Oh Mary!

First, apologies for failing to post on Friday; I usually find some time on a Thursday evening to put some words together but on Thursday evening I was at the Trafalgar theatre to see Oh Mary! with a girlfriend.

If you’re new to Oh Mary! it’s billed as a revisionist dark comedy presenting the wife of Abraham Lincoln (Mary Todd) as a gin-soaked, cabaret-obsessed diva with ambitions for the stage. It charts the days before Lincoln’s assassination in a theatre through Mary’s eyes and offers us a closeted gay president in love with the actor John Wilkes Booth, by whose hand history tells us he is set to die.

As assassinations in theatres go, this one’s a doozy.

The figure assassinated is poor Mary. I write this understanding that there will be few who agree with me. Certainly the audience on Thursday loved the camp brashness of it all, the lewd gags, punchlines that signalled their arrival ten minutes ahead of time and the vibe which was very much serving panto.

At this point I want to make it clear I did laugh. Catherine Tate was playing Mary and she brought her full portfolio of comedy skills to the role, with the ghosts of her Catherine Tate show characters flitting from scene to scene. She was very funny. But did I like the show? No, not really. Not in a West End theatre. Not at those prices.

I might have enjoyed it more in a small venue at the Fringe where it would have been a little piece of silliness; a ridiculous idea turned into a piece of theatre. Even then I might have questioned the hijacking of a woman whose story is already barely known by an English audience, for sure, and distorting it further for laughs. Mary Todd lost three sons - one aged 3, one aged 11 and the third aged 18. Her Victorian society deemed her ‘hysterical,’ that word reserved for women’s behaviour. ‘Unhinged’ is how she’s been described since then. Just putting this out there, if I’d lost three sons I doubt I’d behave in a rational way, and yes, if a male doctor offered me laudanum, I may just have taken it.

Until Catherine Tate took on the role of Mary last week, it was played in the UK by Mason Alexander Park having been originated and written by American actor Cole Escola, both male performers presenting shrieking hysteria and vanity as comedy, and offering a cartoon version of a woman already maligned by history. Catherine Tate has stepped into this drag role as a woman, and I guess that changes the dynamic favourably; there is a sense of agency in her - no spoilers - achieving her ambition to perform cabaret and she is very funny. But the fact that a woman performs the caricature doesn't automatically redeem the caricature. The audience still laughs at the same things. They still go away with a primary memory of Mary as a drunk (no evidence that she even touched alcohol), a hysterical mess (she was grief stricken and consigned to an asylum later in her life by her son who found her dysregulation inconvenient) and aspired to perform on stage (her ambitions lay in politics) and that seems to me to make her the victim of a different kind of modern male oppression.

I’ve probably overthought this, haven’t I? My feminism is instinctive. I don’t know which wave it sits in, I just felt very unsettled about this whole show which felt to me to have cruelty at its heart. I wish I could just join in with all the celebrities who’ve celebrated this as high camp, queer revisionism but I’m just left wondering if intellectual gaslighting is a thing. Poor fucking Mary.

Oh Michael!

My feelings about the biopic Michael - part of the story of the life of Michael Jackson - are much more straightforward. Anna and I went to see this on Tuesday evening having watched the BBC docu-series currently available on iplayer.

A partial story that does not refer to any of the allegations of child sexual abuse, it feels highly manipulative of the viewing audience. Joe Jackson, Michael’s father, is instead cast in the role of villain of the piece, and there is no doubt that the man was pretty monstrous, but in terms of deflection and distraction, it’s an overt ploy: “Look over there!”

Along with the absence of child sex abuse allegations is the absence of Janet Jackson. All the other siblings feature, but not Janet. Turns out she declined an offer to participate and requested instead that she not be portrayed in the film. I like her the more for this. Similarly, while Prince Jackson is named as Executive Producer, Paris Jackson has completely distanced herself from the project, with a ‘Not my monkeys, not my circus,’ comment on social media.

And so to monkeys… Or chimpanzees to be accurate. We’ve already had a scene where Michael is communing with a rat - his gateway pet - but it’s not long before he’s demanding a llama, (I mean, sure, they can work in a domestic setting) and a giraffe (someone tell him no) and finally we see him welcome Bubbles the chimp in a nappy. I remember seeing Bubbles in the tabloid stories of the 80s and not really thinking anything more than, ‘that’s a bit weird.’ Wealthy stars in the US did seem to have a thing for wild animals - Siegfried and Roy had a selection of big cats prowling their house, as did Mike Tyson; Nicholas Cage had a pet octopus to help with his acting (ikr). But as I stared at (thankfully AI generated) Bubbles in the movie, I suddenly felt uneasy about him. The song ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ started playing in my mind and, for the first time, I wondered if Bubbles had been brought into MJ’s home for even fucking weirder and more niche reasons.

As soon as I got out of the cinema, I googled ‘Was Bubbles abused?” If you do the same, you may read about what renowned ape expert, Jane Goodall had to say about the matter and it will make you feel super sad for Bubbles, who is still alive at 42 and living in a Center for Great Apes in Florida, hurling faeces at trees, which is what they do when they’ve had to listen to Thriller that many times.

So the film does definitely present the man as decidedly outside the parameters of normality. But it also presents him as a man on a mission to bring his light to the world, and to hospital wards in particular - as if this will genuinely help the treatment of sick kids. And at this point, I’m just wondering how you stop this from happening? How do you stop weird blokes hanging with vulnerable children?

None of the admittedly great scenes full of the amazing music for which Michael Jackson is rightly accredited would drown out my anxieties. So that was how I left the cinema. Upset for Bubbles and worried about how wealthy men will create access to children and nobody will stop them.

I really, really hope the next installment doesn’t get made. I don’t think I can cope with much more gaslighting.

EYC Member of the Week

Every year I watch the highlights of the London Marathon and wonder what it would be like to have a go. This year my friend and BBC colleague Emily ran it ahead of her 50th birthday later this month. She trained religiously, documented her practice runs and shared photos of herself looking sweaty but smiling. She is my (s)hero and my Executive Youth Club Member of the Week! (To save her blushes, I’m not posting a pic of her here, but she has my undying admiration.)

For those of us who need four wheels to move 26 miles, I’m throwing these wonderful outtakes from Peter Kay’s Car Share into this week’s Jumble Box… Enjoy!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

It’s really very, very yellow.

Writing

‘Virtue, Learning and Manners’ was the motto of the school I attended for sixth form. I’m good on the learning and manners, but decidedly in deficit when it comes to virtue. So when somebody on here suggested back in January that volunteering is a good use of one’s time, building self worth and community capital, I squirreled the thought away to act upon when the moment arose.

The moment has arisen! This weekend I’ve spent some of my time volunteering at the Bournemouth Writing Festival, a three day event celebrating and encouraging writing. I’m not going to say it’s been without stress; it hasn’t. For a start, in the period preceding the weekend itself there have been a number of meet ups for volunteers, precisely none of which I’ve been available for. I’ve either been gigging or in Majorca. The guilt has been significant and I’ve done a lot of apologising.

Then there’s the volunteers’ WhatsApp group. I’ve had to turn notifications off. What can I contribute to cheerful conversations and in jokes I’ve already missed? I feel visible by my absence.

However, I have been issued with a vivid yellow t shirt to make me visible around the town, and indeed potentially from space, and I did get an allowance for lunch to host a mealtime meet up.

It’s been fun so far and pretty eye opening. I feel bound to say that grifting isn’t the preserve of men like Farage, Brand and Steven Bartlett. There are some writers around with the slenderest of credentials selling advice and their experience. I don’t think I’ll say any more but, truly, I wish I had their brass neck.

It has made me feel more positive about my own efforts, I think I can say that. It has also made me realise what a nightmare it must be for agents, editors and anyone with a job of any description in publishing. Because I’m wearing that yellow t shirt, I’ve been shown all kinds of bits of writing and my takeaway? Poetry is for everyone, but not everyone is a poet.

Heck, we can all get better, though, right?

Reading

I’m reading a lot of memoir at the moment and again, I have Substack to thank for the book I read this week. I hadn’t heard of until she began writing here but the Waitrose panettone egg she recommended at the beginning of the month was the triumph of our Easter catering. I bought three. Since then I’ve been a full-on fangirl, so I bought her book, ‘Why Did You Stay?’

I was only faintly aware of the story of the papping of her then comedian boyfriend with his Strictly dance partner. I think I’d thought it was another tawdry example of crap behaviour from a man whose vanity had blown up any sense of decency he may have had. (Spoiler alert: it seems he didn’t.)

The book is a masterclass in the mining of a moment. Defying the ‘don’t make a scene' advice that anyone who’s ever been cheated on will hear from interested parties who understandably want to confine the horror to a plastic sheeted kill room rather than let the gore spatter the walls of other lives, Rebecca issued her own statement in the wake of the story run by The Sun. It began, “I am not a victim,” and went on to coolly deconstruct the comedian’s gaslighting and abusive behaviours.

The book is shot through with the hurt she suffered, but its tone is defiant and I love it for that. Through her writing I hear a young woman stepping into her power and taking control of her narrative firmly with both hands. That moment and the question ‘why did you stay?’ that arises from it allows her to structure a whole analysis of her own responses - social, emotional, conditioned - to the dynamics of a toxic relationship. The moment of the revelation of his infidelity is also the moment of validation for her.

I can’t get enough of Rebecca’s confidence and wit; her belief in her own worth. Hers is a voice of self determination. Her unshakeable ‘take no shit’ attitude to life should be compulsory reading for all women.

Also, she makes really good recommendations. I didn’t even like panettone before.

More gigs

So, last night it was me and Guardian political sketch writer, John Crace at Salisbury Playhouse for another ‘What the Hell Just Happened?’ show. Thankfully, John was fully recovered from the acute episode of gatroenteritis that had literally hospitalised him after the last show and he was on top form.

I feel fortunate to have made this connection with John which allows me to exercise my skills as a comedian, public speaker and interviewer. I am confident I’m really good at this now, and, taking a leaf from Rebecca, I’m trying to vocalise my value and push this area of my work. I mean, how the hell do you even do that? Suggestions welcome.

I’d limbered up with a comedy gig on Thursday evening in a bar in Southampton. Not a single person over 40 in the room. I pushed my first thought - ‘Fuck! Should I even bother with my joke about Steve from the Repair Shop?’ - to the back of my mind and stepped into my power. Smashed it.

The only downside to the evening was that I noticed that the inner thigh area of my Top Shop faux leather jumpsuit, the one that makes me look uncannily like Elvis Presley in his 1968 comeback special, was disintegrating. Thigh rub clearly has a deciduous effect on pleather.

