RIP Ned Sherrin

[HollyH]

An old friend of Ray's from 60s London has passed on...


Ned Sherrin, wit, impresario, bon viveur and Radio 4 stalwart, dies at 76

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Tuesday October 2, 2007
The Guardian

Friends and colleagues last night paid generous tribute to Ned Sherrin, the writer and bon viveur who died of cancer at his home in Chelsea yesterday afternoon.
Sherrin's entertainment career spanned five decades and he blazed a trail for generations of comedians in the 1960s, before becoming a much loved fixture on Radio 4, fronting the enduring popular show Loose Ends from its start in 1986.

As one of broadcasting's most consistent and wryly amusing presences, Sherrin was described as "one of Britain's best loved voices" by BBC director general Mark Thompson last night.

The warm and witty, if often waspish, broadcaster had been ill for the past year and stepped down from Loose Ends just before Christmas.

Of all the myriad plays, books, TV programmes and radio shows for which he was responsible, Sherrin once singled out a series that ran for just two seasons, 1962-63, as the work of which he was most proud: That Was the Week That Was.

The first TV show to intelligently lampoon the political establishment, it proved hugely influential, gave Sir David Frost his big break, and provided a launch pad for a diverse and influential cast of script writers including John Cleese, Peter Cook, Richard Ingrams, Dennis Potter, John Betjeman, Frank Muir and many others.

Mr Thompson, who said he was "deeply saddened" by the news of Sherrin's death, paid tribute to the show's far-reaching influence. "Through his brilliant early work Ned was a trail blazer who paved the way for the sophisticated modern comedy satire shows that are so much loved by audiences today," he said.

"The entertainment industry owes Ned Sherrin a huge debt and he will be remembered with enormous affection and gratitude by the BBC and by countless millions of viewers and listeners."

Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer said: "Ned brought to Radio 4 a fabulous cocktail of wit, zest, curiosity and mischief - all based on an extraordinary knowledge of stage, screen and writing. Ned and Loose Ends introduced to Radio 4 an incredible array of talent. He was an impresario as well as a great raconteur. He was a natural broadcaster - and got the best out of others. He sparkled and made us all smile and laugh."

It was a chance meeting with a floor manager who had seen Sherrin in a revue at Oxford University in the early 1950s that led to him abandoning a career as a barrister to join the fledgling ATV franchise. He later wrote: "In a long career of happy accidents, perhaps the most useful was to have been born in 1931 and to complete National Service, Oxford and bar exams precisely in time for the opening of commercial television."

Two years later he left for the BBC and spent the next decade producing variety shows, panel games and musicals. Following the success of That Was the Week That Was, he left 1966 to produce films including The Virgin Soliders, The National Health and Up Pompeii. As an author, he had a long collaboration with Caryl Brahms which produced a string of songs, three novels, two short story collections, a number of radio and TV plays, five theatre plays, and six musicals. His life produced a rich seam of anecdotes, which he mined for five years, touring his one man show An Evening With Ned Sherrin.

Writer and comedian Arthur Smith, a regular on Loose Ends, described Sherrin as a "kind of London, English boulevardier". He told BBC News 24: "Whenever he interviewed someone, he had always done his homework big time. He had been to the play, read the book, swotted up on everything. He often knew more than the guest he was interviewing."

Playwright Alistair Beaton added: "He could be waspish, and the waspish side was the one I think listeners knew best, but there was also an extraordinarily generous, warm and good person that all the people who met him knew about."

Sherrin's long time personal manager, Deke Arlon, said last night the broadcaster had died peacefully at home in bed, surrounded by friends: "He was just a great writer and a great entertainer ... He was today's Noel Coward, and one of the great men of the entertainment industry."

A life that was

Edward George Sherrin was born the son of a farmer in 1931 in Low Ham, in the Somerset Levels. He read law at Exeter College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1955 but left immediately to become a producer on commercial station ATV.

Two years later he joined the BBC as director of the Tonight programme. In 1962 he devised, produced and direc-ted That Was The Week That Was, which attracted 12 million viewers at its peak. He followed it up with Not So Much A Programme More A Way Of Life. Sherrin left the BBC in 1966 to produce films including The Virgin Soldiers, Up The Junction, Girl Stroke Boy and comedy classic Up Pompeii.

He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1977 and in 1985 won a Laurence Olivier Award for The Ratepayer's Iolanthe. He also wrote six musicals, among them Sing A Rude Song, Nicholas Nickleby and Me and The Mitford Girls. In 1986 he directed Keith Waterhouse's play Mr and Mrs Nobody, starring Judi Dench, and began presenting Radio 4 show Loose Ends.

