Nano Banana 2.1 image, loosely based on Geordie Soc cartoon & my instructions
As many readers know, John White & I have known each other for 45+ years; friends from our Keele University days – especially our students’ union sabbatical era 1984/85.
One of our favourite memories from out Keele era relates to our doing SU discos together. The Geordie Mag chose to tease John in the cartoon used as the headline picture for the article below:
Role the clock forward 40+ years to the Sessions Art Club. John and I are now well in our 60s and do not hold ourselves out as being cool any more…I’m not sure we ever did think of ourselves as cool.
Yet, the story depicted in the headline image basically happened, give or take a well crafted pay-off line by yours truly the next morning.
Sitting at the bar, behind John, was a pair of young women, who seemed to be drinking all evening without eating. Perhaps they had eaten earlier than us and were lingering over some drinks.
At one point, one of them tottered off her bar stool and slightly collided into the back of John’s chair. She apologised profusely. John gently told her that no harm was done. About five minutes later, she approached John and asked him if either of us had any coke on us. Flabbergasted, John simply said no and she resumed her stool.
Mashed potato beneath the guinea fowl, not a heap of white powder or anythingOne portion of cheese between the two of us – John starting to split the delicious plate of goodies – he’s not demonstrating how he might cut anything other than cheese and accoutrements, m’lud.
I suppose there is a first time for everything and for sure this is the first time that John & I have been approached by someone hoping that we’d be a source of illicit substances.
That, despite the fact that we’d sometimes do the bust fund discos, back in the day.
Even further back in the day, Sessions Arts Club was the old Middlesex Sessions House – the largest court house in the whole of England, albeit for lesser crimes than the Old Bailey. Flogging, imprisonment or deportation to far-flung colonies being the main sentencing tools.
Gulp.
Talking of which, the food and the wine was excellent. As is the stunning ambiance of that place.
We started with some bread, butter and mortadella.
We liked the look of mains:
Cod, pear & minestra nera
Guinea fowl, potato & puntarelle
We shared both, which the staff kindly brought to us in a sensible sequence.
I had a rather fruity orange wine – trendy restaurant, go for the trendy wine. John went for a white wine with the term D’Orient in its name, in honour of his football team, which was playing that evening. John’s undying support did Leyton Orient no good that night, apparently.
We followed it up by sharing the delicious cheese plate: Wigmore & Stichelton, with which we both tried the recommended white port.
As always, John and I had a most enjoyable catch up and meal. And on this occasion we also have a story upon which we’ll be able to dine out for a while.
Who’d have thought that someone would assume that a superannuated pair of snowflakes [did you see what I did there?] like me and John might be a source of Charlie? I can confidently state that neither of us tried the stuff even once.
This time, the Korean setting also had double meaning, as the previous week I had attended a work event with visitors from Busan on the Tuesday, then curated real tennis Club Night at Lord’s on the Wednesday.
One of the London-based Korean speakers was most impressed to learn that I would be eating at Kimchee the following week, as he and his family really rate that place. Well done Andrea for choosing it and using your connections (the Kimchee website) to book the table.
As always, it was really good to see everyone who could make it. We chatted about old times…and new times…and all that.
The evening flew by.
Someone thought that I’d be the best placed person to arrange a group selfie of the five of us who attended that night…
…but they were wrong. My effort was pathetic. You see young folk doing this sort of thing with apparent ease, but I have never got the hang of doing anything more than a double selfie.
That’s why I took the headline photo in traditional fashion, which accords with the way I was trained by my dad to take photos.
But I was not in that photo, so I had a go at mogging the whole evening with a solo selfie.
Hawk-eyed readers will observe that I even manage to get my fist in the way for a solo selfie. Discerning viewers will also conclude that my mogging attempt failed aesthetically.
OK, so I am useless at taking selfies with phones, but I have got the knack of instructing free versions of AI software to help get me out of holes. I sent the above three pictures to Google Flow (Nano Banana 2.1) asking it to produce the five person selfie that I ought to have taken.
Me, Sandra, Liza, Linda & Andrea – as envisaged by Nano Banana based on my instructions.
I think it’s done rather well. Or should I say that I have done rather well, instructing the software with such precision.
But the truth is, we don’t need pictures from these get togethers – it’s the memories and the friendships that really matter. Those have endured for decades and for sure will continue to endure.
