I recall that Janie, Steve Taylor and I performed the piece. Janie got some outlandish wigs for us to wear. Try not to think about it too much. Fortunately for the world, no-one took photographs that evening.
Steve at Paris House the year before, 1994, without wig.
However, DeepAI has had a go at revisioning the event and come up with the following:
Robo-Steve, Janie-Bot & Avatar-Ian
WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AT Z/YEN? (To the Tune of “When Will I See You Again?”)
PROPS REQUIRED/DESIRED: Wigs (sorted), mobile phones, pieces of paper (minutes, memos), left overs on plates
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will we share precious minutes? Will we have debate for ever? Will we still be macho (macho) and work the whole night through?
VERSE 2
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will our team eat together? Are we at work or just friends? Is this supper chicken or is it scrag end? (is this scrag end?)
MIDDLE EIGHT
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will I see you at Z/Yen? Haaaaaaa, oooooohhh, Precious motors.
VERSE THREE
When will I hear you at Z/Yen? When will we share precious mobiles? Are we in touch or alone? CAN YOU ****-**** HEAR ME?? Chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh PHONE???
When will I chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh? (When will you stop asking so many ****-**** questions?) When will I beeeeeeeeeep?
[ENDS]
Here are the Three Degrees singing When Will I See You Again:
This time, I went up to Keele by car, meeting Mike Smith & David Foreman for dinner. I stayed at the Post House, just the one night, then on to Manchester on business on the Friday, staying again at the then reasonably rated Britannia Hotel, subsequently not so well rated.
Janie joined me by train as she was doing a weekend foot physical therapy course at one of the Universities.
I don’t think I saw Ashley in Manchester on that occasion – I’m not sure he was yet there or if he was I wasn’t aware of it. On some of Janie’s subsequent visits I was able to spend some time with him.
I think I just read and worked a bit while Janie did her course.
On Sunday I drove us back to London.
Very early Monday I went to Waterloo to take the Eurostar to Brussels with Michael Mainelli & Kevin Parker. I think Janie might even have driven me to the station.
Two days in Brussels and I had my brick (mobile phone) swiped on the Eurostar home.
Ashley wasn’t in the Sneyd Arms in 1995, but thanks to him for this photo
I was rushing around the country like a mad thing for work back then. I had arranged a work road trip that required me to be in Cardiff on the Friday and then in Manchester for a couple of days from the Monday.
As it happened, Janie and I had been invited to a party in Knutsford on the Saturday evening; a couple named Ros & Con whom we had met in Sri Lanka a few months earlier. That Sri Lanka tour was the last time Janie and I did a group tour. We weren’t wild about too many of the fellow travellers, but we did get on with Ros & Con.
Con in pink talking to Ros. Me talking to someone else in pink. Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka.
We also wanted to meet up with Mike Smith & Marianna at Keele – following my January visit, Mike and I had started doing some work together and I thought Janie would get on well with those two…which she did.
So, unusually, we arranged for Janie to travel up and down by train, while I drove around and across the country.
I remember it dawning on me that driving from Cardiff to The Potteries on a Friday afternoon/evening was not one of my better ideas – it took hours. Janie got the 16:00 train from Euston and was cosy in the hotel I’d booked in Burslem, The George, long before I got there.
We had arranged to have lunch with Mike & Marianna in The Sneyd Arms. Mike had wanted us to enjoy their hospitality at the house, but I didn’t want thus to impose on what would be a fleeting visit. Also, I had a crazy craving to see the Sneyd Arms again, for old times’ sake.
I had got to know The Sneyd Arms well during my time at Keele – especially during the 1982/83 academic year during which time I went out with Liza, daughter of the landlord, Geoff O’Connor.
Word had reached me that Geoff had retired before our visit in 1995, so I wasn’t expecting to see him in there…
…but I was wrong. There was Geoff, back visiting the place, sitting in the snug having lunch with his old bunch of muckers. It was like a trip down memory lane seeing that group in there.
