Behind the scenes on Beyonce’s Mrs Carter World Tour? Well, as you know, the gear is moved nightly between shows in trucks. I’ll introduce you to a couple of the drivers..

Eddie (pictured), last seen dousing haddock goujons in saffron mayo as though it was the Last Supper, is an anomalous driver. Well, freak might be a better description, bearing, as he does, a tenuous resemblance to a mammoth – in demeanour, at least.

He left the UK on April 3rd – at the beginning of Beyonce’s World Tour – without any long trousers or a jumper. What, you ask? Is the man entirely without marbles? I tell you what, amid this imbroglio, nobody would bat an eyelid if a unicorn turned up with its hands in its pockets.

Yes, Eddie potters around outside, content as a lark, in temperatures hairier than a macaque’s bottom. Sleet, wind – it makes no difference; he doesn’t have a coat handy even if he felt the cold. Which he doesn’t. Whilst the rest of us had our night heaters running well into May, he cranked up the air-con the very second it stopped snowing.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Trucking

 

‘Wrong trailer, Old Bean,’ he reproved the other night in Montpellier through an open lorry window. Dunderhead that I am, I’d coupled up to the wrong one. Should I admit that the trailer wasn’t even the correct colour? Whoopsydaisies.

Anyway, it’s all very well his tutting high-handedly at my faux pas over the wrong trailer, but at least I wind the legs up on mine. There he was in Zurich at the previous show, wondering why the lorry wasn’t going anywhere with the legs on the tarmac. Ha ha. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Tongue-Twister

 

Or ‘Petal cock black,’ as Vicky, one of the female caterers, blundered the other day before covering her mouth in horror. She’d meant to start with ‘kettle’, I think, but got into a bit of trouble at the beginning of the sentence. Dissolving into a paroxysm of bladder-releasing giggles, it was a struggle to get a meal order out of her for the rest of the evening. ‘Any of that black cock left?’ I tend to ask now at dinnertime.

Talking of cocks, we have a “jizz” truck on the Beyonce Tour – for any bits which won’t fit in the allocated trailers after the show’s been packed away. And I can’t think of a better man for the job than Johnny Holan (pictured below), renowned as he is for wearing fiendishly obnoxious T-shirts.

But what’s he actually got in the back, taking into account that there are several female dancers and that he’s now been delegated to carry “Wardrobe”? ‘Oh, knickers and dresses, mainly,’ he drawls dismissively. ‘All the stuff you like, Barnaby. And I can’t be doing with all this driving business – I need to be in lay-bys trying it all on.’

Beyonce TV Interview

 

If you’d like to see him in action – in a Beyonce news bulletin on Croatian TV, rather than clandestinely slipping into a Size 6 – click here. I’m interviewed as well (both of us around the two-minute mark) and am available immediately at casting agencies for voice-over work and parties with glitterati. Or TV adverts if I’m given notice so I can at least brush my hair..

P.S. Don’t ask me about the persistent Beyonce pregnancy rumours in the papers – you know I never mention the popstars. Their private time is just that – their private time. What I can say, however, is that the Snickers Cheesecake in Catering is irresistible. Draw your own conclusions, by all means.

My brain wouldn’t work. Why was this lady kneeling in the corridor, flapping her hands? Was she having an epileptic fit?

‘Dunno,’ answered my brain, still sulking at being disturbed from a jolly dream about boats. ‘It’s 1am, I’ve been awake only half an hour and you haven’t made me a cup of tea yet.’ Thanks, Brain – you’ve just wasted valuable seconds…and now we’re up Shit Creek. Never mind without a paddle; the dinghy’s sunk, too.

Denmark Danger

Still rooted to the spot – the spot being Rodbyhavn docks – my eyes registered a man. My brain, which I’m seriously considering exchanging for a dual core processor, or maybe just a kettle, said, ‘He’s dressed funny.’ And then, as the masked gunman walked purposefully towards me, it finally woke up. ‘Poo,’ it said. ‘With a capital P.’

‘On the floor. Now,’ said the malefactor, his voice like a pistol shot. His command brooked little argument. Although, now that my brain and I were once more a formidable team, we briefly considered fending him off.

A DAF door key slashing wildly against bullets? It seemed an asymmetrical battle, so we complied – germane to survival and all that. Course if I’d had my catapult with me, it would’ve been a different story.

Now, for all his talking big and wearing blue boiler suits and masks, he was actually quite a gentle robber. A proper baddy, yes, but no histrionics; no trigger-happy nonsense or calling people unspeakable words. He very lightly pushed my back, indicating that I should have a lie-down. And then he disappeared, leaving me clutching my DKV card and wondering if the police are going to mind that I’d left my engine running.

Balaclava-ed Burglar

As I lay there, cloaked beneath the icy scythe of death, my brain went into overdrive. What if the getaway driver returns to “tie up loose ends”? Why hadn’t I written a will and left my flip-flops to medical science?

‘If my time is up,’ said my brain, ‘ what on earth is CID going to make of Namibian’s Gentleman’s Folder on my hard drive?’ Oh, what a mess.

Seconds later, there was a screech of tyres. The baddies had gone. ‘I say,’ I croaked from the floor, feeling a bit sheepish, ‘All OK?’

When officers arrived, it became apparent how unobservant I’d been. ‘Can you describe the attacker?’ asked the uniformed woman. ‘Could have been seven foot three or a dwarf,’ I replied honestly. ‘And there was a car, but I couldn’t tell you the make, model, colour or registration.’

Funny things, brains..