All my notes say is that I went with Bobbie Scully and that we thought it was very good.
I remember thinking Ken Stott was superb – I don’t think I had seen him before. It might have been my first encounter with the excellent Alex Jennings. Des Barrit was also a standout performer, as usual. But in truth the whole cast was good and you can see many names on the list who went on to do bigger and bolder things.
There are no on-line reviews to be found – until now – my one right here – yay!
I’m not sure what Bobbie and I did about eating afterwards, but in those days we would sometimes eat at the RNT itself – we might well have done that – or sometimes we’d go to The Archduke or somewhere of that ilk nearby.
Another unexpected discovery, this one. Credited in my notes to John Random and Gerry Goddin as well as myself. There’s not much of it, so it must have simply been a shared joke at that week’s writers’ meeting.
I don’t recall whether or not this quickie was used. Perhaps Messrs Random and/or Goddin do recall:
THE LOVERS
(This quickie is “voice over” throughout)
{The pianist plays a few bars of music that immediately make the listener think of the Orient. It is Indochina in the 1920’s. It is hot. It is steamy. Lust is in the air. These few bars make the listener think of all that. What a pianist.}
THE LOVERS:{Orgasmic grunting noises (possibly some male, some female – mainly female) build up rhythmically, eventually reaching a “fingernails digging into the mattress” level of intensity.}
UMPIRE:Deuce. (pronounced juice)
DAN MASKELL:Oh I say. Monica Seles has really come out on top.
I mentioned to John during that 2018 visit that I had attended (nay, even been part of the hosting group for) a concert in 1992, around the time, strangely, that John Random and I first met.
I did recall that I had seen Evelyn Glennie perform that evening and that it had been a BDO Binder Hamlyn event as part of my old firm’s sponsorship of Music at Oxford. But the rest I couldn’t recall and I felt a bit silly about that, because I knew that I would have kept the programme at least and that it was all lined up to be Ogblogged…eventually. I should have dug out the bumf before the 2018 visit.
Anyway, curiosity got the better of me a few days later and I dug out the programme. Indeed, not only the programme but, inside the programme, instructions from the BDO Binder Hamlyn marketing department telling me what to do.
Here’s the programme:
Below is a link to a pdf of the instruction pack for hosts. There is even a copy of the form you needed to fill in if you wanted to arrive in Greenwich by boat.
People who know me through Z/Yen and associate “me and boats” in the context of our many Lady Daphne boat trips over the years, might be surprised to realise that I chose not to arrive by boat…those who know me a bit better than that in the matter of boats will be far less surprised.
A common theme to all the elements of this story so far is Michael Mainelli, who was/is:
the BDO Binder Hamlyn partner who led on the Music at Oxford sponsorship/marketing events,
my business partner at Z/Yen who owned and led on the Lady Daphne boat trips thing,
someone who, coincidentally, visited Morgan’s Rock in Nicaragua with his family (though not Mukul, which didn’t exist back then) a few years before Janie and I went there.
Anyway, I got a chance to interview Michael about the Music at Oxford event yesterday (25 January 2018). His main regret was that he couldn’t recall who he took as his date that year to Music at Oxford. Our conversation then side-tracked onto the loony rule that Binder Hamlyn had (and many firms still have) prohibiting intra-firm romances. Michael was already going out with Elisabeth back then but it was a secret, closely guarded by several dozen of the several hundred Binder Hamlyn staff and partners. So Michael had to take a decoy date to events like this instead.
Once we got over that digression, Michael recalled that this particular event was rather a ground-breaking one. Certainly it was the first time that we had taken a Music at Oxford concert beyond Oxford. But Michael thinks it might have been the first (or certainly one of the first) commercially sponsored concerts to take place at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel.
Michael also recalls that Evelyn Glennie was very pleasant company over dinner after the concert.
Here is an interesting little vid about Evelyn Glennie:
Here is a little vid of the percussion and timpani cadenzas from the Panufnik Concertino that Glennie played that night in the chapel – but this is some other people playing. It is a bit noisy:
But the Old Royal Naval College Chapel is a Baroque building of great beauty, so you might want to imagine the sole baroque piece we heard that night, Bach’s Ricecare a 6 from A Musical Offering. Here is a sweet vid of the Croating Baroque Ensemble performing it:
But surely the last word should go to John Random. Because, strangely, that 1992 spring/summer was when John and I met – through NewsRevue. John was the first director to have my comedy material performed professionally – click here or below for one of the better examples from that season:
On spotting that we also heard a piece by Antonín Dvořák in the Old Royal Naval College that summer’s night in 1992, I was also reminded of one of John Random’s lyrics from that same summer. Because that was the summer that Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. John wrote a superb lyric to the tune of Slow Hand by The Pointer Sisters, which included the wonderful couplet:
Not a compatriot of Dvořák,
I want a lover who’s a Slovak.
