Smiffblog.
After Loose Ends
I am on Radio 4’s Loose Ends today, a programme I have enjoyed doing since the late 80s. These days it is fronted by the splendid Clive Anderson, pre-recorded on Friday and goes out at 6.15 on Saturday, but back then it was live for an hour at 10am and was hosted by […]
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Laugharne
Stage – Laugharne The first ridiculous thing about it is its name. Laugharne starts with the word ‘laugh’ but is pronounced as one syllable, ‘Larn’, despite having an absurd 9 letters. I asked my audience in the Millennium Hall if they could think of another place that could match that. ‘Luton’, shouted one woman, […]
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Ask Dr Smith
(Orig published in Balance Magazine) Your question answered. This month a letter has flooded in to me from Mr Ralph Wilson…. “Dear Arthur, My two greatest pleasures in life have been making money and drinking treacle. Alas, now I have type 2 diabetes I am barred from the treacle, so my question to you […]
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Oh Hazel
Originally Published here: http://www.dementiablog.org/oh-hazel/ About 20 minutes into Arthur Smith sings Leonard Cohen (Volume 2) I speak a poem I have written that drastically shifts the mood of the show. Tonbridge, Kent Pulling up late after the party, they see her, their neighbour, standing in the street. She is looking, she says, for a lift to London. […]
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Strange Gigs
No doubt we all consider other lives we might have led. What if I had accepted that offer to train as a teacher when I was 24 and appeared to have few other prospects? Maybe I would now be a head teacher in, say, South Yorkshire with a wife who is […]
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Nightingale Café January 18, 2014
Nightingale Café January 18, 2014 Maybe I should go inside With all the others I am the only one outside And I am cold The street is shiny wet Two joggers overtake an old lady The waitress delivers my porridge It is too hot and I am too cold Maybe I should […]
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I am a stand up
I am a stand up (from my autobiography My Name is Daphne Fairfax) I am a stand-up comic. Even now, after a couple of thousand gigs, making this statement gives me a bristle of pride and a bump of self-importance. ‘That must be the hardest job in the world,’ people say routinely to stand-ups. It […]
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Just before Christmas
Just before Christmas, as the gales and the sirens blew wildly outside, I heard the sad news of the death of comedy’s number one mover-and-shaker, Addison Creswell. Ruthless, abrasive and extravagant, Addison was beloved by (most of) those who knew and worked with him and he engendered almost as many outlandish stories as his old […]
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Advice to Mr Jethro Bumpkin-Yokel
Last summer in a beautiful pub in Devon the barman was telling me how much he loved this picturesque village in which he was born. “But you’re only young,’ I remarked, “don’t you ever long for the bright lights of the city?” He looked at me aghast, “I’ve been to Crediton,” he said, “ It’s […]
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Adventures en route to Leonard (1)
In February 2014 Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Volume 2) is playing at the Soho theatre (see link below). This is episode 1 of my account of the show’s birth…. What is it about? What songs will I sing? How will I sing them? What will I say? How will I say it? What the […]
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