When I say, “funny people” in this context, I mean comedy people, not necessarily strange people. Some of them might also be strange of course, but I’ll leave that judgement to the reader.
First up, for lunch on Tuesday 5 March, was Rohan Candappa. He wanted to try a Malaysian & Indonesian restaurant, Melur, on the Edgware Road. As I had requested that we meet somewhere over my side, as I needed to be at Lord’s for a game of tennis afterwards, that seemed a reasonable choice to me.
The weather forecast suggested heavy rain around the time I’d be finishing at Lord’s, so I took my car to Aberdeen Place and parked there ahead of lunch.
The food at Melur was excellent. I was restrained in my choices given the tennis bout ahead, going for an inoffensive Nasi Goreng. Rohan went for a more spicy version and for some roti canai, which I tasted and reckon was a pretty darned good roti. I shall forever more associate that dish with Rohan, so much so that I’ll think of it as…Rohan Kanhai. Coincidentally, I shall similarly forever be reminded of that Guyanese cricketer when I recall Rohan Candappa’s visit to Lord’s with me, last year:
But I digress.
Initially Rohan and I discussed my burgeoning career as a musician in a novel genre which fuses punk rock with Renaissance guitar:
Rohan, who plans to manage my band, made several branding suggestions – I responded to those thoughts subsequently as follows:
The Wessex Petards might work better as a band name the The Wessex Pistols and I still feel that Sir Michael Smear is a more visceral nom de punk than Sir John Rancid. But I cannot better your album name – Never Mind The Bailiwicks – it ought to go gold or platinum on the name alone, before we release so much as a tiny sound sample…in fact it had better go gold or platinum before we release so much as a tiny sound sample.
Rohan and I also spent a fair bit of our time discussing Rohan’s wonderful Threadmash idea. I had participated in the inaugural Threadmash event a few week’s before.
I very much hope my thoughts were helpful and that Rohan can find a way to make the Threadmash idea work for all concerned.
I had allowed loads of time between lunch and tennis, so brought plenty of reading matter with me which I enjoyed reading over a couple of excellent cups of coffee at Café Laville, overlooking the canal in sunshine.
Then on to Lord’s in order to be taught a lesson by one of my favourite real tennis opponents who has recovered from injury since I last played him and seemed keen to let me see how well he can now move around the court. A surprisingly close match in the circumstances – I thought I did well to get close.
On Thursday 7 March I had a music lesson with Ian Pittaway, who passed expert judgement on my Mock Tudor Rock…
…while helping me with some other silly ideas (watch this space) and sensible techniques (don’t hold your breath).
Then a visit from John Random for a bite of lunch and the second of two sessions of NewsRevue archiving. The first session was 25 January. John has a large collection of NewsRevue programmes, flyers and reviews, which simply needed to be digitised.
We succeeded in scanning it all in two sessions, despite lots of chat, listening to some music and cricket-match like breaks for lunch/tea.
Following some cheerful chat about murder rates around the world, which identified Mexico and especially Tijuana as a hot spot, we both agreed that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass must have a lot to answer for. So we listened to a fair smattering of Herb. John was especially taken with his version of the Third Man theme…
…and his version of A Walk In The Black Forest:
We decided that this type of music is, in many ways, the soundtrack of our childhood. Of course we like to remember the cool stuff from the 1960’s and no doubt have listened to far more of the cool stuff in later life, but when we were kids this was the music that was being played on the radios and gramophone players most of the time in our homes and the homes we visited.
We also of course chatted about NewsRevue casts, shows and material gone by. We discussed one of my own classics from more than 25 years ago, Mad Frogs And Englishmen, which I realised I hadn’t yet Ogblogged. I have put that right now:
Job done in terms of the archiving, it was time for us to set off for one of our regular Ivan Shakespeare Memorial gatherings – at which NewsRevue writers from years gone by gather to eat, chat, laugh and informally quiz.
It was International Women’s Day today, so we found ourselves an all male gathering this time. In addition to me and John: Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan, Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and a rare but much appreciated visit from NewsRevue founder and “father of the house” Mike Hodd.
The venue was the Spaghetti House in Holborn this time; a good notch up in service and food quality from Cafe Rogues in my view. My first time there but not the group’s first time.
For many years John Random has talked about his vicarious support for a football team by the name of Blyth Spartans. His home town, Hartlepool, is John’s real team but he has carried a torch for this other team for decades.
John excitedly reported that he finally got to visit Blyth Spartans and saw an exciting match there just the other week. I believe it was this match. I feel that this momentous event needs recording for posterity, as does an image of John wearing his new Blyth Spartans titfer.
John reported on the event as follows:
I would like to say a big thank you to all those of you who came out to the Spaghetti House on Thursday night. Thanks also to Mike, Colin and Gerry for their entertaining quizzes. Falling as it did, almost on International Women’s Day I regret to report that NewsRevue has still not come clean on its gender pay gap. We haven’t even had any jokes about it, yet – though I have a feeling, we will – and soon.
As I said earlier, it had been a funny week.
Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar.
Well, maybe funny ha-ha AND funny peculiar. Good times with good friends.