Celebrity Sarnie Scoffers Save Symphony

Just ten months ago, the City of Manchester Ensemble was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ticket sales were dropping faster than Boris Johnson’s pants at a Royal Ascot after-party, and the orchestra was haemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. It looked like their next concert might be their last, when their managing director had a brainstorm.

“I saw Benedict Cumberbatch was in town, touring his one-man musical revue ‘Michael Howard – Something of the Nightclub About Him’” said CEO Frank Verzweiflung, “and, in a moment of bravado, we reached out to his management and asked if he would consider putting in an appearance with the orchestra, perhaps hosting our concert. His management replied that, for the right fee, Mr Cumberbatch would appear anywhere at any time for any purpose, but that his busy schedule with the one man show meant he was unable to prepare a script to host the concert. What can I say? We were one postage stamp purchase away from calling in the liquidators, so I just blurted out “He doesn’t have to say anything! He doesn’t have to do anything. We’ll pay any fee, as long as he shows up. He can just sit on stage and eat a fucking sandwich on his dinner break for all I care!”

To his amazement, the agent agreed. “I think Benedict could agree to that,” he said.

“When I said it, I was just sort of half-venting, half joking… just gallows humour, you know… Thinking about losing my job and my house…my wife filing for divorce…. as you do the day before a concert! But when he said yes, I stopped joking and ran with it. Ten minutes later, we posted on our Twitter feed: ‘COME for Brahms’ First Symphony tomorrow, during which Benedict Cumberbatch will eat a prawn mayo sandwich onstage.’ In less that two hours, we were sold out. After that, we worked like lighting, running down the list of first round exits from Celebrity Masterchef, and, within a week, we’d booked celebrities to eat sandwiches at every concert for the rest of the year, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Within ten days,” said Verzweiflung “we had launched the new 2018-19 COME Sandwich Series.”

Not every sandwich consumption/concert has gone smoothly. “Nicole Kidman had a meatball sub during o the Dvorak Stabat Mater with the Symphony Chorus,” said Verzweiflung, ‘and that was a messy performance. She had tomato sauce all down her frock by the end, and there was some, er, audible belching. There were a few complaints. I think some of the audience felt a little let down by her lack of a napkin, but most were just happy to see the star of BMX Bandits and Baz Lurmann’s Australia eating lunch live.”

“I don’t think the problem was really with the way in which she ate the meatball sub” countered Principal Conductor Artis Föråldrad. “It was more the shock of her choice of sandwich. Many thought she’d have something daintier, but it turns out that with the 5000 milligrams of horse hormones she takes every day to keep her skin youthful, she needs to eat pretty much constantly.”

We asked Föråldrad about the cost of incorporating celebrities eating their lunch or dinner into every concert the orchestra gives. “It’s less than you’d think, really” he said with a smile. “Most of them are happy to be paid the same as us. Many bring their own sandwiches, too.”

Given the wide disparity in fees between section and principal players, and between players, soloists and conductors, we pressed Föråldrad to explain which of “us” the celebrities get the same fee as. Surely they couldn’t have paid reality show maven and failed popstar Rev. Richard Coles the same amount to eat his ham salad sandwich on pumpernickel as Föråldrad got to conduct the performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius which accompanied it?

“I’m sorry, you’ve misunderstood me” said Föråldrad with gentle patience. “Richard and the rest get the same as us. All of us. All the players, the soloists, the conductors, the stage hands and the management. Even the bartenders and the ushers. We add up the total of what every other living soul being paid to be in Rees-Mogg Hall gets, and that’s what we pay the celebrity. It’s a bargain, really!”

Staying true to the music and respecting the audience is key, say COME. “We aim to be tasteful, no pun in intended. We try, whenever we can, to incorporate sandwiches which illuminate the music,” says Verzweiflung. “We were really proud of our April concert, when we played Bloch’s Sacred Service while Barbara Streisand ate a kosher pastrami and rye. Many listeners found it very moving.”

