John Random once said to me, many years ago and also many years after the (non) event, that he remembered this song fondly and regrets the fact that he didn’t use it.
It wasn’t very topical, although Mother Teresa was always in the news back then.
Postscript: I have subsequently found the date 15 July 1993 on my log for this song, which might be an error or might show that I wrote it in July and then resubmitted (previously unused) it in October 1993. Cruelly overlooked, whenever it was.
This period of 1993 was “peak Random”, with John perennially, heavily involved in NewsRevue (where he helped to get my comedy writing career going the year before) and also his show Sex In My Anorak, which had played in June.
The theatre was a sort-of public hall in Hoxton, near to Annie Bickerstaff’s place. Janie and I went to see this play along with Annalisa and Annie. We all very much enjoyed the play. I think we ended up back at Annie’s place for dinner after the show.
Janie joined me (and I’m sure quite a few of my NewsRevue writer friends) for the opening night of this show, conceived by John Random.
I think the idea of it was to be a showcase for revue material that John and others of us sometimes wrote that was not ideally suited to the topical NewsRevue show.
I have a couple of pieces of paper about the show, one of which tells me that I forked out some dosh to angel the show.
I cannot remember how much, if any, of that cash came back to me. John might have information on’t.
Here’s the other artifact, which was a sort of interim newsletter which also gives some clues as to the conceit (if that is the right word) of the show.
I also cannot remember how many, if any, of my lyrics found their way into this show.
In fact, the item I remember most clearly about this show is an idea that John in the end didn’t use, which was the idea of performing Spike Jones’s version of the Hawaiian War Chant live.
It would have been wicked hard to stage well with four performers and one pianist. But John and I both still regret that the idea got…as it were…spiked.
I do remember one of John’s numbers, which I think was the closing number, named Living In A Cliche, which was a spoof of Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On A Prayer.
Gosh, yes, that track is simply asking for the John Bon Random treatment.
I wonder whether John still has running orders and/or other materials pertaining to Sex In My Anorak. I do remember thinking the show was rather good.
Postscript: a few months ago we had a discussion about this show and also about Bish Bash Bosh on Facebook in the NewsRevue group – click here for link. Nick R Thomas in particular remembered some interesting stuff about Anorak:
I had a co-written sketch about cats. If I remember correctly, the sketch I wrote with Bournemouth writer Gary Mitchell was about the Cats Protection League actually being a protection racket run by cats.
John had a wonderful running song sketch throughout based on 2Unlimited but featuring nuns, eg “No no, no-no no no, no-no no no, no-no sex before marriage”.
Come to think of it, this No Limit number was also simply asking for the 2Johnlimited Random treatment.
A rare, indeed mysterious visit to the Canal Cafe on a Tuesday.
I recall this only vaguely. The diary helps just a little.
When I dropped off my Woody Allen & Mia Farrow lyric the week before, I think I ran into Jacqui Somerville herself at the Canal. Either that, or I ran into Harriet Quirk who had a message that Jacqui wanted to meet me. In any case, Jacqui and I arranged to meet on a non-NewsRevue evening.
Jacqui had been directing the early spring run of NewsRevue – that was the first show I saw. I shall write up the story of my early correspondence and visits in the fullness of time. Jacqui had her own ideas about the show, including her own pet writers, some of whom were cast, which went down very badly with the regular writers.
Indeed, at the first NewsRevue writers meeting I attended, some told me not to bother submitting for a few weeks, others simply suggested that I don’t lose heart and resubmit material that had longevity for the subsequent run; which was in fact the John Random run that first used my stuff.
So I do remember Jacqui’s rendezvous request sort-of feeling like an assignation. What would the other writers think if they found out about it? Was she going to try and recruit me into the comedy writing dark side? Or to spy for the Russians or something?
In fact, I recall finding Jacqui quite delightful company, very encouraging and full of good advice/ideas for my writing. I had a little burst of creativity over the subsequent bank holiday weekend, which I’m sure was somewhat inspired by that Tuesday evening chat.
I don’t know whether Jacqui met up with any of the other regular NewsRevue writers over that summer to build bridges, but she certainly won me over and used plenty of the regular writers’ material (not least mine) in future runs she directed, not least the 1992 Christmas run.
I also recall running into Jacqui and her more serious theatre work in subsequent years.
I wonder whether Harriet remembers much about this tiny incident or indeed whether this short piece might be a magnet with which to re-establish contact with Jacqui, as part of our “class of ’92” reunion project?
I have not often wondered precisely when it was that John Random took me to one side and explained the facts of NewsRevue song-writing life to me.
But my discovery of this little private joke lyric, dated 9 July 1992, is a piece of incontrovertible evidence. John must have taught me the facts of life a week or so before.
