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.
Janie and I went to this fabulous exhibition early evening on a Friday – this notion of late opening of museums and galleries on a Friday evening was quite new then…
We had arranged to meet Anthea and Mitchell at Salt Yard later that evening. A couple of months earlier I had enjoyed a superb meal at Salt Yard with John Boy:
I recall Mitchell being there when we arrived at Salt Yard and then Anthea arriving last, in a bit of a “sorry I’m late” flap…very much in character.
But the excellent food and wine soon had everyone in a chilled and good mood at the end of the week. For me and Janie, with the fascinating cultural exhibition before the gathering too, it was a super start to the weekend.
Just as well, as the showing sold out, so even Frontline Club members were turned away on the day; we ran into Roger Graef outside the club, regretting that he hadn’t booked.
It is a short film. Unlike some at that time, this film was not brimming with unequivocal praise for “The Lady”. Writing in late 2017, that equivocation seems prescient.
Still, it was a very affecting, moving hour of documentary.
A larger audience for this one, at the Museum of London; slightly more intimidating feel to the platform too (Barnards Inn Hall sort-of feels like home).
Judging by the absence of appointments in the diary, it looks as though Janie and I had planned to take an autumn break that year but then changed our minds. Given Phillie’s state of health by then, the Price of Fish book deadline looming along with my Changing Money Gresham lecture mid November, it was probably a wise move not to go away and yet to have relatively little work in the diaries.
As a result, we also had relatively little cultural activity scheduled for that autumn, but this particular weekend was an exception.
We took the Friday off work and went to this superb Gauguin exhibition, which we both enjoyed enormously.
Originally this evening was set up with Paul and a young woman named Holly. But Holly was off the agenda some time before the evening came round and Scott elected to come down to London to see us instead.
From memory, dinner at the Dock Kitchen had always been on the agenda for this event, but once the dramatis personae changed we thought that some light entertainment before dinner might go down well.
So we booked an hour of stand up comedy at Riverside Studio 3: Andrew Lawrence. He turned out to be pretty good. Stand up comedy is not usually Janie’s thing, but the young men (all three of us) enjoyed it – as did Janie really. This was more thoughtful and less obvious than a lot of stand up.
Then we hot-footed it to the canalside at Ladbroke Grove/Kensal Road to try Dock Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant that had popped up the previous year and stayed around for several years.
It was a really good meal to round off a really good evening.
Dance is not really my thing. Watching dance isn’t really Janie’s thing.
But Anthea and Mitchell were keen to go to this and were raving about it being original and different.
I’m sure it was.
I liked the music in the second half; all Bowie, Eno, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, The Bruce Gilbert and Wire music in the first half left me a bit cold.
The dancing is of course incredibly skillful, it just doesn’t do anything for me.
I could see why Anthea and Mitchell, as fashion show photographers, would relate to the piece; it felt (to me) like watching one long fashion show parade.
We ran into my former colleague Angela Greenfield at the Barbican, sitting directly behind us – how weird is that? We’d sometimes bump into her at the theatre and it seems that she, like me and Janie, was there with friends who had dragged her to something she wouldn’t normally see. I think she enjoyed it as we did.
We went on to the Hix Oyster and Chop House in Farringdon for a late but much needed meal, which was very good and gave us all a chance to chat and catch up properly.
Through our chance encounter in Mexico and resulting friendship with philosophers Alan Montefiore and Catherine Audard, I would occasionally be invited to a high falutin’ philosophical event.
I bought a copy the day after the dinner. I even pretty much read the book. It’s main premise was that the baby boomer generation had stolen much from the future of the coming generation or two.
Strangely, once in government, he went on to be the Universities minister who advocated upping the university tuition fees, which seems strangely at odds with the main premise of his book, but there you are. Two Brains is a Baron at the time of writing (October 2017) and Chair of the Resolution Foundation.
Anyway, as always with these Forum For European Philosophy dinners, the food was good, the company around the table most impressive and it was always a pleasure to spend time with Alan and Catherine.
This exhibition was a few years before Janie became a friend of the Royal Academy but after they had started taking Friday late bookings, which suited us very well in those days. In fact, we still like going to the galleries and museums for those late openings.
Anyway, that’s what we did.
We both really liked this exhibition. Not only a chance to see some of Van Gogh’s superb works but also a rare chance to see his letters.
