Tom Lehrer lives?!

I had no idea that he was still alive, but here he is, giving interviews in an Australian newspaper!

Apparently, he withdrew from performing in the mid-sixties, like Glenn Gould and the Beatles. But unlike Glenn Gould and the Beatles, he also stopped recording.

Who is Tom Lehrer, you ask? Perhaps you should read the interview...

It's funny that he also mentions Peter Cook, whom Terri and I have been enamoured with since we saw Bedazzled.

"The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.

"The audiences like to think that satire is doing something. But, in fact, it is mostly to leave themselves satisfied. Satisfied rather than angry, which is what they should be."

His favourite quote on the subject is from British comedian Peter Cook, who, in founding the Establishment Club in 1961, said it was to be a satirical venue modelled on "those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War".