Wanting to be well ahead of the curve, picnic-wise. for this year’s Edgbaston trip, Daisy and I went shopping on the Sunday before Edgbaston week to stock up on everything but the most perishable items (bread and fruit) for the forthcoming picnic-fest. This shopping we achieved in Kensington after visiting my friend Barry’s amazingly colourful photographic art exhibition:
The next day, around eleven, my stress levels went through the roof when I received an e-mail from AirBnB informing me that tomorrow’s booking for four nights in Moseley had been cancelled for unspecified force majeure reasons.
We were temporarily homeless and wondering where I might find somewhere faintly near where we wanted to be at such short notice. This was the second time I’d felt a sense of homelessness about this trip – the first time was when I logged on to book the Edgbaston tickets, more than a year earlier, to discover that our regular stand(s) of the past quarter century were to be a building site. Exile in the South Stand was the solution.
As for accommodation, “fortunately”, I found space in a place nearby that we had stayed in before, in 2023, nice place but limited kitchen as I remembered it. That would have to do.
Tuesday, we set off for Moseley via Leamington, where I had a hit on the real tennis court with Doc Robson, Charles Heaton & John Yarnall. The first two joined me and Janie for lunch, after which Janie and I toddled to M&S to stock up with the remaining items we thought we needed.
The limited kitchen in our emergency Moseley home was even more limited this time than it had been in 2023, so we needed a visit to M&S in Moseley on our way to Sabai Sabai to get some additional basic condament items.
Nigel shows his full-tilt sympathetic social worker face on learning of our last minute eviction notice.
If anything were ever to befall the King Cricket site, click here for a scrape of that page.
The fact that the match was still alive on the third day and even into the fourth was pretty much down to this guy - Razaullah:
I took this photo on Day One, because this unknown bloke just looked SOOOO up for it.
The drive up had been a rain-soaked horror-show. The drive back was glorious sunshine, made stressful for me only by Janie looking at the score, about 30 miles from home, soon after Day Four started, saying, "two for one...no, sorry, two for two".
A very kind invitation from Claudia Lesley, who had scored a clutch of excellent seats for this production early in the run and thought of us. It was a great opportunity for Janie to met up with her old school pals, Claudia and Anthea. Plus what looked to be a very promising production of Equus, a play that I had studied at school but, apart from the movie version, had never seen.
Janie and I are both partial to a bit of Shaffer too. I had read or seen (or both) most of his oeuvre. Actually one of Janie’s and my early dates was a Shaffer:
Janie even (perhaps inadvertently) forgave Shaffer for his proclivity for theatrical dames who are not Janie’s favourites. Judy (e.g. Gift Of the Gorgon) and Maggie (in several Shaffers throughout my life, starting with The Public Eye and more recently Lettice and Lovage, which I saw back in the day).
Lindsay Posner is a superb director who possibly wanted to continue the family (if not stage dame) tradition for Shaffer plays, by choosing Toby Stephens (Dame Maggie’s son) to play Martin Dysart, the psychiatrist. Great choice. Toby Stephens absolutely smashed it in that role.
Noah Valentine was excellent as the troubled boy. Indeed the whole cast was excellent.
Equus is a long play and the Menier has a bum-numbing seating, but somehow this didn’t seem to matter, as the production was so good, the time seemed to fly by without physical discomfort for us. For the actors, possibly more discomfort, as it was a very well-choreographed production that surely required great feats of strength and dexterity at times, especially from the ensemble “horses”.
Before the show, Janie and I had a hair-raising drive across London with multiple demonstrations and road-blockages in place. I had strategically worked out a route, which worked well, but hadn’t counted on unscheduled (and unconnected) road closures nearer to the theatre blocking off my chosen parking places.
Still, we got to Borough Market on time for a pre-theatre supper of fish at Fish!, with Claudia and Anthea, which was a very pleasant way to start the evening. Not our usual way round for theatre (eating before rather than after) but the only sensible way to have done this one.
Rohan Candappa, Nick Wahla, Me, Steve Butterworth, Ollie Goodwin, Rich Davis & Lisa Pavlovsky– thank you for the photo, Mr Waiter.
A gathering of friends who went to my school, and great fun it was too. It is always enjoyable and uplifting when we meet up.
On this occasion, we gathered at Souk in honour of Rich “The Rock” Davis, who risked flying out of Toronto to London despite his own absence from air traffic control when so-doing.