I’ve had to chuck it, but I can’t bear to say goodbye to the cheap gags about being wipe-clean that came with it. sigh. I’m going to have to spend some time on Vinted.

EYC Member of the Week

Now, I actually can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m awarding our Executive Youth Club Member (with the emphasis on ‘member’)of the Week badge to Piers bloody Morgan. One of the skills of a good interviewer is knowing when to say nothing…

Til next time, my friends.

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

What a week!

Here at the Actual House of Fraser, Tuesday saw the arrival of my husband’s newly published text book, ‘Teach English with AI.’ The book grew out of his writing here on Substack and is a constructive push-back on the current line that AI will destroy students’ abilities to write essays themselves and engage with text. What Mark argues is that using AI in creative ways will help students think critically about their reading and evaluate argument, appreciate nuance and OTHER THINGS.

AI has been our pillow talk for a very long time now (literally years) and I feel I know quite a lot about the pedagogical possibilities for the future. For those who are skeptical - and I appreciate your position - I will say that I choose to feel excited rather than fearful for the impact on the skills of the generations to come. I’m going to say, though I am not bound to, Mark’s writing on these complex issues is really very accessible and entertaining. You won’t always realise you’re reading about AI! (Hurrah!)

If you know any English teachers who would love some cutting edge, fun, ready-made lessons for immediate delivery in the classroom, do put them on to the book. It’s available on all good bookseller sites.

Of course AI brings me to the arrival on Substack of woman-hating grifter and delusional narcissist, Andrew Tate. A conundrum indeed to find oneself sharing a platform. I liked my husband’s response posted in this note:

Burn!

What the Hell Just Happened? (sponsored by Buscopan)

On Thursday I hosted the Guardian’s political sketch writer, John Crace, in his show, ‘What the Hell Just Happened?’ It’s an entertaining journey through the past twelve years of John’s sketching career and the moments in our recent political history that have left us all reeling. We’ve done a few of these together now and I enjoy them enormously. John is great company and I love how much he trusts me to set the tone for the evening.

The venue for the show was the lovely 1930s art deco Tivoli theatre, a theatre I’ve been to many times and which I was super excited to perform in. I’d brought along a tripod in the hope of filming the show and my contribution to it. I’m constantly being told by people who despair of my ability to progress my career, that I should be filming everything, clipping stuff up and growing my online audience. And I know they are right. I wish they weren’t, but I’ve sat in front of too many agents who’ve asked, ‘Where is your audience?’ (Missing, presumed enjoying themselves.) Or, worse, ‘How big is your audience?’ (Small but really good looking?) to know that that’s how the world works in 2026.

I’d broken the tripod within a few minutes of trying to set it up in the lighting box at the back of the auditorium. The filming idea went out the window to land in a heap on the floor next to my career. Why is my life always like this?

I returned to the dressing room John and I were sharing to talk about whether to start the show with the breaking news about the Foreign Office overruling the security recommendation not to appoint Peter Mandelson and appointing him anyway. We were seven minutes away from curtain up and deep in conversation about the odds of the Prime Minister still being in post in a week’s time when John paused and looked at me intently.

“I think I may need to be sick,” he said and reached for the door of the small ensuite shower room. I stepped outside for the purposes of dignity and discretion. Also because people being sick make me want to hurl. Even writing this memory is making me nauseous.

With two minutes to go to showtime, I returned. John hadn’t been sick, but was experiencing horrendous stomach cramps. “I was fine before lunch!” he said as I dosed him up on Buscopan (I am a menopausal woman with bloating issues and dare not inflate on stage or screen). “I only had hummus and naan bread!”

“Hummus isn’t an obvious hazard. Maybe it’s a bug? Shall we pick a safe word in case you need to leave the stage?” I asked. I cast around wildly for a word that might sit naturally in dialogue. Before I could say ‘Trussonomics’ (which I thought would be the most natural fit for someone about to cause an almighty mess for other people to clear up) we were called to the stage. John looked tense but he tried a smile. At least I took it for a smile. It may have been wind.

We got through the first half and I thought John did remarkably well. With the exception of a couple of audible belches, nobody would have known. The audience were warm, and receptive. While they had a drink at the interval John had a lie down on the sofa in the dressing room. The pains in his stomach were worse. He didn’t dare drink even a sip of water for fear of triggering an explosive response. The jeopardy was high.

The second part of the show is a Q&A with the audience. This section can last from 40 minutes to an hour. “How long do you think you can manage?” I asked.

“Let’s try for half an hour,” said John, looking grey and a bit sweaty. We both sent up a prayer to the showbiz fairy. I left him standing in the wings and strode onto the stage. I did a few minutes of material I’d prepared and brought him on.

By some miracle I managed to ease John through fifty minutes of questions and we were done. I’ve rarely seen a man look more relieved. “Thank you for looking after me,” he said.

Four hours later he was in A&E. It turns out that hummus can be hazardous after all.

John Crace. Political sketch writer. Show biz trouper. Executive Youth Club Member of the Week!

Assuming John is feeling better in the coming days (and the signs are good) the show will be at the Salisbury Playhouse on Saturday 25th April. Tix here.

And finally…

In my post on Friday, I wrote about a screen test when my then boss commented on my appearance and how uncomfortable it made me. By contrast, I was in the supermarket browsing condolence cards following a long and trying day during which I’d learned of the death of a dear uncle when a Black woman, perhaps a little older than me, tapped me on the shoulder.

“Girl,” she said in an American accent, “I spotted you as you came in the doors and I had to get over here to tell you look FABULOUS in that jumpsuit!”

“Ohmigod, that is so kind of you to say!” I said, a little overwhelmed. We hugged like old friends and she went on her way.

I wish women ran the world.

Because that woman made me feel good as hell that day, I’m dropping this in my Jumble Box for you this week:

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

The Drama

Anna and I went to see this film by Kristoffer Borgli knowing nothing more about it than that it featured Zendaya and R Patz. I never got into the whole Twilight thing but Anna’s girls loved it and still think he’s one of the hottest things in Hollywood.

He doesn’t look hot to me, but that’s probably in part because I don’t associate him with my teenage early erotic feelings (those would have been for Ian MacShane as cheeky-antiques-dealer-in-cowboy-boots, Lovejoy) and in part because he looked particularly plain in this movie where his shoes look like they weighed more than he does. Turns out the shoes are actually incredibly cool; if you like this kind of info, they’re Paraboot Michaels and all the cool guys who know about shoes are plumping for them. The character Pattinson plays - Charlie, an English museum director - is not a cool guy. That’s the point of him, so what the hell he’s doing wearing the shoes makes no sense.

The meet-cute happens early on; the not-cool guy with glasses stages an encounter with a deaf-in-one-ear, drop dead gorgeous young woman played by Zenday. He lies to her about having read the book she’s reading so he can make contact. It felt a little stalker-y to me at first, and I’ll admit that’s the direction I thought the film would take. I knew it wasn’t going to be the straight-up rom-com I was being lured into thinking it was.

Long story short, at the end of the 105 minutes during which I had laughed out loud on a number of occasions, Anna looked at me. “Did we like that?”

It’s a good question.

“It felt like a dark, tantric comedy to me,” I said.

“Tantric? Comedy?” (Anna had not felt moved to laugh.)

If you can bear to live with high levels of tension for the best part of two hours - the tantric part - the laughs are worth it. Charlie’s wedding speech - a breakdown in real time - and the vignettes around it are, to my mind, hilarious. And the ending is satisfying too. I’m sure it’ll be more satisfying for Pattinson fans since he looks half dead in his final scenes, so that will probably trigger some of those erotic vampire feelings again.

Verdict: worth the trip.

The Other Drama…

NASA/Kim Shiflett

Was, of course, the return of Artemis II, the moon flyby mission which has reignited excitement about space travel. I wrote about it here in my post on Friday, and was admonished for failing to mention how HOT the astronauts were.

On this subject I have to say that I have always been a sucker for anyone in a jumpsuit. My early erotic feelings were very much triggered by watching Top Gun so I completely understand the hotness argument. Fighter School has always done it for me; I do so love anything elite.

Not only do all the Artemis II crew have jumpsuits, they have other Sexy AF ingredients:

Fighter pilot background - Jeremy Hansen, Victor J Glover, Reid Wiseman

Degree educated - Hansen, Glover, Wiseman, Christina Koch

Multi lingual - Hansen (French and conversational Russian)

Chisel jaw - Hansen, Glover, Koch

Dimple in chin - Hansen, Wiseman (shallow)

Unnecessary middle initial - Glover

Executive Youth status - Hansen, Glover, Wiseman, Koch

Assessment - yeah, super hot the lot of them.

And because of their extraordinary achievement in showing the world that experience can sometimes trump youth in the workplace, especially when it comes to choosing a playlist:

the crew of Artemis II are this week’s joining EYC Members of the Week!

And finally…

Just because my brain cued a song while I was thinking about space again, have this lovely bit of pop from luscious haired sweetie, Sam Ryder. I love him. AND HE HAS A JUMPSUIT!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

PS. I’ll be hosting the Guardian’s John Crace as he brings his show, ‘What the Hell Just Happened?’ to the Tivoli theatre, Wimborne Minster on Thursday. Tix here: https://www.tivoliwimborne.co.uk/events/john-crace-what-the-hell-just-happened/

Last One Laughing

For me, the joy of returning to the UK after a few days away, is the backlog of TV to catch up with. The ‘what shall we watch’ dilemma plus the twelve minutes’ hopping through Netflix, Prime and apple tv recommendations before sighing and going for an old episode of Gogglebox, is gloriously absent.

Better still for us, while we were away gazing at cathedrals, series 2 of Last One Laughing had started on Amazon Prime. We had very much enjoyed the first season and were totally up for the new one. Included in the latest collection of comedians (is there a collective noun?) is the brilliant Diane Morgan (aka Philomena Cunk).

I love Diane. She is clever, clever, clever and funny, funny, funny. My favourite six things for a woman to be. As someone who has lectured on comedy, I’d say the ‘joker’ she played where she read Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night and punctuated it with farting noises was text book brilliance.

Comedy arising from the juxtaposing of high art with base humour is one of the oldest tricks in the book and she did it with her dead pan genius. This was, for sure, the stand out performance of the series and for that she is this week’s EYC Member of the Week!

I will just add that David Mitchell’s take on stand-up was also outstanding. We’ve all seen this guy:

While the early episodes of the show were great fun, I thought the ending was contrived and missed the mark. Something for the programme makers to think about next time.

Live Comedy Day

Sticking with comedy, it was Live Comedy Day on Wednesday and across the BBC local radio network comedians, promotors and venue owners talked about what live comedy means to them and to the economy. (What it means to my personal economy amounts to if not a hill of beans, then maybe a tin of beans? Store’s own brand, at that.)

