JOHN FINNEMORE'S FLYING VISIT – A Comprehensive Summary

[starfishstar]

At long last, as long promised...

My write-up from the John Finnemore's Flying Visit show in Edinburgh, final show of the tour, 15th June. This write-up is Absurdly Long. I will not be offended if you skim over it to get just to the Cabin Pressure hints-of-new-canon part. ;-)


JOHN FINNEMORE'S FLYING VISIT!




(Here's the stage before the show. It looks empty now, but believe me, it didn't stay that way. It was a sold-out show!)



They introduced each of the cast via a short, silly video, shown on the big screen behind the stage, then each of them bounded onstage once they were introduced. For example, John’s video introduced him as “John Finnemore of John Finnemore’s Double Acts, John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, and John Finnemore’s Failure to Get His Name in Cabin Pressure.”

Each of the cast was wearing an outfit based around a different colour. It wasn’t a single uniform; they were wearing a variety of shirts, trousers, dresses, etc. that were probably their own clothes, just, each person’s clothes happened to be based around a specific colour. For example John was in purple, and I think Margaret was wearing a red dress. Maybe Simon had a yellow jumper? I don’t remember all of them now. And even when they changed some elements of their costumes throughout the show, everything was still based around their individual colour scheme: so e.g. John wore some different things, but they always included purple. It was a nice way to have the cast look both individual and unified.

Once all the cast were on stage, John started with a little stand-up bit, true stories about his experiences earlier in the day. He said, “So, this is the first time I’ve ever been able to say, ‘A funny thing happened to me on the way to the theatre…’” Then he told an extended anecdote about how he got on the train in London wearing shorts and a T-shirt, not bothering to think that maybe the weather report for Edinburgh – hundreds of miles to the north and literally in a different country – might not be the same as the weather report for London. (And the other cast members, those fools, boarded the train dressed in warm clothing, but he didn’t want to embarrass them by calling attention to their mistake…)

So then he got to cold Edinburgh with only shorts to wear, and had little time and a lot to do before the show, so he dashed into the nearest shop – which turned out to be a tourist place that sold only sold tourist things. Which is how he ended up running around Edinburgh all day in “double tartan,” i.e. wearing both tartan trousers and tartan shirt.

Only later did he realise that in his backpack, which he’d had on his back that whole time as he was dashing around Edinburgh doing errands, was a change of clothes: his outfit for the show. So he’d spent all day looking ridiculous in the tartan he’d had to buy for lack of any other change of clothes…while literally carrying around a change of clothes. (All of this is true: some other fans I talked to actually saw him around town in his tartan during the day.)

There were also a few Edinburgh-specific references in this opening bit, like something about the cannon that fires every day at 1 pm. (Lightly mocking Edinburghers for not being able to tell time without a cannon blast.)

Then the first sketch! It was the Pavlov sketch, but with audience participation. This sketch, as with quite a few others, made clever use of the big screen on the wall behind the stage: in this case showing images (a button, a group of happy dogs, a group of sad dogs, etc.) to cue the audience when to make specific noises (cheering, dogs barking, the “bzzt!” of a buzzer).

Next: Pet Tips with Lawry! (Guinea pigs, budgies, tortoises, in this one.) Pet Tips turned out to be a runner throughout the first half of the show, little bridging mini-sketches presumably while the actors were getting set for the next thing.

Then a new sketch (not from JFSP, never before seen!) in which the characters (full cast) are going to commit a robbery, so they all have face masks: masks of various royals’ faces, except for Simon, who has a mask of Mr Bean. (And is unhappy with it.)

Then John and Lawry did the negotiations-between-a-fast-food-company-and-a-movie-franchise sketch.

Then Tiger with a Gun!! Ooh, it was great to see such a classic live.

Then the show’s first little Simon-breaking-the-fourth-wall bit. In Simon’s introductory video at the start of the show, they’d established that Simon only has four voices: “normal, Scottish, shouting, and lady.” So now, breaking the fourth wall, Simon told John he was going to do the next sketch as a woman – because he’d already done “Scottish” and “shouting” in the masks sketch, and “normal” in Tiger with a Gun. John nixed the idea, though.