But what should we call ourselves? “Alleyn Old Boys” was the standard term when we joined the school. Replaced by “Alleyn Old Boys And Girls” when the school went co-educational, while we were there. That’s a bit of a mouthful, though.
“Alleyn Alums” still has the requisite gender neutrality, but Latin is so old hat. Indeed some of us…no names, no pack drill Nick Wahla, showed little affinity for that classical language 50 years ago, and have not exactly changed their minds since then.
Coincidentally, I have recently had to grapple with this vital old-school nominative question for practical reasons. As part of my sporting activities playing real tennis…
So much room for improvement in that technique – c2016.
…and as foreshadowed in one of my Ognblog pieces a few months ago…
…I have indeed teamed up with Professor Simon Barton (Alleyn’s 1970-1977, stop sniggering at the back of the class) to represent our old school against a pack of rather more seasoned old school pairings in The Cattermull Cup the weekend after Easter. I settled on “Alleyn Old Folk” as our team name, which seemed to amuse Simon – you need a sense of humour to deploy his medical discipline, and even more so to partner me at tennis.
But El Presidente, or Praeses Designatus as Nick Wahla would probably not put it – i.e. Lisa Pavlovsky, was unimpressed by that choice of title.
Sensible suggestions please,
she demanded. Someone needs to explain to Lisa that she is hanging with the wrong crowd if sensible suggestions are what she’s after. Inspired by Lisa’s plea for ideas, Rohan Candappa suggested:
The Canada/Greenland/Pavlovsky Plan – to invade Dulwich College and seize its resources. Finally our CCF training will come in handy! ‘Make Alleyn’s Great Again’ hats will be available for all).
But enough of this forward-looking frivolity. Such gatherings are primarily about reminiscing the past, not planning an heroic future.
There was a lot of talk that evening about train rides to and from school, plus parties which I didn’t attend…probably because I wasn’t invited…where juvenile behaviour, excessive high spirits and resulting broken glass seemed to feature a great deal. I have commissioned DeepAI to produce a couple of illustrative pictures, which I have entitled “Lightbulb Moment” and “Sliding Doors Moment” for reasons of my own.
Everyone played their part, but the hero of the evening was undoubtedly Rich “The Rock” Davis, who had flown in on the redeye from Toronto that very day, carelessly losing five hours in the process, yet still he was up for a Moroccan meal with his old school pals. True grit.
However, the evening ended on a very unfortunate note for me personally. I hadn’t noticed, on arrival, that one of our number had come to Souk on a bicycle. As I was slightly tired and a little emotional, perhaps not articulating my every syllable in my trademark, crystal clear, received pronunciation manner, I mumbled:
Whose is the bike?
…which Rohan, failing to catch my copula, aurally, as it were, mistook for the phrase, “Who’s the bike?”
That’s outragous – you’re cancelled, Harris,
said Rohan, who then followed up the evening with a new nickname for me – Ian “Cancelled” Harris, plus a new one for Ollie – “Glass-breaker” Goodwin.
So there you have it – we all have nicknames now. It’s only taken 50 years to complete the set.
Candy, Gob, Cancelled, Peanut, Glass-breaker, The Rock & El Presidente.
John, Colin, Jonny, Graham, Barry– still crazy after all these years
We are starting to wonder whether the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner puts the kiss of death onto struggling restaurants. Our previously most recent find, the Goodge Street Spaghetti House, closed down after just two or three of our visits. You’d have thought that six to ten comedy writers, three or four times a year could keep any restaurant afloat, but it seems not.
La Ballerina in Covent Garden has been around for a long time. When John Random mentioned the place to Hugh Rycroft, Hugh reported that his aunt used to take him there.
La Ballerina was a little, family-run café when it opened in the late 1800s…back when Hugh Rycroft’s auntie used to bring him to Covent Garden for fruity treats…
But that’s history, whereas we are topical comedy folk…or at least we were.
Anyway, point is, it is always a treat to get together with that crowd. Diverse conversations, ranging from Graham’s bizarre story about spending hours with the wrong Professor Guliyev in Azerbaijan discussing arcane rock formations…
…who knew that Guliyev is a common name in Azerbaijan? Azerbaijanis, that’s who…
…to even more arcane quizzing about symbols on flags. I didn’t come last. Naturally, Barry won that game.
