Number Seventy News

I know, I know: Yorkshire is full of York pantomime bores - from the Effington Young Farmers to the Chuffington Girl Guides who get up a coach party every year, the whole county resounds to “Have you seen the panto yet” from December to the end of January, and the jostling of competitive early bookers to see who booked in March and where they were in the queue.

But, for all you out there who maybe don’t live within easy distance of York, or who have never heard of Berwick Kaler, you are missing maybe one of the last great British pantomime Dames as (s)he comes towards the end of a glittering career.  This is true panto - there are no soap stars milking their z list fame - but a cast of actors (m/f)  who have got  together for over 20 years at York Theatre Royal and have produced a pantomime which has all the traditional elements, even the vestiges of a traditional plot, and a water scene, and custard pies, and a baddy, and a dame, and a “buttons”, and a principal boy and a female lead who epitomise young love at first sight.  The audience, which is well over 50% grown-ups, boos the baddy as soon as he appears, sings the song with gusto, cries out for the traditional distribution of Wagon Wheels, and obligingly yells “Behind you” or “Oh yes he is” at all the right places.

I’ve never worked out which of the ad libs (and it’s really only the Dame who is allowed to do them) are truly ad lib, but the sight of some other cast member being reduced to giggles by sheer anarchy with the script is an annual delight.  Berwick Kaler as the Dame must surely go down as one of the greats (he writes the script too) and the partnership with Martin Barrass (”Buttons”), David Leonard (the baddy) and Suzie Cooper (female lead- except this year - maternity leave) produces an annual triumph.  It’s a York institution.  Every year, as the lights go down, the glitter ball high above the auditorium spins, and the band strikes up with “We’re all babbies, we’re all bairns” I settle back in my seat knowing I’m going to spend the next two hours in utter enjoyment.

[OK Berwick - does that earn me a bottle of Newcy Brown?]

The perils of one’s fifteeen seconds of fame ! You will see from the first post with this title that I was interviewed for a German TV station (based in Stuttgart) for a news item they were doing about the proposed privatisation of German railways. I was agin it.

Well, back in March I was contacted again by the same station, this time by a different reporter who was doing a documentary. Could he come over and interview me ? OK. He was going to be at Paddington. I managed to get an afternoon off and hurtled down by GNER which was only a very few minutes late and across to Paddington on the Metropolitan Line. There was the reporter and a film crew and we spent a very busy couple of hours interviewing me on why I thought rail privatisation the way we did it in the UK was a bad idea. (Incidentally, some jobsworth from Heathrow Express said we couldn’t film with his trains in the background without a specific permit even though we had a permit to film within Paddington station - neatly illustrating the point about the ridiculous fragmetation of the rail service). The film went out in the summer and I had about 6 or 8 minutes out of the 45. Much to my surprise, I was the only person they had interviewed in the UK.

What this does illustrate, apart from a rather sad eagerness to appear on TV anywhere in the world, is the weird world of the Internet. The initial contact was via Wikipedia, where a kind friend had, unbeknown to me, added a link to my website under the heading railway enthusiast. This then led to the second interview. So I end up as the voice of UK concern about rail privatisation on German TV ! I’m sane, my views are reasonably well informed, and I don’t look too nerdy, but it does make me wonder about the role of chance in the affairs of men.

PS. Any other media outlets wishing to hear my views are welcome to get in touch.

Haven’t seen them since about end of October - so either there are none or they will re-appear in the Spring.

The autumn saw us at quite a few concert events so, in no particular order:

• The effervescent Moshe’s Bagel - what energy, what great tunes, what synergy between piano and fiddle in particular.
• The stunning Jan Gabarek at the Sage in Newcastle. The man has suddenly gone all boogie-woogie, and Rainer Bruninghaus on the piano really lets it rip.  A two and a bit hour concert with only 4 numbers and an encore - absolutely great to hear a piece develop over 25 minutes or so.
• The Tord Gustavsen Trio at the Venue in Leeds.  Soft jazz - it makes a delightful evening.
• The Portico Quartet - al fresco on the South Bank in London. Really exciting young jazz musicians with a great sound.
• John Surman and theTrans4mation string quartet at the Wigmore Hall for the London Jazz festival - I love these crossover gigs - such beautiful sound.
• Knut Reiersrud (guitars),Iver Kleive (organ) and Sondre Bratland doing “Rosa fra Betlehem” at the Jacobskirche in Oslo.  Traditional Norwegian (and other) Christmas songs with such inventive backing from the two long time collaborators.

Live music is so worthwhile - almost always.

Even though I know my readers are few, I feel I have let you down these last six months buy not posting anything at all on this “blog”.  Reasons: mainly, a problem with the website which meant I couldn’t update it, and I thought that applied to the blog as well.  It may not have done and so the world is forever deprived of what I would have posted - too late to catch up now; and as a subsidiary reason, I have been a little busy.  However, it should now be possible to share gems with you all, though whether paste or the real thing will, as ever, be debatable.