1992 was a seminal summer in so many ways.
A mere 25 years later…double-selfies hadn’t been invented in 1992
I don’t think this lyric was used. It relates to BSkyB as it was then (Sky now) introducing additional pricing for sports channels. Seems commonplace now, but at the time some folk thought the idea would never take off.
YOU’LL NEVER WATCH A GAME (To the tune of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”)
VERSE 1
When you watch TV sport, Keep your cheque book by, The side of your scram-bling device.
At the end of the match, Send your dosh to Sky, And be grateful we’ve not raised the price.
VERSE 2
Pay on, through the nose, Pay on, till it hurts, This is B-Sky-B’s refrain:
CHORUS 1 (The Chorus have charity type collection boxes which they use as maracas)
Pay up, Pay up, We hope, You’re not poor, Or you’ll never watch a game, You’ll never watch a game.
CHORUS 2 (Perhaps Chorus get off the stage and pretend to menace money from the audience)
Fork out, Fork out, Or we’ll cut, Off you’re sport, Then you’ll never watch again, You’ll never watch again.
Below is a video of You’ll Never Walk Alone, sung by Gerry & The Pacemakers, with the lyrics on the screen.
This one went down really well with the NewsRevue audience and ran for a long time.
I remember being a little disappointed that John Random didn’t use it towards the end of his April to June 1992 run, which was in full flow when this one was written. But I now understand more about the frantic nature of producing NewsRevue; this number would have been a real challenge to add to the pot (as it were) and do well mid-run.
Anyway, Paula Tappenden and her cast picked it up straight away in late June/July and did a fabulous job with it. The number was revived by later casts too, I’m pretty sure.
I recall Harriet Quirk being especially complementary about this one; I think she liked it.
COPPERS ARE DRESSED AS HIPPIES
(To the tune of “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic”)
VERSE 1
If you go down to the Plain today,
You’re in for a big surprise;
If you go down to Stonehenge today,
You’ll see police in disguise.
CHORUS 1
For solstice time means unwanted guests,
The Fuzz are after heaps of arrests,
And that’s why lots of Coppers are dressed as Hippies.
VERSE 2
Every piggy-wig in the force,
Is sure of a chance to bust;
The Hippies always have herbal smokes,
Speed, Acid and Angel Dust.
CHORUS 2
So all the filth that ever there was,
Is gathered there for certain because,
Today’s the day the Force infiltrate the Hippies.
PENULTIMATE BIT
Hippy time for PC Plod,
He’s in the drug squad,
He’s wearing a syrup and false beard;
Kaftan worn and sandal shod,
And using words like “hey”, “wow”, “man”, and “weird”.
AND FINALLY
Thousands of folk mill about,
Just watch them dance and shout,
And sometimes set off a flare.
At six o’clock the chief calls it off,
And they’ve not made one arrest,
Because there aren’t any Hippies there.
(Perhaps two Copper-Hippies simultaneously put their hand on the other’s shoulder and say “You’re nicked”)
Here is Henry Hall and His Orchestra with “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” – I make no apology for the publisher’s placement of the apostrophe – but just dig the clipped tones of the singer:
In fact, that vignette contains most of the specific things I remember about that trip, other than the following scant details:
We flew from London to Dublin, took the train from Dublin to Cork and back, returning to London by plane from Dublin I’m pretty sure;
We stayed in modest hotels in both cities. I don’t recall any high-class meals in Dublin – but I do remember eating and drinking well. We had a good time;
Although Bobbie has/had kin in Ireland, I’m pretty sure we didn’t visit any of them – we basically just looked around Dublin and then looked around Cork;
I was still struggling a bit with my back (from the major 1990 injury) and we sought out swimming pools in both cities, with reasonable success;
In addition to the football match night contained in the Deeply vignette, I also recall the following night, our last, when we ate at the Arbutus Lodge, a rather grand place which had a Michelin star at times and thus we ate a degustation menu at (by Irish standards but certainly not by London standards) enormous expense.
Bobbie might remember some other details and chip in with them – if so I shall add them of course.
I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche. The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992.
Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland. I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.
That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons.
Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team. Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.
A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.
Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.
The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.
By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.
As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.
There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.
At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.
Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.
Coveney on Recruiting Sun, Mar 15, 1992 – 60 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Billington on Recruiting Sat, Mar 14, 1992 – 30 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
