Quote Of The Day

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"

Friday, August 29, 2014

Dara Ó Briain...

Last night Tim, Andy and I went to see one of Dara Ó Briain's warm-up shows at the Pleasance Theatre in London's anything-but glitzy Holloway. It was a very funny show. So I tweeted as much. And Dara tweeted back! Bless.




Thursday, August 28, 2014

Kate Bush - Before The Dawn - Set List...

*** KATE BUSH SPOILERS *** 
*** KATE BUSH SPOILERS ***
*** KATE BUSH SPOILERS ***

*** You have been warned! ***

Oh sod it. I give in. I've seen the Kate Bush set list now. Wow! Pretty much my dream set list.

She plays nothing from her first four albums.

Lily 
Hounds of Love 
Joanni 
Top of the City 
Running Up That Hill 
King of the Mountain 

The Ninth Wave:-
And Dream of Sheep 
Under Ice 
Waking the Witch 
Watching You Without Me 
Jig of Life 
Hello Earth 
The Morning Fog 

A Sky of Honey:-
Prelude 
Prologue 
An Architect's Dream 
The Painter's Link 
Sunset 
Aerial Tal 
Somewhere in Between 
Tawny Moon (new song sung by Bertie)
Nocturn 
Aerial 

Encore:-
Among Angels (Kate solo piano)

Cloudbusting 

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Really Hot...

Remember how you thought if you just slept with someone really hot you would finally feel good about yourself. Ha ha ha.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

BBC Spoil Kate Bush Comeback...

So @BBCBreaking is tweeting the songs on Kate Bush's first night set list. FFS! Boooo BBC! Boooo!

Oh good. BBC News at Ten is now getting in on the spoilers act now.

And now Newsnight too.

Boooooo BBC! Booooo!

Monday, August 25, 2014

Deep Breath...

A blooming loved the first episode of Doctor Who series 8. A flaming T-rex, some creepy torture by robots, and buckets of humour. Great chemistry between new Dr and Clara too.

It was great to have a Doctor/companion relationship that is a clash of wills and wits rather than hearts too. The regeneration episode always needs the companion to be the last one on board with accepting the new Dr. The reason being that the viewers need to be compelled to accept the new Dr so the companion is always written as the last skeptic.

I also loved all the lesbian love interest. All matter of fact but done with humour.

The episode didn't have too much 'corridor running' either. Each scene was given room to breathe.

I loved the restaurant banter too. All round an ace episode.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Cockroaches...

In the event of a nuclear war the only things that will survive are the cockroaches. Which means Britain should still have a functioning government.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Express Yourself...

25 years ago I had a couple of hook-ups with a guy. We met in Heaven and went back to my place first and then the following week we met at his place in Meard Street in Soho. He made me dinner. We had a fun time together. At his place he kept playing and dancing around to Express Yourself from Madonna's Like A Prayer album while he cooked me pasta. "I love this record", he said putting it on again. "You're not kidding!" He was almost obsessed with it. He made me laugh. He was a Portuguese banker and had more than one bottle of champagne in his fridge. Fancy, I thought! I was impressed. He was well-read too. A nice guy. Had a nice smile. His name was Antonio.

We talked about meeting for a third time. He had people staying that weekend though. How about in Comptons? His birthday was coming up and that Saturday night his mate was throwing him a party on a boat on the river. He said that I couldn't come as there were already too many people coming but we should meet the following day on the Sunday. Late though because it was going to be a late one on the boat. OK, Comptons it was. See you then. Look forward to it.

I went to Heaven that Saturday night with my mate Kit feeling a bit miffed I couldn't go to what looked to be a wild party on the river. I enjoyed myself though dancing the night away.

At about 2:30am or so the music cut out on the main dance floor and there was a bit of kerfuffle by the stairs near the door. A couple of people were hugging each other and crying. And people looked horrified. Rumours started to spread. I asked around but no one seemed to know what was going on. Then someone told me they had come from Cannon Street bridge along the river and there had been an accident. Apparently a boat had collided with another and sank. And some people had died. There were lots of gay people on board too. And they were still pulling bodies out of the water.

Oh God. Dreadful I thought. Dreadful. I told Kit it was time to go. And we queued for our coats. It took ages to leave.

But to my shame it was only after I had got on the N19 night bus on the way home it suddenly dawned on me, "Fuck! Antonio! Antonio was on the river tonight!" I got off the bus at New Oxford Street and dashed back to Meard Street. The lights were on on the second floor and I rang the buzzer but no one answered the door. I rang again. I pressed the buzzer for a full minute. No one was there. Oh shit. I started to cry.

In the following days I couldn't read any of the coverage of the Marchioness disaster or watch the news. It was just too upsetting.

RIP Antonio de Vasconcellos - you great shag with your Express Yourself obsession.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Little Shop of Horrors Skid Row...



