A few moments later Harry gave me a shove and I made my first entrance as a stand-up comedian to a chorus of the Eton Boating Song gleefully delivered in thick Geordie accents by the ramshackle house band. There was a faint ironic jeer from the body of the room and loyal applause from Hilda and Vivienne behind the bar as I launched into the routine that Harry & I had put together. There was nothing post-modern in the act, most of the jokes were as tried and tested as a Morris Minor. There was the one about the Geordie polar bear that goes into a chemist to buy condoms, there was the hardy annual about the three blokes in a shipyard and the encyclopaedia, and of course there was the classic Geordie prostitute and the poltergeist gag, though the punters being thick northerners I had to explain what a poltergeist was which rather took the edge off the joke. I quickly realised that the simplest way to get an audience reaction was to say the word Arsenal which immediately drew a hostile growl. We had chosen a Tuesday night, the quietest of the week, for my debut and there were only a few more customers in than on my first visit, but I got some response and as I went off a solitary scampi basket was hurled at the stage.
“Not bad lad” said Harry as I tottered weak kneed into the wings. “We can sharpen it up a bit but they were starting to hate you. Well done”.
Over the next few days we tinkered with the act, cutting set piece gags and putting in more snide comments about northern beer, barmaids, table manners, women in general and as audience numbers and my confidence increased, so did the volume of abuse and the number of missiles that were hurled at the stage. From Harry’s point of view we were achieving our aim in gingering up the audience and the response to the rest of the bill was much better than before. By Saturday night word had got round the local pubs that there was sport to be had at “Harry’s Place” and at closing time we filled up with drunks ready to let fly at the “Southern Bastard”. During the week I had taken a couple of direct hits from ashtrays and had to duck the odd bottle but nothing prepared me for the Saturday show when virtually anything that wasn’t screwed down (luckily the tables were) came my way. I battled on out of sheer Home Counties pride (the spirit of Woking runs deep in the Irwins) and finished the act with “Fuck you, you northern shits. Up the Arsenal! Goodnight!” Not exactly Noel Coward but effective nonetheless.
Harry was ecstatic, takings were well up on previous weeks and the local press were starting to take an interest. I however had a problem as I found as I peeled off my sweat sodden tux that Saturday night, I was black and blue, bruised from head to toe. There was no dressing room for me in the club so I had taken to changing in the area at the bottom of the fire exit stairs, where George, the backstage handyman, used to store empty crates, beer kegs and so on. George was there that Saturday and said “Bloody heck lad, you’ll not be able to take much more of that. Hang on I’ve got an idea” and he disappeared down into the basement. He returned a few moments later with a heavily quilted canvas coat that apparently riveters in the shipyards used to wear to protect themselves from flying rivets and from being scorched by neighbouring welders. It was incredibly heavy and stank of sweat and sump oil but it covered me from neck to ankle. A moment later Vivienne appeared from Front of House, “Here pet you might find this useful” and she handed me a bright orange cycling helmet that she had found in the Lost Property box. Thus in a couple of minutes the trademark costume of “Ted Irwin – The Irritating Southern Bastard” was created. It’s funny how ‘Art’ sometimes works that way.
I settled into life at ‘Harry’s’, I was earning a living and it was a change from watching stage crews unload trucks. The club staff and artists were friendly (apart from Audrey who maintained her glacial cool) and Harry treated me like a. son. Audrey though haunted my waking thoughts and most nights when I had changed out of the riveter’s coat into my street clothes I would stand in the wings and watch her sing. One night in the middle of Funny Valentine she turned and sang the lines
“Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you're my favourite work of art”
straight at me and half smiled before turning back to the audience. It was a heart stopping moment but later as she came off she brushed past with her normal hauteur.
The following night I had just come off and was chatting to George when we heard the clack clack of high heels coming down the fire exit stairs. It was Audrey in her pink silk dressing gown.
“George be a pet a get us some ciggies will you? 20 Capstan Full strength please” George looked a little startled but took the money from her and went out into the street. As soon as he was gone she turned to me and said “Hello southern bastard”, the dressing gown dropped to the floor and she stood there naked apart from her 4” heels. “Let me help you out of that”, she said starting with my top button and we began our affair right there on the floor among the beer barrels and Newcastle Brown empties, right there on the riveter’s coat which forever after smelled of sweat, sump oil and sex.
As I left the club that night Harry tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hey lad come to Sunday lunch tomorrow. The missus and I would love to see you.”
I readily agreed and floated out into the night.
The following day I drove to Harry’s place a couple of miles out of town on the Morpeth road. It was a bit more tasteful than I had expected, it wasn’t called ‘Dungaggin’ and there were no gnomes, in the drive was his pride and joy, a red Humber Super Snipe. Harry himself opened the front door to my knock and called over his shoulder, “He’s here love” and Audrey came out of the kitchen wearing rubber gloves and an apron with a map of the Costa Brava printed on it. At that moment I realised that there was one momentously, earth shatteringly, fundamentally, important and crucial fact that no one in the club had ever made me aware of. Audrey was Harry’s wife and I was in deep shit.
Audrey simply smiled and said “Hello Ted. I hope you like your roast beef well done.” She never looked more beautiful to me than at that moment in her apron and Marigolds.
We pursued our affair through that summer with relentless passion and with great care. Audrey told me at the outset “Harry’s old fashioned, he’ll kill both of us if he finds out.” When I replied that surely that was a little extreme Audrey said “You don’t understand, Harry’s not just a comic, he knows some very bad people and he didn’t get to own all his clubs by just telling jokes. He’s a bloody gangster.” I took her word for it and we met at lunchtimes in distant pubs out on the moors and at the seaside, but best were Tuesdays and Thursdays which were my landlady’s bingo afternoons and we could lie together in a sweaty contented heap at my digs.
During the summer Harry took the show on tour, mostly to his own venues in the north-east but we also ventured further afield, as far as Workington in the west, and to a few scabby working-men’s clubs in Manchester (where I made an appearance on the Parkinson show as a late stand in for Tarby who cried off after a freak golfing accident) and we played a club in Hexham where there were more sheepdogs than humans in the audience. In early September we fetched up in Roker (Sunderland’s Riviera!) playing at ‘Harry’s Showbar’ a few yards off the prom.
Audrey and I used to sneak off in the afternoons and find a secluded spot on the sands, she would puff away at her Capstan Full Strengths and sometimes we would share a jar of pickled onions, Pedro, Audrey’s Schnauzer, would chase the seagulls.
It was on just such an afternoon that I felt Audrey suddenly tense.
“Don’t move!” she said, and said it in the tone that in the movies means that there is a scorpion on the back of your neck.
“What is it?”
“Harry’s standing on the Prom right behind us. Oh shit! Look do you see that man in the donkey jacket by the ice cream van?”
“Yes”.
“That’s Eddie ‘Razors’ Docherty…”
“Oh”.
“…and do you see the man in the dark suit over to our left by the Conveniences?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Joey ‘Mad Dog’ McKlusky. Jesus! Look! Coming along the beach it’s Andy ‘Whitley Bay’ Norris.”
“Why is he called Whitley Bay?” I asked
“It’s where he lives…”
“Oh OK.”
“….and where he dumps the bodies.”
“Ah. What shall we do? Can’t we go and stand next to a policeman for a bit?”
Audrey was contemptuous “Harry buys policemen like bags of crisps. We’ll have to run for it. Where’s your car?”
“In the lane behind the club”.
“OK. Now listen. Razors has had trouble with his knees for years, he’s our best chance. You go to the right of the ice cream van and I’ll go to the left then we’ll both head through the amusement arcade, out the back, turn left and the car is only 100 yards away”.
It didn’t seem to be the moment to mention that my aging Ford Escort was not the snappiest starter or any of the dozen other flaws in this plan that immediately occurred to me.
“One. Two. Three. Go!” and with that Audrey grabbed Pedro with one arm, hitched her skirt up with the other and sprinted towards Razors. I was a bit slower off the mark and for a girl of her excessive smoking habits she could really shift when she put her mind to it. Razors put out an arm to grab her, but was promptly bitten by Pedro, I followed up with a good public school style shoulder charge which flattened him and we were up the steps, across the prom and into Funland. Weaving past the Penny Cascades, I looked back, I could see Whitley Bay, who had no obvious knee problems, closing fast and Harry striding calmly behind. I grabbed a giant plastic walking stick full of gob stoppers off the sweet counter and whacked Whitley Bay across the head with it. He reeled and gob stoppers flew like shrapnel, they also acted like ball bearings on the floor and he went arse over tit into a ‘Lucky Balls’ pintable. Up to that moment I had never in my life hit anyone in earnest and it was a deeply satisfying (if reprehensible) thing to do. Harry came remorselessly on and I ran for the back door. Mad Dog was already there, grinning as Audrey came towards him, she paused as if she was giving up and then suddenly thrust Pedro at him who dutifully sank his teeth into his nose. She left Pedro hanging and ducked under Mad Dog’s arm and into the lane behind, as I passed Mad Dog I grabbed Pedro and dragged him and possibly a part of Mad Dog’s nose away and sprinted for the car. As I ran I fumbled for my keys and shouted to Audrey “Do they have guns, do you think?”
