Silly bloopers revisited: "What a cruise director must endure".

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We're on a French charter from Nice. The cruise is called " In the Footsteps of Saint Paul" and includes stops at the Holy Land, Damascus, Kos, Alanya, Corinth, Malta, and Civitavecchia (Rome). It's a religious culture cruise, with a devout audience that certainly isn't there for shows featuring half-naked girls with feathers in their backsides. Instead, there are... prayer services. Communication between the charter organizers and the headquarters of the cruise line Chandris proves to be a disaster.

The most embarrassing incident occurs when the charterer directly pleads with the chief purser for a Eucharist celebration in the main lounge , which I'm not told about. Yet, I'm the one in charge. The result: when the priest raises the host, the fire and other alarms go off, urgently calling for everyone to get their life jackets and immediately gather on deck by their lifeboat. Right in the middle of Mass. Mass, that is. The lifeboat drill was briefly overlooked, forgotten. But up to me to explain it all.

I remember opening the show at a captain's welcome show with the song "Roses." I sang

"Things are swell, things are great " while five girls paraded around me in red feathers, glittery bikinis, and tiaras. Just then, while I was singing and the spotlight was on me, a waiter came and stood right in front of me to serve the captain and his guests in row one cocktails. He was in the spotlight, I was in his shadow. For almost the entire song. I made arrangements with the bar manager to prevent this from happening again. He suggested, "We'll serve them faster and in a different way." Result: the same show, second edition, and I found myself in exactly the same situation, but with two waiters in front of me.

Once, in the middle of a magic act, a fireman , a miniature Filipino whose job it is to constantly circulate the entire ship checking every area, walked right into the middle of the stage with his helmet and axe, right through the act and the orchestra, straight to the backstage button. Pure Fawlty Towers.

Charters are sure to cause problems. They'll have a group leader who claims to have obtained privileges that we on board are sometimes unaware of.

A Bavarian group managed to bring their own Upper Bavarian orchestra, complete with lederhosen, for a cruise departing from San Juan, Puerto Rico. They'll be playing oompah and eins, zwei, g'suffa throughout the cruise in a lounge where I normally host an excellent black reggae group. They also want the orchestra to play on deck when we depart. But then, as we head to the Caribbean, I've arranged for a calypso band, entirely in keeping with the local atmosphere. But no, we're sailing to the tropical islands off San Juan, aaaargh , to the sounds of Upper Bavarian music played by men in Tyrolean attire. To the dismay of all the Americans and even some Germans. Luckily, I can brandish a fax confirming this from some idiot at headquarters. But still.