glamour night (1985) JOHN MINSON {clip 1}

GLAMOUR 1

Opening scene of British playwright and musician John Minson's BBC play Glamour Night from 1985.

SYNOPSIS - A BBC Play about a "glamour" session with a model at a local camera club. Characters are George the pompous club chairman, weasly leering Macolm, Bob the know it all wannabe pro, right-on college lecturer Glyn, Dave the anaorak clad procurer of the model and June, subject of their photographic attention, who eventually turns the tables on them.

Recently i wrote to Edward Ball of The Times, uk pop group, informing him of the live stuff by his band i'd found and that i'd discovered a copy of Glamour Night by his friend and collaborator John Minson.

He informed me thus of Mr Minson;

John's this extraordinary guy with extreme polarity talents - in the same year that his play Glamour Night was screened by the BBC he started a band called I Fuck A Nun, which i'm most proud to say that i played bass with on occasion. They had this cracking song The Girl With The Gobstopper Eyes - psychedelic nihilism - and physical mayhem.

We played the Deptford Crypt in July 1985 and only John can only describe what happened next . . .

JOHN MINSON; That night, Ed was supposed to be on drums and Tony Conway (Mood Six) on bass but with Ed being left handed and the
kit was set up the wrong way round, so they swapped. We'd never
rehearsed together, that I can remember, but of course both of them are
tremendously talented musicians and had no problems providing a solid
background to our inept combination of basic riffs and feedback
(actually, I'm being harsh on us here - we were bordering on becoming
ept by now). At one stage I remember turning round to see Ed
windmilling away, Who-style. Very freaky!

The slashing wasn't pre-planned but the Stanley knife was there on
stage with me so it wasn't exactly unexpected either. Just before I did
it, somebody let off a smoke bomb, so as I went out into the audience,
blood pouring down my torso, droning whichever dirge we were performing
(probably the cheery sing-a-long entitled Corpse) I was enveloped by a
fog. Understandably, people parted to let me through. But then some put
their fingers in the blood and licked them to see if it was real. In
that atmospheric crypt, it felt like part of some pagan ritual.

Afterwards I remember somebody telling me that was great and that
Genesis P would really love us. Then he added that I ought to rub salt
in the wounds to sterilise them. I think it was then that I decided
hospital might be a more sensible - not to mention less painful -
option.

My final memory of that gig was - once I'd been ejected back into
'reality' by the good and caring physicians of A&E - sitting shivering
on a grim suburban station as dawn slowly broke, waiting for the first
train of the day back to central London. It was Saturday, 13 July and
elsewhere in the world, people were gearing up to play Live Aid...

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• glamour
• night
• john
• minson

[CraigG1960]

This is one of the best TV plays I ever saw.

[muswellmedia]

Classic one off drama from TV's golden age of single drama. Where can we see more of John Minsons work?