with his assistant Boyeau le Nul. Boyeau got sawn in half every night, up until the night the safety catch slipped that is, and he had to be replaced by Scarletta, who played "Jealousy" on the sax with a clog-dancing ferret. There was even a talking gorilla once, on loan from Billy Smart's, a most eloquent creature who spoke French with a delightful Congolese accent.
Bette Noire, "the Toxteth Tarantula", was one of the more exotic dancers, if you follow me, and was not allowed to perform on Sundays, as the Archbishop was busy taking mass and couldn't come to see her. And of course Hattie, Dolores, Flo and me in the chorus line, doing high kicks in our signature hatband formation. Happy days.
One evening Mr Finkelsteinburger told us there would be an important guest in the audience and warned us to keep our thongs on in the final tableau. We begged him, even offered favours, to find out who it was, but even when Pat, "Le Rossignol de Rossendale", offered to do her party piece - doing a handstand naked on the highwire whilst balancing a tray of kirs on each foot - he refused to budge."If I tells ya, it'll affect youse performance," he barked, chomping on his cigar.
We tried to sneak a look through the curtains but were none the wiser. It was only during the opening number that I spotted him in the third row. The dreadlock wig couldn't completely cover his prominent ears, as he tried to hide behind a copy of "Organic Fertilizer Weekly".
"Girls! Girls!" I cried, as soon as got back to the wings. "It's The Prince of Wales! Charlie Boy! Could be our lucky night !"
A chorus girl hissed at me as she marched past: "Chasse gardée, bitch! He's spoken for."
"Who does she think she is?" I asked, staring after her.
"That's Catmilla, one of the Slinky Pussies," explained Hattie. "Apparently he's come to see her act."
The Slinky Pussies were a pair of double-jointed pre-op transsexual contortionists. Catmilla and her partner, La Pouncita, wore leopard print body stockings and did things with a ball of wool you wouldn't countenance. It was, to be fair, one of the more popular routines in the show, and "Gorgeous George" Galloway, who ran the bar, never missed a performance.
Despite Finkelstein's warnings, we did sneakily remove our tassels in the tableau, but the Prince only put down his magazine when Catmilla came on stage. He didn't even look up at Lulu LaBonne's "trompe l'oeil" number where she appeared to be squeezed into peculiar shapes by a boa constrictor, which was in fact tattooed on to her skin (the peculiar shapes were her own), and we all know how much he cares about animal rights.
The Folies Bergère closed down for a number of years in the 1980s, although has reopened since, and we all went our separate ways. Dolores Entwhistle, Hattie Mildew-Spliff and 'Orinoco' Flo McCluskey gave up hoofing when the price of caribou feathers went through the roof. Orinoco Flo used to have a thing for one of the Gadjodildos, but the creep turned out to be already a bigamist, it took her a long time to get over her loss and she turned to strong drink and lesbianism for comfort. The girls all still live in Paris, and we meet up from time to time for a girls' night out, about which I have written in earlier posts. As for Catmilla, she went to work at the Paris Ritz as chief mechanic of the limo fleet, and got married in Windsor a few years ago, or so I'm told.
La Pouncita hitched a lift to England with a truck driver who she promptly married, had her gender realigned and changed her name to Edie Stobart, then resurfaced at Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal where she runs the Casey Jones Bar & Grill, still sporting her trademark ocelot leotard and occasionally climbing onto the bar to blow her own trumpet.
As for me, I did a course in Cordon Bleu cuisine and catered for glittering diplomatic receptions, which was how I met my dear departed Harold. The quickest way to a man's heart is not always with a twelve inch blade. Once he had nibbled my vol-au-vent, he swore he would nibble no other. But that's for another episode.
21 comments:
Never has nudity been so tasteful, Lady Daphne. Trust the Prince of Wales to be such a prig, I bet he didn't even tip you.
Strewth, Daphers, you've tied up all the loose ends and bought our blogging lives to some sort of conclusion here! I was indeed that member of Gadjodildos that you mention, but due to the guilt I felt after that episode my life paradoxically took a similar turn to poor Flo's. After my gender alignment - re-alignment, I should say - I wrote several dissolute novels under the pseudonyms Jean Genet and Jean Rhys.
Ah, Daphne (if I may be so familiar), your life is an instruction to us all about what we might achieve if only we take some risks.
Sadly, I take no risks and keep my passions firmly under lock and key. If only I could set myself free and experience the true delights of abandonment, then I could count you as my role model.
I knew I was missing out by not learning to play the spoons....
It's hard to believe we would trip up and down the stairs trailing those long feathered trains without a second thought. I did think Daphne, that sometimes you were maybe a little too eager to whip off your thong but then I was always the shy one.