As a former presenter with close ties to the station I had shows on, I was happy to round up comedian pals to contribute and I was delighted to be commissioned to present an item for the telly. I filmed it with my trusty cameraman and filmmaker Pete, last Sunday on a grey night in Portsmouth and it went out on BBC South Today on Wednesday evening:

I really love being able to get a little time and profile for fellow travellers on the comedy circuit, especially the women, so I was delighted to feature Laura. Doing comedy is hard. It’s fun when it’s going well and you’re standing in front of an audience prepared to listen and who are laughing in all the places you’d hoped they would, but stand-up is gruelling (I say this as a comic who had a party of 27 men on a stag as part of a big, and quite majorly pissed up audience last night). Getting anywhere close to regular paid work takes persistence, resilience, a dose of good luck and the support of promoters - often comedians themselves.

The gatekeeping of comedy platforms is largely still the domain of men in the business, whether that’s club nights or TV. Suzi Ruffell writes about her frustration at not getting booked for more telly here . While there are many more women building comedy careers, there is still a whole host of blokes who are suspicious of them, who don’t think you can be funny unless you have a penis, don’t like sweary women with explicit material and who would prefer us all to just go away and leave them to it. Of course, many of them won’t say this stuff out loud, they’ll just never book a woman onto every show, and they certainly won’t book two unless it’s International Women’s Day.

(There are also some great ones to be absolutely clear and I love these men with all my heart and have nothing but gratitude for their support and their feminism.)

So when I was asked by one radio presenter on Live Comedy Day, ‘But it’s better for women now, right? I tried to be fair. I said it was better for sure (better than 1974 for example), but there were still challenges.

When I got home, the postman delivered this and I am still incredulous.

To be clear, none of the acts featured on that flyer will know that their show is just one of an entirely male offering. I just really hope that, if they see it, they’ll take it up with the management. There’s absolutely no point in me - a hairy legged feminist - doing it.

(Update: I’ve been in touch with a couple of the acts; they’re on the case. I’ll keep you posted.)

Project Hail Mary

It’s Easter, so obviously I was up for a film referencing Our Lady. I went to see this with my son Theo and my husband on Good Friday. I’d written a few feelings about Easter weekend and the Passion here, so my head was filled with the narrative of self sacrifice and maybe my emotions were heightened.

I ended up sobbing about the possibility of the demise of an alien who looked like a cross between a large crab and a pile of stone cladding. That, my friends, is the power of story (and special effects - isn’t AI great?!).

These are my takeaways from the film:

RYAN GOSLING HAS BEAUTIFUL HANDS. Check them out. If he doesn’t play the piano it’s a waste of a good span to be sure.

THE MUSIC IS AMAZING. Funny how we look to choral work to express the expansiveness of the universe. It’s as though the eternal darkness is one great sacred, vaulted ceiling. Daniel Pemberton has created a score that is so beautifully fragile, I could listen to for hours.

Also, RYAN GOSLING’S HANDS!!

That’s it. Those are my takeaways. Defo see this. It’s actually weirdly uplifting and optimistic.

Personal Jesus

Finally, because it’s Easter, I’m just dropping this in for you. My brain, when I’m thinking about something, automatically generates a song. I was thinking about Jesus, so obviously the ol’ jukebox in my mind whirred into action.

Personal Jesus was actually about Elvis, and I’m willing to feel quite religious about him. My cousins hung out with Dave Gahan in Basildon where they all grew up, so I always feel connected to the band in a totally unreasonable way. Personal Jesus was charting when I was at university and I think it stands the test of time.

Happy Easter!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

At the beginning of the week I was still enjoying my springtime sojourn in Palma, a city I am enjoying getting to know better. On this trip I made it to the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró to see the studios in which the artist worked.

Having just had a birthday which had led me to reflect on how life is actually a conveyor belt of opportunities it’s just that sometimes your arms are tied behind your back so you can’t always grab them and sometimes you’ve got your back to the belt so you don’t see them, I found Miró’s story highly reassuring.

For starters, that studio wasn’t built until 1954 by which time Miró was 61 years old, and he’d be 63 before he could begin work there. What a lesson! In his sixties he was still eager to work and he’d got himself into a place where he could commission exactly what he wanted as a workspace in which to do it. His is a story of continuous reinvention, exploration of his creative self and self realisation.

I came away from that beautiful spot overlooking the Mediterranean, where I’d gazed at works he’d developed, revised and reimagined, and felt positively optimistic. There is more to come as long as I can keep my hands free!

I loved Miró’s studio. The trust running it worked to bring back unfinished sketches, trial pieces, and personal objects that had been moved or stored elsewhere to ensure the Sert Studio looked exactly as it did during his final creative years. There were paint brushes in tin cans at various stations,magazine clippings on the walls and chairs dotted around so the great man could take a break,or gaze at a work in progress whenever he chose.

It looked as though he’d just nipped out to fetch a bottle of wine and a corkscrew.

I took a lot of pictures of the work. The fella was clearly quite occupied with woman as a concept. I’m still processing my feelings about what I saw. I’m currently choosing to see these sculptures as expressing woman as powerful and elemental. There sure are a lot of gaping holes but I guess that’s where the power lies!

Back to Blighty right in the middle of the strong winds and Arctic blast. Our Ryan Air pilot had to battle the cross winds to get us down, and, as we bounced around like an abandoned lilo in the surf, I turned green with motion sickness. I’ll never understand people who enjoy turbulence.

Lessons in Comedy

We had to come home. I’d booked in two comedy gigs for the end of the week. The first was on Friday at Arundel Jailhouse, a subterranean venue which used to be the holding cells for criminals standing trial in the courthouse above. Make your own gags up here about captive audiences and the criminal jokes.

That day, I’d read a comment on a social media post from a former colleague who’s written three as yet unpublished novels and who was feeling frustrated and glum. It made me think about how creative people (and I include myself here) set incredibly high bars for success for themselves. I know that I have myself fetishised the idea of having a book published. I’d even had a book accepted onto the (now defunct) Unbound crowdfunding publisher’s website.

I realised however, that a book wasn’t actually the best means of delivering the story I had to tell, and, at the beginning of 2023 when it had actually raised two thirds of its publishing cost, I made the decision to withdraw it from the site. It became instead the foundation of a very successful radio documentary commissioned by Radio 4. Listen to it here.

As I drove to Arundel I was thinking about my novelist friend and what I could say to encourage her not to throw in the towel. By the time I arrived at the Jailhouse and did that first scan of the audience to get an idea of who was in, I could see the answer sitting on the front row.

I’d mentioned in a Jumble Box post a few weeks ago that I’d be performing at the Jailhouse and one of the readers of this very stack, who lives in West Sussex, messaged to say he’d be there. I have never met Mike, but he has been a supporter of the stuff I do ever since I started presenting on BBC Radio Solent, when I knew him from text messages to the shows as ‘Mike from Emsworth.’

He’s listened to me on the radio (I presented a hellishly early show from 2013), watched me present the weather for BBC South and was a subscriber to my previous blog, ‘Fortysomething Fan Girl. He followed me on Twitter when that was a fun place to be. And he subscribes now to this Substack.

He drove himself and his wife Sue half an hour down the A27 at a time when petrol is going up in price daily, and paid £24 for two tickets to see me do my set in that basement where there was no mobile signal so he couldn’t even check his phone for the football scores (England were playing Uruguay in a friendly at Wembley.)

In the break after my set, we got to meet in person for the first time.

Why do I tell you this? It’s because when I think about why I write, it’s because there is a Mike out there who might enjoy it. Of course I also write because I like telling stories and conjuring interesting ways to construct them and creating unexpected relationships between ideas. In part I perform comedy because it is a fantastic live laboratory to see which ideas are funny or relatable.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t also love to one day be published in the traditional way; full disclosure: of course I bloody would. But finding an audience of people who have no relational obligation to read or watch your work, is the most thrilling thing ever. Writing on Substack is incredibly rewarding, no matter how long your list of subscribers. Connecting with other writers, reading other people’s work and admiring other voices and thoughts is a joy.

We are all hoping our words will land with someone. But I think it’s good to remind ourselves that selling books and writing are two different things. I want to tell my novelist friend that she must keep writing - for herself and the pleasure it gives her to play with the page, and for the Mikes who are out there, receptive to the work, with pom poms in hand to cheer from the sidelines.

Mike, I know you’ll be reading this and I’m sure you won’t have been expecting to be mentioned in this way, but your support means so much more than you can know. In recognition of the hard yards you’ve put in for me, I’m conferring on you the honour of EYC Member of the Week!

And to my novelist friend who doubts the value of her writing, find Mike first. The publisher may or may not come but Mike will always show up for you.

Apologies for the break in my Substack routine. I had a birthday. It threw me off course. For a start I turned an age I simply can’t even bring myself to say out loud. I’ll just put it like this: it starts with fifty and ends with… FUCK!

I used to think nobody would detect my true age, what with all the unguents I was buying. I could have paid off a Plan 2 student loan with what I’ve spent on my skincare regime which includes face serums, moisturisers, sun block, sprays for the decolleté, balms for my feet and butters for my body. Now, though, I have to accept that at least two dermal layers are solidified HRT gel and there’s no pretending otherwise.

So, I took some time out to celebrate my ongoing existence. First by hanging with some genuinely young people - my two flesh and blood sons, and a beautiful human I describe as my ‘there-is-no-god’daughter. Liv - aka Olive Jones - is a rising star of the UK music scene (her album For Mary was released this week and is already at number 10 in the debut album charts) and was playing an acoustic set at the iconic Rough Trade store on Brick Lane.

My boys and I had dinner with her parents (amongst my very best friends) in an eaterie called the Smoking Goat (surely just a matter of time before this becomes the Vaping Goat) before beetling off to the venue where, pleasingly, a large crowd of fans had gathered.

As she took to the stage, inviting us all into her world of soulful reflection, my heart was barely containable within its fleshly structures. I remember Liv as a cheerful seven year old bounding into the weekend performing arts school I ran, with this strangely mature voice that spoke of smoky nightclubs and lives lived on the left bank with an openness that floored you. By the time she was in her teens, she’d traded Bugsy Malone for Corinne Bailey Rae covers and was nailing them. She was always brilliant and now she is enjoying the recognition she deserves. And so are we.

It was an incredibly uplifting evening; important to have those when you’re feeling like life is racing by at a terrifying speed and you’ve yet to achieve anything you set out to.

MALLORCA CALLING

On Thursday evening I fled to Palma, Mallorca for the weekend with my husband for a little taste of springtime Europe. Palma is a beautiful, walkable city and I just fancied sitting with a coffee/beer/wine and reading my book or distracting myself with other people’s clothing choices.

