Twenty Years of Spoof and Bluff

by Carlton

The trick, I may add, is an old one with music-hall artistes who want to get even with a bad landlady, the kipper in this case being nailed under the leaf of the table near the centre. I knew of one case where the local sanitary inspector was actually called in. He had all the drains up, and then failed to find out whence the overpowering odour emanated from.

Another similar “stunt” is to put a pinch of gunpowder in a bloater, and hand her the doctored fish with strict instructions that it is to be grilled, not fried.

Many funny stories could be told by performers of their experiences with their landladies. Of course, there are good and bad of every kind, good cooks and bad cooks, honest women and dishonest women.

My Christmas dinner in Edinburgh where I was performing in pantomime some years ago I am not likely to forget. My mother sent me a Christmas pudding, and she prided herself on her skill in making them. I bought a fine turkey, and invited all my pals round to my special Christmas dinner. Of course in Scotland they do not recognise Christmas Day, and all the theatres and music-halls are open, New Year’s Day being the big holiday there. However, to get back to the Christmas dinner! I had previously told all my pals how nice my mother made Christmas puddings, but imagine my surprise when my landlady served up the turkey—she had stuffed it with the pudding!

On another occasion when I was performing at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, my wife asked me what I would like for supper, and I answered, “sausages, mashed potatoes and onions,” telling her at the same time to be sure to ask the landlady if she knew how to cook them. She replied, “Av coorse,” adding that she had cooked them hundreds of times before. When I got them, however, they were served up like Irish stew. She had put the beautiful Cambridge sausages, the onions, and potatoes in the pot together, and said, on being remonstrated with: “Sure, that’s the way we cook them in Oireland.” This incident was capped later on at Cork where I fancied a shoulder of mutton. The landlady fried it in a frying-pan.

I remember once a very dishonest landlady in Leeds, the pick of the bunch. I used to go out and buy my own things in those days and always kept my tea, sugar, etc., in a little cupboard in my combined room. Everything used to vanish, but she always had an excuse on the tip of her tongue, so after half a bottle of whisky had gone one night I put some jalap in another whisky bottle. I had to laugh, for she was running up and down stairs all night long complaining of pains in her stomach, but although half the contents of the whisky bottle containing the jalap had gone, she persisted in declaring that she had never touched it. Later on, when my tea had nearly all vanished from the caddy, and she had the audacity to complain to me as to how much tea I drank, I carefully caught a fly and put it alive in the tea caddy. When I got home, and took down the caddy to put my tea in the pot, the fly had gone, but even then she would not admit her dishonesty. So I made up my mind to catch her properly the next time. I carefully counted six potatoes, not letting her know I had counted them, and asked her to boil them for my dinner; but she had me again, she mashed them!

To “have” the average man on “a little bit of string” is quite easy, and some of the simplest “gags” I have found the most effective. For instance, you ask a man if he is good at mental arithmetic. The probability is he says that he is. You then ask him two or three exceedingly easy questions, such as, for example, what is twice seven, how many times does six go into eighteen, and so on. Then you say, “How many penny buns make a dozen,” followed, when he has answered it correctly, by the catch question, “How many half-penny ones?” He is practically certain to answer on the spur of the moment, “Twenty-four.”

Here is another equally simple catch. You take a piece of white paper, tell a man to place his forefinger on it, and offer to bet him you can draw a ring round it with a piece of lead pencil that he can’t lift his finger out of. You then draw a small ring on the paper round the tip of the finger, and ask him to lift his finger out of it. Of course he does so quite easily. You repeat this once or twice; then you draw your ring round the forefinger itself.

Or you get a man to put an easily fitting ring on his little finger, then join the tip of your little finger to the tip of his, and ask him if he thinks it possible for you to remove the ring from his finger without moving yours. He will almost certainly pronounce the feat an impossible one, when all you have to do is to slip the ring off his little finger and on to yours, and the trick is done. The ring is no longer on his finger. It is on yours. And the connection between the two fingers, yours and his, has not been severed for an instant. Then you say: “And now do you think it is possible for me to take the ring off both our fingers without severing the connection.” He is sure to say, “No.” Whereupon you just lift the ring so that it does not touch either, and the trick is done.

These little “spoofs” sound very simple after they are explained, but all the same I have “had” some of the smartest men for “drinks round” with them. Once, too, in Denver, I recollect a professional gambler rather got on my nerves by bragging about the amount of money he carried about with him.