Janie and I thoroughly enjoyed this simple five-hander, about a purportedly successful young woman returning to her home town near Manchester.
Much of the play is set in the pub, which gives the piece a bit of a soap-opera-like feel, as does the play’s narrative arc. But there is depth to the emotions and interactions in this play that take the piece into dramatic territory that works wonderfully well as live theatre.
Janie and I would highly recommend this production.
The performance starts (or pre-starts) with an element of immersive experience. The Charlene character is singing karaoke in the pub. Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, seeing as you asked. Go on, give it a go. It’s not easy to belt, so hats off to Olivia Forrest for fooling Janie for a few seconds before we walked in.
Members of the audience were invited by barman/DJ Valentine (Aaron Stanley) to give it a go. No, Janie and I resisted the temptation. But one pair of women from the audience gave a pretty serviceable account of Flowers by Miley Cyrus, then a cunning chap volunteered to sing Tequila, which must be the “minimum effort, maximum reward” option for karaoke. Finally , one brave fellow tried singing Crocodile Rock, perhaps secure in the knowledge that his falsetto la, la-la-la-la-las could almost make up for the inadequacy of the rest. That’s karaoke for you.
Mercifully, the play proper started after that. Rowan Robinson, Deka Walmsley, Olivia Forrest, Sophie Stanton and Aaron Anthony all acted their roles superbly well. Well directed by Katie Greenall, whose name was new to us, but we’ll be looking out for that name again henceforward.
Having praised the pre show Bad Romance karaoke rendering, I should also, for balance, praise Sophie Stanton’s karaoke Brass In Pocket towards the end of the play. Not an easy one.
It is hard for me and Janie to remember a time when Ray was not a constant feature of tennis in Boston Manor Park. We have always played at the weekends. On Saturday mornings, for more than two decades, we would witness Ray enthusiastically showing children the basics of tennis on Court One. On the occasions when we could play during the week, such as Monday mornings, we’d come across Ray again, stewarding some (mostly) women’s doubles.
Ray’s thoughtfulness and courtesy towards other players at the courts was impeccable. One of the many reasons why Janie and I became sure that Boston Manor Tennis Club, is “our sort of place”.
All good things come to an end. Ray has decided to hang up his racket. Would we care to join him and other members past and present for an afternoon party across the way in Blondin Park? Linda Massey was organising a bit of a do. How could we possibly have missed that?
Dozens and dozens of Ray’s friends, family and former tennis trainees stopped by to help Ray celebrate. The April weather smiled on Ray’s party – no more than he deserved. In fact, it was a bit of a scorcher. I decided to protect my head with my new pillbox cap, which I plan to sport when watching cricket and tennis this season.
I have long thought that Janie and I might be the last remaining players at Boston Manor who have been there since before Ray’s time. Very few people played there when we started playing in that park and Ray came along to get activities moving soon after we joined.
Ray confirmed that factoid in his speech, while also making reference to a playful comment by one of the youngsters alluding to my resemblance to a certain well-known writer from days of yore – the short clip below says it all:
No-one had pointed out this resemblance before…at least, not this month they hadn’t.
Ray was far too polite to point the finger at the offending youngster…which is more than can be said for that youngster’s dad, who approached me on the tennis courts a few days later, struggling to suppress his giggles, confessing that his son was the culprit. Hmm.
Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest…
…as The Bard so eloquently put it, in King Lear.
Boston Manor Tennis Club won’t quite be the same place again without Ray, but his efforts (and those of many others) helped transform that small tennis club, and indeed the whole park, into a thriving and friendly community place.
I guess you might describe it as stand-up theatre. Just one performer, Yousef Sweid, telling and acting out his story:
Yousef was raised as a Christian-Arab-Palestinian-Israeli kid in Haifa, and is now raising two Jewish-Arab-Austrian kids in Berlin. Only he’s facing a custody battle, so things are getting complicated…
On entering the theatre, Janie and I ran into my old pal from the health club and Lord’s, Stephen Barry, who I hadn’t seen or heard from for quite some time…
…with his wife, Lindy. Being the Royal Court Upstairs, we were able to sit together and chat a while before the play started. Stephen does wonderful charitable work with refugees from that part of the world, but in any case, it seems, has become even more of a Royal Court regular than me and Janie, although this is the first time I remember overlapping with him there.