When it comes to books, btw, one of the things I’m really enjoying about Substack is the game of tag I’m playing through reading so many other writers here. I really enjoyed ’s Don’t Make Me Laugh which I’d finished couple of days before. It’s centred around the comedy club circuit and the abusive actors within it whose behaviours, known and cautioned against by women within that world, have come to light publicly in recent times. For me, someone who’s worked in radio (Raeside’s protagonist is a radio producer) and comedy, the narrative was very recognisable and relatable for any woman who’s ever shared a green room with some of the outsize egos in that world. I’ve definitely come across an Ed Catchpole or two in my time.

Then I started ’s Atypical Girl: Punk Rock, Liverpool and trying to be normal, which had been mentioned in a note I’d read. She paints a picture of the punk scene and beyond in Liverpool during the 70s, 80s and 90s which was illuminating, and of her career as a music writer. Overall, for me, the book has a melancholic feel with notes of regret, but I recognise the landscape she conjures of the media workplace for women as they age. Maybe we’re lucky to escape with melancholy.

I’ve countered that by starting the copy of Rick Astley’s autobiography, Never, bought by my husband for my birthday. I think Penny would not approve, but I love Rick. He was at the top of the charts when I went to university and listened to him (ironically, yeah?) but as a fella in his fifties, the guy has become outrageously cool. I’ve seen him live a couple of times and who can forget that amazing set with Blossoms at Glastonbury, and the better-than-the-original Smiths covers?

Oh go on then, Rick Astley is this week’s EYC Member of the week!

On Friday evening, we dropped into the Jazz Lounge on Carrer dels Apuntadors. Look, I’m not here to criticise, but I know something about jazz. I grew up with an aficionado. We had to listen to Jazz Record Requests on the radio with my dad, eyes closed, fingers tapping the arm chair while he explained why whichever record was playing was brilliant - or not. So I absolutely one hundred percent can say without fear of retribution that what this band was doing was the musical equivalent of throwing paint at a wall. However, I don’t mind that when I’m nursing a large glass of Rioja.

The last number in the set was at least recognisable as I’m Thru With Love. There was no vocal - no Marilyn Monroe to sing the tortured lyrics - but it was competent. What more could you expect from five blokes who (it transpired when I asked) don’t actually play together much? They were an odd bunch. 80% bearded, 60% looked like they might be homeless, and they all looked like they were playing instruments they’d found in a skip.

Loved every minute.

I’m in Port de Pollenca now. And breakfast calls.

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

Needs to decide whether she’s a guest or a host.

I must confess here that, although I really enjoy Claudia as the host of Traitors, I’m not otherwise a fan. I understand why she has been given a show by the BBC and I’m certain she’ll be a ratings success. I’m just not sure I’ll be watching.

I watched the first episode of the series because I do want to support a prime time talk show fronted by a woman over 50, and things started well. I loved the 70s retro vibe of the titles and the theme tune, and the colourway of the set has the sort of luxe comfort I’d feel at home with. The guests on this debut show were a happy group of experienced chat show veterans: Jeff Goldblum, Vanessa Williams, Jennifer Saunders and Tom Allen. A list personalities that signalled how the show was positioning itself. Fortunately for Claudia her guests could pretty much run the gig themselves and essentially did. In Tom Allen, Claudia had a confident travel guide, happy to put up his umbrella and lead, with the others falling in behind and gradually taking turns to head to the front of the pack. The tour operator seemed grateful not to have to decide the route herself.

At appropriate moments it was clear our host was receiving prompts from the director as she’d suddenly whip out an album or book and ask a question in a way which jarred. The problem with this show for me was that questions were entirely secondary. The focus, such as it was, became the riff on matters arising; ok in a podcast - the entire point of many podcasts - but in a chat show I want to take away something more. Great interviewers extract something new from their interviewees, ask a sideways question, probe a comment, listening attentively for clues. Claudia was instead looking for gaps big enough to interject an amusing comment, or planning ahead to find a reason to introduce an audience member.

She relied on the audience - we were introduced to an upholsterer or set designer (it was never made clear) who’d had something to do with the sofa (again, not entirely clear what), a man who lived in Wolverhampton and will have alienated any audience based in that town by advising Jeff Goldblum to avoid it, a girl who’d designed a new kind of pencil, and an off-duty clairvoyant - to help secure her status in the show, but it was not convincing.

I’m sure she’ll get better if she finds the courage to embrace the responsibility that comes with the role.

James Acaster: Cinemagoers Welcome

I first saw James Acaster in 2015 at the Edinburgh Fringe. My sons had recommended him when we’d come to deciding the family comedy watching programme that year; we’d recommended Tony Laws. Acaster’s show was much, much better; that’s not to say Tony Laws isn’t great, but that year he was wearing a pantomime horse head for much of his show and seemed to be having a breakdown.

So we’re Acaster fans and have seen him live on a number of occasions since. Imagine my excitement at discovering his film, ‘Cinemagoers Welcome,’ was playing for one evening only (and an evening I happened to be free) at my all-time favourite cinema, the Regal in Fordingbridge.

As an aside, the Regal is my favourite on account of its being a restored art deco venue with just 30 seats. Those 30 seats being of the softest, most buttery leather in mustard hues, with little wooden drinks trays for your wine glass (stem or flat bottomed) handed to you full of wine by a cheery person behind the quintessentially 30s bar. The other cinema goers don’t order hot dogs to their seats or eat catering packs of corn chips. It’s bliss. If you’re ever in the area do visit: https://www.theregalcinema.org/

With a flat bottomed glass of Merlot in my hand I was already well disposed to enjoy the film, which is a composite of three shows performed on his recent tour, ‘Hecklers Welcome,’ the premise of which was that, during the show, the audience could pretty much do what they liked and there were no rules about not heckling.

As somebody who splashes around in the shallows of comedy herself, I find the heckle both thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. I’m sure I’m not alone. A great heckle, based in engagement with your material, can prompt a new comic thought which, if you’re up to it, builds an annexe onto the house of your main thesis. Abuse - the more common kind of heckle - threatens the relationship between the stage and auditorium. This film, and indeed the show itself, demonstrate the extent to which the art of stand-up is a creation of the audience and performer together.

The show opens with Acaster playing drums on a child size kit. We are reminded that he is a drummer in the short former life he had before he became the brilliant stand-up he is now. The kit, it will turn out, is a beautifully constructed unspoken joke in a show which takes as a starting point the early trauma of his five year old self when he didn’t get to have a go at his grandmother’s spinning wheel at her demonstration in school assembly.

Acaster was, he tells us, always wanting to be in the spotlight. And yet, he emphasises, he hates doing stand-up. The show is his exploration of his reaction to the audience, being fully present for them and inviting them to contribute. Does he really hate it? I’m pretty sure all stand-ups hate it. Until they get off stage when they are reminded how much they bloody love it. (That’s my experience, at least.)

Three shows are presented: Truro - where only one man heckled (about the dayglo tracksuit Acaster wears on this tour, a marked move away from the Jarvis Cocker style corduroys and autumn coloured knitwear that so endeared him to me a decade ago); Dublin - where the audience really picked up the ball and ran with it, and Northampton where it was clear the audience had a proprietal sense of the prodigal son returning. (Acaster is from down the road in Kettering.)

Hecklers Welcome itself is a brilliantly written show that feels kind, sentimental but intellectually substantial too. It translates well to the screen, although the filming itself is pretty dreadful at times. The rake of the Regal and the obviously fixed camera meant that I seemed often to be at eye level with his crotch, while his head and the bit doing the actual talking was out of shot entirely. If I’d had more than the one glass of Merlot I’d have thought it was me. That aside, the film shows how stand-up, even to an audience of hundreds, can be terrifically personal and intimate.

I’d defo recommend. James Acaster is open, clever in a lovely, un-showy way and eminently likeable. I’d have him in my band in a heartbeat. Were it not for the fact that he was born in the year I took my O levels and is therefore a whole generation below me, I’d offer him free membership to our club.

Which brings me to…

EYC Member of the Week

I wrote in my Substack this week about Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary about the Manosphere. You can read it here. I have long enjoyed Louis’ approach to exposing the subject of his filmmaking; for him, the well judged question delivered with the earnest sincerity of a supply teacher and left to throb in the air, is the engine of the piece.

Because I don’t know how anybody could spend that amount of time with anyone called HS Tikky Tokky or Sneako and because it was clear that he was getting indigestion from swallowing the things he wanted to say, Louis Theroux (55) is this week’s EYC Member of the Week!

Day of the Mothers

And finally, it’s Mothering Sunday today (I choose this term because it avoids the apostrophe controversy). My younger son is taking me out for lunch even though we are due to spend Tuesday evening together in London for my birthday. It was a surprise he’d arranged for me and that truly makes me feel like a mother of a certain age, but I’m hugely touched by the gesture and, instead of telling him he shouldn’t spend all that money on me (it’s an expensive train fare home and an expensive restaurant too) I’m going to enjoy every minute and every mouthful and be so very, very grateful he’s not riding around in a supercar in Marbs dropping game and starting fights.

I mentioned the fantastic BBC archive videos in a recent post. Well, I’ve been rummaging again and I’ve come up with this glimpse into the world of mothering in the past. Enjoy!

Stay mobile,

Sam xx

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Happy International Women’s Day! And this IWD, I’d like to nominate myself for standing at my full five feet 3 and taking it like a man when disaster struck…

On Friday, I was drafted into BBC South for one of my increasingly rare shifts presenting the weather.

I love, love, love live TV. I love presenting. And weather presenting is all ad lib. For those who may not know, there is no autocue for us to read; we take our briefing from the meteorology team in London, piece together our local story, create the graphics and away we go.

‘Away we go’ means the director and tech team in the gallery hit the commands that make the cameras communicate with the weather pc in the studio which is responding to me as I click through the slides. I’m wearing an earpiece so I can take direction - sometimes they want to shave time off the bulletin if the programme is overrunning, for example - and I’m interacting with the presenter(s) in the studio.

I’ve been doing this since 2012. In that time, there have only been a few instances where things have gone eversoslightly off course:

1. The time I clicked the clicker and nothing happened. Three times it didn’t happen, so I was stuck on a map. It was in the lead up to Christmas so I just looked at the camera and said something like, ‘Well, I know what I’ll be asking Father Christmas for this year… ” at which point the thing sprang back into action and we moved seamlessly on.

2. The time when the King was coronated and our programme came live from Windsor. The weather bulletin was going to sit outside the main programme and, once I’d said my final line, the director was to opt into the main BBC 1 trailer ahead of the One Programme. The production assistant in the gallery - the person who gives me the count to let me know how long there is left for me to speak - was doing a great job. At first. So I knew when I had a minute left. I heard him say ‘thirty seconds’ and then… nothing. All was quiet. Right, I thought, I suppose I’ll just keep going. Maybe there’s a problem. I hit the outlook for the next few days and I must have talked for another minute. Eventually, I heard the voice of the director - not the PA - say ‘That’s time, Sam, that’s time! Stop talking!’ in an urgent tone.

