Do you like tales from the Entertainment world? Here's one from my dad, Bandleader Ronnie Caryl.

Here's a little anecdote he told about an incident when he and my Mum were doing their double act in Variety Theatre in the late 1940's. My Dad was very fond of food and cooking, so I was rather surprised this tale didn't have a different ending!

In Dad's own words...

'The tale of the Variety Theatre Piglet.

This particular tale concerns the time when my wife and I were appearing in a resident variety show in the small town of Hamilton in Scotland. In those days the members of the cast, in addition to performing their own acts were expected to take part in various comedy sketches and scena’s. The complete show was changed weekly which not only saved travelling expenses for the cast, but also gave the local patrons a chance to see their favourites in the show performing different items every week.

In this show our producer Billy M, an Australian by birth had a passion for having live animals in at least one of the scenes. One week dogs, another week a donkey would appear and so on and so forth. In this particular week we were playing an Irish scene, and the comedian dressed as an Irish housewife had a small piglet foisted upon him by our creative producer. The piglet was placed in a cradle, George the comic would wrap it in a nappy complete with a shake of talcum powder and then holding it in his arms would sing ‘Terry my blue eyed Irish boy’ to the creature. Now after a few nights the piglet got to quite enjoy this routine, but one night misfortune struck. George our comic was taken ill and his partner had to deputise for him; the little piglet was amazed to see this new face singing to him and without more ado jumped out of John’s arms, ran down the stairs at the side of the stage, tore down the centre aisle through the stalls, out of the theatre and down the main street of Hamilton with Billy our producer in hot pursuit!

I am happy to tell you that the piglet was very soon caught and seemed to be little harmed by its adventure. We all hoped that it would live to be a ripe old age, no doubt telling its grandchildren the story of how in early childhood it had appeared in a variety show. To this day, whenever I see Suckling Pig on the menu at some function or other I can always recall in my minds' eye, the saga of ‘The Piglet that Got Away!’' - Ronnie Caryl, reminiscing in the 1980's.