Aftermath: The Third Annual West End Whingers Party

Well, we’ve almost recovered enough from our hangovers to say a few words about the previous Saturday’s Third Annual West End Whingers Party.

But a full recovery may take longer than that of the economy. In fact it could be another 23 years before either Whinger feels himself again (and let’s face it no one else will, ba boom!).

In truth, neither Whinger remembers much about the evening so what follows is pieced together mainly through photographic evidence, reports from those who say they were there and hopeful speculation.

This year’s theme was “Spring Cleaning” and quite a large group of people arrived ready to roll up their sleeves and give the West End a good going over.

We weren’t in a position to give a prize for the best outfit this year due to having forgotten to choose one in all the excitement. In retrospect, the winner should surely have been Johnny Fox (left) for his beautifully embroidered t-shirt but unfortunately we’ve now eaten the prize.

Anyway, we don’t want to harp on about it. This post is really just  to say “thank you” to everyone who came and “WTF?” to everyone who didn’t.

Thanks to a combination of the raffle proceeds and the sale of this year’s confectionery (Dame bars – 20 different Dames to collect) we were actually able to raise some money for charity and the sum of £205.05 will be winging its way to TheatreMAD just as soon as we can lay our hands on one of those giant cheques so beloved of self-publicising charity-givers.

But back to the Dame bars: Dames Judi and Maggie were produced in considerably larger quantities (by our off-shore unit in south east Asia) as we anticipated a high demand for these two and so it proved to be.

Dames Sybil (Thorndike), Edith (Evans) and Margaret (Rutherford) were snaffled up by those of a more mature countenance.

There have been reports that a full box of eight “happily still alive” Dame bars is winging its way to Australia. Sightings have also been made of the confectionery  in a Carnaby Street music company’s reception and a Dame Diana (Rigg) bar and a Credit Crunchie were spotted in an  Essex branch of Lloyds Bank.

The now-traditional West End Whingers Rather Grand Raffle went as well as could be expected although with a rather tedious record-breaking 13 prizes (click on the image left for details) the draw did go on a bit.

Regular readers will be keen to hear that the miracle toast (13th prize in the raffle but lucky for someone) was won by a Mrs Pearce of Exmouth and the first prize of a set of Dame bars plus membership to the wonderful Audience Club (kindly donated by Angela Hyde Courtney) made Mrs Dr David Eldridge (aka Caroline) giddy with excitement. And it was surely excitement that made her giddy, not the drink. Caroline won the “best outfit” prize last year which seems a bit suspicious and a stewards’ enquiry is under way.

There were many, many highlights to the evening but we also enjoyed discussing our top secret new project with Calendar Girls actresses Gaynor Faye and Elaine C Smith. They showed very polite interest in our plans for a West End Whingers sequel which has the working title of Colander Boys (strapline: “We’re going to need considerably bigger breasts”).  It is very much a work in progress but Miss Faye and Miss C Smith were most encouraging although sadly they stopped short of agreeing to invest in the show as we had planned.

Again: thanks to everyone for coming and making it (we are told; we have no memory of it) a very successful evening.