CURRIED CHESTNUTS

I went to a curry house recently and was reading the menu, as you do, when I noticed amongst the hundreds of dishes available at the drop of an order, a couple of strange dishes available to delight the unwary customer.

There was the opportunity to order a “Prawn McCartney” and the extras menu listed an “Anneka Rice”… (We’re nothing if not “up-to-the-minute” with our celebrity references out here in Lesser Blogfordshire).

Well, I do suppose that at least old Anneka was seen lurking on one of the London bridges during the Jubilee pageant, and Macca was still tickling the ivories on the same weekend I’m told, so maybe these remnants from the golden age of Indian Restaurant comedy are still, at least, vaguely relevant, even if they do conjure up the image of generations of “blokes” going for a curry after the pubs have closed and using the “funniest line in the world” to make their mates laugh as if it was the very first time anyone ever had thought of it…

I wonder whether the “Anneka” was once a “Tim” or might yet have evolved into a “Condoleeza” (or is that still too “Guardian reader”…?), or whether the “Prawn McCartney” was once transmogrified, however inappropriately, into a “John McCarthy” during the months of his incarceration…? But somehow I doubt that up-to-the-minute “topical” news references ever make it into the more leisurely annals of traditional “comedy” like this.

After all, you have to be around for a very long time, or else have a huge popular cultural profile before enough people might have heard of you for the Gagmeister General to be able to display his “wit” to the world and have everyone around the table know what it is he’s talking about.

“Condo-what Rice…? ’Oo’s ee then..?”

I presume a “Stella McCartney” is now more likely to be used during a drinks order in the “Curry House” book of comedy chestnuts…

Still, I suppose that having the ability to laugh at oneself or, at least, to blunt the barbs of those punters still stuck so firmly in the mindset of the last century – and those pre-“Goodness Gracious Me” days - when “Going for an Indian” meant little more than having an opportunity to dish out a little casual racism, put on some “funny” voices, order up the “hottest thing on the menu” as a kind of “blokish” feat of daring, and to be able to carry on knocking back the lagers well beyond “closing time” is no bad thing.

There are also such comedy delights as the “Kahari Kid”, “Tina Tuna” and “Helicopter Naan” all of which, I imagine, were born out of years of hearing that kind of stuff from a group of drunk lads and lasses at about half past eleven on a Saturday night, and being called over to the table time and again, like it was still the last days of the Raj, for some “good natured” abuse when all you really want to do is shut up the shop and head home to your family.

“Eh, eh… (You won’t ’ave ’eard this before)… We’ll ’ave a boiled rice, a pilau rice, a basmati rice and an (all together now!) Anneka Rice…!” (paroxysms of laughter ensue, received graciously with a polite but very fixed grin).

I don’t know, perhaps it is my age, but I remember far too many of those groups arriving in far too many eateries over the years when I was younger, ruining the atmosphere for anyone just out for a quiet meal and generally upping the levels of tension in the entire room. I often expected one waiter or another to finally snap, but they never did, which probably tells us a lot about the levels of dignity being shown by at least one of the parties involved.

As to those groups of post-pub diners, to me they always (ironically) looked the same to me, as if by default, they had transformed into the walking (or perhaps staggering) clichés that they were, and the kinds of benevolent yet still somehow slightly threatening groups that I would usually cross a street to avoid. Somehow, beneath all of the banter and bonhomie, there was always just that hint that things might blow up into something more violent at any second.

Better then, when faced with such a potentially dangerous situation, especially on a nightly basis, to smile politely and take all of the abuse jokes with good grace, and, hopefully, let the evening end with a far happier outcome.

It is an interesting approach to take, however, to have someone’s “best” jokes already written on the menu. If that doesn’t prick the pomposity of the designated joker of the pack, then possibly nothing ever will.

Finally, despite all the years that have passed, whenever I do go into an Indian Restaurant, I still find that those two Menu-inspired Abba classics, “Chicken Tikka, tell me what’s wrong…” and “Do you hear the Lamb Pasander…?”, do have a nasty habit of getting into my head even now, and if I’m not careful I might still find myself humming them to myself all the way home.

Sometimes the “comedy” gets hard-wired so deep into your soul that it’s with you forever…

(First published in “The Lesser Blogfordshire Alternative” July 19th 2012)