Three years later he directed Peter O'Toole in a production of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell at London's Apollo Theatre. Sherrin was awarded a CBE in 1997. He was also a patron of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra.

-- Sarah Knapton

[noisyroom]

thanks, Holly.

"fabulousthingytail of wit"..........priceless ;D

[rose]

Where did ya go, Mr. DJ?

[HollyH]

Nice piece here that I ripped off from our dear friends at the Working Man's Cafe forum:

Memories from an old article from the Independent;

HOW WE MET: RAY DAVIES AND NED SHERRIN

Ray Davies, 52, was born in London. He founded the Kinks, with his brother Dave, in 1963. He has also written music for musicals and films, including Absolute Beginners and The Virgin Soldiers. He lives with his wife in Surrey; he has three daughters from previous relationships. The director, producer and broadcaster Ned Sherrin, 66, was born in Somerset. His successes include That Was the Week That Was, The Virgin Soldiers and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. He now chairs Radio 4's Loose Ends. He lives in London

RAY DAVIES: Ned got in touch with me in 1967 via my managers quite a time before he made The Virgin Soldiers - I think he wanted to meet my brother Dave really and got the wrong one, but was just too polite to mention it. My managers, Robert Wace and Grenville Collins, told me that Ned was the man who invented David Frost; and That Was the Week That Was had had such an effect on me that of course I wanted to meet Ned. So I went round to No3 Bywater Street in Chelsea, where he lived, for tea. We'd just put out Death of a Clown and we were on the road, so I only had time for tea, and then I had to go to a gig, I forget where. Ned had a nice Mrs Somebody who prepared scones and jam and then disappeared, and that was the first time we met.

My first impression was that Ned resembled a giant pigeon. He has a very military bearing, he has wonderful manners, and he puffs his chest out. I think he was in the transport division of the Army once - but good at being driven rather than driving. Recently, I drove him back to his house in Chelsea after we'd had dinner at the Groucho Club, and he told me I'd have made a very good minicab driver.

After our first meeting, I can remember going round to dinner and Eleanor Bron was there; Ned has a great flair for collecting people, and his gatherings were rather like the New York Algonquin ones. At the time, I tended just to mix with pop music people - the pop and comedy worlds hadn't really started to spill over into each other much. Initially, Ned asked me if I wanted to act in his production of the film The Virgin Soldiers, but acting didn't really interest me - I was doing quite enough of it onstage with the Kinks. However, Ned is someone who likes to involve unlikely people in projects: he'd have offered the train robber Ronnie Biggs a part if he could have.

Basically, Ned said to me, "You can do the audition for Virgin Soldiers and be a star, or you can work very hard for very little money and do the music," so I decided to do the music.

I remember recording the film music at Shepperton with an orchestra of about 60 people - and Ned knew something scandalous about every single one of them. He wouldn't have used it in a malicious manner, it's just the way Ned is: collecting facts about people. Ned is a great producer because he enjoys people, he reads what they're thinking or feeling. Some of the things he says off the cuff at a dinner would build the career of a lesser person for a lifetime; there's a great intellect there.

Ned is also very good at giving advice tactfully and kindly. Originally I wrote the Virgin Soldiers music with noble lyrics, and I realised they didn't work when Ned very gently and humorously managed to get me to see it and we dropped them. More recently, when I was asked to direct a project of mine about a train journey I made, Return to Waterloo, for Channel 4, I phoned Ned to ask what he thought about it and he said, "Do you think that's wise?" He was trying to warn me it was a difficult thing to do; and he was right, because directing is something that was much harder than I had thought.

My favourite time that Ned tactfully defused a situation was during a lunch with a producer at Alexanders, a Chelsea restaurant near Bywater Street. The man really wanted Ned to do something and then got sidetracked on worthy social issues. When he'd finished, Ned simply looked up and smiled and said, "I'm terribly sorry; I was finishing my artichoke," and that was the end of that.

After Virgin Soldiers, Ned asked the Kinks to do the music slot for a six-part BBC satirical series called Where was Spring and then there was another topical satire series called The Eleventh Hour. It was a very quick turnaround - I was given a storyline on Thursday, had to write the song, deliver and record it on Friday and the show went out on Saturday; I enjoyed that. I remember that the programme had a young researcher called Esther Rantzen, who was very keen indeed.

