News - updated Wed 12 June

If you've recently seen the DVD of 'Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks' You'll see Harry Fowler in a small role as the owner of a cafe in episode 1, Harry played Buller Bulletthead in the Sir Henry at Rawlinson End film. Viv once said of Harry that he was quite a historian and knows his Onions. Harry was well known for playiong many spiv's in Ealing comedies and such like.

Bonzo's Xmas Gigs

Yes, the Bonzo's are being dragged out of the wardrobe and haviong their cobwebs dusted off for a further couple of performances...

There's the forthcoming 'The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band Christmas Show' to look forward to. The shows will take place on Friday 21st December and Saturday 22nd December at the Shepherds Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, London W12 8TT.
Doors open: 19:00 Start time: 20:00
Ticket price: £35 plus booking and postage fees

To book tickets go to the official website

The Bonzo's are back...

In May the NFT are hosting A Night with the Bonzo's (Wed 23 May 6:30). The format seems rather similar to the 1994 night with clips from DNAYS & The Son of the Exploding Sausage. There also hoping to get some Bonzo's to come along.
 
And on Fri 25 May 8:10 there's Eccentric England - Vivian Stanshall's One Man's Week and Dave Allen in Search of the Great English Eccentric (no Vivian but Bruce Lacey & Ivor Cutler) plus The Moon and the Sledgehammer about a family living in the woods with giant steam engines, pump organs & broken-up buses.

Ian Wallace

Ian Wallace, drummer, songwriter, producer and engineer: born Bury,
Lancashire 29 September 1946; twice married (two daughters); died Los
Angeles 22 February 2007.
In the late Sixties, Wallace backed chart acts such as Sandie Shaw,
the Marbles, Billy J. Kramer and Lou Christie and toured with the
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Viv Stanshall's Big Grunt:
'Viv promptly had a nervous breakdown so I jumped ship and joined
Neil Innes' band the World. We did one album, Lucky Planet, and were
gigging when Robert Fripp asked me to join King Crimson.'

Thanks to Alan (Fred) Pipes for supplying this information.

Danny Baker interviews Neil Innes

Deep in the bowels of the Earth Danny Baker has a jolly time with Neil Innes talking about, amongst other things, another tour at the end of this year. Listen. (11Mb mp3)

Sir Henry Screening News

Rawlinson End on DVD : Jan Pace of Charisma Films tells me that...

We now have a launch date and a distribution partner for the release of Sir Henry. It should be out in most stores around the 1st of November, so we’ll even manage the Christmas season.
We may be having a limited cinema re-release around England, hopefully somewhat timed to match the Bonzo tour. Haven’t got any dates yet, but will let you know as soon as I can.

The DVD cover is already displayed on amazon.co.uk, you can see it below...

and we now have a copy of the trailer on the videobites page

Kettering
Kettering - the magazine of Elderly British Comedy.
Latest issue (#5) has an interview with Neil Innes & a review of the Bonzo's reunion gig, it can be bought from this site.
Issue 1 is available as a PDF downloadable file and has a feature on
Vivian.

I read on a Bonzo or Viv site earlier this week (can't remember which one) that it's more or less at the insistance of Fry, Edmondson and Jupitus that the tour has been organised - all will apparently be appearing as much as their schedules allow, while Paul Merton while be doing more numbers and Rik Mayall is also likely to fill in.......

On Friday 2nd June on BBC 4 at 10pm an edited version of The Bonzo's 40th Anniversary Reunion Gig was broadcast, followed by a repeat showing of the 2004 October Films Documentary 'The Canyons of his Mind' at 11pm.

There will be a Bonzo's Reunion Tour in November, tickets can be booked from www.bonzodog.co.uk

The tour dates are...

Saturday 4th November 2006 Ipswich - Regent Theatre

Sunday 5th November 2006 Bournemouth - Opera House

Monday 6th November 2006 Cardiff - St Davids Hall

Tuesday 7th November 2006 Bristol - Colston Hall

Thursday 9th November 2006 Wolverhampton - Civic Hall

Friday 10th November 2006 Liverpool - Philharmonic Hall

Saturday 11th November 2006 Leicester - De Montfort

Sunday 12th November 2006 Newcastle - City Hall

Monday 13th November 2006 Edinburgh - Usher Hall

Wednesday 15th November 2006 Manchester - Apollo

Friday 17th & Saturday 18th November 2006 London - Shepherds Bush Empire

According to freakemporium.com the Prehistory of the Bonzo's (a CD of the various 1920's novelty songs that The Bonzo's later covered or adapted for comic effect) will be out 05/06/2006. Mind you it was supposed to be out last Christmas.

