The Jazz raconteur/monologist/singer was not overly pleased to be following Frank Sinatra that night in the New Jersey Casino. He didn't mind opening for singers and jazz bands, because he had a dozen innovative ways of leaving an audience literally stunned. He may have been the most outrageous club act of the fifties.

But tonight, he could already see the crowd starting to chatter noisily and leave even before he'd been announced. And THIS guy HATED to be upstaged.

When he was introduced to the restless crowd, he walked to centre stage dressed per usual in immaculate white tie and tails, Pith helmet, and long pointy 'jester type' shoes with curled up ends and little bells on them.

He brought this time, also a saw from backstage. Not a prop one (like Penn and Teller might do today) but a real carpenter's saw. He then proceeded to SAW INTO HIS OWN FOOT. Not right through, thank goodness, but far enough into it so that a stream of blood shot up into the air.

The people who were leaving heard the rest of the audience gasp, and turned around to see the stage, the performer and some in the front rows getting sprinkled with real blood. Shock and disbelief.

The performer then straightened up, bowed and said "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we all know who YOU'RE going to remember from tonight!"

Later as his "friends" drove him back to New York, his mutilated foot bandaged with a bedsheet from his club dressing room, he chuckled at having totally, completely and decisively UPSTAGED Frank Sinatra.

Is anyone familiar with the man who "spoke like a Jazz man plays his horn"? "Lord" Richard Buckley. I even suspect there may be one or two catters who actually saw him live or on TV in the late fifties (he died in 1960)

Cheers

Rick