Many words have been used to sum up Wam Bam: “wonderful”, “georgeous”, “sexy”, and “exciting” are just some of the words I don’t use myself, because in private I have just one word for my show: “madness”.

In the two years and nine months since Wam Bam began, my world has bounced from the bizarre to the ridiculous. I’ve laughed, cried and run screaming with my dignity dead in a ditch behind me, and that’s just the rehearsals. Once the show goes on, all bets are off.

Lady Ane Angel—a very talented burlesque and circus performer—came bursting through my Wam Bam doors in March 2008. This curious lady from Iceland has a sensational fire act that I knew would be perfect for my show. That’s her above, at the start of her flaming crotch routine!

Who wouldn’t want to see that in a cabaret club?

Naturally, I was very excited when the night came for her to perform. However, not everyone in the Wam Bam camp was quite so thrilled. Rachael was concerned with a capital ‘C’! Rachael has been with Wam Bam since its inception and she’s my ideal stage manager because she’s cool and calm in chaos. It still makes me chuckle remembering her pure deadpan fire warning that night: “So, if you should find yourself alight remember these three words STOP, DROP, ROLL.”

All sound advice, though, personally I tend to favour—AHHHHH, FIRE, HELP!

It was the final hour before the show and we were mid-sound check when I received a call from Lady Ane asking about her on stage time. She needed to know exactly because she didn’t want her snake to be out for too long!

SNAKE..excuse me did you say… SNAKE?!

I turned to Rachel and stammered “She’s bringing a bloody snake!”

As a general rule I don’t do animals or children (no matter what the judge said), so we decided to stay well clear and let Ane do all the animal handling.

Just two minutes before the curtain went up, Ane finally arrives, snake in tow. She’d completely missed the sound check, which left us mystified about what she was planning to do. “Oh well,” I thought, “what’s the worst that can happen?”

Answer: this!

Picture the scene. I am on stage, ready to introduce Lady Ane. I announce her name… the audience cheers… the music starts… and then… nothing!

No Lady Ane and no snake. I try again…still nothing. I can feel the proverbial tumbleweed rolling past. Then Rachael’s head pops out of the curtain.

“Lady Ane is running late” she whispers “she can’t wake up the snake”.

Wake up a snake? How hard can that be… oh god! Don’t tell me it’s gone an’ died on us… I’ll have the RSPCA baying for my blood. But dead or not, I was determined that that snake was going to get on that stage, even if I had to shove a coat hanger up its arse.

After what seemed like an age of me mincing about the stage with a badly improvised dance routine, a flustered Lady Ane appears with a few flaming tapers and a very angry looking snake. I say angry, but that’s an understatement. This was one seriously pissed-off python. One minute he’s happily dreaming about choking the life out of Samuel L. Jackson, the next he’s being poked by stagehands, shoved in a glass jar and flung on stage by a woman with a flaming crotch!

The act itself went down really well, all things considered. The flames were thrown and snake did its thing, then slunk away into its glass holding tank.

During the applause, a rather nervous aide of Lady Ane’s gingerly stepped on stage to collect the reptile. Rachel had refused to do it, and rightly so. It was only when I was half way through the next introduction that I heard an almighty smash. The glass jar had been dropped, it had shattered, and now an angry snake was out and about, looking for something to strangle and digest.

The audience were blissfully unaware of this threat as I rapidly finished the introduction which went something like… (to the wings) “there’s a good snakey snakey”… (then to the audience) “here’s Lucy Porter”. I then did a high speed sprint off stage, leaving poor unsuspecting Lucy Porter and her audience unaware of the forthcoming reptilian invasion.

Through quite incredible luck, the audience never realised what was going on. Once caught, the snake gave me rather a sweet look, in a deadly sort of way. I suggested we feed it with Lucy Porter’s hecklers, but Rachel put her foot down.

-Lady Alex