Geoff greeted me warmly and gave me news of the family; not only Liza but also his good lady and the sons, Liam and Shaun.
It was also a great opportunity to get to know Mike and Marianna a bit better, so it all felt like a very natural progression in life.
Janie remembers this day very fondly, not only for the warm and friendly lunch in the Sneyd Arms with Mike & Marianna but also the Knutsford party later.
An Evening Garden Party In Knutsford
Ros and Con were quite high falutin’ people in the Knutsford community. Con had been the top banana in a large power company or something of that ilk.
Con in a Nuwara Eliya tea factory. “One day all this could be biofuel”.
Anyway, Ros & Con’s house was a lovely place with a lovely garden. Janie is convinced that we have photos from the event, but I certainly don’t have negatives, so they might have been sent to us after the event and reside in a pile of prints, possibly in the attic awaiting sorting. If I do uncover pictures from the event, I’ll add them.
It was a very pleasant evening. Most of the other guests were quite a lot older than us and I sensed that they found our peculiar southern vowels and youthful expressions entertaining.
I had booked in to the Britannia Hotel in Manchester – one night in Janie’s case, a couple of nights in mine. This is another hotel that was probably past its grander days by 1995 but was perfectly acceptable and very convenient for my/our needs back then. It was good enough that we booked it again more than once, as Janie did some weekend courses in Manchester in the mid to late 1990s. I think it started to get more tired and we tired of it after a while. The contemporary reviews (he says writing in February 2021) are pretty bad, but not quite as bad as those of The George in Burslem.
But this June 1995 piece is primarily about a very special, enjoyable and memorable day, with Mike & Marianna at Keele in the afternoon and with Ros & Con in Knutsford in the evening. It was well worth the travels.
Actually that was the second of the weekends, when Michael Mainelli & Elisabeth (then still Reuss) came over to Janie’s place in Sandall Close for a feast of wild boar. Almost certainly not the handsme fellow depicted.
The week before, we went to Paul James’s place in Enfield for a party, possibly a housewarming as he was living in Wallington the previous time we went to his place.
With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at their house in Church Plantation.
It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.
Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.
Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.
Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.
So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…
…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.
I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!
Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.
I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.
I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).
But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.
It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.
We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.
I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…
…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.
With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union
After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.
This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.
In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.
Disappointingly, though, nobody said…
…”cards please”…
…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.
Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture
Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.
I don’t mean “my first flame” in the romance sense. Good heavens no. I was over 20 when Africa was released as a single, in my third year at Keele.
No, no, no, I mean my first internet flame.
I started using the internet in the second half of 1994, while setting up Z/Yen, primarily because I/we expected it eventually to be useful for business.
But there wasn’t much going on commercially on the net in those days, so, to get into the swing of using the net, I used it quite extensively for my personal interests. Not least, at that time, subscribing to some Usenet groups that I thought would help me with my development of comedy lyrics, including one where people simply discussed the lyrics of songs.
One correspondent on that lyrics group stated that Africa by Toto was their favourite lyric of all time. That posting made me recall the spring of 1983 and the way that my flatmate, Alan “The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman and I would mimic the line
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti,
which at the time we thought might be the most pretentious lyrical line ever, not least because it barely rhymes with “solitary company” and also barely scans the beat of the song. You sort of need to rush through that line like a broadside balladeer or a calypso singer with too much to say and not enough beats in which to say it.
I made these points about Africa by Toto on that Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours, as was the dial-up method in those days.
When I returned to the group, I had been comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover. Their beef was only partly a disagreement with my feelings about the lyric, which was understandable. It was primarily a character assassination suggesting that I was not qualified to discuss that lyric, on the basis that I had failed correctly to transcribe the line in question.
That line actually reads, “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a lepress above the Serengeti”,
explained the angry song-lover.
