Duckers & Diving: Press Club gives Conley the horn
THIS week finds our seasoned scribbler in fine festive form as he enjoys the hospitality of the Birmingham Press Club and jungle escapee Brian Conley.
The Birmingham Press Club Christmas lunch turns distinctly smutty … and not just because comedian Brian Conley is the guest speaker.
Kay Alexander, recently retired from the BBC after 40 years, is required to perform a ‘blow job’ after receiving the gift of an Acme Whistle horn.
And the whole event gets ever more ‘horny’ when Conley is presented with one too after pulling his pants down.
I was far too far back in the Marco Pierre White restaurant in the Cube, but apparently he has a tattoo on his bum declaring ‘no entry’.
“There is so much porn on the internet that I needed to get a left-handed mouse,” he shares with the audience.
Despite all that, he’s a married man with two children.
Mind you, I can’t talk – I was well chatting up the girls on my table of four when finding myself with my own ‘harem’ – Bournville College babes Alma Aganovic, executive director, Jana Smidkova, marketing manager, and Catherine Hepton, events co-ordinator.
In no particular order … Portuguese, Slovakian and Bosnian.
Glad to see that the UK and Birmingham is still welcoming talented migrants from all over the world.
But back to Conley.
The first person I have ever heard who never allowed Press Club chairman Ed James, of Heart FM, resplendent in blue suit and orange tie, to get a word in edgeways.
The event was about giving him life membership of the press club – the oldest one of its kind in the world.
The same honour was bestowed on Kay – although only the panto star was the one to ask whether the title allowed him walk his sheep through the Bullring!
He wasn’t giving away much about his caught-short spell in the I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here ‘jungle’ where he pulled out early due to illness. He tells the guests he is saving the real story for the Sunday tabloids.
Conley, appearing in Robinson Crusoe and the Caribbean Pirates at the Birmingham Hippodrome – he is a Birmingham regular (that’s Conley; not Crusoe) – did manage to get a blast out of his horn. Mind you, a pity he managed to pillory Acme Whistle’s Simon Topman, another loquacious individual who, like Ed James, never managed a word in edgeways either.
Press Club president Bob Warman hailed Ms Alexander for presenting programmes “the good old BBC way”.
Warman, who should definitely have a part in Downton Abbey, then wins a couple of months of gym membership which I fear may be beyond him.
The lunch nose-dives as the great and the good are asked to fly paper planes, having paid £10 each for the privilege.
Cricket enthusiast Trevor Foster’s goes into reverse swing; John Lamb’s flies like a lamb; ITV’s Mark Gough fails to trouble the airwaves; Norman Cave, of Bournville College, sees his go backwards; predictably the towering Peter Rees-Steer’s hits the roof; Brian Manley-Green is another with altitude sickness; while Adrian Hindmarsh proves to be Birmingham’s Worst Pilot.
