OUR July meeting had a ragtime feel about it with a double dose of humour.

This was courtesy of Chris Walker whose talk, Muppets’ Magical Musical Moments, was a delightful rock ‘n’ roll down memory lane, and quite a revelation.

He had selected some of the funniest clips of the Muppet Show to remind us of the colour, vitality and comic movement of those incredible puppets. To mention a few, we rocked with Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, Zoot the languid green and blue saxophonist, Animal the wild pink drummer, and Rowlf the dog on piano and vocals.

However, it was the wonderful music and the musicians responsible for it that Chris really wanted to tell us about.

It was a surprise to learn that the musical director of the five series of the Muppet Show was Jack Parnell, whose orchestra was the sound of Sunday Night at the London Palladium. He brought together some of Britain’s finest jazz musicians and singers to make the Muppet Orchestra.

Cleo Laine sang, with Ronnie Verrell on drums, Kenny Baker on trumpet, Don Lusher on trombone and Norman Stenfalt as pianist and arranger. What a delight to hear, and see, it all again.

At the back of the hall was a DVD show of the Mosaic Study Day and examples of members’ work to admire. Linda Farrow and Jean McFarlane provided a list of interesting summer events in our area, which included a two-day introduction to archaeology run by Adrian Green, director of Salisbury Museum.