In those days, there was no Google or YouTube or Wikipedia or on-line repository of lyrics to turn to. But I couldn’t even work out what a “lepress” might be. Nor why anything other than “Olympus” might make sense as the simile in question. I even spent a few minutes looking through the dictionary to see if there was a word which had slipped my mind, the feminine form of which might be lepress and make sense in context. The only word I could think of that might take the feminine form “lepress” was “leper”, which didn’t make sense to me in context.
I made these points on the Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours.
When I returned to the group, I had been even more comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover.
You know ******* well that a lepress is a female leopard. Don’t be so ******* insulting.
The flamer had also acquired one or two supporters who joined in the flaming, mostly on the grounds that they like the song, a view which I find fair and with which I have some sympathy. I also sort-of like the song; it’s just that one line that has always grated on me and was the source of our 1983 mirth.
But also, by now, I had acquired quite a few supporters, some of whom were supporting the logic of my specific argument about the lyric, while others were simply arguing that I was entitled to my opinion and that the purpose of the group was, after all, to debate lyrics.
I also received a private message with a plea from one of the group’s moderators, who told me that she felt that I had been unfairly flamed but asked me to post a conciliatory message to try to calm the group down. She was asking me to do this, she said, because she sensed that I was the more likely of the combatants to acquiesce to her request.
I thought about the moderator’s conciliation request, while also consulting my English and American dictionaries, to try to work out what a female leopard might actually be called. “A leopardess”, since you asked. I also listened to Africa by Toto again, just to see if I could detect anything other than “Olympus” in that line.
So I did post a conciliatory note.
I apologised to the original poster for my not liking the Africa lyric as much as they did. I apologised to any females or lepers who had been offended by my attempt to define the mystery word “lepress”. I asserted that the female leopard is a leopardess in both English and American usage. I suggested a compromise lyric, with neither Olympus nor lepress, which might just make sense and satisfy everyone’s sensibilities:
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a left breast above the Serengeti.
I dialed-in to that group a couple more times over the next day or so to watch the flaming discussion peter out. Then I unsubscribed from that group.
Anyway, here is Africa by Toto with the lyrics shown in all their glory and accuracy on the screen.
We were pretty sure the funding was secured and wanted to keep the funders, not least Eli, sweet.
Word was, Eli’s favourite dish was Lobster Thermidor. Janie, bless her, decided to invite Eli and his family and Michael and Elisabeth over for a Lobster Thermidor fest.
After all, how difficult can it possibly be to prepare Lobster Thermidor from first principles?
Reader, I am here to tell you that it is a heck of a lot of work to prepare Lobster Thermidor from first principles and it is really, really difficult to prepare Lobster Thermidor for seven people in a small domestic kitchen.
To add to the difficulties, I also prepared, for the same meal, my famous wonton soup from first principles in that small kitchen.
Before the soup
And to had to the hard work of it all, it transpired that Eli was one of those people who constantly needs to be entertained…like…constantly. Games, stories, food, drink…no quiet periods just savouring the moment.
Exhausted, post guests, some left over soupExhausted, post guests, some left over Lobster Thermidor
Twas the season of goodwill, a week before Christmas 1994, so we shall not report here Janie’s retrospective views on the subsequent debacle over Z/Yen’s start-up financing arrangements. Suffice it to say that Z/Yen survived it and thrived despite it. So we should, in a way, remain grateful to Z/Yen’s initial finance guarantors.
Traditions have to start somewhere; this was the first Z/Yen Seasonal party lyric.
I’d forgotten about this one until I found it in my electronic lyric archive, dated 9 December 1994. Reading the lyric brought it all back to me. I previously thought the lyric for the second seasonal party was the first lyric, probably because that is the earliest one that found its way to the Z/Yen web site. We’ll put that right soon enough.