Oh no! Ear-worm! After we watched Little Shop Of Horrors on Sunday I can't stop signing Skid Row. Even had a dream with it in last night. Help!!!

Gee it sure would be swell to get outta here.
Bid the gutter farewell and get outta here.
I'd move heaven and hell to get outta Skid.

I'd do I don't know what to get outta Skid.
But a hell of a lot to get outta Skid.
People tell me there's not a way outta Skid.
But believe me I gotta get outta Skid Rooooow!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Pride in Football...

Oh look. It's my picture in an Italian right-wing newspaper. Ciao!

Full article here...

Google Translate tells it as:- "There were detachments of the Armed Forces, employees of ministries, the Association of Realtors (the real power, given the cost of the houses in London). There was a group of Christians of various denominations, there were smiling Jews, Muslims with colorful veils and a sign maliziosissimo (held by a girl). There was the band, there were fathers and mothers who confirmed the apparent natural law "twins in a situation always exciting snap in two opposite directions."
From the Pride parade in London, the Gay Gooners. Gay men (and allies) of the curve Arsenal."

Thursday, August 14, 2014

In The Army...

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Common Misconceptions...

Columbus didn't discover America, microwave ovens do not cook food from the inside out, sushi does not mean "raw fish", bulls are not enraged by the colour red, bats are not blind, waking sleepwalkers does not harm them, hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after a person dies and Stu and I do not go to the theatre every night.
A list of common misconceptions... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Monday, August 11, 2014

FA Community Shield 2014...

Yesterday afternoon my brother and I watched a great win at Wembley Stadium as the mighty Arsenal trounced the over-paid mercenary Manchester City 3-0 in the FA Community Shield to yet win more silverware! Let's build a bigger trophy cabinet boys!

Friday, August 08, 2014

My Night With Reg...

Last night Stuart and I went to see Robert Hastie's revival of My Night With Reg at the Donmar Warehouse in London's glitzy West End.

It was twenty years ago I first saw the late Kevin Elyot's superb tragi-comedy of gay relationships in London when it opened at the Royal Court. And it's as funny, as saucy, as dramatic and as tragic as ever.

The play was a hit back then and is set to be a hit all over again now. Parallels have been drawn - favourably I think - with such great American rants as Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart and Tony Kushner's Angels in America.

Reminding me somewhat of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band the play starts at a house party and throughout treats gays as "just like us" - something quite extraordinary at the time. Here we are in the late 1980s however as the AIDS epidemic took hold it and although never mentioned it is the back drop to much of the action.

The play is clever as it jumps in time over four years between the initial house-warming party in north London to two wakes via half a dozen shags. Reg doesn't actually figure at all, except as a sombre spectre of death. The great trick of the play is we, like the characters, are all actually dying to meet him.

We do get to meet however house-proud, floppy-haired advertising copywriter Guy (Jonathan Broadbent); Julian Ovenden's strapping John "Juanita" who is working his way through the family fortune; globe hopping art-dealer Daniel (Geoffrey Streatfeild); lust-interest decorator Eric (Lewis Reeves); and bickering couple Benny (Matt Bardock) a butch, unshaven bus driver and his better half boring Bernie (Richard Cant).

There are great one-liners throughout; "He talks a lot during sex. Maybe he likes the sound of his own vice", some full-frontal nudity and it's very funny.

Above all, Reg is a lovely, touching play about old friends and dangerous liaisons. It set the benchmark for gay drama with popular appeal back then, and Hastie's production has done so again. Elyot's play has been brilliantly restored and is rightly celebrated.

Go see.

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Classic Top of the Tops Titles...

An affectionate return to the baffling world of the 1970s Top of the Pops chart countdown. Who were all these people? Was there really a time when looking like that could make you a superstar?


Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Brighton Pride...

Last weekend was Brighton Pride and Stuart and I joined Hudd, Chris, Darren, Vince, Simon and Mark in an Airbnb house for the long weekend.

The parade and the park were both fun and we had a rare old time catching up with friends.







Friday, August 01, 2014

The Crucible...

Last night Stuart and I went to see Yaël Farber's production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible at the Old Vic in London's not especially glitzy Waterloo.

Starring the hunky Richard Armitage as John Proctor and performed in the round it tells the story of a tight-knit community fractured by petty jealousies and grievances that is blown apart when a group of young girls start accusing local women-folk of witchcraft. In order to gain forgiveness the accused must in turn accuse others. Events snowball as dozens of women are accused creating an atmosphere of hysteria brilliantly captured by this claustrophobic production. The vehemence of the false accusations drive the show forward so we as the audience are left in no doubt the road we are taking. It is the road to tragedy.

Largely seen as a attack on McCarthyism in 1950s America the play as presented here goes deeper than that. It exposes the fragilities of the human condition - its lusts, its mean spiritedness and its capacity for mindless persecutions.

A five star production - perhaps only slightly marred by its bum-numbing three and half hour length.

Oh and we had Alan Rickman sitting behind us.