“Of course they’ve got guns, they’re fucking gangsters you pratt”
We were at the car, Razors and Whitley Bay were only 50 yards off and I was sorting through the 20 odd keys on the ring and in a rare moment of clarity it occurred to me that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing to have the keys to my old bicycle padlock, my mother’s front door, the Fiesta I wrote off 2 years before, and the allotment shed all on the same ring as the Escort’s.
“For Chrissake open the door” shrieked Audrey
I did and threw Pedro onto the back seat and in a startling reversal of Sod’s Law the Escort started first time. As we pulled away I could see Razors and Whitley Bay running back towards Harry who was getting into his Humber at the other end of the lane.
What to do? Where to go? All I could think of was that as long as we kept moving they couldn’t get us. I couldn’t believe that they would start shooting on a busy Saturday afternoon with crowds of eager pleasure seekers thronging the streets wondering what they were doing in Roker. At the end of the lane I turned right only because the road seemed clearer that way and then right again but Harry’s red Humber Snipe loomed large in the rear view mirror. I also noticed that as I looked back that Pedro had a wild look in his eye which I put down to his having tasted human blood for the first time. We turned left at the prom and headed north with the sea on our right. For a while the road was clear and we got up speed but then I saw a coach up ahead disgorging OAPs, zimmers and wheelchairs, traffic was backing up and the only way out was hard left across a shallow ditch and onto the golf course. Bizarrely dressed golfers queuing at the 13th tee scattered (why on earth is it that perfectly normal people think that it is necessary to wear a lemon yellow sweater and tartan trousers in order to play this stupid game?) and I gunned the Escort down the fairway. Harry followed and reasoning that there must be a road by the distant club house away to my left I headed in that direction. Audrey was unhelpfully screaming “Faster! Faster!” Harry saw what I was up to and headed over to his left to cut me off but in doing so he made the same mistake that many golfers on Roker’s 13th hole must have made. He didn’t notice the concealed bunker to the left of the green. There was a resounding “Crunk” and we looked back to see the Humber’s front bumper firmly embedded in the sand and the rear wheels spinning in thin air.
“They’re buggered” said Audrey concisely and delightedly.
We got back on the road and I turned to her and said “Where shall we go?”
“South. Let’s go south” she said.
So we did. With only the clothes we stood up in and a wild eyed Schnauzer on the back seat, we headed south down the A1, branching off at Leeds to join the M1. At one point Audrey asked me “Have you got somewhere to live in London?”
“Yes. I’ve got a place near Victoria”
“Who’s she?” she asked suddenly concerned.
I realised then that Audrey had never been to London and that life was going to be interesting.
At about eight-o-clock that evening, with the sun low in the sky we pulled into Leicester Forest Services for petrol and food. On the first night of our new life together we should have been toasting the future in champagne, as it was we sat down to saveloy and chips, I had coffee and Audrey had a bottle of Vimto.
When she finished she got up saying “I’m just going to buy some knickers and a toothbrush” and went off to the shop. A few minutes later I felt a kiss on the back of my neck.
“Did you get everything you needed love?” I asked
“Yeah I got you” said a deep Geordie voice. I whirled round and there was Mad Dog McKlusky, his nose shredded and with a kitchen knife in his hand.
“Get up slowly. We’re going to the car. Do as I say or I’ll fucking fillet you”.
I got up, McKlusky took my right arm and Whitley Bay the left, in the doorway stood Audrey, eyes wide with terror, flanked by Harry and Razors.
We all moved awkwardly out of the cafeteria and into the broad corridor that led towards the car park. On the right of the exit doors was a plump woman in a headscarf selling AA membership and on the left was a tall bespectacled man selling RAC membership.
“Gosh I’d like to join the AA please” I announced loudly. The plump lady leapt forward with her clipboard.
“Certainly sir! I just need to take some details”
“Ooh the RAC! I’ve always wanted to be a member of that” cried Audrey who was always quick on the uptake.
“Now then my good woman, tell me what the AA has to offer” I said.
“Well sir! Where to start? I could offer you our premier package which includes Relay, Home Start, Full Breakdown Cover, European Breakdown…”
“Hey big feller, you can offer a better service than that fat bitch over there can’t you?” said Audrey seductively to the RAC man.
“Er well the RAC are UK leaders in…” he began hesitantly.
“Who are you calling a fat bitch? Is she with you?” the AA lady demanded of Harry. “You should keep her under control”
Harry and his hitmen were unsure of what to do and we were starting to collect an audience of interested spectators.
“Listen” I said to Audrey “that long streak of piss next to you wouldn’t know a breakdown from shit in a bucket. You should stick with plumpy here and the AA”.
The RAC man finally started to lose it. “I’ll have you know that I am a fully qualified..”
“Pratt” I finished for him. “Give me that clipboard sweetie. You want details! I’ll give you details!” I shrugged off Whitley Bay and Mad Dog and snatched the AA lady’s clipboard and pen. Harry’s men were starting to show their natural desire for anonymity and were stepping back into the crowd, only Harry stood firm.
“Here’s one detail for you! This is Harry Ackroyd the famous one-eyed comedian” and with that I poked him in the eye with Plumpy’s biro and Audrey and I were through the doors and sprinting through the car park. Harry and his men didn’t take long to disentangle themselves from the fracas between the UK’s top motoring organisations but then they hesitated, not sure whether to come after us or to go for the battered Humber which was at the other end of the car park but by that time we were in the Escort heading for the slip road to the M1 and the south.
Foot to the floor the Escort had a fair turn of speed, but the Humber was certainly faster but how much faster?. How much of a lead did we have? Could I risk turning off or would they catch us on the roundabout at the top of the slip road? If we stayed on the motorway would they just shunt us off the road or shoot out our tyres? Did they really have guns? Why had I decided to have an affair with a gangster’s wife?
“Can you see them?” I asked Audrey
“No. No sign”. She and Pedro stared back up the M1.
“Keep looking. Harry won’t give up”
By the time we had gone about 15 miles from the services I was starting to relax but then Audrey swore “Fuck! They’re coming”
“How far?” I asked.
“Way back but they’re gaining. Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“Nope this is it”
We were on a long stretch with no exits, Watford Gap services were coming up in about 12 miles but that would effectively be a cul-de-sac.
All we could do was keep going and hope that something would turn up. Eventually I could make out the Humber clearly in the rear-view mirror and as it drew closer I could see Harry was driving, his trilby silhouetted against the setting sun.
“Shit what are we going to do?” I asked no one in particular.
Audrey looked across at me. “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what Southern Bastard. I’d do it all again”.
What would Harry do? If they rammed us they were as likely to die as we were. No they would probably try to draw alongside and shoot us from close range. I started to swerve from side to side across the motorway to prevent them doing that but other traffic started to get in the way and a couple of miles short of Watford Gap the Humber started to creep up on the inside. Audrey opened her window and started to fling anything loose that she could find at the Humber’s windscreen, her shoes, my AA book (yes, I was already a member), a can of de-icer, the previous weekend’s Sunday papers, a packet of Fisherman’s Friends, but to no avail, I could see Razors, gun in hand, ready behind Harry. Then a miracle, the Humber vanished, or to be more accurate it peeled off into the slow lane and turned into Watford Gap services.
“Where’d they go? What happened?” I gasped.
“I don’t know” said Audrey “We’re OK aren’t we? We’ve done it!”
Then she stopped talking and started laughing. It took a while before she could speak. “I’ve just remembered something. On his deathbed Harry’s Dad made him swear never to go further south than Watford Gap unless Newcastle were in the FA Cup Final. Harry always kept that promise.”
So we were saved by an old man’s loathing of the South and all it’s works. Excellent!
Did we live happily ever after? No of course not. About six weeks after we set up home in London, Pedro, the window cleaner, after whom the dog was named, turned up while I was out and Audrey ran off with him to Malaga. They have run a successful Bar-Cabaret there for the last twenty five years, I get a card every Christmas. She did leave Pedro, the dog, behind with a label on his collar saying “Please look after this Schnauzer. Thank you” which I thought was quite witty by Audrey’s standards and of course I have the riveter’s coat hanging at the back of the wardrobe and it still smells of sweat, sump oil and sex.
Budapest to the Black Sea
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Sunday, 11 May 2008
My Career in Stand-Up Comedy
Some years ago I found myself at one of the crossroads that life throws up and almost entirely by chance I chose the road signposted ‘Stand-up Comedy’. I was in Newcastle supervising the RSC’s annual season. The job wasn’t too demanding and I spent a fair amount of time in the Dog & Table Lamp just around the corner from the Theatre Royal. It was a quiet bar that discouraged the younger trade and one could sit at the bar and brood on life’s unfairness undisturbed. One night I found myself sitting next to a thickset elderly man with a trilby jammed on his head. As men in Newcastle do we started to talk about football and football and as time went on I noticed that he was getting more attention from the staff and the rest of the pub than normal. When he tottered off to the loo I asked the barmaid who he was.
“Ooh don’t you know! That’s Harry Ackroyd, the comic. ‘That’s my dog that is’.“
“What?” I said.
