7 minute read
In The Words Of
from Cardiff Times
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Let’s start by saying it will be better than last year [could it get any worse?]. I can only hope that your Christmas was brilliant [I am writing this on the 20th of December], but with the threat of more restrictions by the drip in charge of Wales, well… I hope that you had a blast, and seeing as nightclubs are shut from the 27th of December, Cardiff Bay must have been busy for New Year’s Eve with all those revellers with nowhere else to go! I could rant for an eternity about Mr D and his fanatics in the Welsh Government, so I will leave that to all my readers to ponder over.
My Christmas present to myself this year was a new Volvo XC40. I went to pick it up from the Cardiff showroom, was given the keys to the shiny new motor outside and moved all my stuff into the car for me to be told that they had ordered the wrong car! My order was for an AWD [four-wheel drive] as I live very rural. The car standing there was front-wheel-drive only. The rest of the spec was correct. Now I have to wait until March for a new one to be built. The garage has been so apologetic, yet I still don’t know why the error had occurred. I will keep you all posted.
by Carl Marsh
where I have always wanted to go, yet never had the chance. It’s a gorgeous place called Portmeirion, which is next to Harlech. My sister has friends who have a place in Harlech, so I went there with her, her kids and my Dad. Unfortunately, my Dad is now very ill with Cancer, so this could have been the last holiday he will be able to take. I will write about it on the next page.
INTERVIEWS
Just the one this month as I wanted to devote a page to Portmeirion and my Dad. Nina Conti is playing at St David’s Hall on Sunday the 16th of January at 19:30 hours (or 7:30 pm if you’re not ex-Military, like me). The show is called The Dating Game, and if anyone knows what Nina is like, you’ll know she is a ventriloquist and an excellent one at that. This new show will have her do a derailed version of Blind Date [if you’re too young to know this show, just DuckDuckGo it (search engine)]. Nina will be aided by her face masks and devices, and no doubt ‘Monkey’ will make an appearance. Voice throwing at its most excellent, I know it’ll be hilarious, and with lots of audience participation, you just know each night of this tour will produce a uniqueness to each performance. I have watched her on TV and YouTube many times and have never failed to laugh so much.
I hope you can all stay sane throughout this year, so do take care, and remember:
Carl Marsh
Twitter - @InTheWordsOf_CM Facebook - @InTheWordsOf YouTube – InTheWordsOf
NEW YEAR SUGGESTION
In the summer, I went to a place in Wales
In January, a Place to Go in Wales - Portmeirion, Gwynedd, North Wales.
As I mentioned in my column, I visited this breath-stealing place in the summer. And I know it is not in Cardiff, and I know it is about a four hours’ drive, but what a drive it is once you leave the M4 and start to get past Carmarthen and heading towards Aberystwyth and that coast road! With my sister having access to a former railway cottage in Harlech, a few miles from Portmeirion, I thought it would be a ‘two birds with one stone’ situation - I emailed Meurig Jones, who is the most knowledgeable at Portmeirion Village. He invited my family and me along. I didn’t expect a VIP tour around the site on a golf buggy with Meurig being our guide, but yes, that is what we had. I cannot thank him and the rest of the staff enough. If you happen to see any travel shows that end up in Portmeirion, it tends to be Meurig that you will see talking about the place. but it was packed. Meurig said that it was much quieter and allows you plenty of room to manoeuvre if people visited in the early months of the year, so that is what I am doing. You can stay over as there is a hotel and many self-catering accommodations. You will also find some Village Rooms serviced by the hotel, and all rooms and accommodations are unique. I could fill page after page of who has stayed here, but The Beatles take some beating for me. And let’s not forget The Prisoner was filmed here, which is how I got to hear about the place. By having Meurig as a guide, we did get to find out all about the designer and original owner, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who between 1925 and 1975 built it all in the style of an Italian village; a charitable trust now owns it.
I am so glad I made an effort, and I will return.
(Sadly, not long after this holiday, my Dad has gotten very sick, so the pics you see contain my Dad, Sister, her kids and Meurig, and my Dad is now stuck at home with a hospital bed and carers four times a day due to cancer which the GP overlooked, so my Dad had to pay privately to find out!)
There aren’t many ventriloquists as funny andskilled as Nina Conti; there aren’t. Nina is for the adults, aside from any kids’ party types, as sexual innuendos are aplenty, voiced mainly by her favourite sidekick, Monkey. This tour is called The Dating Show and will involve a lot of audience participation with the ‘volunteers’ wearing a face mask device controlled by Nina and a lot of voice throwing around the innuendos as mentioned earlier of a sexual kind - no doubt! I spoke to Nina on the phone, and this is what she had to say to me:
Carl Marsh With the central theme of this tour being about dating, and with us all still being in this Covid nightmare, I can’t see it being an issue if the audience participants come up onto the stage wearing a mask, as they will have to put a more oversized ‘animatronics’ type mask on top!
Nina Conti The (my) face masks are pretty COVID friendly. They will protect the person as they are cleaner than they’ve ever been, with more cleaning than I had used to do. But, yeah, it’s just the same as it used to be now, even though it’s funny to think of the mask as being some big sort of naturally protective wittingly.
Carl Marsh What’s been the biggest nightmare you’ve had on the stage when you’ve had audience participation to aid you?
Nina Conti There’s been sometimes where I’ve got somebody up, and they’ve been a bit too cocky. I always end up talking about this because if you get a group of lads needed a ladder, he’ll start making some thrusting sex moves, and I’m not shockable or offended, but the audience doesn’t go for it. The work I have to do then is to make them be a bit more - what’s the word - empathic, likable and compassionate person that people will like, rather than someone who is thrusting! [Laughter]
Carl Marsh The only issue you’ve got is that people who go to shows like to have a drink - some more than others! So, it must be hard to be careful who you pick out for the skits?
Nina Conti That’s what Monkey is always there for, as he’s like my casting agent. So, when I start the show, I’m talking to people with Monkey, and I can get a pretty good idea of someone quite quickly. If the audience is already kind of laughing at the answers, or the conversation that you’re having with someone [via Monkey], you can feel when the audience engages and thinks, “well, we’d like to see that person” or “we want to know more”, so I take all my direction off the audience.
I do enjoy this - even though - when you’re doing an unscripted thing, it’s got a bit of an edge to it that’s thrilling, so I’m excited to go out there. I can’t wait to get people up. I can’t wait.
Carl Marsh And also, it’s probably one of the only entertainment tours you could watch every night and at every location, and you get a different thing every night.
Nina Conti Yeah, you’d get a different show. You might have to sit through about five minutes of jokes with Monkey and me at the beginning, but from then on, you know, the rest of the time is new; and new to me! [Laughs]
Nina Conti - The Dating Show is on Sunday 16th January 2022 at St David’s Hall.