John explained to me that certain tunes were so over-used that NewsRevue aficionados would not consider their use under any circumstances. That was the reason, from his point of view, that, for example:
…had not been used and would not be used on his watch.
Indeed, John said, he considered such lyrics, set to excessively-used tunes, to be a form of torture.
Chattanooga Choo-Choo was another notable example that John specifically mentioned as excessively used and torturous.
I had no recollection of the following little lyric at all, so it was a surprise to me when I discovered it. I must have written this specifically as a joke for John and (presumably) handed it to him at the NewsRevue writers’ meeting that week, on 9 July:
SONG TO PERSECUTE YOU
(To the tune of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”)
Pardon me John,
I wrote this song to persecute you;
Catch 22,
To edit the Newsrevue.
The public pay,
When they,
Can hear the tunes they know and like;
So Chattanooga Choo-Choo,
Shouldn’t always hit the spike.
Copyright 1992 “The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Liberation Front”.
Here is a great Glenn Miller vid of the song, although you don’t get any words for two or three minutes…but it is worth the wait:
Another unexpected discovery, this one. Credited in my notes to John Random and Gerry Goddin as well as myself. There’s not much of it, so it must have simply been a shared joke at that week’s writers’ meeting.
I don’t recall whether or not this quickie was used. Perhaps Messrs Random and/or Goddin do recall:
THE LOVERS
(This quickie is “voice over” throughout)
{The pianist plays a few bars of music that immediately make the listener think of the Orient. It is Indochina in the 1920’s. It is hot. It is steamy. Lust is in the air. These few bars make the listener think of all that. What a pianist.}
THE LOVERS:{Orgasmic grunting noises (possibly some male, some female – mainly female) build up rhythmically, eventually reaching a “fingernails digging into the mattress” level of intensity.}
UMPIRE:Deuce. (pronounced juice)
DAN MASKELL:Oh I say. Monica Seles has really come out on top.
I mentioned to John during that 2018 visit that I had attended (nay, even been part of the hosting group for) a concert in 1992, around the time, strangely, that John Random and I first met.
I did recall that I had seen Evelyn Glennie perform that evening and that it had been a BDO Binder Hamlyn event as part of my old firm’s sponsorship of Music at Oxford. But the rest I couldn’t recall and I felt a bit silly about that, because I knew that I would have kept the programme at least and that it was all lined up to be Ogblogged…eventually. I should have dug out the bumf before the 2018 visit.
Anyway, curiosity got the better of me a few days later and I dug out the programme. Indeed, not only the programme but, inside the programme, instructions from the BDO Binder Hamlyn marketing department telling me what to do.
Here’s the programme:
Below is a link to a pdf of the instruction pack for hosts. There is even a copy of the form you needed to fill in if you wanted to arrive in Greenwich by boat.
People who know me through Z/Yen and associate “me and boats” in the context of our many Lady Daphne boat trips over the years, might be surprised to realise that I chose not to arrive by boat…those who know me a bit better than that in the matter of boats will be far less surprised.
A common theme to all the elements of this story so far is Michael Mainelli, who was/is:
the BDO Binder Hamlyn partner who led on the Music at Oxford sponsorship/marketing events,
my business partner at Z/Yen who owned and led on the Lady Daphne boat trips thing,
someone who, coincidentally, visited Morgan’s Rock in Nicaragua with his family (though not Mukul, which didn’t exist back then) a few years before Janie and I went there.
Anyway, I got a chance to interview Michael about the Music at Oxford event yesterday (25 January 2018). His main regret was that he couldn’t recall who he took as his date that year to Music at Oxford. Our conversation then side-tracked onto the loony rule that Binder Hamlyn had (and many firms still have) prohibiting intra-firm romances. Michael was already going out with Elisabeth back then but it was a secret, closely guarded by several dozen of the several hundred Binder Hamlyn staff and partners. So Michael had to take a decoy date to events like this instead.
Once we got over that digression, Michael recalled that this particular event was rather a ground-breaking one. Certainly it was the first time that we had taken a Music at Oxford concert beyond Oxford. But Michael thinks it might have been the first (or certainly one of the first) commercially sponsored concerts to take place at the Old Royal Naval College Chapel.
Michael also recalls that Evelyn Glennie was very pleasant company over dinner after the concert.
Here is an interesting little vid about Evelyn Glennie:
Here is a little vid of the percussion and timpani cadenzas from the Panufnik Concertino that Glennie played that night in the chapel – but this is some other people playing. It is a bit noisy:
But the Old Royal Naval College Chapel is a Baroque building of great beauty, so you might want to imagine the sole baroque piece we heard that night, Bach’s Ricecare a 6 from A Musical Offering. Here is a sweet vid of the Croating Baroque Ensemble performing it:
But surely the last word should go to John Random. Because, strangely, that 1992 spring/summer was when John and I met – through NewsRevue. John was the first director to have my comedy material performed professionally – click here or below for one of the better examples from that season:
On spotting that we also heard a piece by Antonín Dvořák in the Old Royal Naval College that summer’s night in 1992, I was also reminded of one of John Random’s lyrics from that same summer. Because that was the summer that Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. John wrote a superb lyric to the tune of Slow Hand by The Pointer Sisters, which included the wonderful couplet:
Not a compatriot of Dvořák,
I want a lover who’s a Slovak.