“That’s his catch-phrase silly”
As I found out later it had once been the best known catch-phrase north of the Trent. When he returned I explained that I too was in “Showbiz” albeit a very different branch and for the next few nights we met and despite the disparity in our ages, Harry was well into his sixties then, we got on famously swapping jokes and anecdotes until he had to return to his club and I to the Theatre Royal for curtain down. One night Harry said to me “Listen lad when you’ve finished with that Shakespeare lot tonight come down to the club. I’d like you to see it before you go”.
So after collecting a few ‘meaningful’ notes from the director of Titus Andronicus on curtain down at the Theatre Royal I slipped away and, following Harry’s directions, I headed down Grey St towards the Tyne. As instructed I turned left before the viaduct and there tucked away in a seedy cul-de-sac was “Harry’s Place”. The name was set out in red neon and below that was the image of a cheeky terrier peering up a pretty girl’s skirt, the terrier’s tail appearing to wag only intermittently as some of the neon circuits were not working. On the poster next to the entrance Harry himself was top of the bill, followed by Audrey Fairclough “Songstress of the North”, Eduardo & His Marimba Muchachos, and a ventriloquist called Alvin Toxteth, “The Little Chappie with the Little Chappie”. The tiny foyer appeared to be deserted until a head popped up from behind a counter and said “Can I take your hat sir?”
“Sorry I don’t have a hat” I replied.
“Oh I know. I know. Nobody wears hats these days. I don’t know why I come in at all”. This I learned later was Vivienne, the octogenarian hat-check girl, who Harry had stopped paying in 1965 but she came in every night to keep warm and get the occasional free port and brandy.
“You’ll be that London feller, Harry’s expecting you. He’s at the bar”, she continued, gesturing towards a pair of red and gold double doors.
I went into the club itself, it smelt the same as clubs the world over, from Macclesfield to Macau, stale beer, stale fags and stale hopes. There was a whiff of disinfectant and the Gents in the air and the carpet stuck to my shoes. I walked over to Harry who was deep in conversation at the bar with three heavies who looked like extras from ‘Get Carter’. He shooed them away as I approached and gestured to the barmaid, who was only a little younger than the hat-check girl, for two scotches.
“Glad you could come lad. I want you to watch the show and tell me what you think” he said briskly.
“Er OK Harry but…”
He had already gone backstage. I sat down at the nearest table and studied my fellow punters. There were barely 30 people in the room and most looked as if they had been there as long as the club’s staff. The band, which consisted of piano, guitar and drums, stumbled onto the stage and played a rousing version of Tijuana Taxi before Alvin Toxteth, the teenage ventriloquist, came on, his dummy a cheeky Geordie layabout, his material low grade smut. He was followed by the Marimba Muchachos, three skinny blokes, who, as the barmaid Hilda helpfully told me, all hailed from Gateshead and were remarkably untalented acrobats. At this point I started to look for the Fire Exit and a hasty escape before Harry returned but then something remarkable happened, Audrey Fairclough walked out onto the stage. In her mid thirties, with honey blonde hair, wearing a simple black dress, she stood quite still for a moment centre stage before nodding to the MD to start her first number. The room came to life, the band sat up straighter, the fossilised audience stirred, Hilda stopped washing glasses and I was aware that Audrey Fairclough had that something that makes people want to watch, even if she was only doing the ironing. She started with The Girl from Ipanema and followed on with a string of standards, Funny Valentine, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the usual stuff, the sort of music that made the invention of Rock & Roll inevitable. At the end of her set she introduced Harry who bounced onto the stage and launched into a routine that I guessed had barely changed in 40 years. Sure there were topical gags (Thatcher had just been elected to her first term and Newcastle United were in the Second Division) but there was a period flavour to his act, a black and white quality of the sort that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse have sent up mercilessly in recent years. However at the end the loyal fossils applauded gamely and Harry wound up the show by encouraging the audience to keep drinking at the bar. He then popped his head out of the pass door and beckoned me through.
“Look Harry I…”
“I know it’s crap lad, you don’t need to say anything. I asked you here tonight because together we can change it”.
“What do you mean?” Over his shoulder I could see a blonde figure in a black dress disappearing up the wing. Harry led me into his tiny office and there surrounded by photos of Harry shaking hands with Englebert Humperdinck, kissing Shirley Bassey and, curiously, playing golf with Alma Cogan, he explained his plan.
“The whole show is old hat. I know that. Audrey is special but those three poofs from Gateshead are useless and the vent is a smarmy little shit. What the show needs is energy to kick it off and that’s where you come in. You’re a lah-di-dah educated bloke from down south and the punters will hate you. We are going to trade on that. Together we are going to write a short routine that you are going to open the show with. I’ll bet you can be a patronising bastard if you try. We can really wind them up, they’ll love it. Brilliant eh!”
“No Harry. You’re crazy. You may be right about me being a patronising bastard but doing it professionally, that’s different”.
“No trust me lad we can do this. What else have you got on? Nothing! “
Unsurprisingly at this point I thought to myself “What the fuck am I doing here in this time warp of a nightclub listening to this insane scheme from a deranged alcoholic comic?” But then I had three further thoughts.
a) Harry was right, I had no other work lined up.
b) Why not? I was a bumptious young man and fancied a change and a challenge.
And most importantly
c) I could tread the same boards as Audrey Fairclough.
It’s also worth mentioning that I was drunk at the time. After a certain amount of persuasion I agreed to come back the following afternoon to start work writing the routine with Harry.
So for the remainder of my stint on the RSC season I led a double life, during the day Harry and I ground out a script designed to piss off anyone born north of Watford and by night I tended to Stratford’s finest.
After a few days Harry decided that our plan was sufficiently well advanced to be broached to his fellow performers and took me round backstage to meet everyone. First I was introduced to George who looked after everything technical backstage as well as Hilda’s empties. As my act was explained to him he looked from Harry to me as if he was in presence of two simpletons and then deciding that I must have been totally conned by Harry he patted me on the back and said kindly “You’ll be fine”. I had to agree with Harry’s opinion of the artists at the bottom of the bill, Alvin Toxteth was a smarmy little shit and the Muchachos were absolutely useless but then he took me to meet Audrey. She had the biggest dressing room which she shared with Pedro, her Schnauzer, (who George told me was named after a window cleaner that she had once taken a shine to), and as we entered she didn’t turn round but looked at me in her mirror.
“Harry tells me you’re here to give us all a kick up the arse” she said coolly.
“ No. No. Not at all. I’m only…”
“I’m looking forward to that” she continued. She was wearing a pink silk dressing gown and was showing one naked foot and one very elegant ankle. I felt what little confidence I had as a budding cabaret artist dribble out through the soles of my shoes and gazing at that ankle I idiotically said “Just think of me as a warm-up man” .
“I’ll certainly do that” she replied without a change of expression. At this point Harry decided that I had made a big enough tit of myself and pushed me out of the door.
“Don’t worry about Audrey, she’s takes a while to get to know folk” he said apologetically.
The RSC completed their season and moved on to the Barbican. I stayed behind to become “Ted Irwin – That Irritating Bastard from Down South”, that was how Harry had me subtly billed, as I discovered when I entered the club on the night of my stand-up debut. Harry and I had a last minute run-through, I got into my rented tux (we had thought about tweeds and a monocle at one point) and went off to the loo to throw up. When I came back to the stage Harry rushed up to me saying “You haven’t got an intro. You need an intro to get you on stage”.
“Oh great Harry! What do you suggest The Eton fucking Boating Song? “ I retorted.
“Brilliant lad!” He cried and scuttled off to tell the MD. As he left I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Audrey. “Good luck southern boy “she said and as she turned away she gave me the sauciest wink imaginable.
A few moments later Harry gave me a shove and I made my first entrance as a stand-up comedian to a chorus of the Eton Boating Song gleefully delivered in thick Geordie accents by the ramshackle house band.
To be continued
“Ooh don’t you know! That’s Harry Ackroyd, the comic. ‘That’s my dog that is’.“
“What?” I said.
“That’s his catch-phrase silly”
As I found out later it had once been the best known catch-phrase north of the Trent. When he returned I explained that I too was in “Showbiz” albeit a very different branch and for the next few nights we met and despite the disparity in our ages, Harry was well into his sixties then, we got on famously swapping jokes and anecdotes until he had to return to his club and I to the Theatre Royal for curtain down. One night Harry said to me “Listen lad when you’ve finished with that Shakespeare lot tonight come down to the club. I’d like you to see it before you go”.
So after collecting a few ‘meaningful’ notes from the director of Titus Andronicus on curtain down at the Theatre Royal I slipped away and, following Harry’s directions, I headed down Grey St towards the Tyne. As instructed I turned left before the viaduct and there tucked away in a seedy cul-de-sac was “Harry’s Place”. The name was set out in red neon and below that was the image of a cheeky terrier peering up a pretty girl’s skirt, the terrier’s tail appearing to wag only intermittently as some of the neon circuits were not working. On the poster next to the entrance Harry himself was top of the bill, followed by Audrey Fairclough “Songstress of the North”, Eduardo & His Marimba Muchachos, and a ventriloquist called Alvin Toxteth, “The Little Chappie with the Little Chappie”. The tiny foyer appeared to be deserted until a head popped up from behind a counter and said “Can I take your hat sir?”
“Sorry I don’t have a hat” I replied.
