The Memoirs of Tricity Vogue

Tretchikoff and the Real Blue Lady

2011-03-12T10:09:00.010Z

Cabaret singer Tricity Vogue finds the artist who inspired her hit Edinburgh show, and the woman who was his muse
This article was first published in the Erotic Review: The Art Issue in February 2011 http://www.eroticreviewmagazine.com/

On my bedroom wall is a 1960s framed print of a woman with a blue-green face, a golden Chinese gown, jet-black hair and startling red lips. I bought it on the Essex Road in North London from a shop called Past Caring. It cost me £70. My mum remembers when the same print sold in Boots the Chemist in Derby for 11 shillings and sixpence. She also remembers that it was the picture everyone wanted on their walls. The Chinese Girl was once better-selling than the Mona Lisa. Vladimir Tretchikoff, the painter, was compared to Picasso and Van Gogh: primarily by himself. The ubiquity of the image for over two decades was also primarily down to the artist himself, thanks to a combination of tireless self-promotion and bullet-proof self-belief. But then, when you’ve survived a revolution, a shipwreck and a Japanese prison-of-war camp, artistic world domination wouldn’t seem beyond you either.

I’ve spent two years painting my face blue in homage to Tretchikoff’s iconic image for my cabaret show The Blue Lady Sings. I had a sneaking suspicion that the man behind this stylised, high-impact portrait might be larger-than-life too, and I was right. Tretchi, as he was affectionately known, has all the ingredients for a quintessential artist profile. Deprivation and adversity: check. Volatile, quixotic temperament: check. Exotic muse and mistress: check. Plus vivid extras, including some uncannily accurate predictions at a séance, and a couple of brushes with death in a pink Cadillac. Tretchi lived his life in brighter colours than everyone else.

It was a long journey to the self-designed mansion in Cape Town where Tretchikoff died in 2006, and one that took in all five continents. It started in Kazakhstan, where he was born in 1913 to landed gentry, before the Russian revolution drove the family to China. There the now-penniless boy earned his keep as apprentice scene painter at the Harbon Opera House until he was sixteen, when the Chinese Eastern Railway commissioned him to paint portraits of Lenin and Sun Yat San for their headquarters, for the princely sum of 500 Roubles. Tretchi used the money to move to Shanghai. In the “Paris of the East” (as near to studying art in Paris as he ever got) young Vladimir bagged both a plum job, as cartoonist for the Shanghai Times, and a wife – fellow Russian émigré Natalie Telpregoff. The couple moved to Singapore in 1936, where Tretchi drew cartoons for the British Ministry of Information’s anti-Japanese propaganda. In 1938 he represented Malaya in the New York World’s Fair, and his daughter Mimi was born. Then the Japanese invaded Singapore and things took on a darker hue.

Natalie and Mimi made it out of Singapore, but Tretchikoff’s later boat was torpedoed while he was stoking the furnace. As the ship sank, he bagged the last place in the lifeboat when a woman thrust her baby into his arms. The forty two refugees rowed for their lives for Sumatra, only to discover the Japanese had beaten them to it. So Tretchi and a bunch of other survivors turned the boat around and rowed another nineteen days to Java, risking drowning, scurvy and starvation en route. Legend has it that Tretchi used drawings to barter with island tribesmen for the coconuts that kept them alive. Their safe arrival in Java palled somewhat when the terrified locals handed them straight over to the Japanese invaders, who’d got there first, again.

The Japanese hauled the whole boatload off to prisoner-of-war camp, but the five-foot-three artist was, like many small men throughout history, pugnacious by nature. Tretchi protested that he was a Russian citizen and the invaders had no right to hold him. They promptly threw him in solitary confinement, where he was stuck for three months. Then the prison camp general offered him conditional freedom – if he turned set-painter for a Japanese gala show. Tretchi basically painted his way out of jail.

Tretchi was living as a free man in Jakarta, and not only free, but also footloose, since his wife and child were somewhere on the other side of the world, if they were alive at all. Enter the beautiful Leonora Moltema, AKA Lenka, half Dutch, half Malaysian, and all woman. The Tretchikoff website describes Lenka as “a woman of culture and intelligence… an artist herself, and mistress of five languages”. The choice of word is apt, since Lenka was indeed Tretchi’s mistress as well as his muse and model. An elderly Tretchikoff told documentary filmmaker Yvonne du Toit in the 1990s that she was the love of his life.

Lenka told her own story to Uri Geller, a firm friend in later years, thanks to their shared interest in the supernatural. Her husband, a Dutch pilot, was, like Tretchi’s wife, somewhere overseas in limbo, and, on the night she first met Tretchikoff, he looked at her across the dinner table in an uncomfortable way, then asked her to pose for him naked. When she bridled at the suggestion, he laughed at her prudishness, telling her that only if every part of her figure was perfect would he consider painting her, and if he did, she would be a lucky woman. Lenka knew “the Mad Russian” already by reputation: by night he painted portraits for 40 guineas a canvas, but refused to sell the canvasses he painted for himself by day. She posed for him every Sunday in his tiny lodgings. It took longer to finish the picture than it did for Tretchi to get Lenka into his narrow bed.

The artist moved in with Lenka, but would only make love at weekends, because he claimed he was unable to paint for twenty four hours after sex. Even less congenially, their love-nest was continually raided by Japanese soldiers, convinced that Tretchi was a spy. One night he was arrested on suspicion of blowing up an oil tanker, and slashed with a ceremonial sword during the interrogation. The superstitious Lenka visited a wise-woman and promised to give up what was most precious to her in exchange for Tretchi’s freedom. When he was released without charge two days later, she gave the old woman her most valuable batik.

But was the batik Lenka’s most precious treasure, or Tretchi himself? It wasn’t long before she had to give him up too. It began when she took him to a séance, at which the previously sceptical painter asked the spirit guide where his wife and child were. The answer came back: S.O.U.T.H. Tretchi subsequently put the Red Cross on the trail of the supernatural tip-off and tracked down his family in South Africa. But before leaving the séance, the artist had a few more questions for the spirits. “Will I become a famous painter, and how far will my fame spread?” W.O.R.L.D. “What will be my most famous painting?” O.R.I.E.N.T.A.L. L.A.D.Y.

Lenka disappears from the official biography of Vladimir Tretchikoff as soon as he set off for Cape Town to be reunited with his wife and daughter. But that is no way to write out a muse from any artist’s story. Luckily she herself has shared a little more with her friend Uri Geller. Tretchikoff went to South Africa with her blessing because, she said, she could compete with any woman but not with his child. She even helped him pack his canvasses, which he’d been hoarding for years ready for the one-man exhibition that he was certain would make his fortune. Lenka extracted one promise from him: to give a canvas to his wife Natalie. He did, and the canvas she chose was the portrait of Lenka wearing a red jacket. “Wearing”, that is, in the loosest sense, since all it covers are her shoulders. Did Natalie know that Lenka had been Tretchi’s de facto wife throughout the war years? Why did she choose to have her love rival’s triumphant breasts pertly waving at her from the wall every day?

Tretchi’s portrait of his mistress is in stark contrast to the portrait of his wife. Like so much of the artist’s work, subtlety doesn’t come into it. Whereas Lenka is a feast of warm naked flesh set off by a “scarlet woman’s” jacket, Natalie The Artists Wife is clad in brown, with skin of a blueish tinge, in arguably Tretchikoff’s drabbest colour scheme ever. Vladimir boasted that living with him was sometimes heaven, sometimes hell, but usually purgatory. “Longsuffering” is the word that springs to mind looking at the portrait of his wife. Who knows? Perhaps his muse Lenka had other reasons for “giving him up”. Maybe two years of keeping house for a fastidious and demanding artist were enough for her.

What’s more, when Tretchikoff took off with his hoarded canvasses on his phenomenally successful world tour (as predicted by the spirit guides, and funded by the spiritualist Rosecrucian Order, in a self-fulfilling prophecy), he was not constrained by the need to paint during the day, and was therefore able to cast off sexual abstention. So Tretchi hooked up with his old flame again in London in 1958. While over 200, 000 people flocked to his one-man exhibition in Harrods, Tretchi took Lenka to bed for what she described as a four-day lovemaking marathon. That’s when Tretchi confessed to his mistress that he had sold the Red Jacket painting, even though theoretically it belonged to his wife so wasn’t his to sell. Lenka was appalled and warned him he would have bad luck without her portrait.

Tretchi took no notice of his mistress’s warning, but not long after his return to South Africa, his pink Cadillac overturned in a road accident. It took a transfusion of 20 pints of blood to bring him back from death’s door. Still Tretchi didn’t buy back the portrait of Lenka until he was nearly killed a second time in another car crash. Then finally he conceded his muse might have a point, reacquired Red Jacket for his wife, and lived to be 92.

As for the Chinese Girl - the painting I bring to life in my cabaret show, and the one looking down at me mysteriously from my bedroom wall – it isn’t Lenka. At least, not officially. The first model for the painting was said to be a member of South Africa’s Chinese community. But according to other accounts, the painting, completed in 1950, was begun in Java in 1946, before Tretchikoff got to South Africa. To complicate matters further, the portrait we know is not of the first sitter anyway. The original canvas of the Chinese Girl was slashed, along with 14 others, when intruders broke into Tretchi’s Cape Town home, enraged by the artist’s controversial drawing Black and White, which caused outrage throughout Apartheid South Africa.

The second model for the Chinese Girl was reputedly the daughter of a restaurant owner in San Francisco. Yet there is something Eurasian about the features of the woman with the blue-green face in the painting. By 1950 when he finished the picture, Tretchikoff had been apart from his half-Dutch, half-Malaysian muse for four years. And South Africa was a long way from the oriental lands where he had first found the inspiration to paint. Tretchikoff himself said his paintings were not real women’s portraits, but a fantasy of womanhood from his own imagination. Whoever sat for him in a golden Chinese brocade gown, whether in South Africa or in San Francisco, the real “blue” woman who epitomised longing and absence in the artist’s imagination wasn’t either of them. It was Lenka, the woman who wasn’t there.

Tricity Vogue’s debut album, The Blue Lady Sings is available from her website: tricityvogue.com
Her one-woman show will appear at the Brighton Fringe Festival in May 2011, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2011.

Photograph of Tretchikoff and Lenka by kind permission of Yvonne du Toit

All other pictures by kind permission of the Tretchikoff Foundation

All About The Costumes

2010-09-04T18:20:00.002+01:00

I love dressing up. That’s the reason I was lured away from ‘serious’ jazz (if I was every serious in the first place) and into cabaret. To me the whole point of being on stage is the excuse it gives me to wear a really fabulous gown. The Blue Lady has not one but two costume designers, because she’s even more high-maintenance than her creator. The look of the original 1958 painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff (once available, framed, for eleven shillings and sixpence from Boots The Chemist, and a must-have in every 60s home) was recreated by production designer Salvatore Forino. Salvatore also persuaded the Japanese wig dressers working on Theatre de Complicité’s show at the Barbican to show him how to set the wig like the painting then bake it in the oven for eight hours so it would hold the shape. “This is not real hair!” they said, appalled. I bought it for £12 from Brixton Market, so I’m not surprised.

The Blue Lady’s 1920s blues vamp costume was created by fashion designer Stephane St Jaymes, who’s been making me larger-than-life creations for six years now. It includes £75-worth of sequinned fringing, and by sheer coincidence it exactly matches the description of a fantasy dress I included in a short story called Gown Envy I wrote about five years ago.

In the last couple of weeks before the Edinburgh festival I was ricocheting across London between these two geniuses with arms full of crystal organza, paper flowers, Indian brocade, and long round tubes of foam as they magicked up two more incarnations for the Blue Lady specially for my Fringe run.

You can see the fruits of their labours in this photo album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=190528&id=538496777&l=36e5afb98a

25 Confessions about how I became what I am

2009-02-16T02:19:00.007Z

1. I am named after a fridge. I was given this name by my best friend, Edward Hollis, while staying with him in Edinburgh in 1995, 9 years before Tricity Vogue came to life and performed on stage under the name. Ed’s mother had a 60s fridge with the words “Tricity Vogue” inscribed on it. She may even have it still, somewhere in darkest Totnes.

2. Edward Hollis is therefore the begetter of Tricity Vogue. This is the nearest I ever got to consummating my deep love for him. He is the man for whom and about whom I wrote the song “The man I love loves only men”. http://tricityvogue.com/Music/the_man.htm. Loving someone you can’t have is quite possibly the most powerful creative inspiration there is.

3. I first had the idea for who Tricity Vogue would be in 1999 and I pitched it to a woman who ran a cabaret agency. “I can’t see the point of hiring a woman to wear fabulous gowns and sing jazz songs,” she said. “I might as well hire a drag queen who can do it better.” I confided what she had said to my boss and mentor of the time, physical theatre guru Joss Houben (http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/jan/16/theatre), and he told me to take absolutely no notice and do what I wanted anyway. It took me 5 years to follow his advice. “Do as you please” is, ironically, one of the hardest lessons to learn.

4. Performance poet Aoife Mannix was the midwife of Tricity Vogue. She it was who in 2003 took me along with her to a poetry and music night, where she was featured on the bill, and insisted that I put my name down for an open mic spot. The open mic performer before me was so terrible that the host decided to ditch the next spot, but by that time I had geared myself up to perform, so I browbeat him into letting me have the microphone by promising to be quick. I told the audience that my Big Band had stood me up, so they would have to imagine them on stage with me, and then I sang my song “Well I didn’t want you anyway” acapella.

5. I have sung with a real life 22-piece Big Band only once in my life. It was about 12 years ago, in Nottingham. My first couple of numbers went well, then I got pissed at the bar with a seasoned old jazzer who kept buying me drinks and telling me about 1930s singers I sounded a bit like. When I went onstage to sing my final number, Hey Big Spender, I started singing in the wrong place. Half the band followed me and half of them followed the score, with the result that the whole number collapsed. The conductor managed to bring them back together to finish the tune and give me the Look of Death at the same time. Funnily enough they never invited me to sing with them again, and I learned a valuable lesson about drinking on the job. Honest.

6. I wrote my first “Tricity Vogue” song “Well I didn’t want you anyway” the day after a night of romance with a work colleague. Under the eyes of the whole office, I had invited him for a coffee, and when we were alone I asked him if I could see him again. He told me he was too neurotic for a relationship. I told him I didn’t want a relationship, just another shag… but nothing doing. I wrote the lyrics (and the tune, in my head) as soon as I got back to my desk, and emailed them to a friend, who emailed me back with the words, “You’re mad.” http://tricityvogue.com/Music/well_i.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfSo4um8Y8A&feature=channel_page

7. Rosa Conrad is the Fairy Godmother of Tricity Vogue. All I had were a bunch of melody lines and lyrics, and no idea how to turn them into proper songs that a band could play. I sang them to Rosa and she put chords to them and made them real. She was always baffled by my awe at this feat: “But the chords were implied in your tune already,” she protested. I maintain that she has Magic Ears.

8. The words and tune to “Under Your Thumb” were written after a conversation I had about my love-life while on my way to the gym. My confidante remarked “Well, you’ve certainly got him under your thumb.” I told her that actually it was the other way round, and then I wrote the whole song in my head, including the key change, while I was getting changed into my yoga kit in the locker room. http://tricityvogue.com/Music/under_your.htm

9. I came up with “St Tropez” after a Fat Cat gentleman friend of mine told me he wanted me to write a song about him. I don’t think this was exactly the song he was hoping for. He stopped taking me out for expensive dinners shortly afterwards. http://tricityvogue.com/Music/st_tropez.htm

10. The worst chat up line anybody ever used on me was “You’ve got great ovaries.” This did not work on me, and neither did the seductive prod in the stomach that went with it.

11. The worst post-seduction line anybody ever used on me was “We have barely scratched the surface of our relationship, and already I’m infected.” I left him to lick his wounds on his own.

12. The most effective chat up line anybody ever used on me was “I am dying of a fatal illness. You may be the last lover I ever have.” He’s still alive and I wasn’t.

13. Dress designer Stephane St Jaymes was the Nursery Nurse of Tricity Vogue. While we sat together discussing ideas for my first dress, we also debated Tricity’s family history. According to Stephane, Miss Vogue was conceived when the Royal Train came off the rails somewhere in Yorkshire, and the King invited a local northern wench to come and entertain him in his carriage while he waited for his train to be fixed. Alternatively, I suspected that Miss Vogue’s mother had worked behind the bar in a northern Jazz Club, and was such a conscientious groupie that she was unable to identify which of the many jazzers to pass through her establishment was the father.

14. My first band was called The Tricity Vogue Sextet. There were only five of us but I thought of my dress designer Stephane as the sixth member of the band. Also, I wanted to call the band something with the word ‘sex’ in it. We performed our first gig at the Lincoln Lounge, Kings Cross, on Tuesday 16 March 2004. Stephane was still sewing me into my gown in the Lincoln Lounge’s beer cellar minutes before I first walked on stage. Stephane’s best friend Darcy added the final touch by painting in my lips in bright scarlet and adding huge dollops of lip-gloss. I had been planning on keeping my make up subtle. However, there was no mirror in the beer cellar so I was none the wiser until after the gig. I have never looked back.

15. On the day of my first band gig I took the day off work to prepare, and that afternoon while I was walking along Neal Street in white sunglasses I was stopped by a young man who asked me the name of the band I was in, because he could tell just by looking at me that I must be in a band. I took this as a good omen.

16. That same afternoon I bumped into an old flame while walking along Carnaby Street. He was with a bunch of work colleagues, who were evidently Very Important People. When he saw me he did a double take, tripped over, then pretended not to recognise me. I decided that this was the urban equivalent of a black cat crossing my path.

17. At the beginning of my first band gig I annoyed Donald the then barman of the Lincoln Lounge immensely by badgering him to turn off the lights so I could come on in the dark and do a ‘gown check’ before the band started, then turn them on again for the first number. At the end of the night, after everybody else had gone, he told me that I had a nice personality and everything but I really needed to work on my singing voice because I had murdered a couple of the numbers. I was, naturally, devastated. When I reported this feedback to Stephane, he informed me that he recognised Donald from Madam Jojo’s and that Donald was in fact an ex drag queen who had him(her)self frequently sung on stage. Stephane attributed Donald’s critique of my performance to ‘gown envy’. On learning that my critic was a drag queen, the rest of the band burst into a rendition of “Donald where’s your trousers?”

18. I learned how to put on false eyelashes from Stephane, himself an ex drag queen, and he also gave me my first lessons in stagecraft, based on what he had learned during his own time wearing gowns (before he got bored of having to wax his chin every day - something which I don’t have to do, luckily). “Never mind what the band are doing behind you,” he said, “You can’t afford to take your attention off the audience for a moment, or you’ll lose them.”

19. I learned my first ukelele chords from my singing partner Miss Honey Mink, who has a dayjob as a children’s entertainer and runs a ukelele class for children called “Uke Can Do It”. The first time I played ukelele on stage was with her, at Cheese and Crackers on the Battersea Barge. She and I walked on in our evening gowns and explained our Big Band had stood us up, so we were going to recreate the Big Band sound on two ukeleles instead. We then performed the Big Band Blues together. http://tricityvogue.com/Music/big_band.htm
At the point where the horn section should have come in, Honey launched into a kazoo solo that brought the house down. From that night on I was hooked on the ukelele and bought my first pink Mahalo on ebay shortly afterwards.

20. The first song I wrote on the ukelele was “Aint Gonna Get No Sleep Tonight” about waiting in for a booty call. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwUxtrITgVI
The tune is a straight rip-off from a spiritual called “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho”. Only one audience member has ever spotted this, and he was a jazz buff from New Orleans. Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind, and even thought my act of profane plagiarism was in the true spirit of jazz.

21. In 2008 Stephane made me a new black and white gown for the Tricity Vogue Slinktet’s gig at the Scala for White Mischief. Once again, it wasn’t finished until the last moment, and Stephane had to thrust his way past the bouncers on the door to bring it to me in the dressing room, where he proceeded to shoehorn me into it in a manner that caused even the world-weary Mr Dusty Limits to raise his eyebrows. When I was about to go on, I realised that the dress was so tight I couldn’t actually lift my legs to climb onto the stage, and had to ask Mr Limits to give me a hand up. Stephane pointed out afterwards that I could have actually hitched the skirt up. This did not occur to me at the time.

22. After I came off stage at the Scala in my new gown, I shared a cigarette with Stephane down in the smoker’s courtyard, and he said to me, “You are the best drag queen I know.” I glowed with pride.

23. Shortly afterwards my boyfriend dumped me for looking too much like a drag queen and not enough like a real woman.

24. Tricity Vogue is about to give birth to a daughter – the Blue Lady. The birth of this new cabaret character will take place at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern at Dusty Limit’s night Kunst on Friday 27 February. The Blue Lady will be born exactly nine months after my boyfriend dumped me. My ex is therefore the begetter of the Blue Lady. Dusty Limits will be her Midwife, production designer Salvatore Forino will be her Nursery Nurse, and Rosa Conrad will, once again, be her Fairy Godmother.
www.myspace.com/kunstuberalles

25. Creating the Blue Lady is my way of dealing with the break up, in lieu of throwing plates, screaming or losing the plot generally. Then again, maybe painting my face blue and dressing up as a painting is losing the plot. Or maybe losing someone you love is the most powerful creative inspiration there is.

Recorder Rebels

2009-01-16T02:37:00.003Z

Bonding with your gig-mates is one of the things that makes gigging so delightful (among many other things, because, let's face it, as jobs go, it's not exactly going down the mines), and when someone you think is really brilliant rings you up and says "Will you do a gig with me?" it makes you feel a bit like a teenager being asked out on a date by the person whose name you've been writing on your exercise book for months.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I was waiting in the Playhouse theatre lobby, about to go and see La Cage Aux Folles, when I got just such a dream phone call from guitarist and ukeleleist extraordinaire, Martin Wheatley. He asked me if I'd do a gig with him that Saturday for a birthday party at a venue near Euston. Now this is the man who I've not only heard accompanying the stunning Cousin Alice with exquisite lightness of touch, but also the man who can play 'the dam busters' on a single ukelele and make it sound like the entire orchestra. I said yes immediately, even though I already had two gigs on that Saturday - one in the afternoon, and one late night - and the reason I said yes was purely and simply because it was Martin, and I knew that getting the chance to sing with him was going to be like a Christmas present all by itself.

Then it turned out that the gig he was asking me to do was the very gig that I'd actually turned down a few days before because I was already booked up. And so I had been - until Martin asked me. See what happened there? I got seduced into doing the gig purely and simply for the pleasure of working with one of the best musicians in London, and sure enough it turned out, miraculously, that there was room to fit a third gig in between the other two after all. If any musician ever tries to tell you that they're only doing it to make a living, don't believe them. They're doing it because they love music. (This is why musicians almost never get paid what their services are actually worth.)

Martin picked me up in the car from Volupte after my afternoon gig, and gave me a lift to the bar where the gig was - but when we got there we discovered that we were an hour and a half early, and the venue was locked and dark. So we pulled into a parking space around the corner and ran through a few numbers together on the ukeleles, using a torch to light the cab of his people-carrier enough to see the chord charts - because we hadn't actually had a chance to rehearse a single thing beforehand. This may seem shocking - either the bit where I'm sitting in a parked car in the dark while a strange man gets his instrument out, or the bit where he and I are about to play a 90 minute gig completely unrehearsed (which one you find the more shocking will depend on your musical background, probably).

