Oliver was dismayed to learn that the 2019 Island Fringe Festival wasn’t going to include any audience-participation activities in its launch event, as it had in previous years.

“For every problem, there is a solution,” I am forever telling Oliver.

So he reached out to Fringe officials and, to their eminent credit, the decided to correct this oversight, and added something:

DRAMATIC READING OF YOUR FAVOURITE SONG
Come on down and give a truly dramatic reading of your favourite song… channel your best Liam Neeson as you woo the audience with your rendition of Janelle Monáe’s ‘PYNK’… or pretend you’re Viola Davis as you wow the crowd reading the lyrics of Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’!

Of course this parry required a thrust. And Oliver decided that I needed to participate too.

So I gave a dramatic reading of Kim Mitchell’s iconic Patio Lanterns, and Oliver recited Blackbird, by The Beatles, in his take on a Liverpudlian accent.

There is no extant recording of my performance. But I recorded Oliver’s.