Oh no, it’s Monday morning; oh good, it’s Knickerbocker Glory!
Welcome to the second dollop of very tall ice cream pudding I cooked up for the radio long ago, which never got even slightly licked. With the Golden Globes rising in the west here comes your chance to find out if you could have big yellow balls of your own. Mercifully with radio there are no visuals, so if you do discover potential for shiny sphericals, you can keep it between you and the bathroom mirror, or the park bench and the passers by, or your corner seat of the train, or wherever it is you like to unleash your inner actor, dear heart. As you are going to do all the voices, you won’t have to share the red carpet with anyone but the little old lady with the vacuum cleaner, who is always just out of shot, tutting at the camera operators walking backwards with muddy shoes.
Well, if you are ready for your close-up, the first piece is a soliloquy, which is posh for just you, being Uncle Reg’s Niece, who is trying her inadequate best to run a run a phone service, so her uncle can make you text M_O_N_E_Y to him. I don’t think it’s going to be very profitable, somehow……………….
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Recipe Line.
Throughout this piece we hear distant quacking.
Phone rings, dialling tone..
Uncle Reg’s Niece Hello and thank you for calling the Uncle Reg phone service recipe line. The recipe for today is carrot cake. Actually that’s odd, isn’t it? Because carrots are a vegetable and cake is, you know, cake. I mean you don’t get broccoli cake, or little iced fancies decorated with cucumbers, do you? Well you couldn’t have cucumbers anyway because they’re too long. You could cut them, I suppose. My auntie cuts them in all pretty shapes and puts them in salads. But they’re meant to go in salads. Well anyway, they are when my auntie does them because she knows about cooking and that. I don’t. I’m just here to read the recipe. Anyway. Carrot cake. Here’s the ingredients. That’s what you have to have to make it. You have to have an oven too but it doesn’t say that. If you didn’t have an oven it would be raw. Salads are raw but that’s all right.
Right, I’ll read that again slowly so you can write it down and I’ll put in the missing bits. Are you ready? Right. C-a-r-r-o-t c-a-k-e. I-n-g-r-e-d-i-e-n-t-s. An oven. A kitchen. A sink. You’ll need that for washing up afterwards. Two hundred g carrots. I wonder what the ‘g’ stands for? It just says g. Look. Oh, you can’t, silly me. Well it does, take my word for it. g? g? Sometimes the teacher used to write g on my homework book. It meant good. G for good, see? It’s the first letter of it.
So. An oven, a kitchen, a sink, two hundred good carrots. That’s a lot, isn’t it? Maybe it’s a big cake. Fifty good flour. That’s odd, it doesn’t say how much. Bags, probably. Fifty good big bags of flour. Fifty good margarine. Sugar, oh good, I like sugar. A hundred good bags of sugar. That’s a lot. Two eggs. Well, how mean! You’ll have a kitchen full of carrots and flour and sugar and just two teeny little eggs. They’ll get lost.
Right. M-e-t-h-o-d. That means what you have to do. Grate the carrots or shred them in a food processor. It doesn’t say so but you have to put the lid on the food processor or it goes all over the kitchen. Up the walls and everywhere. It was even dripping off the ceiling.
Mix all the ingredients and place in a medium oven. No, that’s a mistake, surely. You see, this is my first time doing this and already I’m spotting mistakes. Mix all the ingredients and place in a very big oven. Cook for forty-five minutes. Turn on a wire rack to cool. And then, it doesn’t say so, but after that you eat it.
So that’s the recipe for today and you can ring me up tomorrow for a different one. I want to do this properly, like a career because Uncle Reg says thousands are unemployed but not me and he definitely will pay me as soon as we start making some money, so I’m going to practise and become an expert. With a bit of luck tomorrow’s is going to be duck stuffed with oranges.
Furious quacking.
Yes it is. Now don’t be naughty. It’s either eat the navel oranges, or I shall put the satsumas up the other end, it’s up to you.
Quack, quack, click brrr.
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Oh dahling, dahling, the microphone LOVES you. Before you thank your entire family and the milkman it’s time for Archaeology Now. You need three voices for this, one rural, one normal and one as irritating as you can get. Practise irritating voices on people in the street and when they start hitting you, you know you’ve got it right.
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Archaeology Now
Bollards.
Quick burst of theme music, mainly tambours and shawms.
