Previously: Inspired by Kate Moss, T&A women's editor Thelma Gusset (pronounced "Gussay") has decided to launch her own fashion collection at a special show in the Boilermaker's Arms concert room with a little help from Daphne the Venerable Barmaid. Now read on "What a disaster!" sobbed Thelma to The Scribbler, who was sitting beside her in the snug of the Boilermaker's Arms looking nonplussed (as men tend to do when faced with a sobbing woman). "Why did I let myself be persuaded to do it on the cheap?"
"Because we didn't have any money to do it any other way," replied the hapless hack. But Thelma wasn't in any mood to listen.
"And don't try to console me, because I'm inconsolable!" she continued in a display of histrionics of a calibre not seen in Bradford since Mavis Doublebustle went completely over the top in Fagley Thespians' groundbreaking production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1968 ("The intensity of her performance triggered nervous breakdowns in a dozen member of the audience," reported the T&A reviewer).
The Scribbler left Thelma to wallow in her humiliation and pondered on the events of earlier that evening.
The omens hadn't looked good even as the invited audience trickled into the concert room.
Exeter Montgomery Cashew, the pub's ebullient proprietor, had called in favours from a couple of his chums Humphrey and Dumphrey, who had turned up in Bermuda shorts and matching pale-lemon baker's-boy caps. Graham the Gasman had dipped into the ranks of his depot's mixed-doubles arm-wrestling team and brought along three men and two women, all heavily tattooed.
Daphne had managed to enlist half a dozen members of her Thursday-morning line-dance-and-embroidery club, who had featured on Calendar the previous year as the only people in the country who could line-dance and embroider simultaneously.
And to make up the numbers there were several of the solitary day-long boozers who occupied the tap room from opening time to chucking-out, supping a lot and saying little, and a cluster of giggling teenagers from the youth club that Postman Parvez ran in his spare time.
Still, together they made up an audience of sorts. And it was to them that Thelma had prepared to preview her first collection, designed at great speed with input from Daphne and run up in haste by Tracy and Doreen of the Stitch Ups agency (motto: "Sew what?").
It might have helped if the models had been professionals. But the budget hadn't stretched to that. Instead Sonia (formerly Sebastian) Serple, the gender-realigned social worker, had managed to persuade several members of the Him-to-Her Support Group to offer their services. While some of them looked and walked very much like the women they had become, a few were less accomplished and tottered along on high heels. The audience was quick to grasp the situation and the giggling began.
Matters weren't helped by the performance of EMC, the self-appointed compere for the night, whose sinuses were under attack from pollen.
"And dow, sub bagical creations frob Bradford's fidest dew fashion talents," he began to sniggers. And matters went downhill from that point until Daphne swaggered on stage in one of her own designs, all polka dots and ribbons and bows, topped with a broad-brimmed hat.
"It's Widow Twanky!" yelled a wag in the audience.
"Oo were you when you were a fellah?" demanded another, just before Daphne hit him "What a scandal, my fashion debut ending in a police raid," sobbed Thelma. The Scribbler decided that remaining nonplussed was probably his best option.
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