Sixty Second Interview With Doris

    Doris “Yes gentlemen, what can I get you?”
    “I’ll have a pint of old and mild, and my friend here will have a pint of bitter.”
    “We haven’t seen you gentlemen in here before.”
    “No we’re not regulars, so I don’t expect we’ll get the first one on the house.”
    “I’m sorry I’m not quite with you. That will be one shilling.”
    “I'm Number……. I mean J. G. Hyde, and this is my photographic colleague…..Sid Lexy. We contribute to The Tally Ho.”
    “The Tally Ho, what’s that?”
    “It’s a newspaper.”
    “I’ve never heard of it.”
    “Smile” {click goes the camera}
    “You served a gentleman in here the other day.”
    “I serve lots of men.”
    “This one wore a raincoat and flat cap. A blue shirt and a goldie coloured tie.”
    “Oh him. He threw up in the gents, I told him he’d be sick, but he took no notice.”
    “Why was he sick, something wrong with the food?”
    “Certainly not!”
    “Perhaps you sold him a bad pint?”
    “Its wasn’t that, it was the cocktail of drinks he drank, that would make anyone sick.”
    “You mean he did it deliberately?”
    “Perhaps it was for a bet.”
    “What with himself?”
    “There was this girl.”
    “Girl?”
    “Smile” {click goes the camera}
    “What was she like?”
    “Slim, attractive, dressed all in white.”
    “And she was with this man?”
    “No, but she was coming out of the ladies toilets as he was going into the gent’s.”
    “Funny though. She asked me if I would help play a trick on that man.”
    “Trick, what sort of trick?”
    “Well she gave me a pint glass, said I was to put that gentleman’s pint into it.”
   “And you did.”
   “Yes. He drank his pint of mild bitter beer and put the empty glass on the bar. I remember asking him if he wanted another. No he said, one of those was quite enough.”
    “What did he do then?”
    “He ordered that cocktail of drinks then went into the toilet to be sick.”
    “And the glass?”
    “That’s the strange thing, it had a sticker on the bottom of it. I remember because I noticed it when I washed it up.”
    “Sticker? What did the sticker say?”
    “You can read it for yourself. It’s on the bottom of your glass.”
    J.G. Hyde picked up his glass of beer and began to drink. A sticker on the bottom began to reveal itself. You…..have…..just……..been…..poisoned!”
    “Quick Whisky, Vodka, Gin, Brandy, Tia Maria, Tequila, Schnapps, Sherry, and Drambuie.”
    “You’ll make yourself sick sir!”
    “I felt sick the moment I clapped eyes on your dress!”
    {The sound of vomiting!}
    “There I told you so! Someone get a mop and bucket!”

Reporter J. G. Hyde
Photographer Sid Lexy