A couple of weeks ago (May 2017) I wrote an Ogblog piece about my first forays into Ringroad Revue – click here. Quick as a flash, John Easom at “Keele Alumni Central” put Frank Dillon in touch with me, triggering e-mail exchanges, arrangements to meet up and of course a flood of more memories.
Frank wrote/asked:
I was particularly intrigued to learn that you are in possession of The Cornflake Box – or The Holy Grail as Olu Odunsi and I have dubbed it these past 30 years(!) or so.
Any chance you could scan me the contents?
The actual box (which I suppose I inherited from Frank in the summer of 1984) disintegrated during 1985 while it was living in my flat (K block Horwood). I think it was probably replaced by another similar box.
My collection of scripts is now in a file – a mixture of original hand-written scripts and photocopies – a fragment of the Holy Grail with some facsimile elements.
I don’t think that I even took the actual box with me…not that it was THE actual box any more, unless we accept that this particular Holy Grail of a Cornflake Box regenerated every few years – a bit like Dr Who…just more funny, less animated and with fewer enemies.
I suspect it will be autumn (2017) before I get space to take on the Ringroad File/Cornflake Box/Holy Grail Fragment for comprehensive scanning and sharing – otherwise I’ll be interrupting my current/future life by spending a disproportionate amount of time wallowing in the past…and that won’t do.
But I do have, already digitised, a recording of the Finalists Revue from 1985, which I have uploaded in two chunks (due to WordPress file size restrictions).
I cannot remember the name of everyone who appeared in the 1985 Finalists Revue – apologies to those whose names I only half remember or forget.
Frank was gone by then. Olu Odunsi was still around and was a delight to work with on the boards, including this show. John Bowen, who was on the research//academic staff, also joined with us for Ringroad that 1984/85 academic year and was similarly good news to have in the team.
Indeed the whole cast was fun and friendly. Dave Griffiths (who also wrote very good material) and three fabulous lasses, Jo, Jackie and (I think) Karen. Possibly there were others, but I think that’s it. Please help me to fill in the gaps if you are able, dear reader.
I have not re-listened to the recording in full myself yet, but I think the second half might be a tad better than the first half. The recording is poor as we had a microphone shortage, so some bits are less audible than others and some sketches sound a bit shouty.
I was pretty hopeless as a performer, really, but I think it was seen as a bit of a coup to have a union sabbatical on the Ringroad cast taking the pee out of union politics. I wrote little back then – my comedy writing was to blossom later, in the 1990s, at NewsRevue.
Enjoy the recording(s) below and please do comment.
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part One of Two
Ringroad Finalists Revue 27 June1985 Part Two of Two
Imagine Taylor Swift having Susan From Accounts as her support act – after all, Susan does go down reasonably well at the open-mic sessions down The Greyhound. Or Oasis being preceded by The Venn Diagrams – that nice band of “sixth-form graduands”, who performed with such exuberant confidence at their end of school bash.
Actually, the idea of Ringroad supporting the Lenny Henry as originally conceived was even more grandiose; the idea being that Ringroad would perform a warm up act and then a warm down act in the main bar that night. I still have the running orders from the project as originally conceived:
That was probably every last scrap of vaguely suitable material Ringroad had to hand at that time. I have some of these sketches in my Ringroad file. Those which I performed and/or in which I had a part, mostly.
Here are my personal diary notes from the few days before and the day itself:
Saturday, 24 November 1984 – shopped etc. Rehearsed Ringroad in afternoon – wrote [H Ackgrass] column in eve – Annalisa [de Mercur] came over for a while.
Sunday, 25 November 1984 – Rose quite late – spent most of day in office. Cooked Petra [Wilson] a meal in eve – stayed.
Monday, 26 November 1984 – Very busy with lots of committee meetings etc. Rehearsed Ringroad in evening.
Tuesday, 27th November 1984 – Lots to do today in office. Rehearsed Ringroad until very late – quite knackered.
Wednesday, 28 November 1984 – Busy day in office. Petra came over to help me learn scripts etc. – stopped.
Thursday, 29 November 1984 – Lots to do today in office. Performed Ringroad at Lenny Henry gig in evening. Got plastered after.
Those notes tell the story in their own way, but I should fill in some gaps.
I’ll write more about that particular H Ackgrass column in a separate piece. Suffice it to say here that I very much remember Annalisa visiting me that afternoon. She was one of “my spies” for H Ackgrass and that will have been the main purpose behind that visit. I recall Annalisa asking me that day, “how do you fit all of these activities in and get so much done?” and I also remember feeling a bit smug about that. Actually, reflecting now on the relatively poor quality of my extra-curricular comedic output at that time, my answer to Annalisa’s question, forty years on, is to admit that I was substituting quantity for quality.
