On the other hand

I recently had the pleasure of enjoying a drink with two of the good guys from work. The drink was originally offered to all in sundry that work on the team but it was rudely rejected by most and those that remained, feared the potentially good night that was planned. That diminished the numbers to just D and me.

Whilst sounding out another colleague about his plans for that evening, he very graciously picked up on my thinly veiled plead and invited D and myself along to his plans. It therefore resulted in the trio of D, T and I guzzling our way through countless pints of Pride and entertaining many varied subjects of conversation.

It should be noted that many of the topics that are discussed at a time of complete intoxication, when the bar seems suitable to support your now slouched frame and the simple becomes the nigh on impossible, are usually important and pristine visions of a possible future for all man kind.

And then at other times the absurdly ridiculous becomes a point of fascination.

This occasion swung more wildly and more heavily towards the second of these two types of dialogue. I am not certain who first introduced the following subject and even if my beer quaffing blurred brain could recall whom it was I don’t feel it would be appropriate to repeat it in their absence.

The concluding line of an amusing anecdote told by one of us ended with the words “and the fingers on one of his hands was shorter than the other!”At which point D offered the following small nugget of random trivia “You know Jeremy Beadle’s only got half a hand. I mean he’s got stumpy fingers on one hand.” Both T and I agreed this was something we had noticed when he was still a popular entity on television many moons ago.

It was at this point that the conversation became slightly confused, due mainly to two factors. T’s partner, L, approached so he began to talk with her and secondly D was already sh1t faced so the conversation so far had been a minor miracle.

I still felt I had something to add to the subject of“freaky small handedness” so I offered the small utterance of “You know D, Chris Tarrant has a Beadlehand as well.” D turned to me in his drunken stupour, “Really?!”“Oh yes“, said I, “have you not noticed how he always used to sort of sit on one of his hands while he did W.W.T.B.A.Millionaire.”

“No, no I hadn’t. Really?!”

“Ask T, he’s a man of the world, he would probably know.”

“Hang on," said D. "Are you having me on?”

“No not at all, ask T”

“No, wait a minute, you are having me on. Is L’s last name Tarrant.”(A mental leap which I assume was obvious to D at the time.)

“What? No, just ask him.”

And so with a mildly humorous inevitability D turned to T and L, interrupted their conversation and asked

“L-is-your-last-name-Tarrant?”

L, “Err no.”

D towards T “T, did you know Chris Tarrant had a Beadle hand?”

I could do nothing more than stand behind D furiously crying with laughter as T shot me a bemused look as he tried to fathom what direction the conversation had taken since his presence in it moments before.

“He. Tarrant. What the? Milky what did you tell him?”

I shared my knowledge of Mr Tarrant’s limbs with T to which he replied “Really, I hadn’t noticed.” (he’s a little more trusting and less dramatic than D). I then pushed the boat out with my big finish of “And Tony Head, the actor who plays the Prime Minister in Little Britain has a Beadle hand as well.”

“The Prime Minister?” echoed D.

“Yep.”

“Really?! I’ll have to watch that again now.”

The whole night consisted of numerous conversations between the three of us which all essentially sounded like this. It was a good evening despite the lack lustre turn-out which D and T more than made up for.

I also seem to remember that the Live band were extremely good, if you’re ever in Twickenham on a Friday night and fancy listening to a decent guitar band playing songs by The Killers, ‘Phonics, U2, Kaiser Chiefs and the like, then set your sites towards the Twickenham Tup.

I enjoyed it and you just might.