I asked DeepAI to reimagine the RingRoad gang desperately searching for family friendly sketches in the “RingRoad cornflake boxes”, where the sketch archive lived.
My diary doesn’t even mention the RingRoad show that we put on, with only limited success in the February Food Fest, which we held in the Students’ Union. The Food Fest was a spin off idea from the summer International Fair, which I had, as a cub student activist, helped to establish back in the early 1980s…
The idea of the Food Fest was to have a winter “international festival”, indoors in the Students Union, as well as the summer outdoorsy one. Among the main organisers for the Food Fest (as with the International Fair) were friends of mine from the Arab cultural community, mostly postgraduate Iraqui students at that time, many of whom were at Keele with their spouses and families.
A couple of the guys approached me and wondered whether RingRoad, the Keele students’ in-house comedy troupe of which I was, by then, an intrinsic part, might put on a show as part of the Food Fest.
It seemed like such a simple request and how could I say no to friends and colleagues who were putting so much energy into a festival idea that I supported wholeheartedly? Of course I said yes. Of course the warm-hearted RingRoad team said yes.
But when it came to wading through the archive of RingRoad sketches, we realised that the show comprised almost entirely of material that was, to use the modern parlance, politically incorrect and or NSFW. In short, only a handful of sketches in our collection were family friendly or lent themselves to minor edits to become family friendly.
The result was a flurry of sketch writing, mostly by David Griffiths, to produce a few new sketches for that show. I also remember going through tapes of my favourite radio sketches and transcribing a few of those for the family friendly show.
It was not our finest hour as RingRoad, but nor was it our darkest hour…
…as the Food Fest show served its purpose and seemed, if only mildly, to amuse. Fortunately, a family-friendly show’s audience tends to be friendly, so the feedback we received was, if not effusive, at least kind.
The above palaver barely gets a mention in my personal diary for that weekend, which reads:
Saturday 23 February 1985 – rose quite early – shopped etc – went to Union for Food Fest all day and evening – went okay. Drink after – Petra [Wilson] came over.
Sunday 24 February 1985 – rose reasonably early – Kate’s [Kate, now Susan Fricker] for lunch – very nice. Stayed till late. Went to Petra’s briefly in the evening.
Indeed, for the week that followed, my appointments diary says far more than the personal diary:
Hell’s bells, that’s a lot of meetings. No wonder I have been somewhat allergic to committees and meetings since my Keele Students’ Union sabbatical year!
The first meeting of the week, regarding Wot Subsid, I shall write plenty on that matter in a few week’s time, as the run up to publishing that booklet started to feature more in my diary. The “A” no doubt stands for “Annalisa de Mercur”, who did lots of the hard yards with me on that publication. More anon, I promise!
The rest is probably best left to the artwork that is the above scan. If any readers want to know more about what happened in some of those individual committees and/or meetings, by all means pop a message in the comments or “contact us” and I’ll try to answer your questions. I’m not expecting to be inundated with requests.
Here is my personal diary for the same period:
Monday, 25 February 19 85 – very rushed/busy with meetings all day and evening. Petra came over after.
Tuesday 26 February 1985 – very busy with meetings etc – morning noon and night. Petra came over after hustings.
27 Wednesday 27 February 1985 – rushed like crazy – not feeling too good today. Went home to bed early.
Thursday 28th of February 1985 – very busy day rushing around – meetings etc. Cooked Petra a meal in evening – stayed – very pleasant.
Friday 1 March 1985.– Very busy morning to get all out of way – left Keele early…
I recall that Petra was not too keen on the Horwood refectory food. As time went on, when timetables allowed, I tended to cook for her (as well as myself) more often.
Petra’s taste in food was quite different from that of Kate (now Susan) Fricker and John White, for whom I also cooked a fair bit. Both Kate and John were quite partial to spicy food. Petra was not keen on spices, so I tended to cook “pan casseroles” for her, although she was also partial to several of my Chinese dishes, which tended to need more ingredients and preparation time, so I would tend to cook those at the weekend. Kate and John also liked my Chinese style dishes.
I have a mind to produce a mini-series of recipes from that era, once I find the time to browse through my yellowed recipe sheets and delve a little deeper into my memory about the food.
I also am minded to write a small mini-series about the music that was the soundtrack of that era for me. Not just the discos that John White and I used to do in the ballroom (although we are working up some wicked playlists for nostalgics and/or fans of those genres to enjoy), but also the classical music that helped me to unwind from all of the hustle and bustle that year. I’ll stick those classical pieces into some public playlists too.
All those ideas are for later, for now let’s bring Petra in for her dinner…or as they would say in the Potteries, “tea”.
