After the Pantomime

By Susannah Donim

A spare time hobby slowly turns into a lifetime choice for Nick.

“Fiction needs to be credible; I should persuade the reader that the events in my stories could happen, if they haven’t already.” – Ian Rankin, author of the Rebus novels.

Prologue

“He’s behind you!” the kids all shouted, excitement, frustration and panic evident in their high-pitched voices.

I whipped round, just in time to see Idle Jack duck behind the table, but of course Sarah the Cook, my character, didn’t see him. I turned quickly back to the front, my skirt and petticoats swishing round with me.

“No, he isn’t!” I yelled at the audience.

Behind me, I knew Jack would have popped up again.

“Yes, he is!” they all yelled, even louder.

I whipped round again. Jack ducked again. I turned back.

“Oh no, he isn’t!” I yelled.

“Oh yes, he is!” they yelled back, as Jack popped up again to make rude gestures to my turned back – well rude, but not obscene. This was Panto. It was for kids.

I folded my arms under my enormous fake boobs, which hoisted them up, resulting in two outrageous and dramatic wobbles. I’d thought that was for the dads, though for some reason the laughter from the mums was louder than the chortles from the men. What is it about women and drag acts?

“Now, look, boys and girls…” I went on.

The kids were screaming with laughter now, and their mums and dads were clearly happy that their offspring were happy. I had the audience in the palm of my hand.

All Pantomime Dames are cross-dressers, even if most of them limit it to the Festive Season. But for some that isn’t enough…

 

Chapter 1 – Making Money and Telling Jokes

When people ask what I do for a living, I say I’m an entrepreneur. Most people look blank; some nod wisely. Almost everyone follows up with, “But what do you actually do?” And I try to explain.

My father was a ‘The Honourable’, that is, minor nobility – too minor for either of his sons to inherit a title, thank God. He used to describe himself as a Gentleman Farmer, by which he meant he was a large landowner. His holdings did include farms – lots of them – but the closest he got to agricultural labour was jumping down from his Range Rover to look at something one of his tenants wanted to show him. This would usually be cattle disease or plant blight, at which he would nod politely and authorise vet’s bills or the purchase of some fungus remedy. That was usually a no-brainer as my mother was senior partner in the local veterinary practice. Then Dad would climb back in the car and roar off to the golf club, having done his farming for the day.

My older brother and I were quite different – from Dad and from each other. We both went to a posh boarding school, where we made the kinds of friends and connections that would have enabled us to make lucrative careers in politics or show business, but Tom couldn’t wait to go on to Agricultural College and become an actual farmer. Dad was quite pleased, as he could see the business staying in the family. At college Tom learned more about farming than Dad ever knew, but the Old Man made sure he understood business too. Last I heard, Tom was doing very well and Father was enjoying a prosperous retirement.

I was even less interested in the land than Dad. I came down from Oxford with a decent Upper Second, but with no burning ambition for any particular career. I joined Atkinson Stern, one of the big finance houses, on the grounds that an accountancy qualification would always be useful, while I waited for inspiration to strike. It took me four years to get my Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) Level 4, which was about average when you’re working full-time. A promotion came with this but I couldn’t get excited about it. I was beginning to realise that I didn’t actually want to be an accountant, but that was OK. Most top businessmen were either accountants or lawyers who’d never practised accountancy or law. The world could still be my oyster.

I went home for a long weekend to celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday at the family manor. We all had a great time. We had some excellent dinners, mostly based on our own home-grown ingredients. We drank lots of beer and wine. Tom had just got engaged to a local girl and I met Josie, my sister-in-law-to-be, for the first time. She was gorgeous and clever and I was dead jealous of my brother. I’d had plenty of girlfriends but no long-term relationships, and there was no one special in my life at the moment. Sadly, Josie had no sisters, but she promised to introduce me to all her unmarried friends.

Tom took me round his fiefdom and described all his plans for expansion. He was very impressive. He wanted to start brewing cider. I hadn’t even realised we owned orchards.

On my last evening before returning to my London flat and my increasingly dull accounting job, Dad summoned me for a serious talk. He wanted to know what I planned to do with my life, and how he could help.

“Business,” I said, firmly. I wanted to sound definite in case he was going to try and persuade me to follow Tom into agriculture.

“You have contacts?” he asked. “From Oxford? Or the firm?”

And gradually, as we talked, the germ of an idea started to take shape. A couple of my Oxford pals were convinced they could take the business world by storm if they could only raise some seed money. A computer scientist I knew had an idea for an app he was sure would go viral. He described it as ‘a bit like Uber but for private planes instead of cabs’. I also knew a biochemist who had come up with an idea for a new hand-held blood sugar testing device. In three years at Oxford I had mixed widely through societies, sports and social events. As a junior auditor with a top firm I had met many more young people with bright ideas. I knew engineers, scientists and IT specialists. And wasn’t the government providing incentives to small businesses willing to take risks?

“Well… yes,” I said. “I know lots of clever people. I fancy myself as a Venture Capitalist.”

“Good, good,” he said, “and where will the money come from?”

“Well, er… banks, I suppose,” I said.

“And why would your friends need you? Why can’t they go to a bank themselves?”

“Ah… er…” Good point, Dad, I thought.

“How about this?” he said. “Let’s say a contact of yours has a really good idea, but he can’t find anyone to back him. You offer to provide the funds to prove the concept; that is, to develop the product or service just far enough to get proper funding. In exchange you will own, say, 20% of the business. They’ll have to set up as limited companies, of course, and you will own 20% of their shares. That will ensure you receive dividends if and when they show a profit, and you’ll get a big payment if they ever go public.”

“And where will I get the money?”

“From me,” he said. “Well actually, from your grandfather.”

Grandpa had died just over a year ago. He’d left Tom and me £10,000 each but the bulk went to Dad.

