There were a few others at that same show who braved the stage and their friends in the audience and got up and told some yarns.
Cec recalled his days as an apprentice at the Green Island Dockyard in Sydney and a practical joke one of his mates played on a Navy matelot. The sailor was a defaulter. That is he had been caught breaking the rules, in this case being late back from shore leave.
“It wasn't a serious offence, but it was an offence and he was up in front of the First Lieutenant. Now Cec's mate on the docks was an ex-matelot and he claimed to know everything! You know the type. And he said to the sailor, “Don't you worry about him, the Lieutenant, he's a Mason! All you've got to do is give him the Mason's sign and you'll be right. So there was this young sailor up in front of the Lieutenant. The charge is read out and the sentence is about to be given when he starts to make the sign. The officer looks at him in amazement and asks him what on earth he is doing. But he carries on and tries to make the sign more obvious.
The Lieutenant hasn't a clue what he is doing, thinks he's being insubordinate and gets annoyed and instead of just giving him a small fine as his penalty for being late, he puts him in the clink for three weeks!”
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Another yarn from the audience also about practical jokes was about being on a building site. And my apologies but I didn't catch the name of the person who told it, but thank you all the same!
“The blokes had just come back from having a counter lunch in the local pub and of course they'd had a few.  Now this site had several very big cranes on it and one of the blokes said to the others, “Bet you're not game to go up on the hook of that crane!” In those days it was normal practice for a worker to jump on the kippel, which took the concrete up and down a building and have the “Doggie” whistle the orders for the crane driver. “Take it up”. “Lower it” and so forth. And when the order was “Take it up”, you could see the floors go past “zoom, zoom, zoom” until you stepped off at the top.
Well, with this being a Saturday and not many people around, and what with a bit of bravery, the bet was on. For this ride, though, there was just the sling, no kippel. What you did was stand in the sling, which would go up your back and onto the hook and then up it went. The floors whistled past and our brave yarn-spinner studied the architecture and concentrated his thoughts on holding on! It's just that he had nothing to hold onto! The crane took the hook up about ten floors and when it got that high, the crane driver could see what he had on his hook. Up until then, he just listened to the directions he was given by the whistles. Well, when he saw what was on his hook, he said to himself, “We'll smarten this fella up.” So, when the whistle went to bring the crane hook down, he let it drop three floors!! And our poor yarn spinner nearly bit the end of his tongue off and got the fright of his life. His legs were “fairly flapping” when he got back on the ground. But, of course, he blamed that on the few drinks he'd had at lunch!”
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