We also talked about the good old days, of course. Songs are often the most memorable items. We talked about the various attempts that several of us had to rhyme things with Mangosuthu Buthelezi, for example. Was it Jonny who had managed something to the tune of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini? It took two of us, me and Barry, to dredge out something to the tune of Hazy Crazy (Mangosuthu Buthelezi) Days Of Summer.
Graham reminded us of one of his favourite John Random songs from the days that the former Czechoslovakia broke up – Slow-Vak. As it happens, the Harris/Random archiving project has, mercifully, already rescued that one:
I love the way that John felt obliged to inform the cast how to pronounce Václav Havel’s surname, but not Antonín Dvořák’s. And in the matter of spelling, John, should the word be spelt Slow-vak or Slovak in this context? The distinction could make all the difference, comedically, when reading a piece.
Given that La Ballerina has been an eatery for well north of 150 years, it seems unlikely that it will close down any time soon. But our tenure might be foreshortened due to John Random’s terrified thought in the middle of the night when he got home that he hadn’t paid his share of the bill. I rose early to find a message from John to that effect. I replied:
I quipped with the proprietor fellow, while I was paying, that the sixth man was hiding in the loo trying to avoid paying. I’d be most surprised, therefore, if he hadn’t accosted you and relieved you of your portion so quickly after you relieved yourself, you didn’t even notice the extraction. The gentleman struck me as a follower of Colbert, adept at ” so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”
But if I am wrong, don’t be surprised if the next Ivan Shakespeare dinner is at yet another new venue, on account of us having been banned from La Ballerina in disgrace.
Oh, and another thing. John and Mark Keagan are doing a bit of a show at the Canal Cafe in June:
As always, a fun evening. Ivan Shakespeare’s legacy to us – the idea of having regular gatherings – was a great one, much appreciated by those of us who have survived thus far.
“OK, you NewsRevue-alum quizzers and other readers. What is the connection between my family and medal winning at the Olympic Games? Answer in the comments – but only if you get there without using search engines or AI.” AD.
The heist movie, as a genre, isn’t really my thing. It feels disconnected from the real world, to me, or at least disconnected from my world.
I did have a couple of youthful, personal experiences of failed heists. Those actual experiences no doubt informed my negative subjective perception of the genre.
I’m delighted to report that the police foiled The Great Battersea Camera Shop Heist. A few minutes after the crime, a bloodied gentleman presented himself at Bolingbroke Hospital, with several items from my dad’s smashed shop window about his person, having left a trail of blood along the few streets between the shop and hospital.
I remember my father commending the police for their astute detective work in apprehending the photographic equipment fiend. The police officers, without any outward signs of irony in their response, accepted dad’s praise smugly. Thus distracted, the police failed to book my dad for using child labour (me) as assistance for the squalid clean-up operation.
My second experience of a failed heist had the added excitement of cash, contraband and gun violence. This was in the mid-1980s, when I was working, on assignment, in the accounts office, at a large wine & spirits cash and carry warehouse, The Nose, underneath the arches at London Bridge.
One of the administrative employees in that office, I think she was named Diane, was a large, well-built woman. If you had gone to central casting looking for someone to play the part of a 1970s East German Olympic shot-putter, you might have chosen her.
One afternoon, while us office workers were quietly beavering away, we suddenly heard a loud commotion just outside the office. Diane leapt out of her chair and dashed onto the warehouse floor, yelling, “what the bloody hell is going on out here?”
A few moments later she came back into the office. “That’s got rid of them”. Shortly after that, we heard the sound of multiple police car sirens, after which the place was swarming with police for the rest of the afternoon.
It might have looked a bit like this. This and the headline image with thanks to DeepAI
Several (I think two) armed robbers had entered the warehouse in search of cash. They can only have been moments away from our office, where indeed they would have found plentiful cash, when Diane, unwittingly, bounded out with her shouty enquiry. The sight and sound of Diane apparently scared the armed robbers into running away sharpish.
Everyone in the office was in a state of shocked relief on discovering what had happened, not least how close we had come to being held up at gunpoint. Diane seemed the least shocked of all of us.
My work at The Nose was connected with an earlier heist of the non-violent kind. The owners were accused (and eventually convicted) of a sophisticated VAT and bonded goods fraud which, at that time, was believed to amount to £3M; then the largest Customs & Excise fraud ever.