Anyway, returning to Between the River And The Sea…
…this beautifully written and performed piece seemed, to us, pitch perfect in illustrating the human side of the tragedies unfolding in the Middle East. Yousef Sweid is highly charismatic and his story is told with eloquence, charm and humour. Not everyone can tell their stories in this way, but everyone from that part of the world has their stories about their childhoods, their friendships, their animosities and their tragedies.
I would challenge anyone who has a heart to hear the final few sentences of the piece without being profoundly moved. I’m sure Stephen wouldn’t mind me letting on that he quietly shed a few tears
This Royal Court run is sold out – it probably sold out soon after I bought our tickets some months ago.
As I often find myself saying, but mean with special intensity in this case – this production deserves to be seen by a much wider audience.
The pavilion was a bit less crowded than this…actually a lot less crowded
John Fry and I had not really kept in touch at all after leaving Alleyn’s School back before the dawn of time. We were in the same class for, we think, just one year – the third year for me and the first year for him. We were both fast-tracked into the Bear Pit when just 15 – in John’s case on the grounds of talent and in my case possibly because I was in the right place at the right time to look the part.
Anyway, for reasons too daft to explain, John re-engaged with me earlier this year and invited me to a delightful lunch at his club, The Union Club, in late January 2026.
I wanted to reciprocate, but I don’t really have a club. Well, I suppose I do – the MCC, but John doesn’t much like cricket.
The solution was to invite John to Lord’s on a minor match day, when the ground is not crowded, the lunch is still a decent lunch and the cricket is as important or unimportant as you want it to be. John had never seen the place before and liked the idea.
Hence MCC Women’s Day.
I played tennis first thing against Paul Buchanan-Barrow who, coincidentally, had been my doubles partner 18 months earlier in the famous international fixture against the visitors from Newport, Rhode Island. Coincidental, because Paul and I had done battle with a women’s pair that day.
Paul wasn’t sticking around for the women’s cricket, so I waited alone for John, taking in a bit of the atmosphere of the day. Despite the early season scheduling, it was actually a bright sunny day which offered to be warm enough to watch in the great outdoors by afternoon.
But first, on John’s arrival, I thought I’d give him the informal pavilion tour. Rather unexpectedly, we ran into the Club President, Ed Smith, who greeted me warmly as we had not seen each other for some time, and later also the Chairman and CEO, all of whom were showing their faces and/or entertaining folk on this quiet but iconic day.
The potentially pompous experience reminded me of the following 2009 evening I wrote up for King Cricket…
…in which my old friend Stentor Baritone and I showed young Lavender and Escamillo around the pavilion.
That made me wonder what had become of Stentor, as I hadn’t heard from him since before the pandemic. Nor had he heard from me. I resolved to get in touch with Stentor by e-mail some time soon, but, strangely, Daisy and I bumped into him at The Royal Court Theatre the very next evening. Now that’s weird.
John seemed to be enjoying the cricket more than I thought he would, but I managed to wrestle him away from such distractions from our main purpose, taking lunch in the Long Room Bar, then showing him the library and the tennis court and the Performance Centre. There we took some tea in Filipa’s and watched the sun starting to come out in reasonable force.
That gave us the courage to watch some cricket from the Mound Stand, where normal people sit and watch and where you can take a little early season sun.
The day flew by, as Lord’s days do.
While gently watching on, John mentioned, in passing, that he had “a little bit of cricket heritage” in his family. Somewhere in the cousinhood, he couldn’t quite remember, women cricketers – twins as it happens. He’d try to track down the reference later.
I felt a surge of imposter syndrome – wondering whether my guests have more right (at least by birthright) to be hosts at Lord’s than I do – similar to the feeling I had when I took John Random to Lord’s seven years ago. Another friend who claimed no connection with cricket…except for his grandfather Herbert Ireland who was a doyen of Widnes CC to the extent that the function room at that club is named after him. See the Thursday entry “A Random Ramble Around Lord’s” in the diary piece below.
It must be something about people named John with equity surnames and left leanings.
Random as Trotsky
Joking apart, it was a most enjoyable day milling around Lord’s with John Fry.
“And the cricket?”, I hear you cry. Really? You can read all about it here. In fact, if you really want to, you can even watch it all on the stream recording, below:
A delicious lunchtime concert of classical guitar. Samrat Majumder is a young guitarist who is clearly going places. He played an interesting programme of music spanning five centuries, although the 17th and 18th missed out in the jump from renaissance to classical/romantic periods.
