The temptation to draw a 'Sting' prophylactic was very strong with this one!
I was having a haircut, feeling quite pleased that fortune had provided me with a barber who wasn’t inclined towards small talk when the customer in the next chair suddenly emerged from a hot towel treatment with all kinds of things he wanted to say.
Customer: (nodding towards the radio) “This is The Police, innit?”
Barber: “It is.”
Customer: “Roxanne?”
Barber: “Yup.”
Customer: “Don’t talk to me about this record!”
Barber: (declining to point out that he hadn’t been) “Oh?”
Customer: (animated by his sense of the imminent anecdote’s hilarity) “Fella at work, right? He’s made this Doris on a park bench, at lunch time, and he’s started going out on like, dates with her!”
Barber: Yeah?
Customer: “She called Roxanne! Or that’s what she told him anyway. So to wind him up we start playing this record-Roxanne-over and over again in the office. I tell you, by the end of it he was going nuts. Almost crying he was.”
Barber “Right”
Customer: (changing subject effortlessly) “You ever been to Muay Thai?”
Barber: “No. What is it?”
Customer: The old Thai boxing innit.”
Barber: “Right.”
Customer: “Blood all over the shop.”
Barber: “I’m gonna put another towel over you, ok?”
And like a caged bird, that proved sufficient to silence him.
Article by Michael Holden
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