I have a Rat Pack moment as I go clubbing with Ol’ Blue Eyes
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IT HAS been a strange week, beginning last Sunday when I found myself in a van packed with loudspeakers in the back yard of a dilapidated cottage halfway up a mountain on the outskirts of Belfast.
It all started when I flew to the George Best City Airport that morning to be met by the producer of a stage play that I agreed to take part in some weeks ago.
I had no idea what the play was about, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to revisit the country of my birth while getting paid at the same time.
Besides, the producer was an old friend, an actress that I worked with in Northern Ireland the best part of 40 years ago.
When she delivered me to my digs, she informed me that the stage manager for the play had asked her to ask me if I would like to accompany him to a club that he had been booked to appear in that night.
She explained that he was a man of many talents, one of which was the ability to impersonate Frank Sinatra and some of the members of the late crooner’s Rat Pack.
Now, in all my years in the acting profession I have never known a stage manager who moonlighted as Ol’ Blue Eyes, so I told her I would be more than happy to join him on his gig.
A few hours later, he picked me up in his father’s car. He was accompanied by Mickey, a large, bearded young man who is appearing in the play that we are engaged in, and the three of us drove to the stage manager’s family home where he introduced me to his parents and grandparents.
His grandfather is a Glaswegian and his granny hails from Falkirk. She was a big fan of Take the High Road, so that helped to break the ice and we had a good blether while Dean, or Dino as he prefers to be called for obvious reasons, went off to get into his glad rags.
He reappeared shortly thereafter resplendent in a Rat Pack-style suit, complete with crimson waistcoat and a tie with very large musical notes emblazoned on it.
But the most prized piece of his attire was a pair of black and white patent-leather spats that he assured me he had gone to great lengths to acquire.
It was at this point that he told me that the club we were going to was a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) club deep in a nationalist area of Belfast.
He had certain reservations about accepting the gig, given that he is a Protestant and Protestants are not always welcome in GAA clubs, but he hoped that by bringing Mickey, a Catholic, along with him he might fool his audience into thinking he was of the same persuasion as themselves.
It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that, with a name like Derek Lord, I might be on a bit of a sticky wicket also, but, if I had any qualms in that direction, I kept them to myself.
In due course, the three of us piled into a small white van, the back of which was crammed full of the aforementioned loudspeakers, microphone stands and lighting equipment.
Since it was a two-seater, the unfortunate Mickey was forced to perch himself on top of all this stuff.
He looked extremely uncomfortable as we slammed the doors on him.
Dino produced a small satnav device and pressed some buttons on it.
When I asked him if he knew where he was going, he told me he hadn’t a clue, but he assured me that his satnav had never let him down.
And so it came to pass that, an hour later, after following the instructions relayed to us in a cut-glass, female English voice, we found ourselves leaving all signs of human habitation behind as we made our way up a mountain in the gathering dusk.
Just as I was about to say that his beloved satnav might have a few screws loose, it informed us that we had reached our destination.
He stopped the van, but the only thing we could see was a rutted, rocky path disappearing into the gloom.
“That doesn’t look like the entrance to any club I’ve ever been to,” I said, but he decided to drive down it, anyway.
And that’s when we found ourselves in the back yard of the dilapidated hovel.
Dean climbed out of the van and made his way to the nearest window where he observed a very ancient lady fast asleep in a rocking chair.
He returned to the van and admitted that his satnav wasn’t quite as dependable as he had led us to believe.
He swore that he had fed it the postcode for the club.
“Of course, some of these clubs give out the wrong codes in case they get letter bombs from the other mob,” he muttered.
When we made our way back to an area that had some houses in it, I spotted a stationary taxi.
The driver gave us directions and we were driving through the club gates two minutes later.
On entering the premises, we were met with a wall of sound from a heavy-metal CD and the cries of an army of women who were celebrating a christening.
The Irish can always be trusted to turn any event into an excuse for a party.
We were shown into another room and told that a few of the women might drift in later.
The staff were most hospitable; Dino sang his heart out for the next three hours to an audience of about 20.
Nobody asked him what religion he was, and they even gave him another booking.
As for me, I thanked the manageress in Gaelic, which seemed to do the trick.
It was written on a piece of paper behind the bar.
I don’t know what she thought of my pronunciation, but if it was rubbish she was too polite to say.
Slan agus bannacht.
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