That Was The Week That Was

Hi everyone!

"That was the week that was,

It's over, let it go ..."

Sung by Millicent Martin on That Was The Week That Was

Devised, produced and directed Ned Sherrin and compered by David Frost, That Was The Week That Was (TW3) was shown on the BBC in 1962 & 1963. 

It was the first satirical programme I ever watched.

Broadcast live on Saturday night, TW3 attracted an audience of 12 million.

TW3 often overran as the cast worked through material as they saw fit. At the beginning of the second season in the Autumn of 1963, in an attempt to assert control over the programme, the BBC scheduled repeats of The Third Man television series after the end of TW3. 
Frost suggested a means of sabotaging this tactic to Sherrin, and he agreed. For three weeks, Frost read out the plot of The Third Man, until the repeats were abandoned following the direct intervention of the BBC Director General Hugh Greene, the brother of Graham Greene who wrote The Third Man.

Though I didn’t understand all the jokes and satirical attacks, I loved TW3.

It had some wonderful scriptwriters, including John Betjeman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Frank Muir + Denis Norsden and Eric Sykes.

Performers ranged from the comedian Frankie Howerd to The Times columnist Bernard Levin.

But the Star of the Show was its compere David Paradine Frost, “Frostie”.

Jill, the daughter of a friend of Dad’s from his time in Chatham Dockyard in WWII, had been at Barnsole Road Primary School in Gillingham with Frostie. Frostie’s Dad, Wilfred Paradine Frost, was Minister at the nearby Byron Road Methodist church.

Jill told me that Frostie on the TV was just as he had been as a little boy.

For me, Frostie would go on to be the best TV interviewer of the 2^nd half of the 20^th century.

Of course, the interviews with disgraced President Richard Nixon & with insurance fraudster Emil Savundra will be long remembered. 

Frostie was the only person to have interviewed all eight Prime Ministers serving between 1964 and 2013 and all seven US Presidents in office between 1969 and 2008.

But I especially liked his Sunday morning interview programme Breakfast with Frost which ran on the BBC from 1993 until 2005. 

Frostie’s Little Black Book led the Great & the Good (and the Not-So-Good) on to the programme. And whenever there was a bloodless revolution in a far away and unknown (to me anyway!) xxxStan, Frostie would go live to the newly installed General (Oxford educated and Sandhurst trained, obviously!) who, it turned out, was a good friend.

When Sir David died in 2013 I knew that Michael Grade’s eulogy would be fulsome:

Unlike many modern interviewers, he listened, and he disarmed people. You tended to relax in his company and say things that perhaps you otherwise wouldn't. The skill of any interviewer is to get somebody to say more than they intended to say, and David did that with charm. You felt he was your friend. Very quickly, you felt you were just having a conversation with a mate, and you might say something you shouldn't.

He was a complete pleasure to work with. He was very collaborative, picked good people to work with, and he always listened. He was always very keen to learn. He was a delight.

I think his outstanding human quality, which you would not find in anyone else in our business, was that you couldn't get him to say a bad word about anybody. He enjoyed a gossip but I never, ever, in the 30-odd years that I've known him and worked with him, heard him have a bad word to say about anybody. Try as I might to get him to say something, he would just smile and say, "Oh, you know." He just didn't have it in him, and he had so many friends. And that was, I think, one of the features of his longevity.

He was huge – you knew you were going to see an absolute superstar – but you never felt that. He was a sweet, sweet, lovely man. He was very popular to work with. He had a lot of people who were jealous of him, but everyone who worked with him knew he was a gent.

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So, dear reader, just One Small Step from That Was The Week That Was to That Was The Week We’ve Had.

The T20 Vitality Blast season is well-underway.

In the last week I’ve been busy putting in the hard yards watching my beloved cricket!!

Friday night games at Hove Actually are regularly a sell out.

And the game against Surrey was no exception.

Sussex’s 144 for 8 included 76 not out from captain Luke Wright. But it looked 20 to 30 runs too few.

The Shark Attack was led by Jofra Archer (2 for 21) and Tymal Mills (2 for 16).

Duckworth Lewis showed the game was very close; too close to call.

And so it proved with 2 off the last ball by Imran Tahir leading to that rarest of results: A Tie!

On Sunday it was the annual trip to Taunton for the game against Somerset.

Good to be accompanied on the journey out to the Wild West by John Squire.

And to meet up with old cricketing friends from schooldays, Arthur Durrant and Graham Clayton.

Sussex’s 183 for 8 included 78 from debutant Alex Carey, who has been playing for Australia in the World Cup.

Babar Azam with 83 kept Somerset in the hunt, but tight bowling resulted in Somerset falling 12 runs short.

