Andy Richardson: Ooh cheeky! Calls with a splash of sauce

“Well,” she said, impatiently, rapping scarlet nails against the phone. “What’s it to be?” I imagined her tilting her slender frame towards me. My brain melted like butter in a hot pan. I paused for 0.7 seconds.

“Too late,” she said, spinning on her heels and schizzling out the imaginary door in a puff of Chanel No 5 and expensive hair. My chin fell to the floor as I tried to work out what had just happened. But the train had left the station. I’d missed my connection to Fun Town. It was a rainy day on Platform Number Grey and I’d failed to high tail it out of there.

I coulda, woulda, shoulda been faster. Damn, even an: ‘If you’re offering…’ would have sufficed. But logic got in the way of a smooth, slick answer and the Lapland Express headed out of town.

Mrs Sauce has perfected the art of the double entendre. She could turn a conversation about B&Q floor screed into an erotic encounter. In fact, I know exactly how she’d do that. She’d look innocently at the grey and uninteresting powder and say: “Ooh, has it hardened off yet?” Then she’d titter like a schoolgirl. Actually, no, she wouldn’t. Mrs Sauce is Double Entendre Hardcore. She’s B&Q Super Strength. She’d probably pull out an unexpected plastic yellow Bob the Builder helmet and start dancing the cancan after quickly changing into a pair of fishnets.

If I asked her something equally innocuous, I don’t know, like: ‘How do you like your eggs cooked?’ She wouldn’t say scrambled, boiled or fried. She’d say: ‘Why, am I staying at yours tonight? That’s a bit forward, we’ve only just met and you’re already talking about breakfast’.

Her euphemistic conversation is part Frankie Howerd, part Finbarr Saunders. Fnarr Fnarr. It is peppered with such phrases as: ‘it’s great to be on top’, and ‘we could do it now, if you like’. And while those phrases have obvious literal meanings – like, ‘it’s good to be ahead’ and ‘we can start that project now if you like’ – from the mouth of Mrs Sauce they sound like the sort of one-liners you’d find from an XXX-rated, chat-up app.

Mrs Sauce’s double entendres might lack sophistication, but she gets away with them because:

a) She’s pretty

b) She has a ‘sex chat line’ voice that puts the steam into steamy

c) She’s a fox. And foxes can do what they like.

I’ve never quite mastered the art of the double entendre. Nor, it must be said, have I always been successful at picking up the true meanings embedded into most conversations. I’m all about being rational – and that’s no good if you need to understand what people really mean.

My most notable failure came at the age of 21 after getting to know a receptionist over regular lunches. We’d spent a week or two together talking innocently, or so I thought. And I’d taken plenty of stick from colleagues about my friendliness to a woman who, perhaps unfairly, had been described by others as being ‘the good time had by all’. Happily, not understanding double entendres and being unable to read between the lines, I’d failed to divine the meaning of that joke too.

One afternoon, following a lunchtime chat about the unlamented indie band Mega City Four, my phone rang. It was the receptionist. “How would you like to earn some money?” she said.

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I assumed she wanted me to do her dad’s garden or run some household chores. “I’ve got a Flymo if you need it,” I told her.

She laughed. I was a spider in her web. Within a day or two I’d learned the meaning of her clandestine proposal. I didn’t have to weed her father’s flower beds, though I’d discovered the pot of gold that lay at the end of her metaphoric rainbow. Our doomed relationship didn’t last. Though it turned out she was pretty good in the garden. My roses have never looked so good. And who knew she’d be so strong when it came to building a retaining wall.

I kinda like the art of the double entendre. They’re mostly harmless and charming; steering clear of gratuitousness and sleaze. And expertly deployed, they can lighten the most serious meetings or inquisitions.

I’m thinking of asking Mrs Sauce to be my mentor. She can lead me through a world that I don’t understand, holding my hand gently as she teaches me the art of flirtation. And then, when the good-looking woman at the supermarket checkout asks whether she can do anything else for me, I can say something smart and sexy, instead of: ‘Yes, could you stick a ribbon on my McVitie’s Hobnobs’. And no, that isn’t a double entendre.