My firm’s role was to help get the business back onto the straight and narrow, as the tax and judicial authorities wanted the business to continue trading so that the authorities might recover the defrauded value.
That role, twixt business and authorities, was very unusual. At one point, on the first day of the trial, I ended up dashing to the Old Bailey with an incriminating document I had, in the nick of time, discovered. Richard Ducann QC, strangely more famous for the Lady Chatterley , Last Tango & Fanny Hill obscenity cases than for The Nose case, persuaded the owners to change their pleas to guilty on the back of their self-incrimination.
At that juncture, some of the customs people mistakenly thought I was their stool pigeon (ha-cha-cha-cha). But my firm’s role was to support the business, not to do the authorities bidding.
I had an idea to do forensic accounting using seminal computer modelling techniques (spreadsheets), to ascertain the true value of the fraud. In part, that required me to model the economics of the entire wine trade; someone had to do it. The exercise proved the actual value of the fraud was much less than the £3M the authorities had asserted. Thus I quickly fell from favour with the customs folk.
I learnt a lot and enjoyed doing that forensic accounting assignment. But I soon drifted away from such work, after just one other 1980s fraud case. Yet now, nearly 40 years later, I’m minded to re-assemble the old firm’s investigative team. One last enormous, audacious, forensic accounting case. Just think of the fees. We’d all be able to retire in luxury…and what could possibly go wrong?
The Evening Itself, Including Several Other Heists
It is my solemn duty, in my capacity as The Scribe (aka ‘ammer ‘arris, apparently) to report on the evening.
The Boss (Rohan), His Moll (Jan), Independent Scrutiniser (Chris) & The Polymath (Kay)
We ate Moroccan food at Souk, the scene of earlier crimes perpetrated by The Boss and some of his cronies:
After the grub, it was down to business. Usual ThreadMash style – Rohan introduced and linked the pieces. On this occasion he went for some musical links – some funny, some just plain weird.
First up was Kay, whose story started off like one of her rather wonderful childhood stories about spending time with her grandfather, but then got darker and darker, as a heist story emerged from the seemingly innocent fun at the start of piece.
Next up was me – see performance piece above.
Then John Eltham told an intriguing tale from the 18th century, partly based on true events, partly on conjecture, with a mixture of piracy, mutiny, hidden treasure and betrayal. Is it a spoiler to say that, despite the tropical setting, many jewels end up buried where the sun doesn’t shine.
Julie was next. She imagined a family business doing heists to order, with a female member of the family nonchalantly going through the businesses terms and conditions with a telephone enquirer. At least one of the cancellation clauses seemed to be an existential problem in more ways than one. It was a very funny piece…
…as was Jan’s piece, which brought everyone who had assembled that evening into play. The Boss in her piece is a sinister character with a bunch of unsuspecting cronies, who are all writing creative pieces to order, not realising that The Boss is stealing all of their stories and publishing them as his own. Who could possibly stop him? Perhaps the quiet, demure one, who also happens to be The Boss’s moll.
We all chatted together for a while…before The Boss set our next assignment and encouraged his accomplices in Souk to extract money from us.
After that, some of the gang scarpered sharpish – especially those with long journeys. Several of us stuck around to try and put the world to rights. We failed, but at least we tried.
Perhaps we should have debated world affairs over coffee, in the 18th century style. Right at the end of the evening, I suggested same to Kay, as a way of mentioning my Thomas Paine blue plaque project, a mile or so north of Souk, in Fitzrovia, three doors down from the house in which my dad was born.
The Cous Cous Club is a gathering of Alleyn’s Old Boys from the mid to late 1970s – most of whom I have therefore known for over 50 years at the time of writing. In fact many of us have been gathering occasionally and informally in this way for decades.
It was one of Rohan Candappa’s ideas to name and brand a well established thing that previously had no sense of brand identity. Rohan used to be in advertising, but now does this sort of thing in his spare time.
I missed the inaugural meeting of the Cous Cous Club at Souk back in early autumn. I was in the USA, talking at the International Tennis Hall of Fame about events 150 years ago, at another of my clubs, that led to the codification of tennis into the modern game as we know it:
Still, despite the fact that I might easily confuse CCC and MCC in future conversations, Rohan invited me to join the Cous Cous Club for its first Christmas dinner and naturally I said “yes please”.
