I’m pretty sure we spent that first Christmas together apart, as it were, with our respective families, regathering at the bank holiday weekend after Christmas, which fell on a Friday that year.
Janie’s diary for 28 December reads:
1.00 Ian, Kim & Micky lunch – at Kim’s
I believe that.
I’ll guess that we ate some yummy food and drank far too much wine.
My diary suggests that I played bridge on 29th or 30th December. There are no clues as to where we played, nor which day, although I’m guessing the original idea was 30th and the eventual was 29th.
Janie’s 1992 diary for 31 December reads:
11.00 collect food…
…Jane’s party…
…while mine simply indicates a new year’s eve do of some kind, unspecified.
Janie is pretty sure that the term “Jane’s party” in this context means that she threw a small party at Sandall Close, as she was wont to do back then – the “collect food” bit clinching it for Janie that her use of the term “Jane” at that time would have been self-referral.
Her 1993 diary contains more clues, with an additional page stating that the food collection was from Mrs Saad’s place on St Mark’s Road. Lebanese if I remember correctly.
I’ll guess that it was a relatively small gathering – probably Kim & Micky, plus anyone else from Janie’s inner circle of friends who happened to be around. I suspect 10-12 people.
I’ll guess that we all ate some yummy Lebanese food and drank far too much wine.
This is not the most profound song I ever wrote. The electronic file is dated just before Christmas 1992. The song premiered in the first run of 1993, about one month later.
As part of my research for the lyrics that follow, Janie and I did procure and attempt to use such a contraption on one occasion. How we laughed. The things we put ourselves through for my NewsRevue art.
♬ INSIDE A FEMIDOM ♬
(To the Tune of “Under the Moon of Love”)
VERSE 1
Lets go for a little shag, and use a Femidom,
Just me and you and a plastic bag, lets use a Femidom;
I wanna lover {wanna lover} with a cover {with a cover},
Like a great big Wellington,
Little darling, let’s poke and stoke, inside a Femidom {a Femidom}
VERSE 2
Loving you is so fantastic, inside a Femidom,
With your coat of thermoplastic, known as the Femidom;
This vaginal {this vaginal} polyvinyl {polyvinyl},
Is an artificial con,
Little darling let’s bonk and tonk, inside a Femidom {a Femidom}
MIDDLE BIT 1
We only bought the one, because the price is so steep,
By the time you got it on, I’d long since gone off to sleep;
{I think I would rather use my hand}
VERSE 3
Bring the groceries from the shops, inside a Femidom,
A pork salami and sirloin chops, inside a Femidom;
It’s the fashion {it’s the fashion} to kill passion {to kill passion},
With a jumbo freezer bag,
Little darling, let’s hump and rump, inside a Femidom {a Femidom}
MIDDLE BIT 2
At enormous cost, a polyurethane thrill,
I hope that we’ve not lost, our coil and our cap and the pill;
{Why not use a method I can stand?}
VERSE 4
We’ll avoid a misconception, without a Femidom,
Let’s use other contraception, but not the Femidom,
Then we’ll feel {then we’ll feel} something real {something real},
And we won’t feel put upon,
Little darling let’s play and lay, without a Femidom {no Femidom}.
I was reminded of this day in conversation with John Random in February 2021. I have just received a bundle of scripts and ephemera from Erica Stanton, Chris Stanton’s widow, including materials pertaining to the show, Swing Low Sweet Testicles.
John reflected on the show and mentioned a diary note about promoting the show on 15 December. I remembered seeing the show at that time, checked my diary and discovered that I saw the show on 17 December.
Below is the B-Side of the flyer for that show. The reviews must relate to an earlier Noel Christopher extravaganza, known simply as The Show, scripts for which also arrived in Erica’s bundle.
Swing Low Sweet Testicles itself mustered at least one decent review:
Can’t imagine where City Limits got that date range from – it ran from December 9th 1992 to January 17th 1993.
The cast and crew were NewsRevue stalwarts and most had been somewhat involved in my early successes with that mob.
I don’t think that Cliff Kelly had yet overlapped with my material in NewsRevue, but I might be mistaken.
Chloe Lucas had done a magnificent job of belting my Coal Digger song in the Autumn NewsRevue run preceding Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I’m pretty sure that the Coal Digger song, along with a couple of my others, was in the Christmas run of NewsRevue which I saw (for a second time) after Testicles.
Anyway, I rather enjoyed Swing Low Sweet Testicles. I was partial to Noel’s writing and was glad of the opportunity to see some of his less-topical, more-enduring material.
Below is the programme for the NewsRevue show that night, which I stayed on to see for a second time, having seen the opening night on 26 November.
Earlier That Day…Getting Into The Zone
My diary also records a memorable working day. Memorable for inadvertent, comedic reasons.
I was working as a management consultant for Binder Hamlyn at that time. On that day, I accompanied the National VAT Partner, Alan Buckett, to visit a large European Manufacturing Group, whose UK headquarters were out on the M4 corridor, to help them get their heads around something or other.
