Hello there, welcome to my latest roundup for November. As with October, we’ve continued having work done on the house, but I’m happy to say that it’s now all over for the time being. And it has been worth it, despite the inevitable stress, disruption and cost involved over the past couple of months. The kitchen had been badly in need of refurbishment, so it’s now much safer, brighter and looks more modern, while the lighting in the living room has been improved and the outside of the house has been repainted. So it’s been lovely to get back to normal in time for Christmas. We may have more work done next year, as there are other things we want to do, but we’re not rushing into anything. This has been quite enough for the moment!
Despite all of that, however, I have been able to meet up with some of my friends for meals and entertainment, which has been a welcome distraction, and there are a few things I’ve been watching on TV and DVD. The meal and theatre show I went to with Emily were free PR visits for her to review, but nothing is sponsored to appear here and all opinions are my own regardless. So I’ve still got a fair amount to talk about in this month’s post and video, and I hope you enjoy!
Contents
Out & About
Browns & 99 Comedy Club
My first outing this month was to meet up with some friends of mine, because my best mate Simon and his wife were stopping over in London for a night, before they flew away on a special holiday for his 40th birthday. He had kindly spent some time with me for my 40th last year (feels like a long time ago now!), so it was great to have a part in celebrating his big milestone in return. I invited my friend Claire to come along as well, so it was a nice group of 4 of us.
We had a lovely meal together in Browns Covent Garden first of all, which is just around the corner from Leicester Square station. It’s a very nice restaurant, if a bit dimly lit, with very friendly and attentive staff. I had the Sticky BBQ Chicken Skewers for my starter, followed by Shepherds Pie in red wine with broccoli, and finally the Chocolate Brownie with honeycomb ice cream for dessert. It was all very tasty and filled me up nicely, and I had some Aspall cider with it too.
We then walked the short distance down the road and around the corner to the 99 Comedy Club at the Arboretum. It’s in the basement of the Pennine Place building, which you enter through a doorway with a round canopy above it. During the daytime it’s a rather nondescript entrance, with no indication that there’s a comedy club in there, so it’s only when you see people clustered outside in the evening with staff at the doorway that it becomes obvious.
The staff were very helpful anyway, clearly showing us where to go, and making sure we were all sat together. We were on the comfy seats at the back of the room with plenty of legroom, rather than the regular seats positioned more closely together for the rest of the audience, and that was fine, because it’s a small venue and there weren’t any visual jokes to worry about. We could also hear occasional noises from the next room, as they do overlapping shows, with the comedians moving between the rooms to do their sets, but that was never disruptive.
The show was hosted by an MC called Julie, who chatted to various audience members each time she came on stage, before introducing Darren Harriott, Paul McCaffrey and Ahir Shah in turn, who have all appeared on Live At The Apollo as well as other comedy programmes. Each of their sets lasted about 20 minutes or so, and there was a 10-minute interval in between each one to use the facilities and get drinks from the bar. So altogether the whole event lasted almost 2 hours, which is pretty good value for just £20 a ticket.
The comedians were all good, talking about topics like living in London, trying to stay healthy and a little bit of politics. But they gradually improved from one to the next. So Darren Harriott didn’t seem as fluid and self-assured in his delivery compared to Ahir Shah, who came across as being much more confident and experienced, as well as having the funniest jokes.
So while there are better comedians out there, the comedy club put on a fun show that was perfect for a Saturday night. And despite being that time of the week, it wasn’t rowdy either. So we all enjoyed it.
It’s also worth mentioning that Ahir Shah is the only one on the bill who has his own Netflix special, called Ends, which had previously won best show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards. I watched it later in the month out of curiosity, and naturally it included some of the material from the comedy club, as it was only recorded in March this year. He talks amusingly about topics like the unexpected interpretations of his name, the difficulties in trying to see a GP, getting married, taking part in a show with other British-Asian comedians as a teenager, and his thoughts on Rishi Sunak.
