People scoff when I dig out my old reviews to boost a fading ego,
but I proudly boast to my contemporaries there was no one like me,
that old star of stage and screen, who almost became the ‘fifth’ Beatle.

Ah, but that’s another story.

As an actor, it hurt that some regarded me as a one-trick pony.
You see, being a handsome devil, I was often cast
as the romantic lead in our drama school plays.

Admired by that new generation of performers, the ‘theatrical gays’,
I even dabbled with that ‘scene',
but they soon recognised me as a phoney.

My care home is full of annoying people, like ‘Major’ Montague,
always talking of some bloody battle, 
and former pop star Gladys Goodworthy,
trying to remember her hit single.

But I’ve lately teamed up with a former film critic
and fellow resident, ‘Dashing’ Dave Dovecot,
who became notorious in Fleet Street as an old soak.

I’ve forgiven him for his critical reviews of my cinematic roles,
as he lets me join him behind the care home bike shed,
where we smoke a bit of weed.

When I’m ‘high’ as a kite,
I imagine being welcomed under God’s Pearly Gate
for a rare act of kindness.

This occurred on a beach where the British Army
would have faced the Nazi hordes, in those dark days of 1940.

It was there that I found a shivering boy,
who resembled me in his precociousness.

Dave and I took him for a barge trip on the Norfolk Broads,
and one day I asked, ‘How did you end up on that beach in Kent,
little black man?’, after we’d listened to him read poems and
soliloquies to rival any young thespian.

‘Oh, I landed on a leaky boat,’ he nervously admitted,
'but that won’t stop me becoming a great actor, will it?

‘I mean, not actually being who I say I am?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, nobody’s a bigger fake than me,
and I’m your biggest fan.

'In fact, I predict you’ll be a star.’

‘In that case I’ll be able to afford to bring my parents here,
they could do with a break from the horror of civil war,
and can I play footie with that former
football great Gary Linebreaking?’

We used to watch him score goals for fun,
on telly in my poverty-stricken township, playing for Man United,
or am I thinking of that fellow Beckendatin?

‘Anyway, I believe Gary's no fool when it comes to speaking his mind,
and standing up for those who flee a war-torn land.’

Impressed by this response, I could only add,
‘Indeed, young man, in fact I think I met the fellow,
on a BBC promo I did, for £50, cash in hand.

‘He didn’t mind at all when I admitted to not liking football,
and laughed at my story of how I almost became the fifth Beatle.

‘Why, he even called me a funny old fart.
Apparently he thought that was a theatrical term of endearment.’

‘Oh, do tell me that story about the Beatle,’ my youthful new pal asked,
‘I want to absorb British culture.’

‘I wouldn’t bother, dear boy, the world I knew has
gone to hell in a hand cart,
but I’m glad to say a young chap like you
has given me fresh hope.

‘You’re a like a newly discovered star in the heavenly firmament.’

I'm told the beach boy is now lighting up Hollywood,
though the US Border Force have found evidence he’s not
who he says he is.

His response was, ‘Didn’t the people who discovered
America arrive on a leaky boat?’