View from the Green Room: Knuckle down now leaaaads…knuckle down I tell ye!
Pat and Faye Shortt
Shortt is baaaack leaaads in a council high viz vest and a yellow-pack haaard haaat you could see from New Ross.
It’s all builders yard talk about the Children’s Hospital where he had two nephew apprentices. Leaaads that went in to serve their time and came out in retirement. Retired…leaaads …you wouldn’t believe it like if you heard it in a joke…like.
It’s an anarchic brand of humour that carries his twinkle-eyed sense of devilment as those eyes spy the audience.
A latecomer arrives and he welcomes him, and asides to his audience with the entre-nous-finger-to-the-nose confidential gossip that he’s late because he’s cheatin’ on the wife. His third apparently.
Pat can’t understand it because the third wife is a brilliant housekeeper – bakes an’ all now. Oh he’s well set up there and her with a big posh mobile home in Traaaamore… Like.
His last fling ended with a confrontation with an angry mother who confronted him. “Did you sleep with my daughter?” says she… ”not a wink” says he.
Buildin’ isn’t anthing like it was in the gospel accordin’ to Pat. Apprentices…pah…useless…always lookin’ into their phones…never workin’…all big thick redneck wasters.
He had an apprentice from Waaaaterford with a big thick culchie accent who identified as a woman. “Ye have a problem,” says he, “and ye’re tramplin’ on me rights to identify as a woman"…No,” says he, “my problem is with you identifying as a carpenter!”
You’ll never get the better of Shortt the builder.
And then Pat is…well…Pat the actor. And he’s in Time Square where he’s hopin’ to meet up with Tom Hickey but instead bumps into Daithí Ó Sé who’s freeloadin’.
He’s playing Johnnypateenmike, the town gossip in the Cripple of Inismaan along with Daniel Radcliffe, and Alan Rickman comes to call to his dressing room. Unfortunately Pat can’t let him into his dressing room because he’s on tablets. With windy side effects…like. The smell in the dressing room would pulverise a skunk and – believe it or not – Pat Shortt can’t think of an excuse! Such is life at the top. Still…as name-dropping goes, he’s two sets up.
Knuckle down now leaaads leads us to Pat’s anarchic classroom where there’s some eeeejits actin’ the maggot with stick-drawings of men and women’s wobbly bits. He’s belchin’, scratchin’ his behind, pickin’ his nose and chewin’ it as Master Pat launches into a lecture to his students on good manners.
He’s brought in Sr. Patricia (Faye Shortt), an expert on sexual education to discuss the wobbly bits.
Accusations come like grenades from the fartin’, gruntin’ tutor… ”put away that thing…what are you fiddlin’ with…show me…take it out!...“
There’s to be no fiddlin’ with yourself, McGrath…and if any of ye draws any Mickeys, I’ll give ye Mickey fairly lively afterwards…fairly lively now!” As the lights fade to black, so does the sex therapist’s attempts to counsel on problems relating to women’s wobbly bits.
It’s Shortt’s table and we’re all there to sup at it.
Ridicule is his stock and trade. That’s the secret to Pat’s success. He selects people at random in the audience, imagines them as his best friends and indulges in the most bizarre of situation comedies.
There’s lads and lassies in the audience that he imagines as pupils. One misfortunate is ejected from the theatre because he ignored the master’s instructions to close the window. “I can’t find the window,” says he in all innocence. Master Pat is having none of it.
“You don’t know where the window is and you’re in the school six years?
“Four of them in third class…get out, get out, get ouuuuut” as he shoves him out the door.
Pat closes out his set with the Jumbo Breakfast Roll and the entire audience – all three floors – joins in.
