A Cunning Night Out

We went to see Tony Robinson's Cunning Night Out at Salisbury tonight. It was a mix of his own personal history and the more interesting (bloody/mixed with wee) bits of british history in a one man show with an added dash of republican politics to taste. (Don't know how well that went down given that Labour usually comes in a distant third in most elections in Wiltshire, the laughter was quite polite at points.)

But putting a few comments aside it was very enjoyable and I have learnt many an important thing about the history of surnames and how most of them have come about from doing some sort of job that involved standing up to your ankles in wee. For these are important things to know and frankly its shocking that I wasn't taught at School. I might write a letter of complaint.

But to be honest what really made it for me was the fact that Mick Aston and Phil Harding from Time Team were in the audience. Phil even had his hat! But alas no stripey jumper, but I guess you can't have everything. However the hair styles were as gloriously bad as always.

The whole thing was over two hours long, which is a long time to talk, so hats off to him. He had the odd film clip helping him along and some photos showing, but it was pretty much him just telling a story, which I have no end of admiration for. I have trouble stringing one along for over a minute. There was more about history and politics than about Time Team, which to be honest was what I really wanted to hear the most about, but I did learn that Carenza Lewis recieves no end of smutty letters from middle aged academics and that Mick Aston is one of the most propositioned men in Television.

Then at the end, we had a sing song. Very bizarre, I don't think I've done anything like that since I was 12.