5688/18708
At one o clock this afternoon I settled down to watch perhaps the most amazing spectacle that this country has ever witnessed, the Bing live show in St Albans Arena. Hopefully the World Cup game wouldn’t be up to much and so I wouldn’t regret that decision for the rest of my life.
I hoped that the live show might finally answer the question as to what the fuck is going on in the Bing universe and why anthropomorphic child animals are being looked after by stuffed toys in a world with no adults. Or at least that they would execute Pando live on stage. Or at least that the part of Flop would still be played by Mark Rylance, but inside a Flop suit that he never took off so you didn’t know it was him.
It turned out to be a disappointing afternoon for me on all levels. Goals flew in in Russia, whilst Pando lived to see another day (spoiler alert) and the characters were played by puppets and Mark Rylance was not a puppeteer (unless he was inside a very convincing man suit).
But the characters were greeted like pop stars and Phoebe enjoyed herself. Even Ernie was rapt for a good portion of the show and I was only mildly distracted checking Twitter to see I’d missed another goal. The show was a bit long for my taste - I think if it’s a kid show then do an hour and then it’s time to go home, but this one had an interval meaning it was nearly as long as the football match. But afterwards, due to my superstar Hertfordshire status, my family and I got to meet Bing and Flop and have our photo taken with them. The Diva stars of the show insisted the kids wipe their hands, in case their child slime rub off on the puppets, but I guess that just comes with the sort of success that these confusing characters enjoy.
They obviously haven’t heard about what happened when I met the characters from the Furchester Hotel as I too was allowed near the puppets - but as I made clear in my show, I am only interested in puppets in my own age range and I’m not interested in Flop (especially if he’s called that for the reason I think he is) - although he’s a lot more handsome and cheeky in real life than you might have thought.
As with the Furchester puppets, Phoebe was a bit reticent and afraid to meet these stars. But if I don’t take my kids up with me then I am just a 50-year-old man with a track record of unsavoury thoughts about puppets (but remember, like most puppet obsessives I was myself abused by a puppet in the past) trying to hang out with the objects (not that I view them that way) of my desire.
Puppets will be my downfall. There can be no doubt about that. But hopefully the full scale of my crimes will only come to light when I am dead and they find out what’s in my attic.
It’s definitely worth catching the show if it comes near you and your kids love Bing and England aren’t playing a record-breaking football match.
There was a little party afterwards and Phoebe got her face-painted. The lady doing the face painting asked if Phoebe wanted to be a pink tiger. Our family is concerned with gender stereotyping and the way supposedly male and female attributes are casually reinforced in society - and my wife had admired the live show for its positive message on this - and of course the face-painter had asked the question innocently enough. But after we said we thought it should be an orange tiger, Phoebe said she’d like to be a rainbow tiger. So that was punishment enough as the lovely and talented lady was forced to work out how the fuck to achieve that. Something she did with a fair amount of success, if leaning heavily on the blue and purple end of the spectrum.
Sure we missed the football and the sunshine, but we were back for a play and a beer in the garden and I was chased around by a purple tiger, which is not something I would haver predicted would happen when I woke up.
