I was delighted to be given a belated Mother's Day present over the weekend: a double disc set (CD and DVD) of The Hunting of the Snark by Mike Batt

I loved this piece ever since I first saw the Albert Hall production on TV, videoed it and practically wore the tape out. I didn't have the CD. We went to see the full length theatrical version, during the last couple of days before it was taken off the stage in London, this would be about 1991. I was staggered to read that it only ran for seven weeks, as I'd though ti was longer. All the way through, I thought it was just beautiful, and had been so cleverly adapted from the original much shorter version I knew, so as to have more of a message.

But the critics had almost unanimously panned it - TimeOut described it in one word: "dire". So we were watching a condemned show, and Mike himself seemed to have almost an air of desperation about him. I think the critics just didn't understand it.

Just wondered if anyone here ever saw it. There seem to have been lots of plans to revive it somehow, but nothing much has happened yet.

I knew nothing about it at all until your post. I don't think it was even mentioned in the recent series of programmes about British musicals - and that did include such dire flops as the one with Cliff Richard as the rock star being beamed aboard a spaceship Sometimes things are simply created in the wrong time and the wrong place. And perhaps Mike Batt will never really recover from being associated with the Wombles But I'm going to look it up now as it sounds fascinating

When the semi-staged Albert Hall verion was televised, my younger daughter, then aged about 9, fell wildly in love with Mike Batt, and tactlessly said (in front of the rest of the family) "I think it would be lovely to have someone like Mike Batt as a Daddy". This was followed by a lot of loud clearing of throats and she blushed crimson when she realised what she'd said. Daddy, fortunately, has a great sense of humour, and at one stage called her and described himself as "her favourite Daddy after Mike Batt". When the aforementioned Daddy and I amicably divorced several years later, and I remarried, he gave us a Folio Society copy of The Hunting of the Snark as a wedding present.

I accept that this has added nothing to the discussion.

There are several excerpts from the CD and the semi-staged production (not the same cast) on YuTube, but nothing, it would seem, from the theatrical production. I think it must have devastated and nearly ruined Mike Batt, who I gather had to sell all his right to the Womble music (which in its own genre is pretty decent stuff) to pay for his investment in it.

One of the Good Guys, I've always thought

When Mike was writing this, he came to tidworth (hampshire) and use the Quebec band of the Queens regiment as a rehearsal band to try things out (I was on alto sax for it.)

He was with us for 2 days, and it didn't make much sense to us as we just had snippets of things he was trying out rather than the whole thing.

An interesting couple of days

Dave