Café Rouge Maida Vale…is no more
An early example of John Random organising an Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner (gathering of 1990s NewsRevue writers) by e-mail, in John’s inimitable style.
The day after the event, the following e-mail arrived from Random:
Thank you all those came to The Cafe Rouge and to those that didn’t, hope to see you next time, whenever that is. You missed a great evening, especially the surprise visit of Bill Clinton who interrupted his golf game to come over and say how much he’d enjoyed Billy Don’t Be A Hero (February 1994) no he didn’t.
John was no doubt referring to this lyric of mine – quite possibly because Mike Hodd had waxed lyrical [did you see what I did there?] about it at the dinner.
I think I have identified, from the e-mail addresses, all the people to whom John wrote. Presumably not all attended, given the words John chose. Anyway, here is the Random hit list from June 2001:
- Me
- Random
- Jonny Hurst
- Graham Robertson
- Mike Hodd
- Jasmine Birtles
- Barry Grossman
- Sheila Hyde
- John Cowen
- Colin Stutt
- Neil Watson
- Terry Franks
- “Ivan Shakespeare” – presumably Elspeth, Ivan’s partner, who only attended once or twice but I suspect that John kept her informed on the circulation list, regardless of whether or not she was attending, for quite some time.
- Debbie Barham – I don’t remember Debbie ever attending one of these dinners; she was already very seriously ill with anorexia by the time Ivan Shakespeare died. I had stayed in touch with her, sporadically, by e-mail, as had John, presumably. Debbie’s trademark “skcollob.win-uk.net” e-mail domain name was one of a kind. Like me, for business reasons, in the very early e-mail days, she’d gone with a WinNet e-mail account so she could name her own domain. Mine was sensibly corporate, whereas Debbie’s was bollocks backwards. Typical.