We were done with that by lunchtime and Alan suggested stopping for a bite to eat in Earls Court – a convenient stop on the way back to the City for him and a short hop to home for me, as I had an early-evening engagement with Testicles and didn’t want to go back to the City.
Alan parked his car and we walked down the Earls Court Road, in search of a wine bar/restaurant someone had recommended to him.
Ah, there it is…
…said Alan, striding towards the place he had been aiming towards.
But instead of walking down the stairs to, as I could see it, the entrance to the wine bar in question, Alan marched up the stairs and into…
Clonezone. I believe it is accurate to describe that particular store as a Gay fetishist fashion emporium.
I tried to stop him, but Alan had his stomp on and disappeared into the shop.
I waited outside for what seemed ages but was probably only a few seconds.
The tall, besuited Alan, who normally looked every inch a City gent, retreated from Clonezone rather sheepishly.
I smiled.
Alan and I went into the wine bar restaurant for a light lunch and a debrief.
Towards the end of the lunch, Alan said,
When you get back to the office, I’d just prefer it if you didn’t mention…
…I said that his Clonezone secret was safe with me. Alan is long-since retired now and I’m pretty sure, if he remembers the story at all, it’d be the funny side of it that has stuck in his mind.
Alan might well have shocked the clones within as much as they (and the place) shocked him.
Janie and I saw a preview of this one and thought it was absoutely great. Janie has since formed an aversion to Dame Judy Dench…or perhaps Janie liked this one despite Judy.
It hadn’t been used in late 1992 (unsurprising, as the Christmas run tended to keep any December material out until January) so I resubmitted it in early 1993.
I don’t think the song was used, nor on re-reading it do I think it should have been. I cannot recall precisely why it seemed topical to write this song and/or to rhyme “Austin Metro” with “hetero” in Verse Three, but I think someone somewhere was caught doing something sexual with the exhaust of his car.
…was just such a dash – to Annalisa de Mercur’s party.
I hope it was a good one. They usually were.
This one was on a Sunday, so I’m guessing it was lunch/afternoon into early evening that time.
Quite possibly it went on quite deep into the evening.
Janie’s diary suggests that we arrived back at heathrow at 11.05, so I suppose that did enable us to dump our luggage, wash and dash into Marylebone (probably via my place) to the party by early/mid afternoon.
There will have been bagels.
Annalisa usually served lots of mini bagels.
There will have been lots of people too – many of them former Keele folk.
This was probably the first time that Janie met many of the people there; Kate Fricker (probably) and Annie Bickerstaff (almost certainly). Were John and Mandy there on that occasion?
Postscript: John has chimed in by message witha confession that he and Mandy were there. But no additional information was forthcoming.
Janie wore the travelling trousers in those days. She bought a little guide book and scribbled some notes in it.
So from the photos and the guide book we have today (3 December 2017, 25 years later) tried to reconstruct our memories of this little trip.
We didn’t have enormous success with Janie’s hand-written list of eateries above:
Caffè Florian – we indulged ourselves with a coffee but not much more;
Trattoria Alla Madonna – we recall failing to get a booking there. Other trattorias are and were available – we did eat well in Venice, but not there;
Harry’s Bar – we had coffee, cake and a Bellini, because apparently that’s what you must do there;
Gritti Palace – mercifully the top restaurant was closed. I say mercifully, because even the coffee we had in the Gritti Palace bar was, as I described it in my photo caption, probably the most expensive cuppa in the world. We had also hoped to visit the Peggy Gugenheim in that part of town, but that was closed for a refurb at the time.
But, extraordinary as it might seem, we also went out of the room on several occasions and did a rather a lot around Venice, enjoying a mixture of sun and rain during our outings, as evidenced in the photos.
If the labelled, album stack of 26 photos (above) is insufficient for you, the entire library of our Venice photos, “uncut”, is also available – click below:
The photographic evidence and Janie’s markings in the book suggest we did a lot of the usual Venice things:
The Doges’ Palace;
St Mark’s Basilica;
The Frari;
Rialto Bridge;
The Ghetto (I recall seeing it and on one evening eating around there too);
Clock Tower;
Accademia? – not sure we got that far through the list;
Museum of 18th Century Venice? – not sure we got that far through the list either;
Murano – yes – we have photographic evidence of that one, and we still have a glass bowl in the bathroom from there, holding the cotton wool, apparently;
Scuola Grande Di San Rocco – again with evidence:
Also, of course, we wandered around a lot, looking at markets and trying to imagine Death In Venice (in my case) or Don’t Look Now (in Janie’s).
We had a great time. We decided we wanted to explore more places together afterwards, which is a happy ending…
…far more than can be said about the movies that were stuck in our heads.
Harry’s Bar – Don’t Look Now – Death By Chocolate in Venice
I blocked out five nights/six days in my diary for this trip but in the end we only went for three nights/four days and went stright on to Annalisa’s party on our return on the Sunday. It’s as if we spent our life in speeded up mode back then – in our relative dotage, we’d never try to fit anything like so much in.
