Bavard Bar celebrates first birthday!

Congratulations to Tim Crook and all those involved in The Bavard Bar initiative, an evening of interesting and enjoyable talks – some planned, some improvised – music and engaging entertainment for both the participants and the observers. HOT’s Zelly Restorick asks Tim Crook, aka Tim B’avard, the man at the heart of this event, about celebrating one year of Bavard Bar evenings.

So, Tim, you’re celebrating the 1st birthday of starting Bavard Bar talks. How does it feel for you, the initiator? Has the experience turned out as you’d imagined?

I feel thrilled and delighted to be celebrating the first year of the St Leonard’s Bavard Bar (BB) at Kino-Teatr on 16 May 2018. It has been – and is – a fabulous journey on which I have met with some wonderful people. The ‘Bavarders’ have been brilliant to meet, with some extraordinary and amazing passions. And the audience has been fab to meet too. They have proved to be a real delight, and – largely – up for anything, which shows how broad-minded and interested our town is. I’ve also loved meeting the local shop and cafe owners, many of whom have taken BB flyers and placed them in their premises to help spread the BB word about town.

Tell us about what can be expected on a BB evening of entertainment.

At the BB, you will hear three people – the Bavarders – share something they’re passionate about for around 15 minutes. And after each talk, the audience can ask questions. The night’s Bavarders are booked in advance, but I don’t reveal the subjects until the night, so you never know what you’re going to hear until you come along.

I do tell Piano Man Dan though, as he prepares a set-list of songs linked to the speakers’ passions, which he plays before the show starts at 7:30pm and in the two intervals. Eddie the Lens takes photographs and films all the talks during the show and the house Bav-ardist draws or sketches the speakers as they speak. I put all the films and illustrations on the BB website after each show.

I have also introduced some Wild Cards to allow audience members to spontaneously participate if they wish – I never pick on anyone. The Wild Cards include ‘KP Lite’, which is a sequence of six mystery slides that stay on the screen for 15 seconds each. The challenge is to speak about the random pictures for a total of one and a half minutes.

The second Wild Card is ‘Oojah Kappivvy’. It’s a bit like ‘Call my Bluff’ or ‘Would I Lie To You?’. Any audience member can give me a true fact about themselves (the more unusual the better). I invite them up just before the final speaker and offer them two bits of paper – one has their true fact written on it, the other has a false fact I have made up. The challenger takes one of the bits of paper and reads out the ‘fact’. The audience then ask questions to determine if they’re lying or not. The challenge is to fool the audience with the only rule being that if the challenger picks their true fact, they can’t lie when answering questions.

Do you have personal favourites from all the many performers who’ve had the courage to give a talk or improvise with The Wild Cards?

There have been so many brilliant, different and amazing passions shared at the BB that picking a favourite is almost impossible – for me anyhow! I have loved the diversity of the talks, and the speakers, all of which have, in some way, moved me. As for the Wild Cards, I have loved both the ‘Oojah Kappivvys’ we’ve had – Glenys Jacques in January and Stephen Brown in February. I won’t give them away here, but if you get a chance, check them out via the BB website under the ‘Past Bavards’ tab.

The ‘KP Lite’ challenge has been amazing too. I’d probably single out the two teenagers who stepped up to do it – Isaac Quinn in December and Greg Boon in March. Both quite brilliant in my opinion, and again both of them available to see online, along with the full Bavards and all the other KP Lites.

Are you aiming for another year of BB? If so, what do you envisage?

As for the future, who even knows! I host the BB at the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards on the third Wednesday of every month and at Printers Playhouse in Eastbourne on the first Thursday of every month. It’s proving so popular and so much fun that my immediate plan is to carry on having fun with it at both venues in both towns. And then, who knows … just having fun is the main thing though.

Supposing one of our readers is inspired to give a BB talk about their passion, what should they do?

If anyone wants to speak, it’s always best to come to a night first to see how it all unfolds. And then just contact me – either on the night, or via the BB website which has all my contact details:

And if anyone wants to give the Bavard Bar page a ‘like’ on Facebook, that would be fab, and maybe a follow on Twitter and Instagram @bavardbar.

Read previous HOT article here: The Bavard Bar talks.

Also in: Hastings People

« Local volunteers at Buckingham Palace
Sad passing of John the Cobbler »