No rest for Lord Ric … on Tuesday it was off to the Oval for Surrey v Kent.

With a 2 hour delay because of rain, there was plenty of time for Jeremy Simpson and me to reflect on the EU Referendum. We (only) needed a “few” more hours to resolve that one!

When play finally got underway the game was reduced from 20 overs a side to just 7 overs.

Surrey scored 54 for 4.

After 3 overs Kent were level with Duckworth Lewis on 24. But Rikki Clarke’s over went for 21 and, with 43 from Mohammad Nabi, Kent won with an incredible 3 overs to spare!

Time for a break from T20?

On Thursday it was off to Edgbaston, Birmingham for the Test match: Day 1 of England v Australia, the Ashes.

A MASSIVE thank you to Jill Ainscough for the ticket.

It is 2 or 3 years since I last watched Test cricket.

An intense day, a reminder that I ought to apply for more tickets at Lords and the Oval.

Not to mention those long-promised overseas trips to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa!

Stuart Broad with 5 for 86 and Chris Woakes with 3 for 58 were the stand out bowlers for England.

But the day was all about Steve Smith, the former captain of Australia, on his return to Test cricket following his 12 months ban for the ball tampering incident at Newlands, Cape Town.

His 144 showed that he is currently the World’s best batsman. 

Good to see plenty of the England players from the Ashes in 2005.

And to meet up with the Lads from the Tunbridge Wells Borderers:

Bish, Keith & Trevor

And so to the final game of That Was The Week That Was: to Hove for the game against the Old Enemy, Kent, who arrived with the impressive record of 5 wins from 5 games played.

I was delighted to be joined by Kent supporters, Sally and David Lambourne.

We watched the game from the CanCom verandah, the best office viewing in the World Cricket!!

Sally + David

With Host Martin in the pink shirt

Kent set off like a rocket, with a sparkling 50 from Daniel Bell-Drummond, who was taught at primary school in Lewisham by Sally’s sister Jane.

But Tymal Mills with 3 for 23 helped keep the Kent score down to 154 for 8.

It proved far, far  too little, with not out scores from Phil Salt: 63 and Laurie Evans: 65 allowing Sussex to win with 9 wickets and 4 overs to spare.

After all that, I could do with a Rest.

I’m off to the Edinburgh Festival for a good lie down !!

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How about coming to a Friday night game at Hove Actually?

After all ….

Why read a Lord Ric Cricket Blog, when you can star in your own. 

See you soon!!

Lord Ric of Beckley Furnace

Follow me on Twitter: LordRic52

PS

Plenty of wonderful memories of Kent & Sussex games …

Watching on my first trip the Nevill, Tunbridge Wells in ’58 (that’s 1958 , please!).

Sussex winning there in 1963 in the first Gillette Cup game.

And the game in 1980; the 40^th anniversary is next year. Look out for the blog.

And – of course – the match back in 1842. Last game of the season, on Saturday 10^th September if I remember correctly.

In the early 1840's I was living at Banner Farm on the south side of Tunbridge Wells. 

I walked down to the Pantiles where The Lads & I caught the Regency Runner. There was a change of horses at Crowborough and then at Lewes.

We arrived at the ground in good time for a 2 o’clock start.

In those days Sussex played at The Levels, just north of where the Pier is now.

A big crowd; look carefully and you’ll just see us!

A 40 overs a side game, the prize of 1,100 guineas (£1.05 in decimal currency) was Winner Takes All.

(Editor: the prize of 100 guineas a player was equivalent to about 30 years pay for an agricultural worker)

No need to trouble ourselves with the precise scores, for in a Lord Ric Blog the facts never need to get in the way of what really happened!

Suffice to say that Kent batted first and, in what was a ‘nip & tuck’ game, by the last ball of the Sussex innings the home team were 9 wickets down with 3 runs needed to win.

A young Sussex player called Michael was facing. He’d travelled by train from Haywards Heath to Brighton on the railway line which had opened a year earlier in 1841.

Perhaps you haven’t heard of Michael, nor of his great grandsons, Harry & Jim, who both played for Sussex and England.

But you surely must have heard of Michael’s great great grandson who was also called Michael?

As the older Michael took guard on the Kemp Town side of the ground he would have known only too well that 3 runs stood between him and each of his team mates winning 30 years’ wages.

109 seasons on in June 1951 his great grandson (James Michael Parks, ‘Young Jim’) was batting at the Nevill for Sussex against Kent. Last ball of the day … 3 runs needed for his 100 so that Fred & Isabel (Mum & Dad) could get engaged.

What happened next … … Come & watch some cricket with me and I’ll tell you!!

Hint: There’s only The One Winner for me … …