We sang the following at the first ever seasonal gathering of Z/Yen, on 16 December 1994. We were at the Paris House, Woburn, same venue as the following year. A plaintiff little song; I rather like it. Very different in style and tone to later Z/Yen seasonal songs.
Elisabeth, Michael and Katie
We had a meeting and a Shareholders’ Agreement signing ceremony before dinner, although Michael couldn’t subscribe to Z/Yen until a couple of months later. I think he might be going through the Christmas card list in the photo above.
Steve at Paris House in 1994
Stuart subscribing, Janie in the background.
Z/YEN
(To the Tune of “Ben”)
VERSE 1
Z/Yen, the group of us need look no more,
We have founded what we’re looking for;
Tense, and some might say up tight,
We’re working half the night,
Because, my friends, you see,
We’ve got our Main-ell-i
(You’ve got your Mainelli).
From February……… allegedly…..
VERSE 2
Z/Yen, we’re always running here and there,
(Here and there),
That’s why we’ve all lost half of our hair,
(Half of your hair);
Then a project falls behind,
And we’re all hard to find,
But somehow, as you know,
We always make a go.
(The weekend tends to go).
MIDDLE EIGHT
We used to say, “we are bored”,
Now it’s “risk and reward”;
You used to seek dark and rest
Now it’s light, now it’s zest.
VERSE 3
Z/Yen, although we are still very small,
(Very small),
We can puff it up if we talk big,
(if you talk balls);
When, you learn the things we do,
You’ll all want to join too,
So, if we’d start again,
We’d still form a firm like Z/Yen.
Here is Michael Jackson singing Ben, with the lyrics on the screen:
… there were times when I thought the business wouldn’t be ready to start trading on 1 October 1994. But of course we were able to open our sole door, to our sole room in Garrard House, 31-45 Gresham Street, on that prescribed day. No death in a ditch for me.
Click and look at the images for that address and you will see a grand City building, opposite Wax Chandler’s Hall, which at the time of writing has been home to Schroders plc for decades.
In the autumn of 1994, though, it was an old 1930’s building, in a state of some distress, which was about to be emptied for the purposes of a massive makeover for Schroders.
There were just five of us on the payroll that first autumn; Kate Carty, me, Stuart Otter, Steve Taylor and John Thompson. Michael Mainelli was with us, in spirit and informally, but technically Michael was unable to join the firm until February 1995.
Kate Carty got something akin to cabin fever in those early months, as so few of us went nigh nor by the place. Yet somehow Kate and Steve got it together during that early period of Z/Yen’s life, such that our tiny business of just six people; the other four of whom were attached, managed to yield an office romance and then marriage which, like Z/Yen, has endured to this day (as I write 25 years later).
Kate (standing) with Elisabeth and MichaelSteve
One abiding memory from that room is the day in early December when we needed to splurge on getting our first year’s Christmas cards out. We thought this to be a very important marketing campaign…
…in truth the Christmas cards was our only marketing campaign for the first year or so of our existence.
A rare occasion when several of us were in the room at the same time; me, Kate and John Thompson.
In the early days of a business, everyone needs to muck in for all tasks, including stuffing envelopes and labelling up Christmas cards…
…but John Thompson seemed a little reluctant for such menial tasks.
I said:
I must be the highest paid envelope-stuffer in the City right now.
John, a competitive fellow who was being paid considerably more than me at that time, immediately jumped up and exclaimed,
No, I am the highest paid envelope-stuffer in the City.
In the annals of accountancy folk lore, 9 November 1994 will forever be an historic day, not that you would easily find a reference to it on-line…
…until now.
For that evening in 1994 was the very first Accountancy Age Awards, now operated as a separate venture by the looks of it and/or rebranded as the British Accountancy Awards.
And I was there.
Not just there, I was an honoured guest. For I had been one of the judges on one of the panels for that very first year of the Accountancy Awards. I had been on the judging panel for accounting systems, no less. Selected for the role while I still worked for Binder Hamlyn, although I had left to form Z/Yen in the meantime. Accountancy Age were told about the move but didn’t mind. Nor did Binders.