“I intend to take a Deed of Variation out in your favour,” he continued. “That means the money I give you will be deemed to have come from your grandfather’s estate and never been part of mine. So it won’t count as a gift from me and if I die it won’t be subject to inheritance tax.”

As an accountant I was aware of this cunning mechanism, but hadn’t thought of it at all till now.

“Fantastic! Thanks! But you will help me with this venture capital business, won’t you? I’d be really nervous on my own.”

“Sure, I’ll come along for your first few projects – just to keep an eye on you – but when I’m happy that you know what you’re doing, I’ll leave it all to you.” He thought for a moment. “Say you offer a pot of up to £100,000 to each venture. I can afford to sub you for maybe five of those. You don’t have to pay me back. The money will all come out of your legacy, but I will expect two or three of them to come off, or we’ll have to stop. Assuming some of them succeed, you can use your profits to sponsor more projects.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “This is amazing!”

“There is a limit on how much you can have through a Deed of Variation, but if I can survive another seven years after giving you more, that won’t count as my estate either.” He smiled, then got serious. “You’ll have to be tough, you know. You’ll need to exercise real judgement. You can’t afford to support charlatans; you’ll have to watch each of them really closely; and be prepared to pull the plug the minute you see that something isn’t going to pan out. Insist on weekly meetings; open-book accounting; your sign-off for any purchase over, say £1,000; and the rest of it.”

“I’ll need a decent lawyer.”

“Good point. Let me talk to Martin Holford.” Martin was Dad’s solicitor and looked after all his business affairs. “His son, Will, works for him now, you know. He’s as sharp as they come.”

Will Holford was in Tom’s year at school. I knew him quite well. It would be brilliant if he would come in with me.

* * *

And that was the first great turning point in my life. I’ll never know whether Dad expected me to make a go of it, or if he was just trying to make up for having handed everything agricultural to Tom on a plate, but I resigned my accounting job with no regrets. I let my London flat go and moved back to the family estate, which we just called the Manor. I returned my company car and bought a BMW 230i M Sport Coupé, which I immediately fell in love with.

I started ringing round my contacts. Some of them chickened out, not prepared to give up a steady job for the risks of a private venture, but others couldn’t agree fast enough.

Dad and I hauled these budding inventors over the coals. It felt like we were running a ‘Dragon’s Den’ and just like that programme, we didn’t agree to fund them all. Some ideas were too off the wall even for us. But we did find a handful of genuine prospects. In his spare time Will helped me draw up my first contracts and refused to take any payment until I started making my first profits.

Satisfied that we had established a robust process for assessing ideas with genuine promise, my father withdrew gracefully back to the manor, the farms, and the Golf Club.

* * *

Meanwhile Tom’s Stag Night came around. I was delighted to be asked to be his Best Man and began looking around for ideas for a suitable celebration. Going abroad was out of the question for the group. Those who were working couldn’t take the time off and those who weren’t couldn’t afford the cost. So I eventually settled on Open Mic Night at a popular nightclub near us. I reckoned that with a good meal and enough booze inside them most of the guys could manage five minutes of stand-up, however painful. At the very least Tom and I would be able to overcome our nerves and practise public speaking for our wedding speeches. I checked with Lee, the manager, and they had a policy of ‘no heckling’ first-timers, as we all would be of course. He agreed to give members of our party priority at the mic from ten till eleven pm one Friday night, as long as we spent generously on food and drink – which was unlikely to be an issue.

So after a huge meal and several pitchers of beer, I stepped up at ten o’clock to serve as host for the next hour. We had agreed a rough running order. No one was excused but I put the less willing at the back of the queue, so they would be spared if we ran out of time. I gazed out around the room. Beyond our table I could see maybe thirty or forty more revellers in the semi-darkness. Most were smiling indulgently. Some, who were clearly not fans of boisterous stag parties, were less welcoming.

I started off with a few clean(ish) jokes, all of which you’ve heard and none of which would make you laugh unless you were very drunk. Fortunately everyone was. I thought I’d try and stick to one-liners. That way, if a joke fell flat, I’d hit them with another one before they got too impatient. I soon learned it’s not the joke, it’s how you tell it; the Singer, not the Song.

“Hi everybody. My name’s Nick Rawlinson, and I’m drunk in charge of that table of degenerates over there. Each of them will be standing up to entertain you over the next hour, but believe me, it will seem much longer.”

Some chortles from my table. The best I could say about everyone else was that that they weren’t actually hostile – yet. Give them time.

“I’m actually surprised that so many of us were able to afford a night out like this,” I went on. “Our generation is really on the ropes. A few decades ago they had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no cash, no hope and no jobs. Please don’t let Kevin Bacon die…”

A laugh or two from the stags. A couple of smiles from the strangers. Pause just long enough, but not too long. Keep them on the ropes…

“I’ll just tell you a little about me and my family,” I continued. “My father has never learned to drive – in my opinion.”

I heard Dad’s unmistakable guffaw from our table. It was funny because it was true.

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she turned sixty. She’s ninety-seven now and we have no idea where the hell she is.”

Most of the other guys at the Stag Party table laughed, perhaps sympathetically, and a woman at a table to my right laughed out loud. I turned towards her and smiled.

“As for me, I like to play chess with old men in the park, but it’s hard to find thirty-two of them.”

She laughed again. Another couple of people at her table joined in. The Stag guys laughed out louder. Was this the trick to stand-up? Getting the audience in competition with each other, to see who could enjoy themselves more?

I waved at a table further back. “I was in this posh hotel and the maid knocked on my door. She said, I’ve come to turn down your bed. I said, well many women have in the past. Why should you be any different?”

I was beginning to feel that maybe they were coming over to my side…

“I’ve decided to sell my Hoover – it was just collecting dust.”

“I know a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.”

“You’ll have seen that Jeff Bezos, the Amazon guy, is getting divorced. When he’s over here he sometimes goes to a bar near a girl I know. He offered to buy her a drink so she ordered a pina colada. ‘It will be here in 2-3 working days,’ he said. She went home alone.”