Next was another new sketch, an extended riff on the theme of John being pedantic and long-winded and Simon getting increasingly frustrated with him and, yes…shouty. :-) The theme of the sketch was that “nobody could do it” (“it” being unspecified until the very end, because it didn’t even matter to the theme of the sketch), with John endlessly adding, “so then, she said, let me give it a try, and she tried, but do you know what? It was the funniest thing, really. She couldn’t do it! But then he said, give it here, I’ll do it, but do you know, as it turned out…” Simon, vibrating with frustration: “LET ME GUESS. HE COULDN’T DO IT??”

Another breaking-the-fourth-wall bit: Waiting for Margaret. When she finally arrived onstage, she was (ostensibly) talking on her phone: to the mayor of Edinburgh. Who was upset about the comments they’d made about Edinburgh’s cannon. So John promised to say three nice things about Edinburgh by the end of the show. i.e., YES, they adapted the Belgium complaints/compliments thing to fit whichever city the show was playing in each night! This provided very high hopes that there would be an “Edinburgh is the best” song by the end of the show.

Then Otter Sanctuary – I’d actually been lucky enough to see this one when it was recorded for JFSP, but it’s a good one and I’m always happy to see a good sketch again!

Pet Tips (dogs).

Weather Forecast, which is a great bit…and since this was the live show, they put a weather map up on the screen behind John! Also, he included the line, “Of course, as always, the best of the weather has been in Edinburgh” – i.e., slipping in one of the requisite compliments. ;-)

Pooh’s Indebevention – with a few props included, in the form of Pooh’s honey jar (and Eeyore’s empty jar). I didn’t realise this until I was talking to Carrie and Margaret after the show (yes, I got to chat with all of the cast, it was amazing!) but the casting here was different to how it was on JFSP (way back in series one, episode one!) For example, Carrie played Piglet onstage, but in JFSP it was Lawry. (And Margaret hadn’t even joined the cast yet in series one…wow, that was a long time ago.) Also. Is Simon doing an Alan Rickman voice?? As in, he’s basically playing Alan Rickman playing Eeyore, and I just never noticed that in the recorded version? [Listening back to the recorded version: yes! yes, he is!]

A breaking-the-fourth-wall bit, this time with Carrie and John. Where Carrie, very earnest and concerned, asked John: “Is Pooh okay now?” (Because they first did that sketch years ago, so now she wanted an update.) There was a bit of back and forth between them, in the end establishing that yes, Pooh’s fine, he’s sober, he got off the honey…but Tigger’s in prison.

Designing the Snake! This was really excellent, an example of using the screen behind the stage to great effect, and of how they didn’t go overboard trying to make everything have costumes and props just because it’s a live show now, but they did add these nice little touches that really filled things out. In this case, the first thing you saw, before the sketch even started, was the whole screen filled with an extremely complex diagram of a hummingbird – so for seasoned JFSP-listeners, you knew it was going to be one of the “designing animals” sketches, just by that image. The sketch itself was pretty much as heard on JFSP – though another nice little prop addition was Simon ambling about with a coffee cup in hand, looking smug, when he came to show off his design for the snake. AND when John suggested adding just one leg to the snake, they pretended to draw that in real-time on a little pad, and that image appeared on the screen above them, too. (The snake image got a massive cheer, causing John to comment, seriously? He spent so much time on the complex hummingbird, and then the audience cheers for the incredibly simple snake? Yes, John drew the images himself! Multi-talented guy.)

Pet Tips (cats).

New sketch! The anthropomorphised characters of Cluedo (that’s Clue, to us Americans) gathered around, discussing all the things that are actually quite illogical about the game, like the fact that you spend so much of it moving from room to room, trying to guess where the crime scene is. (In real life, wouldn’t that be the first thing you would know?) In a very nice touch, the colours of the cast members’ outfits turned out to represent their Cluedo characters! (So for example John, wearing purple, was Professor Plum.) Also, Lawry was holding a coil of rope, like the rope game piece in Cluedo.

A breaking-the-fourth-wall bit, with Lawry asking John, “Was I good in that sketch?” John looked momentarily baffled, then realised what Lawry wanted: “Yes, good actor! You get an actor treat!” And John tossed what looked like a dog biscuit to Lawry, who capered about in excited dog-like fashion. Then Margaret came out, playing her usual stuck-up, too-good-for-this-show supposedly “real” Margaret character, declaring: No, I don’t want a dog treat, I want roles worthy of my talent… But in the end, she accepted a dog treat instead.

