Human Sacrifice

(The Chamber of Horrors in the Blackpool branch of Louis Tussauds: murky light, no public, just the wax statues. It's sometime in the late sixties. The usual unappetising suspects are lined up: Jack the Ripper, Vlad the Impaler and the standard motley gang of Nazis. Among them is a slightly incongruous figure: a dapper middle-aged man in dinner jacket and black tie. Suddenly, shockingly, he moves: indeed, he takes a silver cigarette case out of his pocket, extracts a cigarette, taps it on the case, lights it, inhales gratefully and steps out of line, greeting the audience with a friendly smile. This is STEPHEN WARD. His voice is exceptionally warm and seductive.)

[WARD]
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?