On Monday evening I discovered there was no more soap in the house.
Ok, in fact I had discovered this earlier I had just thought some might appear from somewhere.
So I used some washing up liquid.
It has taken me two days to rinse it off.
To idle away the time in between rinses I looked through a list I had found at the bottom of the wardrobe, a list that listed (as lists often do) possible names for a double act that Alex and I formed in 1985.
Here’s a picture of Alex and me.
We had a lot of trouble agreeing on a name for the double act – one early attempt was printed onto business cards before we stopped using it (a week later I think). Unfortunately we gave some of those cards out before we burnt the stock in Alex’s back garden. Months later he received a phone call asking to speak to Comedy Boulevard.
Alex had no memory of the incident when we had chosen this name, nor of the moment when we had abandoned it – come to think of it he had no memory of very much at the time –and so he told the caller to get lost and we lost another lucrative contract.
After a while we finally gave up choosing a name and we became Chris and Alex.
Who cared?
Eventually we woke up in Canada where we found ourselves performing at the World’s Fair. One day we looked at the programme of events and saw our name listed alongside the other acts.
Chris and Alex; Bill and Simon; Simon and Tom; Tom and Dick; Dick and Harry; Tom, Dick and Harry.
Boy did we stand out!
We resolved to have a new name by morning and locked ourselves into a sauna wearing tuxedos with the promise that we would not open the door until we had agreed on a new name.
Have you ever sat in a sauna in a full tuxedo?
How long do you think you could last?
So we became Mr Adams and Mr Dandridge.
Foolishly, at the next live performance we tried to amend our well-worked script – which mainly consisted of me shouting “Alex!” and Alex shouting “Chris!!” - to incorporate our new titles.
It was chaos.
Like most of our show now that I mention it.
So we gave that up.
But the name stuck.
It had taken us from Feburary 1985 to July 1986 to settle on the name of the act.
You just can’t rush creativity.
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5 comments:
GAWD -- look at the two of you -- GORGEOUS! Good, Good memories. That picture is in front of the Korea pavilion -- do you remember that it had a permanent scaffolding superstructure (see the yellow screen in the picture] and [phony] workers climbing all over it?
Be clear all BnBs readers -- Mr. A and Mr. D., others in the Magnificent Seven, and the entire Covent Garden contingent [I'll leave it to Chris to name names like Krissie, Mark, John, Michael, Ra Ra Zoo(Dave), Andre Vincent, Les Bubb] were the Biggest Hits of The Fair -- Hands Down Favourites. Would like to also mention Marceline y Sylvestre who I think were from Spain/France who did some truly lovely clowning.
I had the pleasure of being the first person to meet 'Chris and Alex' at the airport upon their arrival at EXPO 86 and accompanied them to their accommodation at the University of British Columbia -- some sort of new age student residence. It was in a word --memorable!
Mx
Ah, now there you go, memories, tricky things, can we trust them.
i hope you met us at the airport but you didn't take us to the University. we stayed in a funky old hotel downtown on skid row. the Windsor or something.
Marceline, Sylvestere and Mike were out at the university.
I remember the Pavilion, don't remember the climbers but do remember Concorde trying to upstage us.
If I am remembering incorrectly then so be it. But we must have detoured thinking that you were with the others at the university. I do recall being in a van on NW Marine Drive, the road that lead from the university to downtown. Our driver was a young woman who was a bit unpredictable.
Did I take you to The Lotus? What a dive! I'd like to apologize on behalf of everyone at EXPO for booking you into that place. It was close to the Expo site but it was bad. It's probably a 5-star boutique hotel now with all of the changes that have taken place downtown in Vancouver. You would not recognize it.
Still you did find that nice house in the West End near English Bay for most of your contract.
Holiday weekend here in Canada -- Thanksgiving this time -- and another 3 day weekend.
M
You are always having holidays in Canada!
The Lotus was fine - like i said funky.
The house though was much better , i don't know how we got away with that!
By the way if you are following the treasure hunt it's not this one.
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