Where Is My Gold Watch?

It’s May 21st 2025 and today I sailed into St. Helier, Jersey, and not for the first time either. This time I am on Oceania’s Vista cruise ship but 11, 734 days ago I was on a ferry and I’d arrived to perform in a show called Cockney Showtime for two weeks at Caesar’s Palace in Grève de Lequ. 

It was my first professional engagement and I’d left my beloved Pontins Bluecoat job behind for two long weeks. At the end of that fortnight Dick Ray, the producer, called me into his office with the good news.

“You got it! You’ll be our comic for the next six months!”

I told him there was no way I could do that. I was a Bluecoat and that job was waiting for me back in Hemsby. We went back and forth with this a few times but I was adamant that I wouldn’t be staying and I certainly wouldn’t be letting Gos, my Pontins boss, down. 

“What do Pontins pay you Paul?” asked Mr Ray.

“Eighty quid a week,” I told him.

“I am going to pay you £300 a week!”

“That’s not really the point,” I told him. I called Gos and told him what had happened. He ripped up my contract and told me,

“Go, you’re a professional comedian now.”

I ran up to the office of Dick Ray and was happy to find out that in the passing twenty odd minutes he hadn’t yet found a comic who would do.

So, 11, 720 days ago I started work on a touring show on the Channel Island of Jersey. We would be doing 12 shows a week, me, three dancers, and a singing guitar man. Oh, and due to a technical problem on the click track, we had a live drummer too and that job fell to Dave Diggle. 

The ‘audition’ I’d had was at Ceaser’s Palace but now we’d be doing the show in different venues on a two week rotation. I have to admit, as much as I was going to miss my old Bluecoat mates, Donkey Derbys, calling bingo and being forced fed Cine Racing tickets, this new gig sounded like it would be fun.

Today I went back but hardly recognised anything about the place. A whole new four lanes of road, several blocks of flats, a whole Waterfront complex with cinemas, restaurants and bars were all on the front where the sea used to be. They’d reclaimed the land and made the town unrecognisable to me! The flat I lived in was gone: it is offices now. The cute little town I’d wander around between shows had disappeared. But worst of all? No more Fat Jacks! Fat Jacks was the cafe yards from the flat I shared with the rest of the cast where I would enjoy a hearty breakfast everyday. I couldn’t cook back then and £4 was nothing for a man on the wages I was on! Jack asked me once what I did for my other meals and I told him his breakfast saw me through every day. I panicked the following morning when I went up to pay my tab and was told it had doubled!

“£8! Why the hike in price Jack?”

“This is why…” he said and passed me a container.

“Your dinner!” And that tradition lasted the rest of the season.

I managed to get through the six months unscathed. The cast eventually stopped waiting up for me to return from whatever party I’d been to the preceding evening and allowed me to be a 21 year old. I made friends I still talk with today and I was only warned by the local police officers the once. Why? Because the music was too loud coming from my car.

Season over, I called Gos and told him I was available for him again only to have my offer rebuffed and told that wasn’t possible. When I asked why I was told, again,

“You’re a professional comedian now!”

And here I am thirty two years later typing up this blog before I have to write out yet another plan for tonight’s stand up performance.