MY UNCLE Leo had a problem with fires. It wasn’t that he wanted to start conflagrations; they just seemed to follow him around. Cooking, mending things, “inventing” (as he called tinkering) – fires would, sooner or later, spontaneously combust somewhere near him.
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When he burnt off most of his facial hair (pickling eggs, as it were, he decided to “warm the mixture”) he waxed quite philosophical about it, “Meh! Eyebrows-shmybrows; so what was I using them for anyhow?”
He was, however, a keen judge of amusements and particularly enjoyed inviting in religious door knockers and listening to their spiel. He never argued; just sit and rock back and forth chuckling, sometimes throwing in an anticipatory, “Tell me more – tell me more” , barely containing his glee.
He said to me, “There’s nothing as entertaining as a simpleton in possession of a zeal for redemption! I can sit and listen for hours.”
Which is why he would have loved to have been at the local LGBTQI meeting (or the Alphabet Soup Group as they like to be called) last week when the visiting evangelists tried to hijack proceedings.
Their message was suitably tailored to the audience: God still loves you even though you are an abomination to his sight.
Apparently this was presented in quite a polite manner; after all, if you are telling someone what an atrocity they are, it’s just plain old gilding the lily to bother to adopt an insulting tone to boot.
It got me thinking about other “most memorable entertaining moments” I remember and a lot seem to be film-moments. 1976, for instance, was the de Laurentiis remake of the 1933 King Kong and, in a packed cinema, we waited a good 40 minutes or so for our first glimpse of the star.
First it was just tree movement, then a shadowy flitting outline and – finally – the “king’s” head filling the screen, moving towards Jessica Lange. We erupted in applause, cheering and whistles – this was the guy we’d come to see, back again after 43 years; he roared, seemingly back at us.
Similarly, a year earlier in Jaws, the lead creature tantalised with only half-glimpses of his presence until emerging in full flight. I remember jerking back in my seat and looking across the row where I was sitting and seeing every other person in exactly the same posture, each with a rictus grimace of shock. There’s nothing like a show where you get your money’s worth.
I loved the Saturday morning wrestling show on TV during the sixties – it was more or less just a promo for whatever was on the card for the next Sydney Stadium night and the ring was in a Channel Nine sound stage with an audience of about 60 or so lucky sods.
The best moment was when Roy Heffernan (“The Man of 101 Holds”) turned from a bad-guy to a good-guy. Some (I kid you not) Nazi wannabe wouldn’t stop pummelling a clearly distressed lesser wrestler when Aussie Roy came storming, from the dressing room, to the rescue like a knight without the armour. Not only was the bad-guy given a whuppin’ but Roy had turned goodie – which I think we had all always secretly and desperately desired of him.
Uncle Leo also loved that moment but would have enjoyed more to be present for the fun at Wagga’s hijacked rainbow meeting – although the members can be relieved he wasn’t: all the talk of fire and brimstone would probably only have given him ideas.