But it's not really that shocking when you consider that there is a huge back catalogue of jazz standards that most jazzers know like the back of their hands, all of which Martin has been playing for decades probably, and many of which I've now been singing for 15 years too. All the musicians need to know is the singer's key, and they're off. And as for me, I never have a clue what the tempo and the style is going to be until they start - which is exactly why I've always got such a kick out of singing jazz with a 'scratch' band. It's a musical rollercoaster. The Slinktet have been going for nearly 5 years now and I absolutely love rehearsing and performing our own material, but I also get a wicked thrill out of going back to my old edge-of-seat ways and flying by the seat of my pants for the odd gig too. Especially when the musician flying the plane is as skilled a pilot as Mr Wheatley.

Having run through a few numbers quickly that we'd both be able to do on ukelele together, Martin pulled his car around to the front of the bar again, only to discover that it was still closed. So back we went to our backstreet parking space. But instead of doing some more rehearsing, we started to chat about how we'd first got into music as children, and a conversation began about our first instrument - the recorder.

It turned out that we had both ended up as musicians despite, rather than because of, the start that we'd had on that unassuming little instrument. Martin revealed that as a child he had actually been thrown out of his school recorder group. Why? Because he had been caught cheating. How had he been cheating? Shockingly, instead of sight reading the music in front of him, he was listening to the tune and copying what was being played. This was considered extreme disobedience by his music teachers, hence his expulsion from recorder paradise.

My own recorder misadventures began when my grandfather (who was an antiques dealer, rather more of the Arthur Daily than the Lovejoy school of the genre), gave me a bakelite recorder so I could join the school recorder group (from which I'd already been excluded for a year by the fact that my parents considered it a waste of money to splash out on a bit of plastic for me to blow down). Unfortunately the bakelite recorder, while a charming antique to look at, was out of tune with all the other recorders in the school recorder group. Thus, whenever we played a tune, there was always that hideous buzzing sound that you get when somebody in the group plays the wrong note. Except in this case, nobody was playing a wrong note, it was the recorder itself that was out of tune, as my recorder teacher discovered when she took the offending instrument off me and tried playing it herself.

After (I suspect) a discreet word in my parents' ear, I finally got a proper bona fide Aulos soprano recorder of my own (which I still have somewhere, complete with deep teeth-marks on the mouthpiece). But my recorder misadventures didn't end there. A few years later my mum gave me a note to give to my recorder teacher. I didn't read it (because I was that kind of a goody goody kid) so I had no idea what my mum had said in it, until my recorder teacher called me over after practice and said to me very gently that it was okay to make the tune up by listening to it and then copying it, because that was actually something called 'playing by ear' rather than cheating. So I wasn't to worry about the fact that I wasn't doing it properly - in fact I should be proud of the fact that I was able to play by ear because in fact that was actually a gift that not everybody had. To be honest I was a bit baffled by this little pep talk, because I wasn't aware that I'd been doing anything wrong in the first place - my mum hadn't actually shared any of her concerns about my musical shortcomings with me - she'd just gone straight over my head to the teacher. And, in fact, it never occurred to me to report back to my mum what the teacher had said. So my mum went on thinking that I was a musical retard - possibly to this day, who knows?

I still can't really read music, to be honest. That's where years of cheating gets you. But what I can do is sing, unrehearsed, with someone I've never sung with before, in front of an audience, and sound like I know what I'm doing. It's the ultimate bluff. Except it turns out not to be a bluff at all, but, in some people's books at least, what you're actually supposed to do.

"Just Be Yourself"

2008-11-05T01:20:00.002Z

When I was little my mum always used to dole out the same piece of advice whenever I was stressing about something I had to do in front of people: Just be yourself. As soon as I would hear this I would be crippled by anxiety: I didn't know how to do that because I didn't know who 'myself' was. My mum was always baffled by her strange, apparently alien, daughter, who seemed to be making a meal out of what to her was the most basic and fundamental of tasks. Why couldn't I just walk into a room like a 'normal' person without twitching obsessively at my clothes and shrinking into myself, or talking in a weird put-on voice and using words that I didn't really understand the meaning of? Admittedly my mum snapping at me "everybody's noticing you fidgeting with your dress like that" did not make matters any better, although in retrospect I can see that all she was trying to do was snap me out of what was, to her, a strange and unhealthy self-consciousness.

I was round at Pete Saunders' place today, rehearsing with him in his shed (don't knock it, he's got a proper studio set up in there, complete with PA system and a Roland keyboard with all the boy-toy piano voices you could ever desire, including a 'scat vocal' one which kept him happily amused for hours today), and when we stopped for lunch we were discussing the things we learn with more years performance experience and I was saying that newer performers are less able to be themselves on stage. Then I realised something: that the quest to learn how to be myself - onstage and therefore consequentially offstage - was probably the drive that started me performing in the first place.

Is it because I didn't know what to do when my mother instructed me to "just be myself" that I became a performer at all?

I suggested to Pete that all performers do it because they are secretly looking for an answer to the question "How do I be myself?" Pete disagreed - he said that the thing that probably drove him into performing when he was a teenager was a desire to escape the need to answer the question "Who am I?" altogether.

So there you have it. The difference between male and female performers. And/or possibly the difference between males and females full stop. The girls are looking for an answer to the question "who am I?" and the boys are looking for a way to avoid ever having to answer it.

Deep. (Or possibly not.)

xxx

I just can’t get you outta my head you b***ard

2008-10-29T23:32:00.001Z

Just got back home from a rehearsal with the band in the Cellar of Joy and I'm a bit pissed, as I took along a bottle of finest South African Sabernet Cauvignon from Lidl (only £2.99 because of the typo on the label). I've just had a lovely evening playing through our set for tomorrow's gig at Volupte, and I must say I thought we sounded better and better as the evening went on and I got through more and more of the bottle. Even though our new bass player Warwick "the thumb" Johnson didn't make it. He rang up to explain he was trapped because he lives in Finsbury Park and there was an Arsenal match on which meant that he couldn't drive in or out of his street without sitting in a queue of traffic for an hour. He told me very apologetically he'd had no idea there was a match on tonight when we booked the rehearsal.

It was only when I got to the rehearsal and passed on this news that Sir Fitzroy informed me that The Thumb is a massive Spurs fan, and Spurs just happen to be playing Arsenal tonight. I was shocked - surely you don't mean he might be watching the match? Fitz, who is also an ardent Spurs fan, just raised his eyebrows quizzically. But I wouldn't think that of The Thumb for a moment, as Spurs fans, in my experience, are men of honour. I know absolutely nothing about football, but my dad is a Spurs fan, and of course he is the man my heart belongs to, and what's more I have been dumped by not one but two avid Arsenal fans, so I know which team I'll be offering my services to should they ever require a jazz singer at any point to do a spot of scatting for morale purposes.

Tonight we were determined to break the mould of Slinktet rehearsals and bash through the set list in an efficient and focused manner instead of pissing about and telling bizarre anecdotes. We were doing fairly well until Connie Vanderlay came up with the game of putting "you b***ard" after every one of our song titles:

Peel Me A Grape You B***ard
Should I Stay Or Should I Go You B***ard
Why Don't You Do Right You B***ard
Sweet Dreams You B***ard

and so on.

Then Fitz started an anecdote about a trombone quartet him and his mates once decided to form called "The B***ards" (pronounced to rhyme with cards or shards) because they were always calling each other b***ard. I was unable to ascertain whether this level of rudeness is exclusive to trombonists or applies to all brass players. (Maybe they should form a group called The Brasstards.) This prompted our arch anecdotalist Earl Mysterio to remember a story about an elderly waiting punter telling the man next to him how much better it was using a ticketing system rather than having to queue - because some "cheeky bitches" had pushed in front of him in a queue the day before, so he'd spat on them, so they'd called him a "b***ard", so he'd asked them if they had any evidence that they'd been born in wedlock themselves.

By this point the conversation had moved a very long way away from what we were supposed to be talking about, which was whether the stabs were on the beat or ahead of the beat in My Side of the Bed. Miraculously however we did manage to get through the whole set by quarter to ten and hit the road. I left the last glass of wine for Mysterio so I could cadge a lift home with Connie, who has just dropped me to my door because it was cold out and she is an angel.

Do you know, this band has been together for four and a half years now and I still love hanging out with them - in fact I love hanging out with them more than ever. Rehearsals are getting to be one of my favourite things, even when they're conducted in a subterranean cellar with no heating and walls that shed chalky white deposits on your clothes - because when I'm at a gig I'm running around looking after the guest acts, or chatting to the audience, and I don't actually get any time with the other slinkers. But when we're rehearsing I get to be entertained by Mysterio's frankly surreal stream-of-consciousness stories, and Fresh's bon mots from behind the drums, and I get to actually look at my fellow slinkers instead of having my back to them the whole time like I do at a gig. And I even get to sit down.

You lovely lot, you were sounding well groovy tonight. And that's not just the Sabernet Cauvignon talking

xxx

Nights at the Office

2008-10-27T00:53:00.000Z

I love my job. Because the place everyone else goes to get away from the stresses and strains of their job is actually the place I go to work. Which means my office is basically a cabaret club. And the things that are glamorous and escapist for the punters become my routine – it’s like everything’s flipped upside down. Now I’m gigging more often I’m generally at Volupte once or twice a week, and, as always happens once something starts to become more regular, patterns and rhythms begin to establish themselves. Here are some of the ritual patterns of a typical ‘night at the office’.

There’s the meet-and-greet/soundcheck when everyone arrives dragging their gig bags on wheels, and we somehow manage to squeeze in a brief discussion about what numbers we’re going to do in between the conversations about who’s got a new coat and where it’s from (Amber Topaz wouldn’t tell me, to my frustration, even though hers is a one off anyway, so there is no danger of me turning up in a copycat green wool trench) and who’s in what state after last night and why (this conversation also includes the club staff as a rule, who are much more dedicated partygoers than us lightweight performers). Some people take the sound check more seriously than others. Amber’s is like a whole extra floorshow on top of the one she gives for the punters. Yesterday the band were running through “hot stuff”, which Beverley had just rehearsed with them, unbeknownst to Amber, and Amber jumped on the mic and started singing “I want some hot stuff baby tonight” in a broad Yorkshire accent. Beverley’s little face fell: “I’m not going to be able to sing that seriously now.” But she pulled it out of the hat for the show.

Next come the dressing room rituals, involving claiming your bit of mirror and starting work on the make up, with accompanying ‘make up chitchat’ which can cover everything from the current economic climate to who would and who wouldn’t shag Beth Ditto. There’s generally some issue or other with nipple tassels, or pasties (not pronounced the Cornish way, incidentally – I remember being sternly corrected on that point by Gwendoline Lamour). Yesterday the issue was two burlesquers with the same set of black tassels. It’s bad form for two girls to go out wearing the same pasties, apparently – so one party nobly agreed to wear her Swarovski crystal ones instead, even though they were heavier and harder to twirl. Incidentally, I also learned that Anne Summers’ black nipple tassels are very hardwearing and an excellent buy, but the pastel coloured ones are rubbish as they shed diamante – so don’t buy those (in case you were planning to).

Then there’s the arrival of the wine, which is always a high point. It’s generally delivered to the dressing room with a great flourish by the manager and met with squeals of appreciation. There’s always somebody who insists they won’t have any, then changes their mind as soon as it’s in front of them. Everybody has their foibles about what they need to drink before they go on. I have this neurotic need to down loads and loads of water which annoys the staff while they’re trying to set up because I’m always nicking water out of the jugs they’ve got ready for the customers, or helping myself from the tap behind the bar which is meant to be out of bounds to performers. Dusty Limits will only drink white wine before he performs, because red wine is too heavy and clogs him up. I’d been on the red wine before I went on the other day and I noticed it had given me purple teeth – but Dusty told me if I drank enough white wine it would cancel it out. So I did. It’s always a pleasure to discover new excuses for drinking more alcohol.

Another favourite part of the routine is the bit where you get your dinner. It’s always a lottery, what the staff food is going to be, but on a good day it’ll be something fabulous like stuffed chicken breast and dauphinois potatoes. Sometimes it can look a bit weird, like the pumpkin lasagne, but it’s important to keep an open mind until you’ve tasted it. The girls all flirt outrageously with the chefs (and so do some of the boys) so they’ll feed us extra treats. I got a secret rum cheesecake all to myself the other day. I do think that giving people free food is one of the nicest things you can do for anyone – but especially for hand-to-mouth types like musicians and performers, who will generally spend their hard earned gig money on drink rather than waste it on a proper dinner. At least somebody’s looking out for us to make sure we get a square meal.

Then comes the show itself, when you’ll step onstage and do exactly the same material you did at the last show and it will somehow weirdly come out completely different - because it’s the audience who give every show its own vibe. Another big part of the routine is a backstage discussion about the nature of the audience. Small but lively? Packed out but really flat? Into it but drunk and noisy? Polite but a bit on the quiet side? Or totally loving it? The quieter the audience, the harder work it is to win over the room – I’ve seen performers come off stage dripping with sweat and shaking from the effort of exuding energy. Sometimes you can really feel like it’s been a damp squib, only to have people from the audience coming up afterwards saying what a fantastic show it was and how they were completely blown away. They were just being blown away quietly. One of the great things about doing Pete Saunders’ Burlesque’n’Blues shows is that we do everything with a live band – singers and burlesquers alike – and there’s always something ad libbed and impromptu, or some collaboration, rather than everybody just doing their own thing one after the other. I had to get singer Buck Svizz on stage to be my stooge for my song “Sneaky” once because there wasn’t a single man in the audience (it was Saturday afternoon tea – which is hen city), and he walked onstage still eating a scone. There happened to be a line in the song that went “and what is the occasion that has merited you giving me these flowers – and cake?” and on that line Buck started pelting me with bits of scone. Brilliant. It was like the whole thing with the cake was a set up ready for that line, when he didn’t even know it was coming. This week the impromptu moment was an on-the-spot ensemble rendition of Hit The Road Jack as the finale. We had three girls around the mic belting it out, and even made up a dance routine. I’m not sure what the audience made of it - but we enjoyed ourselves.

The other ritual element to every gig is the storytelling. An old flame once told me that artists are longer lived than everyone else, not because they live more years, but because they pack more experience into their lives (he was speaking with authority as an accountant). But it’s not only the actual lived experiences us arty types pack in, it’s all the imagined ones as well – and all the ones we collect from each other in the form of pre and post gig anecdotes. These anecdotes are an integral part of the gig routine, mainly because, as a famous musician once said, performing is about 10% stage time and 90% waiting around. (This quote was offered up by the Slinktet’s guitar supremo Earl Mysterio as an anecdote to fill our own waiting around time before a gig. I now can’t remember who the famous musician was, which is a bit rubbish. Probably someone from a cool boy’s band, like The Rolling Stones or something.) The function of gig storytelling is thus to fill the waiting around percentage of the evening. The stories can be about anything, but ideally, they will reveal some behind-the-scenes secrets or describe a shocking and extreme experience that happened to either the storyteller or their ‘friend’.

My ‘day job’ is meant to be writing stories, but I have to admit that time after time my feeble attempts at anecdotage pale in comparison to those offered up by my colleagues. Pete Saunders, being slightly longer lived than the rest of us (strictly in the ‘artist’ sense outlined above, of course), has some of the best. I talked about the time I wrote off my car skidding on an oil spill, and he topped it with the time he rolled his car over three times, miraculously got out, then had to decide whether or not to risk going back to free his girlfriend from the wreckage before the car blew up (he did – because he decided the social embarrassment of leaving her in the lurch outweighed the risk of being burnt to a crisp). I had a story about going to a carol service in Armley Jail when I was a kid which Vicious Delicious topped with a story about how she used to rent a flat in the Brixton prison complex with windows overlooked by all the prison cells, and got treated to a running commentary on everything she did in her flat from the prisoners. I also enjoyed the stories about what bored musicians get up to on the big musicals, after they’ve been performing exactly the same score, note for note, for a year. The entire orchestra playing a whole show naked on the last night of the run was my favourite.

I’m back at Volupte twice next week – on Tuesday for the Lost Supper, and on Thursday for Club d’Amour – which means more treats. If I’m lucky, another chocolate cheese cake. And if I’m really lucky, some even more outrageous gig anecdotes to add to my collection. Plus, I’ll get to wear my gorgeous new black and white gown as well, which is a bit like getting to wear your wedding dress twice in one week. As jobs go, it’s not bad, is it?

xxx

Field Report

2008-10-14T00:40:00.007+01:00

Okay so it’s well over a month since I got back from my last festival, but since the photos from the Bestival antics have only just been posted online I feel both comforted that I am not the only one taking ages to record my summer and also spurred into finally getting around to jotting down a sort of addled postmortem diary of my own various festival misadventures.

I actually blagged like mad to get to go to Camp Bestival, because my brother and sister-in-law were coming over with the kids from France for it and I thought it would be a bit special to meet up with them in a field. The very splendid Zoe of Time for Tease let me come and play her tent, after I nagged both Paul Martin and Kitty Bang Bang to put a word in with her for me. I gave Kitty a lift in my little Nissan micra and we shared my fish tent – we had great plans for a ‘Thelma and Louise’ adventure, which was a bit slow in getting started after I failed to get out of bed in time for that early start I’d been planning, although Kitty seemed strangely relieved to hear I’d be at least an hour late. When I rang her she picked up the phone and went “I’m awake! I’m awake!” which was somewhat suspicious… Then we had to stop en route so Kitty could buy a crate of cider (I’d bought my vodka and Pringles the day before so I was all stocked up with the essentials already). Then we had to turn back when Kitty realised she’d left her mobile phone at home. “If you realise you had it with you all along,” I warned her, as we crawled back through the north London traffic, “don’t tell me.” “I won’t,” she promised. When she bounced back in the car and I asked her where it was, she promised she’d found it by the side of her bed, and looked suitably sincere. Once we got to the actual festival she ran out of credit after the first day, so a fat lot of good it did having her phone with her anyway. She was bouncing off the ceiling with boredom four hours into the car journey, while we were stuck in the queue to get onto the festival site. Two hours to get to Dorset and another two hours to get two miles down a country lane. But we did succeed in erecting our fish tent and inflating our double air mattress with fearsome efficiency, which may have had something to do with the fact it was raining.

The next day Paul L Martin turned up, somewhat anxious because he hadn’t braved a festival since he was seventeen, asking Zoe if her tent was ‘open’ so he could put his bag inside? I explained to him that tents didn’t actually have locks. But he was almost totally converted to the festival experience after learning to knit in the knitting tent, and spending Saturday night dancing on a chair to cheesy disco in the Lauderetta’s travel agency. Meanwhile Kitty and I lost each other on Saturday night and she found herself being ushered onto the mainstage along with Agent Lynch to do backing dancing for the Flaming Lips after she and Agent Lynch wandered backstage looking for a loo. While she was jumping up and down on the mainstage, I was singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ about six times in a row to my two year old nephew in an attempt to encourage him to go to sleep. Instead of which he kept jumping up and shouting “sing it again!” Luckily by then I’d drunk so much vodka I didn’t care how many times I sung it. Unlike everybody in the adjacent tents I suspect. Then again, they were all probably out watching the Flaming Lips – and Kitty’s impromptu backing dancing – on the mainstage.

Sunday afternoon was spent largely showing off for the cameramen who were shooting backstage footage of the Time for Tease tent to pitch an idea for a documentary about burlesque to channel 4. That and eating vast amounts of cake. Oh that Lemon Drizzle cake was incredible. I also remember meeting up with my friend Chris and her two daughters in front of the mainstage, where Kitty and Chris’s eight year old daughter threw each other about and took bizarre photos of people’s feet while Suzanne Vega and Kate Nash represented pan-generational female talent onstage.

Kitty and I had to get up shockingly early on Monday to get Kitty back to London in time to work her shift in the pub, but just as I was getting up at 7.30 on Monday morning I bumped into Jonathan Mayor, an old friend from University now cutting a dash on the Manchester drag scene as a comedian and compere, just as he was returning to his tent to bed. He loudly declaimed his excitement at seeing me, then after about ten minutes of conversation actually realised where he knew me from, which elicited even louder declamations. Gratifyingly, he claimed I hadn’t aged a day and enquired if I had had surgery – I suspect a party-addled 7am perspective is far from the most searingly observant but nevertheless it was charming of him. I’m sure the rest of the campsite were equally delighted to hear our emotional reunion at seven in the morning as well.

All in all, an utterly charming festival. And to cap it all, the Sunday Times Style magazine had a photographer taking pics of everybody which they posted up on the website mocked up as magazine covers. I went to a family party last weekend and was actually congratulated on being on the cover of the Sunday Times magazine. Even though it was completely fake, I still got a kick out of showing it off, especially to my ex, who was the one person I didn’t admit it wasn’t real to.

I’d had so much fun at Camp Bestival that when I got not one but two calls asking if I wanted to come and perform at other festivals I was pretty into the idea, even if I was a bit worried about going on my own, especially to the one in Ireland. Karen the nice lady who invited me to Electric Picnic offered to not only pay my flight but also to send their hire car to pick me up and drive me to the festival site, and to feed me for the three days, so I was almost completely won over - and then ukelele troubadour Des O’Connor encouraged me to go by pointing out it would be an international gig, which meant I’d be able to describe myself as an international cabaret star afterwards – so I said yes. When Amanda from Stranger than Paradise asked me if I wanted to go to Bestival on the Isle of Wight with her I said yes much more quickly, which, in retrospect, was the more foolhardy decision of the two, but more of that later.

Electric Picnic was in a place called Port Laoise west of Dublin, where, my dad tells me, there is also a famous prison (not that I could see it over the ferris wheel). My great uncle, who grew up in Ireland, carefully instructed me how to pronounce the place name properly, which stood me in good stead when I was asking directions to the bus stop at the airport. I managed to my tent up on my own in the dark, and then, just as I was pumping up the air mattress inside, I heard a voice outside saying “We’re coming into your tent”. It turned out some of my fellow festivalgoers were quite taken with the pictures of fish all over it. I told the guy that since he wanted to come in, he could pump up my air mattress while he was there, and he obligingly set to the foot pump while him and his girlfriend chatted about what they’d seen so far, and I fed them Oreo cookies. I was booked to play in a tent called Teas and Tarts by day and Tarts and Tease by night – which transformed from a demure tea shop into a sleazy den of vice complete with an Amsterdam-style red-light-district window complete with pole dancers - but I must admit I was slightly overwhelmed when I realised I was sharing the bill with acrobats, dancers, and huge high-octane bands. My little pink ukelele and I were no match for all that energy. Luckily I persuaded Simon the stage manager to let me go on first on the Saturday night, so at least the show could start small and build up. Oh and it also meant I could go on early and then get pissed of course. At least that was the plan, until I discovered that none of the bars appeared to be serving after 10.30pm. I honestly thought that the notoriously fun-loving Irish festivalgoers had drunk the bars dry – but found out next day that they closed the bars at 10.30pm every night routinely. Weird, since everything went on til 4am. Luckily for me, when I went back to Tarts and Tease and moaned about this sorry state of affairs, Simon said “But you’ve got a rider!” and produced a bottle of champagne. Now that’s what I call a rider. I was over the moon, and even the dire warning that it had cost about 60p from France and was dangerously hallucinogenic stuff didn’t prevent me from pouring almost the entire bottle into a pint glass and toddling off to the mainstage with it to watch George Benson, which was a pretty trippy show anyway, but whether or not that was down to the dodgy French knock-off champagne I couldn’t tell you.

