Totally genuine picture taken on the night in question
I needed to get one more Ogblog piece in before the end of the 2023/24 tax year, obviously, so have chosen briefly to write up the Ivan Shakespeare Dinner which took place on 4 April 2024.
These gatherings of former NewsRevue writers (most of us relics from the 1990s) are a source of great joy. As Graham said at the end of the dinner,
I laugh far more at one of these evenings than I would if I paid to see almost any comedy show in town.
We’ve been enjoying these events for decades now – a couple of examples below:
John Random is our ringleader for these get togethers. In real life John might not be the most organised person I know, but oh boy is he better than all the rest of us put together in the matter of organising these gatherings.
As the years have gone on, it’s not just been Ivan we have been memorialising but several other “fallen” from our ranks. On this occasion, Barry brought a little memorial photograph tribute, which was lacking a picture of at least one of the fallen and which lacks room for any additional pictures. Either hope way in excess of expectation, or Barry plans to cram in some smaller pictures when the time comes.
John deferred on the quizzing this time, allowing Colin and Graham to confound us with some good quizzy offerings. Graham’s revolved around hit song lyrics, which he (and Sue) expected me to smash [did you see what I did there?] but I came up well short on that game, failing similarly on Colin’s quiz. I don’t think I am much of a solo quizzer to be honest. I work better as part of a team…
Anyway, Ivan Shakespeare dinners are not primarily about the quizzing, they are about mirth and convivial dining. I think I’m reasonably good at that.
Colin commented that we don’t often take pictures at these events, which I realised is true. The six of us who gathered this evening: Barry, Colin, Graham, John, Mark, and me – might never again comprise the exact group of an actual Ivan Shakespeare dinner. So obviously the event needed to be commemorated with a picture – see headline and below.
Proof…not that proof should be needed…that we are all absolutely fine.
There is no reason for anyone to question the veracity of this picture. My plea, should the gutter press start to delve deeply where they are not wanted, is to scream, “leave us alone FFS”.
Eight of us gathered for one of our periodic NewsRevue alum evenings at the Holborn Spaghetti House.
There were no controversial shortages of certain dishes this time, but there was an especially irritable waiter who seemed to decide that I am an idiot, perhaps because I turned up a little late and didn’t want to partake of the Prosecco and sparkling mineral water already on the table, but wanted to order my own non-sparkling beverages.
Most unusually for me, I prevailed in Colin Stutt’s quiz about the faces/quotes of Irish writers & characters. A lot of informed guesswork in my answers, plus some lucky, uninformed guesswork. But on the whole it seems I can tell Shaw from Wilde, Joyce from Beckett and the like.
I did not fare so well with John’s intriguing game about famous movie stars and the obscure locations from whence they hail.
The next day, John summed up the evening, wonderfully, in his inimitable words:
I am sure you will all be celebrating the 234th anniversary of the Mutiny on the Bounty, which falls today (I know I am) but if I could drag you away from your Tahiti-shaped cupcakes for a moment…
Just wanted to thank you all for turfing yourselves out last night to the Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner. I would like to thank Colin for his wonderful Irish-themed quiz. I tried bits of it out on Jenny this morning, because she got herself an Irish passport last year in response to Brexit. One of her grandfathers was Irish, which is enough to make you count as Irish, apparently. Sad to say, she didn’t shine, so her citizenship may be re¬voked. I would like to praise Ian for winning said quiz and Mark for know¬ing the birthplaces of more Hollywood Royalty than anyone need to.
I would like to thank Colin again for the generous touch of the Prosecco and each and every one of you for your warm congratulations on Jenny and I becoming man and wife after all these years. I was very touched.
As I looked around the room, I thought how lucky I was to enjoy the friendship of such erudite, witty and good-hearted men. Such a shame that none of them could be there. You’d like them. And Caroline, I left you off that list cos it spoilt the flow of the joke, not because I’ve forgotten you.
With thanks to John Random for several pictures, not least this one: me with Noel Christopher– Caroline is also there, trying to hide in the corner of this picture
Given that Ivan Shakespeare Memorial dinners are principally gatherings of comedy writers, they have not been much of a laughing matter of late, with many of our number having departed permanently. Indeed John Random pondered various re-namings this time:
Ivan Shakespeare Debbie Barham Nick R. Thomas Gerry Goddin Mike Hodd Chris Stanton Memorial Dinner
or
“Ivan to Stanton Memorial Dinner”
Yet plenty of us still survive to dine, chat and play silly quizzes. A dozen or so of us gathered this time.