“Oh I know. I know. Nobody wears hats these days. I don’t know why I come in at all”. This I learned later was Vivienne, the octogenarian hat-check girl, who Harry had stopped paying in 1965 but she came in every night to keep warm and get the occasional free port and brandy.
“You’ll be that London feller, Harry’s expecting you. He’s at the bar”, she continued, gesturing towards a pair of red and gold double doors.
I went into the club itself, it smelt the same as clubs the world over, from Macclesfield to Macau, stale beer, stale fags and stale hopes. There was a whiff of disinfectant and the Gents in the air and the carpet stuck to my shoes. I walked over to Harry who was deep in conversation at the bar with three heavies who looked like extras from ‘Get Carter’. He shooed them away as I approached and gestured to the barmaid, who was only a little younger than the hat-check girl, for two scotches.
“Glad you could come lad. I want you to watch the show and tell me what you think” he said briskly.
“Er OK Harry but…”
He had already gone backstage. I sat down at the nearest table and studied my fellow punters. There were barely 30 people in the room and most looked as if they had been there as long as the club’s staff. The band, which consisted of piano, guitar and drums, stumbled onto the stage and played a rousing version of Tijuana Taxi before Alvin Toxteth, the teenage ventriloquist, came on, his dummy a cheeky Geordie layabout, his material low grade smut. He was followed by the Marimba Muchachos, three skinny blokes, who, as the barmaid Hilda helpfully told me, all hailed from Gateshead and were remarkably untalented acrobats. At this point I started to look for the Fire Exit and a hasty escape before Harry returned but then something remarkable happened, Audrey Fairclough walked out onto the stage. In her mid thirties, with honey blonde hair, wearing a simple black dress, she stood quite still for a moment centre stage before nodding to the MD to start her first number. The room came to life, the band sat up straighter, the fossilised audience stirred, Hilda stopped washing glasses and I was aware that Audrey Fairclough had that something that makes people want to watch, even if she was only doing the ironing. She started with The Girl from Ipanema and followed on with a string of standards, Funny Valentine, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the usual stuff, the sort of music that made the invention of Rock & Roll inevitable. At the end of her set she introduced Harry who bounced onto the stage and launched into a routine that I guessed had barely changed in 40 years. Sure there were topical gags (Thatcher had just been elected to her first term and Newcastle United were in the Second Division) but there was a period flavour to his act, a black and white quality of the sort that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse have sent up mercilessly in recent years. However at the end the loyal fossils applauded gamely and Harry wound up the show by encouraging the audience to keep drinking at the bar. He then popped his head out of the pass door and beckoned me through.
“Look Harry I…”
“I know it’s crap lad, you don’t need to say anything. I asked you here tonight because together we can change it”.
“What do you mean?” Over his shoulder I could see a blonde figure in a black dress disappearing up the wing. Harry led me into his tiny office and there surrounded by photos of Harry shaking hands with Englebert Humperdinck, kissing Shirley Bassey and, curiously, playing golf with Alma Cogan, he explained his plan.
“The whole show is old hat. I know that. Audrey is special but those three poofs from Gateshead are useless and the vent is a smarmy little shit. What the show needs is energy to kick it off and that’s where you come in. You’re a lah-di-dah educated bloke from down south and the punters will hate you. We are going to trade on that. Together we are going to write a short routine that you are going to open the show with. I’ll bet you can be a patronising bastard if you try. We can really wind them up, they’ll love it. Brilliant eh!”
“No Harry. You’re crazy. You may be right about me being a patronising bastard but doing it professionally, that’s different”.
“No trust me lad we can do this. What else have you got on? Nothing! “
Unsurprisingly at this point I thought to myself “What the fuck am I doing here in this time warp of a nightclub listening to this insane scheme from a deranged alcoholic comic?” But then I had three further thoughts.
a) Harry was right, I had no other work lined up.
b) Why not? I was a bumptious young man and fancied a change and a challenge.
And most importantly
c) I could tread the same boards as Audrey Fairclough.
It’s also worth mentioning that I was drunk at the time. After a certain amount of persuasion I agreed to come back the following afternoon to start work writing the routine with Harry.
So for the remainder of my stint on the RSC season I led a double life, during the day Harry and I ground out a script designed to piss off anyone born north of Watford and by night I tended to Stratford’s finest.
After a few days Harry decided that our plan was sufficiently well advanced to be broached to his fellow performers and took me round backstage to meet everyone. First I was introduced to George who looked after everything technical backstage as well as Hilda’s empties. As my act was explained to him he looked from Harry to me as if he was in presence of two simpletons and then deciding that I must have been totally conned by Harry he patted me on the back and said kindly “You’ll be fine”. I had to agree with Harry’s opinion of the artists at the bottom of the bill, Alvin Toxteth was a smarmy little shit and the Muchachos were absolutely useless but then he took me to meet Audrey. She had the biggest dressing room which she shared with Pedro, her Schnauzer, (who George told me was named after a window cleaner that she had once taken a shine to), and as we entered she didn’t turn round but looked at me in her mirror.
“Harry tells me you’re here to give us all a kick up the arse” she said coolly.
“ No. No. Not at all. I’m only…”
“I’m looking forward to that” she continued. She was wearing a pink silk dressing gown and was showing one naked foot and one very elegant ankle. I felt what little confidence I had as a budding cabaret artist dribble out through the soles of my shoes and gazing at that ankle I idiotically said “Just think of me as a warm-up man” .
“I’ll certainly do that” she replied without a change of expression. At this point Harry decided that I had made a big enough tit of myself and pushed me out of the door.
“Don’t worry about Audrey, she’s takes a while to get to know folk” he said apologetically.
The RSC completed their season and moved on to the Barbican. I stayed behind to become “Ted Irwin – That Irritating Bastard from Down South”, that was how Harry had me subtly billed, as I discovered when I entered the club on the night of my stand-up debut. Harry and I had a last minute run-through, I got into my rented tux (we had thought about tweeds and a monocle at one point) and went off to the loo to throw up. When I came back to the stage Harry rushed up to me saying “You haven’t got an intro. You need an intro to get you on stage”.
“Oh great Harry! What do you suggest The Eton fucking Boating Song? “ I retorted.
“Brilliant lad!” He cried and scuttled off to tell the MD. As he left I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Audrey. “Good luck southern boy “she said and as she turned away she gave me the sauciest wink imaginable.
A few moments later Harry gave me a shove and I made my first entrance as a stand-up comedian to a chorus of the Eton Boating Song gleefully delivered in thick Geordie accents by the ramshackle house band.
To be continued
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Apologies
Sorry but a mixture of domestic crises and bank holiday outings have prevented me posting this week. Back next week with "My Career in Stand-Up Comedy".
Sunday, 27 April 2008
How to Put on a Musical 5 – The Creative Team (Part 2)
Costume Designer
Get a nice one. Get a cheerful one. They don’t have much of a life. They spend most of their time in small rather smelly rooms looking at actors in their underpants. The rest of their time they are dragged round the shops by the Costume Supervisor looking for fabrics, when they find one that they like they are firmly told by the Supervisor that they can’t afford it. The biggest cross they have to bear is that producers, who are nearly all men, don’t understand a) how clothes are made, b) anything about shopping and c) how a wig can cost as much as a decent second-hand car. So in the initial budget the allowance for costumes and wigs is normally 50% of what it should be and there is no end of woe and misery in the process of negotiating the figure up to a realistic amount.
Lighting Designer
In the good old days Lighting Designers didn’t exist, in those days the Company Manager would pop into the theatre, tell Cyril, the electrician, which colours to put in the ‘battens’ and then return to the pub to finish his pork pie and bottle of stout. Then at some point in the 1960s someone called Richard Pilbrow insisted that we all take lighting more seriously and it became a legal requirement to have a lighting designer. Engagingly the first generation of lighting designers were drunk most of the time. I have fond memories of a tech of a musical where the LD was spark out with is head on the DSM’s lap at the production desk. She gamely claimed that the LD had “just gone out to buy some cigarettes” and lit most of Act 2 herself. For almost a decade a bottle of Scotch on the lighting desk was de rigeur and alcohol fuelled creative differences, with headsets hurled across the auditorium, were the stuff of legend. These days it’s hard to come up with a convincing risk assessment for that bottle Scotch on the production desk, broken glass hazard, fire hazard, ill judged proposition to the choreographer’s assistant hazard and so on.
Today the top-notch lighting designer needs to be sober and on his mettle just to keep up with the latest technical developments, someone is likely to have invented a new moving light in the time it takes to fit the show up and there is always a smart arse 20 year old at the production desk who is desperate to impress.
Sound Designer
The first thing any aspiring Sound Designer needs to know is that, statistically, they are more likely to be fired before the First Night than any other member of the creative team. Why should this be? It’s because unlike the other disciplines, lighting, set and costume design which nobody understands, where sound is concerned anybody including the Producer’s mother-in-law (possibly particularly the Producer’s mother-in-law) can stand at the the back of the stalls and say “Ooer I don’t think much of the sound”. Anybody who ever owned a Decca Dansette thinks that they are a sound expert.