I was the first to arrive at the restaurant. Most of the party had gathered at a nearby hostelry for a pre-dinner drink, whereas I was coming hot foot from a prior engagement.
My earlier appointment had been a meeting with Professor Tim Connell, to plan my slot at the Gresham Society soirée, which this time will be in mid January rather than during the pre Christmas mêlée. I usually grace the soirée with late medieval music…sometimes more genuine than other times:
As the Cous Cous Club was on my mind, I teased Tim with the notion that I was planning, for Gresham Society, a sing-along of very, very old songs: Slade, Sweet, T-Rex, Rod…
But once I realised that Tim was close to tears and/or apoplexy at this thought, I showed him the early 17th century material, with a Gresham College connection, which I actually have in mind for the soirée sing-along. Tim then cheered up and calmed down.
Anyway, point is, as first to arrive at Souk, I got to chat with the charming and friendly waiter who was to be our main host for the evening. When I explained to him what the Cous Cous Club was, and the antiquity of our shared experience, the waiter was quite blown away. I suspect that young waiter has been on the planet for less half the time we Alleyn’s Old Boys have known each other.
No pressure…
…I said to the waiter, who just beamed, knowing that he and his colleagues would be able to cope with whatever collective curve balls our group of old boys might throw at them.
Then the main gang turned up from the pub, followed by a trickle of late-comers.
So who was there?…
…I hear multiple readers cry. Let’s call the register. This is school, after all, even if it is 50+ years on:
Nick Wahla
Rohan Candappa
Claire Brooke
Paul Driscoll
Simon Ryan
Andy Feeley
Dave Leach
Steve Butterworth
Perry Harley
John Eltham
Me (obvs).
Rohan provided each of us with a fez…apart from John Eltham who, always one of the keenest scouts, had brought his own. Rohan also awarded me my Cous Cous Club membership badge, which felt a bit like being inducted into The Tufty Club, but without first having to cross the road safely.
There were a couple of notable absences, not least Lisa Pavlovsky and Dave Wellbrook. That led, naturally, to those absent friends getting the hardest time of the evening. That might seem unfair, as they had no opportunity on the night to defend themselves, but life isn’t fair. The fact that life isn’t fair is a lesson you learn early at the very best schools. You also learn it at Alleyn’s. And you especially learn that lesson at the Cous Cous Club.
Claire Brooke had come all the way from Harrogate for the evening. Rohan felt, with some justification, that a wrong from the first gathering needed to be put right.
At the early Autumn inaugural Cous Cous Club gathering, Rohan had awarded Lisa Pavlovsky with a trophy recognising her as the first female House Captain at Alleyn’s School.
Lisa, awarded, beaming, early autumn 2025. Photo “borrowed” from Facebook.
But soon after that first event, it emerged that Claire Brooke had been the first female House Captain, albeit a joint one, the previous year. Rohan felt obliged to put matters right:
Claire, beaming, with her revenge trophy, awarded by Rohan, December 2025
Chat soon turned to sport and tales of derring-do gone by. As usual, John Eltham and Nigel Boatswain reminded me about my infeasibly successful/lucky stint in goal against them (Cribbs v Duttons) although the exact details of that story keep changing in people’s memories.
Exciting news, gang – I have actually found a diary reference to that glorious day on the football pitch, which might well be my only such diary entry in all the years I kept diaries. To be Ogblogged in the fullness of time – watch that space.
Then there was reference to the question “who was the youngest grandfather”, as Andy Feeley has recently become one of those. My arithmetical brain worked out that Dave Leach must have first become a grandfather when he was younger than Andy Feeley is now…which I think is right…but apparently that wasn’t the question. Andy Feeley was the youngest person in the room who is now a grandfather.
My confusion was deemed to be Wellbrookian, which turned the conversation to thoughts of Dave Wellbrook and why he wasn’t with us.
Has the lurgy…
…was as close to a polite answer as we got.
Dave Unwellbrook, then…
…I bet no-one had ever made that joke before.
Talk then naturally turned to Wellbrook’s recent treading of the boards, which several (braver than me) Cous Cous Club members had witnessed.
Wellbrook’s self-image, from Facebook. Is this acting, the method or something entirely other?
Nick Wahla’s review was an absolute classic. I paraphrase:
Wellbrook was very much himself in that performance, but he occasionally lapsed into real acting.