Some outright laughs that time. A couple of people even thumped their table in appreciation. Okay, that seems to have warmed them up. Time to bring on Will, who had bravely volunteered to be the first of the ‘Stand-up Stags’.

I introduced each of the crew in turn for a five-minute spot. Some of them were terrible; some weren’t bad; Will and one other guy were actually quite good.

I popped up to take the mic back either when the five minutes was up, or when the poor sod was dying beyond hope of recovery. Each time I rolled out another couple of one-liners…

“My chemistry teacher told me I had a very good brain for science. Then he asked me to donate it to them.”

“Toughest job I ever had: selling doors, door to door.”

“How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?”

“Just because no one complains doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”

“I was a lazy kid. When I was twelve my parents entered me in a national apathy contest. I came second. I wasn’t that bothered. The kid that beat me didn’t even turn up.”

…before introducing the next sucker. The groom was on last. After introducing him, I retired to our table, my job done.

Tom was excellent. He told some decent jokes. Then he riffed on how he and Josie had met and how she had bowled him over. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, apart from tears of laughter, and – best of all – Josie wouldn’t have been offended if she’d been there. I realised along with everyone there that my big brother was really in love and I was dead jealous all over again. We had a great evening, and Tom and I both felt we could face the wedding crowd with some confidence.

Just as we were getting ready to go, Lee came up to me.

“You know, you weren’t bad at all,” he said. “Why don’t you come again? Just you, mind. I don’t think most of your mates had a clue.”

“I might just do that,” I said. “It wasn’t as tough as I expected. I quite enjoyed it.”

* * *

One of my earliest investment prospects was an online dress-making venture called MyOwnCouture.com. It was a joint effort by a young couple, Ruth Braddock, a fashion designer and her boyfriend, Eddy Devere, an engineer. Their concept was that the customer would log into their website and select from a range of dress types, shapes, styles, and materials. She could select a pattern, or upload one she had designed herself. She would add her measurements and a photo – the system would take any kind of image: jpgs, pngs, tifs, even PowerPoints. The software would then show an animated 3D model of what she would look like wearing the dress. It could be a still image, viewed from any angle, or she could be strutting down a catwalk, or dancing, or even walking down the aisle – they expected wedding dresses to be a big money-spinner for them. When the customer was satisfied with her design, the system would give her an all-inclusive price to make the dress. If she was happy with that, it would create the dress and mail it to her.

Ruth was a tall, brusque young woman from Manchester and was clearly the dynamo of the outfit. She led their presentation wearing a severe grey skirt suit with a white blouse, sensible black high heels, and schoolmarm glasses, a look she emphasised by binding her long, blonde hair up in a tight bun. Underneath this forbidding exterior she was quite pretty but she had clearly dressed to emphasise ‘professional’. No doubt she was used to being patronised and not taken seriously when she dressed more fashionably. Anyway it worked; I was able to focus on her proposition, not her.

She had done an honours degree course in Fashion at Bath Spa university, where she also managed to lose her Lancashire accent. She had taken an option in computer-aided design, which was how she came up with the concept of MyOwnCouture.com.

She was now interning at a London fashion house. She and Eddy had shared a flat while he was studying Mechanical Engineering. He had built two simple prototype machines for making clothes from Ruth’s digital designs as his third-year project. They were only ‘proof of concept’, and crude, being made from cheap parts scavenged from scrapped machinery, but one could cut to a computerised design, and the other could sew rough cloth pieces together to the same pattern. The machine tools were guided using numerical control (NC) and Ruth’s software. They weren’t precise or delicate enough to handle fragile fabrics, such as would be needed for wedding dresses or evening wear. Also, they were much too slow for the levels of mass production they had in mind.

They’d been to several bank-funded venture capitalists but none of them were forthcoming. One promised to reconsider if they could show them a fully working assembly line from website to finished product, with some evidence of customer interest. So what they needed from us was sufficient funding to build real, practical machines capable of fast precision work with any fabric. Then, they believed, they could attract more investors and move to large-scale production. I wondered whether £100,000 would be enough, but they promised that they didn’t need money for their personal expenses, so all of the investment would go into the business.

Dad was still helping me when we had our first meeting with Ruth and Eddy. We explored the business model in greater depth and other problems came to light. They would need a dyeing capability, otherwise they would have to hold stocks of every type of fabric in a wide variety of colours, and keeping so much inventory would be very expensive. Also, while they eventually hoped to automate the entire process, in the short term human operators would be needed to move the developing product between stages. This meant they would also need sizeable premises for all their machines, and warehouse space too, of course.

Personally I found the idea exciting, and Ruth in particular really impressive. In my naïvety I thought all the problems could be overcome, but Dad gave them a very hard time. He didn’t focus on the engineering or the accommodation. He wanted to test the business concept further.

“What about marketing?” he asked. “How will you draw customers to your site?”

Social media was their short answer, but they also explained their approach to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). As for marketing, they had an old college friend ready to join them as soon as they were well enough funded to pay him. Apparently he had cut his teeth in online marketing at Ocado, but hadn’t stayed long.

Dad persisted. “You’re going to get customers who lie or make mistakes about their measurements then complain when their dresses don’t fit.”

“OK, we’ll replace the dress and only charge for the raw materials wasted. We will also retain the copyright for everything we make, so we can offer any returns for sale via a different page of the website.”

I could sense Dad was vacillating. I pointed out that we had several underused farm buildings where they could set up shop. We could provide them rent-free until they started making money. The idea of long-term rental income won him over.

Eventually he agreed that their proposal was just the sort of thing we were looking for. We had lots more meetings and I joined the new business as a non-executive director.

MyOwnCouture.com was the first venture we agreed to support. More soon followed. I had never worked so hard in my life, meeting with each of the ventures every week and crawling through several sets of accounts. Eventually I had to close my books, especially as the word had got around about us. We had exhausted our legitimate contacts with great ideas and were now being pestered by crackpots we didn’t know.

