I found Hershey’s Kisses in a bar form at my local shop. Yes, I know the chocolate tastes like shite, but the last time I had Hershey’s Kisses, I had won them off of a New York teacher in a bet over which bloke was going to take his shirt off next in a particularly intense game of basketball. You’ve got to have a skill in life, and that day I found mine. So Hershey’s Kisses are the sweet taste of success to me.

I try to keep the musical geek in me suppressed most of the time, but I was filled with slight glee when I heard the rumour that Evita is going to be revived. It was my prediction for the next musical to be dusted off. Next prediction: Tommy to be picked up by the National and produced small scale to great critical acclaim. Do you reckon Ladbroke’s have got a book on that?

And now to fully express my geekiness...

Chitty was a bit of a disappointment, especially the exceptionally lazy design ripped directly from the film, but My Fair Lady was fantastic, mostly thanks to the Tiffany. Oftentimes in the theatre it turns into a little bit of a busman’s holiday as I pick apart everything that the production has chosen to do, but My Fair Lady just had me grinning with childish glee all the way through. It took me back to being a kid watching Joseph.

While I am kind of unashamed about my love for the Lloyd-Webber oeuvre, I retain some pride by refusing to see Mamma Mia, Saturday Night Fever and anything of that ilk, i.e. anything that a group of five or more middle-aged women would choose for a night out. And because I am not insane, I have kept far away from the Ben Elton atrocities. That said, Copacabana with its marauding pirates in torn lamé was fab. What more could you want in a musical than that and a shedload of feathers?

Cats I could have done without, especially the ever-so funny cat character pretending like he wanted some of my lemon sorbet. It is much to my regret that I didn’t hiss “piss off” at him. The rotating stage and seats thing was great though: it completely disoriented me. I am not ashamed (ok, maybe a little) that still in my mid-teens I was scared by Macavity. Ahem.

As an admirer of high camp in musicals, I didn’t have too much problem with Starlight Express, excepting the hideously annoying American child’s voice. And geez, the train-coupling/relationship oh-so subtle innuendo gets very old, very quickly. If there’s ever a musical song I’m likely to burst out with, “My name is Dinah, I’m a dining car; I’ll cook for you and listen while you lean upon my bar” is up there, mostly because I like doing the cod-American accent that goes with it. Yes, I know, I’m ashamed, but feel sorry for the people that I’ve shared a studio with during the past 5 years.

I’ve seen the updated Fame in three different productions. Goodness knows how or why. The less said about that, the better.

While most of my companions didn’t like Tommy, I’m quite a fan. What other musical has a paedophile, physical abuse, and a father taking his 10-yr-old son to a prostitute? That’s a wee bit darker than your usual hoofing musical. Just don’t ever listen to the American cast recording where the cockney accent is strangled, repeatedly.

While Les Mis was about 2 hours too long, I’m a soppy old soul so I kind of enjoyed it. The main memory of that was sitting up in the gods, which at the Palace are ten times as steep as any seats I’ve seen before. I spent those 3 hours sitting very still: move an inch, and ooh, helloo dress circle.

Crazy For You was pretty average, but with those Gershwin songs you can’t really go wrong. I Got Rhythm is number two on my most-likely-musical-songs-to-randomly-bust-out-with list.

I’m a little bit excited about Mary Poppins coming to the Prince Edward too. After Chitty, I’m not going to hold my breath, but Richard Eyre directing and Bob Crowley designing are good signs.

And uh, many of these, in fact most of the musicals I have slagged off, I own the CDs of. Whew. Good to have got that off my chest.

Just remember, jazz hands deserve a place in any production, musical or not. I have done my bit over the past few years to try to get them included in any show. Beckett + jazz hands = theatre gold, people.

I admire the new retro choice of music in the Queen Vic, instead of the sound people playing ‘guess the chart hit in 2 months’ time’, but really, if you’re going to stage a tense dramatic stand-off, don’t play Devil Woman under it. Cos it made me snigger so much I have no idea what actually happened. If that was intentional, then I salute you, dear sound people. And, please, for the love of all that is holy, STOP WITH THE I’M YOUR MAN. Thank you.

On an ever-so frivolous note...

My clothes on the telly:

First it was my Kronk t-shirt worn by Zoe Slater, who admittedly looked a whole lot better in it than I do. Spit.

Then it was my boots worn by one of Liberty X on Popworld. I’d barely woken up before I saw that atrocity. And she’d tucked her trousers into them. That’s boot abuse, that is.

The final straw was my tights (they’re somewhat distinctive) on some bint on The Salon. I was only channel-hopping past, honest.


And finally, "He was looking up while singing and did not see the edge of the stage." Heh.

