At First I Was Afraid

... I was petrified. But actually, it turned out to be not so bad as I thought. Last week I happened to be listening to our local independent radio station, Town 102, when they had a phone-in competition for some tickets; all you had to do was name the other half of a comedy duo, and then have your name picked out of a hat.



Naming Large as the other half of Little wasn't a problem for someone my age; and it was my lucky day to be picked out of a hat.
The tickets turned out to be for this:



For the uninitiated, the Chuckle Brothers (Paul and Barry) are a comedy duo whose target audience is children the age of mine; of course, I'd won two tickets, so needed to buy one so that they could both go. Absolutely fizzing with excitement - well, the two of them at least - we trickled down to the Regent Theatre (that many still refer to as The Gaumont) last night to catch the show. At £15 per ticket, still the theatre was almost full.

The very thin story revolved around Jack Frost being Santa's wicked brother, who stole all the presents, which were only retrieved with the help of the Chuckle Brothers. There were magic tricks, there were odd fluorescent puppet things doing random skits, there were parents from the audience getting custard-pied, there was ''it's behind you'' for George the Abominable Snowman, there was lots of '' 'ulloooo'' and ''to me, to you, to me'', there were toilet rolls being flung into the audience along with sweets and crisps, there were songs to shout along to, and - perhaps best of all - there was a pantomime reindeer named Nuts that peed on the audience anytime anyone said 'pea'. Or 'pee'. Or 'p'. You get the idea.


My kids had a ball, saucer-eyed and open-mouthed at the magic tricks, hoarse with shouting at wicked Jack Frost, and trying to drown each other out on the Christmas songs, nearly wetting themselves with laughter when Nuts the reindeer peed on the front rows - so much so that Destructo Boy cried when it ended. I had a ball watching them.