I know this is an oldie but who would your ideal dinner guests (dead or alive) be. I think we should restrict this to a maximum of twelve.
Here’s mine…
Salvador Dali
Plato
David Bowie
Johnny Rotten
David Niven
Marilyn Monroe
Hanan Ashrawi
John Lennon
Jane Goodall
Lauren Bacall
Winston Churchill
Queen Elizabeth 11
Hawkfall says
Clive James
Choo Choo off of Top Cat
Akhnaten
Angela Carter
August Kekule
Danny McGrain
Graham “Dumpy” Dunnell
Muriel Spark
Federico Fellini
Bouncer off of Neighbours
The Eleventh Earl of Arundel
Rigid Digit says
Graham “Dumpy” Dunnell
possibly the first mention of the man (the legend?) on the Afterword
H.P. Saucecraft says
Einar
Praphinya
Jim
Dave
Lisa
Jane
Simon
Janet
Jane
Yuri
Rick
Nui
Ross
welshbenny says
I know this. Is it the Polyphonic Spree?
Johnny Concheroo says
Haggerty F
Haggerty R
Thompson
Noble
Carrick
Robson
Crapper
Dewhurst
Treadmore
Macintyre
Davitt
GCU Grey Area says
Asquith, Asquith, Asquith. . .
hubert rawlinson says
I think Mr Concheroo, you’ll find it was Tomkins not Thompson in the classic Barnestoneworth 1922 line-up.
Johnny Concheroo says
Thanks.
It was also Dobson, not Robson.
Neville ‘Baldy’ Davitt. He once scored with the back of his head from 25 yards.
Dodger Lane says
Didn’t he also split a goalpost from the halfway line ?
Johnny Concheroo says
The centre forward wore glasses – during the game!
bricameron says
Look. It’s fine if you dislike me. I’m okay with that but must you be an asshole as well?
Johnny Concheroo says
I assure you it was nothing personal against you @bricameron. I was gently mocking @h-p-saucecraft ‘s seemingly random list above mine.
No disrespect to you or your thread. Honest Injun.
Johnny Concheroo says
Have I missed something? Why would I/we dislike you? What’s happened?
Junior Wells says
I’m gathering the lists are regarded as unhelpful.
Johnny Concheroo says
Oh…
H.P. Saucecraft says
Er … those are the people I’d like to have as dinner guests. I apologise to Mr Cameron if Vlad the Impaler, Mozart, Lemmy out of Motorhead, and Jesus don’t make the cut this time.
bricameron says
and what were their excuses for canceling? AGAIN?
Junior Wells says
I hate yabbering at the table so
Marcel Marceau and Helen Keller are my invites
Gary says
You could add the short one out of Penn & Teller.
Tiggerlion says
Plus Harpo Marx, if he leaves his horn at home.
Rob C says
Swami Vivekananda
Plato
Dion Fortune
WB Yeats
George AE Russell
Winston Churchill
Professor Ronald Hutton
Aldous Huxley
Stan Laurel
Cathbad
Graham Hancock
Madame Blavatsky
Rupert Sheldrake
Rob C says
(ding dong) Sit yerself down, John Michell !
Rec Room says
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Leo Tolstoy,
Peter Hitchens, but only if Christopher Hitchens could be there too.
badartdog says
Jack Kirby
James Ellroy
Shia Lebeouf
Pablo Picasso
Grant Morrison
David Bowie
Susan Sarandon
Winona Ryder
Boudicca
Kelly Sue DeConnick
Cat woman
Louise Brooks
Maybe
chiz says
Emma Dreaming
Arthur White
Chris Muss
Jess Lake
Juan Sui
Hugh Sternaux
Major Dazeby
Mary-Ann Bright
Ann-May Hall-York-Rhys
Mrs B. White
(c. The Goodies File, 1974)
Mousey says
Well I hate sitting at tables with 11 other people, or more, or less.
I’d go out to dinner with anyone of many friends, as long as it was just them, and I could go home when I felt like it.
Even if there’s just one other person I always feel like I’m not necessary and I’d rather be on my own.
But in the spirit of the OP, I’d love to have dinner with – not 12 obviously, but just me and Thelonious Monk could be good. He’d either be appalling or fascinating company, and anyway would probably just want to get to his gig, which I’d hope he’d invite me to because I’d put up with his “company” for dinner.
Clive says
Peter Greenaway
John Peel
Richard Rogers
Anthony H Wilson
Ian Holloway
My Dad
Mike_H says
Miles Davis
Frank Zappa
Leonard Cohen
Graham Nash
Etta James
Susanna Hoffs
Mavis Staples
Norma Waterson
Thelonious Sphere Monk
Frederic Delius
Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter
Joanna MacGregor
duco01 says
Mike – you, Mousey, Thelonious and Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter would make a pretty interesting foursome for dinner!
Kaisfatdad says
I’d never heard of the Jazz Baroness. An eventful life, to put it mildly.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/22/jazz
Mike_H says
Nica could give us all a lift to Monk’s gig at Minton’s, in her Bentley.
If we all survived her appalling driving. And assuming we got the sleeping tramp* out of her car so there was enough room for everyone.
*Her great niece Hannah Rothschild came to visit her in New York, not long before she died, and remarked that there was a tramp asleep outside in her Bentley. “Oh good” said Nica. “That means nobody will try to steal it.”