And it turns out that the celebrities are almost all very easy to work with. “We thought some of them would be divas,” said Föråldrad, “but, to be honest, most of them don’t seem that aware of their surroundings. I suppose many think we’re just another set. You just sort of guide them on stage after the overture and say ‘here you go, Dame Judy, have a seat and enjoy your sausage sarnie. We’ll be back for you in 45 minutes after we re-set the fog machine.’ The rest just sort of takes care of itself, and we get a standing ovation every time.”

News of Manchester’s symphonic sarnie success has spread through the industry. “COME sandwiches are the future of every orchestra that wants to stay relevant in the 21^st Century,” said noted orchestral programming consultant George Sandbox. “This is real innovation. We all know audiences are shrinking. In a market like Manchester with a metropolitan population of just over a million people, there are probably about 47 people who give two cold poops about Bruckner or Debussy. Frankly, people today don’t care about art, movies, sport, the outdoors, the survival of the planet, peace or even God any more. Churches are empty and people can’t even be asked to fund schools for five full days a week for their own kids. But the craven worship of randomly anointed celebrities remains the one universal constant which binds together our modern society. Orchestras today understand that music can’t exist without celebrity.”

Excitement about COME Sandwiches has spread  quickly, and this month, the BBC Proms have jumped on the sandwich-eating bandwagon, recently announcing that Daniel Craig will be eating a cucumber and cheese sandwich on wholemeal nut bread at the opening night of the Proms during a performance of Leos Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass. There has been much speculation as to whether Craig would “go the full Bond” and drink a martini with his sandwich, but Craig is reported to be “more of a purist, and never a showboat” according to his spokesman. “Daniel really thinks drinking a martini in this concert would cheapen and undermine the eating of the sandwich, which he intends to undertake with the kind of attention to detail and intensity that the Glagolitic Mass calls for. The kind of passion and commitment he brought the Bond films when he still gave a shit about them.” Others report that Craig’s management wanted an extra million for him to drink the martini.

The incorporation of celebrity sarnie scoffing at the Proms foreshadows a wider role for pointless celebrity imagery in BBC arts programming. The broadcaster is reported to have scrapped their eagerly anticipated 10-part bio-documentary on Beethoven, which was to mark the composers 250^th birthday year in 2020, and replaced it with a series of broadcasts of 1980’s era Naxos back-catalogue recordings of the Beethoven symphonies by the Ploznitz Academic Streetcleaners Orchestra, played as a backdrop to footage of Frank Skinner doing the crossword and Piers Morgan catching up on back issues of Fashionable Fascist magazine.

The Proms are also underlining that their selection of sandwich eaters will be the most diverse in musical history. “We’re absolutely committed to making sure that half of our BBC butty guzzlers are female by 2023,” said Proms Director Wilson Pickaxe. “It won’t be easy, because about %75 of sandwich afficionadi are men, but if we have to allow some salads and cottage cheese in the name of fairness, that’s what we’ll do.”

Others remain skeptical. “The sandwich is an inherently racist, imperialist lunch item. It is the tasty, quick and convenient embodiment of white privilege” said a representative of Digest for Diversity. “Does the BBC even accept the legitimacy of sandwiches of colour like the falafel on pita or the Jamaican jerk chicken?”

BBC spokesmen were quick to confirm that sandwich selection would be “fully multicultural and pan-dietary, including allowing for gluten-free, vegan and even bread-free sandwiches from all parts of the world.”

As for the 2019 Proms, everyone expects the highlight of the season to be the emotional farewell concert of Bernard Haitink, who bows out of the most distinguished of conducting careers at age 90 with a final performance of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

“No conductor has meant more to the Proms over the last 50 years than Haitink,” said Pickaxe, “and we’re determined to to treat this historic concert with the kind of respect Haitink has earned in his 65 year concert career. That’s why we’ve gone all out for his final concert and broken the “2 celebrity” barrier, booking both Ant and Dec, the Haydn and Mozart of pointless super-celebrity, who will be eating what we hope will be tuna pesto baguettes throughout the Bruckner. It will be worth every penny of the £500k we’re paying them for the night.”