73. Fork Handles

Trying to find a specific pub by name in a city such as Oxford should be a relatively simple task or so it should be provided that you can find a person who actually speaks English or better still actually understands what you are saying. The first person we spoke to, who  could actually string two words together was a young girl with a purple quiff in her hair and a ring through her , nose who didn’t know but asked her friend, a snotty nosed, spotty faced youth who “Fort is down by bacca  black buss sweet”, which roughly translated meant “thought it  was down by the back of Black Bush Street. It wasn’t surprising that they were of no help. If you had a father who was a peacock and a mother who was a pig, you would have been in the same predicament and only slightly better if your father had been a block of wood and your mother a disorientated dyslexic.

Eventually when we arrived at the Four Candles it was shut for a make-over jobbie and Billy said “Does anyone remember that Two Ronnies sketch?” asked the Captain.  The First Mate said “You mean the one where the Big Ronnie winds up the shopkeeper played by the  Little Ronnie and asks for fork handles and gets four candles and then he asks for plugs and gets plugs for the bathroom instead of electrical plugs and then he asks  for some hose and gets letter ‘O’s “Yes that’s the one” replied the Captain, “He then goes on and asks for ‘P’s and gets tins of peas instead and when he asks for pumps at the counter he gets a water pump instead of a pair of pumps” .”Great stuff eh Captain, it’s a shame that they don’t make proper TV programmes like that today”. I wonder whatever became of the Two Ronnies Captain ? The Captain answered “Ronnie Barker died about five or six years ago and I think he lived somewhere around here in Oxford and I always remember him on some chat show when he was asked “Why did you become an actor?” and he replied by saying that” I became an actor because I didn’t have a personality of my   own and I was only happy when I was someone else. And as for Ronnie Corbett, he must be pushing eighty now and  must almost be fully retired by now but I did see him hosting that  Come Dancing  show a year or so ago” .The Cabin Boy giggled out loud  and said” I bet you’ve done that a few times Phil!”.