Random gets busy with his camera phone while Barry looks on and……Hugh Ryecroft shows off the new trophy: The Hoddy
Following the departure of Mike Hodd, we toasted our patriarch and played an extra quiz for the above magnificent new trophy: The Hoddy, provided by Mark Keegan, who set the seminal Hoddy Quiz. Professional quiz dude Hugh Ryecroft took that trophy.
Hugh couldn’t win the regular annual Ivan Shakespeare Trophy, as he won it last year and set that quiz this year. Bit of a busman’s holiday for Hugh, setting quizzes for Ivan Shakespeare dinners. Still, it was Keith Wickham who took that magnificent prize, which will no doubt grace his trophy cabinet for most of 2023:
Wickham lands the big one
I was close, but no cigar on both quizzes, in particular one of them on which i only missed out by a couple of points.
But of course all were winners, as it was such a heart-warming and convivial evening, as indeed it always is.
Was that Keith’s classic James Mason impression making me laugh?
…it didn’t occur to me that there might be someone out there looking for the name Goddin for genealogical purposes. Not least because the search for any next of kin for Gerry had been in vain.
But a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a note from Julia Tisdall, writing to me from Australia, whose great-grandfather was the brother of Gerry’s grandmother.
That makes Julia and Gerry second cousins once removed. (Some of my favourite people are my second cousins once removed).
Forgive the pun, Julia, but a second cousin once removed in the antipodes is a distant cousin in more ways than one.
Anyway, point is, Julia was thrilled and saddened to have found this connection but in such an unfortunate context. Here is an extract from her lovely note:
My great grandfather (Gertrude’s Brother) sailed to New Zealand back in 1913 and settled in Dunedin. 5 years later his sister Gertrude died of the Spanish Flu at only 32 years of age.
I suspect this was when my forebears lost touch with Gertrude’s husband and young son (Gerry’s father) Robert Percy Wilfred Goddin.
I am so grateful to see Gerry in Rainy Day Fellas. What a gem that is.
It took my breath away, 1 , because it is so beautiful and 2 because the close up of Gerry’s hand strumming looked identical to my grandfather’s hand strumming.
For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen the video of Rainy Day Fellas, one of Gerry’s songs which was recorded a few years ago with Donna Macfadyen singing beautifully and Gerry himself accompanying on guitar:
Julia said that she would like to speak, so, one thing led to another and I managed to persuade Julia, who was until yesterday a “Zoom virgin”, to join a few of us on a Zoom call.
I was really glad that John Random, Caroline Am Bergris and Graham Robertson were able to join the call. I didn’t feel I knew Gerry all that well; I don’t suppose any of us really knew Gerry well, but between us we knew Gerry from various aspects of his life these past 30 years or so.
Not just the NewsRevue part (although all of us are NewsRevue alums) but also Caroline’s long association with Gerry in the matter of poems and songs. I think/hope we were able to give Julia a fairly rounded picture.
And talking of pictures, John has rescued a few lovely pictures from Gerry’s flat, which I was able to share on the screen. Here are a couple of examples plus a third picture which is a link to a Flickr album with all 11 of the pictures:
So we were able to share a fair bit of information. Julia informed us that the family were to be found at 1 Ravenhill Road, Upton Park in the 1911 census. Not only did Gerry’s dad lose his mother to Spanish flu as a small boy, but Gerry’s own mum, Mona, died when Gerry was only six. By then they lived in Fairbank Street, Shoreditch, which I think has now been absorbed by the Provost Estate in now trendy Hoxton/Shoreditch.
The highlight of the 80 minute session, for me, was the moment when Julia picked up a guitar and played us a few bars of Rainy Day Fellas, with aplomb.
But actually the whole session was a highlight. I think everyone enjoyed the time together and we hope to have another session in the not too distant future. I know that Caroline, Helen and David are looking at some of Gerry’s other songs and trying to work out what to do with them. Once there is a bit of progress with that, it would be super to regroup with Julia and possibly some other members of her antipodean family.
In these difficult times, a bit of good news like this is something to hold on to. And while our lives comprise far too much Zoom and Teams, with far too little human contact (apart from funerals and queuing outside shops)…
…happenings of this kind make me realise that communications technologies – the Ogblogging, the ability to connect with people through social media, Zoom etc. – does enable many things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise at all.
Which makes me just a little optimistic that the post-pandemic new normal might just be the best of the too-virtual world we inhabit just now and the real world social contacts we crave.
On that positive note, season’s greetings to all readers.
Since then, friends of Gerry, not least NewsRevue alums John Random & Caroline Am Bergris, put in an enormous effort to ensure that we found out as much as possible about Gerry, who had no next of kin and had always been near-silent about his earlier life. John & Caroline also went through the arduous process of arranging a funeral when there is no next of kin nor a will.