But he also covers more serious ground as he talks with passion about the importance and benefits of multiculturalism, and what it’s been like for him and his family to fit in as an ethnic minority. He makes a lot of good points along the way, some quite thought-provoking and explained with real events from his life, and the audience are respectfully quiet in the appropriate moments. He generally gets a good balance between the comedy and the serious messages too, although it does stray into feeling like a lecture occasionally, distracting from the comedy for a bit too long. He also talks quite quickly when he’s in his stride sometimes, so you have to be a bit attentive to keep up. But it’s a good show overall. Not one I’d rush to watch again necessarily, but worth watching at least once, for his jokes and for the messages he gets across.
Banana Tree
My other meetup this month was with my friend and colleague Emily for a couple of press reviews in Greenwich – or GreenWitch as it became known for a couple of weeks to promote the new Wicked movie. I haven’t seen that yet, but I will at some point, there’s no rush.
Anyway, we started by having a nice lunch at the Banana Tree, a pan-Asian restaurant that serves a range of Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malaysian and Thai dishes. And it was really nice, with generous portion sizes. Our starters and mains were served by a friendly and attentive lady called Sylvia, and then after her shift ended another lady took over for the rest of the meal, whose name I don’t know but she was also helpful.
We began with some prawn crackers, served with a sweet chilli dip, which were very moreish. And we each had a Pina Colada (Malibu, coconut cream & pineapple) for our first cocktail, which was very refreshing. They do a 2-for-1 offer on cocktails, but both cocktails have to be the same each time.
Then for starters I went for the Steamed Chicken Dumplings, which were tasty chicken and vegetable dumplings served in a garlic and herb sauce. Emily had a starter of her own as well of course, but we also shared some Sweetcorn Fritter Balls which had a nice crunchy coating.
Then for the main meal itself I went for The Legendary Beef Rendang, as I was curious to see why it was described as “The King of Curries” on the menu. And to give its dues, it was delicious, with lovely tender chunks of beef in a creamy coconut-based sauce, and a huge ball of jasmine rice. So I was pleasantly stuffed afterwards.
I still managed to find a bit of room for dessert though, somehow, for which I had the Coconut Stuffed Green Thai Pancakes. The taste of the caramelised roasted coconut inside the rolled Pandan pancakes was lovely paired with the refreshing vanilla ice cream. And for our second and final cocktail we each went for the Lychee Martini (Beefeater Gin, lychee liqueur, passion fruit, pineapple & vanilla), which was also nice, though if I had to pick a favourite I would say the Pina Colada was the best of the two.
Dick Whittington
After our meal at the Banana Tree, Emily and I then took a very short walk along the road to the Greenwich Theatre, to see their pantomime Dick Whittington & His Cat. It’s a relatively small, intimate, local theatre, so the production isn’t on the scale of big shows like the Palladium panto I saw last year, but it’s still very good fun as you’d expect.
It tells the story of Dick Whittington (Samuel Bailey), who has travelled to London with his talking cat Tommie (Inés Ruiz) to seek his fortune. There they meet Meggs the baker (Phil Yarrow), Alderman Fitzwarren (Paul Kemble), and the beautiful Alice Fitzwarren (Jasmine Jules Andrews), and they persuade the baker to take them on as new staff.
But there’s trouble afoot, as the mean rodent Ratticous (played by Anthony Spargo, who also wrote the panto) wants to rule the city, and doesn’t take kindly to a cat being around. So with the help of his assistant Muffy Mouse (Louise Cielecki), he hatches a plan to force them to leave.
All looks lost, until Dick and Tommy are thrown a lifeline of a time machine by the spirit of the Bow Bells, to find out who’s working against them. However, Ratticous hijacks that as well, forcing a major change to the course of history, so our heroes have to find a way to defeat him and set things back to normal.
