The Laugharne Weekend is one of the arts/literary festival circuit’s best kept secrets and I hope it stays that way. The last thing this tiny South Wales town – pronounced "Larn" – needs is to be overrun. The intimacy - only around 500 all-access wristbands are sold – is one of its charms. And if one show is full the weekend is scheduled to ensure you can get into something equally artistically satisfying somewhere else.
That’s the theory anyway. Things got off to a shaky start on Friday when the first show I wanted to see was absolutely rammed. Not surprising really, as it was Welsh national treasure Ruth Jones talking about her debut novel, Never Greener. What I did hear though is that writing the sex scenes “was quite a challenge.”
Not to worry, I pootled off, had a drink in Brown’s Hotel (one of Dylan Thomas’ watering holes) and made sure I was in the queue early for the excellent Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart down the road at the Fountain Inn. Wobble was something of a wag, opting for a song from his old band Public Image Ltd song but done ferociously fast: ‘My band, my rules,” quipped bass-ace Wobble, like a post-punk James Brown. Elsewhere film scores and ska were dubbed up to the max. I popped out to pick up a fish and chips order towards the end and I’m sure his bass was making my cod reverberate.
In case you hadn’t realised, Laugharne Weekend, which has been running for a decade now, is not strictly a comedy festival, but there was what you might call proper comedy to come at the end of Friday in the form of Simon Day. After a bit of a wait, however. There were some technical issues and when the show started thirty minutes late it transpired that there were no screens on which to show the footage which was essential for the full Day experience.
What we got was pretty good though, with Day reprising The Fast Show’s ducking and a-diving Billy Bleach, gloriously nuts poet Geoffrey “England, England” Allerton, hard man ex-convict Tony Beckton and, finally, Gabrielesque rock icon Brian Pern. “This next bit usually involves me talking about slides…so I’ll sing a song instead.” An abiding memeory of the weekend is Day wandering around in the interval about to stick his Beckton moustache on. A spontaneous Q&A closed his set but Day was slightly stumped by a question about wasps picking up the slack if bees become extinct. You should definitely learn to expect the unexpected at Laugharne. And enjoy it.
Saturday started with a gentle googly - Robin Ince interviewing cricket captain turned psychoanalyst Mike Brearley about his new book, On Form. Ince was probably more interested is discussing the workings of the mind than winning the Ashes but deftly blended the two with questions about the mind games one can use to get the best out of your players. He also made sure he asked about famous English eccentric Derek Randall, who scored one of the slowest centuries in Test history. They also talked about the psychology of humour, with Brearley pointing out insightfully: "If you are making jokes about something you haven't come to terms with it."
Chris Difford of Squeeze fame was good value for money even though I had expected him to be playing music. Instead he talked about his life in and out of the music business, having recently written his autobiography Some Fantastic Place (bet it wasn't as good as my Friday night cod though). I was particularly amused by Difford's account of working with Bryan Ferry. He ended up driving the louche singer to so many locations as a favour he told him he felt like his chauffeur. The following morning there was a fancy chauffeur's hat in a box on his desk.
Review continues here.
