Kiwi Concert veterans ‘incensed’

Press, 30 June 1982, Page 11

Kiwi Concert veterans ‘incensed’

PA Hastings Kiwi Concert Party veterans are up in arms over the "swearing and boozing" image their wartime troupe is being given by the television series. "The Great Kiwi Concert Show." One group of Auckland war veterans was so incensed by the way the original concert party was being portrayed it considered setting up a fighting fund to take the show's producers to court.

A Managateretere farmer and one-time bass-baritone in the party. Mr Bill Nichol, said in Hastings yesterday the show was simply not authentic and had "disgusted" many of his former comrades.

He said the "swearing, cursing and boozing" shown on screen would not have got past the original show's censor. General Freyberg. who visited each new show armed with a notebook to jot down any border-line language or humour.

Mr Nichol said there was no drinking allowed on the show.

"As a matter of fact you were fined if you were caught." he said. Contrary to the television version, the acts in the two to two hours and a quarter concert party shows were continuous and the performers were often talented and highly-trained musicians, he said.

Although the concert party had been given an amateur image by the show on television. some of its top performers had professional theatrical careers before and after the war.

Mr Nichol says he was probably the only troupe 'amateur" when he joined the party at the Maadi Camp in Egypt at the outbreak of the war.

His colleagues in the chorus line included the late "Taffy" Owen, who had toured professionally with the production. "White Horse Inn." before the war. Toney Res. Auckland. John Reid, who became an executive with the National Film Unit. Ivan Hannah who was a singing teacher before the war. Mr Nichol whose own theatre background included performances in Napier operatic shows, and Maurice Double, who subsequently produced the Vera Lynn tour of New Zealand in 1972.

Mr Nichol was stagemanager for the concert party which did a highly successful patriotic fundraising tour of New Zealand during furlough in 1943. The party also had a recordbreaking series of shows in Australia and New Zealand after the war.

"People have come up to me and have said: 'What are you going to do about that rubbish'?" said Mr Nichol vesterdav.

After watching last Saturday evening's show. Mr Nichol conceded it was "a bit better." but rejects the series as a poor imitation of the real thing. "Some of the original members would turn in their graves if they saw this."

The television show lacked the familiar overture and had long gaps between acts — something that would never have been accepted by the audiences of up to 6000 troops who eagerly watched up to three shows a day in war-torn Tripoli and Crete.

Even the television version's opening chorus has struck a jarring note with Mr Nichol. It is similar, but certainly' not the same as the opening chorus for the Kiwi Concert Party written by one of its best-known members. Tom Kirk-Burnnand.