Memorably the worst comedy show I have ever had the misfortune of attending was a Barry Hilton show at a casino in Empangeni about 14 years ago.

As a junior reporter I had been sent to review the show. Never did I guess I would become part of the news that night.

In all fairness, I only had the pleasure of about 5 minutes of Barry’s witty repartee before he disappeared behind the curtain, never to reappear.

He had just made a joke about doing a ‘microwave popcorn’ version of his act, where he would perform his entire show in 5 minutes.

Upon that he walked off and there was a rather long awkward silence.

Was this part of the show we all wondered? But when the silence had stretched so far it was no longer plausibly ‘comic timing’, we all started to squirm in our seats.

Moments later we realised what Barry had seen from his position on stage. Through the glass doors at the back, was a live version of Ocean’s Eleven being enacted in the casino foyer by men in balaclavas, brandishing large guns.

This was no casual ‘exit stage left’, the comedian had ducked for cover in fear for his life!

Panic started to break out across the audience. Luckily one of the guests was a cop trying to enjoy his night off and he ushered the frightened crowd out through the back entrance while calling his fellow officers in blue.

Hiding in the dark in the swampy bit of veld behind the casino, we sat terrified, wondering whether the armed robbers would use the back entrance for their escape.

Thoughts of one of us being used as a hostage flashed through many minds, and those poor souls who were making panicked phone calls to loved ones were dumped upon with cries of “You’ll give away our hiding places!” and “Turn that off!”.

We could hear the sounds of rapid gunfire, but to what was happening we were clueless.

Later I discovered the robbers had been trying to escape out the front door while an ex-military sniper turned private security officer, confronted them with a volley of well-aimed shots.

While no one had been directly harmed by the bandits, once we decided it was finally safe to come out of our hidey holes we discovered a fair number of injured, including one man who had fallen into a hole while trying to flee the casino in the dark and a few who had suffered minor heart attacks.

In the days that followed I acted like a lay counsellor for a great many of the traumatised patrons who came to me to tell their stories.

Talking about trauma, simply acknowledging what has happened to you can be a healing act in of itself.

I thought I had the biggest scoop of my career, but alas I had the story whipped away from under me by a reporter of higher rank who had the contacts I lacked.

Most things in life are about who you know after all.

For example, I wonder if there are any broken streetlights outside the homes of our mayor and sundry?

As we highlight the problem once again this week, there are 494 streetlights out of order between Salt Rock’s Ward 22 and Ballito’s Ward 30 alone.

With 30 wards in the municipality, an educated thumb suck would put the number of broken streetlights at at least 5 000.

This is not the first or the last time streetlights have been a burning issue. In fact, the last time the maintenance of streetlights was working properly was about 2014/5 when 2 companies,

ElectroTech Electrical and Nationwide Electrical, won the tender. Since those tenders came to an end it has been nothing but problems.

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