I felt like a proper grown-up festival-goer after managing an international festival all by myself, but I may have patted myself on the back a little to soon. Anyone who was at Bestival this year will know what’s coming. If I hadn’t been booked to perform I would probably have wimped out of going at all when the storm warnings started coming through, but you gotta be a trooper, right? I knew this was going to be a more extreme festival experience from the start, when a black van with black tinted windows pulled up to pick me up. It was like a grown-up version of the Scooby van, with a fur rug and a bead curtain inside, not to mention a vanful of sprawling pissed bodies dressed in fishnet tights, frilly knickers, huge hats, scull-print scarves and all the paraphernalia of hardcore festivalgoers. There was also an animatronic toy cat in there that purred and moved. A bourbon bottle was thrust into my hand the minute I clambered inside. It was about 11 in the morning.

So much fun was had en route to the ferry port that we barely made the ferry by the skin of our teeth for the crossing, which was accompanied by loud tone-deaf singing on deck. By the time we made it to the festival site everyone except the driver was crashed out. Then we discovered that we couldn’t park in the artist’s carpark because it was flooded, and we couldn’t pitch tents in the artists’ camping because that was flooded too. There was some flouncing and stropping about how we were meant to be onstage in an hour so they better let us in, and this miraculously produced artist wristbands and opened the gates onto the main site for us, so we drove right onto the site and parked up behind the show tents. Then all we had to do was lug our stuff – which included 3 giant dogs’ heads - across a vast field of mud to the polka tent, which, as it turned out, was also awash with mud.
I had lugged my full length tasselled evening gown all the way across the field inside my gig bag but as soon as I saw that tiny tent, churned up with mud, and the stage covered with mud, and the back stage tent churned up with mud which was reached only from across a sea of mud my bottom lip started to quiver and I begged Amanda to please not make me dress up because I couldn’t wash or dry clean my gown without the tassels wrinkling up so if I got it muddy it would be lost to me forever. Amanda said she didn’t care what I wore onstage and told me to relax. Then we found a tiny unlit backstage tent behind the polka tent, and I started to put my make up on by torchlight. As soon as I’d finished, the stage manager came to tell us that there was another much bigger backstage tent with electric lighting in it on the other side of the Polka tent – but by that time I had switched into proper ‘trooper’ mode. I went onstage and led a drunken ukelele singalong starting with ‘Mud mud glorious mud’, encompassing most of the Jungle Book and concluding with Downtown, before conceding the stage to the real bands, and availing myself of the free rider, which was beer not champagne this time. Our strategy was to get drunk enough to stop caring about the sea of mud everywhere, which seemed to work, except that I still had to put my fish tent up. I managed it at 3 in the morning, but forgot about the air mattress, so I had to come back and pump that up at 4 in the morning. By 5 in the morning there were 3 of us crashed out in it, although fortunately the giant dog heads were left outside.

The next day while I was exploring the site (slowly, as the mud was by then getting to that ‘hold on to your welly and pull it off your foot’ stage) I noticed a security guard taking photos of the festivalgoers walking past on his mobile phone. I asked him what he was taking pictures of, and he explained it was of the sight of all these people walking around in the mud apparently having a good time, because he’d never seen anything like it. In his country (Nigeria) this would be viewed as a natural disaster. Nothing would grow on this land for a year. Had these people really paid to do this? Could I explain why this was fun?

By the time I got my fish tent home it was caked in mud, so I took it to the launderette and paid £6.50 for the giant washer. Then when I pulled it out, it flooded the floor of the launderette with water (which made me popular) so I bunged it in the dryer and shoved a pound in, because I couldn’t think of another way to get it dry with no washing line to hang it up from. When I pulled it out of the dryer the groundsheet had shrivelled up to half its former size and formed strange solid clumps of plastic, which were never going to resemble anything tent-shaped ever again. Yes, I had melted my tent.

I could see this as a sign that I should quit festival-going now, before it gets any worse. Or as an opportunity to buy an even more fabulous-looking tent for next year’s adventures.

I might not be able to explain to a baffled Nigerian security guard why it was fun, but something tells me that if anybody invites me to a festival again next year I’ll say yes like a shot. I haven’t been to Latitude yet. And then, there’s the really big one… Glastonbury. I mean, after Bestival, how disastrous can it be…?

Edinburgh Water

2008-08-26T00:08:00.000+01:00

It was the first year I’d braved Edinburgh as a performer since a rather dubious production I was in while I was at university, which has pretty much scarred me for life, but luckily for me, lightweight that I am, one of my oldest and closest friends happens to live in Edinburgh in a flat right on the Royal Mile, so my Edinburgh experience was downright cushy. Except for his kitten, Plug, who if she didn’t get enough attention would launch herself at my leg and cling on to my tights with her claws until I picked her up and stroked her (I’m thinking of adopting this strategy myself in future). So I’ve come home scarred from this Edinburgh experience too, but luckily only literally.

Walking through a torrential downpour to the Underbelly at midnight on my first night to appear in Sideshow, the Bloody Ringmaster’s late-night cabaret, I did wonder how much fun this was actually going to be, especially when I saw the water pouring through the brickwork into the building making the venue look like nothing so much as a medieval torture chamber. There were a couple of guys busking on the street under an archway on Cowgate with a double bass and a guitar. When I came out of the Underbelly after the show, two and a half hours later, they were still there, just packing up their instruments. That’s what I call a stoic performance. My own performance that night was to four people, which meant that when I got one of them up on stage to play the kazoo I actually lost a quarter of my audience. But size isn’t everything and all four of them were delightfully friendly. It was lovely to hang out with Lambchop Magoo, Chrysalis, Margaret the Gimp and the Bloody Ringmaster too – in fact the whole thing was rather cosy, despite the water running down the walls. The Bloody Ringmaster sniffed out the fact that one of our four audience members was in fact a reviewer – thanks to his built in reviewer-dar – so we all fell upon the poor guy oozing charm.

The next day I had planned to see the Bloody Ringmaster in his other play, in which he skipped across the stage in a nightie while someone played the mandolin, but I overslept and missed it. Then I decided to stay in bed and read a book called ‘The Secret Countess’ all day because the rain wasn’t showing any signs of abating, and I needed to know whether the beautiful but penniless Russian aristocrat of the title was going to end up with the young English lord more than I needed to find out what was going on outside in the rain.

That night my lovely Royal Mile Boy and his friend came to the show too, providing us with a third of our audience, which had now swelled to six. Royal Mile Boy volunteered to be my stooge and came up on stage to play the kazoo, but unlike every other audience member I’ve ever picked on before, completely failed to figure out how to get it to work – this must be some sort of Sods Law of Best Mates. To make things even more eggy, a pianist colleague who was in the audience strode onto the stage to show him how to do it, and gave an impressive performance on the kazoo which had no comedy value whatsoever and provided no closure for the little story we were telling about how someone could miraculously master an instrument in just a few moments. So I had to wrench the kazoo from my rather miffed colleague’s grasp and return it to my friend, who I would not allow to leave the stage until he had mastered it. Thankfully he did, leaving all of us feeling rather drained by the experience, which had somehow metamorphosed from a cabaret show into a music lesson.

Fortunately the reviewer who was in the audience, yet again sniffed out by the Bloody Ringmaster, was more excited about the prospect of getting a ukelele lesson off me at the end of the show. And by the time we had all been drinking for four more hours the whole thing was no more than a distant unpleasant memory. What’s more the rain had finally stopped, which suddenly made the prospect of staying out drinking more appealing, so much so that I succeeded in drinking till dawn, after making longsuffering Royal Mile Boy carry my gown and ukelele home for me while I careered off into the night in one of those rickshaws like you get in Soho, which in Edinburgh can actually climb steep hills with two girls in the back. I even managed to carry a full pint in a plastic glass for the whole journey without spilling a drop. That’s some impressive back-seat cycling skills, that is. Walking home at dawn along North Bridge my drinking partner and I encountered a charming local lady who was in extremely good voice as she serenaded us with her rendition of a traditional Scottish ballad. The next morning, unsurprisingly, I missed the Bloody Ringmaster’s play for a second time.

Friday saw me staggering up the Royal Mile with a hangover, cunningly fending off the thousands of flyering performers by clutching flyers for our own show in my hand (I appreciate this was not actually the purpose of giving me the flyers, and apologise in retrospect to the Bloody Ringmaster). It was quite overwhelming. But we found an Italian restaurant to eat lunch in, and I started to feel ready for the Fringe again after a few carbs. And just at that moment who should sashay past our outdoor table on the Grassmarket but Miss Ophelia Bitz in a fetching sequinned beret. She very generously offered me and my friend two guestlist tickets to the Tiger Lillies’ Seven Deadly Sins in the Spiegeltent, which was a riproaring hour’s entertainment.

When I congratulated Miss Bitz afterwards she revealed that from their point of view it had been a nightmare because somebody in the audience had stolen a prop. I had thought the whole baby-theft incident was part of the show, so cleverly had they covered it, which just goes to show how different a performance looks from the other side of the stage. Another unexpected discovery of Saturday was how great Edinburgh water is for washing your hair in. My bob came out all shiny and sleek. I take back all those negative remarks about Edinburgh and water – I love it after all. That night, my last on Sideshow, we had an impressive audience of ten, and my kazoo stooge was a gorgeous American boy who revealed after the show that he was actually playing the part of one of the Columbine murderers by day. So I unwittingly had a murderer on my kazoo for the night. We followed the show with another impressive night’s drinking til dawn. On Saturday I missed the Bloody Ringmaster’s play for the third time.

Saturday night I moved onto my next show, And The Devil May Drag You Under in Musical Theatre @ George Square, and suddenly hit the big league. I arrived to discover a two-hundred-seater auditorium with proper wings, spotlights, the lot. If it weren’t for the warm and friendly welcome I got from the cast and the other guests I’d have been quaking in my boots. Apparently there were loads of reviewers in that night, and there was also a great deal of pressure not to overrun, because otherwise they’d be fined by the venue. Just as I was taking all this in and starting to put my white-face make-up on (to conceal the fact my face had actually gone white with nerves), the cast of the previous show tumbled off the stage and into the backstage room, and a loud female cockney voice was exclaiming about what a nightmare it had been when her radio mic failed and how stressful it had been singing unamplified. I looked up in recognition. That was the voice of Hayley Angel Wardle, one of the four lead actresses of the TV show I’d worked on a couple of years before – Totally Frank on Channel 4. And there she was, in a bright yellow dress and a lot of orange fake tan. I went over to say hello, in my white-face cabaret make-up, and an odd pair we made – a very Edinburgh Festival combination of incongruous costumes. She was in a musical called Departure Lounge about a bunch of lads on their way back from a holiday in Benidorm, and she was playing the femme fatale. I decided that the happy coincidence of winding up in the show right after hers was an auspicious sign.

That didn’t stop me getting the flutters big time about having to step out into the spotlight with nothing but my small pink ukelele and attempt to dazzle a crowded auditorium. The anticipation built up as I waited in the wings with the other performers, hearing but not seeing all the other acts perform their turns. It’s very weird listening to cabaret acts but not being able to see them, it’s a real tease trying to guess what it is the audience are laughing at and what exactly the performer is getting up to out there. I loved Sxip Shirey’s bizarre music, even though I couldn’t see what strange implements he was making his sounds on, and I really enjoyed Greg Walloch’s stand-up routine, but was almost unable to resist the temptation to have a peek and see what Lizzie Wort, Pustra and Vile’een and Scottee were up to, because I could tell there were riotous things going on just the other side of the curtains. My own turn was rather tame by comparison – more whimsical than outrageous really. I recreated a childhood fantasy diva moment by performing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina with my ukelele standing in for the orchestra, the audience standing in for the massed choirs, and a back to front chair for the balcony. The zeal – and the tunefulness – with which the audience joined in led me to suspect that there were more than a couple of performers in the auditorium.

That night I joined the show’s cast for a drink and a dance in the Spiegel Tent but managed to get home by the relatively restrained hour of 3.30am, because the next day I had to get up to go to church.

Yes, I really do mean church. Not a deconsecrated church being used as a Fringe venue. An actual church. My lovely Royal Mile Boy was singing a Haydn mass with his church choir, and had a solo part to perform, so I went along to watch him doing his stuff in cassock and surplice. Because it was a proper mass the choir were tucked away in a corner behind the orchestra, all but out of sight, so I had to sit in a bit of an odd spot to be able to watch him, which meant I missed the ‘real’ show, namely all the synchronised genuflections performed so balletically by the ministers. I must confess I found it all but impossible to sit through the service without unconsciously thinking of it as another piece of theatre, so immersed in the world of festival let’s pretend was I by this time. As such, I must say it stood up rather well, and could probably wipe the floor with some of the other shows on the Fringe. It did secretly amuse me to think that I would be in church in the morning and in Hell with the Devil that same night. But then that’s the Edinburgh Festival for you.

Royal Mile Boy joined me in the Devil’s lair for the show that night, fresh from his mass, and added his dulcet tones to the chorus of Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. Later on, this being the nature of the festival, he and I ended up out for a drink with the Devil himself, of course. But sadly we were unable to source a chip shop for him where he could satisfy his late night urge for a bag of chips at 4am. Apparently “he who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon” so it’s probably just as well the chip shops were all shut, because I have no idea how you’re supposed to eat chips with a long spoon, or indeed a spoon of any description.

Disappointingly I had to go home the next day, but so smitten was I by my Edinburgh adventures that I was sorely tempted to come back for more the next weekend. In the end I decided to wait until next year, when Royal Mile Boy’s kitten will, hopefully, have got old enough to be a bit more low-key about her demands for attention, and won’t send me home covered in scratches.

I was also sorely tempted to bottle some of that Edinburgh water to bring back to wash my hair in, but in the end I realised that since I was already carrying one duffel bag, one hat box, one ukelele case, one rucksack and two gown bags, I wouldn’t realistically be able to manage a demijohn of water as well. Luckily it was raining as I walked to the station, so my hair got one last free wash anyway.

xxx

Music Therapy

2008-07-12T12:19:00.001+01:00

I watched a BBC documentary a few weeks back about the therapeutic powers of music – apart from the fact it had Alan Yentob fronting it, it was a great bit of TV. A guy with acute Tourette’s syndrome controlled it by drumming, another guy with acute autism played piano like a god. There were brain scans of Alan Yentob while he listened to his favourite piece of music, showing his brain flooded with blood. Another guy who’d been struck by lightning and suddenly become obsessed with music played piano at a classical recital (although the ‘healing’ side of the deal fell down a bit in his case, since his obsession with music had resulted in the breakdown of his marriage. Or perhaps his marriage needed to break down to make his life better in the long term. Who knows.) Some attempts were made to analyse the power of music in scientific terms, but beyond demonstrating that it did have power, the show didn’t really penetrate the mystery very far.

I’ve been experiencing the healing power of music myself in the last few weeks, after life took a lurch towards the unexpected, and heaped a sudden cold dollop of misfortune upon my head, which I’m not going to moan about here. Instead I want to tell you about how being a musician has made it easier to cope with. When you’re going through a rough patch your friends try to offer up strategies that will make you feel better: get drunk, chainsmoke, gorge on chocolate, etc. I have actually, perversely, completely given up smoking (at last), find myself barely able to down more than a single glass of wine, and can’t summon up any enthusiasm for chocolate, which tastes like dust and ashes in my mouth. But what my musician and cabaret friends have done for me is book me in for loads of extra gigs, and this is the thing that really has done the trick. Maybe it’s because singing and playing takes you outside of yourself. Maybe it’s because it’s a visceral, not a cerebral, experience, playing music, so it quietens the chatter of your brain. Maybe music is a sort of meditation – but a collective rather than a solitary meditation. You tune in to the other people in the band and you get into a groove with them, then just let it carry you along; like floating down a stream. Or maybe it’s got more to do with the audience – being listened to, being appreciated, being loved for what you’re doing. Even though it’s not really you they’re into but the thing you’re projecting – the fantasy you’re creating for them. Or maybe getting dolled up in the false eyelashes, the red lipstick and the heels is like donning armour, and I feel safer inside there.

I know I’m not the only one who has this experience of stepping on stage and putting life’s shit on hold for the duration of the performance. In fact, the more shit my bandmates are going through, the more incredible the performances they pull out of the hat. Witness Miss Honey Mink, prostrated by cold and flu and so poorly she can hardly walk, flounce onstage and scintillate for 20 minutes without having to blow her nose once. Sir Fitzroy Callow holds a throat infection in abeyance to bathe us in the honeyed tones of his trombone with a performance of greater subtlety, sensitivity and wit than ever. Bobby Fresh arrives at the gig crackling with stress after a day of living hell at the office only to bounce and skip his way across the drumkit with that mischievous lightness of touch that is all his own. And Connie Vanderlay – she’s the most astonishing of them all. There was a time, a few years ago, when life had floored her completely, and a few moments before we were due onstage she was in pieces – then she stepped onto the stage, sat down at the keyboard and played the most transporting and life-affirmingly bright piano part I had ever heard. At the time I felt guilty for asking her to gig on through a life crisis, but now I’ve been on the other side of it, I think my policy when any musician friend is going through a rough patch will be to drag them onstage as often as possible. And even if they’re not a musician, I’m going to give them a ukelele – or even a kazoo – and make them play it until they feel better.

xxx

Countdown to the big gig

2008-06-07T09:39:00.004+01:00

We’re playing at White Mischief at the Scala tonight. TONIGHT! After months of build-up, the big night is almost upon us. This is probably the coolest, most big-league gig the band has ever had.

Here are some of the preparations we’ve been making:

Inter-band emails
Nothing can ever be arranged or confirmed without the full Slinktet checking their diaries and cross referencing the dates everybody can do. This involved mind-numbingly tedious ‘reply-all’ emails, which make your brain dribble out of your ear. What’s more, since I’m the self-appointed manager I’m the one that inflicts this torture on my band-mates, then has to sift through the replies and work out what dates we can play and what dates we can rehearse. This process can go on for several weeks. If I send an email saying ‘I still need dates from X’, X will quite often email me back indignantly pointing out that they replied to that email 2 weeks ago. Oh joy.

This week’s inter-band emails have been all about the set list. We’ve got a half hour slot and we’re not allowed to over-run, so that means 7 songs and me restraining myself and not spending ten minutes in between songs discussing my wardrobe, love life or both. We’ve got a repertoire of at least 25. It would seem that all band members have passionately held views about which are our best songs, and they’re all different. There is going to be at least one song in the set tomorrow that one or more band member doesn’t like. No, of course I’m not going to tell you which one.

Rehearsing
Last night was spent the Cellar of Joy under Earl Mysterio’s batchelor pad in Bethnal Green for our final run-through. Miss Connie Vanderlay joined us straight from the airport, as she’d just flown back from Copenhagen. Trousers and I picked up Kitty Bang Bang en route, who is going to be making a surprise cameo in one of our numbers. We tried to clear a bit of floor space down there amongst the amps, leads and empty biscuit packets for her to practice her routine in – but in the end she just sat on the drum stool and waved her arms in time to the music. Very sensibly, considering the state of the floor. I would strongly advise anyone against doing the splits in there. Most of us band members have mysterious white marks on our clothes from where we’ve brushed against the cellar walls at various times; I’d have hated Miss Bang Bang to leave with a white gusset. She might have found herself in an embarrassing social situation later in the evening.

Press
White Mischief is the only gig I’ve ever done proper grown-up Press for. It was very exciting: I got interviewed for a weekly what’s on e-bulletin called London Le Cool. They asked me two whole questions. I also got photographed for it, sitting on a gravestone in Abney Park cemetery, in full gown and feather fascinator, strumming my pink ukelele. This necessitated me strolling through the streets of Stoke Newington at four in the afternoon in a full length turquoise fringed showgirl gown and feathers, false eyelashes and red lipstick. Not one Yummy Mummy turned a hair at the sight, although I did get a few smirks from the schoolkids on their way home.

Preparation Rituals
We all have our own ways of psyching ourselves up. Trousers likes to dwell on all the things that are going to be a hassle, such as the nightmare parking situation in Kings Cross, and all the factors that might make the gig go badly, such as the fact Honey Mink can’t be with us tomorrow to share vocal duties (she’s in Spain being an Aunty). That way, when the gig goes well in spite of these many factors, he can be pleasantly surprised. Other members of the band, I have no doubt, spend the time rehearsing diligently. As for me, before an important singing engagement I generally have an irresistible urge to smoke. Is this some sort of self-destruct mechanism kicking in? Quite possibly. I have given in to the urge several times over the last couple of weeks, and even went as far as buying a packet of Vogue Menthol a few days ago. Luckily I left them behind at my friend’s flat. I know he will have smoked them before I go round there again, which is good news for my vocal chords. The other thing I tend to do is spend the whole run up to the gig obsessing about what I’m going to wear. Which brings me onto the Big Story of this blog entry:

The New Gown
The Tricity Vogue concept is 50% about the music, and 50% about Dressing Up. When I found out Honey wasn’t going to be able to join me for White Mischief, I decided that to make up for the absence of my sexy partner in crime, I was going to need a gown that had a personality all of its own. This may have been no more than a rationalisation of a primal urge to get a new dress made. My friend “Hollywood” has made two gowns for me before, but the last was two years ago, so I thought it was time I gave everybody something different to look at while I was on stage. How selfless of me… I had an idea that I wanted a dress that looked like flock wallpaper, so Hollywood and I hunted down a curtain factory outlet in North Finchley. There was a coach party of little old ladies there, debating which chintz to get to make a throw for the spare room. Meanwhile, Hollywood was running around like a 6 foot black gay Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen having raptures over brocades and Toile de Jouy, exclaiming at the possibilities for a frock coat here and a leather-trimmed slouch bag there. The staff were initially somewhat wary, warning us that we had to buy a minimum of two metres of any fabric. “I don’t think you understand, we are making a GOWN,” spat Hollywood. When he whipped out his sketchbook and started sketching me pictures of what the gown was going to look like, they suddenly sat up and took notice.

There were some suitably opulent brocades, but many of the colour schemes were too muted for stage wear – then Hollywood had an inspiration – we should make it in black and white. We looked at a huge floral design, and Hollywood worried that it looked too much like a curtain? Then we decided that we would make a feature out of the fact Tricity had made her dress out of a curtain – we came up with a whole story together about how she (that is, Tricity the fictional character, rather than me in real life) had been caught in flagrante in a five star hotel room in the midst of a dangerous liaison, and had had to cover her modesty and take flight in a hurry – so she’d taken one of the curtains with her. With no time to collect her gown before her gig that night, she’d got her friend (Hollywood) to run up a dress for her out of the curtain she’d done a runner in. I suppose it’s an adult spin on the Sound of Music curtain play-clothes idea.

