E-Type blunder and a bonging catastrophe

The Day I Starred In Pantomime. I was very young. I must have been about five as it is one of those fuzzy early memories.

At the time we lived in Leek, a mill town in Staffordshire, and my mum and dad took us to the panto at the town's theatre, which will have been long demolished now.

And I was one of those kids who was called up in a break in the show to go on stage. I very much doubt that I did so willingly, being very shy, but there was probably mention of getting a bag of sweets which swayed the decision.

As the packed audience watched, I glowered back at them, red-faced, uncomfortable and embarrassed.

The compere, who I vaguely recall as a Norman Vaughan type, went down the line asking us what we wanted for Christmas.

"A train set," the first little boy said, or something similar.

"A doll," said the little girl (or something similar).

Then he came to me.

"And, young man, what do you want for Christmas?"

To me it was a completely stupid question with an absolutely obvious answer.

"An E-Type Jaguar," I responded.

At this there were howls of laughter from the audience. I was bemused. What was funny?

For those readers who don't know, an E-Type Jaguar was, and actually still is, a highly desirable sports car.

My answer probably had extra comic effect because as a child I had a Churchillian speech defect, so Jaguar came out with a very soft and mushy "j", making it like a line growled by Churchill in one of his famous speeches.

Incidentally I had speech therapy later to get rid of it. Interesting the way the therapist did it. It was something like putting a "d" in front of such words, and introducing a sounded "t" into similarly troublesome words like catch. So for Jaguar you would say d-yag-u-ar and for catch you would say ca-t-shuh. But I digress.

I did get a bag of sweets but I never did get the E-Type. The sweets were a grave disappointment, being absolutely disgusting. Funny the things you remember.

The nearest I got to an E-Type was a Mini Cooper. The reviews all talked about their "go kart-like handling". There's a hairpin bend at Snedshill in Telford where it joins the Eastern Primary road and I once tested its "go kart-like handling" there.

For years afterwards I would look at the crash barrier to see if the smear of white paintwork from my Mini Cooper was still showing.

What the reviews didn't say was that the "go kart-like handling" is somewhat less "go kart-like" if the road is wet.

Then there was the show at Pool Hill School in Dawley when I was about nine – I think it must have been a nativity play. My unwilling musical role was to bang one of those bongers at various points on one of those things with a little horizontal metal bar.

Being very shy, as I know I've said already, the prospect of going on stage to bang the bonger in front of the parents was not an attractive one and, as it seemed a very minor and unimportant part in the proceedings, when the time came I remained hiding in the audience hoping that my absence would not be missed.

Then the time did come for the bonger to be banged and, horrors, Mr Haynes, the headmaster, whose first name I discovered much later was Cyril but of course in those days nobody knew such things, said: "Where's Toby Neal? He's supposed to be banging the bonger!" That last sentence is a free translation.

So not only did I end up banging the bonger anyway, but I had to get up from the audience and walk on stage with everybody watching me to do so.

I was very shy, as I know I've said two times before, but it is really the point, as I think shyness is a great unrecognised disability, having a crushing effect on the lives of sufferers.

It certainly didn't come from my dad. Whenever the family left to go on a Welsh holiday, in a loaded Vauxhall Victor estate with his home-made wood and canvas canoes strapped to the roof, we dreaded it if he stopped off at a shop to get something – usually Bostik to fix leaks in the canoes.

He would go in and never reappear. In the end somebody would have to go in to drag him out. He would be chatting to people, effortlessly making friends out of perfect strangers.

A great gift, I've always thought.