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April 2025 - Cyril Tickets Available Now
Tickets are now on sale for Cyril, a work in progress show I'm doing at
this year's Camden Fringe Festival, in the Aces and Eights from 28th to 30th July. Come along! A bit of bumph about the show is underneath this photo of my great-grandfather and his dog (both looking quite miserable).
Cyril Gwynn (1897-1988), also known as The Bard Of Gower, was “a tall, sunburnt, unsmiling farmer”.
Gareth Gwynn (1983-Present) is none of these things.
Gareth did not spend the First World War in the Merchant Navy, nor has he ever been shipwrecked, run a farm or tried to emigrate to Australia - but he's found a book of poems by his great-grandfather, and he's determined to find something they have in common.
This is also a comedy show about living in a city when your ancestors thought tarmac was all a bit much.
The image above, on the right, is an actual poster I found in amongst my dad's stuff. Cyril moved to Australia in the 1960s so this is either him on a rare trip back or, as I suspect, his pals reading his stuff after he died. Either way, I think we can all agree, great fonts, so I've tried to update it with more relevant information for my 2025 performances.
Having read some of Cyril's poems in the Gower Festival in 2022 and Machynlleth Comedy Festival in 2023, I'm still in the thick of working out exactly what this is going to be - but do come along. It's going to be lots of fun.
I was script editor and co-director of the show which, this time round, features guest narrators Dame Sian Phillips, Di Botcher, Katy Wix and Suzanne Packer.
As I wrote when series 5 was first broadcast, looking back at the whole run, I'm not sure any of them went according to plan. Over 5 years, ever changing circumstances saw us do audience, non-audience, remote and studio recordings - meaning the build-up to each series felt wildly different from the last. Nevertheless, it has alway been an absolutely blast to work on - and I'm also 99% sure we broke the record for "shortest gap between two distinct radio series" with series 2 and 3 going out just a few weeks apart.
Series 1-4 were, of course, narrated by the brilliant Ruth Madoc - which makes it all the weirder that the reason I think we hold the record for shortest gap between radio series is that I know for a fact we are beaten on on TV by Hi-de-Hi.
Also available: I recently returned to the Beef and Dairy Network as archavist Alex Neon in an episode all about Billy Whizzbang, the plucky bullock who served in World War II and I was recently interviewed by Alex Lynch for his excellent podcast Out Of Character all about the sketch shows O'r Diwedd, Pantheon of Heroes and Tourist Trap as well as the documentary I produced about Rik Mayall (which is still available on BBC Sounds).
And the now award-nominated podcast I'm So Not Over It, which I present with Esyllt Sears, is available wherever you get your podcasts.
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