FANTASY DINNER PARTY: WHOM WOULD I INVITE? BY SANDRA HARRIS.

FANTASY DINNER PARTY: WHOM WOULD I INVITE?

BY SANDRA HARRIS.


This is a good question. I can invite everyone/anyone I want, as many as I want, living or dead, fictional or from real life? Brilliant. Great stuff. As a lifelong reader and book enthusiast, my guest list'll probably be top-heavy with writers.


I don't just love reading, I love the physical books themselves: collecting them, choosing them in a bookshop, handling them, bringing them home, breathing in their scent whether they're old or new, shelving them, re-arranging them endlessly, housing them by category and so on.

I'm a major book person. I'll probably be buried with some of my favourite reads. I might even choose to marry a book, lol. After all, it won't ever cheat on me or forget that women like cuddling after sex and not just being told, can you see yourself out, I have work in the morning...?


Anyway, here goes. Let's see if you agree with my choices!


    1. William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte and some of the Romantic poets, Lord Byron in particular, just to add a classic flavour to the whole thing.

    2. Maybe some of their characters too, like Macbeth, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, Oliver Twist and Lady Dedlock, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickelby, Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, Cathy and Heathcliff and Jane Eyre. We could get a good conversation going about the social issues of the day in Dickens's England.

    3. Some of the great horror writers too: Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray), R.L. Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, Robert Bloch (Psycho), Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), Robert Marasco (Burnt Offerings) and, of course, Anne Rice, James Herbert and Stephen King.

    4. Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. They can also bring Dr. Watson and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, plus some of the actors who've portrayed these characters to perfection in various films and television series: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke.

    5. Bela Lugosi, Gloria Holden, Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Claude Rains, Lon Chaneys Jr. and Sr. and all the actors who starred in the brilliant series of horror films created by Universal Studios. These included The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), Dracula's Daughter (1935) and Werewolf of London (1935). All their characters can come too, naturally!

    6. The actors and actresses from the Hammer Horror series of films: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Hazel Court, Freda Jackson, Michael Ripper, George Woodbridge, Oliver Reed, Barbara Shelley, Ralph Bates, Shane Briant, Michael Gough, Sandor Eles, Miles Malleson and, of course, the women who put the 'glamour' into Hammer, including Caroline Munro, Veronica Carlson, Martine Beswick, Madeline Smith, Jenny Hanley, Valerie Leon, Kate O'Mara and, my personal favourite, the divine Ingrid Pitt.

    7. Vincent Price, Barbara Steele and Roger Corman for the Edgar Allan Poe cycle of films made by American International Pictures. What a cracking series of spooky movies!

    8. The cast and crew of the Carry On films. Hell, let's include their characters too. The main actors and actresses were Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Jim Dale, Bernard Bresslaw, Peter Butterworth, Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor, amongst others.

    9. The Muppets from The Muppet Show and the characters of Sesame Street.

    10. From the world of music: Kate Bush, Freddie Mercury and the other members of Queen, Leonard Cohen, Badfinger (remember them?), David Bowie and Blondie and Steve Harley from Cockney Rebel and anyone who was at Live Aid, the biggest live concert of all time, in 1985. Even the acts I didn't like, curiously enough the Irish ones like U2 and The Boomtown Rats...! I'm not anti-Irish music or anything; I just didn't care for those two bands much.

    11. Michael Crawford and Michelle Dotrice, John Cleese and Prunella Scales, the Two Ronnies, Windsor Davies, Richard Wilson (I don't believe it!), Patricia Routledge, Dermot Morgan, Leonard Rossiter, Eric Sykes, Rowan Atkinson, Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy and everyone else who acted in the sitcoms that are still so funny today, years and sometimes decades after they were made: Some Mothers Do 'ave 'em, Fawlty Towers, Open All Hours, Porridge, Going Straight, One Foot in the Grave, Only When I Laugh, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, Rising Damp, Sykes, Blackadder, Mr. Bean, George and Mildred and a whole host of other fantastic television comedies.

    12. Random Hunks I Just Fancy: Cristiano Ronaldo, footballer. Tom Cruise, actor.

    13. My kids, and also all the hamsters we had who passed away and are now sporting wings.

    14. E.L. James for bringing sexiness in women's writing into the mainstream.

    15. All the Suffragettes who fought for Women's Rights and any woman (or hairy-arsed bloke!) who continues to do so today.


So there you go. What do you think? Whom would you add? Or subtract? Do you approve of my choices? Or wildly disagree? Have fun compiling your own list!



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