I don’t remember dancing the hokey-kokey at that year’s Z/Yen seasonal event, but the photographic record suggests that maybe I did.
We have an enormous number of photographs from that year’s event.
Prior to the meal, we had a party at our new offices, 90 Basinghall Street, which many of our partners had not previously seen. The upstairs room was well suited to hospitality.
Our private room at Bistro Bruno Loubert was a super venue for the dinner. We were quite a large group that year and the space was ideal.
The Price Of Fish had been published that year. Hence the seasonal medley focussing on the two big events of the year: the move to Basingall Street and the publication of the book. I wrote both halves of the song, although I need to nod towards Michael who had written a “St Helen’s” version of the “Oh Little Town” song some years earlier.
OH LITTLE STREET OF BASINGHALL
(Sung to the tune of “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”)
Oh little street of Basinghall,
On Guildhall’s shady side;
Above old Gresham College Hall,
Z/Yen’s offices reside.
Yet on the fourth floor slaving,
Z/Yen staff work till they sink;
While past the fifth floor sliding door,
Directors eat and drink.
How noisily, how noisily,
They party with the swish;
To show off Z/Yen’s new office and,
Promote “The Price of Fish”.
But now Z/Yen’s Christmas party,
Is here so we can sell;
This gastro dome, that wondrous tome,
To the tune of Jingle Bells.
PRICE OF FISH
(Sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)
Price of Fish, Price of Fish, Price of Fish hooray;
Oh! What fun it is to read some pages every day;
Price of Fish, Price of Fish, Price of Fish hooray;
Oh! what fun it is to read The Price of Fish each day.
Reading Price of Fish, at a page or ten each day,
Book or Kindle form, laughing all the way;
Bells in brains will ring, making ideas bright,
What fun it is to laugh and sing The Price of Fish tonight.
Price of Fish, Price of Fish, Price of Fish hooray;
Oh! What fun it is to read some pages every day;
Price of Fish, Price of Fish, Price of Fish hooray;
Oh! what fun it is to read The Price of Fish each day.
Professor Tim Connell had no idea what he was unleashing when he asked me to produce a party piece for the nascent Gresham Society Soirée.
I had no idea what sort of audience we might have, although Tim suggested that he was encouraging Gresham Society members to bring youngsters with them to give the event an age-diverse, party feel. That year, there were a few youngsters in the end.
Unaccustomed as I was to putting on party pieces at that time…a dozen or more years later I am far more seasoned at it…I fell back on material I had prepared or used in the past.
As a youngster myself, I had often used Any Old Iron as a party piece for entertaining old folk, as the old folk at the time that I was a young person were steeped in music hall material.
I had prepared a version of Any Old Iron with a rap break a couple of years earlier…for the life of me I cannot remember quite why…I think I had intended to use it at a Long Finance conference, as Brian Eno had been recommending that we break up the serious s*** with some musical audience participation. Hilariously predictable results ensued, not least a roasting in the Evening Standard…
…but I digress, other than to clarify that my Any Old Iron with a rap break (aka a vocal cadenza) remained on the e-jotter unused in 2009, until the Gresham Society Soirée of 2011. Here’s the very piece:
I decided to dress up in my most spivy outfit (see headline picture from the Lingfield races a few months earlier), including a Rolex-like watch and chain which I had given to my father in the 1990s and then re-inherited on his passing.
I also took a clutch of old pennies from my childhood old pennies collection, as I figured that the youngsters present wouldn’t appreciate what a weighty and princely-looking sum “tuppence” might seem unless they received some coin of the appropriate era.
I also decided, with the benefit of hindsight, unwisely, to involve the pianist, David Jones, not only in playing the piece for me (which of course he was able to do with ease and aplomb). Unbeknown to me at the time, David is a master of the party piece in which you sing faster and faster – in his case the far more difficult Elements Song by Tom Lehrer…
…I am digressing again…
…anyway, I asked David also to join in some business, which occurred to me as we practiced ahead of the show, where I would approach the piano and say:
Hit me!