Hence, some 10 weeks after Gerry died, we gathered. Ironically, we gathered at Hoop Lane crematorium, the same place we NewsRevue alums gathered 20 years ago along with Ivan Shakespeare’s nearest and dearest to say goodbye to Ivan:
As I reported in the above piece, we comedy writers were not sure how to behave at a comedy writer’s funeral. Could we make jokes? We got by. And sadly, we have had some more experience since, saying goodbye to several of our fellow funny people in the past 20 years.
But on this bright but slightly chilly autumn day in 2020, we gathered again not quite knowing how to behave. A socially-distanced funeral. No closeness. No touching. Gatherings of clans aren’t normally like this.
The celebrant handled the ceremony with great dignity and grace. He admitted that it was an unusual situation while putting us at our ease to find ways to pay respects and grieve as we saw fit, within the rules of course.
Caroline read one of Gerry’s favourite poems, Ring Out, Wild Bells, very beautifully.
Then John Random gave a very thoughtful and charming eulogy. John reminded us that Gerry was a “quickie specialist”, a commissioned writer for The News Huddlines. John also hinted at one of Gerry’s more edgy and long-running NewsRevue sketches. Gerry imagined an advert for Vidal Sassoon’s Wash & Go shampoo. There had been a tradition of Vidal himself advertising his own products, as the following real advert attests…
…although I don’t think any of the real ones were quite like the following joke advert. Gerry imagined Vidal appearing jointly with the foul-mouthed comedian Bernard Manning, with Vidal saying, “it’s called Wash…” before Manning chimes in, “and f*** off!”.
I parodied Gerry’s parody advert around that time, “Nosh & Throw” as an intro to my Princess Diana song, She Ain’t Heavy, She’s Bulimic:
I recall offering to credit Gerry for a share of the intro quickie, but he adamantly refused, claiming that the new joke was all mine and that my joke had given his joke an extended lease of life, as the show for many years ran the two as a mini-runner ahead of my song…
…until Diana died. Now they’ve all gone: Diana, Vidal, Manning & Gerry. But my point is that John reminding us all of that joke, brought to my mind the fact that Gerry had, in terms of sharing comedic ideas, a generous, collaborative spirit.
John closed his enigmatic eulogy with another Gerry joke:
APPLICANT: Hello, is this the school of hard knocks?
ENROLMENT REGISTRAR: Yes it is.
APPLICANT: I’d like to enrol please
ENROLMENT REGISTRAR: (snarling) Well you can’t.
Gerry might well have enrolled in the school of hard knocks early in his life. We suspect so but don’t know for sure. Between his short youthful RAF stint in the 1960s and the late 1980s when he turned up as a writer – some quarter of a century later – there seems to be no record at all of what he did.
There was a lovely video to go with that song back in 2016, which John, Caroline, Helen and others managed to track down and show at the funeral, which was a very moving moment for me and I’m sure for others too. Here is the video with Donna Macfadyen singing beautifully and Gerry himself accompanying on guitar:
Then of course the inevitable committal and finally Helen bravely played Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life on the organ as we left the chapel.
Several of the NewsRevue “Class of ’92” gang were there in addition to organisers John and Caroline; Mark Keegan (& Victoria), Barry Grossman, Graham Robertson (& Sue), Colin Stutt, plus at least 10-12 people from other walks of Gerry’s later life.
Many went on to the Spaniards Inn to continue grieving in a socially distanced yet traditional aftermath manner. Someone else will need to write that one up if indeed it should be writ.
Well done John, Caroline & Helen; you gave Gerry a wonderful goodbye.
Seymour Hicks & Ellaline Terriss – not George & Edith
In May 2020 John Burns (aka John Random) sent me an electronic transcript of his great-grandfather’s honeymoon diary, from June/July 1901. The picture above shows John with that anique artefact.
I suggested the idea of upping it as a guest piece on Ogblog and hence a fascinating mini-project was born. Here’s the thing:
There are some truly charming touches in George’s diary. I absolutely love the fact that he couldn’t describe an escalator at Earls Court on July 3rd, presumably because he hadn’t seen one before. He refers to the thing as
Endless staircase lift. You stand still and it takes you to the top for 1d.
By 10 july in Paris, though, he’s mastered these things and merely describes:
Moving staircase.
Another interesting thing is slight changes in tone as the holiday goes on. Firstly there are increasing mentions of money, especially after 4 July when they:
Called at Paris Bank re more money.
Perhaps the trip to Paris was an afterthought and/or perhaps they realised that they were spending more than they originally planned.