I also recall that I recruited Petra as an H Ackgrass spy the following day, as she was vexed at my caginess about my activities the previous day. It seemed easier and more sensible to recruit an additional Ackgrass spy than to lie about something so trivial so early in our relationship.
I’m going to guess that we didn’t cull the Ringroad show until the day of the show, hence the night before desperation of learning scripts, with Petra’s help. I can’t imagine that it was much fun for either of us, trying to cram my brain with Ringroad lines, while there was so much else swirling around in said brain at that time. But I did have a very good short-term memory back then, it is much diminished in power for such things now.
How and when the decision to cull our Ringroad act from two parts to one was made, I have no idea. Pady Jalali might remember. All I recall is that the decision was hastily made and I don’t suppose for one minute that anyone calculated the length of the resulting show or consider the logistics around our performance being in the Main Bar ahead of a Lenny Henry gig in the Ballroom. Here’s the cobbled together running order for the show Ringroad actually performed.
Oh look – I’ve been honoured with the closing number as a solo…
I don’t think the show went down very well. But my abiding memory is of the most awkward spot I found myself in towards the end of the act. I had just started my “Dracula” solo, when word came across the tannoy (probably the dulcet tones of Wally), that the Ballroom doors were open and that Lenny Henry would be starting in five minutes.
More or less the entire audience, quite understandably, made a bee-line to the Main Bar entrance in the direction of the Ballroom to try and grab good spots to watch the main show.
OK, clever clogs reader, what would you do in those circumstances? Would you admit defeat and stop the Ringroad show in mid sketch, or would you take “the show must go on” approach, continuing to perform the sketch to the ever-shrinking, backs-of-heads audience? I chose the latter, albeit embarrassing, approach. I think the other Ringroad performers and a handful of friends, such as Annalisa and Petra, stuck around…but perhaps I was truly alone by the end of the sketch.
Hello! I’m still here! Where’s everybody gone?
Unquestionably my most embarrassing experience as a performer, ever. More embarrassing even than the sword fight that went wrong in Twelfth Night at school six year’s earlier:
But I digress. And you want to read about Lenny Henry, not Ringroad, nor Alleyn’s.
The Lenny Henry Gig At Keele
Securing Lenny Henry at that time was a bit of a coup for Pady, in my opinion. Lenny Henry was on the cusp of real stardom at that time, having just been given his own TV show, which aired in the early autumn, just ahead of his gig at Keele.
Here is the preview story from The Evening Sentinel:
I remember the Ballroom being absolutely packed. I think we Ringroaders watched from a balcony spot; a sole perk for our efforts and blushes. I thought Lenny Henry was an excellent performer and his show had far more in it than I had expected, with songs and set pieces as well as classic stand up material.
Alistair Perkins interviewed Lenny Henry at length for Concourse and also reviewed the show at length. Here are the very pieces that emerged in Concourse ten days or so after the event:
Here is Tim Bevington’s review from The Evening Sentinel:
To get a flavour of Lenny Henry back then, you might want to see the first episode of his 1984 TV Show, which is available on The Internet Archive – click here.
Or you might get more of a feel for his 1980s live performance from the following YouTube, which starts with the live material about 7’30” in:
Epilogue
I saw Lenny Henry live a couple of times in 2023. Firstly, in a wonderful one-man-play which he both wrote and performed, August In England, at The Bush Theatre:
I was far too polite on both of those occasions to get my own back on Lenny – for the embarrassment he inadvertently caused me in 1984 – which I could easily have done, either by walking out of his show or confronting him in front of his friends in the restaurant. I’m far too nice a guy for that. I don’t bear grudges. Anyway, in truth, I had deep filed my memory of that ill-fated Ringroad performance, until going through the old materials brought the memories flooding back.
Further, it probably didn’t occur to me that semi-rehearsing and winging our way through Open University gigs in the summer was all very well, but Ringroad proper, during the term, would be large audiences, who had an expectation of evident preparation.
But before I get into all that, I’ll talk about the end of a momentous week and a short visit to London:
Friday, 16 November 1984 – Busy day – UC and getting staff out of the way. Went to London – arrived quite late. Had a drink and earlyish night.
I blush at the phrase “getting staff out of the way”, which sounds like dismally bad management practice. Looking at my appointments diary, it looks to me as though I had lined up a meeting with the cleaning staff for the Monday morning but also had a plethora of other meetings thrust upon me that day. My guess is that the staff agreed to bring the meeting forward to the Friday to lighten my – and probably also that of Kate Fricker and John White – Monday load.
“London” would have been Bobbie’s new place up in Finchley at the top of the Archway Road. She was sharing in a large house with several other trainee lawyers (mostly solicitors; Bobbie was a pupil barrister).
Chinese Dining & Bagel Hunting
Saturday 17 November 1984 – Rose late – did nothing in particular in afternoon – then went to Joy King Lau for evening.