So I committed to spend – I mean, invest – more than half a million of my father’s money over the next two years. For that I owned 20% of five promising businesses. I would have to live on my own meagre savings and my father’s largesse, while waiting for my ventures to start to pay off. I would be living at home in a self-contained annex of my father’s manor house for the foreseeable future.

I saw more of Ruth and Eddy than any of the others as they were based on our property. Dad and I had converted a nearby barn into offices with ethernet, Wi-Fi, Skype for Business, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony. We let MyOwnCouture.com have two rooms on the upper storey, a small office for Ruth as Managing Director, and a larger open-plan area with space for up to six desks. We also set about converting a derelict cowshed next to the barn into a workshop where Eddy would be able to install the machinery they would need. The agreement was that the space would be made available to MyOwnCouture.com for free until they had managed two successive quarters in profit, when they would need to start paying rent.

We ran cables connecting the office computers to servers in the cowshed. Eddy insisted on this to ensure that he had full control over their data. I respected his concern for security, and in any case I owned 20% of the company, and therefore of the IPR.

Eddy and I became friends as well as business partners. I was on good terms with Ruth too, but she was always a little aloof. She was a hard worker from a working-class family. She never said anything but I think she disapproved of me and my privileged background.

* * *

Working as hard as I was, and with no girlfriend to cheer me up, the highlight of my week now was Friday nights at the Club and Open Mic Night. It was all a bit ‘hit and miss’ – a mix of first-timers whose friends had told them they were funny, and more seasoned performers trying out new material. Some guys were really good, others were excruciating, but everyone had a good time. Lee eventually persuaded me to do a spot.

“Just do what you did at your brother’s Stag Night,” he said. “It went okay; well, not too badly; well, no one actually threw anything…”

I didn’t have any original material, but I could lift stuff off the internet as well as the next man. Anyway Lee assured me that it wasn’t the jokes, it was the delivery. I had enjoyed compering on Tom’s Stag Night and I didn’t seem to be troubled by stage fright. If they didn’t like me, so what? It was their loss.

So I had a go that Friday. I was on somewhere in the middle, but I was lucky in that the guy I was following was terrible. He was desperate to be liked and the audience sensed that. A lesson to learn. I decided to stick with one-liners, rather than risk ‘freebasing’ or social commentary.

“I’d like to start with some chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them. The first one is on the house.”

The crowd were paying attention. There were a few smiles and a few groans. I rushed on.

“I’ve just been to the opticians. He told me I was colour-blind. It was a real bolt from the orange.”

A few laughs this time. Don’t pause. You’re not looking for feedback. You’re in control, not them.

“When people say ‘it’s always in the last place you look’. Of course it is. Why would you keep looking after you’ve found it?”

“If women are so bloody good at multitasking, how come they can’t have a headache and sex at the same time?”

Male guffaws, plus more than one female giggle. That’s the English for you; they really do like to laugh at themselves.

“In Norway, how does the guy who drives the snowplough get to work in the morning?”

They had to think about that one, but when the light dawned, some real laughter followed.

My Careers Advisor used to say, ‘Don’t dress for the job you’ve got, dress for the job you want.’ I later found out she was a dinner lady dressed up as a Careers Advisor.

My girlfriend complains I don’t keep my place tidy. So I put a wash on and did some hoovering in my underpants. I wondered, how did my bollocks get so dusty?

Paddy went to his local priest and asked him if prayer could help him with his hearing. The priest said of course, and that he would pray for him. Next time they met, the priest said he’d prayed for him and asked about his hearing. “Oh, I don’t know, Father,” said Paddy, “it’s not till Wednesday.”

I kept them coming and got a proper round of applause when my five minutes were up. It was the most satisfying thing I’d done for months. I thought it might even be something I could be good at with some practice. I went back the following week with more plagiarised material. I started going regularly and when the wedding came along, my Best Man speech went down well.

Over a few weeks, I got to know the other regulars. We swapped experiences and I learned even more. As my confidence grew, I started trying some of my own ideas, anecdotes, observational humour. I tried to analyse what worked and what didn’t, and came to the conclusion there were three key strategies for getting laughs. First, something could be genuinely funny; that would be the best material. Second, you can try to take the audience by surprise, because most people’s reaction to being surprised is to laugh, assuming they don’t feel threatened, of course. And third, people laugh because they think they’re expected to laugh, even though the so-called joke isn’t actually funny at all. You see this latter category with ‘alternative’ comics on TV. Often they’re just cruel and abusive, but they’re mocking someone in public life who may be unpopular, so the studio audience feel bound to join in. Also, because the comic is famous and the studio audience are apparently wetting themselves with laughter, you laugh. Try repeating the joke to a friend who didn’t see the programme. I doubt hilarity will result and it’s not just that you ‘can’t tell a joke’.

I didn’t encourage my friends or family to come and watch me perform. I told them it would make me too nervous. My mother agreed happily, saying it would make her too nervous. Nevertheless Eddy, Tom and Josie came for one of the evenings when I was on. When Eddy and I left, Ruth was still in the office at the farm. She didn’t seem to notice us going.

After my spot I joined the others at their table. I invited Lee over to join us for a drink. He brought Frank, our occasional pianist, with him, along with a couple of bottles of house plonk.

Tom slapped me on the back. “That was great, Nick. You’re really getting the hang of this stand-up stuff. You should consider going professional.”

Lee and Frank snorted and grinned at each other.

“Thanks, but it’s only a bit of fun,” I said. “I could never do this in front of a paying audience. I’d be terrified.”

They all hastened to reassure me, but I was under no illusions. I knew they were only being polite. I reckoned I wasn’t bad for an amateur, but I was a country mile away from professional standard.

“By the way, I noticed you’ve had no women at the mike all evening,” Josie observed. “Is that usual?”