George’s notes get pithier as the trip goes on, especially when in France where the touring (I think with Thomas Cook) reads incredibly intense and therefore quite tiring I imagine. I know the feeeling from my own travel logs.
George and Edith’s wedding might have been arranged at fairly short notice, although their wedding party as described seems quite large and their subsequent honeymoon quite complex for a rush job.
One additional piece of evidence is the baptismal record for John’s grandmother, Dorris:
That date is just 36 weeks after the wedding day. Dorris apparently went to her grave believing herself to be a premature baby whereas John’s mother never bought in to that explanation.
The truth of that matter is lost in the mists of time.
What survives is a truly charming diary, written with great clarity and a lack of pomposity.
Below are some more detailed notes and thoughts about the content; some arising from conversations between me and John, others arising from subsequent research.
27 June 1901 – late in the day George & Edith arrive at “37 Bedford Place, Russell Square, which is kept by the Misses Dobson.” That place is now (in 2020) The Grange Clarendon, a boutique hotel. How boutiquey it was in 1901 I cannot tell, but I don’t think that Bloomsbury was anywhere near as up-market then as it is now.
28 June 1901 – Ellaline Terriss & Seymour Hicks were huge stars back then, so George & Edith’s evening at The Vaudeville Theatre seeing Sweet & Twenty was a big deal. I have managed to find a contemporaneous review from The Idler:
2 July 1901 – Called at Sharp Perrins. John’s mum added a note to her transcript when the couple returned to that establishment 6 July – “(wholesalers to the drapery trade. The bride and groom ran a draper’s shop in Victoria Rd. Widnes.)” – I have moved the note to this first mention of the firm. That evening the happy couple went to see HMS Irresponsible at the Strand Theatre. There is no west end listing of cast and creatives for that production but there is a record of it opening 27 May 1901 and there is a Theatricalia entry from its Bristol transfer in 1902 – click here. Arthur Roberts is still listed. The playwright, J F Cornish, is hard to find on-line. One or two name-drops/mentions, mostly as an actor. Cornish doesn’t make the index of Seymour Hicks’s 1910 autobiography. Arthur Roberts does…once.
3 July 1901 – Military Exhibition. The entire catalogue from that exhibition is ion the public domain. You can view it on-line at Hathi Trust through this link…or this pdf uploaded to Ogblog here. John’s mum inserted a ? at the mention of Canton river, but the map/catalogue confirms that one of the attractions was a boat ride on Canton river.
5 July 1901 – the happy couple saw Emma Calvé as Carmen. John extracted a chunk of the Wikipedia entry for Emma Calvé in that topic. I have simply placed a link to the wikipedia entry in the 1901 blog – here is John’s chosen extract.
Wikipedia Entry for Emma Calvé
Her next triumph was Bizet's Carmen. Before beginning the study of this part, she went to Spain, learned the Spanish dances, mingled with the people and patterned her characterization after the cigarette girls whom she watched at their work and at play. In 1894, she made her appearance in the role at the Opéra-Comique, Paris. The city's opera-goers immediately hailed her as the greatest Carmen that had ever appeared, a verdict other cities would later echo.[citation needed] She had had many famous predecessors in the role, including Adelina Patti, Minnie Hauk and Célestine Galli-Marié, but critics and musicians agreed that in Calvé they had found their ideal of Bizet's cigarette girl of Seville.
Neither the hotel name, nor the road name, Richepense are still active, but that road, now renamed rue du Chevalier de Saint George, has the Hotel Richepense at No 14, which I suspect is an enlarged version of the same establishment.
8 July 1901 – the reference to “Cook’s four in hand coach as per programme ” tells us that the Paris leg of their honeymoon was arranged through Thomas Cook & Son. I have added the 1901 brochure cover at the end of the Wednesday 10th touring, which is when it seems the touring side of things ended. I don’t believe there was a Cook’s Guidebook for Paris for a further few years, which reinforces my view that George & Edith probably used the 1900 Baedeker if they used a guide book at all.
John sent me several pictures of Edith Corke in later life. He has none of George. I chose one to illustrate the end of the main honeymoon diary but thought the others would show nicely here.
I like the cheeky expression on Edith’s face in this last one. I imagine that someone has just asked her, “was Dorris really a premature baby?”
Mike Hodd (see headline picture) is one of the founders of the show, was a mainstay at our writers meetings in the 1990s and is a fairly regular attendee at Ivan Shakespeare dinners.
For some reason, Mike roped me into liaising with Emma and Shannon at the Canal Cafe to help pull together the 40th anniversary event.
