vailian

Lionel was in Rotterdam, Holland, last week, and in Prague, Czech Republic, at the weekend, did a concert there with a gospel singer; he described the event for me when he got back yesterday.
Open air. The concert was preceeded by a water fountain show, which thoroughly drenched the drums. Never mind, the audience went berserk with enthusiasm.
At the end of the show standing ovations and a boy with Downes Syndrome went onstage and got on his knees and bowed with devotion and happiness. Two other older men leapt onstage with flowers and wanted to present them to the singer, but she ignored them, pushing them away to acknowledge the audience, and did an encore. The 2 gentlemen, obviously embarassed, nevertheless stayed gamely on the stage and waited patiently for her to finish.
When she did take the flowers, one of the the men suddenly took her microphone and began to speak to the audience. Making no compromises for the fact that none of the band could understand Czech. He went on and on, and the handicapped boy made loud noises of protest and motioned for him to shut up already and get off the stage so the band could play some more. Lionel reckoned that the man talked for a good 15 minutes before finally leaving.
It was only as they were packing up their instruments that the manager grimly told them that one of the men was the Mayor of Prague and the other (who spoke so boringly and long) was the country's president.