LITTLE MR ANDREWS

It’s a revival of a revival, the end of the pier show brought back by a council that wants to boost the tourist numbers in a fading north-west seaside town.
You decide to buy a ticket for the show because it’s a fading seaside town kind of day, drifts of drizzle slouching moody across grey streets, few people on the streets or in the shops, and that feeling like it’s dusk even though it’s only just gone two. It’s why you had decided to come to this town, for nostalgia and because that tawdry, long past its best atmosphere might prove to be inspirational, and because if you’re honest, it suits your mood and you want to wallow in it.
So, what better than the tradition and tat of an end of pier show. There’s a terrible compere in a glittery jacket, a comedian who dies on his feet for an agonising ten minutes, some men singing sea shanties who despite their stripy shirts look more like recently retired solicitors than sailors, and then on come Daniel and Little Mr Andrews.
Daniel has dressed for the occasion in a tux, his hair brylcreemed with a vicious parting, and an air of polite and posh confusion. Little Mr Andrews wears a faded tweed suit, tiny leather boots, a monocle, and an air of absolute malice. The puppet swivels his wooden head to look around the audience, he clacks his wooden teeth, and he refuses to behave for Daniel, who is trying to tell him and the audience a story. Mr Andrews interrupts and makes lewd jokes and laughs an unsettling laugh, and you really don’t enjoy this at all. You want to get up and leave, but you are in the middle of the row and don’t want to draw attention to yourself.
Little Mr Andrews turns his head towards you as if he’s read your mind, and clacks his wooden teeth, and grins like he wants to eat you, and you shudder and worry that he is so lifelike that one day he might come alive.
What you don’t realise is that Little Mr Andrews already is. It’s Daniel that isn’t.