Back in the mid-nineties just such an opportunity arose. A ten-date jaunt around Belgium and Holland.

We completed the Holland shows and were in the tour bus en route to Ghent – for tour bus read beaten up old Ford Minibus; lest you get the wrong idea of a luxury state-of-the-art highly impressive mega-wagon you might see parked out the back of Wembley Arena.

Mind you, it did have aeroplane seats, though. Liberated from a decommissioned Ryanair plane languishing in a scrap yard somewhere near Luton. So we were sort of living the dream. You may have guessed by now that we were easily pleased.

Anyway, word went round we’d been booked for an appearance on Belgian radio. Well, clearly news of our fame had spread across the border after triumphantly knocking Dutch audiences bendy. Real fame beckoned. This was it. All that hard slog and living in squalor had finally paid off. Headlining world tours were but a few months away…

Erm… not quite.

A rep from of the radio station met us when we arrived in Ghent. He treated us like royalty, and when we’d been fed and watered, took us to a theatre somewhere in the town. That was odd, and what was also strange was the host of elderly people milling around the foyer. Although buoyed by our success of having cracked it, we thought nothing much more about it.

A smiling guy wearing headphones came up and shook our hands to tell us: “No, we didn’t need to set up our gear as we weren’t actually going to be playing any music.” But more peculiar still was that we were actually at a recording of a radio soap opera show. WTaF? A show that turned out to be an episode of Belgium’s equivalent of The Archers.

Now, for those who don’t know about this show, The Archers is a long-running radio soap opera in the UK. For some people, it’s still a national institution to this day.

It seems one of the main characters in the Belgian version ran a hotel. The episode being recorded was to commemorate some milestone in the show’s history and they were doing a live recording for superfans to let them see the stars and just how the magic happened.

The script had a scene (and don’t ask me why) where a British rock band was to check in to the hotel. It soon became apparent we were to be that rock band. The producers wanted authentic British voices to provide some background hubbub in authentic accents. Yep, we were to be extras. Or supporting artistes as they are now known. How on earth the show’s producers even knew of our existence, let alone that we were in town provided no end of bafflement then… fast forward thirty years and still does to this day.

Reality slowly set in. So, not the big time after all. But with egos now concertinaed around our ankles, feeling woefully crestfallen and miffed, nevertheless, and in the good old “in for a penny, in for a pound” spirit, we agreed to do it for a laugh. Which, and to our credit, we did by quoting lines from Spinal Tap sotto voce so as not to be so obvious. After all, it was show business and we were very definitely in the business of show.

The radio station’s sound guys and producer seemed happy enough with our efforts and it was smiles all round. Job done.

Then, and just when I thought it was all over the producer ambled up and said to me. “Hey, you are Irish man? Yes?”

I admitted it.

He then asked if I knew how to make Irish Stew. Suppressing the urge to do a double take, I said that I did. I had long since acquired the secret of my mother’s legendary recipe and would often make it. Still, the producer’s question made little or no sense, but a day that had been pretty surreal already had just morphed into a day that was completely batshit bonkers.

“Can you please wait?” the producer said. Then went off for a confab with some other bloke. This bloke turned out to be the show’s JR, Grant Mitchell or some such equivalent character. After a few moments, the producer came back to me.

“Would you be able to tell (gestures towards main character bloke) how to make Irish Stew properly, as part of the recording?”

Never having been a shrinking violet and in those days, always game for a laugh, I said something along the lines of, “Yeah. sure. Might be a giggle.”

Producer bloke explained that in a later part of the episode, the hotel was to serve the band Irish Stew (yeah, yeah; I know. Now look here, this honestly happened to me, but even as I write it I’m shaking my head in disbelief).

“So can you tell Grant / JR what he served wasn’t proper stew and then tell him here’s how you make it,” he continued.

Twenty minutes later I ambled onto the theatre stage. Sitting in the stalls was a surprisingly large number of the previously mentioned elderly people. Seems the show was very popular with the older demographic. The aforementioned superfans.

I crossed to where Grant / JR stood and proceeded in my best Al Pacino method acting technique to berate him over his hopeless culinary prowess and shortcomings. Before setting set him straight on how to make proper Irish Stew.

I can still see the look in his eyes to this day as I gave it to him straight. My mum would’ve been proud. He was as confused and as bewildered as I was. As I still am. However, when I had finished my speech, he laughed loudly, slapped me warmly on the back, and shook my hand. The oldies applauded with no small amount of enthusiasm, and everyone seemed happy.

Now, I look back on that day from time and ask myself if I ever had a crazier day in my time in music? Nope. But one thing I took out of it. My co-star asked me had I ever acted before. I told him I hadn’t. “It was very good,” he smiled. Maybe I’d end up getting an award. I didn’t.