We heard:
Luys de Narváez – Canción del Emperador
Alonso Mudarra – Fantasia No. 10
Fernando Sor – Grand Solo Op. 14
Enrique Granados – Valses poéticos
Manuel de Falla – Homenaje ‘pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy’
Antonio José – Guitar Sonata
Encore – Isaac Albéniz – Granada (Serenata)
Here’s a lovely vid of Samrat, a couple of years ago, playing the charming Mudarra piece we heard.
After the gig, Janie and I floated a couple of doors down, to look at posh cookers. That hadn’t always been part of the plan, but that mission ended up fitting in with our plans very well indeed.
If you want to know more about Samrat, this video is a mini documentary/interview with him:
Me and Simon Barton in our Alleyn’s School shirts. Photo by Paul Cattermull
Soon after I started playing real tennis, in 2016, I ran into Paul Cattermull in the viewing gallery at Lord’s. Paul and I had worked together years before, at Binder Hamlyn. I told Paul that I was enjoying the game enormously but finding it really difficult.
But why, Ian? It’s a bit like cricket. Move your feet, get your head over the ball, watch the ball and keep your head still as you hit it…
Indeed, all the shortcomings and techniques I struggled with at cricket are also there to torment me in real tennis. But at least with tennis, if you make a mistake, you just lose one point. Well,15, if you are counting the time-honoured tennis way, but you get my meaning.
Anyway, with perseverance and years of fun sporting activity, I have worked my way up the real tennis handicap charts to being very, very average at the game. Indeed, when the Tennis & Rackets Association re-based the handicaps last year, my doubles handicap straddled the median pre and post adjustment value of 55.
As I progressed from “absolute beginner” into “showing some progress towards ordinariness” category, Paul suggested that I find a fellow alum from Alleyn’s School to enter his eponymous “old school” handicap doubles tournament. It was a lovely idea, but for the absence of such an alum with whom to partner.
Thus the plot was hatched and we agreed to attempt the tournament.
Simon is able to boast having had a single digit handicap and even now maintains a handicap of 14. Unfortunately for me and for our Cattermull Cup campaign, that’s his golf handicap. Simon’s real tennis handicap is in the 70s.
That makes the Cattermull Cup a tough ask for Alleyn’s. Simon’s handicap is above the cut off for this tournament and my limited ability will struggle to cover that shortfall. But we agreed that it would be good experience to give the tournament a go this year, albeit as the lowest ranked pair. We entered in hope, but not with expectation.
Alongside this uphill sporting endeavour, Simon and I have also formed a rather unusual, some might say ghoulish, connection over our avocational history research projects. I am looking at the MCC’s role in the development of cricket and tennis (real and lawn) in the mid to late 19th century, not least the extraordinary efforts of Robert Allan Fitzgerald. Meanwhile Simon, who is described by the website topdoctors.co.uk as an expert in sexual health, is, as one of his hobbies, researching the history of STDs in a similar period.
Parenthetically, biology teacher Tom Gascoigne would have been extremely proud of Simon’s post Alleyn’s medical achievements (as would Chris Liffen & John Clarke), despite Mr Gascoigne’s preference for researching sacoglossan penial styles rather than the penial afflictions of humans.
Robert Allan Fitzgerald, first paid Secretary of the MCC, 1863-1876. “Retired due to ill health” 1876 and died tragically young in 1881, a victim of tertiary syphilis.
I’m pretty sure that Mr Jenkins would have thoroughly approved of the unusual subject-matter in Simon’s and my history projects. With Mr Jenkins’s consent, I researched the 7th century origins of Islam for my third year history project and the 19th century origins of the cinema as my ‘O’ Level history project.
Eadweard Muybridge – moving image pioneer. Mr Jenkins style of history favoured eccentric characters with unusual back-stories, especially chaps with fulsome beards
As Simon put it oh so succinctly after our third thrashing in three warm up matches in preparation for our tournament:
Ian Harris: Better on Jacobethan music and drama than at tennis.
…but Simon’s poxy tag line is more infectious than mine.
Anyway, all the above blurb is merely a maxi preamble to my mini match report on the 2026 Cattermull Cup from the Alleyn’s School team perspective.
No Sets Please, We’re Alleyn’s: The Tournament Itself, Middlesex University Real Tennis Court
All the gear…
We were properly prepared. Simon procured a brace of Alleyn’s School tennis shirts, which went down well with the organisers. My choice of team name did not go down quite so well.