Joy King Lau was one of my favourite Chinese restaurants back then. John White reckons that a visit he and I made (probably with others) was his first taste of “proper” Chinatown Chinese food. But the 17 November 1984 occasion will have been with Bobbie and possibly one or two of her new flatmates.
Sunday, 18 November 1984 – Late start again – went bagel hunting and meal then returned to Keele – arrived back quite late and did some work.
A brace of bagels that succumbed to a bagel hunt, many years later, displayed as trophies in my flat prior to their dénouement in one of my cricket picnics
I cannot believe that Bobbie would have been front and centre in seeking a bagel hunt. I think the impetus came from at least one of her other flatmates and for some reason my faint memory points, perhaps unfairly, at Sharma Gupta as the possible ringleader of the “lets go on a bagel hunt” idea. The hunt probably got no further than Finchley or Hendon. Even back then, the London Borough of Barnet was a pretty sensible place to hunt for the big five (bagels, blintzes, kugels, rye bread and matzo balls).
Back To Keele For Meetings Galore & Ringroad Rehearsals
Monday, 19 November 1984 -Busy day interrupted with meetings etc. Carol Holder’s in early evening and on to UGM evening – Petra came back.
Tuesday, 20 November 1984 – Hard-working office today – meetings et. al. Rehearsed Ringroad in evening also.
Each of those days included three or four meetings. I was SO “committeed out” and “meeetinged out” by the end of that sabbatical year – looking at my appointments diary I can see why. I get a headache just thinking about it.
The Ringroad team at the start of the 1984/85 year comprised Olu Odunsi (a comparative veteran of Ringroad), Dave Griffiths, Jo and Jackie [if someone can remind me of their surnames I’ll insert the full names]…plus me.
As the year went on, we beefed up the team, adding:
John Bowen (who was a relatively junior academic at that time, subsequently Professor of Modern Literature at Keele and currently – forty years on – Professor of 19th Century literature at York)
Warwick Cairns, who also went on to more serious and arguably greater things post Keele
Karen [again, to my shame, her surname escapes me. Jo and Jackie were both very good at playing assertive, strident women; Karen, with a gentle Scottish accent, tended to take the more subdued female parts].
Meanwhile our initially small Ringroad team of five’s first big project – and my goodness this was provisionally conceived as a ridiculously big project – was to support a Lenny Henry gig in the Students’ Union with a warm up act and a warm down act for the evening. Suffice it to say that this idea, on its original scale, was biting off more than even the most seasoned metaphorical bagel-munchers could metaphorically masticate in one go.
Image produced using DeepAI. No actual people or bagels were harmed producing this image.
Some Events Including Mystery Meetings
Wednesday, 21 November 1984 – Went to Stafford Demo in morning – committees in afternoon. Did disco with John in evening – went Petra’s after.
According to my appointments diary, I had Welfare Committee at 1.00 and Policy Staffing & Development Committee at 2;15, so that trip to Stafford (presumably to support a North Staffs Polytechnic demo) will have been an early start and a relatively short demo. It didn’t make the press (not even The Sentinel) by the looks of it. Crumbs – that Wednesday reads like a very full day.
Correction: the demo did make one paper…a Concourse Freebie. That freebie also had a full page write up of the Monday UGM, which I think must have been the one Ashley Fletcher remembers as a particularly raucous debate about the miners’ strike:
Thursday, 22 November 1984 – Busy day with meetings etc. Had quiet drink in evening – Petra came over later.
The appointments diary for that day lists four meetings:
1.15 WPAR Room 13 [answers on a postcard please as to what WPAR might have been – I have no idea]
2.15 DVC [that will have been Deputy Vice Chancellor which presumably means Professor Don Thompson who was Acting Vice Chancellor that term. I got on well with Don, who had been my Civil Liberties professor. He pretty much always came up with a fair determination when I had to appeal dodgy disciplinary matters with him]
4.30/5.00 Farm & Fricker. [“Farm” was my former flatmate Chris Spencer. “Fricker” was Kate…now Susan…Fricker. I am in touch with both of them again now and can ask them why I was meeting the two of them about something that day. I think it is unlikely that either of them will remember. And unless something crops up in a future diary entry that provides clues, the matter will remain a mystery]
7.00 Mergers. [I’m not sure what might have been merging with what. Sounds like something Kate and John might also have attended. I’m no more expecting either of them to remember the subject matter of “mergers” than I am expecting Farm and Fricker to remember the content of their meeting.
Friday, 23 November 1984 – UC in morning – busy in office all day – rehearsed Ringroad in evening.
I shall go into more detail about that Ringroad/Lenny Henry gig in my next piece, which will report on the week leading up to the Lenny Henry gig and the gig itself. For now, I’ll whet your appetites with one sketch I remember performing jointly with Olu in our capacity as a pair of newsreaders:
I think, on at least one occasion with that sketch, I announced myself to be Trevor McDonald and Olu announced himself to be Alastair Burnett…