First came the taking of measurements (during which Hollywood remained tactfully neutral about the size of my hips), then it was time to buy the fabric. Hollywood ordered me to buy an extra two metres of the curtain fabric we’d chosen, because he had an Idea for a skirt that would be “beyond genius” and would need a LOT of fabric. Then we drove over to Goldhawk Road to buy red and ivory satin for the lining, and Hollywood also blew £100 on various brocades, chiffons and silks that he found himself unable to leave the shop without; I’ve never seen anyone suffering from Fabric Addiction before; he get so genuinely excited by cloth that he can barely restrain himself from jumping up and down and shouting orgasmically. I got lost driving home and accidentally strayed into the congestion zone, which cost me £60, contributing further to this being the most expensive outfit I’ve ever bought.

Then came the toile fitting – the bit where I get pinned into a plain cloth sheath with all the pleats on the outside, and Hollywood draws on it with pencil to mark where the bodice is going to be. Then the first fitting of the gown itself, where the plan came together before our eyes. We discovered that you could wear the back skirt attachment in dozens of different ways – as a shawl, as a coat, as a matador’s cape. Hollywood confessed that he was so excited about this gown he’d stood his tailor’s dummy up on a chair in the window, so people could see it when they walked past his flat. By the second fitting the bodice fitted perfectly and Hollywood pinned me into the whole thing then marched me out onto his front step so he could take photos. The ASBO youths across the road shouted cheeky remarks such as: “It’s Amy Winehouse… Gone Wrong!” Hollywood was dismissive: “Do you see me paying them mind? Pay them no mind, they don’t know genius when it’s before their eyes.” Holloway has never before witnessed such glamour.

Yesterday morning the postman delivered the bespoke fascinator that I’d ordered from Caroline Mitchell Millinery – in an enormous box extravagantly packed with tissue paper and bubble wrap. A pair of black suede shoes have been acquired on sale in a Covent Garden shoe shop. And the final piece of the puzzle fell into place at the jewellery stall in Kingsland shopping centre yesterday – one giant pearl necklace, in exactly the same shade of ivory as the gown. Glamour triumphs, even in Dalston.

Now it’s 9am and I’m writing this because I woke up far too early and couldn’t get back to sleep – but now I have to go, because Hollywood is already awake too, and has summoned me for final fitting, pressing and collection this morning.

The gown will be making its debut at 10.30pm tonight on White Mischief’s second stage upstairs. I believe it is no more fabulous a visual aid than our music deserves. Come and have a look at the loveliest thing I have ever owned. And stay for the cheeky jazz.

xxx

Tricity Vogue Eats Humble Pie in the Volupte Dressing Rooms

2008-05-29T13:07:00.001+01:00

Well shame on me for bitching about the Volupte dressing room, because what did I find when I turned up there last night to play at Burlesque'n'Blues? A whole barrage of mirrors twinkling at me from every wall. Not only that but all the worktops were cleared, so that for the first time ever in my experience, 5 girls could all put their make up on at once without any human origami at all.

I ran out of the dressing room shrieking "Mirrors! Mirrors!" like a 6 year old who'd just opened her birthday presents (funnily enough people do buy me mirrors as presents - I wonder why that is?) Owner Miss Kuki LaBelle explained they'd put loads of extras up for Volupte's 2nd birthday party, when pretty much every performer ever to grace the Volupte stage rocked up to do a turn. So there I was, dissing the place when it was already refurbished.

Miss LaBelle graciously accepted my appreciation of the new mirrors with not a word about my blog entry, diplomat that she is, but when I went back upstairs to sound check, I ran straight into her partner in crime, owner Delories Von Cotier:

"Oy, Vogue, what's this about you dissing our dressing rooms on the internet, you cheeky madam?"

Pete Saunders, pianist and emeritus professor of the Performers' School of Tact And Diplomacy, immediately jumped in with:

"All the best venues have the worst dressing rooms, it's a well known fact."
Apparently if you play at Carnegie Hall they make you get changed outside in the back alley next to the bins.

That's probably where the Misses LaBelle and Von Cotier are going to make me change tonight when I turn up to play Club d'Amour...

Unless they read this blog today and discover that I have honoured Volupte's dressing rooms with a specially created new award:

"The most maligned dressing room award."

xxx

Hot and Cold Running Dressing Rooms

2008-05-27T02:12:00.004+01:00

I've decided there have been enough nipple tassels in my blog for now, so this entry I'm going to give you a dressing room audit instead. Ooh the excitement, I hear you cry. But seriously, this is a matter close to all performers' hearts, and therefore deserves its place in a 'behind the scenes" diary.

A few years back a stand up comic friend used to invite me backstage now and again when I went to watch his gigs. This was before I was a regular performer around London myself, and I was completely gobsmacked to discover that even in the pretty big-time comedy clubs the dressing rooms were uniformly tawdry, peeling affairs with strip lights and seats with the foam sticking out through holes in the vinyl. However, what interested me more than the décor was finding out what stand up comics talk about backstage. Would there be badinage? Would they try out new material on each another? Would there be some sort of comedy haka?

Guess what? Stand up comics talk about dressing rooms. They start off doing an audit of the dressing room they're in, and then they go into a compare-and-contrast with the dressing rooms of all the other comedy clubs around the country. It didn't take me long to pick up on the fact that there was a subtext going on, namely "let me give you a list of all the comedy clubs I've played in all over the country, and then you can list all the ones you've played in, and let's see if mine's bigger than yours." But even with the subtext it was not exactly scintillating conversation.

Only now I've been performing for a bit myself do I realise that the chitchat you make in dressing rooms before you go on stage is not a fully functioning conversation, it's more like verbal chewing gum, giving you something to do with your mouth while your mind runs around the act you're about to do on stage, what your opening line is going to be, whether you've left a set list somewhere you'll be able to see it, whether your ukelele is in tune etc etc. I know women are supposed to be good at multi-tasking but I've discovered I can't actually put my make up on and retain any information from a conversation I'm having at the same time. I'm like a goldfish while I'm sticking my false eyelashes on; a few weeks back I had a whole ten minute reminiscence conversation with Vile-een of Pustra and Vile-een about Edinburgh Fringe experiences, and two minutes later I asked her whether she'd gone last year, a question which she had just spent ten minutes answering.

But if there is one conversation guaranteed to get a dressing room full of musicians, burlesquers and cabaret performers' animated attention, it's a discussion about dressing rooms. Now that I am one of the performers engaged in these conversations on a weekly basis, I don't think they're about willy waving any more. I think they're partly a sort of comfort conversation, and partly a sort of solidarity conversation ('we're all in this together"). They're also about straightforward curiosity, stemming from the fact that sometimes a dressing room comes as a big surprise when you compare it to the side of the venue that the punters get to see.

Volupte is my favourite club in London, but it hasn't won my heart through the charms of its dressing room I can tell you. Not exactly palatial at the best of times, trying to find a corner of mirror to use to put your make up on when there's a full compliment of burlesquers on the bill is an exercise in human origami. The other week I put my foot through my dress with my stiletto and ripped it, because I was squatting in the corridor in my gown while trying to put my make up on in a mirror propped on the floor because there was no room in the dressing room itself. Thank God for iron-on fabric repair kits. And then a couple of gigs back I was just about to put my vintage Christian Dior pink satin court shoes down on the floor when I noticed that I was in fact standing in a puddle, and the whole dressing room floor was flooded. Apparently this is a side effect of the washing machine, which the staff themselves have got so used to that they don't even notice any more. The human origami got even more advanced when we had to try and share a corner of the mirror and avoid standing in an inch of water in our best shoes at the same time. I'm tempted to give Volupte the 'worst dressing room' award.

'Smallest dressing room award' may well go to the Glass Bar at Euston Station, but since the whole women-only bar is so tiny it fits inside one of the two stone lodges at the entrance to the station, its dressing room is charmingly to scale, and it seems churlish to complain that you can only fit one person in it at a time. 'Biggest dressing room award' goes to the Sideshow dressing room above the Arts Club near Leicester Square, because the 'dressing room' is in fact the dance studio one floor up from the club, which has vast acreage of mirror – and a bar, in case anybody fancies some warm up demi pliés. This much space can go to a performer's head. In fact, last time I was there, I witnessed Matt Fraser run across the room, slap burlesquer Lamb Chop Magoo on the arse, then run back to the other side of the room (as if to conceal the fact it was him). He also tried out some high kicks on one of the pillars in the middle of the room – his footprint may well be still there, 6 feet above the floor.

'Most glamorous dressing room award' goes to Paradise By Way of Kensal Green. The other day I was doing a little ukelele interlude in between dazzling burlesque numbers at Roxy Velvet, Ivy Paige and Kitty Bang Bang's night "Head over Heels." The dressing room was an elegantly appointed space with a huge gilt-framed mirror at one end, a wall full of mirrors of every shape and size at the other end, and a range of beautifully upholstered couches in between. What really ratcheted up the glamour factor, however, was the fact that there was not one, not two, but three photographers roving the room while the girls were getting changed, taking candid snaps of them sticking on their nipple tassels, pulling up their stocking etc. It was like the photos of the bride getting ready that you get in wedding albums, but with about six brides at once. I was in the midst of blowing on the glue on one of my false eyelashes when I looked up to find a camera lens trained on me from about a foot away (I sensed there was some sort of arty 'reflection in the mirror' shot going on). I think I ruined the potential glamour of the shot by looking up, startled, as if I'd been caught out with my false teeth or my glass eye in my hand after the ball was over. I'm not sure how I feel about close ups of my false eyelashes, to be honest, particularly since I've been wearing the same pair for about six months now (does that make me an eyelash slut?). Not that I needed to worry about intrusive lenses too much since I was in the weird position of being so low-key as to barely register on the glamour radar in the company of Misses Velvet, Paige and Bang Bang and their guests, despite the fact I was wearing a full-length turquoise fringed evening gown and feather fascinator. Ironically, I was both over- and under-dressed at the same time.

I'm going to give my 'Favourite dressing room award' to the BFI Southbank after last night's gig though. I'd asked if there was a room we could dump stuff and get changed in, and was shown into a big square room with a mirrored ceiling, a coffee table with bottled water laid out for us, and loads of smart-looking chairs. The Lady Greys were draped around the room getting ready to do their Edwardian skirt dance, pouring themselves into vintage underwear or sitting in the splits, and generally making the place look like an Edward Degas painting. Okay, so the dressing room wasn't entirely functional, since the only mirrors in the room were on the ceiling.

This led to a lot of cricks in necks as we all craned our heads backwards to check head gear, hair and make up. But once we'd finished our gig, me and Connie discovered a giant leather bean bag we could lie on and look up at ourselves on the ceiling, which has got to be my favourite post-gig chill out position ever. Claire the organiser popped in for a chat and revealed that we were in the green room that had been used by all the stars who'd made personal appearances at the BFI Southbank, reeling off a list of names that included Anjelica Huston and George Clooney. I wonder if George Clooney lay on his back on the same beanbag, looking up at his reflection in the ceiling? I bet he did.

Or maybe he had a chat with Anjelica Huston about how this room compared with other dressing rooms they'd both been in. I'd love to know how they rated it.

xxx

The Case of the Missing Nipple Tassels

2008-04-23T01:03:00.001+01:00

More tales from the dressing room

One Burlesque’n’Blues night at Volupte, panic breaks out in the dressing room. Marianne Cheesecake has forgotten her nipple tassels. First she asks the other burlesquers, but neither Vicky Butterfly nor Chrys Columbine have brought spares. They briefly contemplate sharing but realise this is technically unfeasible, given the turnaround between their acts and the amount of time it takes the glue to dry. So Marianne is left with three choices. Either 1) she stops her act short when the bra comes off, turns her back on the audience and finishes her turn there, 2) She gives everyone more of an eyeful than they bargained for, or 3) she finds something else to construct temporary pasties out of.

Marianne decides to go for option 3. Ever resourceful venue owner Delores Von Cotier is applied to for assistance, and produces two round plasters to go over Marianne’s nipples. This at least ensures the licensing laws will not be flouted. We all get very enthusiastic about using gaffer tape until the harsh reality of that nasty black stuff is right under our noses. Marianne quails visibly at the thought of sticking it to her tender extremities. Misses Butterfly and Columbine are full of advice about the best way to remove gaffer tape from the body – the consensus seems to be that it will hurt like hell whatever way you do it, so your best bet is to rip it off quick. All this sounds worse than waxing. A more gentle alternative, that of fashioning star shapes out of the gaffer tape which can then be stuck on with normal pastie glue, seems like a better idea in theory. I set about trying to make some little black stars out of gaffer tape. They look shit. Marianne very politely declines to affix the two wonky bits of black cack onto her nipples. The Blue Peter team’s jobs are safe.

In the end Marianne comes upon a brilliant solution off the cuff when she’s on stage doing her act. Marianne’s act for Burlesque’n’Blues involves shambling onstage dressed as a little old lady, carrying ‘Grandma’s Songbook’. This she plonks importantly down in front of Pete Saunders and instructs him to play. Pete bursts into Anything Goes, and Grandma starts to strip, to the consternation of the audience, who didn’t sign up for an edgy ‘alt-cabaret’ experience, and are not too thrilled at the prospect of septuagenarian nudity. To their relief, however, once the wig comes off, and a few more cardigans, Marianne is revealed to be a nubile young lady after all. Those of us in the know wait with baited breath for the climactic moment of the routine. How will Miss Cheesecake manage without her nipple tassels? What she does, very cleverly, is grab Grandma’s Songbook from the music stand as soon as the bra comes off, clutch it to her chest, and run off stage with her opening prop pressed back into service to finish the act. I think that’s what they call narrative closure. In fact, it’s such a good idea that I think Marianne should do the same thing every time, whether she remembers her pasties or not.

xxx

Playing with the Big Boys

2008-03-16T22:12:00.002Z

Stories from the Volupte Dressing Room

Every time I step inside the doors of Volupte it’s like walking into the plot of a movie. Usually one of those saucy 60s comedies with Brigitte Bardot or Peter Sellers in. So I’ve decided this material is too good to waste and it is my duty to share it with you.

Story number 1: The Texan Oil Baron

A partyloving burlesque beauty staggers into the dressing room to get ready for the night’s show complaining that she’s a wreck. She didn’t get in until two. And by that she means two this afternoon. I ask her where she’s been and she tells me the whole story. And then she says she probably shouldn’t have told me, but she’s just hopelessly indiscreet by nature. Unfortunately for her, it’s not in my nature to let a good story go to waste either. So I’m going to keep this burlesque beauty and her partner-in-crime anonymous by calling them Q and T (QT – see what I did there?). Q managed to get on the guestlist for an exclusive club, so she called up T and told her to don her glad rags: they were going out to play. (T, incidentally, had been telling me only the week before that she was a bit worried about Q because she was partying so hard at the moment. I’m guessing that was why she felt obliged to go along with her: to make sure she was okay.) Q and T get chatting to some well-heeled American guys who turn out to include a Texan oil baron, and who keep Q and T supplied with champagne all night. When, eventually, the exclusive nightclub closes its doors, Q and T make the Texan oil baron and his friends take them out for food. After the food they are reluctant to call it a night, but luckily the Texan oil baron reveals he still has a mini-bar in his suite at the Dorchester that will keep Q and T in booze for a bit longer. And that’s where Q and T stay until 2pm the following afternoon.

Q remained faithful to her boyfriend, despite her inebriated state (I believe Q’s boyfriend is a drummer, and it’s probably wise to stay faithful to any boy who hits things for a living), but T, who has recently rejoined the ranks of the unattached, indulged herself in a cheeky snog with the Texan oil baron. To T’s surprise, when she and Q left, the Texan oil baron pressed two thousand dollars into her hand ‘for the taxi’. I commented that it would be rather inconvenient to have to take the notes to a bureau de change before hailing a cab, but Q added that he had also given T a fifty pound note in addition to the two thousand US dollars. T had immediately instructed Q to tell no one this story, because she felt somewhat concerned that people might misconstrue the circumstances and think that she was now charging for snogs, whereas, in fact, the snog had been endowed with no thought of renumeration of any kind, as all the best snogs are. Q was mainly disappointed that her noble fidelity to her drummer boyfriend had meant that no notes were pressed into her own hands on departure. However, she was quite satisfied with the quality and quantity of free booze she had consumed courtesy of the Texan oil baron, although she did find it necessary to nip out to Sainsbury’s and get herself a bottle of Magners cider to put the zing back in her step before she could go on stage and do her thing.

I was filled with admiration for the colourful adventure Q and T had succeeded in having. It also occurred to me that their tale would make Beloved blanch, as it was precisely the sort of scenario he dreams up whenever I am late home from a gig and forget to text him, although all I ever get up to is a lengthy discussion about favourite artists with a (generally female or homosexual) cabaret comrade. No, these saucy tales of the Volupte dressing room were for me to listen to, not participate in.

Or so I thought.

Story number 2: The Riding Crop
Last Friday I was on the bill of Volupte’s Friday Follies, hosted by the blonde, dashing, and (tragically for the ladies) homosexual Mr Dusty Limits, who had brought with him a diamond encrusted riding crop to assist him in his role as Master of Ceremonies. It certainly came in handy for threatening the first house’s chatty audience into submission. I was also delighted to be asked to mind the crop while Dusty performed a number later in the show.

I gave it a couple of practise swishes. I feel quite comfortable holding a riding crop because, like many teenage girls, I went through a big pony-mad phase between the ages of 9 and 13. I was a very nervous rider, so I always got the laziest pony to ride, since there was no risk of him galloping off anywhere with me on top of him. Major, he was called, and he was a skewbald, although a skewbald what I’m not sure. To get Major to do anything more than amble, or stand stock still, it was necessary to carry a crop when riding him. I never actually had to hit Major with the crop; all I had to do was raise it threateningly, as if I was about to hit him, and Major would burst into a trot. For about ten paces. And then he’d go back to ambling again. I think I got my riding crop from my granddad who was an antiques dealer, and who seemed to be able to acquire most things required by my various childhood obsessions (including an antique bakelite recorder which was out of tune, but that’s a whole different story). My old crop’s probably still in the loft at home, with my riding hat (which my parents had decided it was probably safer to buy new rather than apply to my granddad for). But now here I was with a riding crop in my hand once more. I felt quite disappointed to have to give it back to Dusty.

After the first show, as I was about to head to the kitchen for my dinner (pasta and Bolognese sauce, courtesy of Cheffy) two gentlemen in the audience hailed me over. One of them explained that it was his 40th birthday and it would really make his night if I would spank him with the riding crop. I graciously told him I would think about it and retreated to the kitchen immediately, where I shared the story with Dusty, expecting him to laugh and think no more of it. Instead of which he calmly handed me his diamond encrusted riding crop.

So I went back out into the restaurant (followed by Sir Fitzroy Callow, Miss Connie Vanderlay and Volupte’s erstwhile soundman Steve, who couldn’t wait to see if I’d go through with it). Birthday boy obligingly got out of his seat and knelt in the alcove on the stage, presenting his rear end to me ready for a taste of the whip. I suggested his friend take a picture, but his friend complained it was too dark and there was no flash on his camera phone. Probably, in retrospect, this was just as well. I pretended to hit him, but instead passed the whip to his mate, who gave birthday boy a jokey thrashing. I thought this would suffice but birthday boy was adamant: he wanted me to whip him myself, just once. I backed up to give myself a good run up, thinking this would add to the comedy value, then ran over and whacked him. He was dewy eyed with gratitude.

I felt rather hot in the face as I retreated to the kitchen and returned Dusty’s crop. My trio of watchers wondered loudly if Beloved knew about this side of my nature? But, as I have so carefully explained with my anecdote about Major the pony, riding crops are for me objects with purely innocent childhood associations, and not in any way sexual.

In any way. Whatsoever.

xxx

Two Weddings and a Feather Fascinator

2008-02-23T00:05:00.001Z

Two weddings in less than a week, and I've been shopping like a whirling dervish with a credit card, I can tell you.

This Sunday, my beloved partner-in-crime, Miss Honey Mink, ties the knot in the Waldorf Hilton. I went with her on Tuesday to do a recce, and it's as gorgeous inside as those twinkly fairy lights on the outside promise. Me and the rest of the Slinktet are going to be playing some cheeky jazz straight after the ceremony in Palm Court, a room so glamorously art deco that it featured in Titanic as a location. Bobby Fresh's brand new silver glitter drumkit is going to look very snazzy in there indeed. I feel very excited that Fresh has bought himself such a glamorous new kit. I'm sure he didn't choose it solely for its looks alone, but the fact that he proudly sent us all a photograph of it leads me to suspect that he is not entirely insensitive to its beauty. There's also a rather lovely grand piano for Miss Connie to tinkle on, and a mad echoey acoustic that is going to make Sir Fitzroy's trombone very loud, and give us hell to play trying to get the vocals to sound half decent.

The night after my Waldorf recce I woke up sweating after a nightmare in which I was upstaged at the Reception by two opera singers, who muscled their way to the Palm Court grand piano before I could get to it, and started belting out arias while Honey's guests were sipping cocktails. Then, bizarrely, the wedding reception was transported into a pub, at which three different bands were playing, and all of them were fantastic, and none of them would get off stage and let me on, and when eventually they did, I'd lost my band. I'm not sure what this dream means exactly - jazzer Pete Saunders suggested a psychiatrist would have a field day with my 'opera complex' - but it's not as if I need to worry about my performance on Sunday anyway, because it's the bride who's going to be the star of this particular show. There are times when it is actually a great pleasure to be upstaged, and a dear friend's wedding is one of them.

Having said that, even though I know everyone will be clustering around the beautiful bride and not paying any attention to me singing in a corner, I had to go out and buy myself a new dress anyway. Of course, I can't actually afford a new dress. But there are times when Needs Must. It became apparent that I was going to have to buy a new outfit first thing this morning, when I disturbed Beloved's peaceful slumbers by yanking a dress I hadn't worn for years out from the back of my clothes rail and trying it on to discover that it was two sizes too big, then yanking another dress out of the bottom of a storage bag I noisily hauled down from the top shelf in the bedroom, narrowly avoiding a fatal accident in the process. That didn't fit either. Beloved freely acknowledged this, and then uttered those magical words that every girlfriend longs to hear:

"Get yourself a new dress. I'll pay for it."

Of course, I wouldn't dream of actually making him pay for it, but just hearing those words is like honey. And all the encouragement I needed to go racing out of the house. Frustratingly, Beloved made me wait until he'd finished his bath before I left, in case the postman turned up with his DVD box set of The Wire. I was literally hopping from foot to foot, going "Can I go now? Can I go now?" If he was ever in any doubt about how much I loved clothes, those doubts have been swept away by this morning's performance. Let's just hope he never asks himself what I would save first if the flat was on fire, him or my wardrobe.

The vintage clothes shops of Stoke Newington and Notting Hill Gate have come up trumps with a 50s dress in turquoise brocade and a pair of flawless Christian Dior pink satin heels. Then there's the pink feather fascinator I bought last weekend from a hatter in Rye, and a pair of white 50s gloves I inherited from my aunt, and a pink silk evening bag from Accessorise. Sorted. Ironically, the whole outfit was planned around the pink marabou feather coat my friend Stephane made me last year, but when I put the coat on top of the rest of the outfit I looked like some sort of grotesque parody of a Grease cast member - and not any of the cool ones, more like the 'beauty school dropout'. So the feather coat has to go, but actually the rest of the outfit works fine without it.

