It’s always nice to be invited to a friend’s wedding . . . and even nicer when the wedding means a trip abroad for a few days’ sun, sea, surf and possibly fishing!
And this promises to be no ordinary wedding, especially given the groom’s nick name is Toast Boy and the place he’s getting married is Siasconset, Nantucket, USA.
It’s the famous coastline author Herman Melville based his classic tale of Captain Ahab’s futile battle with the monstrous Moby Dick.
When he was a young lad Jonathan Block (Toast Boy’s real name) used to help out at the imaginatively named Moby Dick Inn, making toast (75 cents per hour) for visiting tourists and residents, hence the nickname.
Well, one dusky evening as he strolled along the promenade to work, he glanced out across the bay and saw a massive shark slicing its way, like a hot knife through butter, through the dark waters of Cape Cod. Terrified he bolted into the Inn and in a panic spluttered to everyone what he had just seen.
Of course given the fact he was only 10 they put his tall tale down to an overexcited imagination and packed him off to the kitchen to brown the bread. After all there hadn’t been a shark that size sighted in those parts for more than 40 years.
It must have been a dolphin the boy was obviously talking nonsense!
But on his way to work the next night he again saw the shark and ran to the pub to tell everyone. Once more he was told to sling his hook.
The staff, however, thought it would be a good laugh to wind the poor lad up. So, with a lump of rancid beef attached to a butcher’s meat hook tied to 30ft of washing line and an empty plastic bottle as a float, they took the excited Toast Boy out on a small boat to catch his fabled shark.
But the grins were soon wiped off the faces of the men . . . they nearly needed a bigger boat!
After a titanic struggle a behemoth of the sea was eventually hauled aboard. This was no cute dolphin but a whopping 16ft man-eating great white!
After that Jonathon became a local hero. Everyone wanted to toast Toast Boy, everyone wanted to know him, to hear his story and many falsely claimed after to have been on that boat with him.
However, the tale was not quite over for Toast Boy. Two years later a horror book about a killer shark terrorising the small fictional community of Liberty Island was published.
It became an international best seller, Spielberg directed the movie, immortalising for ever more the shark, the theme tune and, of course, its now very wealthy author Peter Benchley.
The title of this tome was Jaws.
Mr Benchley, you see, lived just down the road from The Moby Dick Inn and he knew which way he liked his toast buttered. This was a tale he could get his teeth into and from that point onwards Toast Boy was always going to be onto crumbs!
Jonathon however, was not bitter. Not at all, he was delighted to be the inspiration behind Mr Benchley’s book.
Equally, as he’s one of the most laid back people you could ever care to meet, he was and still is completely un-fazed by all the attention he received. Deep down, though, I’m sure he’s glad to be alive after that little prank.
In later years he became very successful in his own right, joining the upper crust of music’s management elite, managing among others the brilliant band Fun Lovin’ Criminals.
Now he’s messing about with business sharks from the social media, surfing the net and making a megabyte sized bundle into the bargain.
He’s a very dear friend and his marriage to the lovely Destin in September is eagerly awaited, as is a trip out with him in a boat but only if harpoons, dynamite and rocket launchers are supplied as well as a nice wee slice of toast.
Daa-dum . . . Daa-dum . . . Daa-dum . . . Dum dum dum dum dum dum!
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe