TED’S PROBLEM

Here’s a little performance poem written back in the early 80s for venues like the Chelsea Tavern, far too politically incorrect to ever be accommodated these days in a volume of Australian writings, or likely even spoken on the boards, though you never know I might add it later in the year to my cut-down Warner tour featuring music, poems and  various writings. It’s a little Benny Hill but then in the toilet stalls of life Art often finds itself beside fart – and anyway what’s wrong with Benny?

TED’S PROBLEM (dave warner)

 Ted’s a mate of ours he’s not too good looking

Apparently the sewage burst while Ted’s Mum and Dad were fff …foneymooning

They say the scare it gave Ted’s mum was written on the baby’s face

Ted’s not too bright either always two lengths off the pace

Anyway Ted’s a mate of ours and not too good looking

He’s 26 and lives at home – he says he likes Mum’s cooking

Is it any wonder Ted’s story’s so heart rending

Truth is Ted is always sad because he cannot get his end in.

It almost happened once at the pyramids near Cairo

An American art student mistook our Ted for Miro

He was doodling on a postcard – Ted cannot spell so he does sketching

She saw the hieroglyphics and invited him to see her etchings

But later in her boudoir Ted’s very fishy she can smell it

And she let’s out a shriek as he jabs his finger in her palate

That’s the trouble with our Ted whenever girls befriend him

He goes completely apeshit because he’s never had his end in

Following this North African fiasco

Ted takes a skiing jaunt on the slopes of Kosciuszko

All day he keeps his ski-mask on so as not to cause affright

Biding his time patiently for snow drifts in the night

And sure enough the snow comes down and the Lodge is ice besieged

Leaving Ted the centre of attention of eighteen randy bleach haired divorcees

Ted whips it off and whips it out announcing every one he’ll cherish

But eighteen randy divorcees prefer to quit the Lodge and perish

A tear stains Ted’s one good eye as he surveys the soft white blanket

So close but he’s alone now and he knows he’ll have to … radio for help.

They charged Ted with manslaughter but his QC when defending

Pointed out it was not Ted’s fault he couldn’t get his end in.

We even took Ted down to Steve’s for the famous Sunday Session

What a wasted effort it only deepened Ted’s depression

It was a dumb idea none of us have even got a sniff despite our constant spending

How was skin-flint, bung-eyed Ted ever gonna get his end in?

Then one day last week Ted announced that he had scored

We said the only leg you’re pulling is the one that doesn’t touch the floor

But he won us over by vividly describing

The diet of debauchery on which he’d recently been thriving

And then in a revelation I saw the truth about this sexual melange

Ted was one of those – Ted had gone Orange!

 We tried to pull Ted back from the bottomless abyss

But Ted had got his end in and he was having none of this

He caught a plane to Oregon – sold the Superroo

Kept in touch though sent a picture postcard proclaiming each new screw

But a loser is a loser and ne’er a winner can be

And this culminated in Ted’s honeymoon with his thirteen brides to be

Posing for the wedding photo on the slopes beneath Pompei

 Pompei took one look at Ted and spewed its guts away

Immortalising Ted’s non pulchritude forever in black stone

So grotesque, passing gulls don’t squawk they only moan and groan 

But while Ted he may be gone he’ll never be forgotten

And just to prove it every Friday night we drink ourselves half-rotten

And when our eyes go moist at the thought of Ted’s untimely ending

We console ourselves with the fact that at last Ted got his end in.