No laughing matter, and we tried not to.

I was helping out in the posh private lounge bar of the Jerbourg Hotel one day, a humble servant to the few misguided residents. The boss usually served the bar in here, leaving me (thankfully) to deal with the riotous riff-raff in the huge public lounge, where the money was made.

The Jerbourg hotel was old and rather stylish in those days, say fifty years ago, a bit run-down, and furnished in the dated ‘fifties way; lots of Laminex, vinyl tiles, boring light-fittings, steel-and-plastic furniture. But the rooms were spacious with massive windows, and class that was hard to defile.

The seating was ubiquitous throughout: those steel-and-woven-plastic circular things on thin, splayed, steel legs. Of the Era; once ‘modern’, but convenient hotel-ware because of their stackability. They had round cushions like pancakes which also stacked conveniently.

That day, in the private bar, was a very large woman. I mean big, even by today’s standard. She directed me to carry her cocktail to a nearby table of the matching steel-legged variety. There were a few other customers, looking on with prurient interest at her vastness. I instantly perceived the peril ahead, but was powerless to prevent it, hypnotised by disaster, as humans are.

I couldn’t stop her, and if I had, her outrage would have been unbearable. So she backed up to the seat, lowered herself as far as the tendons in her massive legs would allow and fell the remaining six inches.

And kept falling, the splayed steel legs continued splaying as she descended, wrapping the circular frame tightly around her arms and body in a perfect cage. There she lay, bound and supine, on the shiny vinyl.

We all saw it happen as if in slow motion. The room was soundless and motionless for long seconds. The prurient fascination held us spell-bound and briefly expressionless, until excruciatingly-suppressed laughter took over. The huge woman lay silent, trapped, dignity defiled. The pain of maintaining a straight face unbearable.

There was no getting the chair off her while she was on the ground; her massive weight kept the folded steel in position. It took six blokes to stand her upright, with no safe place to put hands for the effort, or to keep her legs from folding at the knees. Those little battery angle-grinders were not yet invented.

Now vertical, she glared, stony-faced, mute, caged, unengaged. Images of mediaeval torture flashed. And experimental asylum treatment. We paused. Considered the situation from a practical, engineering standpoint, humour dismissed temporarily, while she stood, hating us.

Two men to hold her steady. Two more on each side. One leg each on the floor, one leg each bracing and pushing, two pairs of arms pulling the steel apart.

The enveloping device was straightened.  Released, she staggered wordlessly out of the bar, poor woman, to deafening silence. I did later hear talk of suing the hotel, but such was the laughter finally released (two releases) that I’m sure sense prevailed.

The boss bought a round as the giggling dissipated and I removed the mangled chair from the room.  I kept it for a while to illustrate the story to friends. As red faces returned to their normal colour, a couple of men left the bar and we heard a roar of laughter in the corridor, which set us all off again.

The large person quit the hotel immediately, and I believe no mention was made of an unpaid bill.