Daisy Campbell – Ian Louis Harris

Photo by Richard Adams, Wingspeed at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Gresham Society Visit To The Royal College Of Music

This visit to the Royal College of Music (RCM) was my first proper excursion visit with The Gresham Society, following my initial singalong taster session at Wilton’s Music Hall a few weeks earlier.

For me, it was especially fascinating to see the fine collection of musical instruments, some very early, not least because Janie and I listen to a lot of early music. Subsequently I have become a (very amateur) practitioner of early music myself, although only with my voice and my mock Tudor instrument.

*My mock Tudor baroquelele – strangely not in the RCM collection*

I think the Gresham Society crowd went on to enjoy libations somewhere near the RCM, whereas I had other fish to fry that evening.

A Tribute To Ken Campbell

I was a long-time fan of Ken Campbell and his superb comedy work. Janie less so.

This early evening round table discussion at The Royal Court worked out very well for me, as I was able to fit it in between the Gresham Society Visit To The Royal College Of Music and our dinner engagement with Charlie & Chris.

Chris had said that he would be unable to get to The Henry Root in South Kensington for dinner until about 7:30. Janie was keen to have a drink and a chat with Charlie “before the boys get here”, so the plans were well set.

For those who wish they had been there to hear Daisy Campbell, Nina Conti, Jim Broadbent, John Sessions, Richard Eyre and Michael Coveney pay tribute to the great man – fear not. The event was recorded and has been placed in the public domain here…

Or, if that link ever fails, here is an upload of the download, as it were:

ROYAL COURT ROUNDTABLE TRIBUTE TO KEN CAMPBELL

Dinner With Janie, Charlie & Chris At the Henry Root

Unfortunately there was no recording, upload or download of the sparkling conversation in The Henry Root when Janie, Charlie, Chris and I gathered there later that evening.

The Henry Root, which was a rather jolly bistro restaurant named after William Donaldson’s wonderful letter-writing character, is now long gone. It was Ok; Janie and I dined there more than once in those heady days of the early teenies.

That particular evening with Charlie and Chris was an especially good one, as I remember it.

This was a preview of a show Ken Campbell put on at The Piccadilly Thetre later that year.

I loved Ken Campbell’s work and I seem to recall a very funny monologue in one of his earlier one-man shows when he talked about his fascination with the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) and vaguely posited the idea of performing MacBeth in pidgin.

In this piece, Campbell goes into far more detail about the language and his desire to establish pidgin as a world language, or Wol Wontok, which he believed could be achieved in just a few days as the language is so easy.

Here is Ken Campbell’s Guardian piece shown on the back of the programme note above, in proper clipping/readable form:

Guardian Wol Nambawan 22 Jul 1998, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

The first part of the prodcution was fascinating and funny, but, in truth, Janie and I found the delivery of MacBeth in pidgin less funny than the idea of it being done.

Never mind. An evening in the hands of Ken Campbell is never dull and I remember this evening more fondly than my log note suggests I would:

Not as much fun as we thought it might be – the idea is funnier than the delivery

Somewhat strangely, through work, soon after seeing this play, I met Patrick Ellum, who was a former Attorney General of Vanuatu. Through Patrick, I met one of that nation’s visiting Prime Ministers and his entourage. No, I didn’t try out my pidgin on them, although I did ask them about the deification of Prince Philip in Tanna. Hopefully I’ll Ogblog that event in the fullness of time.

But I digress.

“Prince Philip” in pidgin was, “nambawan bigfella emi blong Misis Kwin“, by the way.

I digress again, but no more.

Lyn Gardner in the Guardian gave Pidgin Macbeth a guarded thumps up, while signally failing to translate The Bard’s name into pidgin properly – it’s “Macbed Blong Wilum Sekspia“, dear, not Sekstia – typical Grauniad: