Actor’s Workshop Correspondence & VAT Invoice, 23 & 29 November 1994

Some sundry correspondence and a VAT invoice (which must have baffled Mike Ward) with The Actor’s Workshop in late 1994, while I was registered for VAT in my own name in order to get Z/Yen started.

I sent Mike stuff for his New Year Revels shows for several years, sometimes wrote material to order (from memory, not that year) and occasionally attended with Janie.

No need to redact the address for this correspondence – the premises was fire-bombed in 2001, soon after Casablanca The Musical brought the house down – another story.

Apologies for the rogue apostrophes in the correspondence below – I was young and foolish back then.

Mike Ward                                  23 November 1994
Actor’s Workshop
West Grove Terrace
Hopwood Lane
Halifax, West Yorkshire
HX1 5EX
Dear Mike

NEW YEAR REVELS

Thank you for your letter, cheque and note re Save The Children Fund. I hope the preparation for your show is going well. I enclose my invoice (VAT regulations, who needs ’em?).

I look forward to hearing from you / seeing you soon.
Yours sincerely
Ian Harris
enc.

The enc:

FAO Mike Ward      Date: 23 November 1994
Actor’s Workshop      Tax point: 23 November 1994
West Grove Terrace
Hopwood Lane
Halifax, West Yorkshire
HX1 5EX
INVOICE TO: Actor’s Workshop
ACCOUNT REF: AW01
INVOICE NO: 02008

In respect of songs and sundry patter for the New Year Revels show scheduled for January 1995.
£

ROYALTIES 34.04
VAT @ 17.5% 5.96

————-
TOTAL £40.00
========
This amount has been received, with thanks.

…and one more letter…

Mike Ward 29 November 1994
Actor’s Workshop
West Grove Terrace
Hopwood Lane
Halifax, West Yorkshire
HX1 5EX
Dear Mike

NEW YEAR REVELS -TAPE

Thank you for the call yesterday. I enclose the tape you requested. If you need anything else, do get in touch.

Hope to see you soon.
Yours sincerely
Ian Harris

enc.

Newt Gingrich, NewsRevue Lyric, 22 November 1994

I’m not sure what happened with this one, but the log dates it as above whereas the electronic file is dated July 1995. Perhaps just a tiny tweak and resubmission, probably in vain.

Slow numbers need to be spot on. I don’t think this one is.

NEWT GINGRICH
(To the Tune of “Moon River”)

SPOKEN INTRO

BILL: For the sake of harmony on Capitol Hill, I am prepared to listen to any ideas the new speaker, Newt Gingrich, might wish to advance.

NEWT: Mr President, your wife’s a bitch!

(Immediately, an incessant female nonsense whine starts across the PA)

BILL: (to off) Yes, Hillary, I’ll tell that ass-hole where to get off, don’t you worry your pretty little bitch of head about that, he ain’t getting away with that remark.(To Newt) With all due respect, Mr Gingrich, that’s not quite the kind of harmony I had in mind. Try this for size.

VERSE 1 – BILL CLINTON

Newt Gingrich,
What a crazy name,
Competing for my fame and cares;
New speaker,
And rule tweaker,
The house that you’re chairing’s preparing for prayers.

(Hillary starts again with the whining)
BILL: Yes, Hillary, I’m telling him, I’m telling him good and proper.

VERSE 2 – BILL CLINTON

Two parties try to share the power,
But you’re so gruff and sour, please see;
We’re after the same rainbow’s end,
Let me tax and spend,
Then you can be friend,
Newt Gingrich and me.

VERSE 3 – NEWT GINGRICH

Bill Clinton off to save the world,
You chase your tail and girls loosely;
I’m after a sane rainbow’s end,
Although I’m round the bend,
My cuts will never mend,
Newt Gingrich, that’s me.

Here is Moon River with the lyrics set out below the vid:

Three Tall Women by Edward Albee, Wyndham’s Theatre, 19 November 1994

We didn’t book much theatre or concert stuff that autumn, what with the birth of Z/Yen and all that going on, but we did book a handful of things we couldn’t bear to miss. This was one of those. Edward Albee’s new play, Three Tall Women.

Janie even put aside her Maggie Smith aversion in the interests of seeing this one.

Michael Billington interviewed Edward Albee ahead of the press night:

Billington Albee Part OneBillington Albee Part One Wed, Nov 9, 1994 – 28 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Billington On Albee Part TwoBillington On Albee Part Two Wed, Nov 9, 1994 – 29 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

We both thought the play and production was very good.

Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.

