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These embarrassing moments have been contributed by my very good friend Ray Warke. Thank you Ray for being such a great friend and a superb sport, love these moments!
The first one happened while I was singing with Paul in the duo. We were playing a gig at one of those Irish theme bars in England that I mentioned to you before. We were to start performing at 9:00pm and were all set up and tuned up and had a sound check, and by 8:30pm. There was nothing better to do but to sit down with a pint of guinness for half an hour.
At precisely 2 minutes to nine o'clock, I reached out for the ashtray to stubb out my cigarette and I knocked over the remaining half pint of guinness. It covered the table and spilled down onto my lap. I was wearing faded blue jeans, which suddenly turned dark blue all around my crotch area and down the front of my thighs. I had no choice but to get up on stage and do the gig looking like I had just had an accident in my trousers!
It was so embarrassing, and every time I heard someone chuckle, I imagined they were laughing at me! hehehe. They probably were!
Another embarrassing moment I recall was one day when a friend and I were out in his car and we both decided to pick up a Chinese take away. He pulled the car up outside and waited in the car while I ran in to pick up the meal. I was almost fully sighted then but did have a few sight problems that never really hindered my mobility at all. Anyway, while I was waiting for our meal to be cooked, I decided to get comfortable in one of the chairs provided for take-away customers. I sat down on top of someone's Chinese meal. Well, it went everywhere!
The package just burst open like a balloon and curry and rice was splattered in every direction! Not only all over my backside, but up the backs of the legs of men and women stood around the service bar! And up the walls and over the floor! There were shrieks of disgust from the ladies and a lot of bad language from the guys! I was very very unpopular! If the whole thing had been designed as a stunt in a movie, it would have been accepted on take one. It was perfect. The package had burst like a gun going off and the rice and curry and mixed vegetables went absolutely everywhere!
Anyway, I apologised profusely to everyone and paid for a replacement meal for the guy who had just came back from the mensnroom to find his dinner being used to redecorate the restaurant! The owner gave everyone damp cloths to clean themselves up. Everyone except me that is! hehehe.
I collected my meal and quickly got out of the damned place! In my haste to get away from the scene, I ran to my friends car and quickly opened the door and jumped into the front seat! Squelch! hehehe. The first thing I said as I got in the car was, "Let's get the f*** out of here, I've just plastered the restaurant and every poor bugger in there with curry and rice!"
I turned to look at my friend and found myself looking a priest straight in the eye! The next thing I said was, "Oh my God!" First of all I had just made a mess of his front seat and secondly, I had just used language that I wouldn't normally choose to use while talking to a man of the cloth! I apologised to him and tried to explain the whole thing, but even to someone who you might expect to be quite forgiving, he didn't seem to be in much of a forgiving mood. I got off side pretty quick and into the right car where I made another mess on another car seat! hehehehe.
Well, I still look back on that day like it was yesterday!