   “Is everything ok?” she asked when I came off set.

   “There was no count,” I said, perplexed. “I didn’t get a count.”

   “My bad!” said the young PA. “I switched my microphone off to have a drink, and I didn’t switch it back on! I was counting though!”

   Everything in the gallery had sounded like business as usual, but of course, I couldn’t hear that last ten second countdown.

   “No mistakes, only learnings!” I trilled, attempting not to feel cross. “You won’t do that again!”

3. The time my earpiece fell out and rested on my shoulder. There was no floor manager to do a physical count (you may have seen this if you’ve ever been on a set; it’s where they look like they’re working through the stages of a skydive) so I had no idea how long I had left to speak. I’d heard the PA say ‘30 seconds’ and I have a sort of muscle memory for what that feels like rhythmically and I nailed the timing with my heart pounding.

These have all been minor issues but I have often had anxiety dreams about my ability to cope in a genuine live broadcast crisis. I have had a recurring nightmare where I am trapped in front of the camera and all the graphics have failed. Until Friday, that had never happened.

But March the 6th 2026 will live long in my memory now. There I was, standing in front of the picture, sent in by a viewer, of three barges on the river at Padworth, West Berkshire. I’d planned to talk about it before segueing into the forecast. I said something about the barges providing some welcome colour and turned away from camera 1 to look straight down the barrel of camera 3 where I expected to see the first slide of my forecast graphics. It wasn’t there. Just the three barges.

In the gallery, Linda, one of the most experienced directors I’ve worked with, was initially calm. I felt sure she’d locate the problem and move us swiftly onto the graphics so I just started talking about the weather, hoping she’d catch up.

Nothing.

I was saying words, some of which made sense, but without the graphics, it wasn’t easy to stay on track with the story. I was also trying to listen to the conversation in the gallery. Linda was less calm now. She couldn’t work out why the command she was hitting wasn’t changing anything.

I turned my head slightly to my left to see our lead presenter, Ed, looking wide eyed in helpless horror. I kept talking. God alone knows what I said.

Padworth continued to get some great free advertising.

I arrived at the point in my weather story where I’d normally give the inshore waters forecast. I remembered them word for word, so I confidently delivered this, smiling as hard as I could and listening to the rising panic in the gallery. Still no sign of the graphics. I was on my own.

The weather bulletin is usually around two minutes twenty seconds. We were at least half way into the time when suddenly the first slide of my graphics appeared. By then, however, I was already talking about tomorrow evening, at least three slides away, so I clicked on furiously. There was the slide with the inshore waters, “We’ve already talked about those,” I said, clicking again. Eventually I landed on the pressure map for Sunday - the penultimate slide - before calmly delivering the final outlook and turning to Ed and Lewis and walking, laughing, to the sofa and dropping onto it with theatrical relief. “Phew!” I said, as they laughed and Ed suggested I had a glass of wine before bidding our viewers goodbye.

“Well done, everyone,” came the voice of the producer, “but most of all, well done, Sam.”

It all went wrong and I survived. I didn’t stop and question aloud what had happened. I didn’t burst into tears and run off set. I just kept going until I could pull out of the nosedive we were in.

Colleagues in the newsroom were very kind and complimentary when I walked in. I felt like Maverick in Top Gun when he returns after flying the successful rescue mission of the movie:

It was awful and I’d never want to watch it back, but I did not myself panic and I finally put a nightmare to rest. But I bet it ends up on the staff Christmas tape this year.

Frank off the Radio and EYC Member of the Week

I wrote this week about Baz Luhrmann’s latest film, EPiC (Elvis Presley in Concert); you can read it here. Lots of other commentators have offered their own takes on the film but I particularly enjoyed the conversation between Frank Skinner, who is an Elvis fan, and Emily Dean, his co-presenter on this episode of Frank off the Radio podcast, Their guest, Milo Edwards, previously unknown to me is now 100% on my radar.

My treat on a weekend is to listen to Frank and Emily (I miss their third wheel, Pierre Novelli who recently moved from the show to create his own stuff for Radio 4 and other outlets) as I walk my dogs.

Frank is a brilliant story teller with a massive back catalogue of anecdotes and an intellectual hinterland that really appeals to me. I’m not going to make him EYC Member of the Week just now, however, because it’s IWD after all. I’m going to give that accolade to the brilliant Emily Dean.

If Emily is new to you, I can only recommend you read her fantastic memoir, ‘Everybody Died So I Got a Dog.’ As a manifesto for being a single woman living a fulfilling life there’s almost none greater. Funny, sad, clever, feminist and beautifully written, you won’t regret it!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

Live action

My week ended with a comedy gig at a pub in the Rural Backarse of Nowhere on Friday evening. You may have visited the Rural Backarse of Nowhere yourself; it’s the place at the end of a long drive through deep floodwater and potholed roads in the pitch black, where no phone signal manages to penetrate.

As I’d driven along the main road, the one with regular lighting and clear signs of civilisation, I’d been rehearsing my set. I hadn’t done a stand up set since before Christmas, and I’d introduced a new gag and reordered some other lines, so I needed all the prep time I could get. I’d switched off my audio book of Tina Brown reading The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - The Truth and the Turmoil, and was repeatedly going through the bit where I share my new fantasy of being bundled into a bird hide with Chris Packham who rings me firmly before releasing me into the wild.

I turned off the main road. In the space of perhaps half a mile everything went dark and quiet and very tree-ey. I was forced to leave Chris Packham in the hide and concentrate in a trepidatious silence. Then the roads went very pot holey before disappearing completely underwater.

I had one of those moments where I did question the wisdom of driving into a body of water without knowing its depths, but, with my foot trembling on the accelerator, and with the words ‘the show must go on’ I continued on, heart pounding.

By the time I arrived at the pub - the venue for the show, I could barely speak English, let alone remember a load of material cleverly constructed around naturalists and gardeners (Monty Don also features).

Fortunately for me, opening the show, the audience were already a couple of bevvies down and ready to laugh generously. So that was my first stand up gig of 2026 in the bag. A reminder that the destination is sometimes much, much better than the journey.

And for anybody who might be in the vicinities of the following gigs, in March I will be at Arundel Jailhouse, West Sussex on the 27th (tix here).

And at the Convivial Rabbit in Dorchester on March 28th.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

What it is: How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is the new Netflix comedy thriller from the inspirational Lisa McGee of Derry Girls fame. It follows three lifelong Belfast friends who travel to County Donegal after learning their estranged fourth friend has died, only to discover the death is far more suspicious than it seems. The pals stumble into a chaotic murder investigation involving a secret cult, a shadowy organisation, and long-buried secrets from their teenage years.

What it isn’t: It’s not Derry Girls, the best female led series ever to have been made for TV. However, you will definitely recognise massive similarities between the characters. So Orla is reinvented as Dara, (played by Caoilfhionn Dunne), Michelle is more or less Robyn (Sinead Keenan) and Erin finds a new incarnation as Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher). You’ll also recognise actual Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Jamie Beamish (Ciaran from the Photo Shack who went out with Aunt Sarah) and hot priest-reincarnated-as-supportive-husband Art Campion.

You’ll delight at the appearances of Ardal O’Hanlon, Patrick Kielty and Tom - Ballad of Wallis Island - Basden.

Why you should watch: Because it’s another great female led romp through Lisa McGee’s imagination. And because again, in the character of Saoirse, we are offered a lead female character all women will identify with. Saoirse is Erin from Derry Girls, but she is also Elizabeth Bennett fron P&P and, SJP from SATC at the same time. Brilliantly played by Roisin Gallagher (if you haven’t watched The Dry on ITVX may I urge you to try that too), I’ll bet you you’ll fall hard for her like I have. You’ll also fall hard for Darragh Hand, who plays the handsome cop who finds himself entangled in the quirky mystery adventure and entangled with Saoirse, quite literally. I’d seen him at the National Theatre in ‘Dear England’ when he played Marcus Rashford but he hadn’t registered. Two years or so on, put him in a uniform and you’ll forget how to spell ‘football.’

If you loved Derry Girls, you’ll get a helping of that same fabulously colourful, energetic Irish vernacular and another great soundtrack. Do it!

EYC Member of the Week

In 2019 Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood wrote a score for the BBC Proms, entitled ‘Horror vacui,’ which explored ways he could get a string orchestra to simulate complex electronic sounds.

This week, the Hallé Orchestra performed his rewritten version of that piece, now entitled simply ‘Violin Concerto.’ Only one eight note phrase has survived from the original work.

I find this impressive on two counts. First because I played the violin badly for the best part of ten years. I had no aptitude and less motivation. But I admired players who were good and I love, love, love the sound of strings.

Secondly, I also admire creators who can kill their darlings and start again. If you’ve ever binned two hundred pages and poured yourself a large glass of red wine, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Here’s the one phrase I used last week, reversioned: Jonny Greenwood is this week’s EYC Member of the Week!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

Andrew Lownie’s book, ‘Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York’ was published last summer and Anna was up Waterstone’s as the printing presses cooled. “You MUST read it,” she enthused at every opportunity. “They’re absolutely monstrous!”

Anna is, by her own admission, a paid up monarchist. She’s the one friend who’s always abreast of the royal family’s moves, from Camilla’s latest appearance at a book club to William’s most recent beard trim. I am only slightly less enthusiastic. I know that the republicanism spouted by my husband makes intellectual sense, but I have a romantic spleen, or kidneys or something, and I can’t help but be seduced by the threads of history represented by monarchy which tie us to the societies on these isles that have gone before.

“Thing is,” my husband would regularly say, “we’re only ever one avalanche away from King Andrew, and then how would you feel?”

Well, I read Lownie’s (brilliant) book this week and the answer to the King Andrew conundrum has made itself crystal bloody clear: “Off with their heads!”

Andrew has always been Simply Dreadful and a Complete Thicko but he spiralled into the territory of the Dangerously-Deluded-and Possibly-Actually-Criminal when he sparkled for the cameras in his mum’s ballroom with Emily Maitliss.

Lownie’s forensic, dispassionate book lays out all the ways in which this observation is true. Lownie himself (I wonder how he feels about sharing a name with the most loathed man in the Commonwealth) is the writer du jour, appearing on podcasts, the news and here on this site, where his excellent Substack, The Lownie Report is revealing more of this, the most sordid story of avarice and entitlement, on an almost hourly basis. (There is plenty of stuff he couldn’t put in the book. I mean, my eyebrows have simply run out of forehead up which to ascend.)