I had imagined that the teams had alum-oriented team names and that some of them might be imaginative and witty. But it turned out that “Alleyn Old Folk” was the only team with a waggish name.
We found ourselves in a group comprising Clifton (multiple former winners), Harrow 2 (Harrow are also multiple former winners), Highgate & Alleyn Old Folk.
Let us not delve too deeply into exactly what happened in our round robin group. Suffice it to say that we were not humiliated in any of our matches – no bagels and no breadsticks. Harrow prevailed in our group, deservedly so, winning all three of its rubbers.
When I called Janie before setting off for home, we had the following conversation:
JANIE: How did you get on?
ME: Not too bad – we came fourth in our group.
JANIE: That’s amazing! How many teams were there in your group?
ME: Four.
JANIE: Ah, not quite so amazing then. But did you enjoy yourselves?
ME: Of course we did.
As always with real tennis, it was a convivial yet competitive afternoon with a great bunch of people, many of whom I know well from other matches and tournaments. It was a great learning experience for both of us. In Simon’s case, his first taste of such a match/tournament against lower handicappers. In my case, the challenge of trying to find tactics that would give us a chance to win some games in the sets, as once you are in the mix with games on the board, anything can happen in a one-set-to-six shoot-out.
And there’s always next year, by which time, hopefully, Simon will have a bit more experience under his belt and a better (hopefully uncapped) handicap to bring to the party.
I am imagining what Simon’s and my sports masters would have to say about all of this.
Good on you, chaps. Fine sporting effort for the school. Keep trying. Better luck next time. Harris – would you please mark some matches for me on Tuesday?
Colin Page (1926-2021)
Messsrs Banson & Page watching on c1977
I told you both that you were utterly useless at sport.
Barry Banson (1933-2025)
Epilogue: The Finals
Janie & I played our traditional game of lawn an hour earlier than usual in order to get to Middlesex in reasonable time. At least I manged to scrape one set this weekend…just.
We arrived as the losing Sherborne pair were departing, bemoaning their narrow fate in a tight semi against Rugby (6-2, 6-5). On taking up our viewing positions, I asked one of the victors, Charles Whitworth, to encapsulate the Sherborne match in a few words:
Adrian Warburton’s devilish bobble serve,
came the reply.
We had arrived early in the second set of the second semi-final: Norwich School v Harrow 2. The Norwich School team comprised Tim Edwards, whom Janie and I got to know when we were in Newport Rhode Island for the World Championship last year…
Norwich’s opponents were Harrow 2, Sebastien Maurin & James Charatan, who had proved 2-much for me and Simon Barton the previous day in our group.
Harrow 2 also proved to be too much for Norwich in a close run match (6-5, 6-4), despite Reuben Ard’s relentless pounding of the grille and tambour. At one point he achieved a hat-trick of grille winners, which I have only ever witnessed once before, when Alex Gibson pulled off such a stunt in the 2023 MCC Club Weekend C/D Groups Final. Unfortunately there is no video evidence of Reuben’s achievement, which was rather more muscular than Alex’s, whereas the last two of Alex’s three grille shots are captured here:
I have ever since called that achievement the “Coup De Gibson”. I briefly considered changing the name now to “Coup D’Ard”, but that sounds more like something emanating from the manosphere than a real tennis achievement, so we’ll stick with Coup De Gibson.
Both semi-finals were played between pairs with vastly differing handicaps and were won by the pair that was receiving a significant handicap. The final was very different – just a four point difference separated the two – (Harrow received half 15 from Rugby).
It looked on paper as though it was going to be a tight match, but when it came to the action on plaster and wood and stone rather than paper…
…it was an incredibly tight match. I think at least half of the games went to 40-40. Certainly the first handful of games in each of the first two sets did so. It was compelling viewing and it was impossible to tell which way the match would go until the last few minutes, when the Rugby team applied one or two new tricks which did just enough to confound the Harrow pair. (5-6, 6-3, 6-4).
Callum Grier & Charles Whitworth of Rugby, receiving the trophy from JanieWill Burns, James Charatan, Sebastien Maurin, Callum Grier, Charles Whitworth, Paul Cattermull & Jack Carter
It was an enjoyable watch in good company, as is real tennis’s way. Hopefully next year…or at least some year…I’ll be at The Cattermull Cup on finals day as a player rather than a spectator.