My abiding regret is this was in the pre-Internet age, so I wasn’t able to get a copy of the episode for posterity. I would loved to have heard it.

Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

“Ten, dad. Beat that,” said Michael.

“Hah, easy,” I said.

I scanned the shoreline and spotted a perfect skimmer. A small piece of ancient flint; toffee-brown and white with roughly splintered glass shards along its edge. Ideal for the job. This was going to be too easy. I already estimated my find was a good fifteener, at the very least.

A late summer’s evening with barely a breath of wind, meant no choppy water to worry about. The lake’s vast flat expanse stretched out in front of me, mirroring distant mountains towards the west.

“Last go, Dad. If you don’t make eleven, I’m the winner.”

I smiled. Michael was completely engaged playing skimming stones. A proper old school game that didn’t require a controller or smart device. Amazing.

“Watch and learn, Mikey. Make way for the master.” I said, mimicking a trumpet fanfare.

Standing back from the water’s edge, I hunkered down ready to take my throw. The flint was definitely my trump card and yet… at the crucial moment I just sensed something might go wrong.

I brought my arm back as far as I could to maximise launch velocity, but then subconsciously faltered as I threw. The flint stuck the water heavily, then plopped under the surface after only a measly three hops.

“Pathetic. Three. I win.” Michael’s beaming smile and twinkling eyes were a picture as he did a happy victory dance.

“Well done. You beat me fair and square,” I said. “Just like the day I beat Granddad here on this same spot forty years ago.”

++

Now, c’mere ’til I tell you this.

I’m all ears. What is it?

The brother has barred himself from watching television above in the digs.

Excuse me?

Barred himself for the foreseeable future on account of him having been roaring at the TV in the residents’ lounge, man.

Did he see something that’s not to his taste on television?

Begob, don’t start me now, for practically everything that’s on there is not to the brother’s taste at all.

That must be most perplexing for him, as so much of one’s popular entertainment these days is provided by that very device.

Well, it’s not so much the content of the programming if you understand me. The brother has no real beef about that as such. No, it’s more about these-Hop-o-me-thumbs who do be talking rubbidge left right and centre. Seem to speak in riddles inshtead of good clear speech. And the brother has had enough of it.

Ah, I see.

The brother is a stickler for a body saying what they mean. Can’t abide this modern class of nonsense that’s becoming part and parcel of daily discourse. And do you know who the brother blames it all on?

I could not even begin to guess.

Why, all of them lads in the world of commerce and big business. That’s who. Man, you should hear the brother about them when he gets warmed up on the subject. Says that they’re responsible for our langwidge being destroyed and totally murdered with vacuous mumbo-jumbo and business speak that’s crept into the everyday conversation.

It can, of course, rub some people up the wrong way.

Indeed, and it can. Now take the word “leverage” for an example. Bedamn, it’s like a red rag to a bull every time the brother hears it used. Says he, and I am in full agreement with him here, “When did leverage ever become a verb?”.

Well, yes. Quite so.

There was some eejit there the other night, on the main news now, talking about “lev-ridging, the position of IMF”. Well, when the brother heard that he near flung the coal scuttle at the screen. Livid, he was. Sure I thought he was going to take to the drink over it, and him not supping a drop on account of it being Lent. Puce with rage and roaring at the set he was.

Most vexing for the poor fellow, for sure.

That’s not the half of it. “It’s leverage! Not lev-ridge you gombeen. No hyphen and it’s not a verb,” he roars. And weren’t all of them in the lounge looking at him like he was going mad?

Is that right?

Oh, it is indeed, but he was only getting started. For didn’t the next item nearly send him over the top completely? Sure, it was so bad the landlady had her finger hovering over 999 ready to call the ambulance. Thought the brother was going to self-combust she did.

Goodness, what was it that got him into such an agitated state?

Going forward! That’s what did it.

I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.

Going forward, man. GOING FORWARD. There was this young one on jawing about something or other and begob, do you think she could say the simple phrase: “from now on”? Not the bit of her. Every second utterance was “going forward”.

Yer man doing the interview would be asking her something about such-and-such and nearly every reply started with “Going forward.” The ones that didn’t began with ‘so’. Now, and here’s another thing. What he calls “the proliferation of ‘so’ really gets the brother’s goat, too. But that’s maybes something for another day.

Annyway, wasn’t there one answer that nearly tipped the scales of the brother’s sanity. Sure he had to be restrained from unplugging the set and hurling it out the window.

Most perplexing indeed.

Yer man asks yer wan, “What can be done to improve the overall position?” Well, she got as far as, “Going forward, we must lev-ridge the…”

Oh dear. That can’t have been to your brother’s liking at all.

Who are you telling? All hell broke loose. The brother was out of the seat like a pheasant put up be the beaters, and heading towards the set with murder on his mind. Luckily the big fella who works at the bank rugby tackled him to the floor or the landlady’s 52-inch plasma would’ve been destroyed.