Carrie came onstage as Patsy Straightwoman, to enormous applause! She had a line about how bitter she is that she still never gets to do any jokes, although “maybe, now on tour…” Her interviewee was Stanley Meadows – the painter of ice cream vans, who specialises in “slightly off” Disney characters. Another classic from early in the run of the show!

Pet Tips (owls).

Kirates! This was another clever bit of transforming an only-works-on-the-radio bit (actors playing talking skulls) for the stage. The kirates were shown as an animation on the screen, with mouths moving as John and Simon voiced the lines offstage (or possibly prerecorded?). And Carrie and Margaret, as the two kids who find the kirates while exploring a cave, were down on the stage in the dark, holding torches (flashlights). This one is clearly a favourite – the merch table outside the hall was selling Kirates shirts, with the same picture of the Kirates that was on the screen. Drawn by John, of course!

Then they sang a rousing rendition of “Red Trousers”…and made anyone in the audience who was wearing red trousers stand up!

INTERVAL. Phew, my face was tired from grinning so hard the whole first half.

(Here's a sampling of merch, including kirates shirts and Yellow Car mugs: "ALWAYS PLAYING")


END OF INTERVAL. START OF SECOND HALF!


Costume change! For the start of the second half, they all came out wearing black jackets…and carrying Sainsbury’s bags? (For anybody not in the UK, the plastic shopping bags you get at Sainsbury’s are bright orange, so it was a pretty striking look: everybody wearing all black, with these bright orange plastic bags.) Except for Lawry, who didn’t have an orange bag; he directed the rest of them into a line, then stepped off to the side. The other four then engaged in a dramatic and highly synchronised process of taking things out of the bag: all at the same time removing one white glove [ETA: the gloves were orange, not white! – a correction from someone with a better memory ;-) than me] from each bag, waving this demonstratively for the audience to see, putting on this glove with a flourish, then turning their attention to taking the second glove from the bag, etc. Finally it turned out that each thing they removed from the bags was a costume element to transform them…INTO GOLDFISH. YES, IT WAS THE GOLDFISH SKETCH. LIVE AND IN COSTUME OH MY GOD!! This is one of the sketches I’d most hoped for, but how do you play goldfish onstage? But they did! The orange bags went on top of their heads to be the goldfish bodies, their hands in the gloves they held up by their faces to serve as gills, etc. It was brilliant, a costuming design that was minimalist yet perfectly represented the image they wanted to get across. And they milled around the stage, like goldfish swimming, and they went to Neptune (Lawry) to ask for a better memory, and it was brilliant.

(Complete with a spoke disclaimer of: “Children! Don’t put plastic bags on your heads to pretend to be fish! It’s very dangerous. I can do this because I’m a responsible adult. No, I am.”)

Then they did “BWOORP” with audience participation for the BWOORP noises, which was of course excellent. (In this version of the sketch, the musician the conductor wants to make a sound more like “BWOORP” played a piccolo rather than a cello…presumably for easier transportation of the show’s props!) Oh and when the audience clapped, John as the conductor looked baffled (since the audience here were serving as the members of the orchestra) and said, “This is a rehearsal, don’t clap for yourselves.”

Missed Connections (the first one from JFSP, about two people on a bus). In the second half, Missed Connections replaced Pet Tips as the mini-runner filling in between sketches.

John came onstage in a T-shirt, though in keeping with the theme, it was still a purple T-shirt. And it turned to be the sketch about John’s shirts! This was a brilliant choice of a sketch to do onstage, because it obviously started as John musing about how he always deliberates over which of his shirts to get rid of but then ends up keeping all of them, so he wrote a sketch about that, where actors give voices to each shirt. And now he adapted the sketch for the stage, so that actors actually embodied the shirts, running onstage to deliver their lines while wearing the actual shirt in question. (And yes, they were all John’s real shirts! So for example, at one point while the actors were running on and offstage, changing quickly in and out of his shirts, John nervously urged, “Don’t spill anything on yourself…Carrie.”) In a particularly delightful moment, when Simon flailed onstage (as the extremely old shirt, the one from all the way back in John’s school days that John nonetheless refuses to throw away), yelling “LET ME DIE!!!”, John and Lawry broke so hard. They just completely broke character and laughed so hard. When he could finally speak again, John commented, “I once wore that shirt to a disco.”

