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Afterword dinner party

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I’m settling-in to the first episode of the 3rd series of Detectorists (like you do/did), and Andy and Lance are settling onto the sconce of their favourite oak for a spot of idle rumination. Which six people would you invite (alive or dead) to a dinner party?

It made me wonder in quick succession, who I would invite, and then who the wisdom of the AW crowd would identify as the top six raconteurs, sympathetic listeners, buxom/well-packaged companions for a night around the Afterword Algonquin round table.

So, if you’d care to line up your nominees, I’ll see if there’s consensus around a final sextet of the brightest and the best whose company we’d revel in.

Here’s my starter for, um, six
Jane Austen
Dorothy Parker
Niccolo Machiavelli
Umberto Eco
Douglas Adams
Jane Boleyn

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Comments

  5. Jackie Leven
    Dave Pegg
    Vivian Stanshall
    Oliver Reed
    Paul Whitehouse
    Stephen Morrissey
    Dunno how much would be remembered or how bad I would feel, but I reckon it would be a hoot.

    • As you ask, pretty good – though there are a few introverts and oddballs on that list who might need to be drawn out of their shell. I wouldn’t mind sitting in on the inevitable jam session after the meal.
      Oh, and I only asked for six, not that it really matters.

      • Sorry, I’m a bit of a skim reader at the best of times. I’d deduct Nick and Joni most likely – anyone who needs drawing out is a bit of a dead weight and Joni might be better one-to-one.

  7. A wonderful idea, Sal.

    A tricky one though, as some guests, would have so many wonderful stories, that the others would have problems getting ina a word edgeways. I could happily listen to Jackie Leven all night. Retro’s list is a cracker but the chemistry would be a disaster. Six certain forwards on the same team! To be fair to Jackie, I think he would have been a good listener as well as an hilarious storyteller.

    I will try then. Three lasses, three lads.

    Tina Faye
    Becky Unthanks
    Kate Atkinson

    Billy Bragg
    Kazuo Ishiguro
    Christopher Brookmyre

    I suspect they would have quite a decent evening together.

    • Thanks, KFD. As you seem to allude, what’s interesting about the lists is the dynamic that would arise between the chosen sex – a love hexagon or a circle of hate? You’ve gone for a literary/musical mix (pace Tina Fey) would probably be very cordial, if a little worthy. Where would the sparks come from? Brookmyre maybe?

      • Good point, Sal. Maybe I should try for guest list that would guarantee sparks.

        Boring old sod that i am, I was thinking of a guest list where the guests might enjoy the evening.

        Here you go! Sparky!

        Boudicca
        Joan of Arc
        Dorothy Parker

        Stalin
        Lemmy
        Martin Amis

  8. Adam Curtis – documentary maker
    Jonathan Richman – musical legend
    Jerry Sadowitz – Comedy/Magic legend.
    Bill Drummond – Music/Art agent provocateur.
    Victoria Coren-Mitchell – Fascinating all rounder.
    Donald Trump – Presidential Buffoon. I’d be fascinated to see him in an environment he doesn’t control.

  10. Two misspellings of parallel universe wife already … It’s Tina Fey. Fey.

    For an evening of grins aplenty I think my guests would be:

    Paul Merton
    Eric & Ern
    Frank Skinner
    Barry Cryer
    Ken Dodd
    Spike Milligan

    • I suppose little Ern could perch on Eric’s knee, while the Morecambe wit competed with Frank and Barry for the most depraved ‘Aristocrats’ description.
      Meanwhile I imagine the other three would be coolly constructing dizzying towers of surreal silliness, each possibly getting into a huff when outweirded by one of the other two.

      • Ah I seem to have made Eric and Ern one person. I saw a documentary about them recently and the footage of them talking together about their career was delightful. They respected/loved each other deeply but also led their own separate offstage lives.

        They explained that the middle aged posh lady that appeared at the end of the shows, taking credit for the entire production – was inspired by Beryl Formby – who would appear at the end of George Formby gigs gushingly thanking everyone and accepting applause and flowers – seemingly oblivious to the fact that very few people in the audience knew who she was.

  11. Try this one then!

    Locust
    Hannah
    Ruby Blue
    Mini Breakfast
    Drakeygirl

    DuCool
    Kid Dynamite
    Salwarpe
    Gary
    Hubert Rawlinson

    I would do the cooking and get Neela to help me serve the drinks.
    What an evening that would be!

    Who needs Cleopatra, Attila the Hun, Queen Victoria and Chuck Berry….

  12. Some of the above selections suggest that their sponsors would sooner see the food being worn than eaten.
    My chosen few:

    Brian Eno
    Leonard Cohen
    Lily Tomlin
    Norma Waterson
    Jo Cox
    Barak Obama

  14. Going for people I actively admire plus actually want to spend time with…a lot of people I admire I’d run a mile from.