On the twelfth hour of Reading, my town centre gave to meee,

12 drunk 12-year-olds
11 Topshop mini-skirts
10 button-down shirts
9 mini-cabs a-touting
8 whiffs of urine
7 rude boy racers
6 baldy bouncers

5 RIII-OTTTT VANS

4 meatheads rucking
3 comatose vomiters
2 brand new clubs
And a mental case on the night bus....

...(or not as the case may be; he got refused and so threw himself against a wall, much to the gasps of the poor green Reading bus-users who have obviously never been on a London nightbus).

A stand-off between a man and a nightbus edging down one of the roads off Trafalgar Square was quite the funniest thing I’ve seen. Apart from regarding, you know, the danger to human life and all.

You know it’s a worry when you are admiring the symmetrical composition of the drunkards prostrated across the wall outside the station, complete with identical pools of vomit.

I can't believe I forgot my almost favourite hilarious TV moment of all time:

• Eeevil Rob traps Ruth, Lewis, Tony and, er, some others in a reservoir tank on Hollyoaks, 2000.

The mwah-ha-ha-ha laughing from the control room, the horrendous acting and the frankly ridiculous setting with the actors bobbing about in an overly-theatrically lit tank. “Right, if we use loads of red and green lights, it’ll make it seem really sinister, not at all like a 14-year-old’s first go on a lighting board.” Four letters: G, C, S, E.


Some HILARIOUS use OF capitalisation on the IMDb comments list for Hollyoaks. Also, it reminds me that I once worked with a good-looking actor who had been turned down by Hollyoaks. Just imagine the shame of that, and it’ll make your own pitiful life seem a little bit brighter.

Eek, just searching for info on that scene has unearthed Hollyoaks slash. Is nothing sacred, people?

Chitty poster update!

Unfortunately the grandees at the Palladium have not seen fit to change the pictures outside the theatre to show Jason Donovan in role. Boo! Really. A bit of Photoshop and you'd have been laughing.

On the good news side, coming to a bus shelter with random-shoe-on-top near you, posters advertising Donovan's stay as Caractacus Potts! Yay! Sadly, I have only seen these from a fast-moving train so it has been difficult to assess their hilarity.

While Ricky Martin’s She Bangs played on the magnificent Reading 107, I found myself shimmying. I haven’t shimmied since 1994. I also found myself doing that Martin-esque head flick thing to the side at salient points in the lyrics, which isn’t too sensible when you’re doing 85 in the outside lane.

And then something akin to Move Any Mountain played which had me throwing shapes in the air, also not too wise seeing as I was negotiating the M4/M25 interchange at the time.

I quote Bill Bryson: “Wherever it is you want to go, the consensus is generally that it’s just about possible as long as you scrupulously avoid Okehampton, the Hanger Lane gyratory system, central Oxford and the Severn Bridge westbound between the hours of 3 pm on Friday and 10 am on Mondays..” Seeing as I’ve done the last three out of the four as either driver or passenger quite a few times, especially Hanger Lane, I feel I qualify to judge hellish road conditions.

I have done the Euston Road a million times. The cars barely move so there is little cause for hatred for your fellow driver, just room for worrying that you’ll get funnelled off into the congestion zone by mistake. And also good for getting worried calls from a stage manager to which you can only respond “I am 30 seconds’ walk away, but about 15 minutes’ driving. Unfortunately I am in a car which I cannot leave parked in the middle of the Euston Road otherwise my mum will hit me good and proper.” I have even done Piccadilly Circus (by accident. What? How was I to know that I couldn’t get off the underpass at Hyde Park Corner?) I have done south London, which mainly involves getting raced off traffic lights in Tooting at 7am on a Sunday. And Muswell Hill is Land of My Fathers (and Ray Davies and Maureen Lipman) so north London is fairly familiar.

But all infinitely preferable to the no-man’s-land that is driving in Middlesex. In this lawless county as soon as you venture off of the M40 eastbound, every third car is a learner driver (an incredibly dense and slow learner driver at that), every other car thinks that 20mph is the speed limit and is incapable of lane discipline at a roundabout or having any sense of the size and hence positioning of their vehicle. How on earth are these people allowed to drive? At least on the M4 you just get cut up by Audi TTs, and in south London, you just get cut up by, uh, everyone. I can cope with that mentality; the every man out for himself strategy, but the drivers of the M25-bound hinterland of Middlesex drive me nutty. My 89-year-old grandma drives faster than them. Admittedly, quite a lot faster, and while opening and shutting car doors while sailing down a steep north London avenue, but still, at least she isn’t making every driver behind her chant “TURN OFF, TURN OFF!” like I was doing for 20 minutes through Ruislip.

And, breathe....