The Bonzo’s Reunion DVD review
It certainly catches the atmosphere well.
Obviously there has been a lot cut including some parts that should have stayed.
The start "Shall we bother tuning?" Roger Ruskin Spear "Don't milk it bitch" to the strange little woman with blue hair who was also excised. Neil "Vernon, that was supposed to be your ukulele solo" Sam Spoon's inspired gag with the boxes and the chair.
Ade Edmondson "Don't worry, it's rehearsed" in Tent.
Let's hope they release volume 2 shortly. It also confirmed my suspicion about the guests. Phil Jupitus was inebriated - he hammed his way though Mr Apollo and nearly ruined Canyons of your mind.
Perhaps they were down for Bill Bailey originally.
Paul Merton was as nervous as I thought. Ade Edmondson could sign up with the group tomorrow. And Stephen Fry was having the time of his life. Excuse me, I think I'll just watch it again for another glimpse of John Hobbs. And was that Graeme fleetingly? Anyone else recognised in the audience?
It lists 27 songs.
Contributed By Roger Stevenson

Rawlinson End on DVD
Here's the latest from Charisma:
We've finished doing a director's-actors' commentary, and are now busy doing
a) the subtitling....we thought that it would be a pity to miss even one of those wonderful lines of dialogue, and because of the age of the film, and the general slurriness about it, a word here and there is, to me at least, a bit muffled.
b) we're trying to invent a way of marketing this cleverly.
It's taken us a bit more time than I thought, but then again, it's the first time we're doing something like this so please bear with us. It's on track. Given all its false starts, we'd rather give it the time it takes. I have it on very good authority from Charisma films that there will be a DVD release of Rawlinson End
sometime this year. Apparently audio and video have been mastered and they are working on the extras.
The picture restoration is black and white with a slight sepia tone.
The director, Steve Roberts, advised Charisma that the film was originally shot in high contrast black and white, the sepia being an unintentional after effect of one of the many transfers.
Streaks, flutter, dirt, and the downright purple tinge of the master is what the restoration was focused on
removing. Sound has also had a rework.
So we know from this that Steve Roberts has been in contact, to what extent he is involved I can’t say.
It would be good if there were a directors commentary wouldn’t it.

On Channel 4's One Hit Wonders (Saturday 6 May) programme “I’m The Urban Spaceman” was voted somewhere amongst the top 50 one hit wonders (as voted for by YOU!, appaently), and included interviews with Neil Innes and Roger Ruskin Spear.

Last week, "Legs" Larry Smith was one of the fathers of naughty kids on BBC3s House Of Tiny Tearaways on mon-fri 8pm, if you missed it, you didn't miss much!

We now have some Desktop Images that you can download for your Mac or PC...

If anyone reading this has a recording of Vivian Live at the Bloomsbury theatre from his 1991 Dog Ends tour, could they please contact us - we know recordings of this exist, but copies have eluded us so far.

The Bonzo's 40th Anniversary gig on 28th Jan was superb, with some amazing guest appearances.

More information on the forthcoming DVD of the concert will be available as soon as possible, we know it's shipping on 15 MAY, visit Classic Rock Direct.

Unfortunately it appears that they're not including the entire concert on the DVD release.

However, to console those who missed the Bonzo's Reunion gig, David Christie spoke to Neil at a recent solo gig, he says "that both Neil and Yvonne said that there are likely to be more Bonzo Dog gigs around October/November time. Apparently it is not the other Bonzos who are keen to do it, but the celebrities. I believe Adrian Edmundson in particular. Neil mentioned that they hoped to do about 10 gigs. Let's hope so. I also spoke to Neil's drummer JJ about the Bonzo Dog reunion gig and he said that on the stage it was really chaotic, but he agreed with me that there was a certain magic about the whole gig. "

And Paul Osborne adds: 'I got a couple of things signed by Neil after the gig and he said that the Bonzo's are going to do about 10 more gigs around November time. I think the Shepherds Bush Empire has been earmarked for the London shows. They are doing about 3 in London, so I guess they would all be at the same venue. They also go to Bristol and Liverpool etc. Stephen Fry will appear at some, if not all shows and Paul Merton will do more songs as well. Yvonne said that Ade Edmondson may not be free for the whole tour, so Rik Mayall might stand in!'

David Christie e-mailed Genesis publications about this Legs Larry Smith book, he got the following response:

Dear Mr Christie,
This project is no longer on our books. Please see our website for current and forthcoming projects.
Kind regards,
Tessa Hodgson
Sales Manager
Genesis Publications

Gulp! by 'Legs' Larry Smith [forthcoming]

This book is not going to be published!

from the publisher: "Advance warning is given that we are currently working with the entirely eccentric 'Legs' Larry Smith on a forthcoming Genesis limited edition book/CD set. Larry's formidable talents stretch over numerous fields (it says here). Let Larry tell you himself: 'Artist, composer, musician, writer, designer, accomplished chef and serious serial shagger - is there no end to this man's spots?!? Will we ever be free of this boy's influence? A founder member of the legendary Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, he rose to cult status and then mysteriously varnished.' Larry is an accomplished musician and artist (educated in art and design in Oxford, London and New York) who has worked with The Beatles, John Cale, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Sir Elton John, Keith Moon, Paul McCartney, Jim Capaldi, Rod Stewart & The Faces, The Travelling Wilburys, Yes, and others. He has recently been working on a series of new computer-generated art pieces specially for this book He is also writing a magnificent and witty text to accompany the images. 'You'll hate them, and they'll hate you,' says Larry a little modestly of his artworks. His musical talent will also be showcased in an accompanying CD of original new works. We can assure you that this limited edition will surprise you. Register your interest in a copy of this delightful limited edition now by emailing us at gulp@genesis-publications.com." Bomp note: this is part of the beautiful, extravagant, expensive, limited edition series from Genesis Publications, which includes books on the Stones, the Beatles, the Who, Dylan, Clapton, Hendrix, Bowie and more. It is published by subscription, meaning that the only way to be sure of geting a copy is to order one in advance, and once they're sold out, that's it. This one is pre-publication, no release date yet announced. While the price will certainly be high, so will its collectibility