Liars' League

NEXT EVENT: Royalty & Revolution, Tuesday 11th April

2023 will see the first Coronation in 70 years ... so the night of Tuesday 11th April (also our 150th show by the way, which makes us at least 70 in literary event years) is themed on Royalty & Revolution - political, sexual, scientific or other. This month we bring you murder state PR, cross-class romance, a grieving Queen, how to poison a tyrant and the political protest to end them all ... or will it?

So, if you want to hear tales fit for a Tsar on a beggar's budget, book £5 tickets now for the best value Coronation knees-up in the West End! (Our majestic venue, the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, W1 also does two-for-one burgers on Tuesday night, which is nice). 

WINNING STORIES for ROYALTY & REVOLUTION

A Queen Cannot by Joseph Surtees - NEW AUTHOR

Heads of State by Richie Jones - NEW AUTHOR

The Princess & the Kennel-Girl by Fiona Mossman - NEW AUTHOR

We Accept Your Demands by Oliver Bussell - NEW AUTHOR 

The King's Potatoes by Jerome McFadden

The uprising begins here!

 

Tuesday 11th April, 7.30pm, £5 (doors open at 6.30pm)
The Phoenix basement bar
37 Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0PP

(nearest tube Oxford Circus)

 

N.B. We DO now accept card payments on the door but it's well worth booking a ticket via Paypal in advance to ensure you get a table - just click here. Still got questions? See below.

2023 will see the first Coronation in 70 years ... so the night of Tuesday 11th April (also our 150th show by the way, which makes us at least 70 in literary event years) is themed on Royalty & Revolution - political, sexual, scientific or other. This month we bring you murder state PR, cross-class romance, a grieving Queen, how to poison a tyrant and the political protest to end them all ... or will it?

So, if you want to hear tales fit for a Tsar on a beggar's budget, book £5 tickets now for the best value Coronation knees-up in the West End! (Our majestic venue, the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, W1 also does two-for-one burgers on Tuesday night, which is nice). 

WINNING STORIES for ROYALTY & REVOLUTION

A Queen Cannot by Joseph Surtees - NEW AUTHOR

Heads of State by Richie Jones - NEW AUTHOR

The Princess & the Kennel-Girl by Fiona Mossman - NEW AUTHOR

We Accept Your Demands by Oliver Bussell - NEW AUTHOR 

The King's Potatoes by Jerome McFadden

The uprising begins here!

 

Tuesday 11th April, 7.30pm, £5 (doors open at 6.30pm)
The Phoenix basement bar
37 Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0PP

(nearest tube Oxford Circus)

 

N.B. We DO now accept card payments on the door but it's well worth booking a ticket via Paypal in advance to ensure you get a table - just click here. Still got questions? See below.

The uprising begins here!

 

Tuesday 11th April, 7.30pm, £5 (doors open at 6.30pm)
The Phoenix basement bar
37 Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0PP

(nearest tube Oxford Circus)

 

N.B. We DO now accept card payments on the door but it's well worth booking a ticket via Paypal in advance to ensure you get a table - just click here. Still got questions? See below.

Meedy by Will Conway

Read by Rich Keeble (third story in podcast here, at 30:25)

 

Monday

‘Tobes, the Meedy is flashing differently. Does it mean it’s not working?’

‘Test it.’

‘Who’s the biggest knob head?’

‘I would describe neither of you using that word,’ the flat voice issued. ‘Please charge my battery. Toby, by my calculations, it’s your turn.’

Interview at the RSA by Sarah Richardson

Read by Andrea Hall (first story in podcast, here)

The man opposite had started trying to make eye contact. I could tell by the way his shoe twisted quickly back and forth, grazing the scuffed floor of the waiting room in a timid plea for acknowledgement. I kept my gaze on the shoe—a worn DM, sketchily smeared with polish by its owner—for as long as my nerves could take it, which I doubted had amounted to very long at all. I looked up: ‘Hi—’

‘Hi!’ The man’s hope leapt from his throat so forcefully that another man, sitting to his left, visibly recoiled. ‘I don’t suppose you’d—’

‘No.’ Then I added, ‘Sorry.’ Because genuinely I was: sorry for him, whoever he was, sorry for all of us. Chances were he was decent enough, and he wasn’t bad-looking either—a bit sweaty, but all of us left had been waiting more than three hours now and to be honest I probably looked a lot worse. 

Dear Miss Maguire by Amy Eddings

Read by Caroline O'Mahoney & Oliver Yellop (final story in podcast here, at 1:23:40)

Dear Miss Sullivan,

Was it but yesternoon I beheld you first, gliding so elegantly through Hanover Square in that utterly bewitching taupe walking-dress with the Paris silk trim? The feathers on your hat danced as vivaciously as if they would truly fly – and my heart, treacherous bird that it is, flew from my breast to be with them! I near-swooned, fearing that so divine a vision must be heaven-sent; that perhaps my twenty-four short years on Earth had concluded as I turned the corner, and God had sent an angel to reap my soul!

It was only when you dropped your little lace handkerchief – positively the coverlet for an infant cherub in its delicacy and beauty! – granting me the inestimable good fortune of retrieving and returning it to you, that I understood I was not the visionary dreamer of an exquisite dream, and that you existed indeed! A Woman, in the very Flesh, before my bedazzled eyes!

Mushroom by Melanie Carvalho

Read by Katy Darby (fourth story in podcast here, at 47:25)

It was that limbo week between Christmas and New Year, five years ago. It was the first limbo week I had spent alone with the kids, after their dad left me. I say me, because he insisted he did not leave them, only me. I say left, because he said I was being melodramatic when I used the word abandoned, and so even now, in private, between you and me, I’ll try not to be melodramatic. Even now, his version of events wins out. Even now, I can be charmed by him, as is everyone, still.

Starfish by Donna Tracy

Read by Linda Shannon (second story in podcast here, at 16:50)

It’s Sean’s sister, Jackie, who tells me he’s back. She drops it casually into the conversation when I bump into her at the market.

‘Just until Monday,’ she says. ‘It’s Mum’s seventy-fifth.’

She looks at me funny when she says it, waiting to see how I react. I nod, purse my lips as if I’m not that interested. I’ve always liked Jackie, she’s a good laugh, but she’s got a streak of something in her that gets a kick out of seeing people squirm, so I’ve never asked her anything about Sean, never let her know I want to know.

Not Raven but Drowning by M J Lee

Read by Keleigh Wolf (fifth story in podcast here, at 1:03:37)

The night is Vantablack and John Cage-silent when the Uber drops me at Zora’s. I thank the driver and rate him five stars and tip him a tenner on the app. What a nice guy, I think. What a goddam human being. It’s four below, and the frosted pavement outside Zora’s live/workspace in Catford is scintillating like a million tiny stars. I can hardly tear my eyes away to find the doorbell, it’s so beautiful. A kind of exquisite fractalism, the tiny ice crystals reflecting the unimaginably massive, superhot balls of gas billions of miles away …

Fuuuuuck!  I shake my head like a cat with a flea-collar. I’m so sick of this wonderstruck hippie bullshit. This is not how I want to feel. And it’s all Zora’s fault. I need more of the bad stuff, and Zora’s the only one I know with a solid connection.