Very Devon ‘Ello and welcome to Archaeology Now with me, Very
Devon and my assistant, Derek Here. This week we are
on the banks of a river up north, where an exceptionally
low tide ’as exposed what might be a Saxon boat or a
Roman pier or possibly an Edwardian bandstand. We’re
keeping our options open at the moment. So far Derek
Here ’as found four bits of timber, a couple of ’andmade
nails and a modern supermarket trolley. He’s struggling
a bit in the backwash because there are boats going up
and down the river all the time. What do you think of
the boats, Derek?
Derek Here Bollards Dev. I’ve found a couple of bollards.
Very Devon Well that is good news, if indeed they are bollards.
Derek Here Well one of them has ‘bollard’ carved on it and it’s
got the remains of a boat tied to it with a bit of rope.
Very Devon Still, no need to go jumping in with rash attributions
at this stage. I think we’ll leave the bollards to the boys
in the lab.
Huge splash.
Very Devon My goodness, that boat came a bit near. Are you all
right, Derek?
Derek Here I’m only completely soaked, thanks, Dev, but I’ve
managed to hold on to my bollards and as long as another
boat doesn’t come past we’ll be able to see them when
the water subsides.
Feeble splashing of oars.
Coracle Man I think I can help. I could get between you and the big
boats and act as a breakwater.
Very Devon ’Eaven ’elp us, it’s that idiot in the coracle. What’s ’e
got with ’im?
Coracle Man It’s my lute. I thought I’d come and sing atmospheric
ditties. I’m a coracled chanter.
Very Devon I don’t care if you’re a bagpipe chanter. We don’t
need ’elp. Paddle off.
Coracle Man No, I can help. I want to be helpful. Where’s the dig?
Derek Here Under your boat. Can you get him off, Devon? He’s
bashing my bollards with his oars.
Coracle Man Sorry, I’ll paddle out a bit.
Splashing.
Coracle Man (Shouting) What are you exacavating?
Very Devon It might be a Saxon boat. Not that it’s any of your
business.
Coracle Man Oh Saxons. I love the Saxons.
(Sings) Oh Beowulf was a Saxon girl
And her father he was hopping
When she crashed his car at a roundabout
While taking her friends out shopping.
Very Devon But we don’t know that for certain. It could be a
Roman pier.
Coracle Man Even better. I really love the Romans.
(Sings) Oh Wayne he was a Roman boy
And his mother was not very pleased
He broke her mobile telephone
By dropping it when he sneezed.
Derek Here You don’t know anything about history, anyway
it might be an Edwardian bandstand.
Coracle Man (Quickly, sings) Oh there was an Edwardian laser
disk……….
Very and Derek (Together) Push off!
Coracle Man Don’t you want my little ditties?
Very Devon No.
Coracle Man You can have a go in my coracle.
Derek Here Actually, Dev, now the water’s receding I can make out
more carving on this bollard. There’s an address and a
date.
Very Devon Really? ’Ow fantastic. What is it?
Derek Here 1976.
Very Devon Oh is it? Let’s ’ave a look. Oh yes, so it is. Well
that needs thinking about. Do you want to climb out
then?
Huge sucking noise.
Coracle Man Aren’t you going to excavate any more?
Very Devon (Quietly) Can ’e get ashore ’ere?
Derek Here Only if he’s got waders. The mud is about three feet
deep.
Very Devon (Shouting) What kind of shoes are you wearing?
Coracle Man Suede lace-ups. Why?
Very Devon In that case I think we’ll pop a tarpaulin over it and head
for the pub.
Theme tune.
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Dahling dahling, you were adorable. All that remains is to rise from your seat, smile tremulously at all your friends, smile radiantly at your enemies, check the sequins are stuck to your chest and all is safely gathered in, or, if you were very desperate, safely falling out and strut your stuff through the tables, up the stairs and there you are…..you’re on!
I would like to thank my director, Jane, my sound recordist, me, my make-up person, me again, my mother for having me, my Uni for chucking me out, without which I would never have started waitressing, my personal trainer, my stylist, my frock cobbler, me again, my father, the postman who looks so much like me, my cat, my dog and me again. I utterly love and adore this golden globe. Isn’t it heavy? It will make a wonderful doorstop. (Big smile, wait for the laugh) I deserve this, I so very truly do. No, really. When I think of all the reading, the minutes of practise, the woman opposite who is looking at me strangely for reading aloud on the train……….all I can say is, oh flipping heck, it’s my stop. Briefcase. Umbrella. Phone in pocket.
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JaneLaverick.com – starting Monday morning off just right.