Another breaking-the-fourth-wall bit: Lawry plaintively asking John, why does Margaret always get to do the funny voices? Margaret put in an appearance to declare, “It’s TALENT.” (John: “Don’t encourage her.”) There was also something somewhere in here about how Lawry wanted to be allowed to do accents, and John asked what accents he could do, and apparently the answer was just…Brightonian. And possibly also (quite bad) Norwegian.

Throughout the show they really played up this theme of the supposed “real” personalities of each cast member – for example, Margaret being the egotistical one who’s always complaining that the roles aren’t good enough for her talent. (This is something they play with on JFSP, too, but it seemed like they really emphasised it in the stage show.)

Carrie was presented as the dumb one (which sort of makes me sad, because I think Carrie is brilliant!) – like when she earnestly asked John, "Is Pooh okay now?" (i.e. she doesn't realise Pooh is fictional), or some offstage lines while the cast were all changing costume ("Carrie, no, the other sleeve…no, that’s Margaret’s sleeve...")

Lawry was generally portrayed as a flailing buffoon – so, a little bit like Carrie, but with more goofy flailing!

Having noted all of the above, I was struggling to pinpoint what Simon’s characterisation was, since there was less of a clear theme with him than with the others. But after the show I was discussing it with some other fans, and we talked about how on JFSP Simon is always the one who breaks the fourth wall to call John on things –­ he’s the rational voice (well, or the shouty voice), and he’s also the one who plays John’s “voice in my head.” So I guess that’s Simon’s character – the one who shouts at and corrects John. :-)

The next sketch was more animal designs! Ones we hadn’t heard on JFSP, like the puffin, vulture, jackal, tapeworm. Then there was an extended bit about the anglerfish, that strange and prehistoric-looking creature, and its truly wild sexual dimorphism: the massive, strange-looking anglerfish is the female, and the male is a tiny thing that attaches to the female’s side and then gets subsumed into it. As more and more detail about this design unfurled, John (as the animal designer boss) grew increasingly concerned about Lawry (as the one who’d designed this fish), repeatedly asking him, “…Is everything all right at home?” Lawry’s character finally admitted the name he’d given to this fish, this terrifying female with massive jaws that consumes and destroys its mate: the Angela fish. As in, clearly, he’d named it after his wife, Angela.

Breaking-the-fourth-wall: Simon is excited! He has an idea for how to play his next character! John: “Is it a lady?” (And again, John nixes the idea.)

Next sketch: Pachelbel! The frustrated one-hit wonder composer. This was another one where doing it live onstage added nicely to the experience, because John’s visual/facial acting as he sang the song was great.

There was also a reference somewhere in here to, “We’re here to visit the cultural capital of Europe.” i.e., Edinburgh. i.e., they’d now slipped in two of the promised three Edinburgh compliments.

Breaking-the-fourth-wall: Margaret complains, why do the guys get all the songs? She wants a song. Carrie chimes in: she wants to sing Red Trousers. Or, if John won’t allow that (since they already did it) it could be something that rhymes with Red Trousers! Like – “Shed Browsers!”

Missed Connections: this time, it was Simon doing the one that ends, “…and I’m a farmer, tending my croft in the Orkney Isles.” And the audience laughed so hard. There was just something about Simon earnestly doing his Scottish accent, to an audience of Scottish people in Scotland, that was unbelievably funny. Especially as the laughter went on and on and Simon masterfully, heroically kept earnest-faced and in character, and just never, never broke, even as everyone else in the place was howling with laughter.

Missed Connections was obviously there to allow time for an offstage costume change, because…

Carrie came onstage again as Patsy Straightwoman, again met by great applause, and then she was joined by……ARTHUR SHAPPEY!

IN HIS ARTHUR SHAPPEY STEWARD’S UNIFORM!

ARTHUR SHAPPEY IS HERE ONSTAGE!

AS ARTHUR SHAPPEY!

The premise was that there had recently been a documentary about OJS, so Patsy Straightwoman was interviewing Arthur about it. She greeted him, he greeted her enthusiastically back. Then he corrected himself and said: “Oh, I mean –” and launched into a bunch of Arthur-speak (you know, in the vein of, “Please kindly allow myself to inform yourself, that…”) When Patsy told him it was okay to speak informally, he switched back into normal Arthur excited mode.