I take very little credit for the superb evening that ensued, but I did contribute some archival material and I did stitch up some NewsRevue alums by gathering names and serial numbers through the e-mail connections.
I also suggested that the event include a smoker, in line with a tradition we had back in the 1990s of having after show parties at which we performed party pieces. Mike particularly liked that idea so it simply had to happen.
But the organisation of the event was really down to Emma, Shannon and the team who did a cracking job.
First up was a pre show drinks reception, at which some of us (encouraged to dress up), looked like this:
Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and Me.
Then we watched the current show. An excellent troupe comprising Dorothea Jones, Brendan Mageean, Gabrielle De Saumarez and Rhys Tees under Tim MacArthur’s directorship.
Before the smoker, Shannon and the team played us a wonderful 40th anniversary video compilation of pictures and video clips from across the decades. Here is that very vid:
I was proud to have supplied some of the clippings contained therein and moved to see the video and ponder on just what 40 years of a show really means.
Then the smoker. I was really delighted that current/recent cast and crew joined in the idea and chipped in with their own party pieces, which were very entertaining.
From our own “Class of ’92, there were several contributions, captured pictorially by Graham Robertson, with thanks to him for the following pics.
Mike Hodd made two excellent contributions to the smoker;
a very amusing stand up set in which he somehow managed to extract humour from Parkinson’s disease. I shall never again be able to dissociate in my mind the film Fatal Attraction from the affliction fecal impaction;
a slow build routine in which he was an auctioneer trying to fob off some utter tat as masterpieces. Great fun.
Gerry Goddin
Gerry Goddin performed an audience participation routine in which we joined in a song about “mutton dressed as lamb” to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown. Gerry dealt with my heckling so masterfully that some people thought the heckles had been planted; they had not.
Barry Grossman
Barry performed a stand up comedy routine with masterful poise. I thought we were all supposed to be writers who cannot perform.
I wanted to celebrate one of my classic songs from 1992; the second of mine to be performed in the show but a perennial:
Chris Stanton was the performer who made my debut contributions to NewsRevue such a success in 1992. He too was at this party and performed a couple of classics brilliantly well; A Loan Again and also John Random’s classic 0898 song. No photo of the Chris’s performance as yet – unless Graham finds one of those amongst his collection.
Jonny Hurst also celebrated John Random’s ouevre with a rendition of the wonderful “Tell Laura A Liver”.
This was in part done to honour John Random’s recent selfless act to donate a kidney out of pure altruism to an anonymous recipient. To complete the honouring of that extraordinary good deed, Jonny and I jointly segued the liver song into a visceral medley including a specific piece we put together to honour John’s donation:
WHO DO YOU THINK GOT YOUR KIDNEY, MR RANDOM?
(Lyric to the Tune of “Who Do You think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?”)
THE MAIN REFRAIN
Who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Since your organ donation? Was it a girl for to stop her renal pain? Was it a boy who can take the piss again? So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
FIRST MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns – he came to town The age of twenty-one He did assume a nom de plume And took the name Random.
FIRST REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
SECOND MIDDLE EIGHT
Mr Burns did not return With kidney number one But kept his sense of humour… (pause) …And is ready with his pun.
SECOND REPRISE
So who do you think got your kidney, Mr Random? Now that you’ve gone down to one?
It was a great party, it was a terrific show and it was a superb smoker. A truly memorable event to celebrate 40 years of a wonderful show.
As John Random said in his preamble to the smoker, NewsRevue has initiated so many careers and transformed so many lives over those decades. And for those of us who have formed enduring friendships, it is hard to express our gratitude to Mike Hodd and those who have kept the NewsRevue torch burning week in week out for forty years and counting.
Of late, I have been immersing myself in writing up the journal and some impression pieces about my visit to Mauritius, which was 40 years ago exactly. Devotees of Ogblog (i.e.subscribers) might well be aware of this; others not so.
Ahead of his latest visit, John Random e-mailed to say several things, including this about one of those journal pieces:
A Jew Hunt in Port Louis reminds me of something not very interesting I must tell you about next Thursday.
I had felt quite frustrated about the above piece since I realised that my mother had not only thrown away my article about the resulting great story I discovered once I hunted down the mystery man in Port Louis, but that she had also thrown away my journal notes for 10 and 11 August 1979, as part of the same inadvertently vandalistic act, in the name of “clearing out rubbish”.
Putting that to one side, John and I had a pleasant lunch and did some more fiddling around with his archive of writings. Less progress this session than the previous session, but the previous session had yielded plenty of unexpectedly retrievable data from his old collection. Actually even this day’s session seems to have yielded more than I thought it would.
Then I raised the matter of John’s “Jew Hunt anecdote”.
Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that, 20 or so years ago, Jenny and I went to a Mauritian community event in South-East London. There was a bookstall at that event, where I looked at a book called The Mauritian Shekel. It looked really interesting but in the end I didn’t buy it. Your headline, “A Jew Hunt In Port Louis” reminded me of that book.
I nearly left it at that, but my curiosity had been sparked, so I asked John if he remembered what the book was about.
It was a fascinating true story from the time of the Second World War, about a large ship full of Jewish refugees from Central Europe, who had been turned away in Palestine and who were eventually given refuge on Mauritius…
“Hold on!”, I yelled. “THAT’s the story the mystery Jewish man told me in Port Louis. THAT’s the very story I’m desperately trying to recall. The Mauritian Shekel, did you say?”…
…it might not have been cheap, but it was available as a rare second hand book on Amazon:
So the book is on its way and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to reconstruct my missing article/story from it.
At about 17:00, John went off in the direction of the Proms while I went off in the direction of Lord’s. I bagsyed some seats for me and Jez Horne in the Warner Stand, then went for a quick meeting with Katie Berry for a briefing on participation cricket in Middlesex.
Jez messaged me to say he thought he was a little delayed but should only miss an over or so. In the end, he arrived just in time for the start of the match.
It was good to catch up with Jez again. I hope we can catch up again when Janie and I are in Hove and he also intends to join the Z/Yen party at the Hampshire game in a couple of week’s time.
This Middlesex v Surrey match always has some real frisson to it, though, being a local derby. More often than not we Middlesex fans end up disappointed at this fixture, but of late Middlesex have been doing better and tonight demonstrated that improvement.
AB deVilliers and Eoin Morgan were scintillating with the bat; Steve Finn magnificent with the ball.
Unusually this year, the first Lord’s County Championship match of the season didn’t work out for me and Charles “Charley the Gent Malloy” Bartlett to have our traditional early season meet, but this second match did, so we arranged to spend Day Two of the match together.
A Cunning Plan: Tuesday 14 May 2019
Actually I was able to attend for the latter part of the first day. My cunning plan was to get my work out of the way, drive over to St John’s Wood Road around 15:00 – it is almost always possible to find a Ringo parking place at that hour, drop off my tennis kit ahead of tomorrow, get some reading done and watch some cricket in the sunshine.
The cunning plan worked.
I briefly popped in to the pavilion and chatted for a brief while with Colin, before going in search of some warmth in the spring sunshine of the Mound Stand.
Barmy Kev joined me briefly in the Mound Stand that afternoon before going off to speak with more important folk than me:
Borrowed from Barmy Kev’s Facebook posting – Click the picture to see that posting.
As I left Lord’s that evening, I ran into John Lee from the Leicestershire committee, who was on his way to try to find his hotel on Sussex Gardens, so I was able to give him a lift there and have a chat along the way.
A Great Day Although The Picnic Partially Went Pear-Shaped: Wednesday 15 May 2019
I rose early to prepare the picnic and set off for Lord’s soon after 8:00 in order to play tennis at 9:00. I used the rucksack that DJ kindly gave me last year, as that is an ample size for a picnic for two…
…except that I didn’t think about relative softness and hardness of items in the various compartments and planted a bag containing Chas’s pears (Green Williams) towards the bottom of the rucksack.
Other Species Of Pears And Bagels From A Previous Visit To Lord’s
Charley’s fussiness about his pears is a matter of some legend and a yet unpublished piece that should appear on King Cricket at some point in the next few years.
Infuriatingly, I had procured and ripened the bag of pears to perfection for this visit, but they got badly bruised in the rucksack. Message to self: put pears in a protective fruit box next time.
Chas threatened to go public about my pear preparation going pear-shaped, but I decided that the best way to prevent the risk of blackmail was to come clean myself. Now Chas will have to decide how to deal with the other side of the “mutually assured destruction” information unholy bargain we had with each other. It could get as messy as that bag of bruised pears.
Anyway, I played quite a good game of tennis (won) and spotted, as soon as I got off court, that Chas had messaged me to say that he was in the vicinity ridiculously early. I suggested that he make haste to the gate where I could get him into the ground with his voucher before I showered and changed. This ploy worked well.
In the morning, we braved the traditional back/backside ache of the pavilion benches. John Freer from the visiting Leicestershire group spotted us on those benches and came out for a pleasant chat. Peter Moore also chatted with us for a while. Chas and I didn’t get around to the picnic (apart from nibbling some cashews) until we got around to the Mound Stand in the afternoon.
