My diary suggests that I at least planned to go to an Ivan Shakespeare memorial dinner on 13 September 2007.
In truth, I don’t recall this particular one. It was just a few weeks after my dad died, so I might have skipped it, but I have a feeling I was there. In those days we always gathered in the (now defunct) Café Rouge Maida Vale.
The story of the NewsRevue writers alumni dinners generally is explained in the following piece from 2017:
Ultimate Love and Happy Tories, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 3 March 2017
Mercifully, we have a contemporaneous, verbatim report of the 13 September 2007 evening from John Random, who wrote:
Thanks to all those who braved the Tube Strike/Floods/Terracotta Army Delete As Appropriate last night to come to the 24th Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, an annual event that takes place four times a year in the old scout hut. For those of you who couldn’t make it – perhaps because you were in an oil-rich/war-torn/fat-free/Delete As Appropriate country, there is however good news. The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinners are now available on Second Life. At the inaugural Second Life Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner a virtual Colin Stutt exchanged virtual quips with a digitally-enhanced Barry Grossman. Sadly, a virtual Keith Whickham had to cry off at the last minute because his avatar had a job on Third Life, while Hugh Rycroft couldn’t make it because he was in Pond Life. The whole dinner can be now downloaded into your lavatory bowl if you’re not feeling well. But please remember to put what you want in the subject line as dinners may contain spam.
So that’s all explained then. On reading that review, the evening starts to come back to me, so I’m guessing that I was there.