Ned is a very committed person. He does everything thoroughly, so if he has a meal it will be a good one with good wine: we've split a good many bottles over the years. Ned also has a very sweet tooth, so he's had a few visits to the fat farm and I do remember a zealous phase of jogging - maybe he still does it. Certainly, at one point in the Eighties, he was so into keeping fit he bought tracksuits wholesale. I've still got a white one I bought off him for pounds 25. I still wear it round the house.

One of his ideas at the moment is to do this show of my songs called See My Friends. It sounds like a worthwhile project and I'd be very happy if it happened. Ned is someone you can call up at any time if you've got a problem, but you'd better make it an interesting problem, and make it worth his while to listen to. He's like an older brother or sister to me.

NED SHERRIN: In 1967, I was just about to finish my contract with Columbia Pictures when they asked me if I'd produce the film of The Virgin Soldiers as they'd bought the book by Leslie Thomas. I was talking to my old friend and co-writer Caryl Brahms about a good composer to do the opening music, and almost without hesitating Caryl said, "Oh, you should use Ray Davies of the Kinks." Caryl was about 70 at the time and completely au fait with the pop scene, and drew my attention to their singles "You Really Got Me" and "Sunny Afternoon". I'd never heard them before. I rarely play music at home; I'm more of a Radio 4 person. But Ray's music really interested me - it seemed accurately topical and to catch the spirit of the moment. I thought the Beatles's music was charming pap and and there seemed to be no relevance to the period in the Rolling Stones' lyrics - I just couldn't understand them.

I asked Ray to come round to my house in Bywater Street, and he agreed to do the opening tune. I can't remember what he was wearing or who was there, but we've remained friends ever since. We auditioned all the virgin soldiers in that house. Wayne Sleep, Hywel Bennett and David Bowie all came round. David did a rather wooden screen test, but we did use him in once dance scene as an extra; I still get letters from people asking which one he is.

Ray may have had a reputation for being quite a prickly person at the time, but as far as I was concerned he was never a moment's trouble: polite, attentive to what was needed, and then he just went away, composed the music and delivered it on time. I don't think he wrote it down - because I don't think he can read music. Writing, though, is something we never usually discuss - we deliberately shy away from the daily grind. It's a wonderful piece of music; it's perfect for the film, and it utilises the fife and other military band instruments over a series of historical stills of soldiers up until the present day. Everyone was very pleased with it.

We've known each other ever since; not in a hip and thigh sort of way, but we've had a great many meals and sunk a great many bottles together over the years. The conversation simply flows between us - Ray's a loquacious sort of fellow. I do remember that after one meal in about 1969, we'd had so many bottles that we went to the Jermyn Street Turkish Baths to sweat it out, and simply carried on talking until morning. We usually eat around Chelsea - it was the Casserole in the old days, now we often go to the Canteen. The last time we had a meal together was at the end of last year with Tim Rice, who is a notorious collector of rock icons and who hadn't met Ray - so I introduced them. It was rather a success, I think.

In the early Seventies, I did a series for the BBC called Where was Spring with Eleanor Bron and John Fortune. Klaus Voorman of Manfred Mann did some simplistic animations for it and each programme had a musical interlude which I got Ray and the Kinks to do. Ray wrote something for each show, and the whole group would come in and do it. He and his brother, Dave, would quite often bicker - they were famous for it.

I've listened to all Ray's music now. He hasn't produced that much over a long period of time, but he has a love of rural England and a view of social history that's very special - he's perhaps the best English songwriter ever. I've put a show together of his songs under the working title of See My Friends - rather on the lines of Noel Coward's Cavalcade. I'd like to do it by the millennium and it will cost about pounds 5 million - but then everything does these days. Ray loves the idea and will probably have strong ideas and get closely involved when the thing gets off the ground.

I'm of a different generation to him - about 10 years older, but I'm not old enough to be paternal; we're simply friends. Sometimes I'll get a phone call from Ray's office, asking my advice on something, or sometimes Ray will ask me himself. He needed a manager, so I put him together with mine, Deke Arlon, back in 1994; it seems to be working well.

I keep in touch with both Ray and Dave. There's always a watershed in people's lives that affects their work; and in Dave and Ray's case, it was the death of their elder sister, Rene, when they were teenagers, that affected them hugely. Ray's always had an original mind - he's a curious mixture of a streak of iron with a running sore on top.

[Smiley]

[uncleson]

Thank you for posting these. I really enoyed reading them.

[rose]

me also. Sympathies to Ray & Dave and all of Mr. Sherrin's friends