Good Evening
from the play by Peter Cook & Dudley Moore
Dudley: Roger, here is your Mother's signet ring she wanted you to have and wear for her. Took me two hours to get it off her bloody finger. And if you wouldn't mind wearing this black armband in memory of your Mother. I know she'd be pleased because she sewed it especially for you......Roger, your Mother left this life as she lived it, screaming her bloody head off. I remember it very well, it was a Wednesday afternoon. Uncle Ralph had come in for a cup of tea, we hadn't seen him for twenty years and we were, you know, talking about when we used to walk over the cliffs at Leigh on Sea watching the boats come in -- he's a boring bugger, that Ralph -- once every twenty years is good enough for me. Anyway, Mother was lying very quietly, very still, almost at rest and suddenly, without a word of a lie, she sat bolt upright in bed, she went, "Aargh" (screams) Her false teeth hit the ceiling and that was it. Your Mother never did anything by halves -- both sets -- POW -- hit the electric light bulb, the bulb fell to the floor, smashed, matron came running in, slipped on the broken glass, hit her head on the bedpost, killed outright...Nurse Oviatt, hearing the commotion, came roaring in from the President Roosevelt Memorial Ward, tripped over matron and went flying out the window. She fell five stories onto a car that was coming into the forecourt. It was an open car, she killed herself and the two passengers. The weight of the three dead bodies on the accelerator took that car roaring into the catering department, killed seven nurses, knocked ten orderlies into a huge vat of boiling potatoes. Well naturally, the valve on the vat got stuck and there was a tremendous explosion -- and the first floor collasped. Well, you can imagine what that did to the second and third floors. Anyway, son, I won't bore you with the details -- suffice it to say, that I was the sole survivor. Nine hundred and eighty-seven people wiped out in a flash of your mother's teeth.