Altogether it was 2 hours of good, silly fun that didn’t take itself seriously. And it was all set in the 60s, so there were very colourful sets and costumes, plus they performed songs from that period and other decades, sometimes modifying the lyrics to fit the storyline. So there were plenty of tracks the adults would recognise, and there were also a few jokes thrown in for them too that the kids wouldn’t be aware of. Plus there was some audience participation of course. So it was an enjoyable show for all ages, and a good way of marking my first festive activity of the year.
TV
The Sarah Jane Adventures
I’ve now finished watching the complete run of The Sarah Jane Adventures, a lovely Doctor Who spin-off for children, which I’d never properly gone through before. But it’s really good, with plenty for adults to enjoy as well, and was cut far too short by the sad death of Elisabeth Sladen. Back in October I reviewed Series 1-2, and now this month to mark Doctor Who’s 61st anniversary I’ve written a post about Series 3-5, so feel free to check that out for all the details.
Tim Vine
Tim Vine is a master of clever puns and silly humour, putting on shows filled with a myriad of one-liners, props and songs, that are a wonderfully absurd form of escapism from all the less amusing nonsense in the real world. His latest DVD, Breeeep!, came out in November, and it’s just as funny as his previous releases. So I’ve watched them all this month, looking through the various extra features as well, and have written a post with short reviews of each one if you want to look through that too.
Junior Taskmaster
Series 18 of Taskmaster has been a triumph as usual, with Rosie Jones, Jack Dee and Emma Sidi being my favourite contestants, but Andy Zaltzman and Babatunde Aléshé have been very good as well. They’ve all got such different styles, which meant there was a fun variety of approaches to the tasks, as well as great studio banter between each other and with Greg Davies.
But just as that series has come to an end, a new spin-off has got underway, called Junior Taskmaster, with children stepping up to have a go. The format is slightly different, as presenter Rose Matafeo and her assistant Mike Wozniak obviously have a gentler style towards the kids than Greg does towards the adults. And they don’t keep the same 5 contestants across the whole series, instead having 5 heats with 5 new players in each, leading to two semi-finals and a final.
Everything else about the show has stayed the same though, and it’s very good as a result, better than I was expecting really, as I wasn’t sure what the children would be like. Rose and Mike are perfect in their Taskmaster and assistant roles, sparking off each other with great chemistry, while the children are fun and creative, and are even prepared to argue with the two hosts in a playful way. Clearly these youngsters are familiar with the adult show (presumably the family-friendly bleeped version!), as they have a very good sense of what’s expected of them.
The silly and challenging tasks they have to do wouldn’t be out of place in the adult version of the show either, and Mike is quite prepared to throw in the same kind of twists that Alex does, just to infuriate the contestants a bit more. So it all works very nicely, because they haven’t meddled with the format too much and the contestants have been carefully chosen to make it work well.
Conclusion
This has been a busy and stressful month in some ways, because of the work going on at home, so I was glad to get out and meet my friends in amongst in all. And I’m glad the refurbishments are over now. There’s still some new equipment and other items we plan to buy for the kitchen soon, but they’ll just improve things rather than causing disruption. Indeed, there’s something I got in the Black Friday sales that’s proving to be very useful already, but I’ll mention that in my next Favourites post as we only started experimenting with it in December (and the same goes for something else I also got in the sales that isn’t house-related).
I do have a few plans for December, including meetups with friends, a short trip away and an exhibition I’ve been invited to. And there are a few bits and pieces I’m looking forward to watching over Christmas, naturally, as I’m already well aware of what’s coming up thanks to press releases, newsletters, social media, the TV guide, etc. So I’ll have plenty to keep me occupied and to tell you about next time.
I will of course be making one or two blog posts about things during the month as usual, but obviously this will be my last Favourites post that I publish in 2024. So I’ll take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I hope you have a wonderful time, whatever you’re getting up to, or if it’s a difficult period then I hope it’s as comfortable as it can be in the circumstances. In any case, best wishes for the holiday season, and I’ll see you for my Christmas Favourites in January!
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