I don't know a lot of Noel Coward - but my goodness they do stick in the mind don't they?  I was singing Lets not be beastly to the Germans all morning.   

And here he is in 1955 singing the very funny Nina from Argentina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTrVEfea64c

I can imagine him saying that, Stanley . Your tactics for delaying the rehearsal sound like the kind of thing we did at school. ("Get her on a pet subject, and it'll fill up the rest of the lesson and we won't get the test.")

You're quite right, DB. I 'm selective in my fondness for Coward, and I don't like the Germans one for just the reasons you give.

And Norfolk isn't all that flat.

Thank you, Ian.  Don't let's be beastly to 63% of the Germans who had to put up with the terror of the Nazi regime.

Still it is not democracy's finest achievement.

On last Sunday afternoon's R3 Request programme, Don B, so they should be. Failing the which a copy resides in the Dough Archives and, unless I'm much mistaken, chez Stanley, too.

Indeed it is, although as yet unheard, Stanley....

Perhaps I may be permitted to tread on the coat tails of this thread as the name of Noel Coward still generates a degree of interest.

I've recently viewed an off-air video of Twentieth Century Blues - the Words and Music of Noel Coward.  This was a recording of a gala concert staged at a black tie 'do' in London, in April 1998, to raise funds for the Red Hot Aids charity.   The show featured Coward songs performed by Elton John, Pet Shop Boys, Sting, Suede, Robbie Williams, the Divine Comedy, Marianne Faithfull and Shola Ama - in particular she left me gaping with disbelief.  Overall, strange bedfellows but it was for charity so I felt that I had to enjoy myself, although I kept impersonating W C Fields as Mr Micawber;  " In the aggregate,what we have here is a highly distasteful collection!"   However, I was impressed by a few performers who understood the basics of stage technique and the essential skill in communication; rather than coming on stage and confining their work to a mistaken reliance on using a throat microphone.  Coward's lyrics are a minefield as you need a high energy quotient to conceal the skill of line, phrasing and enunciation with split second delivery, spoken  'trippingly on the tongue'.   Behind his flippancy, he was always serious in his passion for the basic mechanics, the discipline of performance.  You have to be on top of the material until the performance looks effortless.

I'd already seen Marianne Faithfull in her concert performance; she's good.   Commands the stage with ease and her 'Mad About the Boy' had a subtext of life's experience.    Surprisingly, Elton John opened the gala with an effective 'Twentieth Century Blues' and I liked the piano and sax accompaniment but he constrains himself with a lumpen presence.   Neil Tennant on good form with 'Sail Away' and I enjoyed the bluesy arrangement of 'If Love Were All' with trumpet accompaniment.  Sting attempted 'I'll Follow My Secret Heart' and Robbie Williams also appeared.



   The show was presented by Ned Sherrin with readings, judiciously edited, by Imogen Stubbs, Nigel Hawthorne, Nickolas Grace, Martin Jarvis and Jane Howell - a delicate reading of Coward's poem, 'I Am No Good at Love' from 'Not Yet The Dodo and other verses', Heinemann 1967.

                I am no good at love
                My heart should be wise and free
                I kill the unfortunate golden goose
                Whoever it may be
                With over-articulate tenderness
                And too much intensity.

                I am no good at love
                I batter it out of shape
                Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
                And, gibbering like an ape,
                I lie alone in the endless dark
                Knowing there's no escape

                I am no good at love
                When my easy heart I yield
                Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
                Which should have stayed concealed;
                And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
                Into a battlefield.

                I am no good at love
                I betray it with little sins
                For I feel the misery of the end
                In the moment that it begins
                And the bitterness of the last good-bye
                Is the bitterness that wins.
               

Thanks for the mention of the NC diaries.  I used to borrow them from my local library now and again but then they had a fire and this was one of the books that was burned!  They never did replace them.

Ian.