...Yeah but the clog dancing ferret stole the show. He's now a multi-millionaire producer in Hollywood. I taught him everything, damn it...
Sx
Another feather to your fruit basket, D.
Vol-au-vent!
Any hot cross buns?
That takes me back...
It's all true, btw. Ffact.
Scarletta's bloody ferret was forever snapping at bits of my boa - Those shapes were achieved with gastric bands my dear.
I'm so looking forward to hearing about how you met Harold - I'd heard that he played Tarzan at a jungle-themed Butlins before moving up in the world - is that true?
This "exotic" dancer stuff is quotidian for some of us. My sister was at boarding school with Orinoco Flo (just plain Orinoco then; the Flo came later, with a lucky, if short-lived, marriage to a Sr. Flo from, as you have pointed out, Costa Rica), and she was anyone's for a sherbet fountain. Orinoco, that is, not my sister; our mother didn't raise any cheap children.
So can we please have some posts about accountants? You might know that it was to a member of this profession that I lost my heart, and to this day the chance sight of a beautiful accountant will take my breath away.
Ah, those were the days. I always took it as a sign of the gravitas of the times that all the gentlemen patrons carried broadsheet newspapers.
Toxteth Tarantula huh? I'm doing spiders today too :-)
Dear most of you
This is simply proof that false memory syndrome does exist.
Mme DeFarge, what are you waiting for? Rewards in the afterlife? Was it the dying John Betjeman, who, when asked if he had any regrets, answered: "Yes, I wish I'd had more sex."
Pat, I was eager to whip it off because the damn thing was so uncomfortable. Whoever invented that (and the suspender belt) was a pure sadist.
Lulu, that was in the Guards, not Butlins. The red coats are confusing.
Inky, you sounded frighteningly like Mrs P there. I think it must have been someone else by the same name, our Flo went to Pitlochry Reformatory for Wayward Gels and would have had you and your sister for breakfast.
Kev, in those days a gentleman needed something to cover up his enthusiasm.
My sister Arachne insists that she and Orinoco (Orrie) attended the Perth and Highlands Welfare Organization for Outreach and Adolescent Relief at the same time. It is true that PHWOOAR played some of their hockey matches against PRWG, which may account for the confusion, but ask your friend Orinoco if she remembers being so heart-broken over the departure of the French mistress, the one with the flashing eyes and noticeably form-fitting bodices.
Ah, Inky, so that's what you mean by boarding school. Sounds like the Scottish equivalent of St Trinian's. I suspect Flo (as we always called her) carried a torch for that French mistress all her life.
Prestidigitateur was one of the more useless words I learned in my French classes at school (when I turned up). The other one was speleologie. And I can say "Are there many donkeys in England?" in Spanish.
But dance the cancan I cannot. Hats, nipple tassles and thongs off to you Daphne! I am raising my glass of Gin and It to you now!
best, Vi xxxx
Au zoo près de chez moi il y a aussi un gorille congolais qui parle le français en employant le langage des signes ...SI ! Si !
Les chats furtifs ! Contorsionniste et transsexuel c'est un pléonasme ?
Le vol-au-vent j' connais ,surtout ces derniers jours il est passé à plus de 120 km/h :(
En tout cas les filles sont BELLES !!!
Un poil de sérieux ou devrais-je dire une plume de délicatesse !!
Et en 1974 à affiche Hélène Martini " j'aime à la folie "
De Joséphine BAKER à Jacques BREL, d'Edith PIAF à POIRET et SERRAULT (les auteurs de 'la Cage aux Folles' )
L'équivalent de la population française a un jour franchi le seuil des Folies Bergère ! Dont moi !!!
Et pour conclure ,une phrase de Maurice Chevalier avec Mistinguett ( en 1912 )
" Un beau jour, au cours d'une répétition de notre danse, lorsque Miss collée à moi nous nous enroulâmes dans le tapis, nous nous trouvâmes, tout naturellement et sans parler, nous avouer l'un à l'autre de la manière la plus précise qu'il n'y avait pas besoin de chercher l'amour ailleurs. Le déroulement et la sortie du tapis se firent beaucoup plus lentement qu'à l'habitude, mais personne, ce jour-là du moins, ne soupçonna que le couple Mistinguett-Chevalier venait de conclure l'entente d'un beau et long voyage "
Crabtree, je lis en ce moment l'histoire des déboires sexuelles des résidents de "Happy Valley" au Kenya dans les années 20 et 30 - il y a de quoi faire rougir une professionnelle! Comme quoi, meme si les humains ne sont pas au sommet de la moralité aujourd'hui, on en a vu pire!
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We clearly both learned from À la Page and whatever the Spanish textbook was called!
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