An Audience With The King - Westival

It was back to Taunton Castle and the Somerset County Museum last night. I was appearing as part of the Taunton Westival, a sort of "Happy Shopper" version of the Edinburgh Festival. Earlier in the week the delightful Carrie Blogg from Somerset County Museum had phoned full of woes as not many tickets had been sold and there was a chance that the evening might have to be cancelled. Add to this the fact that it was supposed to be held outdoors and that my friend Tris Pinkney from Bilby's restaurant was supplying a load of Tudor food, then there were a lot of variables to throw into the mix! Later Carrie phoned with good news - nearly 50 tickets had been snapped up by a group of students. Great! An audience full of students would be fabulous fun... wouldn't it? With the weather still misbehaving it was finally decided to hold the event in the Great Hall of Taunton Castle. Then the next big surprise - the students were all from Italy. I prayed that there was a small community in north Somerset called something like Italy-sub-Mendip, but I was to be disappointed. The show went OK, but in mostly awestruck silence from the Italian's with the laughter and guffaws coming from the English minority at the back of the seating. I don't think I have tried so hard to make a group of people laugh and fail miserably since I died on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Club in 1987 in front of about 400 highly inebriated Scotsmen. The only time the students really perked up was when I played the musical instruments. They whooped and applauded manically at the end of each tune and I did comment about the international language of music!

After the talk I posed for several thousand photos with the massed ranks of Italian students before we strolled down to the education area where Tris and his wife Jane were serving their Tudor grub. This was also a massive hit with everyone with some delicious food, including flat breads, pickled French beans, mince meat pie, venison with quince jelly, roast beef on trencher, a boar's head and crumbled fish. Wonderful. There was also a fine local beer called Taunton Castle, which went down a treat. After the Italians had gone there were laughs aplenty from everyone at their stunned reception to my talk. Carrie and the lovely Steve Minnit from the Museum want me back in November, but I begged and grovelled at them not to allow in any foreign language students. Apparently they want me to dress up as Judge Jeffries... watch this space...