Coffee-Table Notes

Geoffrey Palmer – Actor Born June 4, 1927; died November 5, 2020    Geoffrey Palmer, who has died aged 93, was a ubiquitous and instantly recognisable fixture of the small screen. His hangdog features illustrated the Eeyoreish intonations that emerged from a voice laced with disappointed authority. With a delivery that was by turns officious and charmingly sad, Palmer’s slow burning sense of tragicomic timing lent itself perfectly to a seemingly endless seam of emotionally stunted little Britainites he played over his sixty-year career.    This was the case in the series of sit-com roles that first gave him a national profile in the 1970s. It began with Jimmy, the ex army reactionary forever struggling with a ‘cock-up on the catering front’ in David Nobbs’ The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-1979). Palmer later played a Jimmy style would-be vigilante at the centre of the Nobbs scripted Fairly Secret Army (1984-1986). In Butterflies (1978-1983), Carla Lane’s poignant tale o

The spirit of Orpheus is ever present in Marchmont House, the Grade A listed Palladian mansion nestled in the Scottish Borders since being built by the 3 rd Earl of Marchmont, Hugh Hume-Campbell, in 1750. A carving of the great prophet of Greek mythology by sculptor Louis Deuchers dominates the fireplace of what Marchmont director Hugo Burge likes to call the Larimer Dining Room. This is an unofficial acknowledgement to architect Robert Lorimer, who modified and expanded the House between 1914 and 1917, building on its original design attributed at various points to either William Adam or James Gibbs.    With Orpheus plucking his lyre in the woods while surrounded by animals charmed by his great musicianship, this image alone seems to sum up the power of art to transcend the ordinary, both in Greek times and in Marchmont House itself. Built on the edge of the village of Greenlaw, some nineteen miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed, under Burge’s guidance, Marchmont’s previously neglected count

James Randi – Magician, Illusionist, Writer, Sceptic Born August 7, 1928; died October 20, 2020   James Randi, who has died aged 92, was known to millions as The Amazing Randi. As a magician and illusionist, he captivated audiences worldwide, and broke Harry Houdini’s record for staying in a sealed metal coffin. Other feats of daring saw a straitjacketed Randi hung upside down six stories high over Broadway, New York in 1955, freeing himself in two and a half minutes. He performed a similar life-threatening routine in 1976 over Niagara Falls.     Like Houdini, Randi remained sceptical of psychic and other paranormal claims made by those he saw as defrauding the public. He made no secret that his performance was based on trickery, and had no truck with those who claimed to have special powers. This became an obsession, and he spent much of his life investigating various forms of what he called ‘woo woo’.    In collaboration with TV talk show host Johnny Carson, Randi famously humiliated

Spencer Davis – Musician, band-leader   Born July 17, 1939; died October 19, 2020      Spencer Davis, who has died aged 81, was a guitarist and band-leader who was one of a generation of young white British artists to popularise black American Blues, Soul and Rhythm and Blues. As de facto leader of The Spencer Davis Group, Davis was a key figure in the 1960s beat boom that gave then little known songs a more Anglicised interpretation.    With vocalist and keyboardist Steve Winwood, the latter’s bass player brother Muff Winwood and drummer Pete York, The Spencer Davis Group scored their first UK number 1 in the first weeks of 1966 with Keep on Running. The single kept the Beatles off the top spot, and was followed a couple of months later with their second chart-topper, Somebody Help Me.    Both songs were written by Jamaican crooner Jackie Edwards. A third Edwards composition, When I Come Home, reached number 12. Several self-penned hits followed, including Gimme Some Lovin’ (1966) and

Herbert Kretzmer – Journalist and lyricist Born October 5, 1925; died Octobe r 14, 2020     Herbert Kretzmer, who has died aged 95, will forever be known for his English language lyrics to Les Misérables, the French Revolution based musical which ran continuously on London’s West End for just shy of 35 years after it opened in 1985. Only the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic stopped it in its tracks. Kretzmer’s words for songs such as I Dreamed a Dream and Do You Hear the People Sing? transformed Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg’s original French language numbers into show-stoppers brought to rousing life in Trevor Nunn’s epic Cameron Mackintosh backed production.    Kretzmer’s lyrics for Les Misérables went beyond translation to reimagine the songs anew for an English speaking sensibility. He duly won Grammy  and Tony awards for a book he put together over five months after Mackintosh brought him on board. This came about after the pair met with a view to reviving Our Man Crichton (

J ohn  Sessions – actor   Born January 11, 1953; died November 2, 2020      John Sessions, who has died suddenly from a heart attack aged 67, was an actor of huge intelligence. This was clear early on from his regular appearances on both the TV and original radio version of Whose Line is it Anyway? (1988). Here, Sessions’ mercurial facility for comic improvisation was laced with a razor-sharp largesse that might see him join the dots between a series of seemingly freeform cultural references, classical allusions and literary quotations.    Sessions’ ability for mimicry had already been a gift for two series’ of the original Spitting Image (1986), where he voiced puppets for Laurence Olivier, Norman Tebbitt, Prince Edward and many others. He later did something similar, albeit in the flesh this time, in Stella Street (1997), based around a suburban corner shop inexplicably run and frequented by celebrities. Here, Sessions played exaggerated versions of the likes of Al Pacino, Joe Pesci

Brite Theater at Your House Three stars     Another Friday night in, and what to do? Such has been the wall-climbing dilemma for those craving life beyond their front door since Covid forced them into solitary confinement more than seven months ago. For the next Tier 3 imposed while, at least, audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow can put out the welcome mat for this exercise in intimacy created by director Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir and her Leith-based Brite Theater company.   It begins with a hand-delivered package containing a zine-like set of instructions designed to guide you through a series of everyday rituals normally taken for granted. Nudged along an experience of your own making, this suggests assorted sense memories, personal soundtracks and other oblique strategies of survival for the self-isolation age. Out of this comes a gentle form of self-reflection. Depending on how you as both audience member and sole performer respond, there is also the possibility, at least, for cele