I know exactly when I am going to wear the feather coat, though... to my next wedding on 29 February. This, in stark contrast to Sunday's joyous and poignant event, will be a Sham Wedding. The bride is Mr Dusty Limits, and his three grooms will be Ruby Blues, Naomi Blume and Kate Friend. I am honoured to be participating in this "momentous and utterly ludicrous event" at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, along with, apparently, every single cabaret and burlesque performer in the whole of London Town. Dusty has issued us with stern instructions not to upstage each other. The service itself will no doubt surpass even the most hammy of soap opera weddings for shocking last minute revelations and moments of tear-jerking sentimentality. I can't wait to find out what the bride will be wearing. Even more intriguing is what the grooms will be wearing... here's hoping it's more than in their wedding photograph, or they'll catch their deaths.

I'm going to be leading the congregation in a stirring hymn on the ukelele. If you want to know what that hymn will be, and whether I will be able to get through the entire thing on my small pink friend without forgetting the chords or being upstaged by a burlesque diva wearing nothing but gold paint, you'll have to come to the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club on Friday 29 February and find out for yourself.

The Wedding of the (leap) year of the Rat: from 7pm on Friday 29 February at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, with a Deception from 9pm featuring sensational live bands and DJs. Entry £5.

I'll be the one in all the pink feathers.

xxx

Nostalgia Trip

2008-01-22T01:47:00.000Z

I just celebrated my birthday (no, I’m not telling), and it sent me on a nostalgia trip about my very first singing gig, which was also on my birthday, many years ago.

I was living in Sri Lanka, where I’d gone to teach English in an international school. Me and my flatmates, two other nubile young teachers, were invited out by a group of Sri Lankan bright young things to the karaoke bar of the Ramada Renaissance hotel in Colombo. I got up and had a turn at the mic, and when I came back to my seat, one of the bright young things, whose name was Rohan, told me there was a grand piano in the lobby, and did I fancy knocking out a few tunes with him? So while the rest of the gang went downstairs to the hotel nightclub, we hung out in the lobby going through all the tunes we could think of together. We kept at it for hours. Rohan was a composer who’d just come back from studying for a music degree in the States. He was quite sexy when he got behind a keyboard, and that was my idea of heaven: leaning against a shiny black grand piano, played by an attractive man, in a five star hotel lobby, in a tropical country, in the small hours of the morning, singing.

Then another bright young thing came over and said hello. She’d been listening for a while, and she knew Rohan slightly from the Colombo social scene. She told us she was organising a jazz night at the Hilton Hotel in a few weeks’ time, and she invited us both to come and perform at it. It was on 10 January. My birthday.

The girl put me in touch with the guy who was organising the music for her for that night; a jazz pianist called Cecil Rodrigo. I went over to his place to rehearse a few numbers with him. He lived in an annexe room over the garage of a relative’s house, and rehearsed on a tiny Casio keyboard. He had a lit cigarette between his fingers the whole time, and dropped ash on the keyboard while he played. Cecil thought I had promise, but I didn’t know enough of the standards. He told me to go away and listen to as much Ella Fitzgerald as possible. He also asked a singer friend of his, Jean Fernando, to lend me her lyrics book to photocopy so I’d have all the words to the standards. Jean performed in all the five star hotels in Colombo, with her husband Rodney on sax. She was lovely to me. I’ve still got that photocopy.

Meanwhile Rohan and I were spending quite a lot of time together, although always as part of a group. Sri Lankan social life for this rather upper crust set was a bit like something out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. The rigid rules of social acceptability lurked just beneath the surface of their apparently Western party lifestyle. It wasn’t respectable for Rohan and me to be alone together (although I wouldn’t have minded), and there was something clandestine about Rohan’s flirtation with me, which I didn’t really clock at the time, being quite new to the country. He’d phone me up and chat for hours; mischievous, teasing conversations; but when we were out with the group his female friends closed in around him. One of them once said to me at a party, “There are lots of good-looking English boys teaching at your school. Why don’t you stick to your own kind?” They saw me as a dangerous foreign femme fatale, which bemused me, since as far as I was concerned it was Rohan that was ringing me up and flirting with me. I only wanted him for his piano playing.

Rohan came round with a cassette he’d made for me: it was a copy of an album by Doris Day and Andre Previn. I must have played that album more or less daily for the whole two years I lived in Sri Lanka. Back home in England everyone was singing along to Take That. I was singing along to “Falling in love again” and learning Doris’s phrasing. Just a couple of years ago, our trombone player Sir Fitzroy Callow lent me his copy of the same album, and I was reunited with it. It still sounds as good.

My birthday and the gig came around, and the whole day seemed magical. I came back to Colombo on the train after a weekend in the hill country with a newfound friend, who was even more like something out of an Evelyn Waugh novel. Birthday Boy was a beautiful blonde public school boy who spent the entire train journey teaching me the lyrics to Cole Porter songs. I had fallen head over heels in love with him, all the more so because he batted for the other team, which made him tantalisingly unobtainable. We still go away for the weekend every year for my birthday, to celebrate our anniversary.

We arrived at the Hilton hotel’s nightclub, the Blue Elephant, for my debut that evening, and the staff presented me with a birthday cake. It was a chocolate mousse one, and it was absolutely gorgeous. I was sitting with Birthday Boy and a bunch of English teachers from the international school. Rohan turned up with an entourage of bright young things, who colonised the other side of the club.

Although I’d rehearsed a few times with Cecil Rodrigo, Rohan and I hadn’t rehearsed for our turn together that night. Naively, I hadn’t worried too much about that; when we’d played together in the Ramada lobby, it had seemed so easy and natural, so all we’d have to do, I thought, was the same thing again. But the forces that were pulling Rohan and me apart came to a head that night. There were digs about me made by his friends that Rohan seemed embarrassed about, and he avoided me for the whole evening until it was time to go on stage. Did Rohan do it because he had listened to his friends about how unsuitable I was, and wanted to drive me away? Was it an intentional act of humiliation? Or was he showing off his jazz virtuosity to his friends? Or perhaps I do him a disservice, and he was just a self-conscious performer, suffering from nerves or stage fright. For whatever reason, Rohan launched into a jazz rendition of the song we were meant to do together that was so abstruse that it was almost impossible for a novice like me to follow. I bravely battled through to the end of the number as best I could, then sloped off stage.

Cecil, the old jazzer who’d taken me under his wing and had been training me up, comforted me by saying that Rohan had been unfair on me, and hadn’t been playing with me at all. Then Cecil pulled me up on stage to play with him and his cronies, all seasoned jazzers with a warmth and generosity that was quite different to Rohan’s prickly performance. They were just more comfortable on stage. The sax player in Cecil’s band asked me if I knew “The Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady. I’d done the musical at school and I knew it like the back of my hand. But I’d never heard it done like this before. Cecil and his band swung it, and it was glorious. I came in, swooping over the top of it, remembering about half of the words, but feeling so gleeful at the mischief of the song’s transformation that it carried me through to the end triumphantly. I came off stage glowing, and completely smitten with jazz. That was my first experience of improvising with a band in front of an audience, and I was hooked from the off. It was like throwing yourself over the edge of the Death Slide at the adventure playground with your eyes shut.

If Cecil hadn’t pulled me back on stage after my disastrous number with Rohan, maybe I’d never have become a jazz singer. Cecil gave me my grounding in jazz, and my first gigs. In the second year I was there he went off the radar, and it turned out he’d started to drink more heavily, and lost a lot of his gigs because he was too unreliable. When I went back to Sri Lanka six years later and tried to look him up I found out he’d died of liver failure. I never got to tell him I was still singing, and to say thank you to him for kicking me off.

But on the other hand, if Rohan hadn’t pulled me out of the karaoke bar and over to the grand piano in the lobby that night at the Ramada Renaissance hotel, I’d never have been booked for my first ever gig, and I’d never have met Cecil in the first place. Rohan and I never made music together again like we did that first night; too many outside pressures got in the way. But that first night was magic.

And what number was I singing in the karaoke bar when he spotted me? Madonna’s Like a Virgin.

xxx

Learning To Beg

2007-12-09T19:55:00.000Z

I love everything about hosting open mic nights for singers at the Live Lounge and CellarDoor... except for one thing.

The begging.

The pianist and the host play for tips, so part of my job as the host is to sweetly cajole and/or strongly pressurise the audience into throwing some money into the hat. And I have to do this several times during the course of the evening. The relatively cowardly way to do this is to send the hat around the tables by itself while I sing a song which is hopefully so entertaining that the audience willingly dig deep into their pockets.

However, I have noticed that a lot of coppers end up in the hat this way, because people feel that for appearances sake they should put something in, but they don't really want to part with their dosh, so they put 1p and 2p pieces in. But this is worse than putting in nothing at all. Not only do the coppers weigh the hat down, thus impeding ease of passage around the room, they also encourage other people, who see the coppers in there, to put more coppers in themselves. And not only that, guess who is stuck counting the 1p and 2p pieces for half an hour at the end of the night, sifting through them hopefully looking for missed pound coins? Yours truly.

A tactic used by godfather of cabaret Mr Paul L Martin is to publicly shame anyone who doesn't donate, by pointing them out to the rest of the audience, and explaining to them that if they are enjoying to the evening's live entertainment, they should give money to the people who are providing that entertainment for them. And if they're not interested in the live entertainment, they should leave and find another bar where no one is singing their hearts out in front of their noses. This strategy frequently results in people leaving, rather than in people putting money in the hat, however.

The best way I've come up with so far to make people put proper money in the hat is to go round and stick it right under their nose in person. Nobody puts 2p pieces in when you're watching them like a hawk, it's almost uniformly pound coins, or even fivers, if you're lucky. It's nice if someone else will do this on your behalf - a friend, or one of the bar staff - but you generally get more if you do it yourself. So far I haven't directly confronted any of the people who have pointedly ignored me, or pretended they've already put money in when I know they haven't, but I have to say that my confidence is growing, and I've noticed that the more shameless and unembarrassed I am about asking for money, the more I get. "Please donate to the Starving Musician's Cocktail Fund" has been my most successful line as yet. It's only a matter of time before i'm having a face-off with some reluctant donor or other and asking them if the live music going on under their nose is interfering with their quiet evening out, or whether it is, in fact, contributing to their enjoyment in any way, in which case they should show their appreciation.

I once lived in Sri Lanka (where I also started my singing career, singing jazz in the five star hotels) and it took me a long time to get used to the constant barrage of beggars who would appear as if from nowhere as soon as I stepped outside my door (and sometimes even before I'd stepped outside my door). Street beggars who'd lost their arms thrusting their handless stumps through an open car window into my face was the most disturbing experience I remember. At first I reacted to this experience of everyone constantly wanting a piece of me by giving nobody anything. This was a pretty common initial gut reaction amongst all the other expats as well - we felt assaulted by these intrusions into our privacy, by the rudeness and apparent hostility of it. But I noticed when I was out with affluent Sri Lankans that they would give automatically without even thinking twice about it. In Sri Lanka, giving to beggars was like tipping in restaurants: just something you do, to maintain the economic system you live within.

And now I find myself on the opposite side of that equation, at a time of life when I expected I'd be financially secure, instead of which I'm the one holding out the begging bowl. When I'm passing the hat around at an open mic night, I sometimes get unnerving flashbacks to those handless stumps being waved in my face through a car window in Sri Lanka.

Being a performer gives you an odd sort of status. On the one hand, people are often admiring, and complimentary, and you certainly get more ego boosts than you do in most other jobs. On the other hand, you are just as often viewed as someone in a servile role, who is there for the entertainment of the audience, the hired help, and therefore low status. Ironically, in my experience, the more you are paid for a private function, the more you are ignored or treated with disdain by the guests. So, to persevere as a performer, you must be resilient to rapid, unexpected, and unpredictable swings in status, from god to serf and back again, sometimes several times in one evening. Apparently Buddha said it was good discipline for anyone on the road to enlightenment to experience periods of both high and low status in their life. I can see how it could help to polish you into a fine, humble and generous spirit - although it is just as likely to leave you a neurotic bag of nerves.

So how to overcome this status neurosis and steel myself to ask my audience to pay me for my performance?

I suppose at the end of the day it's about how much I value my own and my colleague's work: because in life one generally gets what one thinks one deserves (rather than what one really deserves. This is one of life's great ironies, but also one of life's great secrets. Once you're in on it, your path will be strewn with rose petals. Probably. )

I know that my colleague on piano is working his socks off performing musical feats that I could never dream of accomplishing (even if I could play the piano) - sight reading 10-page-long musical scores, transposing keys on sight, and vamping around a singer who's lost their place until they find it again, without drawing attention to the fact. He's earned his money all right, which is why I owe it to him to get as much as I can out of the crowd. I also know that I'm working hard to make the evening fun for everybody in the room, and that's no mean feat either, so I deserve my half too.

Hosting an open mic night can be a delicate balancing act. Sometimes pleasing the would-be singers by giving them several opportunities to sing is not pleasing the audience, who want more variety, and don't mind one or two rather more experimental or charmingly unpolished performances, but find their patience wearing thin if required to listen to too many of them. Sometimes taking on a roomful of drunken partygoers is like walking into a bear pit - although you're just as likely to find yourself being playfully stroked by the bears as you are being savaged by them. However, drunk bears can play rough without even realising they're doing it, so you're also just as likely to come out bruised from copious effusions of affection.

Sometimes nobody in the room is interested in anything other than their own performance, and twitch impatiently through everyone else's turns until they can get behind the mic themselves. Singing to this type of crowd, as host, is terrifying, because you are supremely aware that your technical vocal abilities are being judged by a highly-attuned critical ear, and, worse, with that sort of why-not-me attitude that is impossible to please except by making it their turn as fast as possible. Which is generally my strategy in these situations. And when I do come back on to sing at the end, it's usually to lead the room in a singalong - which is another cunning strategy to deal with overly-critical listeners, because they will be far too busy concentrating on their own performance to worry about mine.

But when the night works - and this is what I'm beavering away to achieve, by working the room and smiling and chatting to everybody, and trying to find out what their musical dreams and ambitions are, and giving them a gentle nudge up to the microphone if they need it - when the night works it's magic. About 10 times more magic than just playing a gig yourself and having people just sitting listening to you. Because you're all part of something together: a night of musical discovery where new voices have been heard and people have exposed themselves on a microphone for the first time and discovered how exciting it is to make yourself vulnerable on stage for an audience. And even the people who've discovered how emotionally eviscerating it is to make yourself vulnerable on stage for an audience have been lifted up by the love in the room and made to feel better about the fact they sang the whole of Girl From Ipanema in the wrong key. Because no one is more gentle with performers than other performers. Because nobody knows better than other performers how hard it is to get up there and sing the right notes, and the right words, in the right order, and most of all to be yourself, amplified.

When the night works, it's priceless.

And those are the nights we get the most money in the hat.

xx

Have Ukelele, Will Travel

2007-11-19T09:10:00.001Z

Walking around London with a ukelele case all of a sudden transforms your day into a whimsical adventure, whether or not that was your original intention. Try it yourself, and you'll see what I mean.

A few days ago I headed out of the house with a long list of back-to-back social engagements, and the last one on the list was the ukelele jam session that happens every week in the Royal George pub off Charing Cross Road, so that meant I had to take my ukelele with me to all the other appointments too.

First off I dropped in on Johnboy, the manager of the Lincoln Lounge, who made me a frothy free latte while we discussed plans for the Ukelele Cabaret on Tuesday. While we were at it, we also discussed a range of other random matters, such as the ethics of ripped software, how many books we owned and the ethics of making drunken punters move off a reserved table. Then I realised I had to be in Soho for another meeting in half an hour, and foolishly decided to walk it because it would be good exercise and more interesting.

Half an hour later, instead of being safely ensconced in one of Soho House's sofas where I should have been, I was standing on a Bloomsbury street corner staring blankly at the pages of my A to Z. A girl stopped and asked me if I was lost, then revealed that I was in fact in Holborn not Soho and pointed me in the right direction. Before she walked off she asked me if that was a ukelele I was carrying? I said it was and she said it was nice to meet a fellow ukelele player. So i whipped out a flyer for Tuesday's gig and pressed it eagerly into her hand before I skittered off.

I think it was the ukelele case that made her stop and help me in the first place. A ukelele sisterhood, if you like.

Rushing through Soho in a slightly sweaty panic, I discovered another use for a ukelele case - brandishing it in front of me like a sword, I was able to clear myself a path through the teeming crowds of Tottenham Court Road far more effectively.

I apologised profusely for being late when I finally rattled into Soho House and my host said graciously that it was worth it to see a girl walk in with a ukelele.

When that meeting was finished I trotted down to Picadilly Circus to the Pigalle Club to pick up our pay from the previous week's gig. I think there's something really cool about walking into clubs through the back door, especially really posh West End supper clubs. Even if the back corridors are invariably grubby and grim. In fact the posher the venue, the grimmer the back corridor - it's a sort of Murphy's Law of gigging. I did feel a bit weird trotting into the club when it wasn't even our night to play there, but the fact that I was carrying my ukelele case made me feel legitimate, and also meant that nobody questioned my right to be in the back corridors; they could look at me, see the instrument case and think, ah, right, she's a musician, that explains what she's doing here. Handy. I was especially grateful for my prop when I had to squeeze past Lenny Beige and his cohorts while they were soundchecking for their gig that night. Lenny Beige exists only as a legend for me: one day I hope to actually get to see one of his shows, but at least I've seen him obsessively mumbling gibberish into a radio mic, which is something.

Then I trotted off to yet another meeting at the University Women's Club, where an eclectic array of very individual-looking women of every age, shape, size and colour barely gave my ukelele case a second glance, then I shimmied my way past all the designer shops of Mayfair, swinging my case happily, back into Soho and finally to my destination, the ukelele jam itself.

Walking down into a basement full of ukeleles of every hue, as well as a smattering of banjoleles for good measure, I could almost feel my little pink Mahalo vibrating with pleasure from inside its case, like a purring kitten.

One of the ukelele jammers said to me after we'd finished playing for the night that the thing with the ukelele is that you either get it or you don't. The world, for him, is divided into Friends of the Ukelele and everyone else.

I appear to have stumbled into some sort of evangelical musical movement - Ukevangelism?

Little did I know when I first picked up one of these diminutive little instruments that I was also becoming part of a Movement and taking on a spiritual creed. I'm not sure exactly what the creed of the ukelele is, but I'll ponder on it and maybe try and write it out in due course. I think it might have something to do with being whimsical and taking the scenic route in life.

Even if taking the scenic route makes you fifteen minutes late for a meeting, it would seem that if you're carrying a ukelele with you, nobody will mind.

xxx

Creamcake Splatter Damage

2007-11-10T15:37:00.000Z

Packing up my kit bag last night with my Jazz Costume, ready for my late spot at the Warped Variety Show, I spotted some grubby bits of cack stuck to my pink velvet shoes.

What on earth was that nasty brownish stuff?

Then I remembered. About a month ago I did a spot at the Volupte Saturday Night Gala, right after a burlesquer by the name of Stella Plumes. One of Stella's acts is to come on stage as her alter-ego, Enid Brown, in a prim and proper 40s style secretary get-up, complete with glasses and hair in a bun. She then recites a poem about how everyone told poor downtrodden Enid to behave herself and not eat cakes, but she decided to transform herself into Stella Plumes and be a bad girl. 'Enid' then strips off right down to her lingerie, while gorging herself seductively on cream cakes at the same time. This act has intense appeal to the women in the audience, making the connection so explicit between being a bad girl and eating sugary confections slathered in chocolate.

After her act Stella trotted gaily off the stage in her suspenders, knickers and nipple tassels, and I trotted gaily on, putting my foot right in her chocolate eclair.

Being the showman that I am I didn't flinch - and a moment later I was distracted by a very drunk gentleman shouting "Off! Off! Off!" I wasn't sure if he was referring to my clothes or my entire person, but when I went over to take him to task over his heckling after my set, he assured me that I was very lovely and he had meant no offense (while kissing my hand rather sloppily). This did not deter him from shouting the same thing at every other act that went on after me as well, however.

Sir Fitzroy asked me in passing later what on earth that squishy brown thing on the floor at his feet had been, and was relieved to hear it was only a cream cake. You never know with these burlesque girls. But he was mostly concerned with the heckler and his intense desire to march off stage and thump the guy with his trombone. I'm glad he didn't: I don't want any harm coming to Fitz's brass.

And so I completely forgot about the cream cake until last night, when I spotted those bits of several-week old cream and choux pastry clinging to my footwear. I'm happy to report I managed to get it all off with the nail brush from the side of the bath. And then I put the nail brush back on the side of the bath without rinsing it off. But I was in a rush to get to the gig - and nobody ever uses those things on their actual nails anyway.

I will remember to rinse the nail brush off later. Probably.

xxx

The Love Axe

2007-10-11T20:05:00.000+01:00

I've always known Beloved was fond of his gold fender strat, but I've never troubled myself with the question of which of us he would save if the house was burning down.

Until last night.

While walking across the front room yesterday evening I caught my foot in the guitar lead and knocked the axe in question off its stand so it went flying and landed on my foot.

While I shrieked in pain, Beloved leaped across the room and picked up his poor precious baby. He cradled the guitar protectively in his arms and peered solicitously along its neck. One of the strings had broken and hung limply from the fretboard. Beloved struck a tentative chord. The guitar made a pitifully cacophonous noise, a bit like a mewling kitten.

For the next hour Beloved refused to look at or speak to me. Instead he fetched a screwdriver, a soft cloth and a can of furniture polish, and proceeded to administer a full medical on his poor bruised guitar. The strings were carefully removed. The fretboard was lovingly polished. A panel was unscrewed from the back of the guitar, revealing three mysterious springs. Beloved then attempted to remove the spring from inside the lid of the spray can of furniture polish without success. Luckily he turned out not to need it, as all three springs in the back of the guitar were apparently intact. He then carefully placed the stringless but now very sparkly axe on its stand, and pointedly kicked the leads and wires out of the way of any stray clumsy feet that may happen to be passing.

Throughout this entire procedure I was rubbing my poor bruised toes, emitting faint whimpers of pain, to which Beloved was completely oblivious.

Several hours later, Beloved decided to graciously accept my apology for tripping over a wire in the semi darkness that was sprawled right across my path, and grudgingly acknowledged that I might not have knocked his guitar over on purpose.

I look forward to a full medical update on the wellbeing of the Love Axe when I get home this evening.

As for my toes, they are much better, and only slightly sore, so the good news is that I will be able to wear heels again.

Although possibly not in the front room.

xxx

An International Burlesque Star Stole My Lipliner

2007-09-13T16:49:00.000+01:00

The dressing room at Volupte is a hotbed of glamour and intrigue.

Last Friday night was no exception, as a room-ful of semi-clad maidens jostled for position in front of the mirror and catalogued their various beauty woes.

"I can't find my nipple tassels!" shrieked Kitty Bang Bang, emptying the entire contents of her vanity case onto the dressing room floor. A fascinating array of satin lingerie tumbled out - but no nipple tassels. As you can imagine, embarking upon a burlesque striptease without that crucial final layer of concealment is unthinkable.

