“And wasn’t that last contestant great? Never knew someone had THAT much talent juggling horses! Now our next contestant is someone who if you recall, only just squeaked past our preliminary round thanks to mouldy cafeteria chips, please clap, because no one else will, for Barold Balfour!”
Hopping around on his jelly legs, sweating small droplets that feel as heavy as gold, Barold bounces botherdly, accidentally leaping into sets and cabinets and causing a ruckus.
He makes out a polite couple of claps and tumbles onto the stage a rotating mass of limbs that has knotted itself, in a heap of anxious human. Returning to his feet and grabbing hold of metal amplification he speaks, the voice squeaks, the mic peaks.
“Good evening folks! Barold here, with a few jokes! I’ve been working on the set since the last, this time I think I can promise there will be no accidents or vomit. Sorry, Thursday front row!
Have you ever been somewhere, somewhere you’re not supposed to be? And you got there by mistake, obviously, no one goes where they’re not supposed to be, and when you’re there everyone who is supposed to be there gets so mad at you!
‘Sir!’ they shout, or sometimes a bit more profane, ‘Sir! Your are standing on a foundry conveyor belt! That’s gonna dump you into 1300 degrees celsius liquid steel! What are you doing?!’ he screams.
‘This isn’t the travellator for the airport?’”
The returning silence does nothing to dampen the spirits of Barold.
“Or what about this, you ever think about misnamed products? Ready meals. You still have to cook them! They should be called ready to cook meals! Or packing peanuts, I ate a whole bag of them and was in the hospital for a month! Well, at least I was safe getting there!”
“Once I went to a country fair and they warned us to properly secure our vehicles, but they were not happy when I started welding my car boot shut!”
Barold Balfour is not a comedian, but he is not phased and right now as he fails to land, he still makes an impact on his dream.