I cannot find on-line reviews for the original cast (which we saw) but this Independent piece compares and contrasts the originals with their replacements a year or so later.

Actually I can find review clippings – Michael Billington for example:

Billington On Three Tall WomenBillington On Three Tall Women Wed, Nov 16, 1994 – 35 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Here is Kate Kellaway on the production:

Kate Kellaway On Three Tall WomenKate Kellaway On Three Tall Women Sun, Nov 20, 1994 – 84 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

The original three; Maggie Smith, Frances de la Tour and Anastasia Hille, were all superb in my view.

Albee doesn’t always work for me (us) but this one surely did.

Commerce With Ben Murphy, Autumn Correspondence, Culminating 15 November 1994

Ben Murphy is/was a very funny fellow and I enjoyed doing business with him. But several of the NewsRevue writers struggled with him, usually at the “getting paid” level.

He certainly wasn’t very business-like (but then nor are some of the NewsRevue lot), so I suspect that my correspondence felt a bit more urgent to him.

I always got paid eventually, for as long as he wanted more material, as I’d simply withhold new stuff until I was paid for the old stuff after a while.

The other problem dealing with him was working out where he was. He moved around a lot, partly for summer season purposes but possibly for other reasons. I hope he didn’t pay me rather than the rent that month…perhaps that explains the move.

Anyway, the correspondence and invoices below (from the early Z/Yen days when I needed to invoice) give a good flavour of it all.

I got paid and got continuing business for a couple more years. Ben started calling me Z/Ian after the second of the letters below.

Ben Murphy                  12 October 1994

(Wells address redacted)

Dear Ben

SONGS

As promised, Ben, here are those new songs. Hope you can use them..

Looking forward to receiving the dosh soon. Hope to increase my volume of output again shortly – so watch this space.

Do let me have your new address and phone number a.s.a.p. Speak to you soon.

Cheers.
Yours sincerely
Ian Harris

encs

…and with a little more urgency…

Ben Murphy                                   15 November 1994

(Wells address redacted)

Dear Ben

THANKS FOR THE MEMORY

Thank you for the telephone message that I have just received. I hope this letter gets to you, as your message did not identify your new address and telephone number.

I enclose copies of my fee notes (bloody yuppie he’s becoming) and copies of the very small number of new songs I’ve produced since we last spoke (nice guy ‘tho’, how could you possibly hate him on principle?).

I shall resort to private detectives and all sorts of shit unless I get a new address and telephone number out of you by the end of the month. I’ve just got to get these new songs to you!!

Love and kisses.

Cheers.
Yours sincerely
Ian Harris

Encs.

…and the invoices…

INVOICE
VAT REG NO GB 646 1995 04

FAO Ben Murphy Date: 12 September 1994

Tax point:14 August 1994

(Wells address redacted)

INVOICE TO: Ben Murphy
ACCOUNT REF: MU01
INVOICE NO: 02003
In respect of songs and sundry patter for your summer season, May to 12 August 1994.
£

ROYALTIES 150.00
VAT – NIL (PRE REGISTRATION) –

LESS: ADVANCE PAID 25.00

————-
TOTAL £125.00
========
This amount is now due. Many thanks in advance of your prompt attention.

 

INVOICE – FILE COPY VAT REG NO GB 646 1995 04

FAO Ben Murphy Date: 12 September 1994
Taxpoint: 12 September 1994

(Wells address redacted)

INVOICE TO: Ben Murphy
ACCOUNT REF: MU01
INVOICE NO: 02004
In respect of songs and sundry patter for your summer season, mid August to September 1994.
£

ROYALTIES 25.53
VAT @ 17.5% 4.47
————-
TOTAL £30.00
========
This amount is now due. Many thanks in advance of your prompt attention.

Accountancy Age Awards, The Brewery (Chiswell Street), 9 November 1994

OK, perhaps it wasn’t THAT long ago.

In the annals of accountancy folk lore, 9 November 1994 will forever be an historic day, not that you would easily find a reference to it on-line…

…until now.

For that evening in 1994 was the very first Accountancy Age Awards, now operated as a separate venture by the looks of it and/or rebranded as the British Accountancy Awards.

And I was there.

Not just there, I was an honoured guest. For I had been one of the judges on one of the panels for that very first year of the Accountancy Awards. I had been on the judging panel for accounting systems, no less. Selected for the role while I still worked for Binder Hamlyn, although I had left to form Z/Yen in the meantime. Accountancy Age were told about the move but didn’t mind. Nor did Binders.

A few weeks or months earlier, while still at Binders.

