For reasons explained a little later in this piece, I did not write up this extraordinary and memorable evening at the time. It was only on learning (in August 2020) that Gerry Goddin has died, that I uncovered my omission and decided to put matters right.
I met Helen Baker and her delightful Mousse Wines project through Gerry. That story is written up in my report of my first visit to a Mousse Wine Tasting – here and below:
Janie came with me more often than not to the several subsequent wine tastings I attended. Most if not all are written up to some extent on Ogblog. Janie and I often combined those tastings with visits to the Tate Modern or some other “day off” activity that pleased us.
Ahead of the 2 November 2016 visit, I received a somewhat surprising (in a pleasing way) note from Helen Baker:
Looking forward to seeing you and Janie tomorrow.
This is just to let you know that as well as the wine tasting, there will be private screening of a Eurovision entry. You may well recognise the singer and the songwriter from previous incarnations…..and maybe also the filmmaker…..
It transpired that Gerry Goddin had, unbeknown to many of us who have known him for decades through comedy writing, an avocation in writing songs of a more serious nature.
My reply to Helen:
Sounds ominous/looking forward to it. Perhaps the Eurovision entry will seem more enticing once some of that sumptuous wine has been consumed!
Helen persisted:
It’s really good – Gerry wrote the song and the rest is a co-operation courtesy of serendipity at The CABIN.
Frankly, I’m hoping the wine measures up…
Typically for Gerry, although he (or rather, his work) was star billing at this event, Gerry was unfashionably late, to the extent that Helen didn’t want to get the wine tasting into full sway and/but there wasn’t much we could do other than socialise while waiting for Gerry.
Janie and I enjoyed getting to know a bit better “The Cabin” team that had put the Eurovision entry together. Janie recalls that it was a wet evening and that eventually, amid the umbrellas and anonymous commuters who periodically hovered outside the cabin, Gerry’s face appeared at the window, perhaps struggling to work out where the door was located.
Anyway, Helen Baker was absolutely right when she said the Eurovision song was very good, both as a piece of writing and in performance. In fact, I think pretty much everyone gathered there agreed that the song and performance were both so good that it was almost unthinkable that it might be selected to be the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest entry. We were absolutely right on that point too.
We also enjoyed the wine tasting, which focussed on some yummy Syrah grape-based wines, from Cornas, Cote-Rotie and Washington State.
I think we were rewarded with the song video again towards the end of the evening, but Janie and I remember less about the end of the evening than about the beginning of it.
I remember discussing Gerry’s more serious song writing with him during the evening and we resolved that he would send me some lyrics and chords so I might have a go at playing some of his work, including the potential Eurovision song, on my four-string. But as was often the way with Gerry, he didn’t follow through with that, neither by e-mail nor when we next met up, at that year’s Christmas Ivan Shakespeare dinner – the second of three described through this link (or click below):
I held back on writing up that superb and memorable Eurovision Wine Tasting Evening while awaiting those materials. Of course they might yet come, through the “Cabin Crew” or Gerry’s executors.