As I gaze around that vast music hall, The Palladium,
I shout a fervent ‘Good luck!’ to my favourite singer, Miss Claribella Constance,
and am rewarded with a wave from behind the stage curtain.

I remembered when, as a young girl, a roving gypsy, Ma McDonogool, 
prophesied, ‘Her heart is full of high notes, yet I sense there is unfulfilled passion.’

As a teenager, I’d thought I was in there! until I received a punch in the solar plexus.
I should have remembered she was St Swithins School boxing champion,
and had a neat right hook, when I enticed her to share a bottle of cider and then tried for a kiss.

However, keen to impress my mates, I took it as an opportunity to boast.
But my indiscretion and her tempestuous nature set
her on a torturous path out of our village, and left me pitifully forlorn.

For when farmer Smithins, eager to add her to the list adorning his bedpost,
sought her maidenhead on a frosty night, after promising a ride on his horse,
she kicked him in the Donegals, shouting, ‘You’re not adding me to your conquests!’

‘I’m an artist,’ she shouted, ‘and what’s more can sing like a fog horn,’
and she did, then stole his trusty steed Run Like The Wind,
who laughed and pranced at his newfound freedom.

My love remaining unrequited, and hearing tales of an operatic rider in wayside villages,
I tracked her to Nottingham where I learned she’d established
a reputation as a warbling waitress in a Robin Hood theme bar,
with Run Like The Wind giving kids dressed as peasants rides in Sherwood Forest.

Alas, her heart broken by a bow and arrow salesman, she left,
after sobbing her heart out to a very camp Jodhpur Japes,
a retired actor who recited a mediaeval ballad about Tam Lin,
a lustful knight who enticed young maidens with wine-sodden grapes.

‘Alas, dear girl,’ he told her, ‘your lover has gone to flog his wares
to Viking re-enactors in Denmark and Finland.
You, I’m afraid are a victim of male hetero dominance.’

Intrigued, she asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘Well, it’s a term coined by a radical thinker who is making a name for himself.’

‘Oh, what’s he called?’

‘Alas, my memory fails me, but I hear he’s been described as ‘magical’,
and helps young women find their artistic self.
He’s seeking converts to his rebellious commune above the city of Brighton.’

So off Claribella rode to arrive in the gay resort,
arriving with a smile for the milkman who, impressed by her speedy steed,
added her to his list of people to know, promising to help her find this ‘magical’ man,
in the seaside town where the ‘queer’ men and women go.

So, in return for racing Run Like The Wind along The Downs for bets,
Claribella was directed to a cavern, the home of latter-day hippies,
who were enveloped in a fog of cannabis.

Feeling she’d been sent on a wild goose chase, she was about to go,
but bumped into Magical Malcolm, whose eyes opened with delight when she declared,
‘I’m desperately trying to discover my inner self.’

So he took her to Harlot’s Hill, where he announced, ‘This is where neolithic man practised fertility rites.
I take all my female followers here, by way of an initiation,’
and he made his fateful move, only like me before him, to fall a victim to Claribella’s boxing skill.

She showed him a neat side step, followed by a quick one-two,
and was only stopped from inflicting serious hurt by a policeman emerging from the bushes.
‘No need for fisticuffs,’ declared the sergeant, ‘just let me read him his rights.’

‘Oh,’ she laughed, ‘as long as they’re not the ones he was referring to.’

‘Good on yer lass,’ came a cry from a babel of young women.
‘We knew what he was up to Claribella, so we thought we’d save your blushes,’
they cried, as Malcolm was taken to the police station.

You may wonder where I was in all this fuss.
Well, knowing of her interest in art, on arrival in the famous resort I sought out arty types,
and among these was art tutor Marcus Mansett who asked me to model for his class.

I duly turned up and stripped only to hear an audible gasp,
and blinked in amazement at you-know-who.
She informed me she’d been making ends meet by singing and sketching on the pier,
with her pals from the cave as backing singers,
cashing in on her reputation as the girl who brought down a notorious cult leader.
 
