Liz, WRT the "hand actions", are you referrring to the send-up where someone stands behind the reciter and does amusing but silly things with eggs and stuff? It's very funny the first time or two you see it, as is the "hecklers" version, where two military types in full red-coated fig -- supposedly ex-colleagues of Carew -- keep interrupting from the audience.

I have been known to go into transports of poetic delight about TGEOTLYG, but I won't today (loud cheers). Suffice it to say, it's not much as literature goes -- "good bad poetry", as George Orwell put it -- but as a bit of story-telling, it's as good as any folk song or story. It's gone down very well indeed when I've done it straight. That goes for many of the soppy Victorian songs like The Miner's Dream of Home, or Father Dear Father Come Home With Me Now, or Just Like The Ivy: just make the effort and keep your face straight, and they'll take it seriously.

Steve