Author: catherinedoveyroche

We’re in the middle of recording the next series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, with Reading done, and Salford on 8^th November. There’s one more date on 22^nd November, venue TBC. Barry Cryer was with us at Reading; otherwise the teams from here on will be people who’ve been tried and tested on the show before (though not in every case); it’s gratifying that so many of the younger crowd want to be involved. Graeme Garden has retired from Clue, but contributes ideas and suggestions as our online eminence grise comique.

27^th October saw the Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Night return live, and we had a completely packed house treated to a fine, varied programme of films. I played for Lupino Lane’s Good Night Nurse, a 25 minute comedy in which Lane’s every physical skill as well as some clever trick photography were featured.

He made many more comedy films – and in Hollywood, too – than I knew about, and this one is a real tour de force. 

I was back at Italia Conti in October, working for the first time with Acting Course 3^rd years on Lucy Kirkwood’s excellent The Welkin. It has a Kate Bush song in it (Running Up That Hill) which needs an a cappella folky treatment, and which we extended into a second Bush song (The Big Sky). Very committed work by the cast made the arrangement work perfectly.

I’m performing my one-person show, Clueless at the Keys, in Tunbridge Wells at the Trinity Theatre on Thursday September 30^th at 7.30.

The show is about my connections with music and comedy, with material from musical wits as well as my own contributions. I haven’t played it for about two years due to the lockdowns, but from now I’ll be feverishly re-rehearsing myself back into it and adding a couple of new numbers, one of Tom Lehrer’s and one of Alan Sherman’s.

Trinity Theatre has held onto my booking there – it’s a venue I’ve enjoyed playing in the past both on my own and with Barry Cryer – despite enforced cancellations due to we-all-know-what. A full two hours, with silent film accompaniment as the Grand Finale!

Denville Hall, the care home for people retired from the entertainment business, has restarted its programme of visiting performers, and Barry Cryer and I did an hour there on 13^th August. It was good to be back for our second show together there, and we were made very welcome.

Barry did an ‘interview-with’, myself prompting him with questions and names from his long career. He was on excellent form, and the audience loved his stories and anecdotes.

Lisa Bowerman, Chair of the House Committee, took enough photos of us to fill a gallery…