…we were delighted to see that, at last, what had been a deserted space underneath the theatre, formerly the Finborough Arms, had been revived and reopened as a rather sprauncy-looking Indian Restaurant; Yogi’s Kensington.
We popped in, took a look around, smelt the mouth-watering smells – such an improvement on the stale chip fat smell that had been the Finborough Arms kitchen’s trademark smell for some while before that place closed down – and even picked up a menu for future reference.
The small print is detailed descriptions of dishes
Anyway, I thought this place sounded right up John’s street. It was my turn to choose and John leapt at the idea when he looked at the menu on-line. Simples.
Here’s what we ate – the first two dishes being starters to share:
Hot Garlic Honey Fish – Honey glazed spicy, tangy fish with bold garlic chili flavors.
Lasooni Methi Lamb – cooked in fresh fenugreek, garlic with special indian spice
Goan Curry Prawns – cooked in fresh coconut with authentic kokan spice
Dal Makhani – Slow cooked black lentils with red kidney beans
Saffron Pilaf Rice – Fregnante rice cooked with saffron
Plain Naan
Washed down with some beer (in John’s case) followed by wine by the glass in both of our cases.
Every dish was delicious.
So absorbed were we in our conversations and delight in the food, we both forgot to take food porn photos – that’s twice in a row we’ve dined without photos.
As always, it was great to get together with John. We didn’t quite solve all the world’s problems this time, so I guess we should get together again quite soon and have another go at the problems…or at least have another fine meal together.
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 subject was Sobers, Janie was, believe it or not, sober
I spotted and booked this one on the members’ on-line system, before it was announced and several weeks before Alan Rees mentioned it to me in the library.
An interesting character, Garry (or should I say Sir Garfield) Sobers. As David Tossell said in his opening remarks about his book, Sobers has not been well served in print previously, with several books of dubious quality and little digging into his impoverished early life and his colourful career.
Before the talk, a traditional Library Book Club supper with two tasty courses, the most photogenic of which was the pud:
Then the talk.
David Tossell peppered his talk with fascinating anecdotes and well-chosen visualsAttentive. No attention deficit here. Which is more than might be said for Sobers
I can hardly wait to read the book. I expect there’ll be a reference in it to that day in 2009, which was surely a major moment in Garry Sobers cricket career…at least it was in mine.
Seriously, as always it was a most enjoyable evening; initially the dining and chatting with interesting folk around us. Then the bonus of a fascinating book talk.
Another excellent evening of theatre at the Hampstead Downstairs. We saw a preview of this one, which technically opens on Monday 16th and only runs until 11 April. If the thought of it grabs you, we suggest you grab a ticket while stocks last.
The play is about venture capital, tech-entrepreneurism, purportedly-ethical-investing and all that sort of thing.
But if that all sounds like a massive turn-off theatrically, don’t be put off. Aaron Loeb has written three all-too-believable, three-dimensional characters who are ensnared, and ensnare each other, in a web of their back stories, ethical dilemmas, rapid technological advancement and the resulting commercial/regulatory environment…with real human interest.
(Aaron Loeb, if by chance you are reading this – that is meant as a compliment).
One conceit of the play – that “the powers that be” might not appreciate a discovery that solves so many problems that their markets and jobs might be eroded – reminded me of an Ealing film I remember seeing on the TV and thinking about a lot as a child – The Man In The White Suit.
Enough about the piece. the acting was excellent throughout. Lloyd Owen, Letty Thomas and Millicent Wong all played their parts superbly well. All three (especially Lloyd Owen and Millicent Wong) were on stage for most of the 100 minutes the play runs, which must take some energy. Chelsea Walker directed the production, making 100 minutes pass without seeming like it was far too long without an interval. But 100 minutes is, by definition, a bit too long without an interval – the audiences aren’t getting any younger, you know.
But my minor quibble is there merely to show balance. This is yet another triumph for the Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. I do hope, for the sake of the wider audience that should see this production, that the production transfers.
The original Hinds Trophy being presented in March 2023
The following text (or an edited version of it) will shortly appear on the MCC website, along with some of the photographs taken on the night. When that happens, I'll add a link.
Sixty years ago, in March 1966, one of the most coveted trophies in global sport, The Jules Rimet Trophy, was stolen from its apparently secure display location in Westminster. A couple of days after an aborted ransom sting, a dog named Pickles discovered a parcel containing the trophy in a hedge beside his owner’s home. Pickles became an overnight sensation, the Jules Rimet was presented at the 1966 Football World Cup Final, before being retained by Brazil, then, a few years later, in Rio, permanently stolen.
The Hinds Trophy (aka The Skills Night Wooden Spoon Trophy), another of the most coveted trophies in global sport, recently had a similar journey. The original Hinds was snatched from its secure location behind the Lord’s hazard end galleries, at some point in the summer or autumn of 2024. No ransom was ever demanded, nor was any canine heroism involved, as far as we know. But just a few weeks ago, long after its replacement with a replica trophy, the original Hinds reappeared just as mysteriously as it had disappeared. The replacement Hinds will continue to be engraved and displayed. The original Hinds is now preserved at a highly secure, secret location.