Praise indeed. Nick – you really should turn your hand to being a theatre critic.
Out of nowhere, Perry Harley related a story to me about him meeting Mungo Jerry while on holiday in Bournemouth. Perry wondered whether I remembered any Mungo Jerry songs other than “In the Summertime”.
Off the top of my head, I mentioned “Alright Alright Alright” and “Long Legged Woman Dressed In Black”, which raised much mirth and some scepticism too.
It was hard to disabuse Perry and friends of the scepticism, as neither Perry nor I could get our smartphones to connect to the outside world.
Strange how my memory instantly dredged up these tunes and lyrics from that era, way back when we all first met.
Rohan shot a short clip of video that evening, which I can share with you, dear, long-suffering readers:
I wondered, on seeing that clip, whether I might now, after all these years, be even more gobby than Nick Wahla. Now THERE’S a thought.
Yet, I was hugely honoured to read, on Facebook, that Rich Davies – who is hiding in Canada, blaming a little bit of slightly inclement weather for his absence from the evening – had awarded me the Golden Camel for looking the most Moroccan amongst us. That might have had something to do with the fact that I was the last to remove my fez hat.
Anyway, in case it isn’t clear by now, it was great to see everyone and I’m pretty sure we all had a great time.
Thanks, Rohan, for being such a stalwart organiser of great get-togethers. Much appreciated. And so well branded.
Colin clinched the china after strivin’ for the Ivan, the beaker for the burlesque is the cup snuck by Chalice…
London Cricket Trust Dinner At Soutine, 9 December 2025
This is the second time we’ve had our London Cricket Trust Christmas dinner at Soutine after our last Board meeting of the year.
Smug and self-satisfied we are not, but we are now able to boast 118 non-turf pitch installations and 21 net system installations completed since we started seven years ago. “Way to go”, as our transatlantic friends might put it, but this is a transformational number of facilities in parks around London that would otherwise have been without.
Chris Whitaker, Ed Griffiths, Ian Moore, Sophie Kent and I enjoyed the meal and the company.
Dedanists’ Society Lunch, Lemonia, 11 December 2025
These images from the Dedanists’ Society website, depicting the lunch last year
Always a highlight of the festive season, this gathering of dedicated realists provided an opportunity to talk real tennis, in contrast with my activities earlier in the week which were about cricket.
Hard ball doesn’t get much harder than this. I tried to be suitably abstemious, or at least minimally lubricated, as I also had an evening engagement that evening…
The Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Goodge Street Spaghetti House, 11 December 2025
A slightly depleted gang gathered for the traditional seasonal Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, which has, for decades now, included a form of quizzing for the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Trophy. More recently, since the demise of NewsRevue founder and mentor Mike Hodd, we also play for a Mike Hodd memorial trophy. I won “the Hoddy” last year, which meant that it was my job to come up with a suitable game/quiz for this year’s contest.
The gang for dinner this year comprised me, John Random, Barry Grossman, Hugh Ryecroft, Chalice Am Bergris, Mark Keegan and Colin Stutt.
Barry Grossman started the game proceedings with the Ivan Shakespeare Trophy quiz. I did rather badly and Colin Stutt did rather well.
Then it was my turn to curate a game/quiz for the Hoddy. Below is the game.
Any reader should feel free to write in, ianlharris@gmail.com, and I’ll gladly mark your questions. No pressure, but Chalice scored eight-and-a-half, which was a joint top score, winning by dint of the humour bonus on one of her questions.
It’s not all about quizzes and awards, of course. Heaven forbid. The chat at dinner was lively and witty as always.
Z/Yen Seasonal Lunch, Watermen’s Hall, 12 December 2025
After a hearty hit on the tennis court at Lord’s and an even stouter Board Meeting at King William Street, the Z/Yen throng retired to Watermen’s Hall for seasonal lunch and festivities.
Secret Santa did his best to liven up the post lunch activities, despite certain seemingly intelligent folk strangely finding the idea of Secret Santa hard to understand…not mentioning any names, Bob Pay.
Then quizzing and singing. As part of Z/Yen’s journey towards net zero…in this case zero effort more than necessary…the Z/Yen seasonal quiz bore more than a passing resemblance to the Hoddy one depicted above…apart from the title and Z/Yen logos where the pictures of Mike Hodd are shown above.