Historically Sound Designers are even later arrivals at the Musical Theatre Ball than the Lighting Designers. It’s only relatively recently that we have all decided to take Sound Design seriously and even now we sometimes smirk a bit when we think that no one is looking. In the Good Old Days there was no amplified sound, the band played in the pit and the cast sang on stage and if you couldn’t hear them you fired them and employed someone that you could hear. In the early days of the amplified musical it was considered a result if you heard the words and the music on the same evening. How things have changed. These days the sound rental package for a West End Musical is likely to cost twice the lighting package and you hear every note, every word, it’s almost as if you were in the same room as the performers.
Sound Designers need two important qualities. Firstly they need Secretary of the UN style political skills to deal with all the dozens of people who will come up to them and helpfully say “I was sitting in Row G/ Row AA/ Upstairs/ in the Bar and I couldn’t hear anything. I just thought you should know.” More importantly they need to spot the poisonous bastards who don’t pass on this helpful information but go and whinge to the producer about it. They also need obvious technical gravitas. It’s absolutely no good for a sound designer “Hmm that’s not loud enough” or “Turn the bass up on that”, they need to move in a techno-babble universe that only they and their keen bean assistants understand. When the chips are down this is likely to be their only defence against anything that the producer’s mother in law can throw at them.
Fight Director
All you need to know about fight directors is that they are never available and you probably don’t need one anyway. Figures from the Michigan Institute of Spurious Statistics show that on average Fight Directors are available for 8 minutes per calendar month. So it’s best to do without unless you are doing Zorro or Fight Club – The Musical in which case you will need squads of them working in relays.
Project Model – Maintenance!
The producers of Maintenance have done themselves proud in employing Buzz Phelps as Costume Designer. She has worked with Alvin Toxteth many times before and apart from being talented she is also unrelentingly cheerful, a keen Arsenal supporter and likes gin. She may be a welcome antidote to the Director/Set Design team who tend to be a little dour.
Geoff Osram, Maintenance’s lighting designer, is a direct descendant of Sir Horace Osram the inventor of the late 19th century automatic pig feeder which revolutionised breakfast, but he has no connections with the light bulbs which were invented by a bunch of Germans. He has been around a while and though not considered top rate or inspirational he is definitely a safe pair of hands. He tries hard to understand the creative needs of his directors and designers even if, at times, he completely misunderstands them, not being the sharpest tool in the drawer. He likes to wear pullovers.
Ian “The Geek” Geek is a new talent in the West End and much to everyone’s surprise picked up an Olivier for his sound design on Noddy & Me, the Slade musical, and his Heston Aerodrome sound effects on the Neville Chamberlain musical Whoops-a-Daisy were well regarded by his peers. He is known as “The Geek” not only because that is his name but because he is the ultimate anally retentive, techno-bore who only reads manuals and catalogues. He is the sort of man who reads the instructions on a Pot Noodle. He was reputed to have no sex life at all until one day in the middle of the ‘tech’ of Hedda Gabler at the National, a Mrs Geek appeared with four children, who she deposited in the stalls, she then hurled a bunch of keys at The Geek screaming “The car’s in the NCP. I’m off you boring bastard”.
Get a nice one. Get a cheerful one. They don’t have much of a life. They spend most of their time in small rather smelly rooms looking at actors in their underpants. The rest of their time they are dragged round the shops by the Costume Supervisor looking for fabrics, when they find one that they like they are firmly told by the Supervisor that they can’t afford it. The biggest cross they have to bear is that producers, who are nearly all men, don’t understand a) how clothes are made, b) anything about shopping and c) how a wig can cost as much as a decent second-hand car. So in the initial budget the allowance for costumes and wigs is normally 50% of what it should be and there is no end of woe and misery in the process of negotiating the figure up to a realistic amount.
Lighting Designer
In the good old days Lighting Designers didn’t exist, in those days the Company Manager would pop into the theatre, tell Cyril, the electrician, which colours to put in the ‘battens’ and then return to the pub to finish his pork pie and bottle of stout. Then at some point in the 1960s someone called Richard Pilbrow insisted that we all take lighting more seriously and it became a legal requirement to have a lighting designer. Engagingly the first generation of lighting designers were drunk most of the time. I have fond memories of a tech of a musical where the LD was spark out with is head on the DSM’s lap at the production desk. She gamely claimed that the LD had “just gone out to buy some cigarettes” and lit most of Act 2 herself. For almost a decade a bottle of Scotch on the lighting desk was de rigeur and alcohol fuelled creative differences, with headsets hurled across the auditorium, were the stuff of legend. These days it’s hard to come up with a convincing risk assessment for that bottle Scotch on the production desk, broken glass hazard, fire hazard, ill judged proposition to the choreographer’s assistant hazard and so on.
Today the top-notch lighting designer needs to be sober and on his mettle just to keep up with the latest technical developments, someone is likely to have invented a new moving light in the time it takes to fit the show up and there is always a smart arse 20 year old at the production desk who is desperate to impress.
Sound Designer
The first thing any aspiring Sound Designer needs to know is that, statistically, they are more likely to be fired before the First Night than any other member of the creative team. Why should this be? It’s because unlike the other disciplines, lighting, set and costume design which nobody understands, where sound is concerned anybody including the Producer’s mother-in-law (possibly particularly the Producer’s mother-in-law) can stand at the the back of the stalls and say “Ooer I don’t think much of the sound”. Anybody who ever owned a Decca Dansette thinks that they are a sound expert.
Historically Sound Designers are even later arrivals at the Musical Theatre Ball than the Lighting Designers. It’s only relatively recently that we have all decided to take Sound Design seriously and even now we sometimes smirk a bit when we think that no one is looking. In the Good Old Days there was no amplified sound, the band played in the pit and the cast sang on stage and if you couldn’t hear them you fired them and employed someone that you could hear. In the early days of the amplified musical it was considered a result if you heard the words and the music on the same evening. How things have changed. These days the sound rental package for a West End Musical is likely to cost twice the lighting package and you hear every note, every word, it’s almost as if you were in the same room as the performers.
Sound Designers need two important qualities. Firstly they need Secretary of the UN style political skills to deal with all the dozens of people who will come up to them and helpfully say “I was sitting in Row G/ Row AA/ Upstairs/ in the Bar and I couldn’t hear anything. I just thought you should know.” More importantly they need to spot the poisonous bastards who don’t pass on this helpful information but go and whinge to the producer about it. They also need obvious technical gravitas. It’s absolutely no good for a sound designer “Hmm that’s not loud enough” or “Turn the bass up on that”, they need to move in a techno-babble universe that only they and their keen bean assistants understand. When the chips are down this is likely to be their only defence against anything that the producer’s mother in law can throw at them.
Fight Director
All you need to know about fight directors is that they are never available and you probably don’t need one anyway. Figures from the Michigan Institute of Spurious Statistics show that on average Fight Directors are available for 8 minutes per calendar month. So it’s best to do without unless you are doing Zorro or Fight Club – The Musical in which case you will need squads of them working in relays.
Project Model – Maintenance!
The producers of Maintenance have done themselves proud in employing Buzz Phelps as Costume Designer. She has worked with Alvin Toxteth many times before and apart from being talented she is also unrelentingly cheerful, a keen Arsenal supporter and likes gin. She may be a welcome antidote to the Director/Set Design team who tend to be a little dour.
Geoff Osram, Maintenance’s lighting designer, is a direct descendant of Sir Horace Osram the inventor of the late 19th century automatic pig feeder which revolutionised breakfast, but he has no connections with the light bulbs which were invented by a bunch of Germans. He has been around a while and though not considered top rate or inspirational he is definitely a safe pair of hands. He tries hard to understand the creative needs of his directors and designers even if, at times, he completely misunderstands them, not being the sharpest tool in the drawer. He likes to wear pullovers.
Ian “The Geek” Geek is a new talent in the West End and much to everyone’s surprise picked up an Olivier for his sound design on Noddy & Me, the Slade musical, and his Heston Aerodrome sound effects on the Neville Chamberlain musical Whoops-a-Daisy were well regarded by his peers. He is known as “The Geek” not only because that is his name but because he is the ultimate anally retentive, techno-bore who only reads manuals and catalogues. He is the sort of man who reads the instructions on a Pot Noodle. He was reputed to have no sex life at all until one day in the middle of the ‘tech’ of Hedda Gabler at the National, a Mrs Geek appeared with four children, who she deposited in the stalls, she then hurled a bunch of keys at The Geek screaming “The car’s in the NCP. I’m off you boring bastard”.
Monday, 21 April 2008
How to Put on a Musical 4 – The Creative Team (Part 1)
Choreographer
Musical and dance go together like Germany and France - centuries of conflict. Directors resent the Choreographer’s need for rehearsal time and space, Set Designers resent the need for ‘a big flat bit in the middle’ to accommodate show stopping routines and Costume Designers despair at all those splitting gussets. Worst of all most dancers can’t act and don’t necessarily sing too well so the arguments start at the casting stage. Then again there are those who just don’t like dancing at all. Queen’s Roger Taylor expressed this point of view clearly the day he arrived at We Will Rock You rehearsals during a run of Radio Ga-Ga and loudly declared “Oh I fucking hate dancing! Can’t we cut all the dancing?”