Ironically, the coveted Hinds Trophy was nearly won this time by Andrew Hinds’s own team, Three Ravens. Numerically and temporally challenged in many ways, that team started with just two but ended up with four players. They need words, not numbers; the collective noun for ravens is “an unkindness”.
The ravens team was especially unkind to two teams. By performing so well on the final discipline, they knocked Souldiers Three (Hugo Fenwick, Gavin Yeats & David Pritchard) into the Hinds Trophy slot. Then, with the final scoring of the event, those unkind ravens denied Three Things In Store late surge to the top spot. Instead, Three Poor Mariners – Richard Boys-Stones, Mary Strevens & Huw Humphreys – were, fairly, reinstalled at the top of the podium.
The Close But No Cigar Award went to neophyte Gerald Slocock, whose ability to almost-but-not-quite hit a target might become the stuff of legend, if he maintains form in that regard.
The Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award went to Shaheed “Sid” Rashid, not least for being the only player to score two points off one hit on the central beam of the dedans gallery.
The Philip The Bold Golden Moment Award went to John Thirlwell, for an extraordinary hat trick of coups du pataugeoire -landing the serve in a paddling pool – which is much harder than it sounds.
There is a serious purpose to skills night; honing skills. True, most of the skills honed on such nights involve eating curry, drinking, singing and the like, but the evening does include some real tennis skills too.
Skills night unquestionably proves the skills of the MCC admin team who organise the event so well, and our tennis professionals, who make the game swing with great reliability. Which is more than can be said for most of us players’ tennis swings!
We both thought this play/production was really excellent. The Bush Studio is one of our trusted venues these days – we rarely leave that place disappointed. This time we felt we had seen a very original piece of writing and some excellent performances.
The scenario is a simple one. A housing association block acquires a stench in the building which residents suspect might be caused by the demise of one no-longer-visible resident. But the residents seem powerless to get action out of the bureaucratic jobsworths “from the housing”.
The play is performed in a narrative rather than dramatic style, although the narrator/performers do slip in and out of characters – several each – while telling the story. A style that sounds iffy when described but it really worked for this piece. Below is the teaser/trailer fort his production.
The story is sad at many levels, yet there is a great deal of humour and humanity in the play. Performers Marcia Lecky, Safiyya Ingar & Sam Baker Jones all do a great job of bringing the story to life. Jess Barton directed the piece with a simple but very effective style.
The piece speaks volumes about the our society in the 2020s by telling a simple story, not by preaching or screeching about the issues that underlie that story. Farah Najib has written a really excellent short play here – we’ll be looking out for more of her work – that’s for sure.
This was our first visit to the Finborough for a while. We were pleased to see that the former pub underneath the theatre – which had been a closed down space on our last few visits since covid – is now a trendy Indian restaurant named Yogi’s. One to try…but not tonight.
1.17am is a two-hander, in which two twenty-something young women, Katie & Roni, whose close friendship has been shattered since he untimely death of Katie’s brother, spend a heart-wrenching 75 minutes delving into their shared truths, half-truths, white lies and fantasies.
Sarah Stacey’s directing is to be commended for making the piece flow so well. The play is a seamless one act play which could become laboured in less capable hands.
The production is running at The Finborough until 7 March 2026 – if you read this review in time and you like this sort of thing, we suggest that you book it before it’s too late.
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.
All music by William Lawes, this is what we heard:
Choice Psalmes: – Music, the master of thy art is dead
Harp Consort No. 9 in D:– Pavin on a theme by Cormacke
Choice Psalmes: – My God, my rock, regard my cry
My God, my rock, regard my cry (arranged by Loris Barrucand)
Judah in exile wanders
Harp Consort No. 5 In D: – Alman – Saraband
Harp Consort No. 4 in D: – Coranto
Choice Psalmes: – Whieles I this standing lake swathed up with ewe
Love, I obey, shoot home thy dart
O sing unto the Lord a new song
Harp Consort No. 11 in D: – Fantazy
Choice Psalmes: – Ne irascaris, Domine
Harp Consort No. 10 in G: – Paven on a theme by Coprario
Choice Psalmes: – How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord
Come sing the great Jehova’s praise
In resurrectione tua
Harp Consort No. 8 in G
Choice Psalmes: – O my Clarissa
This concert is basically their latest album Lighten Mine Eies, available I’m sure at all good CD outlets and streaming, e.g. YouTube Music – click here.
Below is a little video clip of them performing one of the instrumental pieces:
While below is a little video clip of them performing one of the choral pieces:
We were supposed to hear Maïlys de Villoutreys sing the soprano parts, but she was unfortunately unwell. Enter a late replacement in the form of Marion Tassou, who did a wonderful job given the near-absence of preparation and rehearsal time.
Ensemble Près are a very together-looking unit, handling the late soprano switch like the commensurate professionals they clearly are.
We really enjoyed this concert and have enjoyed listening to their recordings of 16th and 17th century English music since. An unusual choice of repertoire for a young French ensemble. I hope it works for them.
Robin Pharo, their leader and gambist, did mention that they have started work on some French repertoire as well. Quelle surprise!