The interview was really well done: in the context of a sketch that was fun and joke-filled in its own right, John also slid in various nods and hint of what new canon (NEW CANON!!!) has happened since we left the Cabin Pressure crew at the end of the Zurich episode. I didn’t take many notes during this part, since I wanted to be wholly focused on the sketch itself, but here’s what I’ve got from memory:

At OJS, Douglas (whom Arthur always refers to as “New Skip”) and Herc are bumping along about as you’d expect. Their latest flights are San Sebastian and Trinidad and Tobago – as in, yes, the Cabin Pressure world has continued on through the alphabet of double-letter place names, after we last saw them flying off into the sunset, bound for Addis Ababa.

Yes, Carolyn and Herc are married! No, she didn’t take the name “Knapp-Shappey-Shipwright”…though New Skip definitely delights in calling her that. In fact, she dropped the “Shappey” from her name – glad to be rid of any vestige of horrible Gordon, one assumes. The audience reacted sadly to this (that Carolyn and Arthur no longer share a name). But Arthur enthusiastically declared that he wanted to drop the “Shappey” from his name too! But then it was pointed out to him that if he did that, his name would be just…“Arthur.” So he kept his old name after all.

Herc has moved in with Carolyn – and it was implied (by a line about “my old room”) that Arthur has moved out, though we don’t know where to! Yes, Finn McCool the Third the stuffed dead sheep is still with them. Generally he stays in one place (I think this was where the line about Arthur’s old room came in – that’s where they keep Finn McCool). Except when Carolyn is annoyed with Herc, in which case she puts Finn McCool in various unexpected places, to frighten him. The best one of these, apparently, was outside a window looking in. :-)

You know who isn’t married, though? Martin and Theresa. The audience reacted with devastation. No, but it’s okay! It’s just because of some long-winded complicated thing about how it turns out that Liechtenstein royalty can marry people who are not from Liechtenstein, and they can marry commoners – but they can’t marry commoners who are not from Liechtenstein. So Martin will need to get Liechtenstein citizenship. Which requires taking a citizenship test, a test of one’s knowledge of things about Liechtenstein. And you only have to get 60% or something on the test, but…have you met Martin? Martin will never be satisfied with getting 60% on anything! So currently he’s studiously learning everything about Liechtenstein. I imagine a Martin who’s determinedly memorising literally every fact about Liechtenstein is a happy Martin. :-) Arthur said he helps Skip study for the test by texting him spot-check revision questions. Like: “How many dogs are there in Liechtenstein? I mean, right now?”

The interview also, of course, included other fun Cabin Pressure references: like Patsy asking Arthur about Yellow Car. (“Now, for the possibly two people in the room who don’t know: How do you play Yellow Car?”)

The interview gradually got more bizarre – for example, Arthur said he’s no longer working at OJS. What??? Yes, now he’s a “polar bear scientist.” When Patsy asked him what aspect of polar bears he studies, he said “all of them.” She got really enthusiastic about that too, said how cool it sounded to be a polar bear scientist – and then they ended up switching roles, because Patsy never gets to answer questions, and Arthur thought it would be fun to ask them.

So it went on like that, getting a bit strange and off-kilter, and then… This was a big secret/spoiler, there was even a note up on the screen at the end of the show asking people not to mention it, so that other audiences throughout the course of the tour wouldn’t be spoiled, but I HOPE since the tour is now completely over that it’s okay to mention this? Anyway:

Douglas’ voice came over the intercom. Yes, secret voice cameo from Douglas!! He wanted to know what on Earth Arthur was doing in there. Apparently they were doing some kind of safety drill that was only supposed to take a certain number of seconds, and Arthur had been in the hold or wherever this was for something like 37 minutes. I think Douglas also made some reference to the Travelling Lemon, too – something like, “See if you find a lemon in there.”

Arthur said, “Coming, Skip!” and Patsy Straightwoman slumped down in her seat like a life-sized doll – the implication being that she wasn’t really there, and the whole interview/polar bear scientist thing was just something Arthur was daydreaming. He picked her up to carry her offstage…and there was a lemon taped to her back. :-)

This was followed by another Missed Connections (13th century Japan).

