The Fun Factory by Chris England Page A

above his ears. His jacket was a couple of sizes too small and his trousers and shoes a couple of sizes too large, and he supported his weight on an achingly slender ribbed cane which looked like it might snap at any moment.
    The crowd were still rowdy from their success in banishing the upstart beginner, but Robey stood before them with a look of benign puzzlement on his face. He began telling tales of aneveryday life not so very different to their own, except that everything about him said “fallen on hard times” as clearly as if he had it written on a sign hanging round his neck. All his stories were designed, I could see, to make the audience feel smarter than Robey himself, and he was the unwitting butt of every one of them. He even became indignant that he was not getting the sympathy he felt he deserved.
    “I am not heah,” he protested, “to become a laughing stock!”
    As I watched the audience, not a couple of minutes earlier a rabble throwing missiles and shouting abuse, calm down, relax and begin to laugh as one, I realised that I was seeing The Power in action. Robey was a master of it, in complete control.
    “Desist!” he cried haplessly, meaning them to continue, and they did.
    I found that I was not laughing myself. It was funny, I could see it was funny, and I wanted to laugh, I really did, but I didn’t want to miss even a moment of the experience. It was as if I was thrilled beyond laughter by Robey’s display, and was already processing it, dissecting it, taking it apart in my mind to see how it worked. And in my youthful arrogance I felt that I had been shown a vision of my own future, that I too was capable of this mastery.
    Too soon Robey was done, and exited the stage to rapturous acclaim. I gave the next acts a few minutes, but they were pale shadows in comparison. I was on pins, anxious to commune with the master, and hurried round to his dressing room as soon as I thought decent.
    “Come!” he boomed in response to my knock, and there he sat at a large mirror with a pot of cold cream, wiping away at his huge eyebrows.
    “Come in! Sit!” he cried, wafting his arm at a battered but comfortable armchair. “How d’ye like it? Eh?”
    “Um … marvellous. You were marvellous!”
    “You’re very polite,” Robey smiled. “Bit of work to do after that walking calamity just before me, but
in extremis
we find ourselves, don’t you think?”
    “I’m sure you are right,” I said.
    “So, you are under Alf’s wing, are you? I often think of Alf as a mother hen, clucking around his chicks, making sure they all get their peck of corn, don’t you know?”
    I smiled, nodded.
    “Good fellow, Alf. Salt of the earth. And if you can make your way with Karno you’ll not go far wrong. Some very fine comedians he has brought on in his time, and no mistake. Fred Kitchen, now, he’s as good as anyone, and Harry Weldon, too. Karno won’t pay them a quarter of what they’re worth, but they won’t leave him, because they’re safe, they feel comfortable. It’s guaranteed work, fifty-two weeks a year, and they never have to go out and sell themselves. It’s never their name on the bill, it’s always Karno’s, and Karno’s name will always bring a crowd. Now maybe a crowd would come to see good old Fred Kitchen, or Harry Weldon, but they’ll never find out, will they, because they haven’t got the nerve.
    “Now, say what you like about that sorry youth tonight. He may have stunk worse than a week-old halibut, but it took courage to go out there like that. Especially with that material, by the way, which was somewhat second-hand, and second-hand old hat at that. Some of Karno’s lads could do with striking out on their own and testing themselves. They won’t, though, because they don’t see the bigger picture. Not like me. But then I havethe benefit, you see, of a Cambridge heducation,” he announced grandly.
    “Really?”
    “Oh yes, I am the finished article, you might say, both