Before you hire a choreographer you need to consider the dance style of the piece,
arty-farty balletic or tap, there is some middle ground but these are the two ends of the dance spectrum. Human beings have long known something of the emotional impact of tap dancing, the Romans were the first to attach ‘taps’ to their shoes, there are the accursed Morris dancers, and we should never forget the achievement of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard who routed Marshall Kutozov’s 4th Division by the sheer ferocity of their tap dancing on the cobbles of Austerlitz. After a peak in the Fred & Ginger years, tap dipped in popularity until relatively recently, and now nearly every village hall in the land echoes to the relentless tramp of OAP and toddler tap classes. Whichever way you go your choreographer needs protection from the forces arrayed against him/her, they tend to get the rough end of the schedule, the rehearsal space, the casting and are quite often presented with a set at an angle of 45ยบ with a surface like black ice.
My best example of a choreographer in extremis was probably Reda, the French/Algerian choreographer of the awful musical version of Romeo & Juliet at the Piccadilly. He had the shortest fuse imaginable and was a rich source of entertainment to us all throughout the production but he excelled on one occasion during the tech. He asked the director David Freeman if one of the set trucks could be moved slightly, David mildly pointed out that if the truck were moved it would block the next entrance. Reda exploded, he bounded off the stage, into the auditorium, and ran around shouting “Fucking English! Fucking English!” at the top of his voice for several minutes before vanishing through the Front of House not to reappear for several days.
Set Designer
Stage Design! What a rich field of human endeavour this is. On the one hand ‘design’ has transformed some musicals from just being successful into a global brand, on the other inept design can strangle the life out of a perfectly good musical and dump it into a shallow grave.
The key thing is to make sure that your director and designer are at least on speaking terms and it’s even better if they have had a meeting or two before rehearsals. Surprisingly this is not always the case. You would be simply staggered by the number of design presentations that I have attended where it appears that the director and designer only met on the bus on the way there.
I could fill a book with quotations from set designers, bewildered, embittered, angry, betrayed, and I probably will, so you will have to wait until then to hear them.
Project Model – Maintenance!
Kevin McHarrowing has insisted that the set for Maintenance be designed by his regular designer Ulla Hoos. Dungaree clad Ulla is Latvian born but UK based, she won her theatrical spurs working as assistant to Frankfurt Opera Artistic Director Klaus Kronstadt on the notorious nude Carmen (set on a croquet lawn) and the even more notorious Der Rosenkavalier, which closed after three nights following violent protests from animal welfare organisations. Maintenance producers Samuel J Bloodlust and Alvin Toxteth have their doubts (like McHarrowing Hoos has never done a West End musical) but have agreed to his proposal. Bloodlust said at the time “She’s what we need. We need to be edgy on this one. Why the fuck does she wear dungarees all the time?” Ulla has already set off for Mlada Boleslav, location of the main Skoda plant, in order to stay with a typical Czech car-worker’s family in the interests of research. The Kopecnick family are puzzled as to why this grim faced Latvian lady has come to live with them but they take her money with good grace. Mrs Kopecnick, particularly, got rather flustered when Ulla insisted on taking a photograph of the entire family in the bath together. The time has not been wasted, McHarrowing has been bombarded with giga-bytes of gritty car plant imagery, hectares of gear boxes and brake linings, rows of dumpy canteen ladies, men in showers, girls in showers and Skodas, lots of Skodas. The only piece of research material that Ulla may choose to disregard is the farewell advice from Mrs Kopecnick’s mother “You are are a nice girl but you will never find the love of a good man while you are wearing those fucking dungarees”.
On the choreographic front Toxteth and Bloodlust have opted for experience and proven success and have snapped up the doyen of Broadway choreographers, Bobby Brasso. Brasso has become available after the abrupt cancellation of Fight Club – The Musical and has promised to make something “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” out of the opening ‘Skoda Production Line Clog Dance’. He is a legend on the ‘Great White Way’ for the commitment and intensity that he brings to his work. He is such a dauntingly intense individual that he makes Bob Fosse look like a Golden Labrador jumping into a pond. Also there isn’t a row of tents anywhere in the world camper than Bobby Brasso.
Musical and dance go together like Germany and France - centuries of conflict. Directors resent the Choreographer’s need for rehearsal time and space, Set Designers resent the need for ‘a big flat bit in the middle’ to accommodate show stopping routines and Costume Designers despair at all those splitting gussets. Worst of all most dancers can’t act and don’t necessarily sing too well so the arguments start at the casting stage. Then again there are those who just don’t like dancing at all. Queen’s Roger Taylor expressed this point of view clearly the day he arrived at We Will Rock You rehearsals during a run of Radio Ga-Ga and loudly declared “Oh I fucking hate dancing! Can’t we cut all the dancing?”
Before you hire a choreographer you need to consider the dance style of the piece,
arty-farty balletic or tap, there is some middle ground but these are the two ends of the dance spectrum. Human beings have long known something of the emotional impact of tap dancing, the Romans were the first to attach ‘taps’ to their shoes, there are the accursed Morris dancers, and we should never forget the achievement of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard who routed Marshall Kutozov’s 4th Division by the sheer ferocity of their tap dancing on the cobbles of Austerlitz. After a peak in the Fred & Ginger years, tap dipped in popularity until relatively recently, and now nearly every village hall in the land echoes to the relentless tramp of OAP and toddler tap classes. Whichever way you go your choreographer needs protection from the forces arrayed against him/her, they tend to get the rough end of the schedule, the rehearsal space, the casting and are quite often presented with a set at an angle of 45ยบ with a surface like black ice.
My best example of a choreographer in extremis was probably Reda, the French/Algerian choreographer of the awful musical version of Romeo & Juliet at the Piccadilly. He had the shortest fuse imaginable and was a rich source of entertainment to us all throughout the production but he excelled on one occasion during the tech. He asked the director David Freeman if one of the set trucks could be moved slightly, David mildly pointed out that if the truck were moved it would block the next entrance. Reda exploded, he bounded off the stage, into the auditorium, and ran around shouting “Fucking English! Fucking English!” at the top of his voice for several minutes before vanishing through the Front of House not to reappear for several days.
Set Designer
Stage Design! What a rich field of human endeavour this is. On the one hand ‘design’ has transformed some musicals from just being successful into a global brand, on the other inept design can strangle the life out of a perfectly good musical and dump it into a shallow grave.
The key thing is to make sure that your director and designer are at least on speaking terms and it’s even better if they have had a meeting or two before rehearsals. Surprisingly this is not always the case. You would be simply staggered by the number of design presentations that I have attended where it appears that the director and designer only met on the bus on the way there.
I could fill a book with quotations from set designers, bewildered, embittered, angry, betrayed, and I probably will, so you will have to wait until then to hear them.
Project Model – Maintenance!
Kevin McHarrowing has insisted that the set for Maintenance be designed by his regular designer Ulla Hoos. Dungaree clad Ulla is Latvian born but UK based, she won her theatrical spurs working as assistant to Frankfurt Opera Artistic Director Klaus Kronstadt on the notorious nude Carmen (set on a croquet lawn) and the even more notorious Der Rosenkavalier, which closed after three nights following violent protests from animal welfare organisations. Maintenance producers Samuel J Bloodlust and Alvin Toxteth have their doubts (like McHarrowing Hoos has never done a West End musical) but have agreed to his proposal. Bloodlust said at the time “She’s what we need. We need to be edgy on this one. Why the fuck does she wear dungarees all the time?” Ulla has already set off for Mlada Boleslav, location of the main Skoda plant, in order to stay with a typical Czech car-worker’s family in the interests of research. The Kopecnick family are puzzled as to why this grim faced Latvian lady has come to live with them but they take her money with good grace. Mrs Kopecnick, particularly, got rather flustered when Ulla insisted on taking a photograph of the entire family in the bath together. The time has not been wasted, McHarrowing has been bombarded with giga-bytes of gritty car plant imagery, hectares of gear boxes and brake linings, rows of dumpy canteen ladies, men in showers, girls in showers and Skodas, lots of Skodas. The only piece of research material that Ulla may choose to disregard is the farewell advice from Mrs Kopecnick’s mother “You are are a nice girl but you will never find the love of a good man while you are wearing those fucking dungarees”.
On the choreographic front Toxteth and Bloodlust have opted for experience and proven success and have snapped up the doyen of Broadway choreographers, Bobby Brasso. Brasso has become available after the abrupt cancellation of Fight Club – The Musical and has promised to make something “Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” out of the opening ‘Skoda Production Line Clog Dance’. He is a legend on the ‘Great White Way’ for the commitment and intensity that he brings to his work. He is such a dauntingly intense individual that he makes Bob Fosse look like a Golden Labrador jumping into a pond. Also there isn’t a row of tents anywhere in the world camper than Bobby Brasso.
Sunday, 13 April 2008
A Dull Day at the Post Office
The life of an international internet postcard dealer is not as glamorous as you might at first think. True there was that meeting in a West End hotel with a young Swiss banker representing a reclusive Geneva based collector who passed over a briefcase full of Swiss francs in return for the only known copy of a card showing Gustav Mahler playing snooker with James Joyce in Trieste, and then there was the time when a lady in a fur coat and not much else offered me far more than the asking price for a rare photographic card of the 1907 Upton-on Stour Coronation Day Sack Race in the car park of the Les Dennis Memorial Hall in Droitwich during the West Midlands ‘Card Bonanza’. But on the whole it’s a pretty mundane business, hours at the computer, scanning, listing, sending invoices, packing and finally the queue at the Post Office and the latter is where time stands still and you begin to question your whole existence and you think “What does it all mean?” “Why am I here?” “Is that blonde bloke in Hollyoaks really a girl?” I have tried to pass the time by humming the overture to Flying Dutchman in it’s entirety but there were complaints.
