Leading comedians who come back to perform at the height of their fame – notably Roseanne Barr and Dennis Leary this year – say they’ve been drawn back by the Montreal audiences and by the city itself. Although many of them mock it, the Frenchness of Quebec is clearly one of the factors that attract monoglot Americans, who simply have nothing like it, even in Louisianan. It’s not every day you get to meet a working-class heroine, feminist icon and top-notch sitcom star who has won four Emmys and the prestigious Peabody Award. Some also take in English acts, but those who do must find it a turn-off to watch an endless succession of American stand-ups mocking the way they speak. (Some British comedians also go for cheap laughs with the same sad tactic).Yet Nulman contends that Just For Laughs – or Juste Pour Rire, as the Francophones prefer – provides a vital annual safety valve for this divided province. Being boss of a comedy festival has turned out to be a fairly lucrative pursuit, plus he gets the chance to revel in his own brief stand-up routine every time he’s introducing the real performers. It plainly provides some balm for any emotional scars he still carries.Nulman is an endangered species in this part of the world – an Anglophone Quebecer who is determined to stand up to his Francophone neighbours and try to stop them tearing “la belle province” out of the Canadian confederation.
When the separatist Parti Quebecois erected a statue last week to commemorate the 30th anniversary of General de Gaulle’s provocative “vivre le Quebec libre” declaration, Nulman hit back on stage with a few piercing comic rejoinders. The audience – all apparently fellow Anglophones – lapped it up. The Quebecois tend to flock to the first week of the festival, which is devoted to French fare. “I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I contemplated suicide,” he says, recalling his painful rejection by the audience.But it all worked out beautifully for him. Andy Nulman, chief executive of the festival (which is a private corporation) says his operating credo has always been “to ensure that the industry is taken care of and given what it wants without jeopardising the public’s enjoyment of the event”.Nulman, who darts around the downtown district for the duration of the festival in various attention-seeking attires – including a red and white Montreal Canucks ice-hockey shirt – once had a stab at being a stand-up himself when he was a reporter on a now-defunct Sunday newspaper But he died on stage – or, rather, seriously wished he had. Many ordinary folk come to Montreal from across Canada, and even from parts of the US as well, just for laughs.
His denial was rendered somewhat less convincing by the fact that we were chatting at around 2am in the lounge of the Delta Hotel, where most of the industry folk in town hang out to network.Not everyone is here to schmooze with the star-makers. Britain’s own Ben Elton got slightly irritated when the Montreal Gazette suggested that was his main motivation for launching a double assault on audiences with his play Silly Cow and his own one-man stand-up show Alone.”They can’t believe anyone would simply want to come to Canada – what a sad cultural cringe!” he told me later. More than 30 development deals have been hammered out here in the last two years, they say. Of course few aspiring, or even fairly successful, comedians would own up to having crossed the Atlantic for that careerist purpose. Commanding any coverage in Tinsel Town’s trade rag gladdens the festival organisers, who lure hot young stand-ups to the banks of the St Lawrence river every summer with the tantalising promise that top execs from the major US television networks and some of the big movie studios will be there to scout for talent.
Ramsay Ltd v IRC [1982] AC 300, disregarding steps taken in implementing a tax avoidance scheme and looking only at the end result, a liability to income tax arose under s 478 of the Taxes Act 1970 (S 739 of the 1988 Act) (transfer of assets abroad), but the scheme might equally have failed by the application of a purposive and realistic interpretation of the facts.Andrew Park QC, Launcelot Henderson QC (Inland Revenue Solicitor) for the Crown; Edward Nugee QC, Michael Ashe QC (Gregory Rowcliffe & Milners) for the taxpayer.. Although Furet did some typical Annales style work in his early years and co-authored a significant book on literacy in France, he was never a true annaliste in the mould of Braudel or Le Roy Ladurie. Furthermore, steps should be taken by a magistrate to make sure that a party at risk had the opportunity to comment on the matter of the award of costs.Dominic Bell (Meaby & Co) for the appellant; Miranda Moore (Herbert Smith) for the respondent.Road trafficDPP v Taylor; QBD Div Ct (Simon Brown LJ, Garland J) 17 June 1997.There was nothing in the language of s 7 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 which prevented a police officer from requesting an alternative specimen where he was uncertain whether there had been a refusal to give blood for medical reasons, and had thus in fairness determined that the driver should be allowed to give a sample of urine.Simon Christie (CPS) for the appellant; David Geey (David Taylor, Liverpool) for the respondent.TaxCommissioners of Inland Revenue v McGuckian; HL (Lord Browne- Wilkinson, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, Lord Steyn, Lord Cooke of Thorndon, Lord Clyde) 12 June 1997.Applying the principle in W.T. That did not, however, take away the responsibility from counsel for the party against whom the order was to be made to ensure, if he thought it necessary, that such a bill was inspected. Magistrates’ courts
Hutber v Gabriele; QBD Div Ct (Henry LJ, Gage J) 3 July 1997.In the normal course of events a magistrate, before making a wasted costs order, should of his own motion take steps to see that a party against whom the order might be made saw the bill of costs submitted by the other side. The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports. As he was driving home on 17 July after a meeting on land claims, his car was involved in a head-on collision with a vehicle driven by a foreign tourist who reportedly fell asleep at the wheel.
Rata died on Friday from his injuries.David BarberMatiu Rata, politician: born Te Hapua, New Zealand 26 March 1934; MP (Labour, Independent), Northern Maori 1963-80; Minister of Maori Affairs/Minister of Lands 1972-75; founder and leader, Mana Motuhake Party 1980-94; married 1956 Nellie Eruera (two sons, one daughter); died Auckland 25 July 1997.. He did not talk tough enough for young radical Maoris and had become enmeshed in squabbles dividing the tribes about who had the right to negotiate with the Crown over the multimillion-dollar Muriwhenua claims.Mat Rata died after an accident while still engaged in the Maori cause. He said then: “Maori affairs no longer remain in the quiet backwater, but have become part of the main agenda.”Born and raised in Te Hapua, New Zealand’s northernmost settlement, he worked until his death promoting land and fishing claims of the Muriwhenua tribes in the Far North. He stayed in parliament briefly as an independent before forming a new Maori party, Mana Motuhake. He put its goals of Maori self- determination within a bicultural society to the test at a by-election in June 1980, but was defeated by the Labour candidate and never succeeded in subsequent efforts to return to parliament.He remained leader of the party until 1994, after its first MP had been elected when Mana Motuhake joined the NZ Alliance, a five-party opposition coalition.