…in the time honoured fashion to encourage a musician to play. The joke was that David was to feign misunderstanding the entreaty and pretend to throw a punch at me.
We practiced the manoeuvre a couple of times. My final note to David was that he would need to put more effort into the fake-punch and I would have to put more motion into the fake receipt of the punch to make the device look realistic.
But in the heat of show, as it were, David possibly over-enthused…or I under-dodged…such that I really did receive a punch from David, which made me stop for a moment and say:
Ow, that really did hurt
…before carrying on. I think the audience thought it was all part of the show, so they laughed just as we had wanted them to. The song went down well. The bruise wasn’t too bad. David is still talking to me…just about…but perhaps not so open to my last minute bright ideas for performance tweaks any more.
The Ben Daniels character, the father, is basically being sucked in by a cult. On reflection at the time of writing (January 2018) it has a fair bit in common with My Mum’s A Twat – click here, which we saw recently, except the cult-ista in the more recent case is the mum and the storyteller is the affected child later in life.
As soon as we entered the Royal Court Upstairs, we felt a bit un-nerved by the arrangement – we seemed to be sitting higgledly-piggledly on top of the action.
This production had started its life in a Peckham outreach location – a former cricket bat factory it transpired, which probably explains the unusual layout of the room. The working title of the play had been SW11, so I think Rachel De-lahay originally had a Battersea Estate in mind rather than a Peckham one – little matter.
The action was full of ethnic and inter-generational tensions. Very well written – where is Rachel De-lahay now (he asks, writing in 2018)?
Gosh I remember how disappointed we were by this one.
We had loved Conor McPherson’s previous work whenever we had seen it – especially but not only The Weir.
But this play, set in the early 19th century, just left both of us feeling cold.
Super cast, with several of the “usual suspects” for Irish plays, not least Bríd Brennan. Plus an early sighting of Caoilfhionn Dunne.
But for us, nothing could quite save this play.
I remember saying afterwards that it was like “Chekhov had written a ghost story” and I remember smiling when I subsequently saw one of the reviews saying just that.
The idea of it is wonderful. It is an innovative 1960’s play exploring the meaning of life through the story of a successful man who decides to become a hermit.
Also, James Saunders had a long association with Sam Walters and the Orange Tree, which was being celebrated by this revival.
The play does have flashes of brilliance, humour and insight to it, but in truth we found it fairly hard going as an evening in the theatre. There is one heck of a lot of existential angst involved.
I recall looking forward to this play/production a great deal, but not enjoying it as much as we had hoped.
Douglas Hodge was terrific in the lead; indeed all of the supporting cast did well too.
I think it is just a bit of a mess of a play. John Osborne works best for me when his angry, ranting lead has more context than their own small world. The Entertainer and this play lack that context for me, becoming almost lengthy monologue rants.
I also recall us finding the audience a bit irritating the night we went. I think Douglas Hodge and Karen Gillan had attracted a bit of a TV-star-sycophant crowd, which has a tendency to deflate our mood at the theatre.
In truth we were reaching the end of our road with the Donmar by then. For a long while it felt like a slice of fringe in the heart of Covent Garden, but it was starting to feel more like an exclusive, corporate club for West End theatre in a small house.
They made a movie of this play back in the 1960s, soon after it was first seen on the stage – below is a vid with a clip of that. Nicol Williamson – there is an abbreviated first name to conjure with – John Osborne considered him to be “the greatest actor since Marlon Brando”, apparently…a tough act for even Douglas Hodge to follow, I guess:
We quite liked this play. I recall it was an excellent production, very well acted and directed, but it had a slightly old-fashioned feel to it…
…perhaps that was the effect Nicholas Wright and Richard Eyre were after.
In truth, not really our sort of play. But it covered an interesting, almost comical, moment in history and we had the benefit of a superb cast to depict it.
So we were glad to have seen it, despite it not really being our type of play.