According to my 1994 diary, I spent the afternoon of 13 September 1994 at the Accountancy Age offices. During those few hours, I and the rest of the panel “examined” several systems, to decide which were worthy of  awards. You can imagine just how methodical and scientific that judging process must have been.

It was my first experience on an awards judging panel and I learnt a lot that afternoon to stand me in good stead since, whenever I have subsequently sat on (or in some cases chaired) such panels… mostly I learnt how NOT to judge awards from the Accountancy Awards experience.

But on awards night itself the judging was all behind me. My hard work was done. My black tie outfit was donned. I think I might have still been hiring black tie gear back then. It looks from my diary as though I worked from home that day, thus avoiding the worst excesses of “black tie day misery”: lugging clobber around all day, knowing you’ll have to change into that tux in some smelly bog, early evening. Or, in many ways worse, wandering around town all day in black tie, explaining to each client in the morning and afternoon meetings that you are so darned busy with back-to-back meetings that you are already dressed for a pompous evening do.

I have two lingering but fitful memories from the evening. The first relates to Bob Monkhouse, who hosted the show. I remember discovering that Debbie Barham was writing gags for Bob Monkhouse when he did this kind of gig, by mentioning this event to Debbie at a NewsRevue writers meeting. Debbie was a young, supremely talented comedy writer, whose subsequent tragic story was posthumously written by her dad in this book – click here.

I cannot remember whether Debbie and I had that conversation about Bob before or after the event itself. I do remember that, once we’d had that conversation, I’d get occasional e-mails from Debbie (she, like me, was a relatively early e-mail adopter) asking me for background information, buzz phrases or just something for her to latch onto when she was writing patter for similar commercial events, usually for Monkhouse or another serial awards offender, such as Ned Sherrin or Rory Bremner. Little did I know at that time how obsessive Debbie’s work habits would become and how tragically her situation would end.

But on the Accountancy Awards evening itself, I recall finding Bob Monkhouse’s jokes rather predictable but very professionally served. As was the food.

My second memory relates to George Littlejohn. By good chance, I was placed next to George. He was also an honoured guest, in his case in the capacity of a former editor of Accountancy Age magazine. George had subsequently moved on to bigger and better things; yes that really is possible.

George is a most interesting chap with a very good sense of humour. The latter came in especially handy that evening. There is always something incongruous/pompous about awards ceremonies done “Oscars-style” for matters less glamorous and more mundane than the Oscars. Accountancy Awards, for example, are, in my opinion, just a tad less glamorous and a smidgen more mundane than Oscars.

Perhaps George Littlejohn remembers the evening differently; if so, I hope he chimes in with a comment or three. We’ve kept in touch all these years, our business interests overlapping occasionally, but in any case we always enjoy meeting up. I occasionally run into George at cultural events, as indeed I did on New Years Day 2017 at the Curzon Bloomsbury – click here – which triggered me to write up this 1994 event now.

I particularly recall the last award, Accountant of the Year, being delivered with extreme fanfare, won by a big-haired young woman. Her excellence as an accountant I couldn’t possibly question, but it seemed (to us at least) that she had primarily been chosen for the award because she would utterly look the part in the press photos. In any event, she rapidly got busy, kissing Bob Monkhouse spontaneously, looking elatedly happy and supremely excited about it all. Meanwhile, the flash guns went on firing and the thumping music went on blaring. George and I couldn’t stop giggling for quite some while.

Still, the event must have been a great success – it is still being held every year, at the same venue I believe – for sure it was again at The Brewery, Chiswell Street in 2016. The event even has its own website and strap line – click here.

Although I have no pictures to show you of the event from 1994, the good news is, Accountancy Age have put up an album of pictures from the 2016 event. I have to tell you that, apart from the absence of me, George Littlejohn and of course the late Bob Monkhouse, the photo album looks just how the event looked in 1994 – it’s an uncannily similar look – click here.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that there is no record on-line from the 1994 event; who needs it? As another great George, Santayana in this case, succinctly put it:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Black Yeti, NewsRevue Lyric, 6 November 1994

Presumably someone found a yeti’s remains in Hunan province.

I don’t think this lyric made it into NewsRevue.

BLACK YETI
(A Quickie To the Tune of “Black Betty”)
VERSE ONE

Wo-oh Black Yeti – Hunan man,
Wo-oh Black Yeti – Hunan man;
The Yeti has been seen – Hunan man,
In a Chinese ravine – Hunan man;
He’s abominable -Hunan man,
And he finds it hard to pull – Hunan man;
We’ll make his mark -wo-oh Black Yeti,
A Chinese theme park – wo-oh Black Yeti;
Hunan man.