Always keen for a bargain, I took her to that popular eatery, HP Featherflumes,
taking advantage of their two-for-one offer.
But after chiding me for being a cheapskate, she ended up in the arms of ‘Big’ Bud Coyote,
a millionaire cowboy who’d bought one of her paintings,
of a whale stranded on a pebble-strewn beach beneath a chalk cliff,
which she claimed was, ‘Symptomatic of my life, stranded among a rock and a hard place’,
and she was soon adorning the old homestead he’d built on the Downs,
to replicate his childhood home, Forever Windblown.

At first their love blossomed; Bud even raced Run Like The Wind
in the County Coastal Chase, bagging a 100 guineas,
and she attended social events with him as he tried to buy up half of Sussex.

Undeterred I followed along in his wake, a pitiful besotted creature.
However, Claribella trilled with delight when I was allowed to
accompany her to opera venue Glyndebourne, after Coyote had declared,
‘I’d rather listen to the shrieking Indians I watched in Wild Bill Hiccup’s Wild West Circus,
than those strutting divas - besides, they aren’t a patch on Dolly Parton.’

It was when the couple visited the US that discordant notes were heard,
after Claribella wanted to visit the valley of The Little Big Horn,
where Chief Crazy horse defeated General Custer, in a battle over the sacred
Sioux Indian lands of the Black Hills Of Dakota.

‘Why are you so interested in that?’ He asked angrily.

‘I was a tomboy and read all about the Wild West and its Indians,
in particular how children were slaughtered at the valley of the Washita,
by Custer and his regiment.’

However, his protests were to no avail and off she went,
living rough and sketching wild flowers, displaying them in an exhibition,
but received adverse publicity when she was pictured in a bed with noted
women’s activist, reality TV star Stephanie McPowers.

Bud accused her of damaging his image, and demanded to know
if she was now batting for the other side.
‘No, my dear, it was an act of solidarity, ‘but I did nearly try it once,’ she giggled,
after getting squiffy on Brighton’s day of Pride.’
Then, hearing she’d announced a separation, he boasted that she would return
after discovering life as a Midwest woman was, ‘Tough, if you ride solo.’
So she determined to put his nose out and, after filing for divorce,
entered a cowboy competition, which involved spitting into a spittoon from 50 paces,
which she was no good at, but surprised everyone by scoring top points at the rodeo.

Asked by a reporter why she was so proficient at matters equestrian,
Claribella replied, ‘I used to ride father Smithins’ mare, back home in England.’

‘Oh, did you meet the Queen?

‘I did in Brighton,’ she laughed, ‘but not the one you mean.’

Advertisers cashed in on her fame, and she was pictured on a horse,
opening a cowboy convention, wearing a low-cut bodice singing a country hit that was all the rage.
Broadcast live, this publicity got record numbers tuning into the radio waves.

She sang, ‘I fell in love with a cowboy from Leningrad,
who told me he was a clown with the Soviet State Circus,’
with the chorus, ‘But now I’m all alone and sad,
for he left me for a Cossack from Moscow called Boris.’

Then she suddenly disappeared but was spotted swimming and singing,
sans clothes in a remote bay off the Irish coast,
with a Dolphin she nicknamed Dolores, who was feeling seasick.
Claribella believed the animal was suffering from anxiety,
after hordes of tourists flocked to see her swimming in the Atlantic.

However, the publicity about ‘A naked hussy whose lewd behaviour has
brought hosts of nudists to the Emerald Isle,
and dealt a blow to tourism by
luring a popular marine animal to her bosom’, made her furious,
so she enlisted the help of the Taoiseach,
who raised the matter in the Dáil (the Irish parliament),
resulting in the establishment of a school for dolphins,
where they were given therapy and sent back out to splash and entertain the curious.

Well, that is a brief resume of my sweetheart’s career up to this moment,
as she prepares to face a packed London Palladium.
As I ruminated on the journey which had taken her thus far,
I saw some familiar names - Farmer Smithins and Magical Malcolm – out on bail -
then as the lights went down, in sneaked a glowering Bud Coyote,
making a racket in spurs and Stetson.

On she came to thunderous applause, saying, ‘I would like to dedicate this number to
my boyhood friend, and she pointed at me, ‘who, being a lusty sod,
propelled me on a journey which led to this place.’

At this everyone stared at me,
in particular those rascally types I alluded to above.
But she laughed, and said, ‘See you later darling.
Oh, and I owe you a kiss.’