ALSO BY E-MAIL TO RELEVANT PEOPLE & OPENLY PUBLISHED ON MY OWN MEDIA
Dear Colm,
COMPLAINT: REGARDING 3 WOODFIELD AVENUE, STREATHAM, LONDON SW16 – FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH OMBUDSMAN FINAL DECISION (Ref: PNX-5254672-Y6R6)
I don’t make a habit of complaining to Chief Executives of public companies, but Allianz’s conduct in this instance has been so poor and falls so far short of commercial decency, I believe that you and the public should be made aware of it. I think it is a matter of public concern that a legally binding, final decision from the Financial Ombudsman Service is being delayed and ignored by Allianz.
Minor subsidence was first spotted and reported to Allianz in the autumn of 2019. Less than a year later, following significant damage resulting from the subsidence, losses started to arise. I shall not delve in this letter into the Allianz-led problems that have bedevilled this insurance claim from the outset.
Suffice it to say that Allianz’s poor conduct and performance is documented in detail in my complaint to the Ombudsman in August 2024, which was clearly determined in my favour on 16 September 2025: PNX-5254672-Y6R6 (decision attached). I accepted the decision on that same day.
Frankly, you should be horrified at some of my grounds for complaint between 2019 and 2024. Allianz’s original attempt to deny liability for loss of rent in 2020 and the dishonest attempt by Allianz’s contractors, pretending that there had been storm damage in January 2021, whereas in fact they were simply lying about having done work, is bad enough. The fact that the claim was still open and the root cause not addressed until the claim was nearly five years old was strongly censured by the Ombudsman. I need not repeat his criticisms.
My complaint directly to you is because I have been met solely with silence from Allianz since the Ombudsman made his decision. I was told that I should hear within four weeks of the decision. I wrote on 6 November 2025, then again 26 November 2025 and understand that the Ombudsman also followed up with Allianz on my behalf.
A lump of money arrived in my bank account from Allianz on 28 November 2025 but without any accompanying correspondence; no statement, no calculation, and no letter of explanation. It is impossible for me to reconcile this with the Ombudsman’s ruling. It does not accord with computations I have made as to the sums I might now expect, based on the principles set out in the Ombudsman’s decision. I wrote again 15 December 2025 asking for an explanation and a computation for final settlement, presenting my own computation. The Crawford loss adjuster responded to the 15 December e-mail asking me to be patient and promising a response before Christmas.
On 15 January 2026 I wrote to Allianz & Crawford again, as I had again been met with a wall of silence. On 20 February 2026 Crawford wrote again, stating, “I have not received instructions from your insurers, and I am conscious that another month has passed.“ He said he had advised Allianz to make a partial payment of c£12,000 towards the remaining sums owing to me (my estimate c£20,000), which he promised would be forthcoming.
He wrote again on 5 March asking for my bank details again, which I sent by return, promising, “partial payment should follow in 7-10 days.“ Needless to say no partial payment has been forthcoming. Nor have my constant requests for warranties and certificates of adequacy since the remedial work was completed in October 2025 been met with anything other than silence. Without the certificates of adequacy and warranties for the 2025 works, the property remains effectively uninsurable (with anyone other than Allianz) and unsaleable, not that I curently wish to sell the house.
In short, I am near my wits end. The Ombudsman has clearly expressed his decision and the remedial work has theorietically been signed off, but I am some £20,000 short of where I should be and I still do not have documents to evidence that the property has formally been secured and restored.
Although the property is enveloped in a body corporate, it is still the family home in which I grew up. I enveloped it in Trust as a protective for my mother when she developed dementia before she died; hence the body corporate now. While I understand that, in a formal sense, emotion does not come into it in corporate circumstances, I cannot help but feel upset and exhausted by the sorry way the matter has been handled by Allianz and its contractors, in so many shoddy ways, for so many years.
As my wife constantly points out to me – 3 Woodfield Avenue could easily still have been my family home. It could easily still have been my late mother’s sanctuary in her declining years. Such properties often are owned and/or occupied by vulnerable people, who would not be able to stand up for their rights as I have been able to stand up for mine.
Our sense is that Allianz (and probably other insurers like it) have a systemic, seemingly mendacious issue with the ways such claims are often handled. Even the Ombudsman seems powerless to get Allianz to act promptly and decently.
