John Finnemore's Priory Engagement (20 May 2013)

(Heute mal wieder des Themas wegen in Englisch.)

Beware, this is slightly spoilery. If you don't want to know what the sketches are about then don't read this.

Last week two friends and I were on holiday in London. As luck would have it, John Finnemore was doing a Priory Engagement for his Souvenir Programme during our stay. We were lucky enough to get tickets and the Priory – it's a really lovely pub, and they do really great Mac&Cheese and extremly delicious handmade chips; I'd strongly advise you to visit this pub when you're in the vicinity – was only a mile down from our hostel. The pub isn't huge and it was sold out, of course. In contrast to the Cabin Pressure recording, the audience for the Priory Engagement was pretty diverse – young people, older people, about as much men as women, local people, not so local people and us three Germans (I think we were the only foreigners apart from a few Americans, who seemed to live in London). So whereas the CP audience definitely caused some second-hand embarrassment, this audience couldn't have been better. Anyway. Apart from John Finnemore there were Carrie Quinlan, Simon Kane and Maggie Cabourn-Smith on stage. Lawry Lewin wasn't there, but I don't know why. They did the Priory Engagement just like a radio recording, with (non-stapled) scripts in their hands. The first sketch was about a family with different opinions about parenting. Given that there were 6 or 7 generations alive, this was not your ordinary family gathering. Right at the beginning of the second sketch John's phone rang. John then proceeded to make stern announcements between the sketches (‘Don't record this, please!’). Later Carrie Quinlan took over (‘Beware of swans!’, ‘Staple your scripts!’). I don't think I remember all the sketches, but there was one about a lovely little family business now run in the third generation called North Korea (you don't have that many authentic dictatorships anymore), another Churchill sketch, three Radio 4 sketches — another Archers sketch dipdleedipdeedipdleedip (with Carrie Quinlan as a cow, because farmers evidently always have cows with them), a sketch about those generic Radio 4 plays where the characters spell every bit of plot out for you and one about an art programme that was about detecting rather unlikely forgeries – and a sketch about a bear with sleeping problems in winter (I love his animal sketches). They also performed two old sketches, the supervising sketch and the ghost story sketch with a story in a story in a story in a story. What really had me in stitches though was the song about red trousers, sung by Simon Kane and John Finnemore, with someone whose name I don't remember live on the piano. I didn't catch all the words but it was the crowning moment of an already extremely funny evening. Afterwards we lingered a bit in the pub because it was so nice (on our second visit we found out that the Priory closes at ten, so they were doing overtime that evening) and we also got the obligatory photo (I'm normally not much for photos, but since I can't really nick a script to put it up next to all the set lists from concerts a photo will have to do) and I had my booklet of the fourth Cabin Pressure series signed (it's my favourite of the four booklets). The next logical step would now be to go to an actual Souvenir Programme recording, and I might do just that.