Human Sacrifice - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Alexander Hanson

I don’t mind admitting, the last place I expected to finish up…

was as an exhibit in «The Chamber of Horrors».

And not even at the main HQ —

but in Blackpool, if you please!

Nowhere to be found on my long list of

desirable places to spend the weekend

And yet… not so very long ago, I had a fair claim to be the most popular man

in London

(He moves towards us, shaking his head ruminatively; then looks up again,

smiling, full of charm, the soul of bonhomie.)

Stephen Ward

Your friendly osteopath

I can fix your

Lower back for you

Also known for

High-class portraiture

And you’ll find out

That’s not all I do

Winston Churchill

Ava Gardner

Different contours

Same predicament

Gandhi was another regular

Called me his «preferred medicament»

I invented

A new way of life

Some might call it

Unconventional

All that stuffy post-war Englishness

I like something

More consensual

You’ll be wondering

What I’m doing here

Stuck between Hitler

And the Acid-Bath Murderer

Let me warn you

It’s the consequence

If you get up

The nose of the establishment

If you give them

What they’re looking for

They’ll be grateful

Oh, they’ll be awfully nice

But

If you should step across the line

You’ll become a

Human sacrifice

Friends could never understand

The girls who caught my eye

Shopgirls, models

Working girls

I’d have them all come by

Strange behavior, you may think

But tolerance is blind

All I ever cared about

Was simply being kind

I tried marriage

Didn’t go for it

I liked freedom

And diversity

Mixed with all sorts

Tarts and royalty

And, of course, the young and beautiful

Portraits of

The Duke of Edinburgh

Jolly threesomes

In Belgravia

Weekends in some

Stately country house

With assorted

Misbehavior

All this was my life

Limitless delights

All the girls and

All the parties

All the amazing nights

Self-indulgence

Is permissible

But one day, you’ll

Have to pay the price

I suppose I

Stepped across the line

And became a

Human sacrifice

They will bring you down unless

Your heart’s as cold as ice

Nothing they like better than

A human sacrifice

(He takes a final drag of his cigarette and stubs it out on Lucrezia Borgia;

then he turns back to face the audience.)

No matter how experienced or sophisticated you are, you never see it coming,

do you?

I mean, when I stepped into Murray’s Club in Beak Street that wet and

murky Tuesday… why should it have been any different from the dozens of other

evenings I’d whiled away there?