Big trouble...

Amongst the more hair-raising roles I’ve undertaken in my long and non-too-illustrious acting career was that of the Child Catcher in a world tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Now playing the baddie in a kids show is usually great fun especially if, like me, you’re not very fond of children. They don’t know that and they have a great time booing and hissing and there’s always a plethora of yummy mummies to be tapped up in the circle bar after the late show.
Our tour took a turn for the more sinister when we hit Beijing however. Nobody warned me that the kids over there have taken audience participation to a whole new level. In fact it’s not just the children, it seems their parents have them in training months before the play opens, tantalising them with magazine pictures of sweets and Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, waking them up at 3.am to force porridge down their necks and reciting hate poems against the evil, sugar-hording bad man. So when me and my agent Bernie Shimshelwitz showed up in Tiananmen Square pretending to lock up a child from the show along with enough pick-n-mix to keep Woolies in business, the natives did not react like their counterparts in Weston Super-Mare. In short all hell broke loose; I was given a crash course in Sumo by a 7-year-old girl with bingo wings, the Child Catcher’s cart was ripped to pieces it’s bounty looted (and not just the Bounties either) and at the other end of the rope pictured is Bernie Shimshelwitz himself desperately trying to flee the scene with the only CurlyWurly left in the Orient.