The case against Mountbatten-Windsor, in every microscopic detail, has largely been made for the Crown. They had only ever to read the book. I understand from Mr Lownie, that Andrew himself won’t have picked it up. It is said he only reads camera books and watches golf on the TV.

I can’t recommend Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York more highly. You will be appalled.

1981: Life of the Extremely Wealthy Man

There is so much great stuff from the BBC Archive available on YouTube; I have become obsessed. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the awful news or the interminably wet weather, I comfort myself with the thought that at least I have a toilet with a reliable flush actually inside my house and can order Deliveroo if the need takes me (it never has). There’s nothing like a glimpse of yesterday to remind you of how great today is.

Because I’ve been wrapped up in listening to the excesses of the former Duke and Duchess of York, I’ve been trying to imagine how it must feel to be genuinely, rudely wealthy (or at least to be sufficiently confident that someone else will pay your debts); to be so well off that you’ll just spend, spend, spend, no matter what.

Trust the BBC to educate me. In the Man Alive documentary ‘1981: Life of the Extremely Wealthy Man,’ we are treated to an insight into the lives of Britan’s wealthiest men - or at least the ones who were prepared to discuss them on camera.

Say hello to the hero of the piece, one Rupert Deen. Old Harrovian, Rupert, whose grandfather was ‘in oil,’ would rise at 9.30 and take his breakfast (black coffee) at the Ritz before contemplating how he might spend his day. His life was spent trailing across the globe hanging out in all the premier spots: Verbier, the Cote d’Azure and Ascot to name but three. It tuns out there was more to Rupert than cigars and swim trunks. For Rupert was a GB Olympian! He came last in the luge during the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo. Following his death, his friend Algy Cluff is reported as saying of Deen’s luge career, “This was entirely suited to Rupert’s requirements, since it is the only sport with the participant lying flat on his back.”

Also putting in an appearance in the doco, was Peter North and the Porsche which hasn’t made a hole in his personal bank balance because it’s run through his company. And it’s not, he’s keen to emphasise, a ‘tart cart.’ Ah the eighties!

Representing the self-made man, step forward Peter Stringfellow. Peter’s running his clubs and whizzing round in his Merc complete with cop-style private mobile radio kit. My favourite moment? Peter picks up his walkie talkie to convey the essential news that ‘Lionel Blair’s booked a table for tonight and wants a cake.’

For balance, a wealthy female accountant is featured talking about what she spends on clothes and her hair in a year, but the show’s not called Life of the Extremely Wealthy Man for nothing, right, so we pass over her excesses in the space of three minutes. God forbid women start getting ideas about earning their own money and spending it with equal abandon.

The programme ends with a ‘discussion’ (three blokes in leather and chrome chairs) of the tax system and how it benefits the wealthy. We see a youthful Jeffery Archer, appalled by the programme’s seeming premise that ‘all millionaires are frivolous,’ and an equally youthful Frank Field MP, making the point that extremes of wealth and poverty put our sense of community at risk. Plus ca change, is, I believe, the apposite phrase here.

I don’t think I’ve seen such a phallocentric programme since Ru Paul’s Drag Race!

Finally to EYC Member of the Week

81 year old actress and grandmother, Illona Linthwaite, is gearing up to get naked in the production of Siegfried, the third of the four parts of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House. She’ll be playing Erda, the Earth Goddess and the primordial personification of wisdom and prophecy.

As I grow older, I’m always looking out for the women who are showing how empowering ageing can be. Illona is more than at ease with her older self and, having decided that attitudes around ageing and the older woman are ‘bollocks,’ is making a political as well as artistic statement of her own in reprising this role which she first played last year.

“I don’t care what people think now,” she says in her interview with Emily Prescott in The Sunday Times. “Actually, that’s not quite true. I was going to say I don’t care what I look like. I do care what I look like. On a certain level, I’m quite vain. But there is something about just owning yourself as you are.”

An actress, writer, director, teacher and lifelong feminist, I’m happy to add to Illona’s collection of titles by conferring on her the accolade of Executive Youth Club Member of the Week. I hope they keep the heating on in the dressing rooms backstage!

Friday was an anniversary for me. Four years since I ran my one and only half marathon. I’d always sworn off running; all the women I knew who did it looked gaunt and, if I’m honest, a bit leathery. But during the pandemic, when people started going mad for paddle boarding, cycling and Couch to 5k-ing, I interviewed a man on the radio who challenged me to have a go at the running thing myself. Because I have never declined a dare (it’s the reason I spent most of my education outside the Head’s office), I agreed.

I chose Jo Whiley as my ‘coach’ from the selection available, not because I didn’t want motivation from Michael Johnson or homespun encouragement from Sarah Millican, but because somebody at a party once said I reminded them of her. Flattery, etc.

In no time at all I was navigating sunny streets, parks and promenades at pace. 5k came and went. 7k. 10k. I hadn’t run this far since I was 12 and accidentally made it into the cross country team (everyone else deliberately ran slowly because who the hell wants to be in the cross country team, right?).

How about a half marathon? My husband had bought me a Garmin watch once I’d triumphed in the 5k stakes, and I saw there was a training plan spread out over a number of weeks. As 2020 rolled into 2021 and we found ourselves in another lockdown, I think I appreciated the structure and purpose the plan gave me.

I bought new leggings, some gloves and a shed load of jelly babies and, on February 13 2021, aged 51, I ran my first (and only) half marathon, entirely alone save for the musicians playing through my earphones.

My legs, the same legs I regularly moan about - they’re too close to the ground, have too much in common with Shetland ponies and one of my calves is definitely fatter than the other - carried me around meadows and tea gardens, up to the Head, along the beach and around the quiet lockdown streets at an incredibly consistent pace. Eventually I turned into my own road and struck for home, in tears. It was - ridiculously - one of the proudest achievements of my life.

I should have run that half marathon with other people in the sort of race where they give you a medal and a special t-shirt for finishing. My family should have been waiting for me with balloons and a banner. Ideally there’d have been a cameraman and a reporter from BBC Sport at hand to record my ecstasy. Instead there was just my Garmin watch telling me I’d run a new record. My 13 miles in 2:13:44.

And there was James and this amazing track from 1997 as I hit the imaginary tape:

I’ll never not think of finishing my run whenever I hear this song. Enjoy the video which features a young and yet-to-break-out Keeley Hawes!

The Names by Florence Knapp

I read this book following a recommendation from about seventeen friends. Confessing I hadn’t read it had started to get embarrassing so I bought a copy.

It’s the sort of debut novel that makes any aspiring writer lay down her pen and think, ‘why bother?’

The premise, that our name determines if not the trajectories of our lives, then sufficient elements to influence them, works in a sliding doors way. It made me wonder if I’d have been more successful if I’d been called Araminta or Boadicea.

Sometimes it was hard, painful, even, to read but I found it compelling.

The key takeaway? Stay the fuck away from men called Gordon.

Small Prophets

Talking of men called Gordon, Mackenzie Crook plays Gordon, an annoying middle manager with an anaemic ponytail in the new series he’s written and directed and which dropped on Monday on the BBC. Small Prophets is a masterpiece of suburban whimsy and Mackenzie Crook is an actual genius.

What else can I say about this beautiful series? In it, Pearce Quigley is a DIY shop worker - Michael Sleep - paralysed by grief for a girlfriend who disappeared seven years previously, and seeking answers. His aged father, played so convincingly by Michael Palin that I actually forgot it was Michael Palin, suffers the sort of confusion that comes with age but which is not his only state of being. In his lucid moments he has a supernatural route to prophesy involving jars of water, incantation and manure, which he shares with his son. That relationship is touching and poignant and, for anyone who’s seen a parent in the shallows of dementia, completely relatable.

This is a show structured around confusion. There are weird, creatures grown in jars of water in the shed that reminded me a bit of those ‘grow your own boyfriends’; there is the brilliant Paul Kay as a skint and desperate brother-in-law, and there is the magnificent Sophie Willan as a curious neighbour. And if that’s not enough to get you to switch on then how the hell are we even friends?

The Radio Times gives a much better overview; I like that phrase, ‘magic in the mundane.’

EYC Member of the Week

All of this brings me on to our EYC Member of the week. Michael Palin is 82 and, in Small Prophets, he is turning in the most fabulous, twinkly, mischievous and heart breaking performance. Top of his game. Hands down EYC Member of the Week!

Stay mobile!

Sam xx

Is This Thing On?

Last week I went to see a film I thought was about Neil Diamond and it really wasn’t. This week I went to see a film inspired by the story of comedian John Bishop. I thought I might learn something about John Bishop.

I didn’t.

‘Is this Thing On?’ is a film produced and directed by Bradley Cooper who plays a very funny character. Much, much funnier than the character - Alex Novak - played by Will Arnett who is the John Bishop styled comedian. Novak’s marriage is on the brink of collapse until he discovers stand up comedy and mistakes it for therapy. It’s easily done. I myself have often said that open mic nights are like a parade of mental illness.

As a woman who splashes around in the shallows of comedy (they won’t let me in the deep end) I did not find this an enjoyable watch. My husband, on the other hand, loved it. So that’s where I’m starting with this. He loved Bradley Cooper, he thought Laura Dern was brilliant and he enjoyed Will Arnett.

But he has never spent an evening in the corner of a British Legion club (or pub or provincial theatre) surrounded by other comics, none of whom want you to get more laughs than they do, waiting to go on in front of an audience of stony faced people who’ve sat as far away from the stage as possible in the hope that the MC won’t pick on them. He will, because he hasn’t got anything else in his repertoire.

And that’s my problem with the Will Arnett character, Alex.

Yet another unlikeable man with unwarranted confidence and no material, on the comedy circuit. And in that sense he was TOTALLY CREDIBLE.

Expect to see Alex Novak on Live at the Apollo soon!

EYC Member of the Week

Carol Kirkwood announced last week that she is hanging up her weather clicker and giving up those horrid early starts in order to spend more time with her husband of two years, Steve. Carol’s kindness and her sense of fun are well known and there has been a collective sigh of regret across the corporation at her departure after more than 25 years. I for one, will miss the little gasp she makes on the intake of breath between phrases.

Giving up work to lie in late with a husband more than ten years your junior? Without a doubt this makes Carol EYC Member of the Week. Wishing them both many leisurely breakfasts in the years to come.

It’s ‘tongue-out Tuesday’ for Cheeky Chappie!

Puppy Love

When I reached the point whereat my boys fled the nest and no longer needed me to fold up their pyjamas, I did the thing so many of us do. I got a dog. I describe Ludo as my ‘furred son’; Toby is my first son, Theo my second and Ludo my ‘furred.’