Luckily the combined maternal instincts and razor-sharp organisational skills of our Mother Superior of Burlesque, Gwendoline Lamour, came to the rescue, because naturally she had a spare set in her own bag kept at the ready for just such an emergency. They were silver ones, in the shape of snowflakes. Gwendoline warned Kitty that one corner was a bit wonky and needed extra glue to keep it stuck on. Kitty was limp with gratitude.

And very fine they looked too, if not entirely in-line with the playing card theme of her new 'Luck be a Lady' routine. But I didn't hear any of the appreciative punters in the audience commenting on the incongruity of snowflakes, so I think she got away with it.

As for me, I was moaning about the fact that my hair was all frizzy, and asking advice from my partners in glamour on what on earth to do about it. Kitty's suggestion - don't wash your hair on the day of a gig - was unfortunately too late to follow, but The Divine Miss Em bunged me some hair serum which helped no end.

Then it was Gwendoline's turn to put the distress call out, as she realised she couldn't find her red lipliner. Horror! No burlesque star goes on stage without red lipstick, least of all the star of the entire night. I lent her mine, and was rather pleased to be told it was the perfect colour. It was, however, sharpened with an inferior type of sharpener, which meant the point wasn't long enough. Luckily Gwendoline had a proper sharpener, and gave me back my own second rate one, before carefully sharpening my lip pencil with her more professional tool.

I used the lipliner myself right after Gwendoline had finished with it, and it did indeed seem easier to handle with a longer point. Now I come to think about it, I've had that old pencil sharpener since I was about sixteen, and it came free with a set of big fat pearlised eyeshadow pencils which have long since gone the way of all superannuated make up in my life. (They're stashed in a vanity case on my dressing table.) Note to self - next time I'm in Covent Garden I shall brave the supercilious sneers of the shop assistants in Charles Fox and go and pick up a proper pencil sharpener.

Last time I went into Charles Fox it was my maiden visit to this den of thespianry, and very intimidating it was too. I was buying some new make up ready for a 2-minute screentest I was shooting the next day with filmmaker Alex de Campi, and she'd told me she wanted me to look really pale skinned, for a very heightened, extreme look. However, the greasepaint that the assistant in Screen Face showed me was actually about two shades darker than my natural skin colour. I told her that I'd been instructed to get something pale, but she retorted:

"Oh no, you need to go much pinker for stage lighting. When I'm on stage myself, I always go for a foundation much darker and warmer than my natural skin tone, otherwise I look washed out."

I was still doubtful about this - I explained I was being filmed rather than appearing in the theatre, but Miss Make Up claimed this made no difference. When I reiterated that the director had explicitly asked me to go for a pale shade, and asked her about a greasepaint stick two shades lighter than the one she'd suggested, she got huffy with me:

"By all means get that one - if you want to look like a corpse."

She then walked off and refused to meet my eye for the duration of my time in the shop, so I had to get her colleague to help me find translucent powder, false eyelashes, a sponge and a powder-puff.

Gritting my teeth in the face of this opprobrium, I bought the "too-pale" shade I'd picked out anyway - and you can see for yourself whether it makes me look like a corpse by having a look at the film Alex shot of me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwUxtrITgVI

Meanwhile, back in the Volupte dressing room the clock was ticking. (Not that there is actually a clock in there. It's on the list of things we always harp on about needing for that room every time we're getting ready, along with a second mirror for the other wall. Harping on about this has now become one of those reassuring Volupte rituals.) Showtime was almost upon us, so I chucked my lipliner back in my make up bag, picked up my skirts and skittered up the two flights of stairs to the restaurant.

Because I make use of a magical and quite possibly carcinogenic product known as Lipcote, I don't need to top up my lipstick at half time when I'm doing a show. Lipcote is a mysterious liquid that comes in a little bottle with an applicator brush and which you paint around the edges of your lips then across their entire surface area to permanently glue on your lipstick. It stings like a motherfucker (as a certain potty-mouthed Burlesque star would say), but so powerful is its effect that I regularly have to scrub my lips with my toothbrush to get the red lipstick off at the end of the night.

However, probably very wisely, none of my show-mates make use of this dubious substance, so, it occurs to me in retrospect that I was perhaps a little bit previous in assuming the work of my lipliner was done for the evening, and putting it away. When I came back to the dressing room after the first show I was mildly puzzled to see my make up bag lying open when I was sure I'd put it in my canvas holdall, but I packed it away again absentmindedly without thinking to check its contents.

And this despite Gwendoline's dire warning to me just a few weeks before, that she had a dangerous tendency to hoover up any make up that was left anywhere in her vicinity. That time, I had only just managed to rescue my greasepaint stick (yes the corpse-coloured one) and powder puff in the nick of time, before they disappeared forever into the black hole of her make up bag.

I have no evidence whatsoever for the outrageous accusation made in the title of this blog entry. But when I unzipped my make up bag to get ready for my show at CellarDoor on Sunday, there was no sign of my red lipliner anywhere.

Hazily the memory of that open make-up bag came back to me. Could it be that, needing a lip top up, and, naturally, needing to use the same shade as she'd put on before, Miss Lamour had fished out my lip pencil once more and then, in her haste to rush to the stage, absentmindedly left it in a pile with the rest of her make up paraphernalia, to be swept into the Black Hole when she packed up at the end of the night? If I hadn't tidied away my own make up bag into my holdall, she'd probably have noticed it sitting there, and remembered where the lipliner came from.

Of course my lipliner might actually be rattling around in the bottom of my canvas holdall, along with a multicoloured bag of straws (in case the venue don't have any, and I need one for my water, to avoid smudging my lipstick on the rim of the glass), and a pink paper fan (in case it's hot on stage - this item of my Emergency Kit hasn't been out of the bag all summer, incidentally). I should probably have checked before making such wild accusations.

But the fact remained that on Sunday night I was in a bit of a jam. No red lipliner, and no roomful of burlesque stars to tap for one either. Just me in my own bathroom at home.

What did I do? I pulled a faded cloth vanity case from the bottom of a pile of stuff on my dressing table and opened up Pandora's Box to reveal every discarded piece of make up I have ever possessed since the tender age of sixteen (my mum wouldn't let me wear make up before then. I'm not sure what dangerous effect she thought it might have on me, but whatever her fears were, I think it's fair to say I've surpassed them many times over by now.) Sure enough, in amongst the peach pearlised lipsticks and dried out mascara wands was a red lipliner of fine length, virtually unused. I gave it a quick sharpen with my vintage teenage sharpener, and we were good to go.

So everything was all right in the end. My new (old) lipliner does the job nicely, although a better pencil sharpener might help transform it into a truly professional tool. My original red lipliner may or may not be jetsetting its way around the world in the make up bag of an international burlesque star. I like to think of it being whipped out in dressing rooms in New York, LA, and Istanbul. Oh what tales it will soon be able to tell, if it could talk. (Although if it could talk, I doubt Gwendoline would let it live. And come to think of it, neither would I.)

Will I be asking Gwendoline for my lipliner back? Absolutely not.

xxx

False eyelashes, deckchairs and underground toilets

2007-08-21T22:27:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy few days on Planet Vogue.

Friday night was A Night of Lamour at Volupte. I was providing the musical interludes between the stripteases, and Miss Gwendoline Lamour was breaking in a new outfit.

Boys, forgive me. I have to take a few moments to describe this wonder. The girls, and one or two of the homosexual men among my readership, will understand.

First, a full length silk satin coat, with a train, in pale gold, trimmed with brocade and swarovski crystal beads. The coat was given to Gwendoline by a designer friend, but came from the designer's wedding collection and was in fact worth three and a half grand. The brocade and beads were sewn on by Gwendoline herself. She plans to add more when she's saved up to buy enough swarovski crystals. Beneath the coat, a golden corset, absolutely decked in beads, again, all lovingly sewn on by Gwendoline's own hand.

Never before has the point that burlesque is really all about showing off fabulous outfits and only secondarily, if at all, about showing naked flesh been brought home to me more emphatically.

The dressing room was a flurry of twittering anxiety. and I was the worst of the lot, because lovely Connie was halfway up a mountain in Italy, and I'd called in a dep to cover the gig for the evening. A dep who I hadn't actually had a chance to rehearse with at all. A dep who hadn't turned up yet. Luckily for me, Dickie Luck (yes that is his real name) appeared in the nick of time, after a rocky ride on the tube, and we dashed for the piano, just in time to run through our numbers before they started letting the punters in. I just had time to nip back down to the dressing room, where four burlesque stars were jostling for position in front of the mirror, and finish putting on my own slap.

Miss Honey Deville was struggling with her false eyelashes and wanted to know how I stuck mine on. I explained that I used surgical glue (which dries transparent), blew on the eyelashes after I'd applied the glue to dry it a bit before I put them onto my eyelids, and used a cotton wool bud to prod the edge of the lashes down onto my lids if they started peeling away. Honey got one lash on perfectly and was full of thanks for my 'hot tips' until her second lash completely failed to stick. Then divine Miss Roxy Velviet, cheekiest of burlesque dames, offered up her own eyelash tips. Her eyelash glue was from Shu uema and cost a fortune, but was, she claimed, about 10 times stickier than the regular type. She also suggested putting the glued eyelash onto your eyelid then taking it straight off again, so that when you put it back on after the glue has started to dry, there is glue on both surfaces (the lashes and your eyelid), which makes it stick better.

Miss Honey Deville was a bit reluctant to fork out for Shu uema luxury eyelash glue, although the other half of Roxy's advice seemed eminently sensible (I even tried it myself before my Sunday gig, but I think I'll stick to my regular method because it got a bit messy). Roxy then revealed that the only reason she actually possessed this fabulous Shu uema glue was because she'd done a photoshoot once and the make up artist had told Roxy to put the glue in her pocket while they were on the location, then completely forgotten to claim it back off her afterwards. Spoils of war. Nice one.

Both shows went off with a bang, and Honey Deville's glitter eyelashes not only looked fabulous but also stayed on throughout the night. Gwendoline's new outfit drew appreciative gasps from the crowd, as did her swing act. Roxy Velvet ate a goldfish live on stage. And me and Dicky Luck managed to feel our way through the four songs we'd had exactly ten minutes to rehearse and look as if we knew what we were doing. Oh and chef gave me a mouthful of freshly made cinnamon meringue which hadn't quite dried yet, but which was absolutely delicious.

Saturday morning at the crack of dawn my alarm went off because I'd offered to go and be an extra in director Alex de Campi's music video. I promptly turned it off and went straight back to sleep, then woke up an hour and a half later with the dim awareness that I was supposed to be doing something. I somehow made it to Embankment Gardens only an hour late, and discovered, to my relief, that none of the extras had actually been needed in a shot yet. Our job was to sit in deck chairs reading books. Nice one.

The story of the video was that a skinny lad was singing a love song to a girl on one of the deckchairs, then was spotted by a couple of record industry men, who replaced him with a cheesy boyband singer, but the skinny lad broke a bottle over the boyband singer's head and reclaimed the song for himself, before running off into the sunset with the girl in the deckchair. I thought the skinny lad was the musician whose song it was, but when we were chatting on the bandstand later it turned out he was an actor, and the guy who'd made the track (and who was also a former member of Scritti Politti) was the unassuming middle aged bloke who'd been in charge of playback earlier, and had been lugging a mini amp and MP3 player around obligingly. The self consciously cool looking bloke in the shades and leather jacket who I'd assumed to be the star when I first arrived turned out to be nothing to do with the track at all. He was the actress in the deckchair's boyfriend.

I also learned (from the boyband singer) that having a sugar glass bottle broken over your head feels like nothing at all, and the boyband singer actually had to remind himself to fall, because there was nothing to push him to the ground. I also tried wasabi nuts for the first time (very hot) and learned (from the boyband singer, again) that Vogue cigarettes are actually what old ladies smoke. Which has done more than anything else so far to deter me from smoking them. But still not quite enough.

Oh and I met pioneer online diarist Dickon Edwards, who's been writing a blog for about a decade now and is very good at it. I just had a little peek at his diary and sure enough he's written up the video shoot as well, with infinitely more erudition:

http://dickonedwards.co.uk/diary/index.php/archive/polymaths-in-the-park/

Dickon's got such an elegant way of putting things. I like the idea of being a polymath - and I suppose now that I spend half my time writing and the other half of my time singing in nightclubs in flamboyant gowns, that might even qualify me as one. Or a dilettante - although I'm not sure which one of my two 'jobs' I could be described as dabbling in. Beloved has a creeping suspicion that it might be the day-job I take the less seriously of the two, and is constantly encouraging me to focus on my writing career and stop getting sidetracked by glitter and feathers.

But on Sunday Beloved came along to my gig - which was lovely of him - and not only that, he even rounded up loads of his mates to come too. The gig was at CellarDoor, a former underground toilet on Aldwych, now converted into a very chic little venue, all banquettes and mirrors. The stage 'area' (if that isn't an exaggeration) is surrounded by a black velvet curtain that can be whipped aside dramatically at the beginning of the set, and swished closed again at the end. This alone would be enough to give away the camp leanings of the bar's two owners, even without the absurdly handsome bar staff. Mr Dickie Luck struggled his way through the very cryptic charts I put in front of him and made beautiful noises come out of the keyboard despite my best efforts to throw him off the scent. There were occasional moments when I was singing a different tune to the one he was playing, but hey, people expect that when it's jazz. A moment of brilliant serendipidy occurred when I whipped out my small pink ukelele, and a girl in the audience whipped out another pink ukelele to match. It was her birthday, and she'd just been given it as a present. She turned out to be the singer in two London bands, and I invited her to come with me to the 'uke gotta be kidding' ukelele jam on Wednesday nights on Charing Cross Road. She promises to come as soon as she's learned her first chord...

It was a very special night for me because my best friend was in the audience, visiting London from Edinburgh for his Birthday. This is the man I wrote one of my most moving and romantic songs about - The Man I Love Loves Only Men - and I was able to serenade him in person, which he enjoyed enormously, being quite possibly even more of a shameless show off than I am. I suspect he enjoyed the cabaret Kylie cover even more though - because he could join in with the dance routine. There are not many men who can mime their way through a Kylie routine and still retain any gravitas, but Birthday Boy is one of the few. I think his new beard might have helped, or possibly the poise that several years of university lecturing have lent him. Although as far as I can tell his students have been more a bad influence on him, than he's been a good influence on them.

But now he must return to his hibernian home, and his new kitten, and I must return to my weekday life of less glamour and more contentment in my Stoke Newington pied a terre, where Beloved is cooking up quiche and salad and disproving the myth that real men don't eat it once and for all.

And so the false eyelashes come off and the 'real me' is revealed at last...

But only until next Sunday, when I'll be sticking them straight back on again.

TV

xx

Sore Fingertips

2007-08-12T21:07:00.000+01:00

More jazz injuries - this time self-inflicted.*

All my fingertips on my left hand are killing me from practising the ukelele.

They are also developing hard pads like cat's paws on the ends, which will eventually mean (hopefully) that it'll stop hurting so much when I practice.

It never hurts when I play in front of an audience. This must be because the adrenaline kicks in and you don't feel anything. This is probably the same reflex that stops me sneezing on stage as well, even though my hay fever is so bad this year that I've actually come near to biting off my own tongue a couple of times, such are the power of my sneezes.

Although I feel no pain live on stage, I do however manage to forget the chords to songs I thought I knew inside out and upside down as soon as somebody else is looking at me. My strategy has therefore been to write some new songs that only have two chords in them. So far this strategy has been extremely successful.

However, with my usual unrealistic approach to music and performance, I have now decided to attempt to learn how to play the real big league jazz standards, in order to perform them live on solo ukelele. I'm starting with Take Five. I'm getting the hang of strumming in 5/4 time, but it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to get the audience to sing along, so that they can provide the famous 'take five' riff themselves. This will also serve a dual purpose, as it will hopefully distract the audience from listening too closely to the pregnant pauses, lurches and stumblings which pepper my ukelele stylings.

Another side-effect of playing the ukelele, as well as sore fingertips, is the necessity for short nails. This is going to put the kybosh on any plans for glamour manicures in the near future, unless someone can come up with instantly detachable (or hinged?) nail extensions. I've discounted the idea of having long nails on one hand and short nails on the other. That just sends out mixed messages. The solution is probably to wear gloves at all times unless I am actually playing the ukelele. Then hopefully my fingers will be flying over the strings so fast that nobody will notice their stubby nail-ness.

I'm very pleased with my hard case - a generous gift from Miss Vanderlay's mother (thank you Mrs V!) - although a couple of times I have been mistaken for a violinist on my way to the Royal Festival Hall (instead of a cabaret artist on my way to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern). I've also heard a few cracks about carrying a tommy gun in there, Bugsy Malone style, but luckily not so far from any employees of the underground or gentlemen in Blue.

The next thing on my ukelele shopping list is a ukelele stand. I bet they sell them at the Duke of Uke.

Imagine my tiny pink ukelele sitting proudly upright on stage on its very own little stand - possibly cosying up between Mysterio's swish orange German guitar and Trousers' new Japanese Fender bass like some sort of bastard guitar offspring. If I can get two stands, then mine and Honey's can snuggle up next to each other like twin babies.

I think I am to be congratulated on finding an instrument to play that successfully repels all attempts to take it seriously. I am determined to hold true to my defiant stance against becoming a 'serious musician' - and thankfully, even now that I am regularly seen actually playing an instrument (one of the credentials essential for the 'serious musician' tag), I seem to have got away with it by choosing an instrument that is absurdly tiny, and pink.

phew

TV

xx

*PS if my jazz injuries are self-inflicted, does that make it musical self-abuse?

smoking - a cautionary tale

2007-08-01T23:57:00.000+01:00

Last night I was dancing around in a flat in Bounds Green (no, I didn't know where it was either, until I got there, and I'm still not sure I could find it again) one minute, and mopping up blood the next.

I was at the residence of two delightful Swiss German gentlemen whose exquisite taste in interior decor was only rivalled by their gardening skills. The Fine Artist of the couple had just introduced me to the breathtaking camp grandeur of a tune called Paroles Paroles by tragic French 70s pop diva, Dalida, and I was waving my arms about appreciatively, making shapes in sillhouette in the window glass, as you do after putting away about a bottle and a half of cava, joined by the Artist and another of his guests. Only then did we notice that the Artist's better half was mysteriously absent.

Moments later he reappeared in the flat with a bloody nose, a cut lip, wonky glasses and a big graze over his eye. Most distressing of all was the fact that he'd knocked out half of his front teeth. Had he been beaten up? No. He had been running to the off licence to buy more cigarettes before they shut when he tripped and fell flat on his face.

The real tragedy of the situation was that my fellow guest had a brand new packet of cigarettes in her car all along, so our host's mission had been completely unnecessary in the first place.

While I refilled our host's wine glass, my fellow guest carefully placed a cigarette between his numb lips, and lit it for him. He inhaled gratefully, and the soothing effect of the nicotine enabled him to calm down enough to recount his sorry tale. His companion then proceeded to tell him how unattractive his face now looked, while my fellow guest started lecturing him about the dangers of bad British dentistry, and recommending her own dentist in Milan.

Non-smokers frequently talk about the strange death-wish that drives us smokers to continue fuelling our nicotine addiction. It seems we must now add running to the shop for more supplies to the list of perils that assail us on all sides.

Naturally we will all continue smoking anyway, out of sheer bloody mindedness

TV

xxx

The Black Hole of Volupte

2007-07-20T18:43:00.001+01:00

I have had my suspicions for a while now, and the evidence is mounting...

Deep in the underbelly of Holborn's favourite cabaret and burlesque club, there lurks a Black Hole.

Perhaps I have been watching too much Doctor Who (in fact, I know I've been watching too much Doctor Who... god bless broadband) but there is definitely something spooky going on down there...

It all started with Connie Vanderlay's watch, which mysteriously vanished from the dressing room. Then Earl Mysterio reported that his entire music folder had disappeared. And then I discovered that I'd lost my diamond ring. I never lose my diamonds - as anyone familiar with my act will know, my diamonds are very precious to me and i keep them close to my heart at all times. They may not be real diamonds, but that's not their fault. I can only conclude that a supernatural force has been at work.

I mentioned this Black Hole thesis to Bobby Fresh a few days ago, and he revealed that Volupte had also swallowed up one roll of gaffer tape and two felt-covered mallets (which are apparently for hitting drums with).

A watch, a folder full of chord charts, a diamond ring, a roll of gaffer tape and two mallets. What strange device is our supernatural foe creating in its underworld lair?

And then the text came today from club owner Miss Kuki Labelle informing me that her laptop computer had also mysteriously disappeared from Volupte's subterranean depths.

Which means that the Creature from the Black Hole is now online, and is probably reading this blog entry right now... which means it knows I'm onto it.

Which means that next time I descend the staircase into Volupte's basement, I might never come back up again...

TV

xx

more jazz injuries

2007-07-05T01:04:00.000+01:00

Having said i'd never heard of such a thing as a jazz injury shortly before our trombone maestro Sir Fitroy Callow fell down the Volupte stairs, I've just thought of another jazz injury:

I've got one front tooth that is yellower than the other. My dentist told me that it is actually dead because I've knocked it.

It took me ages to figure out when I'd knocked my front tooth. And then one day I got over excited while I was singing at a gig and whacked my teeth on the microphone - and remembered that I'd done that quite often before in the past.

So there you have it. My jazz singing has actually killed one of my front teeth.

Who'd have thought jazz could be so perilous?

TV

xx

Purple Hair

2007-06-24T13:01:00.000+01:00

It's one thing to be an exotically bohemian 'starving artist' surviving on tinned tomatoes and £1 jumbo bags of penne pasta from Sainsbury's. it's another to be too broke to afford to get your hair done.

Imagine my delight, then, when I received a lovely text from my hairdresser offering me a half-price deal 'for a special lady' - just in the nick of time. Not that I'm prepared to admit in print to any signs of premature ageing in my coiffure, but I can reveal the doubtless not particularly shocking news that my hair colour is not 100% natural. And you've got to keep your bob crisp, haven't you? Especially when it's your signature 'look'.

So I hot footed it over to Kensington Church Street, and skipped up the little secret grey staircase that leads to a magical wonderland of mirrored walls and swivelling chairs. One of the positive things about not having a proper day job is the fact that you can lounge around gettting your hair cut when other people are strapped to their desks, and the salon was deliciously quiet - just me, my Hair Guru, and lots of cups of Earl Grey tea.

The Hair Guru had found a new hair colour which he thought would be perfect for me - very dark brown with a rich red glow to it. The swatch looked great. Of course when he actually mixed it up in the little tub, it looked a highly suspicious shade of nuclear orange, but I didn't let that worry me, because it always does. I was a little bit anxious that my lazy habit of spraying dry shampoo into my hair when I can't be bothered to actually wash it might have detrimental effects if the dye reacted with the chemicals in the stuff, but the HG seemed to think this was highly unlikely. We chatted our way around a heady mix of topics from celebrity clients to Northern sensibilities while we waited for the dye to work its magic, and then the HG washed it off.

A tiny twinge of alarm hit me as I glanced at my reflection in the mirror beside the sinks - was my hair... purple...?

I decided to wait until it was dry before getting alarmed.

