It seems churlish to complain about too many nice events, but this particular week really did include a surfeit of them for me.
I had already enjoyed the Parasite evening at Curzon Mayfair…
…and the Z/Yen 25th anniversary party at The Old Bailey…
…and it was still only Tuesday.
The three events described in this piece were the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the same week.
London Cricket Trust Dinner, Three Cranes, Wednesday 11 December 2019
No photos from this event, but the above photo and link is from one of the highlights of the London Cricket Trust’s year – A B de Villiers opening our Deptford Park facility in July.
We thought it would be a good idea to have a meal together after the Trustees meeting this time. We have been gathering now since 2017 planning non-turf pitch and net facilities for London’s parks, without ever breaking bread together…until this evening.
The Three Cranes location in the City worked well for me, giving me the opportunity to clear some work at the office (yes, believe it or not I did also do some work in this event-filled week) before the Trustees meeting at the Three Cranes, which was followed by the joyous meal and libations.
This evening was an excellent opportunity to all get to know each other a bit better. Not just we Trustees, but also the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) people who have been working tirelessly on our intiiative (and participation cricket more generally), plus Ed Griffiths and his team who have been doing so much wonderful pro bono work on behalf of the LCT over the years.
One of many good thoughts that emerged from the evening is that we still haven’t actually watched any professional cricket together; we’re hoping to put that right during the 2020 season.
A very enjoyable evening.
Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner & Trophy Match, Spaghetti House Holborn, Thursday 12 December 2019
It’s been a big year for anniversaries. Not only the Z/Yen 25th (the alumni party for which is linked again here and at the very start of this “hat trick” piece)…
…but also the 40th anniversary of NewsRevue, which had its alumni event during the summer:
One NewsRevue alum who, sadly, only just made it a few months beyond the 20th anniverary of that show was Ivan Shakespeare. We “Class Of ’92” types who were NewsRevue contemporaries of Ivan meet on an irregular occasional basis, three or four times a year, to keep in touch with each other, eat, trade jokes, share bizarre quizzes and also to remember Ivan. We’ve been doing that since mid 2000, a few months after Ivan died.
In the seasonal version of our gathering, the stakes increase markedly and we play one of the quizzes for The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy. I am proud to be the donor of the original Memorial Trophy, which was first contested in 2002, about 18 months after the dinners started.
It’s a bit like The Ashes, but for comedy writers rather than for cricketers.
Much like The Ashes, the trophy is a thing of exquisite gimcrackness; it’s absence of taste simply has to be seen to be believed:
The problem is, unlike The Ashes, the trophy is inscribed with the winner’s name each year…
…and the original trophy is running out of sensible places for the embazoning of the winner’s name…
…OK, there never were sensible places for the emblazoning, but now we are even running out of silly places to inscribe.
The solution: a new trophy. Acquired through the sort of tenacity that only Graham Robertson could possibly deploy – an eBay purchase which he needed to make twice because the first eBay vendor of tasteless out-of-date royal gimcrack merchandise took Graham’s money and did a runner.
The assembled alums at our new spiritual venue, The Spaghetti House in Holborn, decreed that Mark Keegan, who won the original trophy three times, should become “steward-for-life” of the original trophy.
As usual I came quite close but no cigar for me in the trophy stakes since 2004. Barry Grossman scooped the glittering prize this year – with sincere commiserations to Barry – he could have been an also-ran, but instead…
It wasn’t all quizzes and trophies; oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. There was plenty of time for eating, drinking, topical humour and some sense-of-irony-sapping politics on what was, after all, an election night.
Moving swiftly on from the will-to-live-depleting topics back to the humour section, John Random produced another set of personalised Christmas crackers this year, based on the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.
My cracker contained a note posing the intriguing question:
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
Frankly, I had no idea and would gladly have said, “no idea”, but for the answer provided, which instead said, in Braggian tones:
With me to discuss what you call a deer with no eyes, I have Ian Harris, Professor of Mammalian Opthalmology at Gresham College and author of In Darkness Let me Dwell – and Professor Jonny Hurst from the University of Manchester, author of Champagne Super Over: Oasis In Popular Culture.
There is sort-of a tradition in recent years for at least one person’s order to go horribly wrong at the festive dinner. This year it Barry Grossman who suffered the indignity of being brought his main at starter time and a starter-sized portion of his chosen main at main course time. The nice waiter did his best to sort things out.
Ironically, Barry went on to win the quiz, as did Jonny Hurst in 2017 when it was his turn to be the brunt of the ritual service humiliation – in those days at Cafe Rogues in Holborn not far from the scene of this year’s crime. That year, 2017, John Random’s personalised crackers had been based on the Moral Maze. He likes his thinky-Radio-4 programmes, does our John.
Anyway, the night of 12 December 2019 will surely be remembered as a great night for NewsRevue alums…and Tories…ironically.
Z/Yen Seasonal Lunch, The Old Bailey, Friday 13 December 2019
In the world of crime fiction, criminals have a regular, unfortunate tendancy; returning to the scene of the crime. Whether that is true in the real world or not I have no idea. Nor do I have the faintest idea what that point might have to do with this section of this piece.
Anyway, just three days after the Z/Yen Alumni function at The Old Bailey, the current Z/Yen team regrouped in that astonishing building for the staff seasonal lunch.
On this occasion we found ourselves in the smaller function room, used daily for the judges pre-luncheon drinks, after enjoying our pre-lunch drinks in Michael and Elisabeth’s apartment. Once again Sean, their footman, proved his skills as a photographer – thanks Sean.
The meal was a very good one; smoked trout fillet, followed by a posh duck dish, followed by an apple tart-like desert.
The wines tasted suspiciously like those excellent wines we’d enjoyed earlier in the week and seemed suspiciously well food-matched for the lunch, thanks to the combined skills of Gordon Clunie and (in all modesty) me.
Linda produced one of her fiendish seasonal quizzes – let’s not even talk about how badly Simon Mills and I did as a so-called team on that one.
Secret Santa visited (I got some baritone ukulele strings) and Santa also brought everyone a small box of super posh chocolates.
Then the traditional Z/Yen seasonal sing song. Being exceptionally woke for a boomer, I again recycled a previous effort this year, cunningly adding a topical reference ensuring that no-one would realise that it was recycled…
…unless they looked at the copyright years and/or version numbers and/or read this piece. Here is the 2019 version of The 12 Days Of Z/Yen Training. Excellent, was the performance, especially the “Five Forces” motif, which brought tears to my eyes each time around.
It is a fascinating musical phenomenon that this particular song works in so many different keys: C, C#, B, D, D#, A, E, G#, G, F & F#…all at the same time…at least, it did that afternoon.
After the formalities, plenty of informalities with some additional quizzing, singing, chatting and libations until it was chucking out time at The Old Bailey.
Chucking out time at The Old Bailey on a Friday afternoon works remarkably quickly and effectively:
You are welcome to stay on downstairs if you wish…but no-one will be here with the keys to your cell until Monday morning…
…everyone scarpers sharpish at that juncture.
Some ventured on for more libations at a local hostelry, but after five events in five days, all I could think about was getting home and lying down for a good few hours.