The secret life of the Bavard Bar

Creator and host of the Bavard Bar Tim B’vard, aka Tim Crook, takes some time out from his organising duties to speak to Jude Montague about the popular club.

The Bavard Bar has been described as a “delightful blend of TED, comedy and Radio 4”. And that just about sums it up. It takes place at the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards on the third Wednesday of every month, and also at Towner in Eastbourne on the second Wednesday of every month. It started in the spring of 2017 and is now in its eighth year.

The creator and host of the show is Tim B’vard, or more accurately, Tim Crook. Tim is a former lawyer turned standup/MC, with a passion for the eclectic, esoteric and general nonsense.

Tim says: “At the time I created the show, back in 2017, my then 16-year-old daughter was revising for her GCSEs. I was telling her about my idea and said I needed a name for the show. I described the concept to her, which is essentially three people sharing their passions, and she turned to her French vocabulary book which happened to be open at the letter ‘B’. As the show involves ‘chatting’, she suggested using the word ‘bavarder’, the French verb meaning ’to chat’.

“I added the ‘bar’ part as it reflects my time as a lawyer (certain lawyers, namely barristers, are called to the ‘bar’ when they qualify). And there’s a bar at both venues.”

The inspiration for the regular event comes from Tim’s background as a lawyer, spending most of his days arguing in courtrooms up and down the country, mixed with  a love of live comedy shows and old comedic radio shows such as I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, The Burkiss Way and many other similar shows. He also loved  hearing regular people’s often extraordinary tales at underground clubs in Brighton and beyond.

Tim used to wear a T-shirt at every show, with ‘Humans of Hastings’ written on the front of it, which reflected the essence of the show as the night is open to anyone and everyone to share their passion. Speakers can be accomplished or ‘professional’ speakers or not, the key ingredient being that they have a genuine passion that they would love to share with the audience. In the interests of show business Tim has replaced it with a sparkly jacket!

There have been so many extraordinary and fabulous talks over the years, but one that sticks in Tim’s mind, and those of all the audience who were there on the night, was Pete Fij’s remarkable story about ‘Wojtek the Bear’.

It’s a tale of a Polish army regiment in WWII who rescued an abandoned bear cub. The bear stayed with them throughout their involvement in numerous campaigns in WWII, and the bond that developed between Wojtek and the soldiers was incredibly moving.

But perhaps most moving of all was the revelation that Pete’s father was in the regiment with Wojtek, a fact that had been unknown to Pete and only came to light after his father’s death.

More recently, Anthony Grant gave an astonishing talk about how, aged 19 in the 1980s, he invited almost every well known UK celebrity at the time to his home for a photo shoot. And remarkably, they accepted. But not only that, he persuaded them to dress up, and as a result he has a catalogue of astonishing photos of the likes of John Cleese, Joanna Lumley and Tony Benn, to name just a few, dressed in ways you may never have seen them. A truly remarkable story.

Tim also recollects Sachi Kimura-Lawson’s hilariously brilliantly bonkers bavard about ‘Bum Reading’! Sachi explained how, like Jackie Stallone, she is practised in the ancient art of ‘Rumpology’. Sachi is able to read your bottom and give you insights into your past life, as well as future possibilities. It’s a ‘trouser on’ bottom reading, and not long after Sachi spoke, she read my bottom. Revealing…

To Tim, one of the key ingredients of the show is that everyone who comes along has a good time, most importantly the audience. “So I mix the night up by introducing games that I’ve devised over the years, all of which have a comedic element. There’s a caption competition that rolls throughout the night, so that audience members can come up with, often incredibly funny, captions to a random image.

“Then I have wild card games that audience members can choose to play if they wish. These include games such as the ‘KP Lite’ where the volunteer speaks to six random images; ‘Make it Stop’, where a volunteer dances to a song being played wirelessly into their ears, which song the audience has to guess; and ‘Pearl or Dean’ where the volunteer plays a song of their choice on the Kazoo or Swannee whistle, and again the audience has to guess the song.

“There’s also the ‘Oojah Kappivvy’, a Hastings Old Town expression for a game which is along the lines of ‘Would I Lie To You’. The volunteer has to bluff the audience into thinking a fact that they’ve read out relating to them is true or false.”

Piano Man Dan plays songs linked to the night’s bavards in the two intervals and in the time before the show starts, while Maria O’Neill draws and paints the speakers on a quick-fire basis.

www.bavardbar.co.uk – you can find all the past ‘bavards’ there.
YouTube channel: @bavardbar

Bavard Bar on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter): @bavardbar

 

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