Tuesday, September 20 2011
Hands up who doesn’t love golf! Oh.
Well, some of The Bike Insurer crew were recently invited along to Formby Men’s Golf Club to take part in the annual Marina Dalglish Foundation Golf Day. Formby Men’s golf club is famous both for it’s undulating fairways, fast greens and inaccessible toilets so when The Bike Insurer team members arrived they knew they were in for a fun day of golf (if such a thing exists)
The team were made up of Lester Short (playing off a handicap of 28) Neil Hodgson (playing off 20) and Mike Szabo (Once held a putter when he was eight) and once they had made their way through all the celebrities present such as Alan Shearer, Kenny Dalglish and “That funny scouse bloke of the telly” they were paired up with Barry Murphy. A few minutes of googling later found out that he was either an Irish comedian or a breeder and exhibitor of fine Yorkshire Canaries. Whilst we hoped for the latter it actually turned out to be the former so after a quick beer and a sampling of the craic (steady on) our motley crew headed out to set the golf course alight. Lester’s library of “Best way to stroke a bird” jokes went unheard.
Once it was pointed out that setting fire to a golf course is both illegal and difficult they found themselves at the 12th tee and ready to go. It was around this point that Mr Murphy was probably realising that he would have been better staying in bed today as Lester’s first tee shot made it a full 7 meters away from the pin. This was to be the theme of the day as despite numerous pieces of advice to the contrary Lester seemed to be under the impression that you “win” at golf by trying to hit the ball to the moon. The rain started to pour but it did little to dampen the mood of our intrepid golfists journey to destroy as much of the rough as possible.
Neil’s golf performance was admirable if a little wobbly at times and Mike’s caddying skills ranged from standing still to moving slowly. Many holes went by and the jokes continued to flow, surprisingly not from the professional comedian who was part of the team and Lester’s bill for lost golf balls had hit a staggering £47,000. As the team approached the much more favourable 19th hole and the rain abated they headed in to get ready for the evening’s frivolities of eating, sitting and tie wearing.
It turned out that the Irish comedian’s act (some of which is featured below) involved an impression of a German comedian, which was almost as surprising as Lester’s par on the 8th hole and as the drink continued to pour most of the talk moved away from motorbike insurance and onto slightly darker topics such as Lester’s wet trousers, Mike’s Hungarian ancestry and just how difficult is it to throw a kettle over a pub.
As the evening drew to a close and Lester was becoming more and more frustrated at the barman’s continual refusal to put N-Dubz on the sound system the team drifted off into the night to dream about how to reduce premiums for all and just who the hell was Barry Murphy…