“Sadly, yes,” said Lee. “Seems like ages since we last had a girl doing a slot.”

“What about Suzy Queue?” said Frank. “She was a regular here.”

“She went off to Uni nearly two years ago, and has never been back,” said Lee.

“Why is that?” Josie mused. “It’s not like there are no great women stand-ups – there’s Joan Rivers, Victoria Wood, Jo Brand, Sarah Millican. Not to mention a whole bunch of younger ones. We saw lots at the Edinburgh Festival last year.”

We all fell silent, thinking of our favourite female comedians.

“Yeah, it’s a shame we don’t have any now,” I said. “I’ve found some great one-liners for women comedians.”

“Well, why don’t you do them?” said Josie.

“No, no, they only work when it’s a woman telling them.”

“Sure, but you could pretend, couldn’t you?” said Lee, clearly taken with the idea. “There are no rules on Open Mic Night.”

“A drag act, you mean? No, I couldn’t…”

Could I? More importantly, why would I want to?

“Why not? A wig, some make-up. You’d be great,” said Josie.

“And a man telling jokes as a woman wouldn’t be patronising at all, would it?” I said, sarcastically.

“No,” said Lee. “It’d be satire.”

I stopped to think about it. There was a gleam in Josie’s eye.

* * *

She wouldn’t drop the idea, and she soon got Tom on her side. With both of them nagging me over the next couple of weeks, it was hard to resist the pressure. We got together at their house one Friday night after another session at the Club with no female comics at Open Mic Night.

“Why don’t you want to do it?” she insisted. “You’d get lots of laughs! That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

“They’d be laughing at me,” I objected. “Good stand-up is about getting them to laugh with you.”

“I think it depends on your attitude.” Tom made a rare contribution to the argument. “If you look good, and are confident, you’ll soon get the audience on your side. That’s how the best Drag Artists and Pantomime Dames do it. The audience all know you’re really a man, but it’s like you’re sharing a private joke with them.”

“That’s right,” said Josie. “Think of Danny La Rue, Terry Scott, Les Dawson. You create a character, with exaggerated female gestures and mannerisms, and tell jokes from a woman’s point of view. All the girls in the audience will love it – you’re a man who seems to appreciate and understand women – maybe even envies them!”

I frowned. I began to see what she was driving at.

“I have no idea about clothes, hair, make-up, or anything like that…” I said.

“Oh don’t worry, I can help you with all that,” Josie said. “That’s the easy part. You’ll need to practise though. You probably won’t get the walk or the stance right till you’re in costume.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting I go outside dressed as…”

She steamrollered over my objections.

“And you need a name. It has to be feminine and maybe slightly old-fashioned…?”

“Elsie, Edna, Gladys, Gertie…” suggested Tom. Josie made a face. “Nancy, Nellie, Bessie, Daisy…”

“Daisy!” she shouted. “That’s it! What about a surname?”

“Duck?” I said.

“Ha ha. But it should be something beginning with ‘D’. How about ‘Duquesne’? Daisy Duquesne – that sounds a bit like a drag artist, doesn’t it?”

“How do you spell ‘Duquesne’?” Tom asked.

“No idea,” said Josie. “Does it matter? Now: clothes. Obviously nothing of mine will fit you, but something of my mum’s might work. She’s a bit of a fashionista, always in trouble with my Dad for spending too much on clothes. In fact, this week she mentioned she’s been stripping her wardrobe to make room for new stuff. She’s got several boxfuls waiting to go to the church jumble sale. Let me go and get my tape measure.”

She soon had all my measurements. It seemed the decision had been taken. I was going to perform at the next Open Mic Night as Daisy Duquesne, comedienne.

* * *

Meanwhile Ruth and Eddy were making impressive progress with MyOwnCouture.com. Most of my seed money was going on second-hand machinery that Eddy would adapt to their needs, but they also hired two new graduates on six-month contracts: Mike, a young engineer to help Eddy, and Vicky, a programmer to support Ruth. Will also popped in from time to time to offer free legal advice when Ruth needed to set up a contract with a supplier. I told him he was the only lawyer I had ever known not to charge exorbitant sums for five minutes’ work. He laughed and told me not to tell anyone as he would be thrown out of the Law Society. In any case he was keeping a tab and would sting me for a fortune as soon as he thought I could afford it.

Ruth and Eddy had also persuaded Mo, the marketing guy from Ocado, to join them on a one-year performance-based arrangement. During that time he would get a small fee for each hit on the website and a bigger sum for each actual order. I was concerned when I heard he had been ‘let go’ by Ocado, but they assured me it was part of a redundancy programme, not something he’d done or failed to do. Anyway he seemed to make a good start with us. He spent days locked in with Ruth going through the ‘customer experience’; that is, what a potential customer sees when trying to access and navigate the website. It needed to be easy and enjoyable to use for someone with no technical experience. Organisations can easily lose potential customers when their website is badly organised, and Ruth was very keen that shouldn’t happen.

Mo very quickly redesigned the website to increase its ‘stickiness’. He also did some SEO to make sure internet browsers would direct people to MyOwnCouture.com if their searches included any relevant keywords. He also incorporated a routine that counted views of the website, and the number of visitors who browsed for more than a minute. That would generate a ‘pop-up’ box which asked the potential customer for her contact details (only her email address, if she wanted), so that we could send her updates and special offers. He also set up the site to accept payment using PayPal, Worldpay, or by taking the customer’s credit card details. Finally he began looking at attracting advertisers to the site to generate revenue, although Ruth was keen that it wasn’t overloaded with annoying adverts.

He got his first fee – five pence – when the site detected its first visitor, a day after his changes were published. Although this didn’t turn into an actual order, he insisted on buying doughnuts for everyone in the office to celebrate.

He and Ruth also began talking to other companies in the fashion business about mutual advertising opportunities, but this was slow going because most of them saw them as potential competition.