Apart from the pear debacle, the picnic was a great success. Poppy-seed bagels with Alaskan smoked salmon, Prosciutto and Parmesan cheese sandwiches on sourdough, a fruity Riesling and several sweet treats – the latter arranged by Chas.
There were some large school groups sitting quite close to us – very well behaved but autograph hunting like crazy – especially from Nick Gubbins who was fielding down our way and patiently worked his way through a long queue.
At one point in the afternoon Dawid Malan (out injured) wandered around the outfield and stopped to chat with us briefly. Some of the junior autograph hunters asked him who he was and/but seemed minimally impressed that he was the Captain of the team. Only some sought his autograph; still Dawid handled the matter with great dignity and willingness to please the junior crowd.
As always, the day just flew by and it seemed like a blink of an eye after meeting that Chas and I were parting company again.
I watched tennis for a few minutes to let the crowd and traffic die down before Ubering home.
A Random Ramble Around Lord’s: Thursday 16 May 2019
When arranging that visit, I mentioned in passing that Middlesex were playing at Lord’s that day and that I could show John around the place properly if he was interested. His previous visit had been to watch tennis only:
Anyway, John said he would really enjoy that, so after the concert we legged it to Lord’s, where John reckoned he could spare 90 minutes to two hours before heading back to do some work.
I gave John an informal tour of the pavilion, which I think he really enjoyed, stopping most of the way through the tour to take some refreshment and watch some cricket on the sun deck, at Janie’s favourite spot under one of the turrets.
While chomping and drinking coffee there, John informed me that, although he had no pedigree in cricket whatsoever, his grandfather, Hector Ireland, had been a leading light in Widnes Cricket Club in days of yore, to such an extent that a bar in the club is named the Hector Ireland Room:
I explained to John that, while I like to pretend that the Harris Garden at Lord’s is named after my grandfather, the truth of the matter is that I have no cricket in my ancestry at all, so I felt that John’s so-called remote cricketing pedigree was trumping mine big time.
We completed our informal tour in time for John to get away in a timely fashion, I hope.
After saying goodbye to John, I then returned to the pavilion to join the Leicestershire visitors in the Committee Room. John and Penny Freer were in there, as was John Lee and also new Chairman Roy Bent, together with a smattering of Middlesex hosting folk.
Postscript To John Random’s VISIT To LORD’S
In August 2021 John visited Widnes CC and reported the event to me with the following charming words and photographs:
…I finally managed my pilgrimage to the Hector Ireland Lounge of the Widnes Cricket Club, Hector Ireland being – as I think you know – my grandfather; as opposed to the one [George Corke] who had a honeymoon in London and Paris. That was a generation earlier. I was so proud and happy to see his name memorialized on the plaques and his photo still above the bar. I was shown such a warm welcome by men who knew him even though he died fully fifty years ago. I even watched some cricket.
The Match Was Poised, But…: Friday 17 May 2019
I returned to Lord’s again early that morning; a long-planned appointment with the tennis court. In fact, I ended up being press-ganged into playing two hours, from 9:00 to 11:00, which is a bit of a mad idea for playing singles at my age, but there you go.
John Lee had threatened to come and watch me play real tennis for a while before the cricket started and saw through that threat. Afterwards, he reported that he had been baffled by the tennis at first, then after a while decided that he understood it, then after a few more minutes realised that he hadn’t understood it.
Meanwhile, I played quite well that morning and then, after changing, joined the small remaining group in the Committee Room for the rest of the morning session. A few overs had been lost to bad light but the forecast was hopeful for the rest of the day.
Nevertheless, I realised that I needed to get some work out of the way to relieve the pressure from the first half of next week, so went home at lunch, resolving to return for the lasts session of the match.
Sadly, the drizzle started as I arrived back at Lord’s around 16:00 and that last session was much curtailed, turning an interestingly poised match into a draw. David Morgan joined us for a while during that stop-start session.
It was probably Leicestershire who had the most reason to feel aggrieved by the rain, although a couple of quick wickets would have turned the match back Middlesex’s way. Infuriating that a poised match ends that way, but that’s cricket.
It was nevertheless very enjoyable company with which to pass the time at the end a few days of cricket intermingled with work and other activities.
When I say, “funny people” in this context, I mean comedy people, not necessarily strange people. Some of them might also be strange of course, but I’ll leave that judgement to the reader.
Funny-comedic, not necessarily funny-strange: Rohan Candappa
First up, for lunch on Tuesday 5 March, was Rohan Candappa. He wanted to try a Malaysian & Indonesian restaurant, Melur, on the Edgware Road. As I had requested that we meet somewhere over my side, as I needed to be at Lord’s for a game of tennis afterwards, that seemed a reasonable choice to me.