Readers are as welcome to have a go and send in your questions for the Z/Yen quiz as you were for the Mike Hodd one. No pressure, but the combined forces of Juliet and Charlotte managed a most impressive nine. Questions that were too clever for their own good did not find favour with the judge, which was a bit of a disadvantage for the more-propellor-headed attendees.
As a further lurch in the direction of net zero (excess effort), I also road tested the idea of getting a random bunch of people to sing Jacobean songs, which worked almost as well with Z/Yen as it seems to be working with the real tennis community on skills nights. But that’s another story. As (will be) the attempt to get Gresham Society people singing in that manner.
Suffice it to say that the Z/Yen community was so motivated by the “We Be Three Poor Mariners” song that they danced around the Watermen’s table while singing it. Apt, I suppose, at Watermen’s.
I have known Rohan Candappa since we were eleven. I met him on my first day at Alleyn’s School, the secondary school we both attended 1973-1980. There he is in my first year class, 1973/74:
This half-century-old remembering is relevant to Rohan’s show, not least because most of the musical material into which Rohan is delving relates to the years that he and I were still in full-time education – including the university years following school.
Also to say, although Rohan and I lost touch after school, we have very much been in touch with one another again for best part of the last 20 years.
When Rohan “shouted out” to ancient pals, like me, that he would be doing a free gig as part of the Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre grand opening day, how could I possibly say no? Even though Janie and I had tickets to the theatre that evening – it seemed to me that the hike from Hornsey to Hampstead Theatre (by car) would easily be achievable – thus we agreed to do both events.
We thought Rohan might need the support. We needn’t have worried on that score:
Nor need we have worried on behalf of Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre generally – the place was heaving with visitors on its opening day:
Rohan was performing in the former Council Chamber, which was mighty grand. Janie and I had a theory that it would be good to get into the chamber early, as there would be good seats and not such good seats in such a place. We were right.
There’s me, one of the first to get in. Indeed, only the lady in the red hat – whom you might have got from central casting to play the role of the enthusiastically-right-on elderly lady – beat us to it. Apart from Rohan and the technical dude, obvs.
The lady from central casting danced magnificently to Free Nelson Mandela at the end of the show
Rohan started the piece with a bit of Hornsey Town Hall history from January 1937 – when Oswald Mosely held a public meeting there and protesters bravely made a scene.
Article from 26 Jan 1937 Daily Herald (London, London, England)
Rohan thought that four gutsy protesters had embedded themselves in the hall and taken on the fascist mob, but the embedded Daily Herald article [did you see what I did there?] suggests that there were six brave hecklers.
Anyway, Rohan took us on a tour de horizon of political songs from the 1970s and early 1980s, including Part Of the Union by The Strawbs, The Killing Of Georgie by Rod Stewart, Ghost Town by The Specials…you’ll get the idea if you are of our generation. Actually, you’ll get the idea – if not the nostalgia fix – however old you might be.
Most of Rohan’s choices were items I might have expected…although he omitted the two tracks that I had mentally put on my list of essentials before we arrived – we’ll return to those…
…but he did choose some items that were refreshingly and interestingly unexpected to me. For example, I wasn’t expecting All Gone Away by the Style Council, but was glad to hear it again in this context.
Nor was I expecting quite so much emphasis on anti-apartheid politics, despite the fact that my own political awakening was much-triggered by that cause. Rohan played a short excerpt from Coal Train by Hugh Masekela before playing the whole of Peter Gabriel’s Biko…
So which two “essential” tracks (in Ian Harris terms) did Rohan omit?…
I hear all you inquisitive readers cry.
Stand Down Margaret by The Beat and (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang by Heaven 17.
I had told Rohan (and his wife Jan) that I would demand all my money back if Rohan didn’t use both of my “essential” political songs and he used neither of them. Honourably, Rohan has promised to refund both me and Janie every penny I had forked out for those event tickets…
…what do you mean, the event was free?
I sense that this performance piece, which was excellent and suitably moving in parts, will serve as a pilot for one of Rohan’s more honed pieces in the fullness of time. I might have to pay for tickets to see the honed version.
As it was, the after show period between 5:30 and us needing to head off towards the Hampstead theatre gave us time for a very pleasant wine bar drink with Rohan, Jan and another of our pals from school, Steve “Peanut” Butterworth.
As Steve discreetly put it to Janie:
…a lot of people had far worse nicknames than mine…
