Sorry I smiled!
When I deliver after dinner speeches about my worldwide travels with the Natural Theatre Company, one of the most frequently asked questions is which was the best country in which to perform our particular style of theatre.
I always edge my way around the answer as the question suggests there might be countries where performing is not so enjoyable.
The fact is however, that whether one is performing in a shopping centre in Brazil, a marketplace in Nigeria, on a bus in Bath or a cable car in the Canadian Rockies, Mr and Mrs Ordinary the world over enjoys a laugh.
A short break from the daily grind is all they ask. The Irish can come back at you with something even funnier (a fellow spontaneously threw off all his clothes on meeting our fake nudists on a Dublin street), the English can be a bit yobby and the Finns try to find a deeper meaning in what is actually shallow tomfoolery.
But on the whole, people in all countries are incredibly open and up for fun!
It’s the people who run the countries, or think they run the countries that can be problematic. And I’m not talking about the more authoritarian regimes.
In fact, we had the freedom of the streets in China for example.
We might have been doing some quite naughty things off piste, but the public assumed that we couldn’t possibly be doing that without full permission of the powers that be.
And so, they were all very relaxed about it, even the grinning police officers.
There is one country that shall remain nameless, where anyone with the slightest vestige of a uniform is a right grump.
We were there a while back and it seemed there was a certain stratum that really missed Soviet times and wished they were back there.
Don’t get me wrong, the public were lovely, as evidenced by the fact that a few months after our visit some people were injured in a crush, so eager were they to enjoy some buskers.
But from the scowling official who greeted us at passport control, through the scary waitresses who plonked the scrambled eggs down in front of us at breakfast whether we’d ordered them or not, to the harridan in charge of our landing at the hotel who seemed sorely affronted when we answered her abrupt enquiry ‘Do you want sex or massage’ with a polite British ‘Neither, thank you,’ anyone remotely in charge of anything seemed to become tin pot generals.
Even the cashier in the local cake shop scowled at our choice of a joyful double choc bun with cream and crystalised fruit!
There would be a whole load of historical reasons for this which I won’t investigate here.
The answer for us was to grin and bear it.
But, on being confronted by the same passport geezer glaring at me on the way out of the country, I couldn’t help leaning forward and saying quietly, ‘Please remind me not to invite you to our office Christmas party!’