Southend on a Sunday November night. Ned Boulting at the Palace Theatre - which, incidentally, was 12 years new in 1923 - and Country and Western at The Plough.
"Intermarché make their way up the side of the peloton with Biniam Girmay in the green jersey as we approach the intermediate sprint...David, have you heard from Eurosport?"
This is met with slight but knowing chuckles. This is very much an ITV4 Tour de France audience and a typical ITV4 Tour de France highlights show subject.
Such an audience, that Ned starts the show, boldly, with a gentle ribbing. He has a history of annoying Strava Wankers and Rapha Wankers, and he continues, jesting "if it's not on Strava it didn't happen" and "you're just filling the gaping void in your life". Ironically, someone's phone rings and Ned improvises, "that's probably her now, oh no, I changed my number". These are all met with laughs, just. The doughty wives of the primary audience members would probably rather be in the pub next door.
If you know Ned you'll know he's a lover of European culture and history, and has a penchant for the niche, the obscure and the under dog.
Enter Théophile Beeckman; who is wheeled on from stage right as a tweed jacket, leather gloves, flat cap and aviator goggles. The unlikely star of this story. A man who was as stereotypically Belgian as it's possible to be: he loved racing his bike and his mother's waffles. But before 2020, Théo was just a blurry smudge on a bridge, and then a street, somewhere in France at some point in time.
This is the man Ned spent years trying to find during the COVID-19 pandemic, after being presented the opportunity to buy a nearly 100 year old Pathé newsreel at an online auction. It turns out he was the only person in the world interested in it. And £120 later, his obsession began. He later objects to being called 'obsessed' by French historian, Michel Chatal, probably because said gentleman was a bit of an obsessive lunatic himself.
Ned acts out the long, dull days of late 2020 and 2021, holed up at home in Lewisham with a shattered humerus - you will know the story if you listen to Never Strays Far - spending hours trying to find out anything about the grainy black and white characters in still form. Every now and then, an email would ping into his inbox, helping to broaden the web of his investigation.
Through black outs and brilliant parody ITV adverts, Ned perfectly flits between the necessary, intimate, intricate storytelling of the precious film and whimsical humour of modern day stories; among others, an incorrect WhatsApp recon of Bordeaux with Sir Mark of Cavendish and the crushing boredom of commentating the neutralised roll out.
This neat one-man show becomes an intentionally awkwardly performed three-man show as Ned, via voiceover, conveys the first meeting with Théophile Beeckman's grand-daughter and her husband. It's a blessed relief when 'she' finally turns up and the small talk with 'him' can end.
Ned's struck by how similar she looks to Beeckman, and she knows before he's even said it.
Perhaps most striking - at the conclusion of what is a fun yet information heavy show - are the family photos at the end. Generations of Beeckmans with Ned's book, 1923. The unknown dot on a bridge, attacking on the 412km stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France, briefly and flippantly mentioned in the day's press, was now immortalised for his family 100 years hence.
Finally, Ned shows us pictures of when he got the chance to visit the former site of the bridge in Easter 2022 (which was sabotaged by the occupying German forces in 1944) and hamlet depicted in the film: La Roche Bernard.
You can't help but be moved. This 'lost generation', in some part, honoured.
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