Last week however something remarkable happened while I stood near the back of the queue beyond the photo-booth, a lady wearing a badge on her ample bosom that proclaimed that she was both Valerie and a Supervisor approached me and said “Mr Irwin?”
“Er yes”
“Come with me please. Let me take those for you”. She seized my carrier bag full of post and strode to the nearest counter, elbowing aside an OAP who had waited 2 hours to buy a single second class stamp, “Sort these out for Mr Irwin”, she ordered the counter operative and then led me through the door next to the foreign exchange counter. On the right just inside the door was a young man sitting in a cubby hole surrounded by video screens.
“This is Craig” said Valerie “, he’s responsible for the CCTV round here. He’s the one you have to thank for all this. Craig has calculated that you have queued for more than 500 hours in this post office during the last year”.
“Very nice to meet you at last Mr Irwin” said Craig “I’ve put together a little montage of your highlights”. His nimble fingers sped over his keyboard and a series of images flashed up on the screens around me. There I was standing next to the drunk who asked me 26 times how long it would take for a letter to get to Kettering, there I was in the summer dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirt, and there I was so far back in the queue that I was next to the cheap DVDs with titles like “The Glory of Sudoku” and “Design Your Own Garden Pond”.
“I’m not sure what to say” I said
“You don’t have to say anything at all Mr Irwin” said Valerie and led me along a bleak corridor to a door labelled ‘Staff Canteen’. She pushed me through the door and as she did so champagne corks popped, streamers flew across the room and a sea of grinning faces sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. A pretty girl thrust a glass of champagne into my hand. A beaming chubby man stood on a chair and ‘tinged’ on his glass with a teaspoon until there was quiet.
“Welcome, Mr Irwin, to this little get-together to celebrate your sterling efforts in queuing for more than 500 hours in the last year. A remarkable effort and a branch record, furthermore you have achieved this feat without complaint. I think I am right in saying that you have not once asked for a complaint form”.
“Er there didn’t seem much point” I replied
“Quite right” said Mr Chubby. “Ooh by the way does anyone here know where the complaint forms are?” he asked the room in general. Everyone laughed uproariously at this. “Thank you for joining us today and now I think Mrs Winterbotham would like to meet you”.
Valerie took me by the elbow and led me up some stairs and along a carpeted corridor to a mahogany door with a brass nameplate.
“Mrs Winterbotham is about as big a cheese as it’s possible to be in postal circles round here” explained Valerie as she knocked on the door.
“Enter” said a commanding voice.
“This is Mr Irwin” said Valerie and she half curtsied as she left the room.
I was in a large and richly furnished office with a vast desk at one end and an open fire, sofa and coffee table at the other. The walls were hung with expensive Turkish rugs, there was a Faberge pen-holder on the desk and a polar bearskin rug in front of the roaring log fire. The room reeked of money and power. Behind the desk sat an attractive raven haired woman.
“Ah Mr Irwin, Valerie has told me all about you. Thank you for taking the time to pop up and see me”.
“Um …no problem” I replied.
“I’m interested to know which of our services you found the most useful”. She said as she stood up, and as she did so I saw that she wasn’t an attractive woman, she was a very attractive woman. She wore a bright red suit with an unexpectedly short skirt and had legs to die for. She gestured me towards the fire and sofa.
“Well I just use whatever seems appropriate…” I muttered.
“I see. Are you are a big user of ‘Proof of Posting?” she asked as she came closer “a lot of people find that very useful these days….”
“Er yes”
“….and the ‘Next Day Special Delivery’ is that something you might consider”.
By this time we were both on the polar bear skin rug. “Phoo it’s hot in here” she said and shrugged off her jacket revealing a sleeveless black silk top that set off her light tan but was having trouble restraining the gentle thrust of her breasts.
“I er…”
“Valerie tells me that you’re a big man for ‘International Signed For’. Is that right?” She was closer now and never once took her large brown eyes from mine. “Can I have a sip of your champagne?” She took the glass from my hand, our fingers touching for an electric instant, she sipped and returned the glass with a perfect semicircle of lipstick on the rim. She was standing as close now as was possible and not touch.
“Have you ever tried ‘Air-Sure’ ?”. She put her hand on my arm, I felt dizzy. “I think you might find ‘Air-Sure’ just the ticket”. Her lips moved closer to mine but then out of the corner of my eye I saw something in the fire that distracted me. It was an ‘International Signed For’ sticker. I bent and looked closer, the fire was no log fire it was a parcel fire. There were letters, packets, parcels, ‘Special Delivery 9.00am’s, ‘International Signed For’s, ‘Special Delivery Saturday Guarantees’ all ablaze. I turned back to her.
“What’s happening? This isn’t right!” but she had changed, her skin had yellowed and coarsened, her hair seemed grey. I felt time passing very fast and Mrs Winterbotham first became a cackling skeletal hag and then crumbled into bones and dust. I ran from the room, down the stairs and back into the main body of the Post Office. For a moment all seemed normal, the queue hadn’t moved an inch, but then I realised that the queue was petrified, mummified, skeletons clad in yellowing flesh and rags, a Royal Mail version of the Terracotta Army. I ran for the exit but as I did so the ghastly figures shuffled forward to bar my path. The horror was too much for me and I swooned and all went black.
I felt a prodding in my back. “Move along dearie” said the old lady behind me “Position 6” is available”. I was at the head of the queue and phew! It had all been an awful dream.
Last week however something remarkable happened while I stood near the back of the queue beyond the photo-booth, a lady wearing a badge on her ample bosom that proclaimed that she was both Valerie and a Supervisor approached me and said “Mr Irwin?”
“Er yes”
“Come with me please. Let me take those for you”. She seized my carrier bag full of post and strode to the nearest counter, elbowing aside an OAP who had waited 2 hours to buy a single second class stamp, “Sort these out for Mr Irwin”, she ordered the counter operative and then led me through the door next to the foreign exchange counter. On the right just inside the door was a young man sitting in a cubby hole surrounded by video screens.
“This is Craig” said Valerie “, he’s responsible for the CCTV round here. He’s the one you have to thank for all this. Craig has calculated that you have queued for more than 500 hours in this post office during the last year”.
“Very nice to meet you at last Mr Irwin” said Craig “I’ve put together a little montage of your highlights”. His nimble fingers sped over his keyboard and a series of images flashed up on the screens around me. There I was standing next to the drunk who asked me 26 times how long it would take for a letter to get to Kettering, there I was in the summer dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirt, and there I was so far back in the queue that I was next to the cheap DVDs with titles like “The Glory of Sudoku” and “Design Your Own Garden Pond”.
“I’m not sure what to say” I said
“You don’t have to say anything at all Mr Irwin” said Valerie and led me along a bleak corridor to a door labelled ‘Staff Canteen’. She pushed me through the door and as she did so champagne corks popped, streamers flew across the room and a sea of grinning faces sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. A pretty girl thrust a glass of champagne into my hand. A beaming chubby man stood on a chair and ‘tinged’ on his glass with a teaspoon until there was quiet.
“Welcome, Mr Irwin, to this little get-together to celebrate your sterling efforts in queuing for more than 500 hours in the last year. A remarkable effort and a branch record, furthermore you have achieved this feat without complaint. I think I am right in saying that you have not once asked for a complaint form”.
“Er there didn’t seem much point” I replied
“Quite right” said Mr Chubby. “Ooh by the way does anyone here know where the complaint forms are?” he asked the room in general. Everyone laughed uproariously at this. “Thank you for joining us today and now I think Mrs Winterbotham would like to meet you”.
Valerie took me by the elbow and led me up some stairs and along a carpeted corridor to a mahogany door with a brass nameplate.
“Mrs Winterbotham is about as big a cheese as it’s possible to be in postal circles round here” explained Valerie as she knocked on the door.
“Enter” said a commanding voice.
“This is Mr Irwin” said Valerie and she half curtsied as she left the room.
I was in a large and richly furnished office with a vast desk at one end and an open fire, sofa and coffee table at the other. The walls were hung with expensive Turkish rugs, there was a Faberge pen-holder on the desk and a polar bearskin rug in front of the roaring log fire. The room reeked of money and power. Behind the desk sat an attractive raven haired woman.
“Ah Mr Irwin, Valerie has told me all about you. Thank you for taking the time to pop up and see me”.
“Um …no problem” I replied.
“I’m interested to know which of our services you found the most useful”. She said as she stood up, and as she did so I saw that she wasn’t an attractive woman, she was a very attractive woman. She wore a bright red suit with an unexpectedly short skirt and had legs to die for. She gestured me towards the fire and sofa.
“Well I just use whatever seems appropriate…” I muttered.
“I see. Are you are a big user of ‘Proof of Posting?” she asked as she came closer “a lot of people find that very useful these days….”
