Tag: Katy Turner

Street Theatre, Princess Margaret and The Ball Debacle, Keele, 10 December 1980

In our first term at Keele, Simon Jacobs and I signed up for a drama workshop thing, run by Brian Rawlins. Brian helped make drama great fun and gave us a great deal of freedom to do what we wanted to do in this extra-curricular group.

I’m not entirely sure who else was part of the group, other than Jonathan (Jon) Rees whose name helpfully appears in my diary and on the single relic I have from the experience.

That first term of ours also coincided with a big debacle over Princess Margaret’s invitation (or lack of invitation) to the students’ union ball. We decided to parody that debacle with a piece of street theatre as our contribution to the debate and as the culmination of our term’s drama work-shopping spree.

My memory of the whole thing is fairly hazy, but the diary and relic provide some help. Here are the relevant extracts from the diary:

11 November – decided to write play

13 November – met Simon and Jonathan in evening to write play

18 November – drama rehearsal good fun

25 November – rehearsed skit in evening – good fun

2 December – easyish evening – drama rehearsal

…and there the references cease. I know the intention was to perform the skit in front of the union on the day of the ball, but my diary is entirely silent on the matter so I wonder whether our skit was scuppered at the last minute. Simon might remember and I am due to see him very soon indeed at the time of writing (April 2016) and so shall update if his memory adds anything to the pile.

Meanwhile it seems from the relic that it was Jon who preserved a copy of (most of) the script and ensured that I had a copy in my memory box. The hand-written skit itself looks like Simon’s writing if my memory serves.

It reads as juvenilia, which is what it is – heck we were all just 18 at the time – but looking back I think we were quite plucky in our first term tackling this particular political debacle head on in this way.

Intriguing also, for me, how it foreshadows some of my subsequent students’ union activity, including my press battle with Nigel Dempster over Princess Margaret.

Anyway, here’s the script. You can drill into the pages to make them bigger/legible size. Unlike my handwriting, this stuff is actually legible. I should add that the character Katy is Katy Turner, the President of the student’s union that year, Mike is Mike Stevens, the Union Secretary that year.

Street Theatre Script Page OneStreet Theatre Script Page Two

Street Theatre Script Page Three Street Theatre Script Page Four Street Theatre Script Envelope Front Street Theatre Script Envelope Back

My First University Of Keele Students’ Union UGM, Starring Princess Margaret, 20 October 1980

I have no idea why Princess Margaret loomed so large at Keele University, but throughout my time at Keele our titular Chancellor was the source of countless controversies in absentia…which is indeed the manner in which I chose to receive my degree in 1984.

I knew nothing about this when I signed up for Keele. I knew more or less nothing at all about the place, other than the fact that Simon Jacobs had been to visit Keele in August and liked the look of it.

Getting In To & Starting At Keele University, 8 October 1980

Indeed, it was along with fellow fresher Simon Jacobs that I took my seat at my first Students’ Union UGM…the first of a great many as it turned out…on 20 October 1980.

I don’t remember all that much about that first UGM, other than the hoo-ha that was the Princess Margaret controversy.

There were no doubt student political machinations involved in the matter dating back to before our time. But in short, it seemed, the new union sabbaticals had invited Princess Margaret to the Union’s Christmas Ball without seeking approval for such a manoeuvre from the whole committee nor from a UGM which is (or at least was) the sovereign body of the union.

Trying to recall how I felt about it, looking back on the event almost exactly forty years later, I don’t think I saw the matter as especially newsworthy or even all that controversial on the night itself. It just felt like good debate with some political theatre thrown in…and we even got to vote. The argument that the student ball would be far more restricted if HRH attended and that anyway she probably didn’t really want to come to our student ball seemed the most convincing to us and indeed to the majority of those who bothered to turn up, listen and vote.

Extract from The Daily Mirror Diary Page, 22 October 1980. Click the picture link above to see the whole page, including a piece about Mick Jagger describing him as an ageing rock star…he was 37 back then.

The Daily Mirror saw it a little differently. We’d been at Keele for less than a fortnight and already we were “bolshie students” and “little devils”. Yay!!

A week or so later, the student newspaper, Concourse, covered the story in a far more balanced manner:

The controversy rumbled on and had an impact on several of my activities in the first couple of terms, as my unfolding story will reveal. Within a few weeks, Simon and I and others were lampooning the whole affair through a street theatre skit which I wrote up a year or two ago – click here or below:

Street Theatre, Princess Margaret and The Ball Debacle, Keele, 10 December 1980

Not even two weeks after coming through those Keele gates for the first time, I felt that I’d well and truly arrived by the night of 20 October 1980!