The Noble Goat Freehouse was literally the only sign of life in the middle of quite a lot of nowhere, and even then the signs were not particularly evident. We had our pick of the car park, simply because there wasn’t a single other vehicle there, unless you count an ancient milk float jacked up on blocks. At the sound of the Austin’s engine, a dozy-looking black-and-white dog poked its head out of the driver’s side of the float, gave a half-hearted yip then flopped back onto the seat with the look of someone who needed to sleep off a few too many whiskies.

Out of nowhere, I had a flashback to that same feeling. You know, like when you wake up and realize you can’t remember anything since dancing to Take That in the student bar at midnight with a lager top in one hand and an honors law student in the other? This time, the twang in my gut was definitely not my imagination and I reached under my shirt to rearrange the waistband of my jeans into a more comfortable position.

The North Devon gig guide had said registration for the open mic closed at seven fifteen for a seven thirty start, so Leonard had timed for us to get there by six forty-five, allowing for getting lost and there being a queue to sign up. Hooray for Google, we were early, and unless a few dozen open mic-ers had arrived cross-country on foot, it didn’t look like there was going to be any problems with a queue.

Walking into the pub beside Leonard, Norman looked even smaller than usual, and it wasn’t the first time I’d wondered if the effort his body had to put into growing all that psoriasis was stunting the rest of his growth. Reversing it, even. The shoulders of the too-big suit jacket fell away at either side and, even though the sleeves swung along against his body as he walked, the jacket was always slightly late. Robert Foreman’s comedy shoes were never going to be big ones to fill, despite what I’d somehow led Norman to believe, but his jacket was another story.

When we got to the door of the Noble Goat, Leonard stepped in front of our little procession and pushed it open with a flourish to allow Norman a grand entrance. I walked in behind him in time to see Barbara Windsor’s doppelgänger raise her head listlessly from a newspaper spread across the bar. I can only imagine the grand entrance lacked some of its effect due to the fact that there wasn’t another soul in the pub. Leonard was taking his role as Norman’s self-appointed manager seriously and he made his way across the great divide to Barbara’s bar.

“Good evening, madam. Delighted to meet you. Is the sign-up for the open mic with you?” Barbara fixed him with a cast-iron-eyelashed gaze, and a couple of decades ticked by as she tried to work out whether Leonard was taking the piss or quite serious about signing up for a stand-up performance in a pub that had no customers and, for all we knew, no open mic night. Because it was pretty clear there was also no stage, no lights and not even a rusty microphone in sight, open or otherwise.