My other ventures were taking longer to get going, so I was able to go into Ruth’s office most days to help. With my accounting background my most useful contribution was to manage the little company’s finances, especially given that all their funding came from my venture capital anyway. I was now a part-time Finance Director; so much for being a lazy non-exec.

I commandeered a desk in the open plan office, close to Ruth’s domain. When Vicky was in with her and her door was closed, I got used to visitors asking me whether she was in and could she be disturbed? I frequently pointed out that I was not her secretary, but I stopped objecting when it became apparent I was wasting my breath. Sometimes she even diverted her phone to me and I took her messages. I drew the line at fetching her coffee, but like everyone else I offered when I was making myself one.

“I suppose I’ll need to hire a proper secretary at some point,” she said. Cheek!

* * *

Over the next few weeks I got to know Ruth, Vicky and Mo quite well as we worked together upstairs in the barn. Mike and Eddy tended to spend most of their time in the cowshed – Mike told everyone they were ‘shedding cows’. All we knew was that they were doing arcane techy stuff with their old cloth cutting and fabricating machinery, and that as yet there hadn’t been any loud explosions, just a lot of low humming and throbbing. Once a week the six of us would take lunch at a local hostelry, ostensibly for a progress meeting, but really for a thorough and methodical real ale tasting.

I couldn’t make Ruth out. She was usually cordial, even warm on occasions, but she avoided any conversation that wasn’t work-related. Even odder, that also seemed to apply to Eddy – and he was now her fiancé. Come to think of it, I never saw any real signs of affection between them. Even though I knew they shared a flat in the nearest town, they never seemed to arrive or leave together. When I asked about that, Ruth explained that their different roles often required them to visit clients and suppliers independently, so they had to travel in separate cars. But I knew that at this stage of their work they rarely had to go out. Ruth was almost always in the office, and Eddy in the workshop. But Ruth made it clear that further nosey enquiries regarding their travel arrangements would be unwelcome.

With the seed money I had provided dwindling rapidly, Ruth had to set a date for a presentation to the one bank that had expressed an interest. So that became the ‘do or die’ moment we were all working toward. It was about three months away, just before Christmas. MyOwnCouture.com would need a fully functional system by then and some evidence of demand and fulfilled orders.

* * *

Another deadline I now had to meet was Daisy Duquesne’s debut. I was summoned back to Tom and Josie’s a week before the big night for my costume fitting. Josie ordered me to shave as closely as I could just before going round to their place. At first I had been quite excited about appearing as Daisy, but I was beginning to get cold feet. I was pretty sure I would look stupid dressed as a woman, and people might think the whole thing was in poor taste. I had begun to look forward to Open Mic Nights at the Club. I didn’t want to be ostracised.

When I rang the doorbell Tom let me in, already wearing his outdoor coat. He was off to the pub.

“It seems you’re her latest project,” he laughed. “Nice to see her working on someone else for a change. I guess I must be the finished product.”

“As if!” Josie had heard his parting words. “You’re still very much a work in progress. It’s just that Nick’s transformation is more urgent.”

She waved her husband goodbye. He grinned and raised his eyes to heaven.

“Good luck, mate,” he said, stepping out into the night.

“Come on,” Josie said to me, “lots to do.”

I had barely taken my coat off before she was dragging me upstairs to their spare bedroom. There were several large cardboard boxes on the floor. I looked at her enquiringly.

“I picked all these up from my mum’s this afternoon. There’s bound to be something you can use amongst all this lot. Now, first we have to decide what kind of woman you’re going to be,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Do I have a choice?”

“Well originally I thought you were just going to be a drag act – you know, a caricature of a woman, telling jokes from a female perspective. A bit like a Pantomime Dame.”

“Well, not that,” I said. “Pantos are mainly for kids. I don’t do those kinds of jokes.”

“I know, and anyway there’s a risk that the whole thing could come across as sexist – misogynistic – if you’re not careful. You could get booed off the stage.”

“They’re not usually that bad on Open Mic Night. They know we’re all amateurs, and they make allowances.”

I was trying to convince myself as much as her.

“Maybe, but it’s still a risky strategy, isn’t it?” she said. “The jokes need to be warm, from the heart, showing you understand and sympathise with the female condition. I don’t think you can do that if you’re a caricature of a woman.”

“I think I see what you mean,” I said. “Maybe we should forget the whole thing?” I was a little disappointed for some reason.

“Or we could make your disguise good enough that you don’t come across as a Drag Queen.” She stopped to let me digest this. “Ideally so that some of the audience think you actually are a woman, and plenty more aren’t sure.”

“That’s impossible!” I said, confidently. “I’m a man. I could never be that convincing.”

“Well I’d like to see what we can do. You are a little… androgynous, you know,” she said.

“Oh, thanks very much! I know I’m not big and butch like Tom, but…”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t make you any less attractive. And you’re what? Five-eight? On the tall side for a woman but not exceptional. And you’re very slim. With a little judicious padding, you could have a very believable hourglass figure. I originally planned on just a wig and make-up, but now I’m thinking we can do much better. This is going to be fun!”

“Let me guess – you had lots of dressing-up dolls when you were little?”

She wasn’t listening. She had upended one of the boxes onto the bed.

“When she first started putting on weight after having us kids, Mum bought herself some ‘shapewear’,” Josie was saying, as she rummaged through her mother’s discarded lingerie. “She doesn’t really bother with that anymore, so she’s giving most of it away.”

“What exactly is ‘shapewear’?” I had to ask.

“It’s a foundation garment designed to hold you in tightly and make your figure look better, maybe to help you get into a dress you’re really too fat for. So it’s usually made of strong, controlling material, like spandex.” She continued to rummage. “I’m really looking for a one-piece… Ah, here we are! This is still in its original packaging. I don’t think she can ever have worn it.”

Well that was good news anyway. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to wear her mother’s old underclothes. Josie was breaking it out of its polythene wrapping and cutting off the cardboard labels.

