Sting, 2003

[Bob45]

Bonsoir!

[CENTER]"None of that jazz rubbish..."[/CENTER]

In a workingmen's club in the north of england, the central event of the evening's entertanment is not the act, or the "turn", as it's know, but the playing of bingo. Everything is organized around this quasi-religious ritual. The bingo caller is the high priest of the ceremony and sits at the centre of the stage behind a large Perspex box filled with luminous coloured ping-pong balls, numbered from one to a hundred. Inside the Persex box is an electric fan that, when turned from which the caller removes them one by one. He reads the numbers out and places the balls neatly in a waiting rack.

"Kelly's eye, number one"
"Doctor's orders, number nine"
"Downing street, number ten"
"Two little ducks, number-two"
"Two fat ladies, eighty-eight"

The bingo caller, usually the club secretary, will read out these numbers with the solemnity of a hanging judge, and importantly for this story, what prevents the coloured balls from being spewed out into the room is a tiny plastic membrane over the mouth of the tube. Which secures each ball until the caller is ready to remove it.
The occasion of our ignominy takes place on a saturday night in the Red House Farm Social Club Sunderland, in the middle of a tought working-class area in the north of the city. The Phoenix Jazzman will perform at 9 p.m. after the bingo session. It is the early part of the evening and we are lounging in the dressing room, which we also share with the Perspex machine.
While our fearless leader is giving us our nightly pep talk. He is leaning casually against the bingo machine and absently playing with the delicate plastic membrane at the end of the tube, the one that holds the balls in place.
"Sting, clear boy..." He's been calling me that for weeks now. I must have worn the damned sweater but once, and yes it did make a wasp, with its black-and-yellow hoops, but this stupid name is beginning to stick. "Would you mind terribly...?"
Snap!

There's a sound like a stating pistol in the tiny room.
"Oh shit!"
The tiny and crucial piece of plastic has snapped in his hand; all of us are in shock. This is not just vandalism; we are in a workingmen's club and we know this to be nothing less than mortal, bloody sacrilege. Gordon's expression has lost all of its irony. His mouth hangs open in horror, with the doomed and piteous look of the condemned.
Just at this point the club chairman, an arrogant man with a wig that Gordon refers to as the Syrup, bustles into the dressing room with two of his henchmen. They have come to wheel the precious bingo machine out on to the stage, handling it as if it were the Ark of the Covenant.
Gordon is like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming truck, but before he can explain the awful tragedy that has occured, the club chairman, hairpiece ever-so-slightly askew, is already lauching into him.
"Now, you lads had better be playing some tunes from the hit parade tonight, so the lassies can dance, none of that jazz rubbish you played last time you were here."
Gordon bravely tris to set things right "But...But..."
It is too late. The Perspex box is now being wheeled into its place in the centre of the stage.
The pompous chairman gives us one final glower before he strides out like a tragic actor.
The noisy club is immediately hushed as the chairman braces himself in front of the mike.
"Ladies and gentlemen, you will be entertained tonght, if i can call it that by the Phoenix Jazzman. They're not exactly my cup of tea, but some of you may like them."
Gordon whispers to Ronnie to go out and start the van in the car park while we watch aghast as the disaster unfolds before us.
"And now, whithout futher also, the high spot of the evening, for a cash prize of one hundred pounds..."
The club secretary is seated behinf the machine. He has the switch between his fingertips as the audience sit, poised and expectant with their bingo cards and ballpoint pens. The atmosphère is charged with hight drama.
"IT'S EYES DOWN FOR A FULL HOUSE. MR SECRETARY, PLEASE, THE SWITCH."
The switch is pulled, the fan begins to whir, and then all hell breaks loose. The horrified audience and bombarded by a relentless hail of luminous ping-pong balls, landing in glasses of beer lodging themselves in wigs and cleavages, and bouncing disastrously under the feet of tumbing tray-laden wairtresses.
The Phonix Jazzmen are trozen at the open door between the stage and the dressing room and there is the unmistakable look of guilt and shame upon all of our faces. The club chairman, with a face like death, slowly raises an accusatory finger at the doorway and now we hear a primal and gut-wrenching howl of outrage from the floor that wouldn't be out of place at a public hanging. We run for our lives.
[RIGHT]
Adapted from Broken Music, Sting. 2003[/RIGHT]

[Bob45]

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