nick manho

listen, listen, are you listening? right. here's a funny thing. there was this painter chap. botticelli, his name was. look at that painting up there. he'll get me shot, he will. venus and mars he called it. well you know what you can do with a mars? no, shhh, don't laugh, you'll have the manager out here. i promised him, no blue stuff tonight. can you see him? if you see him tell me, ok? so this botticelli chap he did a lot of saucy paintings and, cor blimey, they were saucy some of them. did you see them, lady? i'd get shot if i painted stuff like that. i'm a nice boy, lady. clean, i am.

anyway, just when botticelli was getting hot along comes this priest fella,



take a look at that nose. you know what they say about noses, don't you? they called him savonarola. there's a joke there somewhere, lady. i can't make it tonight cos i promised the manager. this savonarola chap he started getting all prissy with the pagan painters and botticelli fell for it... i said fell for it lady, not... here, you're gonna get me into trouble. botticelli fell for it and started painting all this jesus stuff,



lovely stuff, too, but it's stuff from the white book and you prefer the blue book, don't you? you know you do. what happened next? well, things went bad for savonarola and they burned him alive in a piazza in florence,



and botticelli lost his audience.

so remember, lady, if a chap with a big nose tells you to stop doing the blue stuff, you tell him from which bridge in florence he can toss himself off.