1992 was a seminal summer in so many ways.
A mere 25 years later…double-selfies hadn’t been invented in 1992
Buoyed by my early success with California Here I Go, I wrote quite a lot of lyrics during John Random’s Spring 1992 run.
Eventually I’ll upload the others; those performed and those not. Actually I’m not sure which John used and which he didn’t; I think he was (rightly) quite selective with those earlier efforts. But I do recall that John used this one about NHS Trusts; indeed it was revived, updated and used quite a lot for at least a couple of years – one of my better and more successful ones.
Virginia/Gini refers to Virginia Bottomley, the much-maligned Secretary of State for Health at that time. The song still works pretty much word for word, by merely changing the name of the Health Secretary and the future year in which a bed might become available – at the time of writing I am using “2028” when I lay this one down on my baritone uke.
I especially remember Chris Stanton starring in this number, as the lead singer/unfortunate old codger who was suffering while the NHS tried to transform into trusts. John Random will doubtless remember more about it, including the names of the other cast members from that run. I’m guessing Ian Angus Wilkie…
My WP file is dated 4 May 1992 and I am pretty sure that my version was first performed that Thursday, 7 May 1992.
♬ YOU CAN’T HURRY TRUSTS ♬
(To the tune of “You Can’t Hurry Love”)
VERSE 1
I need drugs, drugs, to ease my pains, I need some treatment, NHS explains;
CHORUS 1
{Virginia says}You can’t hurry trusts {No} you’ll just have to wait;
{She says}List’ll get shorter, numbers doctored by the state.
You can’t hurry trusts {No} you’ll just have to wait;
{You gotta}Pop pills for a while, that way you will be sedate.
VERSE 2
But how many more months must I pine,
Before they find a bed in which to mend my spine?
Right now the only thing that keeps me hanging on,
Is the pethidine and this mogadon.
CHORUS 2
{But Virginia always says}
You can’t hurry trusts {No} you’ll just have to wait;
{She says} While we raise finance, operations will be late.
How long must I wait, how much more can I take?
Before all ‘dis traction, will cause my poor back to break. {You must wait}
VERSE 3
NHS trusts, don’t come easy,
So they keep debating, pontificating,
While Gini argues, what trusts ought to provide,
The NHS shoots off down the slide.
But I keep hoping, {Oooooh} that one fine day,
( {The hospital’ tell me}, I can stay.})
CHORUS 3
{But Gini says}You can’t hurry trusts {No} you’ll just have to wait;
{Why?}We must hire accountants, and a huge inspectorate.
You can’t hurry trusts {No} you’ll just have to wait;
{We promise}You’ll have a bed soon, autumn nineteen ninety eight.
John Random must have thought I was obsessed with Californian news, because I submitted this less than two weeks after California Here I Go. Perhaps I thought it might replace the morbid execution piece, which by its nature became old news rather quickly.
Unsurprisingly, this “looting” one wasn’t used. But it was submitted in the same pack as You Can’t Hurry Trusts, so you can’t fault John and the cast for their discerning choice of a winner when they saw one.
LOOTIN’ USA
(To the tune of “Surfin’ USA”)
VERSE 1
If everybody was in turmoil,
And causing an affray;
Then everybody’d be lootin’,
Like Californ-I-A;
You’d see ’em wearing their shell suits,
With beard and sandals too;
They’d all be breaking their curfews,
Lootin’ USA.
CHORUS
Insurrection USA They’re starting fires in Long Beach,
Depredation USA And in Fort Lauderdale;
Conflagration USA There’s violence in Pasadena,
Turbulation USA And in San Quentin jail;
Consternation USA All over Manhattan,
Deflagration And down in Santa Fe;
Everbody’s gone lootin’;
Lootin USA.
VERSE 2
We’ll all be planning out a riot,
And then we’ll light my fire;
Then go and nick some hi-fis,
To build a funeral pyre;
Insurgence and arson,
We’re gonna plunder LA;
Tell the fuzz we’re all lootin’
Lootin’ USA
SHORT INSTRUMENTAL (Preferably including some dancing that vaguely resembles people beating each other up)
Everbody’s gone lootin’;
Lootin USA.
Everbody’s gone lootin’;
Lootin USA.
Here is a really weird vid of The Beach Boys making minimal effort to mime Surfin’ USA while wearing bizarre beach outfits:
