The Day A VIP's Teeth Fell Out (24 June 1978)

In my pantry I keep what I have always known as the “wobbly buffet”.  It is a stool, all wooden, with a round top and four legs, each of which is of a slightly different length.  During the First World War I climbed on to it to draw the blackout curtain across the fanlight. Now I keep a vegetable box on it so that I do not have to bend too far.

The buffet is higher than a normal chair and it was bought so that, as a child, I would be able to learn to play the cottage piano.  Those were the days when in Yorkshire, Fenny Stratford and throughout the land most entertainment was home-made.  There were thousands of cottage pianos.  I have heard it suggested in recent years that they were status symbols, but that is only partly true.  Most of them were in constant use, especially for family get togethers and the like.  And if you had a party including half-a-dozen or so adults there was sure to be one who could play a bit.  I look back on those occasions with nostalgia.

Here was Uncle Mark Smith, a stentorian tenor, whose favourite contribution to the evenings was “Trumpeter, what are you sounding now?”  We had to give him his full name to differentiate him from Uncle Mark Bramley. He joined basso-profundo Uncle Dick in the “Excelsior” duet.  Dad, a light tenor, and Uncle Willie, a baritone, then tried to best them with “Larboard watch, ahoy!”

All the men would join to sing “Oh, who will o’er the downs so free?” a favourite glee of the times.

Nor was the female element any less strong.  Aunt Polly was a good light soprano and Aunt Alice an agreeable contralto.  The mixed choruses were rollicking affairs.  But most of all I liked Aunt Sophia or Aunt Sofia.  I forget which way it was spelt, but to me it always sounded like “Aunt’s afire.”  I would call her a soprano-profundo, if there is such a category.  Anyway, she could belt out a top note and hold it longer than most of her kind.  But she had one fatal weakness – a sense of humour.  She would be singing along famously until she came to a peak emotional bit.  Then she would have a fit of the giggles and after two or three ineffectual squawlks she would collapse in a shriek of laughter and set everybody else laughing too.

I have a relic of those days in the volume of songs bound by my father.  He must have had extremely wide tastes, for the songs ranged from funnies like “All of a fidgety-fudge” and “All of a ditherum-dee” to sloppies like “Genevieve” and “It’s only a bird in a gilded cage,” to saddies like “Three fishers went sailing out into the west”.  You never hear of any of them now, unless they crop up occasionally in the Black and White Minstrels Show.

A feature of such parties and also of public concerts was that surprising Victorian literacy invention, the monologue.  This was a longish recitation, grave or gay in verse or prose, which was accompanied by appropriate sounds from the piano.

I still remember with joy an occasion at one of our chapel concerts when the monologue was given by that very important person, the chairman of the trustees.  Being head tuner at a local mill (or miln, as he called it) he had rather more brass than most and advertised this virtue on Sundays by wearing a frock-tailed coat and a gold Albert chain across his waistcoat.  But Sunday was also the only day of the week when he might wear a long face.

His monologue was a comic about a culinary concoction of sheep’s head and suet dumplings and was meant to be spoken in the Yorkshire dialect, of which he was a master.  Well, he came to the front centre of the stage and got on with the hilarious tale of right until he came to the bit where the sheep’s head chases the suet dumplings.  Then his upper false teeth suddenly shot out of his mouth and landed at the feet of we youngsters sitting on forms in the front row.

A lesser man would have been non-plussed, but not old Charley. He lowered himself from the stage, picked up his dentures, turned his back on the audience and popped them back in his mouth.  Then he climbed back, gave a trial cough and carried on where he had left off.  At the end the applause was terrific, but as far as us youngsters were concerned it was mainly in the hope of an encore of the false teeth episode.

On another similar occasion a serious-minded chap named Lewis Oates gave a monologue about the sinking of the Titanic. In addition to the piano, this required a voice off-stage to sing “Nearer, my God, to Thee.”  For this vocalism Lewis enlisted the help of ”Red” Ben Lodge, so called because he had fiery red hair and there was another unrelated Ben Lodge in the village who had blonde hair and who was known as “White Ben.”

“Red Ben” had a beautiful natural tenor voice, but he was a creature of impulse and I could never make out whether he was not in the choir from his own choice or theirs – probably a bit of both.

However, for this monologue Lewis had indicated to Ben where he should start singing, where the piano would gradually fade out and where Ben should gradually fade out too, so as to leave Lewis to speak the last few words solo.

For the most part it worked wonderfully well.  Nobody could see Ben, but there was no mistaking that voice and it was especially enchanting after the piano had suitably faded.  Ben’s voice then began to fade and seemed just about to peter out when, right in the middle of the last “nearer to Thee” it gave a loud “Glug-glug-glug” for all the world like the bath water running out.  Lewis was stunned into silence and when the audience began shouting with laughter he was furious and went after Ben.  From the wings was heard a loud altercation, with Ben innocently protesting that Lewis had told him to sound like he was drowning which was what he had done.

Before the incident there was hardly a dry eye in the audience.  After it, there was not one, though the tears were now of an entirely different order.