Such poor conduct by a public company like Allianz and its agents should be called out in public. The systemic issues that underlie such poor conduct should be addressed by Allianz and by the insurance sector gnerally.
No-one should have to go through what I have been through over a slightly complicated, but basically standard, subsidence claim in suburban England. I await your comments and proposed actions with great interest.
cc: The Financial Ombudsman Service, BBC Radio 4 ‘You and Yours’ (Investigation Desk), BBC ‘Money Box’ (Consumer Redress Team), The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (Consumer Protection Division), Crawford & Company
Innocently hoping for the utmost good faith, c1966
…we were delighted to see that, at last, what had been a deserted space underneath the theatre, formerly the Finborough Arms, had been revived and reopened as a rather sprauncy-looking Indian Restaurant; Yogi’s Kensington.
We popped in, took a look around, smelt the mouth-watering smells – such an improvement on the stale chip fat smell that had been the Finborough Arms kitchen’s trademark smell for some while before that place closed down – and even picked up a menu for future reference.
The small print is detailed descriptions of dishes
Anyway, I thought this place sounded right up John’s street. It was my turn to choose and John leapt at the idea when he looked at the menu on-line. Simples.
Here’s what we ate – the first two dishes being starters to share:
Hot Garlic Honey Fish – Honey glazed spicy, tangy fish with bold garlic chili flavors.
Lasooni Methi Lamb – cooked in fresh fenugreek, garlic with special indian spice
Goan Curry Prawns – cooked in fresh coconut with authentic kokan spice
Dal Makhani – Slow cooked black lentils with red kidney beans
Saffron Pilaf Rice – Fregnante rice cooked with saffron
Plain Naan
Washed down with some beer (in John’s case) followed by wine by the glass in both of our cases.
Every dish was delicious.
So absorbed were we in our conversations and delight in the food, we both forgot to take food porn photos – that’s twice in a row we’ve dined without photos.
As always, it was great to get together with John. We didn’t quite solve all the world’s problems this time, so I guess we should get together again quite soon and have another go at the problems…or at least have another fine meal together.
Rohan Candappa, Nick Wahla, Me, Steve Butterworth, Ollie Goodwin, Rich Davis & Lisa Pavlovsky– thank you for the photo, Mr Waiter.
A gathering of friends who went to my school, and great fun it was too. It is always enjoyable and uplifting when we meet up.
On this occasion, we gathered at Souk in honour of Rich “The Rock” Davis, who risked flying out of Toronto to London despite his own absence from air traffic control when so-doing.
But what should we call ourselves? “Alleyn Old Boys” was the standard term when we joined the school. Replaced by “Alleyn Old Boys And Girls” when the school went co-educational, while we were there. That’s a bit of a mouthful, though.
“Alleyn Alums” still has the requisite gender neutrality, but Latin is so old hat. Indeed some of us…no names, no pack drill Nick Wahla, showed little affinity for that classical language 50 years ago, and have not exactly changed their minds since then.
Coincidentally, I have recently had to grapple with this vital old-school nominative question for practical reasons. As part of my sporting activities playing real tennis…
So much room for improvement in that technique – c2016.
…and as foreshadowed in one of my Ognblog pieces a few months ago…
…I have indeed teamed up with Professor Simon Barton (Alleyn’s 1970-1977, stop sniggering at the back of the class) to represent our old school against a pack of rather more seasoned old school pairings in The Cattermull Cup the weekend after Easter. I settled on “Alleyn Old Folk” as our team name, which seemed to amuse Simon – you need a sense of humour to deploy his medical discipline, and even more so to partner me at tennis.
But El Presidente, or Praeses Designatus as Nick Wahla would probably not put it – i.e. Lisa Pavlovsky, was unimpressed by that choice of title.
Sensible suggestions please,
she demanded. Someone needs to explain to Lisa that she is hanging with the wrong crowd if sensible suggestions are what she’s after. Inspired by Lisa’s plea for ideas, Rohan Candappa suggested:
The Canada/Greenland/Pavlovsky Plan – to invade Dulwich College and seize its resources. Finally our CCF training will come in handy! ‘Make Alleyn’s Great Again’ hats will be available for all).
But enough of this forward-looking frivolity. Such gatherings are primarily about reminiscing the past, not planning an heroic future.