“Er yes”
“….and the ‘Next Day Special Delivery’ is that something you might consider”.
By this time we were both on the polar bear skin rug. “Phoo it’s hot in here” she said and shrugged off her jacket revealing a sleeveless black silk top that set off her light tan but was having trouble restraining the gentle thrust of her breasts.
“I er…”
“Valerie tells me that you’re a big man for ‘International Signed For’. Is that right?” She was closer now and never once took her large brown eyes from mine. “Can I have a sip of your champagne?” She took the glass from my hand, our fingers touching for an electric instant, she sipped and returned the glass with a perfect semicircle of lipstick on the rim. She was standing as close now as was possible and not touch.
“Have you ever tried ‘Air-Sure’ ?”. She put her hand on my arm, I felt dizzy. “I think you might find ‘Air-Sure’ just the ticket”. Her lips moved closer to mine but then out of the corner of my eye I saw something in the fire that distracted me. It was an ‘International Signed For’ sticker. I bent and looked closer, the fire was no log fire it was a parcel fire. There were letters, packets, parcels, ‘Special Delivery 9.00am’s, ‘International Signed For’s, ‘Special Delivery Saturday Guarantees’ all ablaze. I turned back to her.
“What’s happening? This isn’t right!” but she had changed, her skin had yellowed and coarsened, her hair seemed grey. I felt time passing very fast and Mrs Winterbotham first became a cackling skeletal hag and then crumbled into bones and dust. I ran from the room, down the stairs and back into the main body of the Post Office. For a moment all seemed normal, the queue hadn’t moved an inch, but then I realised that the queue was petrified, mummified, skeletons clad in yellowing flesh and rags, a Royal Mail version of the Terracotta Army. I ran for the exit but as I did so the ghastly figures shuffled forward to bar my path. The horror was too much for me and I swooned and all went black.
I felt a prodding in my back. “Move along dearie” said the old lady behind me “Position 6” is available”. I was at the head of the queue and phew! It had all been an awful dream.
Sunday, 6 April 2008
Great Shortcuts of Our Time
1. The Strand – Embankment
Should you be stuck in heavy traffic on the Strand thinking “Oh I wish I was on the Embankment”, turn into Adam St, first right into John Adam St, second left into York Buildings and then almost immediately left into what appears to be an underground car park but is a street. Lower Robert St, this will take you down to Savoy Place, near the riverside entrance to the Savoy Hotel.
2. Don’t bother to brown your meat when making stews or casseroles. This comes from the TV series Nigella Express and the kitchen goddess has got it absolutely right. Every recipe since the dawn of time has started “First fry the meat until golden brown” (not that meat ever goes golden brown it just goes ‘abattoir grey’) and you don’t need to bother. It makes no difference it doesn’t “seal the flavour in”. Apart from this gem the rest of the series was pretty dull only enlivened by Nigella looking coquettish in cardigans that are too small for her. Incidentally “coquettish” doesn’t just mean looking a bit tarty while you open the fridge door it is also the name of a 17th century dish made from partridge feet and quince, traditionally served during Advent.
3. Orange St to Trafalgar Square via the National Gallery.
The back entrance to the National Gallery (free entrance) in Orange St is unimposing and usually deserted. There is a security man behind a desk, who doesn’t disturb incomers and once past him you have the choice of going upstairs or downstairs. Downstairs (if it is open) is a large gallery packed with paintings roughly arranged by century and hung densely packed on hessian screens. The total value of the art in the room is probably several billion but it looks like a West Country auction room. At the far end of the gallery stairs take you up to the front of the building.
The upper path is definitely quicker than the lower, once you have learned the route through the Rembrandts, Poussins, Tiepolos etc, but of course the whole point of this short cut is to be distracted. If you find yourself in the vicinity of the gallery with five minutes to spare, why not skip that cappuccino and go in and see something extraordinary and amazing. My personal favourite is a self-portrait by Madame Vigee-Le Brun which normally hangs in Room 33. The fact that it is by a woman is remarkable enough in a gallery where I think that she may be the only pre 1800 female artist and she has done herself proud. A sexy self confident artist gazes back at you, palette in hand, with blue eyes, full red lips, a straw hat with a jaunty feather, nice knockers and curls of grey hair falling down her neck. She can come to tea anytime.
My other favourite is the Tale of Patient Griselda told in Medieval comic-strip form on 3 panels painted in Siena around 1490. The panels are hung in the ‘Carbuncle’ Sainsbury Wing of the Gallery which is mostly cluttered up with dreary Madonnas with Child and silly haloes. Who first came up with the idea of haloes? At some point one artist must have thought “I know what I’ll do, I’ll paint the Blessed Virgin Mary with a golden frisbee behind her head” and instantly haloes became an industry standard across Europe. Anyway I will now relate the Tale of Patient Griselda just to show you that Renaissance men certainly knew how to have a good time. The Count of somewhere or other was out hunting in the forest when he met a poor but beautiful girl named Griselda. He asked her father’s permission to marry her, which was readily given, and then he proposed to Griselda but only on condition that she swore to be utterly obedient for evermore which she duly did. The Count took her back to his court where he stripped her naked in front of his courtiers before giving her a wedding dress and marrying her. In the fullness of time they had a son and daughter. While Griselda was asleep the Count took the children away and told Griselda that had had them killed. He then staged a fake divorce, stripped Griselda naked once more and sent her back to her father. After some years the Count came back and ordered Griselda to return and prepare his house for his new bride, a young and beautiful woman with a handsome brother. Griselda did as she was told and at that point the count finally revealed that the new ‘bride’ and her brother were in fact her own children whom she thought had been dead all those years. How Griselda must have chuckled! Bizarrely they lived happy ever after.
Should you be stuck in heavy traffic on the Strand thinking “Oh I wish I was on the Embankment”, turn into Adam St, first right into John Adam St, second left into York Buildings and then almost immediately left into what appears to be an underground car park but is a street. Lower Robert St, this will take you down to Savoy Place, near the riverside entrance to the Savoy Hotel.
2. Don’t bother to brown your meat when making stews or casseroles. This comes from the TV series Nigella Express and the kitchen goddess has got it absolutely right. Every recipe since the dawn of time has started “First fry the meat until golden brown” (not that meat ever goes golden brown it just goes ‘abattoir grey’) and you don’t need to bother. It makes no difference it doesn’t “seal the flavour in”. Apart from this gem the rest of the series was pretty dull only enlivened by Nigella looking coquettish in cardigans that are too small for her. Incidentally “coquettish” doesn’t just mean looking a bit tarty while you open the fridge door it is also the name of a 17th century dish made from partridge feet and quince, traditionally served during Advent.
3. Orange St to Trafalgar Square via the National Gallery.
The back entrance to the National Gallery (free entrance) in Orange St is unimposing and usually deserted. There is a security man behind a desk, who doesn’t disturb incomers and once past him you have the choice of going upstairs or downstairs. Downstairs (if it is open) is a large gallery packed with paintings roughly arranged by century and hung densely packed on hessian screens. The total value of the art in the room is probably several billion but it looks like a West Country auction room. At the far end of the gallery stairs take you up to the front of the building.
The upper path is definitely quicker than the lower, once you have learned the route through the Rembrandts, Poussins, Tiepolos etc, but of course the whole point of this short cut is to be distracted. If you find yourself in the vicinity of the gallery with five minutes to spare, why not skip that cappuccino and go in and see something extraordinary and amazing. My personal favourite is a self-portrait by Madame Vigee-Le Brun which normally hangs in Room 33. The fact that it is by a woman is remarkable enough in a gallery where I think that she may be the only pre 1800 female artist and she has done herself proud. A sexy self confident artist gazes back at you, palette in hand, with blue eyes, full red lips, a straw hat with a jaunty feather, nice knockers and curls of grey hair falling down her neck. She can come to tea anytime.
My other favourite is the Tale of Patient Griselda told in Medieval comic-strip form on 3 panels painted in Siena around 1490. The panels are hung in the ‘Carbuncle’ Sainsbury Wing of the Gallery which is mostly cluttered up with dreary Madonnas with Child and silly haloes. Who first came up with the idea of haloes? At some point one artist must have thought “I know what I’ll do, I’ll paint the Blessed Virgin Mary with a golden frisbee behind her head” and instantly haloes became an industry standard across Europe. Anyway I will now relate the Tale of Patient Griselda just to show you that Renaissance men certainly knew how to have a good time. The Count of somewhere or other was out hunting in the forest when he met a poor but beautiful girl named Griselda. He asked her father’s permission to marry her, which was readily given, and then he proposed to Griselda but only on condition that she swore to be utterly obedient for evermore which she duly did. The Count took her back to his court where he stripped her naked in front of his courtiers before giving her a wedding dress and marrying her. In the fullness of time they had a son and daughter. While Griselda was asleep the Count took the children away and told Griselda that had had them killed. He then staged a fake divorce, stripped Griselda naked once more and sent her back to her father. After some years the Count came back and ordered Griselda to return and prepare his house for his new bride, a young and beautiful woman with a handsome brother. Griselda did as she was told and at that point the count finally revealed that the new ‘bride’ and her brother were in fact her own children whom she thought had been dead all those years. How Griselda must have chuckled! Bizarrely they lived happy ever after.
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