We just rediscovered The Waiting Room Youtube channel!

John Otway on TheWaitingRoomVR youtube channel

Well now, as I made a blog to announce our campaign to get Carmen and Dick to Christmas number 1 this year, I had to find a space to upload a 10 second video clip… This led me to Youtube - and then a long forgotten Youtube channel TheWaitingRoomVR. I think probably we just uploaded a bunch of videos here in about 2007 and 2008 - but that a lot of those videos had even been made before that -since around 2002. (We’ve put on events and ‘happenings’ on Sunday nights at The Waiting Room for over 20 years.)

Before YouTube there was Myspace - and I remember that we had even more weekly videos there - which were lost (in what was a bit of a scandal for indie musicians especially) when Myspace got sold to the Murdochs - or something.

Carmen and Dick - pre 2007

In fact Carmen and Dick are on there - looking a little slimmer - as is Andrew Johnson, who knows Dick well.

(Andy is actual a musical producer for Carmen and Dick); There was great excitement for Andy Johnson and The Waiting Room youtube channel (which appears to have 45 followers) - when the X Factor had a contestant called Andrew Johnston one year so that anyone searching for him on the internet - with the wrong spelling - happened upon our Andrew Johnson singing Kylie at The Waiting Room - and his views shot up from the usual dozen or so to 65,000! in the space of a couple of weeks.

TheWaitingRoomVR - was our original clever name on the social channels back then representing both Vegetarian Restaurant and Virtual Reality - see? Anyway we’ve always had a funny begrudging relationship with the social media - and so have dipped more out than in over the years… Now though I wish we’d done more Youtubing - we could probably have rivalled those Tiny Desk guys for weekly ‘live’ shows, and actually we had loads of stuff back then, which we never uploaded. This included some risque material by Stewart Lee, where I lost concentration/or misunderstood when I had been meant to turn the camera off… involving Richard Hammond’s head being severed and rolling around the race track (risque not in the sexual sense).