HG snipped away, sharpening up my bob, and then blow dried it until it was deliciously smooth and shining - and it really did look great. The colour was very dark, and there was a distinctly coppery glow about it, but I decided that my purple moment had been one of sheer unfounded paranoia. Paranoia at the hairdressers is a very common occurrence, as every girl knows, and it's important to give yourself time to get used to new hair before deciding whether or not it works on you - our initial reaction to something different to what we're used to is quite often one of shock and negativity.

Hair done, HG invited me to spend the afternoon hanging out with him, since he didn't have any other clients booked in, and we indulged in a sushi and red wine lunch at the newly opened Whole Foods store on Kensington High Street. The one-time Biba building has been transformed anew into a sort of high glamour supermarket, where a serve-yourself salad from the salad bar can cost you £12 if you're not careful. Upstairs in the food hall you can sit at the window and look down at the Kensington shoppers below while you snack on delicious and organic treats from the various food counters. From the looks of it, this is where the Ladies Who Lunch are all hanging out these days. HG and I agreed that although it was all very stylish, they had made one or two errors of judgement in the fixtures and fittings (with some of the overhead lights looking suspiciously like the sort you get in B&Q) and we missed the old Barkers. But finding two bottles of organic wine for £8 on offer downstairs won us over again.

Then it was back to HG's flat in Camden for a couple of games of pool and some rather excellent 70s tunes played extremely loud, while we road-tested the organic wine, and HG's flatmate wowed us with his note-perfect rendition of Jose Feliciano's Light My Fire. When I eventually got home to Beloved I was feeling extremely mellow. But not too mellow to resist asking him what he thought of my new hair colour?

Yes, it's nice.

Does it look... purple... to you at all?

Beloved immediately spotted an opportunity to wind me up, and said, with a broad grin...

Maybe... a bit...

and has been letting drop the odd remark here and there ever since:

"Your hair's looking a bit purple this morning"

"Maybe it's just this light..."

"Lots of my ex girlfriends used to have one hairdresser they trusted for the cut and another they trusted for the colour..."

Is beloved feeling slightly miffed that I spent the afternoon boozing and playing pool (very badly) with my hairdresser? Is this his way of getting his own back? Quite possibly.

I consulted with another friend independently, who said the colour was very dark, but she couldn't see any purple in it.

Would it bother me so much if my hair WAS purple? And if so, why?

Taste is a strange thing; it sometimes seems to be a kind of tightrope walk between conservatism and boldness. To be truly stylish, you have to take bold steps across the line from time to time, but you also have to know and regard long established style conventions at the same time. Every style choice comes with its own set of associations; a sharp little bob like mine has resonances of the 60s and Mary Quant, and also a hint of the 20s about it, although it's not pure Louise Brooks because I don't have a fringe (I can't do fringes, I look rubbish, as this picture of me in one of Honey's wigs demonstrates)

The bob was the HG's idea, and I'll be forever grateful to him for finding me my signature hairstyle, which I'll probably keep until the end of my days (I might have it completely white when I reach my dotage - I'm thinking that look could have a lot of gravitas going for it). And that's why I feel I need to trust him on the colour too.

But just a step too far over the line towards burgundy could bring all sorts of less welcome associations with it, of a particular kind of 80s retro that reminds me more of brassy northern birds in lurid lycra and plastic jewellery. Okay, I know I am, to some extent, a northern bird, and it's important to be true to your roots, but call me conservative, I like my hair colour to look natural these days. Even if it isn't actually my own natural colour, at least it can be someone else's...

I found resolution for my colour-anxiety yesterday when Beloved and I were walking on Hampstead Heath.

"What's that lovely tree over there with the really dark leaves," I asked Beloved, "They look amazing, almost black - or purple."

"That," said Beloved, who grew up in the countryside and knows his trees, "is a Copper Beech."

"The leaves are the same colour as my hair!" I realised, delighted.

So now I can rest easy in the knowledge that, even if my hair is, in some lights, slightly on the purple side, the colour is still completely natural.

It's the colour of a Copper Beech.

TV

xx

Jazz Accidents

2007-06-15T23:49:00.000+01:00

Picture the scene... a bunch of glamorous dames in feathers, satin and corsets, all variously crouched, hunched and perched around a big round hardboard table, noshing away on chicken legs, rice and spaghetti.

The dames in question were Can Booty Can ( http://www.myspace.com/canbootycan ), Miss Honey Mink and myself, and the location was backstage at Volupte's Friday Follies. It was the hour-long break between shows, and we were all tucking into our free dinner with gusto (one seldom sees food-related neuroses amongst the cabaret sorority, I can tell you) whilst swapping tales about the perils of performance.

Mademoiselle Fifi had filled us in on the dangers of working with flammable liquids and naked flames (she was still tasting paraffin after knocking back a mouthful of fire more quickly than intended in the early show) and I'd recounted in gory detail the full horrors of escapologist Jonathan Goodwin's "Nipple Ring of Doom" (see my blog of 28 April 07), after which one of the Can Booty Can dancers had stood up too quickly from our makeshift table and banged her head on the air con unit, and I had commented that myself and Honey Mink were relatively safe from misadventure, because you didn't hear of so many "Jazz Accidents".

I had to say it, didn't I?

Later that night, after our second set was over, Sir Fitzroy Callow hobbled towards me through the restaurant and told me that he'd just fallen down the backstage stairs. The intense pain in his ankle was as nothing compared to the deep humiliation he felt after the club owner, Miss Kuki LaBelle, stepped out of her office just at the moment he landed on his arse at the bottom of the stairs, and politely enquired what on earth he was doing down there.

So there you have it. A real-life jazz accident, as demonstrated by our very own one-man horn section, Sir Fitz.

TV

xx

Boredom exhaustion

2007-06-04T17:02:00.000+01:00

Is there anything more energy-sapping than having to do something you find mind numbingly boring?

I am battling with a wave of sheer bone exhaustion right now. It's so extreme that I barely have the strength to lift my fingers to type. Has this been brought on by a great feat of physical endeavour? No. Well, not unless you count walking round the corner to Fresh and Wild to buy a chocolate brownie.

It's been brought on by the job I'm supposed to be doing right now, instead of writing this. I'm supposed to be writing an article about pulmonary disease for a fitness website. And when I've finished that, I've got to write one about the cardiovascular system.

I tell you what, my own cardiovascular system is struggling to keep pumping the blood around my body, such is the dead weight which has settled upon every fibre of my being at the prospect of wrestling with phrases such as "Pulmonologists are involved in both clinical and basic research of the respiratory system, ranging from the anatomy of the bronchial epithelium to the most effective treatment of pulmonary hypertension (a disease notoriously resistant to therapy)" in an attempt to render them remotely interesting or comprehensible to the breather on the street.

The chocolate brownie did help, but it disappeared alarmingly fast. I wonder if there is any scientific research into why doing things you don't want to is approximately ten times more tiring than doing things you do want to? According to my calculations, I could sing for five hours and feel ten times more energetic afterwards than I do now, albeit in need of a drink to rehydrate my vocal cords.

I suspect I have uncovered the dark secret behind the capitalist economy. People go to work to earn money to spend on things they want, but they find having to go to work so draining, that they have to spend a large amount of the money they earn on compensating for the pain of having to work for it in the first place: comfort chocolate brownies being a case in point. For the more well heeled, the same also goes for stress-relieving massage, and retail therapy. Whereas, if they didn't go to work, they would need to spend much less money on boosting their energies and improving their mood, because they wouldn't need cheering up in the first place, and the whole capitalist economy would collapse.

And we'd all be like Tom and Barbara in the Good Life, driving around on converted lawnmowers and living in wellies. Think how long our smart going-out clothes would last us when we got so little wear out of them.

But then, unfortunately, no one would be able to afford to pay the entrance price to come to Volupte either, so I would end up with no one to sing to...

Hmmm.

maybe I'd better just resign myself to the status quo and buy myself another chocolate brownie instead.

TV

xx

Where Marabou Feathers Come From

2007-05-28T16:26:00.001+01:00

While I was home for a few days last week, my dad and I decided to go out on a little day trip to a nearby stately home that has a rather spectacular Bird Garden.

One of the first enclosures we passed contained a couple of enormous and frankly rather grizzled looking storks, with bald heads and necks, and ferocious-looking beaks. They use their beaks for picking at carrion, and have evolved without feathers on their heads and necks to stop the blood of the dead animals they feed off from sticking to their plumage. I didn't like the look of them much, and was ready to move on to the aviaries with all the pretty birds of paradise in, until I noticed the name on the sign.

They were Marabou Storks.

Stephane made me a flamboyant and voluptuous coat about a year ago completely covered in pink Marabou feathers, and I don't know why, but I somehow imagined them as coming from small cute pink birds - if I even imagined them coming from birds at all. I suppose I hadn't really given it much thought... until I saw those great big ugly fowl stomping about in their pen. The notice on the enclosure fence said that although the birds weren't yet an endangered species, their numbers were becoming severely depleted owing to the popularity of their inner tail feathers for use in ladies' hats and haberdashery. That's me, that is.

I had a good look at their tails, and there really weren't very many of the fluffy little feathers like the ones on my coat, even on those massive, fully-grown birds (and they weren't pink, they were white). I wondered how many of those gargantuan creatures had died to make my coat.

I've always considered my predilection for glamour to be a relatively benign hobby, but it made me realise that it's not as harmless a pursuit as I always thought it was.

Consider the lilies of the field. What do they get for looking beautiful? They get chopped from their roots, wrapped in plastic, shipped halfway across the world and then plonked in a big glass vase for the likes of me to enjoy looking at.

Arum lilies have always been my favourite flowers – but I've recently noticed how lovely they look growing in gardens and on balconies around Stoke Newington: they've got big lush leaves that elegantly complement the fine white flowers I've always loved.

Maybe I should stop buying them from the florist and grow a bush of them in our garden instead.

The End Of The End Of The World

2007-05-27T14:55:00.001+01:00

I am still in a deep blue funk after The End Of The World Variety Show reached the end of its 7 week run on Friday night.

It's looking very likely that it will be back in a few weeks time, but even so, I felt really sad saying goodbye to everybody on Friday - because I've been a performer long enough to know that you can never be 100% sure of anything until it's penned in your diary, and quite often not even then.

There are so many reasons why it's been brilliant. It's been brilliant being part of a company, and working with performers who do so many weird and wonderful things - I never met a man who makes his living juggling a glass ball before. And Matt Hennem is not only a mesmerising performer, he's also one of the loveliest and most fascinating people I've met in a long time. Mind you, he has stiff competition from the other guys and girls in the show: I want Irene the tap dancer to give me tap lessons, and the beautiful Gemma with her extraordinary soul voice to come and sing and wow the crowd at the open mic night I host. And Jack the guitarist, who walked me home to my door at 4am on Friday, turns out to be a Stoke Newington neighbour, so I'm pretty certain I haven't seen the last of him either.

It's also been brilliant coming back to the same venue every week and gradually getting to know everyone a little bit better, so that by the end even the apparently surly Nigel Burch of the Fleapit Orchestra was ballroom dancing with me around the hall.

And having the chance to sing non-stop for an hour every week has been brilliant, because it's given me so much practice, and really got me into a new place as a singer, where I could start to relax into the music. After the first couple of weeks I felt comfortable with the venue, and familiar with the sound set up, and Connie and I felt comfortable with each other as a duo, and it meant I started to sing for the sheer love of singing. Because we were the warm up act it wasn't my job to command the undivided attention of the crowd, and even that was quite relaxing, because it meant we could just get into the music without worrying about doing lots of attention-grabbing patter. In fact, I think it's taught me, more than anything else, that I don't need to talk at all to get the audience's attention. I can just sing. And I think I'm going to do a lot less talking all round in future.

This Friday, Earl Mysterio came with me and played guitar instead of Connie on piano, because Connie has been at the Small Worlds music festival all weekend, sitting in a field with her little travelling guitar, joining in jams for 48 hour stretches and such like. Mysterio found it quite tough, and said it felt like "playing through a sock" but Jack, the guitarist who accompanies Gemma in the show, reassured us that we sounded really strong, even if we couldn't hear ourselves. I like singing with just the guitar as much as I like singing with just the piano - it brings out a different sort of flavour, and I find myself going for a more melancholic, soft kind of mood, whereas Connie on piano often brings out the bounce in me. Mysterio and I are going to do a wedding together in July, with Fitz on trombone, and I think it will sound rather lovely. Where the piano provides a very full accompaniment, the guitar is somehow more spartan, and more intimate. Having said that, it's high time we got the full band together again for another full-on party gig as well - hopefully with dancing. I get a real kick out of seeing people dancing to our music. I reckon we all do. Who knows, maybe when The End Of The World comes back, The Fleapit Orchestra might need a night off sometime, and James will book the full band... and then we can work out a number for the Lady Greys to dance to as well.

Me and Sophie who runs the troupe weren't the only ones talking about collaborations by the end of the night on Friday. Not only are we getting excited at the prospect of joining forces and choreographing a number with the Lady Greys singing and dancing along with the Slinktet, but Barry and Stuart the magicians also came up with the idea of getting the Lady Greys to saw them both in half live on stage. I suggested that maybe I could write a 'sawing in half song' to accompany the spectacle. There followed lots of drunken attempts to come up with brilliant rhymes for 'saw' and 'half', after which Stuart concluded that it could be the worst song I ever sang.

Actually Connie is working on composing a special "End of the World" song already. I really hope I get the chance to sing it when the run starts up again. Please come back. Oh please come back...

TV

xx

Superglue

2007-05-22T16:12:00.000+01:00

I was in Driffield on Saturday, a pretty little northern country town near Hull, where cars have to slow down to let ducks cross the road, and there's still a Saddlers on the high street (disappointingly not selling saddles any more... but at least it kept the name). I was there for my nephew's baby naming ceremony, which was a lovely familial feast with babies crawling and squawking everywhere, getting chocolate down their white outfits, and a barrage of camera flashes capturing every moment for posterity.

My 2-year-old niece Lily has developed a particular fascination for fridge magnets, and had managed to break her granny's Prague fridge market into several pieces. My brother was demonstrating his Dad skills by sticking it back together with superglue. He also managed to stick his fingers together, which is, i think, obligatory for anyone using superglue, but luckily they came apart fairly quickly with little apparent pain.

I had a sudden flashback to the week before, when I was sitting in a Soho coffee shop chatting to burlesque star Roxy Velvet... and she pulled a little tupperware pot out of her holdall, full of false nails. While she chatted, she started applying superglue to them and sticking them on to her real nails one by one, in preparation for her red carpet appearance that evening at the International Burlesque Festival. She got distracted at a crucial moment, and stuck her fingers together by mistake... but luckily she managed to prize them apart in the nick of time, before the glue set...

I told my brother and my sister-in-law's sister's husband (what's that, a brother-in-law-in-law?) about the last use of superglue I'd witnessed, and my brother-in-law-in-law commented that it sounded like a glimpse of an exotic and glamorous world that was a long way away from his (which currently alternates between building sites and a beautiful 6-month-old baby daughter).

I think there's something reassuringly everyday about the fact that even in Roxy's world of fabulous glamour there's still room for something as practical and ubiquitous as superglue, even if it is being put to a rather different use.

The Prague fridge magnet was back on the fridge by the time I left the party - right at the top, safely out of two-year-old reach, and looking only slightly the worse for wear.

And my brother-in-law-in-law's daughter fell asleep in my arms, which made me very proud that despite all my messing about with false eyelashes and elbow-length gloves, I could still keep it real enough for a baby to nod off on me.

TV

xx

a heady week of gownage, gadgetry, and glamour tobacco

2007-05-15T21:49:00.001+01:00

There's been so much exciting stuff going on that I've been dying to write it all up in my blog - but it's one of life's ironies that the more there is worth writing about the less time there is to write about it. So this is going to be a bit of an omnibus edition.

This time last week I was getting ready to go onstage at Volupte with the rest of the Slinktet, to a select audience of 60 of our nearest and dearest, and 5 video cameras. I was twittering with nerves, and Denise the co-owner of Volupte gave me a shot of black sambuca to calm me down. But instead of drinking it I managed to knock it all over the bar instead. Reminds me of the guy with the drink problem in Airplane who kept missing his mouth. I quite often have that problem when I'm nervous.

We ended up with a director, 5 camera operators, and 5 sound men, which was a pretty impressive crew considering they were all doing it for love (and I did give everybody a thank-you bottle of wine as well). We'd spent the afternoon in the wilds of darkest Stratford, hiring the cameras and monitors from an arts venue cunningly located in the centre of Stratford's busiest road junction. This meant that as well as bass, bass amp, guitar, effects pedals and guitar amp, plus gown and make-up bags, our longsuffering little Micra also had two camera bags, two massive tripods, three monitors and a battery pack rammed into the back of it, and the equally longsuffering Beloved had to lug it all in and out of the car as well. As someone pointed out (I think it was Dan, who came along to operate one of the cameras) music and filmmaking are possibly the two most equipment heavy occupations it is possible to find, and combining the two on one night was bound to be a killer.

In a way, all that running around was quite a useful distraction to stop me angsting about my actual performance. In the end I just about had time to stick on my false eyelashes and make a few warm up siren noises (which annoyed Honey no end). The siren noises are great - it's all about making as much noise as possible without worrying about sounding pretty, or even whether or not you're hitting the note (because siren wails don't have notes). Doing siren noises as loud as possible gives me flashbacks to my childhood and my mum barking "Give up yorping" at me. Now I'm a grown-up I can yorp with impunity. Hooray. Richard my singing teacher wants me to do my siren noises every morning, but Beloved is mysteriously not keen.

So the gig itself went by in a blur, as they generally do, but I think I remember enjoying it. The matching pink ukeleles were a big hit - although mine just looked pretty and wasn't actually making any sound through the PA (which was probably lucky, since I only started learning a few weeks ago and I'm still a bit more hit and miss on it than Honey). I found out a couple of days after the gig that Bobby Fresh had been sitting at his drumkit reading the paper behind me while I was pouring my heart and soul into my ballad "Well I didn't want you anyway" - which I thought was admirably cheeky behaviour for the drummer of a "cheeky Jazz" band. I don't think he was the cheekiest of the night though, that award probably goes to the 5th camera operator who did a runner without paying his tab. Although come to think of it when I offered him his thank you bottle of wine he did mutter something about having had two glasses at his table: perhaps I wasn't perceptive enough to realise he was asking me to pick up his tab.

It'll probably be a while before the video is finished - poor Phil the editor has got 10 hours of footage to trawl through before he even begins putting anything together - but I'm so taken by the added glamour that a load of cameras lend to an evening that I might set them up at all our future gigs from now on. There wouldn't be any film in them, they'd be purely for decoration.

Next day, I was wandering through Soho after coming out of a meeting about the day job (writing stuff) when I bumped into Burlesque starlet Roxy Velvet, who was exuding vintage glamour in red lipstick, fabulous sunglasses, a tweed pencil skirt and red patent heels. We decided to go for coffee, but on the way Roxy popped into a newsagents to buy 20 Vogue menthols. I was thrilled - a cigarette named after me? They shouldn't have. No, they really shouldn't have, because of course I had to buy a packet. Every single long slender white cigarette has my signature on it. It's uncanny. Seriously, check it out. Here's a picture of the packet:

and here's my signature:

Now of course this didn't help my battle to resist the lure of tobacco at all. The only advantage was that the cigarettes looked and tasted so fabulous that everyone else was nicking them off me all week, and they were gone by the weekend.
Next stop for me and Roxy on our way to coffee was a haberdashers selling the most enormous feather boas I'd ever seen in my life. Roxy tried the turquoise one on for size and decided that £130 was very reasonable for such a piece of exquisite frippery - but she didn't have the cash on her just at the moment. I find it reassuring to think that as soon as I have a spare £130 burning a hole in my pocket I'll know where to go.

And then we bought a couple of lattes and Roxy told me all sorts of colourful tales about her past which were just as sensational (in every sense) as you'd expect, but which of course discretion prevents me from sharing with you.

On Thursday I was back on stage again, in a former chapel on the Isle of Dogs, with a grand piano, but without a microphone. It was the opposite extreme to Tuesday's gig's embarrassment of audio and visual gadgetry... I had nothing but my own lungs to create enough sound to fill a room. Luckily I also had my gowns to provide enough visual spectacle to get me through my 20 minute set, but to my relief I did succeed in making enough noise to be heard, which is thanks in no small part to the encouragement and tutelage of Richard Link, my singing teacher. While drinking in the bar afterwards, Jamie Anderson the host and Jo Jolly one of the other performers on the bill both admitted that they'd been as neurotic as I'd been about having no mic to sing through (whilst helping me get through my packet of Vogue Menthols). Andrew Pepper even brought along a microphone stand to use as a prop for his performance. His particularly colourful use of the stand during his number about auto-erotica was one of the most memorable moments of the evening.

Thursday was a wonderful experience, but I was very glad to have a mic back in my hand again on Friday for The End of the World variety show, when I polished off most of the rest of my Vogue Menthols, with a bit of help from Janet, the venue manager. The rest of them fell out of their packet into the bottom of my bag, but Sophie, the leader of the showgirls troupe The Lady Greys, saved them from a total mashing by suggesting I tip the contents of my bag onto the floor and rescue them that way.

When I went for my singing lesson yesterday, Richard commented that my voice was much lower and much less "present" than usual - perhaps, he wondered, I was tired after my 3-gig week... or had I, perhaps, been smoking? I confessed that I had, and it was obvious to me even without Richard pointing it out what a negative effect it had had on my poor dessicated vocal chords.

So no more Vogue menthols for me. No really. I mean it.

I'd brought along the sheet music to "What are you doing the rest of your life" - a song I recently fell in love with after finding a track of Dusty Springfield performing it with what is possibly the most beautiful vocal I have ever heard: it glides along the mad scales of the song like a river of pure honey. Richard not only knew the song well, he also lent me a whole book of the composer, Michel Legrand's songs -which include "The Windmills of your Mind" (my dad's favourite song), and "I will wait for you", the theme tune to a beautiful French film called Les Parapluies De Cherbourg, which is a delicious visual and aural confection entirely in song from beginning to end (even the mundane moments where people ask their neighbour if they'd like a cup of tea, or discuss whether their car needs a new clutch). Richard played a song of Michel Legrand's called "You must Believe in Spring" which I sight read over his shoulder, and which made me burst into tears, it was so poignant and lovely. I want it sung at my funeral.

I realised today how totally absorbed I'd become in the world of music for the last week when I was wandering along Stoke Newington High street and saw a sign for "Fresh Bass". For a moment I wondered how a musical instrument could be described as "fresh" until I realised I was actually walking past a fishmongers.

TV

xx

Soft Pedal Peg

2007-05-03T00:06:00.001+01:00

Connie Vanderlay has come up with an intriguing invention to combat un-neighbourly noise.

After a rather fraught rehearsal a month or two back, when our rumbustuous rendition of Honeysuckle Rose was interrupted at every bar by angry banging on the ceiling (lighten up mate, it wasn't even ten o'clock...), Connie has gone to inventive new lengths to avoid more aggressive complaints from her neighbours.

Last night she pulled off the front of her piano to show us her ingenious invention. She had attached a clothes peg to the rod of her soft pedal, which held the hammers nearer to the strings when the soft pedal was depressed, making the piano even quieter.