Gary says
Chet Baker
Hank Williams
Miles Davis
Elvis Presley
Richard Nixon
Seve Ballasteros
Morrissey
Emily Dickinson
Eddie The Eagle
Bubbles the chimp
Charlie Gordon says
The Trinity Tiddlers
Lt. The Hon. George Colthurst St Barleigh
Jacko
Badger (bought it at the first Ypres)
Bumfluff (copped a packet at Galipoli with the Aussies)
Sticky (out for a duck)
The Gubber (snitched a parcel sausage-end and gone goose-over-stump
frogside)
Drippy
Strangely Brown
Titch
Mr Floppy (gassed back to Blighty)
GCU Grey Area says
Strangely-Brown has to be one of the best names ever. Used in our house to describe the general atmosphere outside, when the farmers are muck-spreading.
Dodger Lane says
My 12.
James Cameron
Rene Cutforth
Bert Hardy
Michael Foot
Michael Palin
Norman Lewis
Paul Theroux
Elizabeth Taylor
Helen Mirren
Aggers
Johnners
John Arlott.
Black Celebration says
Most of the tables here would be full of preening show ponies. It would be like playing in a football team with Ronaldo, Messi, Best, Maradona etc – you are not going to get a look in. They are not going to pass the ball.
My tabes would comprise of people that may like the sound of their own voice, but they will be entertaining. Some of them might even be grateful just for a good square meal.
Gyle Brandreth
Barry Cryer
Simon Groom
Freddie “Parrot Face!” Davies
Carol Vorderman
Roger McGough
Jean Alexander
Carol Cleveland
Julian Cope
Ken Livingstone
Gordon Strachan
Laurie Pike
thecheshirecat says
First off, you miserable so-and-sos, why do you think all these people would turn up without their respective partners? In any case, I bet the respective partners would be as interesting a prospect as their famous other halves.
Second, whenever this kind of question come up, I’m never that drawn to the famous, but rather to those who spoke the lines. So here goes :
The original residents of this estate cottage, which if I’m told right would have been the head gardener for the big house plus his missus.
A train driver on the Cheshire Lines, perhaps some time around the 1920s when the railways were at their busiest. Plus his missus.
My maternal grandparents, who did live to see me grow up, but too long ago for me to understand who they really were. They raised as close knit a family as you could imagine, lifting them out of poverty on South Tyneside in the 1920s, even as Marchers were departing to London from neighbouring Jarrow. By all family accounts, my grandmother was the gentle dependable woman to whom the whole extended family would turn at times of spiritual need. It would have been good to have known her.
An early settler from the Victorian bush – I have in mind the Howqua Valley of both Nevil Shute’s ‘The Far Country’, but also my father’s childhood. Plus his missus, of course.
FauxGeordie. +1
Tiggerlion says
I dislike these ‘dinner party’ games. They are simply a test to see who is the biggest smart-arse, aren’t they. The answer to the OP, for me, is a group of friends whose company I know I’ll enjoy, rather than a group of people I don’t know at all, apart from their fame.
Having said that, cheshire, yours is a lovely heartfelt post. Have an up from me.
thecheshirecat says
Why, you’re welcome, my feline friend. If my sums are right, there’s still one chair left at the table if you want to come along.
Bingo Little says
Groucho Marx
Christopher Hitchens
Mark Twain
Robert Oppenheimer
Greg Noll
Steve Martin
Bobby Fischer
Marilyn Monroe
Carl Sagan
Alan Moore
Johan Cruyff
Chuck Yeager
Madonna
Can the meal please go on for three or four days?
MC Escher says
Youse guys – some of your guests are dead. That could lead to some awkward longeurs I’d have thought. And possibly a struggle to get at the bread rolls.
Junglejim says
Carrie Fisher
William S Burroughs
Ava Gardner
Iain Banks
John Waters
Richard Herring
Dorothy Parker
George Orwell
Luis Bunuel
Germaine Greer
I’m assuming there would be copious amounts of cold drinks to lubricate this lots’ interaction. I reckon it could get pretty lively & entertaining as the night wore on.
BigJimBob says
Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb. Captain Flack would be there too, to take the roll call.
BigJimBob says
otherwise, in no particular order:
Margaret Mead,
Siddhartha Gautama,
Jane Austen
Aleister Crowley,
Martha Geilhorn,
Fritz Haber,
Diana Rigg
Robert Anton Wilson
Marcel Duchamp
Grace Slick
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Mae West
Junglejim says
I DO like the idea of RAW as a dinner guest, fascinating bloke with lots of ideas that I still find myself pondering at unexpected moments.
All hail Discordia, indeed.
Rigid Digit says
John Lydon
Paul Weller
Noel Gallagher
Marc Bolan
Rod Stewart
Tony Hancock
Ray Galton
Alan Simpson
Bill Bailey
Michael Palin
Danny Baker
Charles Shaar Murray
MC Escher says
Peter, Andrew, James, John, Mathew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, James, Judas, Jude, and Simon
Black Celebration says
Wonder what they’d talk about?
Black Celebration says
An interesting game would be for them to *not* talk about Jesus.
The moment He’s mentioned, they have to neck a Jagermesiter
MC Escher says
A Bloody Mary, surely 🙂
SteveT says
Think Michael Palin will be a bit podgy by the time he gets to mine because he appears on a few other lists but along side him I would invite:-
Jimmy Greaves
Nelson Mandela
Sophie Loren
Marilyn Monroe
Bobby Charles
Danny Thompson
John Martyn
Elmore Leonard
Susan Sarandon
Maggie Smith
John Smith