And then…Since You Ask Me!

By the way, I noticed this in the JFSP recording I went to, too: John really does have a “Since You Ask Me” face: a specific goofy expression his face takes on when he’s playing Finnemore (Finnemore the SYAM character, not Finnemore as in himself). And, like at the JFSP recording, he started the SYAM by taking up a glass of wine. :-)

He used the bit about whittling (making a replica of the Queen Mary, the ship, from a larger replica of the Queen Mary, the queen; converting the forehead into a fo’c’sle), but otherwise it was an all-new Since You Ask Me. The plot of this SYAM was…quite convoluted (especially since it was built around tying in maximum callbacks from throughout the evening!) but I’ll try to hit the highlights. There was also audience participation, e.g. bringing back the “bzzt!” buzzer sound from the very first sketch of the night. And they established early on that they would be breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging the audience’s existence – for example, two characters were discussing forming a rather delicate alliance, and one looked around nervously, and the other said something like, “There’s no one here but these 868 people from Edinburgh…you can speak freely.”

Okay, so, the plot was about “the secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord” (as in, the line from the Leonard Cohen song). David, who discovered this chord, was somewhere way up in the north of Norway, and various characters with different motives all ended up racing up to the Arctic to try to be the first to get access to the chord. One of them (played by John) had a dogsled that worked, but along the way his sled dogs got too exhausted to continue on. (The dogs being voiced by the audience, of course – via cues on the screen, as in the Pavlov sketch.) Another one, named Edward (played by Margaret, if I remember right) had lots of perfectly energetic schnauzers, but a sled that had broken down. So in a moment of brilliance, they realised they could combine forces, and jumped into one sled together.

A sled that was pulled by…Ed’s schnauzers. Which, if you’ll notice, rhymes with red trousers! So of course they burst into song, which meant Margaret got to sing a song at last, and Carrie got her not-Red-Trousers-but-rhymes-with-Red-Trousers song.

Also, they played Yellow Car while in the sled. :-)

They arrived in the north of Norway at last. Lawry came onstage to play the character David, the one in possession of the special chord, and John’s narration began, “A lanky peculiar man…” – as in, he’s about to describe the character of David this way. But then John concluded, “…played the role of David.” As in, describing Lawry himself, instead of his character. And Lawry totally broke.

So Lawry finally got do an accent: he can play the character as Brightonian! No wait, even better, it turns out David is Norwegian!

And Simon? Came onstage to take the role of David’s “lady wife,” getting to play a lady at last.

Then there was a cue for the dogs (the audience) to sing – but of course what we sang was, “BWOORP.”

Then John said, “Well, since you ask me for the only sound the lord likes…” And DOUGLAS’ VOICE came over the intercom again. :-) :-) :-)

And that was the conclusion of the Since You Ask Me.

So the show appeared to be wrapping up, but whoops, no, the mayor of Edinburgh called again: John hadn’t said three nice thing about Edinburgh as promised. There’d been the thing about culture, and about the weather, but it was still one short. So of course, as any JFSP fan had by now delightedly predicted, they began to sing:

THE BELGIUM SONG, BUT ADAPTED FOR EDINBURGH. “EDINBURGH IS THE BEST”! (They did a different version for each city the show played in, obviously.) When they first sang it, it had a couple of nice Edinburgh-specific lines, like “it makes a better capital than London any day” (ha!) ;-) but otherwise it was (deliberately) incredibly generic, just bland things you could say about any city. And the mayor of course called them on their laziness (still relayed via Margaret on her phone) and insisted they needed to be more specific.

So then they did a proper EDINBURGH IS THE BEST with tons of Edinburgh references, which of course then morphed into EDINBURGH IS THE WORST, and they made the whole audience sing along, with the lyrics displayed up on the screen. All the lyrics were great (maybe someone somewhere has managed to transcribe some of the city versions from the various shows?) but my favourite bit was a line to the effect that, given the weather and all, “Athens of the North” is really not a very fitting descriptor for Edinburgh. So instead, “We’ll definitely rebrand ourselves the Glasgow of the East.” So they got 868 Edinburghers to heartily sing out, “We’ll definitely rebrand ourselves the Glasgow of the East!”


What a great show. Not sure how it was for people who weren’t already massive Finnemore fans, but for people who are already massive Finnemore fans, it was a delight from start to finish.