VERSE TWO

Wo-oh Black Yeti – Hunan man,
Wo-oh Black Yeti – Hunan man;
Boy that Yeti was mean – Hunan man
Fried up with yellow bean – Hunan man;
Black Yeti was a male – Hunan man,
We threw him in jail – Hunan man;
Without a trial – wo-oh Black Yeti,
Chinese style – wo-oh Black Yeti,
Human rights.

Sorry, human rights is off. Try number 23 – summary execution without trial or appeal.

Here is Ram Jam singing Black Betty with lyrics on the screen:

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 5 November 1994

If my memory serves me correctly, we saw Peer Gynt as a matinee on the Saturday and then Twelfth Night in the evening. It might have been the other way around.

Anyway, Janie and I voted this one very good, as indeed we voted Peer Gynt.

Coincidentally, I realise at the time of writing (October 2019, almost exactly 25 years later), Janie and I saw Emma Fielding star at Stratford again last week in A Museum In Baghdad.

I also realise that this Twelfth Night experience was almost exactly 15 years after my own “legendary” Alleyn’s School production of Twelfth Night:

Gosh.

Anyway, this 1994 production of Twelfth Night has all the cast and crew listed on Theatricalia – here.

Just one on-line review – Paul Taylor in The Independent, who hated it while admitting that his was probably a minority view.

Also this Michael Billington clipping to be had:

Billington On Twelfth NightBillington On Twelfth Night Fri, May 27, 1994 – 32 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Also Michael Coveney’s review is there to be clipped:

Coveney On Twelfth NightCoveney On Twelfth Night Sun, May 29, 1994 – 73 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

We really liked it. Des Barrit an obvious highlight but Emma Fielding was excellent as always and Tony Britton made an excellent Belch…as it were.

I vaguely remember dining at the Shakespeare after theatre that night…or did we do the Shakespeare after Pentecost and Fatty’s after this? Who cares?

Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, Swan Theatre, 5 November 1994

If my memory serves me correctly, we saw this play as a matinee on the Saturday and then Twelfth Night in the evening. It might have been the other way around.

Anyway, Janie and I voted this one very good.

Theatricalia shows a full list of credits for this production here.

Janie and I are fans of Ibsen for the moral dramas; this play is very different – a fantasy poem of sorts, although grounded in Ibsen’s family experience. Wikipedia explains the play well here.

Paul Taylor previewed this production in The Independent in 1994 just before it opened – click here.

Below is the Michael Billington clipping:

Billington On Peer GyntBillington On Peer Gynt Fri, May 6, 1994 – 45 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Robert Hanks reviewed it for the Independent in 1995 when it transferred to the Young Vic – click here…

But who needs experts? Janie and I thought it was a very good production, so it was just that. Alex Jennings memorable in the lea but well supported by the whole cast.

Pentecost by David Edgar, The Other Place, 4 November 1994

In amongst the heave of getting Z/Yen started that autumn, Janie and I did make the time for a solitary long weekend in Stratford-Upon-Avon, during which we saw three plays.

Not exactly a rest cure…

…said Janie, when I latterly (c25 years later, October 2019) showed her the evidence of that weekend.

The evidence shows that we stayed at The Shakespeare Hotel that time; I think for the second and possibly the last time. We found the room a bit pokey.

Anyway, we saw this David Edgar play on the Friday evening and thought it superb. I’ve always been a fan of Edgar’s plays and this is a good example of his work.

Wikipedia is not all that forthcoming about the play – click here – but I learn that we saw the premier and that it won an Evening Standard Award the following year on transfer to The Young Vic.

Theatricalia sets out the cast and crew here.

I’ve managed to find a contemporaneous review of this one on-line – Paul Taylor from the Independent – click here…

…scraped to here just in case the above link goes down.

Here’s a Michael Billington clipping:

Billingtpn On PentecostBillingtpn On Pentecost Fri, Oct 28, 1994 – 40 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Billington On Pentecost Part TwoBillington On Pentecost Part Two Fri, Oct 28, 1994 – 41 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Here’s Michael Coveney’s take:

Coveney On PentecostCoveney On Pentecost Sun, Oct 30, 1994 – 79 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

Anyway, we loved this play/production, that’s for sure. The notion of art and culture fusing/transferring both from west to east and from east to west is more or less received wisdom now, but the debate in the play, especially while the southern slavic region of Europe was still in turmoil, felt very topical and of the moment in 1994.

Did we eat in Fatty Arbuckle’s that evening? Quite possibly, but unless more evidence turns up we’ll not know for sure.