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It's a public function as Alan Bennett visits WI
When you're a national treasure with a career spanning almost 50 years, it's understandable how a 10-minute skit might have slipped from memory.
But the ladies of the Clapham Women's Institute never forgot the comedy sketch written for them by Alan Bennett – and performed it to the great man as part of his 75th birthday celebrations.
It was the first time Bennett had seen the sketch performed, and now the WI members who presented it for him have found their way into a BBC documentary celebrating the life of one of Britain's best-loved playwrights and authors.
It has been 30 years since Bennett wrote The Committee Meeting for the WI in the Dales village where he has had a home for many years.
Clapham WI president Kath Hewitt explained: "We have been trying to persuade Alan to come to one of our meetings for a few years now. When he agreed to join us I was rooting around and found the script hidden away among some papers. I took it to the committee and suggested performing it for Alan."
Bennett was invited as guest speaker and enjoyed a WI buffet.
Eileen Plumridge, 72, another WI member, said: "Alan said he had no recollection of writing the sketch. When we reminded him he said he had to see it, so we performed for him.
"He wrote the sketch for the Clapham WI to perform at a national convention 30 years ago as a favour, but it hadn't been performed since."
It was going to be – to borrow the title of an Alan Bennett screenplay –a private function, until Kath got a phone call from a producer at the BBC asking if they could come along and film.
"At first I thought it was a wind up," Kath, 54, said. "But I soon found out she wasn't joking.
The BBC had been following Bennett around and the Clapham WI visit was in the middle of filming.
Extra rehearsals were planned by the ladies to avoid any slip ups when it came to making their television debut. When the day arrived the crew set up their equipment and everyone awaited the arrival of their star guest.
In true WI style Bennett was warmly welcomed.
Kath said: "Alan and Rupert (his partner] arrived and things got underway with singing Jerusalem. Then we performed our sketch. Eileen, Moira, Jill, Jean, Ann and myself managed to pull it off apart from we had to do a re-run, because of some technical problem with the TV cameras to get it right."
Eileen, who performed, explained: "I wouldn't have been nervous at all if it was just Alan, but with the BBC cameras there I was. We all know Alan because he's had a house in the village for 40 years."
The buffet was then served and with everyone fed and watered the time came to sit back and listen to Mr Bennett.
Kath said: "He was every bit, and more, of what we anticipated."
To send Bennett on his way the WI ladies struck up a rendition of Happy Birthday.
The pice de rsistance for the birthday boy was a very special present – WI style. Eileen said: "We presented him with a birthday hamper packed with homemade jams and marmalades and cakes."
Kath added: " It all seemed very appropriate and went down very well with Alan."
Bennett, who turned 75 on May 9, was born in Leeds, the son of a Co-op butcher. He has written of how his birthdays have sometimes brought him bad luck.
On May 9, 1966, he collapsed while on holiday in Sardinia. On his 50th birthday, filming in Ilkley with Michael Palin and Maggie Smith, he was served a mixed salad with shards of glass among the rocket. His long-time outdoor lodger, the lady in the van, Miss Shepherd, had her funeral on May 9, 1989. On the same date in 1992, while on holiday in Todi, he was attacked and hit over the head with a length of steel scaffolding by two Italian hoodlums. And in 1998, he spent the night in a Middlesex hospital.
Thankfully his 75th birthday went off without a hitch.
Being Alan Bennett, which features the Clapham WI, is on Saturday at 9.30pm on BBC Two.
A national treasure
Alan Bennett was born in 1934 in Armley, Leeds, the son of a Co-op butcher.
He studied at Exeter College, Oxford, then after a period of National Service, became a lecturer for a short time at Oxford University.
In 1960 he co-wrote and starred in Beyond the Fringe, along with Dudley Moore, Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Since then has been an actor, director, broadcaster, and written for stage, television, radio and film.
His first stage play was Forty Years On in 1969. Since then he has written numerous works including Talking Heads in 1988, The Madness of George III in 1992 (later made into a film) and The History Boys in 2004, which he also later adapted for a film featuring the original cast of the stage production.
In 2005 he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre and was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of The Madness of King George.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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