    Jeff Bridges
    Sam Neill (he could bring the wine)
    Loudon Wainwright III

    Juliet Binoche
    Barbara Kingsolver
    Margaret Atwood

  18. Alan Moore
    Christopher Hitchens
    Marilyn Monroe
    Andrew WK
    80s Madonna
    Julia Louis-Dreyfus
    Groucho Marx
    Mark Twain
    Bobby Fischer
    J K Rowling

    Still fewer participants than the Algonquin Round Table.

    • “Fewer participants” That would be your justification for selecting more than six, would it? *stage wink*

      I wonder how Madonna and Marilyn would get on? After the Nic Roeg film, Insignificance, I’ve often thought Marilyn would be an interesting and generous conversationalist, drawing the best out of her companions with well-chosen compliments.

      I’m not sure what Alan Moore and JK Rowling would have to say to each other.

      Would Groucho and Twain get on? Or just try to outwit each other to impress the blondes?

  19. My first instinct was to say that pretty much any dinner party with a Famous Person involved would be a living nightmare.

    But maybe the more famous they are, the less of a horrorshow they’d be? Minor celebs are the absolute worst. I remember a friend from here telling me he rocked up to a gig once where the Word staff and lots of the bloggers (it’s not a blog, it’s not a blog) were all there… as well as Danny “fucking” Baker, who proceeded to essentially try to divert everyone’s evening in his direction and was a tiresome show-off for the duration. So I’m sticking to a strict rule of genuinely household names only, and the Daz Doorstep Challenge doesn’t count.

    I’m afraid I’m going to have to have Shakespeare. I’m not trying to look erudite here, it’s just I’ve been studying and teaching the bloke’s stuff for 25 years and the more I do, the more amazed I am by it. I have questions for him! Plus, a colleague of mine is that most tiresome of things: an Oxfordian. I want to shut him up.

    Other than that:
    Leo Tolstoy (re-reading Anna Karenina right now and it’s blowing my mind)
    JK Rowling
    Armando Iannucci
    I’m breaking my own rule here and putting Ira Madison in because I think he’s hilarious.
    Stewart Lee
    Carrie Fisher is a great shout so I’m nicking her
    As is Sam Neill

    • Having said all this, though, I have a 40th birthday weekend planned in Feb with the following notables:

      Nick
      Ross
      Lynden
      Jim

      They’re not famous, but I can’t imagine a better dinner than with them.

    • I think Tolstoy might be one of those people who would always dominate an evening, if A N Wilson’s biography is anything to go on. Often by taking deliberately contrarian positions – including his view that Shakespeare was a terrible writer, which might lead to some awkward moments at your dinner party. But who knows? Didn’t Shakespeare end up owning land as well, so he and Tolstoy might end up chatting away to each other about the price of corn, both of them relieved not to have to talk about the day job for once. As when Joyce and Proust were once invited to a dinner party and disappointed the other guests by only talking about their health.

      • If Wilson’s laughable Darwin book is any guide, I’m not sure I can believe the good stuff. When a book is that bad, that poorly researched, it surely casts a bit of a shadow on his prior work, doesn’t it? I know his other bios are well-respected but still…

        Also, old Tolstoy the beardy Christian anarchist Georgist is quite a different dude from young Shagger Tolstoy. He seems to have lived a life of two quite distinct halves. Interesting regardless.

        Did he really think Shakespeare was a bad writer? Didn’t know that. Well, it’s hard to think of any better writer than either of them, so hearing them talk would be pretty cool.

      • That is a marvellous story, David. I had to find out more….

        http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/when-james-joyce-marcel-proust-met-in-1922-and-totally-bored-each-other.html

        This has more detail about the venue: the Majestic Hotel on Rue Kleber.

        http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/author-recreates-the-dinner-party-of-a-lifetime-6110844.html

        I am sure you are right about Tolstoy. The War and Peace Hitmaker would not have been a shy wallflower.

          • I’ve just read the Orwell Tolstoy essay. It’s bloody great- thanks so much for the recommendation. Particularly liked this: “There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars.” Going to chew that around the old brain pan for a while, I think.

            • I’ve read a shitload of Eric* in the last couple of years and am astonished at how relevant he continues to be. He absolutely skewers the British left in a way that would be instantly recognisable to anybody familiar with Owen Jones, Toynbee or a thousand dinner-party radicals.

              (*working title of Brimful of Asha – fun fact!)

        • I heartily endorse Mr Mooche’s recommendation, as the Orwell essay was where I first read about Tolstoy’s writing on Shakespeare, and it examines the tensions in Tolstoy’s personality and writings which led to his bizarre view. On the Wilson book, I thought it was a good run through of Tolstoy’s life, and as far as I remember, Wilson did point out that he read the Russian sources in the original language, with some help. The Darwin book seems to be getting a justified slagging, because Wilson doesn’t understand that the analytical approach necessary for writing about science is very different to the descriptive narrative which works well for a literary and political figure like Tolstoy.

          By the way, I remember from the book that Tolstoy, who admired Chekhov’s stories greatly, told him that his plays were worse than Shakespeare’s. Hard to know how anyone would take a criticism like that.