I fell hard for my little companion, the keeper of my secrets. And then I started to panic. Dogs don’t live forever, right? I couldn’t stop thinking about that line I’d heard: ‘A dog is your best friend for part of your life but you are his best friend for the whole of his life,’ which could bring me to tears in Pets At Home and prompt me to reach for every overpriced toy or treat in sight. I couldn’t conceive of a life without him. So I did the thing so many of us do. I got another dog. I describe Lettice as my ‘dogter.’

We hang out as a three. I am recognisable by my dogs when I walk on the beach near my home every day. “I just cannot imagine my life without dogs,” I said to my husband in bed one night, as I spooned Ludo and Lettice slept at my feet. “I’m frightened about how I’ll feel if I lose them.”

“Not this again,” he sighed. “This is how it starts. An imaginary excursion into grief and suddenly we’re on a waiting list somewhere. But no. Absolutely not. We are not getting another dog. And I beg you not to volunteer at the RSPCA.” He switched out the lights. (“I beg you!”)

I have reluctantly accepted that I may not augment my pack (which will be a relief to Ludo who quite frankly, was very happy being my one and only, my prince, my heart) so I’ve begun collecting whimsical vintage ceramic dogs instead.

I’m so excited with my new hobby. Pictured above is ‘Cheeky Chappie,’ my Crown Devon 1930s Scottie, bought for a tenner in a closing down sale in an antiques shop opposite the post office, just before Christmas.

Cheeky Chappie (I believe this is the model name, not one I’ve baptised him with) was joined this week by a fantastic find on Vinted. Of similar vintage, this little fella is Japanese Marotomoware and I’ve yet to find a name for him (open to suggestions!). For £3.50 plus the postage, I satisfied the impulse to buy created by the dreadful weather and saved a pup from the landfill.

I’ve introduced the two wee fellas to each other and voiced their conversations. (I’d tell you what they’ve been saying to each other, but it’d probably get me cancelled, so I’ll save it for a podcast.) I’m turning into a woman of a certain age with dogs and collectibles and it’s brilliant.

Look at that noble Japanese mien!

Staying with dogs, my rummage in the Jumble Box this week has thrown up the following delightful video of a rescue dog - Olly the Jack Russell - living his best life in the Crufts arena as he takes on the agility course. I watched this about eight times on Thursday when the skies were menacing and the rain kept bloody falling. Olly is a bringer of joy throwing himself at the obstacle course of life. This week’s take-away? Be more Olly!

And for anyone who might want to, you can donate to the Blue Cross here.

Have a great week and stay mobile! Sam xx

Song Sung Blue

Anna and I went to the cinema on Wednesday. “You’re literally the only person I know that would want to come and see a Neil Diamond biopic,” she said to me. (I felt so proud.)

We thought it was a biopic about Neil Diamond. It’s not.

It was, however, an absolutely fabulous advert for the NHS and the concept of free healthcare at the point of need. (Accidents and heart attacks will happen and they will wreck your stab at fame and fortune.)

Kate Hudson is brilliant as ‘Thunder’ - one half of the musical duo, ‘Lightning and Thunder’ (who perform a mean Neil Diamond experience) and plays the role with the most authentic eyebrows I’ve seen on any actress since Susan Tully played Suzanne in Grange Hill.

Hugh Jackman is entirely without vanity in this film. I had no idea he had quite so much chest hair. I thought he did a fair job of interpreting a man interpreting Neil Diamond, but Anna said he left her cold and complained about his teeth throughout the whole 2 hours 13 minutes (“I could have done with an hour less,” was her verdict).

I sobbed heartily at the end. She looked at me. “Have we just watched the same film?”

The Fast Show

If you’ve listened to my BBC Sounds doco, ‘Scorchio! The Story of the Weather Girl (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001slqd) you’ll already know that I was a big fan of the Fast Show in the 90s. I always thought it was clever, very funny, very British and didn’t completely forget about women. I’ll admit to being a little wary about seeing An Evening with the Fast Show when it came to the Bournemouth International Centre on Friday, (time can be cruel) but I’m in that zone where nostalgia is everything and I’ll never not love Simon Day, so I went along with pals.

I haven’t laughed as much since 1997.

The show, the last of the anniversary tour and, as the cast pointed out, potentially the last time they’d ever be together again on stage, was perfectly crafted. A mix of all our favourite characters plus stories of the relationships between the cast members and some backstage gossip, it held four thousand audience members rapt and laughing uproariously from start to finish.

In a show of more than two and a half hours, there were moments of reflection that struck me. Arabella ‘Does My Bum Look Big in This?’ Weir was the only Fast Show female cast member present (there was a fabulous tribute to the extraordinary Caroline Aherne RIP), and made no bones about her experience as a woman in comedy in the 90s, even working with men who would have thought themselves progressive at the time. The men sat there and took it. Which was nice.

Everybody got a bit of time to talk about their experience of the show. God, it was bloody great to laugh at stuff that was so uncomplicated and to understand how small observations, a phrase, a look, could be used to build compelling, funny characters. I could listen to this stuff all day.

And then there was the pair of gold lycra trousers worn by John Thompson that must have been washed too often and I’ll never unsee that anatomical detail.

I’ve chosen for the Jumble Box this week a sketch from the Fast Show that would never be made today. It features the Simon Day character, Billy Bleach, alongside characters played by Mark Williams and Arabella Weir. Take a look at Simon Day’s face after the mention of his ‘darts arm.’ And just because he evokes men I knew in my home county of Essex so brilliantly and makes me ache with laughter, Simon is this week’s EYC Member of the Week.

The Fast Show - Billy Bleach 4 Relationship Advice

Weren’t the 90s brilliant!

Tim Key: LA Baby!

I bought this beautiful little book for my son, Theo, who is a huge fan of poet, actor, comedian and writer, Tim Key, a man I consider one of the UK’s most lowkey comedy geniuses.

His writing is always funny, shot through with a poignancy and pathos (see The Ballad of Wallis Island) and is distinguished by its English and often unexpected turns of phrase and its cultural references.

Theo loved the book, which is small enough to carry in a big pocket on the tube. When I asked to borrow it to read myself this week, he handed it over, much thumbed and misshapen from being rained on. Somehow, that was the most fitting tribute this little book could have.

LA Baby! tells the story of Tim’s visit to the States to film an unrevealed show, through poems, excerpts of a putative screenplay and conversations with his creative collaborator and the book’s designer, Emily Juniper.

Tim’s veiled loneliness, the putting on of a brave face and the failure of his American dream are conveyed in heartbreaking but simultaneously hilarious lines, page after page. His return to the UK is a relief. The relationship with Juniper is touching in its intimacy and authenticity.

I loved this little book so much. Everything about it is brilliant and, I for one, am grateful for the resurrection in print of the word ‘piehole’, a word I remember from the Beano. Thanks, Tim.

I’ve chosen the poem below from the book for you, and urge you to pick up a copy yourself as the perfect antidote to global politics.

GREEN AND PLEASANT

I plodded down Sunset Boulevard and spotted a man who

looked a lot like Nick Witchell, the BBC’s former royal correspondent.

Goddammit! I missed England!

I collapsed and hauled myself under a vast poster

advertising series four of Slow Horses.

I screwed my eyes up tight and thought of the homeland.

I thought of Compo, and the NHS, Adele, bacon and eggs.

My eyes glazed themselves over, and I imagined a whole

cavalcade, walking before me.

Geoff Capes, Nasty Nick and Lauren Laverne.

Taco Bell vaporised across the road, a West Cornwall

Pasty Co. stood in its place, Tony Adams, and Fred Dibnah

streaming in, England everywhere.

Wallace and Gromit, Des Lynam, Nottingham Forest,

Ziggy Greaves, Dennis the Menace, marching before me.

Lady Di!

Jeremy Bates!

Withnail and I!

I appeared to have the taste of Boddingtons in my mouth

as I stood, unsteady on my legs.

Then the whole lot exploded into an impossible cloud of

burning colour.

A cosmic haze of red, white and blue.

I wiped my eyes with my Dodgers hand towel and

moved forward.

I’d find a little place that did pizza pies.

Pull myself together a bit.

******

Have a great week and stay mobile!

Sam xx

On Wednesday evening I raced to Dorchester and the theatre at Thomas Hardye School (named not for the novelist but the one with the additional distinguishing ‘e’ who endowed the free school in 1579) where Janet Street-Porter was performing her show, ‘Janet Street-Porter: Off the Leash.’

I wasn’t sure what to expect from an evening with JSP but I was keen to support an older woman performer who swears at least as much as I do, and I was intrigued to find out more about her life, her loves and her fashion choices. Janet is 79, has had four husbands, many more lovers, two knee replacements and a new hip, and boasts a career in the media like no other woman of her generation. As a working class woman, identifiable by her accent, she has succeeded in spite of shameful prejudice, and sometimes, I suspect, she has succeeded because of that same shameful prejudice.

Despite her most recent knee surgery she prowled the stage in the most fabulous, green, sequinned trouser suit, regaling the audience with outrageous tales from her life in newspapers and the media, her many relationships and the set of Loose Women.

A grammar school achiever, hers is a story of the sort of social mobility that doesn’t seem as prevalent now, and it was one which made me think of my own mum’s journey away from London’s East End. Both Janet and my mum were ridiculed for their London accents - my mum’s cockney tones certainly meant she missed out on lots of opportunities - but Janet, brought up in the more acceptable environs of Fulham, managed to make hers part of her brand.

She was funny, acerbic and relatable. The audience was invited to submit questions for the second half of the show. My question - is it better to be a woman in 2026 than it was in 1986? - didn’t make the cut. Instead she chose questions like ‘Who was your favourite husband?” (Answer: “They’re all your favourite at the beginning.”) And “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever put in your mouth?” (No spoilers here!) I know she wanted to end the show on a laugh but I really think she’d be a wonderful commentator on the changing landscape for women over the past fifty years.

I left the show full of admiration, not only for the many ways in which she was a pioneer in a male dominated industry, but for the energy it must take at 79 to tackle a thirty date live tour. For these reasons, JSP is my EYC Member of the Week!

There are more dates on Janet’s current tour and I have no hesitation in recommending it: https://www.janetstreetporter.com/tour

An Evening at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

I did so much racing around this week. Fingers crossed the batteries have run out in all those nasty speed cameras on the A3. On Thursday I drove up to the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford to host the fabulous John Crace in his tour show, ‘What the Hell Just Happened?”

Just by the by, in case you’re wondering (because I was) the theatre is unusual in being named after a non-royal woman. In my eyes that makes the woman especially worthy of investigation. Yvonne Arnaud was a French born musical prodigy who swapped the concert halls of Europe for the London stage, aged 21. She had a vibrant career in musical comedies and later in British films. Having lived in Guildford, where she was an active member of the community, for much of her life, the theatre was named for her in 1965, seven years after her death. There. I just wanted that name to live for you.

