Let's all go down the strand
Banana skins? Yeah, right, they went out of slapstick fashion along with stepping on a rake and looking down the sharp end of a hosepipe, ooh, around about the time the talkies came in. Look, Ted bloody Bovis in Hi-de-bloody-Hi talked about them being a comedy staple. How much more proof do you need that they're not funny?

Except, except... On a drizzly, dank evening in 1994, at the exit to the Vasileostrovskaia Metro station, where the wind whips in off the Gulf of Finland and where the apartment blocks huddle together in groups to disperse radioactive fallout. It's that kind of a cheery place. The St. Petersburg winner (and believe me there's stiff competition) of the Nora Batty lookalike contest - headscarf, blue raincoat, face hewn off the distaff side of Mt Rushmore - struggles out the station door and shuffles off down the plaza with a bulging net carrier bag in each hand, the kind Russians fold up and carry on the off-chance you come across something worth buying, because you knew it won't be there later. The economic chaos of the early 90s meant Soviet habits died hard, and it was a struggle for many to make ends meet. Russia had the best-educated taxi drivers, not to mention other unfortunates working the streets, in the world. I can't remember now what she had found, but whatever it was it looked heavy.

Now it wasn't quite wartime levels of deprivation: people didn't have to be told that bananas needed peeling; they had seen them before. At least, one person near that station exit obviously had. Mind you, poor Nora Ivanovna obviously hadn't seen the banana skin. I wonder what went through her mind as her feet went up in the air. Her legs and torso described a perfect right angle with the arms still weighed down vertically by the net bags. I swear for a moment she floated there, a blue-clad geometric vision backlit by the advertising hoardings, a martyr to the immutable rules of comedy. Then down she went with a crump.

I don't know what happened after that. I was too busy wiping away tears of laughter. Part of it stemmed from a post-modern disbelief: "Bugger me, I have actually just seen someone slip on a banana skin" but, let me be honest, most of it was sheer hilarity at the misfortune of someone else. And do you know what the worst thing was? The fact that she'd seemed miserable as sin prior to just made it all the funnier. I've never seen it happen since. But, frankly, after that performance, I don't need to.
(Mr Apollo Follow me!, Tue 26 Jan 2010, 1:16, Reply)