  21. I love this thread! I’ve played this game often and my six guests change, depending on who is on my radar. Your choices are all fascinating.

    I’m in London at the moment, visiting my daughter, but I’ll enjoy putting together my six guests on my train journey home to Glasgow later today! ❤️

  22. For what its worth:-

    Bruce Springsteen
    Elmore Leonard
    Sophie Loren
    Mikhail Gorbachev
    Martin Stephenson
    Gretchen Peters

    First instinct was to choose Elvis Costello but like @DisappointmentBob said about Danny Baker pretty sure Costello would want all the attention directed his way whilst Springsteen would be much more interesting.

  23. Unless we have actually me them, we are making guesses about how celebrities are when they are not in the line light. They may not be as desperate for attention at all.

    On stage any musician or tv personality puts on a persona. Some can shed it easier than others and just blend in and be unnoticed.

    Talking of Bruce I am reminded of that story told here a while back, of the guy in a Dublin restaurant who saw Bono and wanted his autograph.

  24. Adam Buxton
    Kathy Burke
    Micky Flanagan
    Brian Eno
    Vic Reeves
    Rob D. [my friend and the funniest person I know]

    I’m not really interested in answers to the big questions, I have a feeling that it would be ultimately disappointing. I’d also choose to have a good laugh rather than clever conversation [I don’t want to work that hard] and the thought of a load of “gobby, ‘edgy’ opinion dumpers” [afterword T-shirt] battling each other for attention sounds like a nightmare.

    So, comedy, music, film and laffs, and just the right amount of clever, all represented

    • Damn, I should’ve had Buckles. What a lovely man.

      Totally agreed on the “big questions”, because I’ve already got answers that make sense to me:

      – is there a god? (I don’t care, but it seems highly unlikely)

      – are there other civilisations elsewhere in the universe? (yes, it’s a statistical almost-certainty)

      – what’s the meaning of life? (there isn’t one, so the good news is that it’s whatever you choose)

      – what’s the point of it all? (See above, but if there’s an answer that isn’t “first do no harm, and then try to be a kind person and ideally make the lives of those around you at least marginally better for having known you”, then I’m not interested in it).

      So my dinner party is all about people who I think are either very nice or very interesting, with the latter being more important than the former.

    • Btw, I’d have Bob over Vic. For a start I think he’s funnier, but also Jim Moir appears to have absolutely no interests apart from painting and arsing about with Bob. I was reading an interview with the two of them and Vic – as nice as I’m sure he is – is so uninterested in the wider world that he didn’t even know the EU referendum was happening on the day that it happened. That’d drive me nuts!

      • No! That’s perfect – I think his own little insular world seems much more interesting than anything happening ‘out there’
        I’ve heard/seen them both interviewed and Vic comes across and much more ‘alive’ than Bob, who strikes me as quite a grump if he’s on one, whereas Vic always seems happy.

        And Bob, Bob would drive you nuts talking about football

        • Ha, possibly. But in my experience football fans don’t talk about football much if nobody else is interested.

          Maybe you’re right about Vic: it might do me good to see if someone so insular can still make for nice company.

  25. Maybe we need something livelier? This lot should do the trick.

    Erik Bloodaxe
    Attila the Hun
    Al Capone

    Boudicca
    Kate “Ma” Baker
    Dorothy Parker

    I gave some thought to Rasputin, but decided against it. I wouldn’t want them discussing Boney M all evening.

  27. Never liked the idea of inviting a dead person. Who wants a corpse stinking up the room while you’re trying to eat. As for live ones:

    Simon Schama
    Jo Brand
    Grayson Perry
    Martha Lane-Fox
    Alan Johnson
    The Mrs (Come on, I can’t leave her at home)

    • Simon is a geezer, but I wouldn’t have him round to dinner because he flaps his arms about a bit when he’s on a roll. There’d be wine glasses flying and smashing all over the shop.

      Jo would tut. Tut I tell you.

  28. David Mitchell
    Victoria Coren-Mitchell
    Tom Fletcher
    Giovanna Fletcher
    Aljaž Skorjanec
    Janette Manrarararara

    I like to think my night will be full of wit, comedy, music, dancing and interesting conversations. A couple-friendly night is guaranteed for all. Of course the Future Mrs Japanese would be with me.

  30. In the real world one would very rarely come to a dinner party alone but would bring one’s spouse or partner. If we got to choose six couples, how would that effect the chemistry?

    Looks lie things would get even livelier……

    Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor
    Ike and Tina Turner
    Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley
    Johnny and June Carter Cash
    Virginia and Leonard Woolf
    Shakey and Ann Hathaway

  34. William Gibson
    Ursula Le Guin
    Billy Bragg
    Victoria Wood (if only she were alive – if not Victoria Coren to keep it a Victoria)
    Dr. Brian Cox
    Angela Merkel

    Of course the GLW would have to do the cooking so I would need to have her there too. (Swap for the late Victoria Wood if necessary).

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