The weather forecast suggested heavy rain around the time I’d be finishing at Lord’s, so I took my car to Aberdeen Place and parked there ahead of lunch.
The food at Melur was excellent. I was restrained in my choices given the tennis bout ahead, going for an inoffensive Nasi Goreng. Rohan went for a more spicy version and for some roti canai, which I tasted and reckon was a pretty darned good roti. I shall forever more associate that dish with Rohan, so much so that I’ll think of it as…Rohan Kanhai. Coincidentally, I shall similarly forever be reminded of that Guyanese cricketer when I recall Rohan Candappa’s visit to Lord’s with me, last year:
I’m thinking of naming my novel genre “Mock Tudor Rock”
Rohan, who plans to manage my band, made several branding suggestions – I responded to those thoughts subsequently as follows:
The Wessex Petards might work better as a band name the The Wessex Pistols and I still feel that Sir Michael Smear is a more visceral nom de punk than Sir John Rancid. But I cannot better your album name – Never Mind The Bailiwicks – it ought to go gold or platinum on the name alone, before we release so much as a tiny sound sample…in fact it had better go gold or platinum before we release so much as a tiny sound sample.
I very much hope my thoughts were helpful and that Rohan can find a way to make the Threadmash idea work for all concerned.
I had allowed loads of time between lunch and tennis, so brought plenty of reading matter with me which I enjoyed reading over a couple of excellent cups of coffee at Café Laville, overlooking the canal in sunshine.
Then on to Lord’s in order to be taught a lesson by one of my favourite real tennis opponents who has recovered from injury since I last played him and seemed keen to let me see how well he can now move around the court. A surprisingly close match in the circumstances – I thought I did well to get close.
On Thursday 7 March I had a music lesson with Ian Pittaway, who passed expert judgement on my Mock Tudor Rock…
Place the rascal in the stocks at once!
…while helping me with some other silly ideas (watch this space) and sensible techniques (don’t hold your breath).
Then a visit from John Random for a bite of lunch and the second of two sessions of NewsRevue archiving. The first session was 25 January. John has a large collection of NewsRevue programmes, flyers and reviews, which simply needed to be digitised.
We succeeded in scanning it all in two sessions, despite lots of chat, listening to some music and cricket-match like breaks for lunch/tea.
Following some cheerful chat about murder rates around the world, which identified Mexico and especially Tijuana as a hot spot, we both agreed that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass must have a lot to answer for. So we listened to a fair smattering of Herb. John was especially taken with his version of the Third Man theme…
…and his version of A Walk In The Black Forest:
We decided that this type of music is, in many ways, the soundtrack of our childhood. Of course we like to remember the cool stuff from the 1960’s and no doubt have listened to far more of the cool stuff in later life, but when we were kids this was the music that was being played on the radios and gramophone players most of the time in our homes and the homes we visited.
We also of course chatted about NewsRevue casts, shows and material gone by. We discussed one of my own classics from more than 25 years ago, Mad Frogs And Englishmen, which I realised I hadn’t yet Ogblogged. I have put that right now:
Job done in terms of the archiving, it was time for us to set off for one of our regular Ivan Shakespeare Memorial gatherings – at which NewsRevue writers from years gone by gather to eat, chat, laugh and informally quiz.
It was International Women’s Day today, so we found ourselves an all male gathering this time. In addition to me and John: Gerry Goddin, Mark Keagan, Barry Grossman, Colin Stutt and a rare but much appreciated visit from NewsRevue founder and “father of the house” Mike Hodd.
The venue was the Spaghetti House in Holborn this time; a good notch up in service and food quality from Cafe Rogues in my view. My first time there but not the group’s first time.
For many years John Random has talked about his vicarious support for a football team by the name of Blyth Spartans. His home town, Hartlepool, is John’s real team but he has carried a torch for this other team for decades.
John excitedly reported that he finally got to visit Blyth Spartans and saw an exciting match there just the other week. I believe it was this match. I feel that this momentous event needs recording for posterity, as does an image of John wearing his new Blyth Spartans titfer.
John reported on the event as follows:
I would like to say a big thank you to all those of you who came out to the Spaghetti House on Thursday night. Thanks also to Mike, Colin and Gerry for their entertaining quizzes. Falling as it did, almost on International Women’s Day I regret to report that NewsRevue has still not come clean on its gender pay gap. We haven’t even had any jokes about it, yet – though I have a feeling, we will – and soon.
As I said earlier, it had been a funny week.
Funny ha-ha, not funny peculiar.
Well, maybe funny ha-ha AND funny peculiar. Good times with good friends.
