NewsRevue 40th Anniversary Party, Show & Smoker, Canal Cafe Theatre, 18 August 2019

NewsRevue is the world’s longest running live comedy show. It has been running since 18 August 1979. That is a Guinness World Record. If you don’t believe me, click here and read it on the official Guinness World Records site.

I have been involved with the show since 1992, as reported on Ogblog in many postings, not least this one which records my first performed offering – click here or below:

California Here I Go, NewsRevue Lyric, 23 April 1992

I formed many friendships over the years I wrote for NewsRevue (most of the rest of the 1990s). Many of us keep in touch through Ivan Shakespeare dinners, many of which are written up on Ogblog, including this one:

Ultimate Love and Happy Tories, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 3 March 2017

Mike Hodd (see headline picture) is one of the founders of the show, was a mainstay at our writers meetings in the 1990s and is a fairly regular attendee at Ivan Shakespeare dinners.

For some reason, Mike roped me into liaising with Emma and Shannon at the Canal Cafe to help pull together the 40th anniversary event.

I take very little credit for the superb evening that ensued, but I did contribute some archival material and I did stitch up some NewsRevue alums by gathering names and serial numbers through the e-mail connections.

I also suggested that the event include a smoker, in line with a tradition we had back in the 1990s of having after show parties at which we performed party pieces. Mike particularly liked that idea so it simply had to happen.

But the organisation of the event was really down to Emma, Shannon and the team who did a cracking job.

First up was a pre show drinks reception, at which some of us (encouraged to dress up), looked like this:

Then we watched the current show. An excellent troupe comprising Dorothea Jones, Brendan Mageean, Gabrielle De Saumarez and Rhys Tees under Tim MacArthur’s directorship.

Before the smoker, Shannon and the team played us a wonderful 40th anniversary video compilation of pictures and video clips from across the decades. Here is that very vid:

I was proud to have supplied some of the clippings contained therein and moved to see the video and ponder on just what 40 years of a show really means.

Then the smoker. I was really delighted that current/recent cast and crew joined in the idea and chipped in with their own party pieces, which were very entertaining.

From our own “Class of ’92, there were several contributions, captured pictorially by Graham Robertson, with thanks to him for the following pics.

Mike Hodd made two excellent contributions to the smoker;

• a very amusing stand up set in which he somehow managed to extract humour from Parkinson’s disease. I shall never again be able to dissociate in my mind the film Fatal Attraction from the affliction fecal impaction;
• a slow build routine in which he was an auctioneer trying to fob off some utter tat as masterpieces. Great fun.

Gerry Goddin performed an audience participation routine in which we joined in a song about “mutton dressed as lamb” to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown. Gerry dealt with my heckling so masterfully that some people thought the heckles had been planted; they had not.

Barry performed a stand up comedy routine with masterful poise. I thought we were all supposed to be writers who cannot perform.

I wanted to celebrate one of my classic songs from 1992; the second of mine to be performed in the show but a perennial:

You Can’t Hurry Trusts, NewsRevue Lyric, 7 May 1992

Chris Stanton was the performer who made my debut contributions to NewsRevue such a success in 1992. He too was at this party and performed a couple of classics brilliantly well; A Loan Again and also John Random’s classic 0898 song. No photo of the Chris’s performance as yet – unless Graham finds one of those amongst his collection.

Jonny Hurst also celebrated John Random’s ouevre with a rendition of the wonderful “Tell Laura A Liver”.

This was in part done to honour John Random’s recent selfless act to donate a kidney out of pure altruism to an anonymous recipient. To complete the honouring of that extraordinary good deed, Jonny and I jointly segued the liver song into a visceral medley including a specific piece we put together to honour John’s donation:

 WHO DO YOU THINK GOT YOUR KIDNEY, MR RANDOM?

(Lyric to the Tune of “Who Do You think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”)
 

THE MAIN REFRAIN
 
Who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random?
Since your organ donation?
Was it a girl for to stop her renal pain?
Was it a boy who can take the piss again?
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random?
Now that you’ve gone down to one?
 
FIRST MIDDLE EIGHT

Mr Burns – he came to town
The age of twenty-one
He did assume a nom de plume
And took the name Random.
 
FIRST REPRISE
 
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random?
Now that you’ve gone down to one?
 
SECOND MIDDLE EIGHT

Mr Burns did not return
With kidney number one
But kept his sense of humour…
(pause)
…And is ready with his pun.
 
SECOND REPRISE
 
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random?
Now that you’ve gone down to one?
 

It was a great party, it was a terrific show and it was a superb smoker. A truly memorable event to celebrate 40 years of a wonderful show.

As John Random said in his preamble to the smoker, NewsRevue has initiated so many careers and transformed so many lives over those decades. And for those of us who have formed enduring friendships, it is hard to express our gratitude to Mike Hodd and those who have kept the NewsRevue torch burning week in week out for forty years and counting.