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First Note Music Trust now has three cantatas penned by Chris Lowe and myself, the latest being composed by me during May and into the summer. This is Away From the Manger, a set of light and witty choral pieces speculating on discussion and dialogue between all who attended the Nativity – angels, shepherds, Three Kings/Wise Men, animals. Entirely secular in treatment, it’s now accessible on the FNMT website.

In May Chris and I attended a rehearsal of Starting Out, our primary schools oratorio, at Rugby’s Avon Valley School where I ran the morning session, teaching the material to some 100+ lively and engaged pupils. Prince William School, Oundle, expressed an interest in performing part of Away From the Manger, and a keen choir in Holyhead are currently working on selections from Starting Out, to be performed in late January next year.

I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue recorded another series through May to July (Bath, Northampton and Ipswich), the pool of players now strong and many. Jack Dee and I remain the constants. Another series is currently being recorded through the autumn (Bournemouth, Leicester and Dorking), and has started transmission on Radio 4 this week.

Kennington Bioscope at the Cinema Museum near the Elephant and Castle has kept me increasingly busy and enjoyably challenged. 17^th May found me playing for a speeding locomotive in the Wild West in The Westbound Limited of 1923 – very busy on the fingers. On 14^th June I covered some of the short films in the programme, ditto in an open air Kennington Bioscope silent film night on 27^th August. More short films on 13^th September – I mainly get given the comedies, can’t think why I should be thus associated – and then on the Comedy Silents weekend of 4^th – 5^th November I picked up a few lively short pieces but more important the Buster Keaton feature The Cameraman of 1928. This was immense fun to accompany and contains some inspired Keaton moments, not least the one-man base-ball game.

On 13^th June I visited Denville Hall, the retirement home for actors and other professional theatre people. I took a couple of Chaplin silent comedies from 1917, The Immigrant and The Cure, and we all had a very jolly afternoon watching the films while I played and then chatting about Chaplin afterwards. One of the residents had known him when she was a girl.

I was teamed up with a previous Clue producer, Paul Mayhew-Archer, for an evening as part of the Worcester Festival on 17th August. Paul does a very funny (but ultimately very thought-provoking) one-man show about having Parkinson’s, and it was a pleasure to sit to one side and contribute the occasional musical offering in an evening which worked extremely well.

I’ve been teaching singing and repertoire to postgraduates at Drama Studio London this term, and will also take the BA 3^rd years in the final week, a good group whom I’ve taught before. I’m expected to do something ‘fun’ with them…(See my comment above about being associated with comedy.)

Kennington Bioscope hosted a silent film weekend in November at which I had the chance to play for the feature-length Widdicombe Fair (Norman Walker, 1928), and a selection of shorts under the umbrella title of Nasty Women – rather a non-woke misnomer given that these comedy pieces simply showed women successfully rivalling men.

I continue to play regularly for the Bioscope, including in March the delightfully witty The Love Expert (David Kirkland, 1920), with the excellent Constance Talmadge.

The evening was reviewed by Paul Joyce, who regularly writes a (very long and well-informed) blog on silent film showings http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2023/03/triple-talmadge-love-expert-1920.html. I get a mention:

“Colin Sell played along with style, debonair digits delivering the elegant bon mots this film deserved, celebrating not the epic or the groundbreaking but the sheer entertainment and helping to restore the love for one of the brightest stars of the silent era.”

In October the BBC began recording another series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, one of the recordings taking place in my home town of Croydon.

The Clue national tour of the stage show, under the aegis of Random Entertainment, began in late November, and we did half a dozen dates. The bulk of the tour – 25 dates – took place from the last week of February 2023 until the end of March, covering much of the UK and playing to packed and very responsive crowds.

The teams were drawn from a sparkling array of comedy talent who joined us variously around the country. They were Rory Bremner, Marcus Brigstocke, John Culshaw, Pippa Evans, John Finnemore, Tony Hawks, Harry Hill, Milton Jones, Fred MacAulay, and Rachel Parris, with Jack Dee chairing as ever.

I’ve been kept busy this academic year, in drama schools old and new (to me).

In October East 15 invited me to work on song repertoire with the MA students. I returned mid-November to work with the MA International students on the music and songs for their two children’s Christmas shows.

In the Autumn Term I also taught weekly singing classes at SchoolLondon https://www.facebook.com/theschoolldn/ a drama course run by my ex-colleague Trudi Rees. I was back again at East 15 in January – illness had bedevilled their Music Dept since October – working with the BA 3^rd years.

I then taught 1^st years for a couple of days at Drama Studio London, working on singing skills.

In terms of composition, the works I started with Chris Lowe are now complete and will be freely available. Both The Primary School Oratorio, for primary music teachers in search of material for their young classes, and Carmina Comica , for choral societies with a sense of humour, will soon have links on the First Note Music Trust website https://www.firstnotemusictrust.com/