Jazz Accidents

Picture the scene... a bunch of glamorous dames in feathers, satin and corsets, all variously crouched, hunched and perched around a big round hardboard table, noshing away on chicken legs, rice and spaghetti.

The dames in question were Can Booty Can ( http://www.myspace.com/canbootycan ), Miss Honey Mink and myself, and the location was backstage at Volupte's Friday Follies. It was the hour-long break between shows, and we were all tucking into our free dinner with gusto (one seldom sees food-related neuroses amongst the cabaret sorority, I can tell you) whilst swapping tales about the perils of performance.

Mademoiselle Fifi had filled us in on the dangers of working with flammable liquids and naked flames (she was still tasting paraffin after knocking back a mouthful of fire more quickly than intended in the early show) and I'd recounted in gory detail the full horrors of escapologist Jonathan Goodwin's "Nipple Ring of Doom" (see my blog of 28 April 07), after which one of the Can Booty Can dancers had stood up too quickly from our makeshift table and banged her head on the air con unit, and I had commented that myself and Honey Mink were relatively safe from misadventure, because you didn't hear of so many "Jazz Accidents".

I had to say it, didn't I?

Later that night, after our second set was over, Sir Fitzroy Callow hobbled towards me through the restaurant and told me that he'd just fallen down the backstage stairs. The intense pain in his ankle was as nothing compared to the deep humiliation he felt after the club owner, Miss Kuki LaBelle, stepped out of her office just at the moment he landed on his arse at the bottom of the stairs, and politely enquired what on earth he was doing down there.

So there you have it. A real-life jazz accident, as demonstrated by our very own one-man horn section, Sir Fitz.

TV

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