“See, if this will fit, it will give you a nice bust and bum with a little padding, and also hold your tummy in. Strip off!”

“What here?” I said. “In front of you?”

“Oh, you can go in the bathroom next door if you’re shy.”

I took the strange garment from her and headed for the bathroom. She started packing all the other underclothes back in the box they came from.

The thing she gave me was a bit like a woman’s one-piece bathing costume. It was a dull grey colour and looked far too small for me, but I soon found out it stretched – a lot. I stripped naked and gingerly stepped into the lacy leg holes. When I tried to pull it up I found it was no problem getting it over my buttocks but progress slowed when it reached my waist. Now it was nearly at full stretch and it took quite a lot of effort to work it up further. I eventually managed to get it up as far as my chest and was able to wriggle my arms through the shoulder straps. I tugged at the edges around my thighs and, er, bust, to try and make it more comfortable.

I turned to look at myself in the mirror. I looked stupid. The shapewear was tight around my waist but a bit floppy up top and down below, apart from around my genitals. Apparently my member was finding the whole thing exciting, even if I wasn’t.

There was no escape though. Somewhat apprehensively, I returned to the bedroom. Josie made no attempt to hide her amusement.

“Well your brother may be taller than you,” she giggled, “but you match up pretty well in terms of… (ahem) endowment.”

I blushed. While that was nice to hear, I still felt like an idiot, dressed – half-dressed – as I was.

“This stupid thing is a terrible fit,” I said, plucking at the loose material round my bum and non-existent bust.

“Well, obviously,” she said. “It’s shapewear. It’s female-shaped, and you’re not – yet…”

When she had finished chuckling, she walked around me appraisingly.

“It’s holding your tummy in nicely,” she said, “though it looks like it’s nearly at full stretch. Now we need to pad out your bust and backside until those areas are fully extended too. I’ve got some cotton wool for now. It’ll probably be a bit lumpy. We may need something better for the night.”

“Such as what?”

“I dunno… modelling clay? Plasticine? Maybe Polyfilla?” she grinned. “I think we have some in the workshop.”

She grabbed a huge roll of cotton wool and started forcing lumps of it into the shapewear’s padded bra and rear. I gradually took on a believable feminine form. She packed more cotton wool into the sides of the bra, which pushed the flesh of my chest together and produced a surprisingly realistic cleavage.

“That’s interesting,” she said, walking around behind me. “It’s got sort of pockets across the backside. I think you’re supposed to stuff padding in these…”

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked, naïvely. “I mean, why would a woman want to make her bum bigger?”

Josie laughed. “You don’t get out much these days, do you, sweetie?”

She happily filled the panels across my butt with sheets of cotton wool. But she had been right about the texture of the stuffing. It was lumpy and tended to shift when I moved, like I had some horror movie parasite moving about under my skin. My new rump looked uneven, like two big, different-sized balls of congealed porridge. It also wasn’t terribly comfortable to sit on.

What was worse was that when I turned suddenly, a large lump of cotton wool popped out of the bra, ruining my cleavage and making my bust even more obscenely asymmetrical, like I’d had a partial mastectomy.

Josie cursed and tried to make some repairs. First, she re-stuffed my bra, packing the padding in more tightly and taking me from a B to a C cup, the spandex stretching obligingly. Then she had me lie down on my front on the bed. She ran her hands over my backside to try and smooth it out. When she paused for breath, we turned to the wardrobe’s full-length mirror to evaluate her efforts. I didn’t look quite so stupid now. Below my still-obviously-male head was a fairly convincing, if slightly plump female body – if you ignored the incongruous body hair.

“Do you want to shave your legs?”

“Hell, no!”

“So not a skirt or dress then. Well I don’t think any of Mum’s slacks will fit you. You’re too tall, and even with the shapewear your waist is too thick. I guess it’ll have to be leggings.”

She pulled out another box which was full of pants and stockings. She found a pair of what looked like thick black tights.

“Mum’s about five-five. These are 28-inch inseam, and XL. They should fit you.”

I had no idea what any of those words meant, but I took the garment she handed me and sat down on the bed to pull it on, as instructed.

“You need to pull it right up to your waist. It should stretch that far.”

This was nearly as hard work as the shapewear. Josie helped me to make sure there were no wrinkles or ladders, and eventually we succeeded in getting the thing on me to her satisfaction. The material was thick enough to conceal my leg hair.

“This should work,” she said. “It’s great – they look like skin-tight pants. Now you need a top. Most of Mum’s will be too small for you around the chest and shoulders, but maybe you can wear one of her shorter dresses as a sort of smock.”

Josie emptied another box onto the bed. This one was all dresses and blouses. She found a large white dress with a floral pattern.

“This should work. Also it has a high neck, which will hide your Adam’s apple, such as it is.”

The dress was a little tight around the shoulders but I got it on easily enough. As she had predicted, it came down to about mid-thigh, and it looked like I was wearing a smock over skin-tight black leggings.

“It’s got three-quarter length sleeves. You may have to shave your forearms.”

“I can live with that,” I said. “I’m more concerned that this is the sort of thing women wear when they’re pregnant – and with the padding you’ve given me…”

“That’s a great idea!” she said.

“Hang on! I didn’t mean…”

“We wouldn’t have to squeeze your waist any more, and the extra bump will help to conceal your… masculinity. And you can add in some pregnancy jokes! Let me see if I can squeeze a little more padding around your tummy.”

I shut up before she had any more bright ideas. After a bit more pushing cotton wool into my shapewear and moving it around, I had developed a substantial ‘spare tyre’.

“That’s great,” she said, happily. “You look about three months pregnant.”

“I’ll need a whole new act,” I grumbled.

“But it’ll be completely original. They won’t have seen anything like it before on Open Mic Night!”

“That’s for sure. I’ll probably have doctors and midwives coming to tell me off for endangering my baby’s health. And I won’t be able to drink!”

