Sunday, August 12, 2018

David Kernan: Sorry-Grateful


The star was David Kernan as Buttons, who had already appeared in Zulu on television in That Was the Week That Was. He was later to become even more famous in Ned Sherrin’s Side by Side by Sondheim. 
I can remember his last scene, singing a song called “I’m Going Away” because his friend Cinderella was marrying Prince Charming. How we loved him!
I wrote that after acquiring the programme for Cinderella at the Watford Palace, which I was taken to see in January 1967.

Since then I have done a bit of research and discovered that it was Kernan who devised Side by Side by Sondheim. Ned Sherrin produced its first staging and acted as the narrator.

I thought this very cool, very English take on Sondheim's Sorry-Grateful must come from a television version of that show.

In fact it comes from an Andre Previn programme on Sondheim made for American television in 1977. And this song (which comes from Company) did not feature in Side by Side by Sondheim.

Let's end with the profile of David Kernan from my pantomime programme.

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