But back to the show. ‘What the Hell Just Happened?’ sees John dazed and bewildered by the politics he’s been sketching for the Guardian since 2014. I mean, what a decade it’s been! Six Prime Ministers, four elections, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Trump - the man’s never been short of material. His stories are funny and insightful and the story of John’s own career is illuminating. Just as with JSP, the audience gets to ask questions too; unlike with JSP they are always ‘live’ with no submissions for vetting beforehand!

I’m so proud to be John’s sidekick for the shows he does in the south and I had a great evening. I have often opened for well known comedians in local comedy clubs but the joy of opening a show for a speaker like John is that the audience doesn’t have an expectation of the host. When I hit the Guildford audience with my own brand of humour and well deployed political gags they laughed so generously. I was bloody thrilled and John was super happy too. Years of interviewing people on the radio have taught me how to listen carefully to help structure the course of conversation. I came away from the evening believing I have some skills. Now, if only I could find the job that requires them…

My next shows with John will be at the Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne on April 16th: https://www.tivoliwimborne.co.uk/events/john-crace-what-the-hell-just-happened/

And at Salisbury Playhouse on April 25th: https://www.wiltshirecreative.co.uk/events/john-crace-what-

Sharing a dressing room at the Yvonne Arnaud

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A friend’s son is in the current production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe. I love watching work I feel personally connected to and as tenuous as that connection is, it was enough to motivate me to buy tickets.

A lot of license has been taken, but I was won over. The show looks beautiful in the space and, candle-lit by chandeliers, is really atmospheric. Far from midsummer, the action is given a winter setting with lots of fur coats. The girl sitting next to us added extra authenticity by sneezing and spluttering through some of the quieter moments in a way that absolutely suggested the onset of the flu season and helped me identify with the latent aggression of Puck. The whole show is given a punk styling which was right up my street. It was the darkest interpretation of the Dream I’ve seen in a while, foregrounding sexual violence and political unrest. And the best thing? My friend’s son turned in a great performance so there has been absolutely no need for me to come up with one of those congratulatory lines that’s complimentary but essentially says nothing. Favourites of mine include, “You nailed it!” or “Look at you!” followed immediately by “What can I get you to drink?” as an immediate deflection.

The show runs for another week in London and then tours. If borderline psycopathic men in tutus invoking fairy magic is your sort of thing, defo see this! https://www.headlong.co.uk/productions/a-midsummer-nights-dream

Right, those are the pickings from the Jumble Box this week; I’m off for a long, hot bath. Stay mobile!

I managed to get to two films in the past week. First, Anna and I went to see ‘Becoming Victoria Wood,’ a documentary directed by Catherine Abott and currently playing at independent cinemas. Find your nearest screening here.

It’s hard to express how much I love Victoria Wood. As somebody who splashes about in the shallows of comedy and knows how bloody hard and cruel it is right now in the 21st century, let alone fifty years ago when she was starting out, my admiration for her knows no bounds. Her material was witty, rooted in Britishness, clever and compassionate. She herself was without vanity and enormously generous to the performers she worked with. The closeness of her team is clear throughout the film, and it makes perfect sense that friends like Julie Walters (“I’d never seen anyone with such small eyes,” says Victoria of her) do not appear, nor do her children or ex-husband, Geoffrey Durham contribute. Some reviews I’ve read have held this against the film, but I think it is perfectly understandable that these people who loved her will protect her privacy. As a fan who’s been lucky enough to see her live and who has taken inspiration from her relentless commitment to her own creativity, I do not feel entitled to ask for anything more.

I laughed so much. And then I felt enormously sad for the loss, ten years ago this year, of a British comedy star who wore her brilliance so lightly. Defo see this!

Hamnet

On Wednesday Anna and I (we don’t always spend this much time together, but she felt guilty that I’d bought the tickets and the tea when we’d been to see the Victoria Wood film and she wanted to discharge her debt pronto) went to see Hamnet.

My thoughts:

THE TREE IS BRILLIANT. It 100% needs an agent and security. We don’t want another Sycamore Gap catastrophe.

Jessie Buckley is a REALLY GOOD actress. And they made her wear that same dress day in, day out. Imagine a decade without anything new in your wardrobe.

Paul Mescal’s necklace did not figure.

The Jupe brothers as boy Hamnet and actual Hamlet are great, and I did not know at the time that their mum was in Coronation Street.

The film clearly shows that crushing up mugwort and a load of other herbs is unlikely to save you from a deadly infection.

I am really glad I was born when I was. I newly appreciate running water and tarmac.

The bits that made me cry were actually the words written by Shakespeare and the music written by Max Richter. Which was a bit naughty, IMHO.

I am one of the few people who didn’t really go for the book. I haven’t gone a whole heap for the film.

I read a very interesting article by Jonathan Bate about Maggie O’Farrell’s reimagining of the death of Shakespeare’s son and what we know for fact. Sadly it’s behind The Times’ paywall, but if you subscribe: https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/how-accurate-is-hamnet-the-shakespeare-scholars-verdict-3fw670xgw

You’ll probably have to see this film at some point - it’s one of those - but the production values are something else and you will love all the hawk action.

Executive Youth Club Member of the Week

Photo: Leisha Bond

When I first started writing about executive youth back in 2017, I devised a quiz much like the one on my Substack here (do check it out if you’re not sure if you qualify for membership).

To illustrate the original quiz and its accompanying post, I used a picture of a pole dancer and suggested that the spirit of executive youth was the fifty-something woman taking up pole dancing, potentially after a hip replacement.

Imagine how thrilled I was to read this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c041r5xr22qo about Leisha Bond, a barrister who turned pole dancer in her fifties. She hasn’t had a hip operation but she does gets the odd niggle, and that’s good enough for me.

Leisha is my EYC Member of the Week for representing almost to the letter, the spirit of our merry band. And for anyone requiring representation, not only is she an expert in finance on relationship breakdown and divorce, she has also been awarded Most Stylish Female Barrister (I mean, I had no idea either) twice.

I’m sure she’ll be delighted to hear of her latest accolade. Congratulations Leisha!

My Movements

Members in the Surrey area might be interested to know that I’ll be hosting Guardian Sketch Writer and EYC member, John Crace, in his show at the Yvonne Arnaud theatre this coming Thursday, 22 January.

John is a warm, authoritative and humorous speaker with so many interesting takes on the lunacy of our democracy in recent years. I love working with him and am really looking forward to the event. If you’re nearby, there are a few tickets available: https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/whats-on/john-crace-what-hell-just-happened

Until next week, stay mobile.

What a week! My world was rocked on Tuesday when Dr Miriam Stoppard joined Nuala McGovern on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to talk about her new book, ‘Sex, Drugs and Walking Sticks.’ I’ve got to be honest here, I’m no longer the regular listener to Woman’s Hour I once was. Since Jenni and Jane departed, the show has lost its warmth, sense of humour and its lightly worn intellectual hinterland, but it briefly redeemed itself when it broadcast Miriam’s earnest exhortation for older women in their 60s, 70s and 80s, to continue to explore and enjoy their sexuality.

My husband messaged breathlessly on Whatsapp: ‘Just heard Miriam Stoppard talking about ‘embracing your dildo’ on Woman’s Hour - candidate for your Executive Youth Club!’

I’ll say! Miriam is 88 years old. I love that she’s turned up to the studio looking every inch as glamorous as she would have done thirty or forty years ago, wearing a wig she might have borrowed from Joan Collins, and she’s been completely unafraid to say exactly what she wants to say. For this reason, she is this week’s Member of the Week.I hope her book sells millions.

You can listen to the episode here (Miriam enters the fray at around 16:43).

Hanks for the memory

On Thursday evening I went to my regular tap class. I’ve been learning how to tap dance on and off for much of my life. I’m still not good enough to busk in an underpass on a tea tray, but I love it. It’s a multi generational adult class and I like to think of myself as in touch with the younger dancers. On Thursday though, I gave myself away.

Learning a new choreography we were instructed to ‘step forward, cross in front, step back and bring the right leg back to the side.’ I’m pretty sure this is called a ‘crossing box step’ but, imagining I was being helpful I exclaimed, ‘You know! The Hank Marvin step!’

I was met with blank stares and quizzical-but-immaculately-maintained eyebrows. “Who the hell is Hank Marvin?” asked one of my younger classmates.

What should I say? Who was (indeed, still is, at the time of writing) Hank Marvin? A few options:

1. “Imagine a gentlemen’s shoe salesman picked up a guitar and started playing in the stock room? That’s Hank Marvin.”

2. “Picture all the great guitarists of the world: Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Slash… He’s not them but he definitely had a distinctive sound.”

3. “He was the leader of The Shadows, Cliff Richard’s band.” (Running the risk of the dangerous follow up question: “Who the hell is Cliff Richard?” I mean, we could be there all night.)

4. His actual name was Brian Rankin; absolutely no rizz?”

In the end I just went with ‘Ask your nan,’ and stepped back meekly into the line, cursing Hank Marvin. Never bloody liked The Shadows anyway. Apart from Apache, which was quite good.

Never heard of Hank Marvin? Check out this clip of an early iteration of The Shadows playing Wonderful Land in 1962. Close your eyes. Life will seem much simpler and kinder. Oh, and you won’t miss any choreography because there isn’t any. Boy bands in the 60s didn’t have to sing. Or dance.

Remembering the best of us

Yesterday - January 10th - was my younger son’s birthday. I bought him a coffee and repeated the story of his birth (elective caesarian, he was very cross upon arrival, mop of unexpectedly strawberry blonde hair etc). “It’s always a special day for me,” I told him.

“Is that because it’s also the day David Bowie died?” He replied. “Because I remember that day and it did kind of put a downer on my birthday and now I can’t help but think of Bowie dying when I’m blowing out my candles. In fact, the act of blowing out my candles has come to feel weirdly symbolic.”

What can I say? The day has indeed become doubly meaningful because I love Bowie and yes, he did die on January 10th in 2016, that awful year that we lost so many cultural icons, many of them members of this very club.

So I want to just take a moment to remember David Bowie, whose constant exploration, reinvention and experimentation made it impossible for him ever to be described as ‘middle aged.’

I’ve chosen ‘Life On Mars’ as my offering from his ouvre, partly because I love the final moments of this video and partly because it was a jumping off point for the brilliant BBC series starring John Sim, Philip Glenister and Liz White which you should also watch if you haven’t already.

Following an extensive consultation, the EYC confers a ‘Legend of Executive Youth’ award on this outstanding human. Any problems with that, get in touch with the club secretary.

If you have any nominations for EYCMember of the Week comment below!