But it was touch and go I can tell you. The brother was a gibbering wreck.

Where the Guards called?

No, the residents somehow calmed him down, insisting he took a small whiskey to settle his nerves. Lent or no Lent, do you see?

The landlady marched him up to see the doctor the next day, and the upshot is he’s taking up the Yoga in the hope of being able to find some class of inner tranquillity. Hence, he has barred himself from the TV lounge in the meantime.

A sensible precaution, I’m sure.

I’d say it is. The brother is a man who sticks to his guns, and he doesn’t want to be upsetting the equilibrium at the digs. He’ll be keeping himself to himself for a while now and maybe taking a course of nerve tablets, too.

I shall pray his soul finds peace again.

Ah, I’ll tell him, so. Annyway, here’s me bus. Cheerio

.

******************

Now the brother has a thing or two to say on most matters and sure the bowl o’ stew is no exception.

He practically wrote the book on stew and is a holy terror if the landlady above in the digs ever gets it wrong on ‘stew night’, which according to himself, is always the Wednesday. “Stew was practically invented by the cavemen for the Wednesday.”

He tells a harrowing tale of how one time he was over by in London and didn’t he go into one o’ them highfalutin 3-Star Michelin restaurants? Now, I’m naming no names but you’ve seen the proprietor of this eatery on the television, and indeed so have I. He looks like some kind of scientist. But, ah… lookit now. Sure I can’t say more for fear of falling foul of the legal crowd.

Annyway, there’s the brother sitting nursing a glass o’ wine and perusing the menu, when in between dishes such as: Lamppost Shavings in a Bicycle Saddle Reduction, Gaseous Timeless Oxter Dainties, Ephemeral Jukebox Buttons on Toboggan Toast Vapours and the like, all at £70 pound a skull too, doesn’t his eye fall upon something less outlandish. A real taste of the Emerald Isle: Traditional Irish Stew with a twist.

He admits the ‘twist’ worried him, but being the stew aficionado that he is: “Listen, I’ve et countless plates of the stuff from Dublin to Dubai,” says he, he felt compelled to give it a go. So, summoning the waiter over, he asks.

“Is the stew the real proper shtuff?”

And of course yer man sells it to him big style. Likely on commission, I’d say.

“Sir,” says the waiter, a lad from Belfast according to the brother, “If he was still around today, Finn McCool himself would practically live on it.”

So, taking him at his word the brother says, “A plate o’ thon’s the very thing for me,” and hands yer boyo back the card. He was in London on business do you see, and as the firm’s expenses was funding the dinner, the brother never so much batted an eyelid at the £95 price tag. It being listed as a special.

Annyway, after an age, doesn’t yer man come out from the back kitchen with a sort of shallow bowl yoke on a gold salver.

That immediately had the brother on red alert. Then looking into the bowl he sees there’s some class o’ brown gunk slopping about inside but with not so much as a shpud to be seen anywhere. Well, didn’t that put the tin lid on things? For as everyone knows, isn’t the shpuds the backbone of the dish?

“Traditional Irish Stew… with a twist, sir,” says the waiter.

He puts the bowl on the table with a practised flourish and goes to make a quick getaway. But he’s picked the wrong man, for the brother is onto him like an insurance salesman who’s got your private phone number and has his hands firmly around your throat.

“Hold your horses there, son. What in the name of good god is this?” says the brother, all the time him prodding the contents of the bowl with his fork. And then – the worst bit – doesn’t his eye spy the one solitary and tiny shpud hiding under a sliver of carrot? Hardly able to contain his disgust the brother prongs the lone pratie and holds it up under the waiter’s neb.

“Would you mind telling me what is this?” he asks, in a voice so sharp it would’ve cut the very sods o’ turf straight out of the bog.

“It’s a mercury-basted, irradiated Charlotte Potato kissed with liquid hydrogen. Chef likes to add them to the stew. It’s his modern riff on the dish,” says m’laddo.

Well, the brother’s heard enough by now and draws himself up to his full height.

“You may tell Chef from me he’s an imbecile.”

And with that, off he goes, leaving the waiter standing there, jaw on the floor and the whole of the restaurant’s clientele up on their feet cheering as the brother walks out.

Now that was in March and the brother never got over the trauma of the whole terrible business until near Christmas. Was atein the nerve tablets like sweeties for the best part of the first six months.

Oh yes, the brother is very particular about the stew alright. I have his own recipe meself and do be makin’ the odd pot now and again. And I’ll tell you this. It knocks these 3-Michelin star lads into a cocked hat, so it does. And the beauty of it is this. A well-stored batch will keep for up to a month and there’s good atein in it right down to the very last shpoonful.