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Dateline: 8th May, 2007
Ian Watson, executive producer of TAMAR, Scarborough, and the driving force behind the Jake Thackray musical Sister Josephine Kicks the Habit (now being rewritten by Alan Plater and entitled The Thackray Arms), died of cancer on the evening of Friday 4th May 2007. BTG reviewer Ray Brown, an old friend and colleague, remembers him. Back in the happy pre-managerial revolution days of Yorkshire Playwrights, Ian Watson was what passed for our bureaucracy. As paid administrator he took care of our brilliant script reading scheme, made applications for loot, ran the newsletter, and was the font of all committee practice and wisdom. I won't speak for other YP Chairs, but he was Peter Brough to my Archie Andrews. I need merely look to him and he would read the body language: 'What next, Watto?' For the stumbling clique of professionals and pals who formed YP, Ian was invaluable - without him and our inestimable Treasurer, Peter Johnson, we would have been lost. Ian loved the company of writers and was no mean scribe himself (his was, I believe, the first book on Ayckbourn). He had vast experience of theatre and arts administration, from his days at South West Arts, from the Yorkshire Theatre Company, from the Stephen Joseph Theatre and almost certainly elsewhere. He also ran his own booking agency TAMAR. And he ran it with heart and generosity. He liked on stage what he liked on stage and he put his energy where his heart was. I was lucky enough to have two shows on his books. He never took his 'cut'. Admittedly one of them, the ill fated Touching Base with Brown and Malloy, was never booked. But what fun we had setting it up - a great photo session at Scarborough's Spa! He was a good, unobtrusive stage photographer, and that is a special skill. And he wrote brilliant, concise brochure copy. That was the thing about Ian, he was an intricate lad with many hidden talents, useful experience and endless specialist and general knowledge. He was dry in humour; acerbic, with a delight in one-liners and cutting nick names. He could play the disgruntled Yorkshire man with relish. He was honest, sometimes brutally so - 'You asked, so I told you!.' Praise from Ian was very highly valued. And many of us benefited from his critiques of our work. During my time as chair of Yorkshire Playwrights we would chat on the phone two or three times a week. Usually we'd talk at the end of the day's work, after he had trundled off to catch the 'bloody last post to London'. Usually one or both of us was cooking. So we'd clear up the matter of the menu, compare the plonk we had to hand, then get down to essential business and wide ranging chat and as much laughter as we could squeeze in. He was a good laugher - rich and fruity. His great loves: family, theatre, Brassons and Thackray. Like the great singer songwriter Georges Brassens (natch), and the great Jake Thackray, Ian was a fluent speaker of French and something of an expert on French poetry and song. He was a long term pal of Jake who after too many years 'on the sauce' wanted nothing to do with the world of entertainment. Ian arranged for me to meet him, get tippling drunk with him, and feature him in the radio series Starry Starry Night. Jake's episode told of the night he played Cardiff's Sherman Theatre with his all time hero, Georges Brassens. Ian was there on the starry night, and in the Thackray kitchen after the gig, when Tonton Georges was expansive and Jake and he jammed together. Ian glowed when he recalled that night. There was a non-homoerotic love between them all, rooted in art, scholarship, and zest for life. Of late Ian and Jake had a plan. Ian would produce a musical based on Jakes rich catalogue of songs. Jake was happy about this, so long as there were 'frolics'. Thus was born Sister Josephine Kicks the Habit. Sadly Jake didn't live to see this ribald, roistering show which bubbled with frolics and the joviality of its writer Ian McMillan and director friend, Fine Time Fontayne. The show toured and was popular, but it had captured Jake's chips without the salt and vinegar. So, wanting nothing more than to honour Jake, Watto started again. Ian McMillan and Fine Time were off frying other fish, a new writer was needed. Alan Plater stepped in. Ian had good contacts! Last year cancer of the oesophagus was diagnosed. It would be a rapid do. Ian knew he didn't have long. I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he was chipper. 'It's not bad really,' he said, 'I've cut out all the crap and I'm spending my time on the important things.' Sadly his condition excluded the pleasures he'd always found in food and drink. He dedicated his dwindling days to furthering the Jake Thackray project. 'I know I won't see it, which is a bugger, but I'll take it as far as I can.' He talked freely about the unpleasant symptoms and prognosis. He didn't expect to get past April, so the extra few days with his family must have been a bonus. He had no faith in an afterlife but said that, increasingly, he found himself remembering jokes he might share with Jake. So picture this. A painted metal table, a Dubonnet sunshade, bottles of claret, a couple of guitars, Ian and Jake lolling and laughing, an empty chair. And in the heavenly pissoir, Tonton Georges Brassens, smiling into the blue, composing a song about le cricket. Go well, Watto! Editor Peter Lathan remembers, too: Although we had corresponded by email for a number of years, I only met Ian Watson once, at the premiere of Sister Josephine at Helmsley Arts Centre, but that meeting confirmed all that his emails had suggested: a friendly, enthusiastic, lovely man. Although not one of the famous names of theatre, he was one of those who form its bedrock, whose tireless work enables the rest of us to enjoy to enjoy theatre at all levels. He will be greatly missed. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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