(SOMEONE MADE THIS CAPTAIN DINOSAUR FOR JOHN. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.)


After the show, I went to hang out in the venue’s lobby/bar, hoping the cast would do the stage door thing. (They didn’t do it at the BBC recording I went to, which made me a bit sad.) And they did, they all came out and hung around and just chatted with folks from the audience for ages. There was a massive queue to see John of course, and he was so gracious, taking time to interact with each person. Someone gave him a fantastic knitted Captain Dinosaur puppet that she had made. One of the ushers who’d been working the show asked him to sign a lemon, for her friend who had first introduced her to Cabin Pressure (by welcoming her into their flat with the words, “The lemon is in play.”) And someone decided to name her bassoon by asking John to suggest the first name that came to his head, but John wasn’t sure, so he called across the room to Simon, asking him to name a name. And Simon instantly said, “Trevor.” So now the bassoon is Trevor. :-) There was a little kid ahead of me in the queue who was so, so excited that he was going to get to meet John. Lots of kids in the audience, in fact, which was great to see. In the theatre, there was an older man on my right, and a middle-aged woman with her maybe 8-year-old son on my left, and it just seemed like such a nice range of people who all appreciate the writing of John Finnemore!

I got my turn to meet John, which was dazzling, then also got to chat with all the cast members – I joined in with a small group who were talking to Lawry a bunch (and also Simon, more briefly), then later got to talk to Carrie and Margaret, too. It was Lawry, for example, who told me that John drew the art for the show. And we also determined, rather hilariously, that Lawry doesn’t remember many of the references that fans remember – because they record the sketch once then move on, unlike us fans who listen to the episodes over and over. So for example, someone asked Lawry something about when he played Mr Floofywhiskers, and he didn’t even remember who that was! Also, Margaret really is the conceited version of herself that she plays in the show…or so she claims. ;-)



(Travelling lemon, signed by John.)




After after the show, I fell in with four other fans, as others gradually drifted away but the five of us were still there, talking to John and to David Tyler, who was the producer of Cabin Pressure. And then John and David had to leave, and the five of us hung around in front of the theatre for what may actually have been hours, sharing Finnemore and JFSP and Cabin Pressure excitement. They're the only people I've ever met who quote John Finnemore in conversation even more than I do.


Everything about the evening was brilliant!




ETA: The mod of the hellyeahjohnfinnemore Tumblr (who was one of the wonderful Finnemore fans I met in Edinburgh!) has added some fantastic further details about the show. Check them out!

.

Comments

[chocolamousse]

New canon and a cameo from Douglas! Brilliant! :D Thank you for this very detailed summary.

[starfishstar]

You're very welcome! Yes, it was *so* exciting to see Arthur, hear Douglas, and get all these hints of how things are in the Cabin Pressure world. :-)

[debris_k]

Thank you so much for this awesome detailed summary! <3

[starfishstar]

You're so welcome! It was a pleasure to write it up, and if others can enjoy it too, then I'm thrilled. :-D

[hellyeahjohnfinnemore]

Hiya! Figured this was easier, but of course you can link back! I had also seen the show on Wednesday before seeing it on Friday, but I'm a big fan of details and data. :P

[starfishstar]

Hi! Ooh, you're here too on Dreamwidth. :-) Thank you again for your fantastic additions. I've added a link...and also corrected my reference to the color of the gloves. ;-) Seriously, your eye for set, lighting & costume details is so good!

ALSO. WHAT. DID SIMON JUST LIKE YOUR TUMBLR POST???

[hellyeahjohnfinnemore]

Nah, I just joined so I could comment on your post, actually. :) Is there a big presence of Finnemore on here?

I work in the data field, so I like to think that I am detail oriented. I just absorbed everything from that show.

And yeah, he did. :P He follows my blog and has for quite some time, but it always catches me off guard when he likes a post, or reblogs a post. Yesterday when I was making my post with my various additions, there was a few more things I wanted to add, namely from his introduction that I remembered, but, I didn't want to come across as a crazed fan who remembered so much about stuff centric to him, so...I omitted it. I also was going to bang on more about his not breaking, but, again, decided against it.

