An unknown agent calls me on a Friday afternoon.

"Are you free next Tuesday morning to play solo saxophone?"
"Um..."
"In Broadmead Shopping Centre?
"Err..."
"It's the opening of the new toilets."
"Ah, well, actually..."
"It's £200."
"Oh, well, in that case..."

A couple of hours (well) paid practice time in a nice acoustic where 
noone will be listening and (perhaps more important) noone will 
recognise me sounded okay. So I turn up there in my best suit to find 
that these aren't any old toilets - these are brand-spanking-new 
toilets that cost more than a quarter of a million quid and, as well 
as me, there will be face-painting for kids, hair-styling for the 
ladies and "show-girls". How glamorous can toilets be??! Very, 
according to da management. Ready to practice my scales in all twelve 
keys I found myself hanging around the entrance to the bogs while da 
management worried about missing a "marketing opportunity" and called 
in the photographers.

I was not going to get away with this.

The show girls arrived in skimpy, scarlet bikinis and full-size, red 
feather wings. Almost immediately they disappeared into the ladies 
with the hairdresser and the photographer. Ominously, a few minutes 
later, I am also called into the toilets. And now I have to pose - as 
cheesily as possible - with two under-dressed glamour models, a 
hairdresser and a photographer, trying to look enthusiastic about a 
woman's lavatory.

Bear in mind it's 11.30 in the morning and I haven't had a drink.

Finally, I am released from my intense social discomfort and return 
to my post in the corridor by the entrance to the girls wazzers and 
begin to chunder through some sexy, smoochy standards.

This lasts for about 10 minutes. Almost as soon as I had got going (I 
think I may even have been playing "I Can't Get Started") the loos 
sprang a leak and had to be closed. Off home I went, hoping to forget 
all about the this lavatorial interlude. And I had mostly succeeded 
until I started getting phone calls from sniggering "friends" who had 
seen my photo (with the two under-dressed glamour models etc.) on a 
half-page spread in the Evening Post.

My next gig a few days later was with a duo of free-jazz musicians on 
platform 5 of Taunton railway station to mark the rebranding of First 
Great Western.

I get all the glamorous gigs.