There was a lot of talk that evening about train rides to and from school, plus parties which I didn’t attend…probably because I wasn’t invited…where juvenile behaviour, excessive high spirits and resulting broken glass seemed to feature a great deal. I have commissioned DeepAI to produce a couple of illustrative pictures, which I have entitled “Lightbulb Moment” and “Sliding Doors Moment” for reasons of my own.
Everyone played their part, but the hero of the evening was undoubtedly Rich “The Rock” Davis, who had flown in on the redeye from Toronto that very day, carelessly losing five hours in the process, yet still he was up for a Moroccan meal with his old school pals. True grit.
However, the evening ended on a very unfortunate note for me personally. I hadn’t noticed, on arrival, that one of our number had come to Souk on a bicycle. As I was slightly tired and a little emotional, perhaps not articulating my every syllable in my trademark, crystal clear, received pronunciation manner, I mumbled:
Whose is the bike?
…which Rohan, failing to catch my copula, aurally, as it were, mistook for the phrase, “Who’s the bike?”
That’s outragous – you’re cancelled, Harris,
said Rohan, who then followed up the evening with a new nickname for me – Ian “Cancelled” Harris, plus a new one for Ollie – “Glass-breaker” Goodwin.
So there you have it – we all have nicknames now. It’s only taken 50 years to complete the set.
Candy, Gob, Cancelled, Peanut, Glass-breaker, The Rock & El Presidente.
John, Colin, Jonny, Graham, Barry– still crazy after all these years
We are starting to wonder whether the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner puts the kiss of death onto struggling restaurants. Our previously most recent find, the Goodge Street Spaghetti House, closed down after just two or three of our visits. You’d have thought that six to ten comedy writers, three or four times a year could keep any restaurant afloat, but it seems not.
La Ballerina in Covent Garden has been around for a long time. When John Random mentioned the place to Hugh Rycroft, Hugh reported that his aunt used to take him there.
La Ballerina was a little, family-run café when it opened in the late 1800s…back when Hugh Rycroft’s auntie used to bring him to Covent Garden for fruity treats…
But that’s history, whereas we are topical comedy folk…or at least we were.
Anyway, point is, it is always a treat to get together with that crowd. Diverse conversations, ranging from Graham’s bizarre story about spending hours with the wrong Professor Guliyev in Azerbaijan discussing arcane rock formations…
…who knew that Guliyev is a common name in Azerbaijan? Azerbaijanis, that’s who…
…to even more arcane quizzing about symbols on flags. I didn’t come last. Naturally, Barry won that game.
We also talked about the good old days, of course. Songs are often the most memorable items. We talked about the various attempts that several of us had to rhyme things with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, for example. Was it Jonny who had managed something to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini? It took two of us, me and Barry, to dredge out something to the tune of Hazy Crazy (Mangosuthu Buthelezi) Days Of Summer.
Graham reminded us of one of his favourite John Random songs from the days that the former Czechoslovakia broke up – Slow-Vak. As it happens, the Harris/Random archiving project has, mercifully, already rescued that one:
I love the way that John felt obliged to inform the cast how to pronounce Václav Havel’s surname, but not Antonín Dvořák’s. And in the matter of spelling, John, should the word be spelt Slow-vak or Slovak in this context? The distinction could make all the difference, comedically, when reading a piece.
Given that La Ballerina has been an eatery for well north of 150 years, it seems unlikely that it will close down any time soon. But our tenure might be foreshortened due to John Random’s terrified thought in the middle of the night when he got home that he hadn’t paid his share of the bill. I rose early to find a message from John to that effect. I replied:
I quipped with the proprietor fellow, while I was paying, that the sixth man was hiding in the loo trying to avoid paying. I’d be most surprised, therefore, if he hadn’t accosted you and relieved you of your portion so quickly after you relieved yourself, you didn’t even notice the extraction. The gentleman struck me as a follower of Colbert, adept at ” so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
But if I am wrong, don’t be surprised if the next Ivan Shakespeare dinner is at yet another new venue, on account of us having been banned from La Ballerina in disgrace.
Oh, and another thing. John and Mark Keagan are doing a bit of a show at the Canal Cafe in June:
As always, a fun evening. Ivan Shakespeare’s legacy to us – the idea of having regular gatherings – was a great one, much appreciated by those of us who have survived thus far.
“OK, you NewsRevue-alum quizzers and other readers. What is the connection between my family and medal winning at the Olympic Games? Answer in the comments – but only if you get there without using search engines or AI.” AD.
