It was with huge excitement that we ventured last night to the Cafe de Paris in Coventry Street. This was, after all, the high society home of the top dance bands of the Twenties and Thirties frequented by the Prince of Wales, Cole Porter and the Aga Khan, and after being destroyed by a WW2 bomb and rebuilt was still the height of fashion for the likes of Princess Margaret in the 50s and 60s, where Frank Sinatra rubbed shoulders with Tony Hancock, Eartha Kitt with Spike Milligan, Grace Kelly with Noel Coward.
Cafe de Paris website
Today the venue is rather sadly wedged between a tacky casino and the KFC, but still retains a faded glamour - with its chandelier, gilded balconies and double staircase (which of course we made full use of!). And now it is the home of the annual
Scarlet Fever variety show.
Arriving at the head of the queue we got ourselves a nicely placed booth, and the show commenced. Unfortunately our MC for the evening Chris Fitchew got things off to a very uncomfortable start with his manic leaping about and shoutingly unfunny routine - what he was "on", and quite why he seemed to think he was Russell Brand is beyond me, but we cringed. And the first few warm-up singers were just so bad that it began to appear we'd walked into a Croydon karaoke - oh! and a girl climbed up a rope, twirled about a bit, practically fell off it and went off again. She was closely followed by someone called Nick Mohammed, who was billed as a "comedian" but I couldn't quite see it myself...
However, the first half was saved by the effortlessly brilliant
Rick Skye, doing his classic turn as
Slice O'Minelli. He showed up the previous acts as the absolute amateurs they are - with style, perfect comic timing and by refusing to allow the baying juveniles at the front of the audience to rhythmically clap along and turn his show-stopping numbers into some kind of seal-feeding impression. His/her version of of Charles Aznavour's
My Love complete with sign language is an acid parody, and
I Love My Rolling Chair (Mein Herr) is just superb! Rick Skye is a comic genius, and one who should be even more well known than he is.
(Met the lovely Rick after the show, and he is exactly as charming as we might have hoped. A star!)
Part two, and perhaps helped by the volume of bloody expensive gin and tonics we sank, even the smarmy Mr Fitchew was not too unbearable as he and his partner in crime in the double act Lick & Chew launched into a fairly funny routine about the tabloid obsession with B-list celebs. Some slightly pointless dancers in burlesque costumes jiggled about a bit to some tunes, and then we were entertained to a really bizarre act...
Now, I have nothing against people - even those who are a bit too old for it - doing a bit of break-dancing, and to be fair we were expecting it from the poster (just one of those points in the show where you plan to get to the bar, really). But Shlomo "The Human Beat-box" was something really weird indeed, and very unexpected - how can you actually be entertained by a man who makes synthesiser house music through his nose and throat? It was rather like watching a mad person sitting next to someone else on a bus, but it was strangely diverting nevertheless.
And then came the lovely
Mrs Barbara Nice. Now all I had ever known of Janice Connolly was her part as the barmaid in
Phoenix Nights, but I knew she had taken "Mrs Nice" to the Edinburgh festival and had rave reviews. Barbara Nice is a Stockport Mam who doesn't drive and instead travels the country by National Express coach reading
Take a Break. Her husband assumes she's at Bingo. And her act is indeed hilarious - everything from Iggy Pop to the news headlines. She ended up stage diving the willing audience, and was carried hand to hand overhead all the way across the theatre to the bar! Fab!
Despite it being a Monday night, the music performed by the remaining acts took a bit of an up-tempo kick from then onwards and we had a bit of a bop for a few hours - admittedly not till the advertised 3am (but there were lots of party poopers there)...
All in all it was a fabulous night!!