Josie wasn’t interested.

“I think we’ll try the wig I got you next, and maybe some make-up and jewellery. Oh and I think I have some old clip-on hoop earrings from before I had my ears pierced.”

She led me into the main bedroom and sat me down at her dressing table, which was covered in complicated-looking feminine implements: combs and brushes, rollers, a hair dryer, and oodles of cosmetics.

She began by pinning my hair back and covering my face with foundation.

“I’m not going to do a proper job tonight, just try and get a rough picture of what you might look like. I need to check whether the make-up I have works with your colouring. We should also paint your nails for the actual performance. Don’t cut them again until after that. We need them as long as possible.”

“This does seem like a lot of trouble to go to,” I said, “just because the Club has no female comics, and I’ve dug up some jokes for a woman to tell. Wouldn’t it be better for me to give them to you, and you could do a spot?”

“God, no!” she said, appalled. “I could never do stand-up. I’d be terrified.”

“You think I’m not?”

“No, actually,” she said. “You seem to be in your element when you’re in front of an audience. Tom said he realised that at the Stag Night, and I’ve seen it several times since then. You have great timing and you really know how to engage an audience.”

“Actually I have no idea how I do that. It just seems to… happen.”

“So you’ll be great as Daisy. Just think of her as a costume for a performance. Now shut up and let me work or I’ll put your eye out with this mascara wand.”

It took her another half an hour of experimentation till she was satisfied. She kept up a running commentary of what she was doing. I finished up with a light, daytime make-up – a little mascara, eyeshadow, pink lipstick and some blush on my cheeks.

“I think we’ll have to pluck your eyebrows…” she began.

“I don’t think so, Josie,” I said, intending to be firm.

“Just a little,” she said. “You won’t notice any difference when you’re back to being Nick. Promise! Anyway, for the moment I’ve covered your actual eyebrows with powder and I’ll draw on some thin feminine ones with eyebrow pencil.”

When she’d finished with my face she reached for the wig.

“We’ve had this for ages. It’s real human hair and very good quality. My great aunt bought it when she had to have chemo, but she hardly ever wore it. She found it too itchy and she just wore a turban.”

It was an ordinary mousy brown colour, much more realistic than some Dolly Parton blonde affair. I just hoped it hadn’t retained any of whatever it was that Josie’s great aunt had found itchy.

“I might get you a proper wig cap for the big night, but your own hair isn’t too long so it’ll be okay for now.”

She pulled the wig down firmly over my head, then spent ten minutes putting the hair up in a high bun, with a few wispy bangs down the sides.

“It’s a bit crumpled from having been in a box for a while, but I can wash and style it before your big night. Now, let me just put these earrings on you and you can stand up and see yourself in the full-length mirror.”

She clipped two big hoop earrings on my lobes, which didn’t hurt – much. Then she grabbed my hand and pulled me up to the wardrobe mirror.

“Ta daa!” she cried. “Meet Daisy Duquesne!”

‘Ta da’ indeed! In the mirror was a tall, plump brunette, not pretty exactly, but not unattractive either. I turned sideways. Daisy was obviously pregnant, but not much more than late first trimester.

“I think it’s fair to say that no one would suspect you of being a man,” said Josie, “at least not at first glance.”

I nodded, fascinated. “You’re right,” I said. “This could work.”

“At least until you open your mouth,” she said, with a frown. “You’re going to have to work on speaking in a higher register. I’m sure you can do it. You don’t have a deep voice. Tenor, I assume?”

“I haven’t actually sung properly since school chapel, and I was a treble then. I gave up choir when my voice broke.”

“Well you’ll just have to find that boy soprano again.” She stood back to appraise me more thoroughly. “I don’t like the way you’re standing though – too butch.”

She reached out and pulled my left foot forward and bent my left knee. Then she placed my left hand on my hip. Walking round to my other side she bent my right arm at the elbow and turned my hand down at the wrist.

“This feels really effeminate,” I said.

“Dressed like that you look feminine, not effeminate,” she corrected. “The point is, women use their arms for balance more than men do, especially if they’re wearing heels. You’ll have to learn to move like a woman. High heels would definitely help you get the hang of it, but I don’t think we have any that will fit you. What size do you take?”

“Nines.”

“There’s about a size and a half difference between men’s and women’s sizing, so your men’s 9 is about a women’s size 10½. That’s huge for a woman. Mum and I both take sixes. You usually have to go to specialist shops like Long Tall Sally for sizes bigger than eights.”

I wondered how she knew all this stuff, but she’d clearly been doing her research.

“You may have to wear your trainers, but they’re not very feminine. I do know someone I can call though. Leave that with me.”

“Okay. So are you going to help me get this lot off now?”

“That would be a shame after all my hard work,” she grimaced. Then her eyes lit up. “I know – let’s go down to the pub and show Tom!”

“I can’t go out like this!” I cried.

“Why on earth not? You look great, and you’ll meet far fewer people there than you’ll be performing for on Open Mic Night!”

I tried to find a viable excuse.

“Oh don’t worry,” she said, pre-empting any further protest. “Nobody’s going to try and pick up a pregnant lady. They’ll probably all be glued to the football anyway.”

She went over to her chest of drawers and fished out some items.

“Here’s a spare handbag and a purse you can use. I’ll put your lipstick in. Go and get your money and keys and stuff.”

I stepped into my trainers. I struggled to bend down and reach over my baby bump to tie my shoelaces. I slung my handbag over my shoulder and followed her out into the night.

At some point I was really going to have to find a way of saying ‘no’ to my brother’s wife.

Author’s Note: As freely admitted above, when it comes to telling jokes Nick is a plagiarist. The author therefore wishes to acknowledge the great comedians from whom his jokes have been, er, nicked: Tim Vine, Ken Dodd, Bill Bailey. My humble apologies to any I have failed to acknowledge.