Grumpy Old Women at the Southampton Guildhall.

On (surely!) the coldest evening so far this year I ventured forth from my nice warm hearth to meet my fellow Floosies in the foyer of Southampton's Guildhall, as always searching for their presence by scanning the milling medium-sized crowd for colourful hats and green clobber.  There they were - Angie, Angeline, Caroline, Georgie, Jan, Janice, June and Margaret.

It was nearly 7.15 so we proceeded to find our seats (near the back of the raised bit of the auditorium) and sat, chatting and waiting - and waiting - and then we looked at our tickets to discover that the show started at 8.00 not 7.30 as our dearly beloved June had told us!  So we waited a bit more - and then there they were - Jenny Eclair, Suzie Blake and Wendi Peters marching onto the stage in pseudo-military outfits, primed to entertain us...

I wish I could recall more of the many jokes and one-liners to give you some flavour of the evening - but This Grumpy Old Woman's little grey cells are hitting the deck faster than you can say "liberty bodices with rubber buttons"!  The only bit I can (decently) repeat here is Jenny's summation of today's youth, female: "What can you call a 17-year-old girl but 7 stone of fake tan in Ug boots?"  The only other bit I can remember word for word is to do with Scotch eggs and a chap called Derek but I can't tell you that or my Mum will wash my mouth out with soap and water!  I do recall, with distaste, unfortunately, that Jenny Eclair seemed to have a fixation about periods and tampons and, in the main, the humour was largely scatalogical.  The three ladies did a magnificent job of keeping the whole show moving along - they must have phenomenal memories to learn a whole evening's worth of lines! - but the sad fact was I, for one, could not hear a great many of their punchlines (?poor acoustics / poor microphones / too far away) so felt cheated when the audience in the front half of the auditorium were laughing their socks off. 

We had paid £22.00 each for our seats and, I have to say it, it wasn't worth it.  Sorry, chaps, but there it is.  In fact, some of the audience actually left their seats at the interval and didn't return at all!  That kind of sums up the evening, really.  I wasn't particularly grumpy when we finally left the Guildhall - but this Old Woman would have appreciated a bit more volume, a bit less dirty talk and a bit more value for money.  Would I go again?  Definitely not - especially at £22.00 - and it had been my idea in the first place!  (But it was good fun teasing June about getting the start time wrong...)

Hyacinth Kerria Karen