A few weeks or months earlier, while still at Binders.
According to my 1994 diary, I spent the afternoon of 13 September 1994 at the Accountancy Age offices. During those few hours, I and the rest of the panel “examined” several systems, to decide which were worthy of awards. You can imagine just how methodical and scientific that judging process must have been.
It was my first experience on an awards judging panel and I learnt a lot that afternoon to stand me in good stead since, whenever I have subsequently sat on (or in some cases chaired) such panels… mostly I learnt how NOT to judge awards from the Accountancy Awards experience.
But on awards night itself the judging was all behind me. My hard work was done. My black tie outfit was donned. I think I might have still been hiring black tie gear back then. It looks from my diary as though I worked from home that day, thus avoiding the worst excesses of “black tie day misery”: lugging clobber around all day, knowing you’ll have to change into that tux in some smelly bog, early evening. Or, in many ways worse, wandering around town all day in black tie, explaining to each client in the morning and afternoon meetings that you are so darned busy with back-to-back meetings that you are already dressed for a pompous evening do.
I have two lingering but fitful memories from the evening. The first relates to Bob Monkhouse, who hosted the show. I remember discovering that Debbie Barham was writing gags for Bob Monkhouse when he did this kind of gig, by mentioning this event to Debbie at a NewsRevue writers meeting. Debbie was a young, supremely talented comedy writer, whose subsequent tragic story was posthumously written by her dad in this book – click here.
I cannot remember whether Debbie and I had that conversation about Bob before or after the event itself. I do remember that, once we’d had that conversation, I’d get occasional e-mails from Debbie (she, like me, was a relatively early e-mail adopter) asking me for background information, buzz phrases or just something for her to latch onto when she was writing patter for similar commercial events, usually for Monkhouse or another serial awards offender, such as Ned Sherrin or Rory Bremner. Little did I know at that time how obsessive Debbie’s work habits would become and how tragically her situation would end.
But on the Accountancy Awards evening itself, I recall finding Bob Monkhouse’s jokes rather predictable but very professionally served. As was the food.
My second memory relates to George Littlejohn. By good chance, I was placed next to George. He was also an honoured guest, in his case in the capacity of a former editor of Accountancy Age magazine. George had subsequently moved on to bigger and better things; yes that really is possible.
George is a most interesting chap with a very good sense of humour. The latter came in especially handy that evening. There is always something incongruous/pompous about awards ceremonies done “Oscars-style” for matters less glamorous and more mundane than the Oscars. Accountancy Awards, for example, are, in my opinion, just a tad less glamorous and a smidgen more mundane than Oscars.
Perhaps George Littlejohn remembers the evening differently; if so, I hope he chimes in with a comment or three. We’ve kept in touch all these years, our business interests overlapping occasionally, but in any case we always enjoy meeting up. I occasionally run into George at cultural events, as indeed I did on New Years Day 2017 at the Curzon Bloomsbury – click here – which triggered me to write up this 1994 event now.
I particularly recall the last award, Accountant of the Year, being delivered with extreme fanfare, won by a big-haired young woman. Her excellence as an accountant I couldn’t possibly question, but it seemed (to us at least) that she had primarily been chosen for the award because she would utterly look the part in the press photos. In any event, she rapidly got busy, kissing Bob Monkhouse spontaneously, looking elatedly happy and supremely excited about it all. Meanwhile, the flash guns went on firing and the thumping music went on blaring. George and I couldn’t stop giggling for quite some while.
Still, the event must have been a great success – it is still being held every year, at the same venue I believe – for sure it was again at The Brewery, Chiswell Street in 2016. The event even has its own website and strap line – click here.
So perhaps it’s no surprise that there is no record on-line from the 1994 event; who needs it? As another great George, Santayana in this case, succinctly put it:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