Needless to say, I'm glad I did that. ;P

[starfishstar]

Aw! I'm flattered. :D No, I don't think there's much CP/JFSP/Finnemore fandom on Dreamwidth, unfortunately. There was more back in the Livejournal days, but I think as with most fandoms, when Livejournal imploded, not everything survived the shift to Dreamwidth, since Tumblr was already becoming the main place anyway. I'm just one of those weird holdouts who still likes and misses the LJ/DW format...but even I will probably set up a Tumblr eventually. ;-)

That is *so* cool that Simon follows you. And I for one would be happy to hear your additional notes about Simon's intro, if you want to share them...

BTW, I've been gradually finding some more write-ups of the show/the Cabin Pressure section, with more cool details I forgot to mention, for example here.

[hellyeahjohnfinnemore]

Pity. :/ I know the transcript page on LJ still exists, to an extent, but wasn't sure if anything stuck around when LJ effectively died.

To be honest, it tripped me up when he started following me.

So, the other notes about the introduction:
After John calls Simon out for yawning, Simon stops and then John loads the first Chekhov's gun by saying that 'Simon is known for his 4 voices, normal, shouty, Scottish, and lady.' I found it interesting, because it is similar in nature to the Margaret thing that I mentioned in my additions in that during the SYAM Credits, John mentions that 'But they [the BBC] suggested I should hire some actors to do voices. Voices, said I, why I can do all the voices we can ever need: normal, silly, French, and two types of posh...." Being, in the first sketch (as Simon tells John) he does both his normal and shouty voice, this sets up the rest of the show perfectly. Additionally, the introduction for Simon also includes a bit about how he's the 3 (or 4?) year winner of 'loudest/shoutiest person in a smallscale radio ensemble. (Something like that?) I liked it because it takes care of not only JFSP as a radio ensemble, but also Monster Hunters, as he is sometimes kinda shouty as Sir Maxwell House in Monster Hunters.

(Btw, I didn't realise this until I got back, but on the Maxwell House container that he signed for me, at the end he wrote 'I'm actually Simon Kane, as above he had written GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.)

[starfishstar]

I mean, I'm sure there's at least a bit more Finnemoreishness tucked away in some corners of Dreamwidth that I don't know about, but yeah, I think it's mainly on Tumblr now. (e.g. there was a Cabin Pressure Livejournal, but it doesn't seem to have made the jump to Dreamwidth.)

Yeah! I thought it was quite funny that they did the bit about Simon "only having four voices" since it's so close to that line about John, which I've always loved – "normal, silly, French, and two types of posh"! John is so good at self-deprecating humor. :-)

And oh! yes! I could have sworn the line was something like "shoutiest actor in the van" (or car?) Which (if I'm remember that right) is hilarious because they did all just spend weeks traveling together at very close quarters. ...One of the neat things Lawry mentioned when I was talking to him after the show is that they've all known each other for ages (he and John did stand-up together something like 16 years ago, and the rest of them were at uni together? or something like that) but this, being in close proximity to each other nonstop for a month of touring, was nonetheless quite a test of friendship. Sounds like it worked out, though. :-)

[arianedevere]

Thanks for such a detailed report! I was tempted to go to one of the shows a couple of hours' travel from London, but the ruddy theatre website wouldn't let me have a single ticket, insisting that I had to buy a minimum of two. Much as I love John, I don't love him that much!

[starfishstar]

Oh, you are so very welcome! This is such a drop in the bucket compared to all that *you* give fandom, but I'm so pleased if you enjoyed it. (I actually thought of you at one point, and how you probably would have managed to transcribe things like the entire lyrics to the Edinburgh song on the fly) ;-)

I'm sorry you didn't get to see the show, and I hope reading about it can stand in for the experience a tiny bit!

[scfrankles]

I feel like such a lightweight fan next to you ^___^

Thanks so much for writing this. I so enjoyed reading about the show - you gave such a vivid sense of what it must have been like to actually be there. I'm glad you had such a good time! ^____^

[starfishstar]

Aw, you're very welcome! And ha, no, I'm a pretty quiet Finnemore fan usually – my Finnemore fannishness is massive, but usually it's just within my own head! This was the one time where I felt like I really had something I could offer to other fans (since I was able to go to the show, and I'm sure lots of people wanted to but couldn't) so it made me really happy to be able to do this one thing I could offer to the fandom. :-)