Of course I completely undid all her good work by demonstrating exactly how loud I could sing top A (or whatever it was, feel free to correct me, Connie) at 10.15pm. It was a very childish thing to do, and quite unpleasant for Connie and Honey, who were both within two feet of me at the time, let alone the neighbours. I don't know what came over me - the only possible explanation I can offer is that I'd been having a singing lesson just the day before at which the lovely Richard had been encouraging me to make as much noise as I could. He even lets me make siren noises, it's brilliant.

I'm not sure if Richard is aware that by encouraging me to shake off my inhibitions and sing at full operatic volume in a built up area, he has unleashed a monster...

still, as forms of rebellion go, I suppose it's relatively benign being a human noise pollutant.

Maybe I could get a peg for my throat...

TV

xx

Giving Up Smoking... Again

2007-04-29T10:21:00.000+01:00

I was doing so well... I'd managed to completely give up smoking and I'd lasted a good six months... and now here I am chuffing away again.

It's classic self-destructive behaviour. I've got two important gigs coming up next week: one of them we're going to film, so I want it to be note-perfect and pure honey-coated sound, and the other one I've got to sing without a microphone, so I'm going to need my full lung-power.

And just when I need my lungs at full capacity, and my voice crystal clear, I'm hijacking my bronchial system with smoke and tar.

Yeah yeah I know that some people like to hear a bit of 'hard living' in a jazz voice, but I haven't really got that sort of voice. Much as I'd like to sound like Billie Holliday, I know I'm more like Doris Day in her squeaky clean phase... and you've gotta play to your strengths. Apart from which, if I've been caning it with the tobacco, I can't sing to the end of a 45 minute set without running out of puff. And breathless panting, although it can work in some contexts (Brigitte Bardot in Je t'aime, for example) is not really appropriate for my material...

Even while I'm writing about how terrible it is for me to smoke, I'm getting cravings to roll another cigarette. What's that all about?

I've noticed that pretty much every singer I ever meet is a smoker - including Honey Mink, who is similarly wrestling with her addiction at the moment. She smokes Marlborough Reds, which is properly hardcore. And they look great in a cigarette holder too. My own personal predilection for roll ups doesn't go with my image at all - another reason to knock it on the head - plus they leave orange stains on my fingers. Yuk.

And when I brush my teeth after I've been smoking, they feel really sensitive. And then there's the foul taste you wake up with in your mouth. It's so much nicer to feel clean, inside and out.

All in all, it's a no-brainer.

So why am I still eyeing that packet of Amber Leaf with pure longing...?

TV

xx

Comedy Jobs

2007-04-24T17:58:00.001+01:00

Flicking through the Guardian job pages yesterday, in the vain hope there might be a job vacancy entitled: "Jazz Diva Wanted", the talk turned to our fantasy jobs.

Beloved has decided he quite fancies becoming a Private Detective. He's imagining it will be a glamorous modern day version of a Raymond Chandler novel, and he'll get to drink loads of whisky and play with high tech gadgets. Me and his friend Jason reckoned it would be more about sitting in cars watching houses and having to tell distraught spouses that their husband/wife was doing the dirty on them, and that he'd be bored out of his skull and/or an emotional wreck within a week.

The suggested alternative job for Beloved was Supervillain. He quite fancied sitting in a big swivel chair with a cat on his lap, but Jason reckoned a more appropriate prop for him would be a Mini Me. The perks would be good - an immense fortune, and an underground swimming pool stocked with sharks - but then we decided it would probably be quite stressful because Supervillains were never satisfied until they'd achieved Total World Domination, and they never get that because some heroic secret agent usually throws a spanner in the works.

So then we decided Beloved could apply for the job of James Bond instead. I'd quite like to apply for the job of nerdy girl sidekick, the one who spouts gobbets of science geek-speak and cunningly hides her beauty by having her hair up and wearing glasses.

Then the talk turned to real life bizarre jobs. Beloved had once read about a job vacancy to throw frozen chickens into a jet engine. We discussed whether the fact they were frozen would give an inaccurate result, since real birds flying into a jet engine wouldn't actually be frozen at the time, and whether you would also have to defrost them in a microwave before you lobbed them in.

Jason had heard there were actually job vacancies for Horse Masturbators. Because apparently throughbred racehorses are far too precious to risk letting them copulate as nature intended. He wondered whether confusion might arise in social situations: "No, sorry mate, I only do horses."

My dream job would be "shopping researcher". I would be given a lump sum of cash - say, £1000 a day, to go out and spend, and report back on my purchases.

I reckon we should start an Ideal Jobs web-page, where instead of having to apply for real jobs, which always sound boring as hell (Communications Manager for Pest Control Magazine), you could write a job description for the job you'd actually really fancy doing, and then see if anyone got in touch and offered you the position.

I'd like to propose to my readers that we start the ball rolling right now. Let's have your Job Descriptions please...

TV

xx

Escatalogical Adventures

2007-04-23T19:46:00.000+01:00

I didn't know what the word 'eschatalogical' meant until recently, and now I do I thought I'd 'try using it in a sentence today' (as Cher says to her protege in Clueless).

Regular readers will be relieved to learn it is nothing to do with scatalogical adventures, which are not something I would ever go in for, and even if I did I certainly wouldn't write about them in my blog.

Eschatalogical means relating to the end of the world - which of course, I was performing at on Friday night. It's quite weird attending the end of the world on a weekly basis, but in a nice way. I managed to stay and watch the whole show to the end this time, and it was brilliant - particularly the guy juggling a glass ball and making it look like it was floating by itself - that was mesmerising. In a way, though, it's the audience contribution that really makes the show - they email in loads of stuff before the show, like songs they want to hear in their last two hours on earth, and any regrets or secrets they want to get out in the open before armageddon strikes... and if i was gonna bare my soul before the end of the world, I can't think of a cuter man to do it to than Alex Zane. Of course, when I say 'cute', I mean that in a purely platonic way... and I do of course mean 'bare' in a purely metaphorical way. Of course.

This week I followed up the End of the World with a cross-London marathon to Vauxhall, where the Dark Prince of Cabaret, Dusty Limits was hosting the debut night of new cabaret show, Le Phreeque, at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The place was bristling with Burlesque icons, rubbing shoulders with party boys, men in white coats - and puppets. I loved the puppets. My favourites were the giant disembodied mouths who came on stage as backing singers to a lipsynching act. I'm not sure if it would be accurate to describe it as a drag act - it was a pretty out there costume, but there was no question of the performer's manhood, given the size of his stainless steel codpiece. He particularly enjoyed reflecting laser beams off it in the course of his number.

Dusty threw in a few special effects of his own, including snorting white powder from a mirror live on stage through a rolled up 5 euro note, to lend modern-day verisimilitude to his colourful rendition of Kurt Weill's Alabama Song. He told me afterwards what the powder really was, but I'm sure I'm not allowed to reveal his professional secrets, so I'm not telling you whether it was what you're probably thinking it was, or not.

My night ended in style when the divine Miss Roxy Velvet gave me a lift all the way home to Stoke Newington. She had to move a nurse's medical screen off the back seat specially to make room for me - and manipulating metal poles and rubber sheeting is not easy in the dark in six inch silver lame heels - but the sight of a glammed up burlesque queen wrestling with her props by the side of the road has become one of those bizarre sights which I now think of as entirely normal in the curious cabaret world I've been inhabiting of late.

Roxy was due to run the London marathon on Sunday, and she's managed to raise nearly £1500 for Shelter. She'd been eating nothing but pasta and potatoes all week in preparation, and was nobly necking back the pineapple juice all night - but she was as excited about the run as I get about a big show. I can't wait to hear how she got on.

After spending Friday night at the very apex of Gay London, I spent Saturday afternoon at that bastion of heterosexual masculinity - watching the Arsenal Tottenham match in the pub with Beloved. Okay I can't pretend I know anything about football - or care - but it was quite exhilarating being in a roomful of excitable testosterone. I liked the chants - they were even quite tuneful in places.

Sunday was more live performance chaos - this time at the first birthday celebrations for Lost Society in Camden. So I made my own little trek across London north to south, while all the marathon runners were on their East to West axis. I would like to thank Transport for London for choosing this Sunday in particular to close both the Northern Line Bank Branch and the Victoria Line between Victoria and Stockwell. Nice one. I staggered into Lost Society brandishing my slightly battered pink ukelele case with only minutes to spare before I was due on - and then hung around for 45 minutes anyway, while the band due on after me lugged their gear up on stage. It was mayhem in there, mainly because everyone had been knocking back free cocktails since 2pm. Not necessarily the gentlest and most attentive environment to try a cute and quirky little turn with me pretending I'd been dumped by my big band and attempting to recreate the same musical effect with one tiny pink ukelele and a kazoo... I'm glad Connie and Fresh were there to lend moral support - although I did get lots of warm kind words afterwards, even if some of them did involve the word 'brave', which i generally think is a bad sign (it means they could see the fear)... and Connie said she'd never seen a kazoo solo go down so well before...

I stuck around to watch Miss Vicky Butterfly perform her butterfly strip an hour later - since a couple of the audience had already invaded the stage to give impromptu pole-dancing displays I felt rather concerned for her modesty, but luckily her butterfly costume had an 8 foot wingspan and some fairly scary metal rods on the ends of her arms, so everybody was sensible enough to keep their distance. And even when the music cut out seconds before the end of the act, it only added to the performance - because it was just at the moment Vicky was about to reveal the butterfly pasties affixed to her bosoms. What could possibly have distracted the sound man at exactly that moment I wonder?

And finally I'd like to congratulate Tryg, our host and entertainer extraordinaire last night, for holding his own despite the onslaught of obnoxiously drunk Clapham Bunnies trying to grind him and steal his microphone to announce to the assembled crowd that it was their mate's birthday and she was a whore.

So there we have it, another weekend of strange and wonderful occurrences on London's live scene. You couldn't make it up.

Happy Monday.

TV

xx

Dusty Day, Dusty Cellars, and other strange events

2007-04-19T14:08:00.001+01:00

My life at the moment seems to be one bizarre occurrence after another... and what disturbs me most is that it's beginning to feel like normality...

Last Friday I participated in The End Of The World - which was very pleasant indeed because it's actually a variety show at the Clerkenwell Theatre in Exmouth Market. Me and Connie were the warm up act while the punters were taking their seats - and then we hung out backstage nicking free cider and bread and cheese while the Tapdancing Twin Angels of the Apocalypse practised tumbling in the kitchen and got in the way of the waiters (who didn't seem to mind at all). That lovely man Alex Zane carried our keyboard down to the cellar for us, with James, the show's charmingly madcap impresario (just the way all impresarios should be, in my opinion). I have heard the cheeky Mr Zane described in television circles as the 'poor man's Russell Brand' in which case all I can say is I'm glad to be poor (and I don't say that very often) because I know who I'd rather be down the cellar with any day. Other non-starry behaviour exhibited by Mister Zane included tracking himself down a steam iron and mini ironing board, and ironing his own shirt before the show. I do like a man who knows how to iron his own shirt (even though I iron Beloved's for him... but then Beloved wouldn't be wearing a shirt if I hadn't made him do it in the first place...)

My brush with cellars didn't end there, as Saturday afternoon was spent in the Cellar of Joy, rehearsing for tonight's gig, while every other mortal with an ounce of sense was outside lapping up the sunshine. Including Honey, who forgot we were rehearsing (but she's had a lot on her mind recently what with marriage proposals flooding in and so on).

And my weekend adventures were crowned with the glorious Dusty Day on Sunday, in honour of Dusty Springfield's birthday. I trekked all the way across London to Finnegan's Wake on Ealing Green for the occasion, but my journey was dwarfed in comparison to that of some of Dusty's most devoted fans who had made the pilgrimage from as far afield as Holland and Canada for the event. When I walked into the front of the pub it was all beery blokes and footie on the telly, but in the back of the pub there were pictures of Dusty on every wall, and a huge video screen showing pictures of her in action. My friend Jonathan Cohen was providing the one-man-orchestra musical accompaniment for three of Dusty's original backing singers, who belted out rip-roaring versions of Dusty's biggest tunes. One of them was there in between courses of chemotherapy treatment, and sang like a goddess to a roomful of rapt listeners.

A very drunk - and heterosexual - young male friend of Jonathan's proclaimed in a loud voice: "Have you ever seen so many dykes together in one place?"
"Yes," came the terse response, "At Dusty's funeral."

Said drunk heterosexual was later steered tactfully out of the charity auction before his 'comedy' fake bids brought on the collective wrath of the entire roomful of Friends of Dusty (is that the female equivalent of Friends of Dorothy I wonder?)

I for one was honoured to be there - and even more honoured to meet Kay Garner, who sang with Dusty and many other greats, and who even said she would come along to one of my own gigs in the future, chemotherapy permitting. She was looking great, despite all her health problems - living testimony to the fact that Music Keeps You Young. Young at heart, certainly, which is the sort of young that really matters. I hope she gets well soon.

TV

xx

Naked on Stage

2007-03-28T23:01:00.000+01:00

How's that for a provocative blog title?

Okay so I'm not planning on taking my clothes off in front of an audience, but before you sue me under the trade descriptions act, there are other sorts of naked.

I'm going to go naked-voiced on stage on 10 May. At Cabaret Confidential's first night in its new Canary Wharf home I'm going to be singing without a microphone for the first time since I was a choir girl - which was a lot longer ago than I'm prepared to admit.

London's Cabaret Godfather Paul L Martin says that The Space has incredible acoustics because it's a converted chapel, so none of us will need mics. But many of his other acts are musical theatre performers, used to belting out showtunes at full volume whilst dashing across the stage under hot lights in period costumes carrying a fellow cast-member. I'm just a lazy little jazzer used to moaning gently into an SM58 and letting the lucky soul on the sound desk pick up the slack.

Time to remind my diaphragm it exists, I think. It's ten years since my singing teacher drilled me through my scales and introduced me to the mysteries of Resonance, and many of the parts of my body she once pressed into service for making a big noise come out of me have long since gone back to sleep. I'm going for a refresher lesson next week with the lovely mister Richard Link, who says that what I have to do to make my voice carry is make a clean sound, without any air in it. Because the air is like white noise, interfering with the signal. I'm not 100% sure I get what he means, but I'm guessing it's something to do with singing less like Marilyn Monroe.

The question is, can I make my voice loud enough to carry without a mic, and still sound like Tricity Vogue? It's always worth trying something a bit different in my book, so I'm looking forward to the challenge. Plus it's a long time since anybody let me sing inside a church (even a converted one).

And while we're on the subject of trying new things, the lovely Crimson Skye was telling me I ought to give burlesque a go on Friday night... she says the first thing is to find a great song, one that makes you think 'yeah, I want to take my clothes off to that'. She does her act to The Doors 20th Century Girl, and Jimmi Hendrix Foxy Lady. I know what song I'd do my burlesque striptease to - if Beloved would allow me to do a burlesque striptease in a million years. But he is being very firm on the matter (and he's very sexy when he's being firm on the matter, I can tell you) so I will of course be respecting his wishes, and giving up on my fantasy to come on stage dressed as a nun to the strains of Johnny Cash singing Your Own Personal Jesus, then remove my habit to reveal devil horns and a basque underneath, just as the music segues into the Depeche Mode version of the song...

Shame, it was a cracker of an act. And I bet Stephane would enjoy designing the costume too.

But Dusty Limits said something very wise on Friday along the lines of the fact that being physically naked isn't really revealing that much in this day and age, and a really daring striptease is an emotional one, when a performer reveals the truth about themselves. I think that was the jist of it - I was onto my third glass of champagne by then and everything was very sparkly and fizzy - but it rings true to me. That's what great cabaret singing - in fact great singing full stop - is really all about. Emotional striptease.

So that's the kind of naked I'm going to aspire to on stage.

TV

xx

The Fascinator

2007-03-24T19:31:00.000Z

I found out what my little feather head-dress is called last night.

It's called a Fascinator.

it was only my Fascinator's first outing at a gig, and I must say i thought it did a very good job of fascinating. Although the pointy end of the feathers kept poking people in the eye, which was less endearing than the other end.

What a fascinating night it was all round at the Volupte Lounge. Gwendoline Lamour AND Roxy Velvet AND Crimson Skye in one night - a big chocolate box of burlesque treats. And then Dusty Limits bought after-hours champagne and I discovered what an enormous quantity of the stuff it is possible to drink without getting a hangover. Brilliant. I am only getting drunk on expensive champagne from now on.

After-hours secrets of the night? I couldn't possibly reveal what a roomful of burlesque queens, cabaret singers and supper club staff get up to after the punters have gone home. Suffice to say there were drumsticks, impromptu dance routines, and anecdotes involving fanning people's arses involved.

And right at the end, before I jumped into my taxi, there was one really really lovely shot glass full of something a bit coffyish which I couldn't identify but which i definitely want to drink again as soon as possible.

I don't know about anybody else, but I for one had a very fascinating night indeed.

TV

xx

The Trousers Mercedes Dubtet

2007-03-16T13:01:00.000Z

Trousers Mercedes, diva wrangler and bassist extraordinaire, has decided to form his own band and perform dub covers of the entire Tricity Vogue repertoire.

Which means the set list will go something like this:

Honeysuckle Dub
Does You Dub Or Does You Don't
Dub Tropicana
All the Dub Reasons
Apple Dub
Under Your Dub
Boys Don't Dub
My Side of the Dub
Dub is a Girls Best Friend

I think he might be on to a winner. In fact, his band will probably become about 10 times more successful than mine, and be filling Wembley before the year is out.

Hopefully he'll let me sing in it, at least. Can you do reggae in evening wear?

TV

xx

Teaching My Boyfriend To Swing

2007-03-13T22:46:00.000Z

What a fantastic title for a blog entry.

But I really am not making this up. Beloved and I have just been rehearsing together for our gig tomorrow night at Volupte, that most louche of after-dark hangouts, and our swing version of Sweet Dreams hit a glitsch when Beloved noticed how close to the White Stripes' 7 Nation Army our Sweet Dreams bassline was (really - there's only one note difference. Check it out for yourself). Once he'd noticed this, he couldn't get the White Stripes song out of his head, and this had the effect of knocking all the swing out Sweet Dreams and sending him off into a rock-out frenzy.

I cured him by force-feeding him Paul Anka's swing versions of Wonderwall, True, and Eye of the Tiger. No one can resist Mr Anka's swing for long, even if listening on a loop can bring on an effect that is the musical equivalent of having eaten too many ferrerro rochers.

Suffice to say that Beloved is now swinging like crazy.

It's going to be one hell of a night at Volupte tomorrow I can tell you.

I'd better retire for the evening and get my beauty sleep... unless Beloved needs more lessons, that is.

TV

xx

Things To Do When Your Computer Breaks Down

2007-03-06T23:22:00.000Z

1. get it fixed
2. buy another one
3. borrow someone else's
4. do the housework
5.mend an antique fan
6. ring your parernts
7. read a book
8. visit your fashion designer friend and get him to iron your vintage ball gown with his professional steam iron
9.listen to a show on radio two called 'in search of the perfect pop song' in which guy chambers plays tantalising snippets of all your favourite songs ever and then plays more tantalising snippets of the people who wrote them talking about it
10. start furiously writing song lyrics for what will definitely be your own number one hit
11. go to bed early
12. get up in the middle of the night and sneak on your boyfriend's computer while he's asleep.

Me, I'm a big Mac fan - dating back to the days of the Mac Classic, that favourite of university computer rooms in my undergraduate days (oh god that ages me - more than if I admitted dancing to Come On Eileen at a college disco, because let's face it, everyone still dances to Come On Eileen at college discos) - but the thing is with macs, when they die, they really die. I took mine to show a nice hassidic jewish man in Walthamstow, who stroked his beard and said "You're logic board has gone". "Is that bad?" I said. Apparently that means the whole thing is bust - and for the money it would cost me to replace it I could buy a new one - he did have several very reasonable models on offer, but I decided to go away and think about it... then found the same computer £100 quid cheaper on the apple website. I was struck down by this massive paranoia attack in the repair centre that the shoddy-looking ibook they returned to me, shaking their heads, was not in fact mine at all, but one they had switched in the repair room for mine. Surely my own screen had not been that bent? Surely mine didn't have that huge crack down one corner? Surely my own power cable did not look so grubby and disgusting? I realised that all the things that make your own computer distinctive and familiar to you are on the inside - your desktop, your settings - and if I'd been asked to select mine at an identity parade I'd have had less clue than when they wheel out the ex pop stars on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. The next laptop I have, I'm going to sign my name on the bottom in permanent marker, I can tell you.

Beloved was very eager for me to get on with buying a new computer as urgently as possible, mainly because for the last few days every time he gets up to go to the loo, he comes back to find me squatting his machine, faffing about on myspace or giggling secretively at emails. Thank god for my friend round the corner with a laptop sitting unused all day while she's at work, who let me go round and borrow hers so I could finish my work.

I've noticed I get on with what I'm supposed to be doing much more efficiently when I'm not at home. Many people who work at home claim that they end up doing the housework instead of working... if only my displacement activities were so worthy. We're not really into housework as an activity in this household: we tend to shut our eyes and pray for the fairies to come and do it, until we trip over a pile of Sunday newspapers so high we have to stir ourselves into a cleaning blitz (this usually happens on Thursday morning when we hear the recycling truck approaching down the street). However, without a computer of my own in the house to suck me in, I have found myself surveying my surroundings with a critical eye similar to the one I turned on the beat-up case of my old ibook - how come it got this bad and I never noticed? The hoover's been out, and - hold your breath - the kitchen floor has been Mopped. Yes, mopped. Not actually with an old school mop and bucket, but with this natty little toy called a Flash Powermop, which has a battery operated squirter to spit Flash liquid onto the floor just in front of the nappy-style mop-head attachment. Whether this marvel of modern technology actually gets floors any cleaner than the traditional method is questionable, but it's a lot more fun to use.

That's 1 - 4 covered. The antique fan in number 5 was once left behind at a gig by a friend of a friend - I sent her a message to say I had it and she told me to look after it because it was antique, and promised to come to another gig to pick it up some time. That was about 2 years ago. In all that hot weather last summer I took to using it on stage to cool me down... until one day it ripped in half. I'm not sure the friend of a friend will ever come back to collect it - but just in case she does, I thought I'd better try and glue it together again, so I stuck some tissue paper on the back with uhu. That was probably a sacriligeous thing to do with an antique painted fan, but it does mean the fan will now open and close without falling to bits. I haven't spoken to the friend of a friend since I bumped into her in the toilets of Century, that club in Soho. I'd been taken there by a fat cat I was dating, ostensibly for a drink, but, it turned out once we got there, his real intention was to dump me. Perhaps he thought that if he did it in a public place I wouldn't cry. However, I did cry - and, of course, in the midst of my emotional outburst a business contact of his moseyed up to say hello and asked to be introduced to his 'new lady friend', so that backfired on him somewhat. I then ran off to the loo, where I bumped into the Lady Of The Fan, who was so busy regaling me with tales of all the famous people she was hanging out at the club with that she didn't notice the black tear streaks down my face (liquid eyeliner is a bugger to do relationship breakups in). Luckily she didn't ask me about the antique fan either.

7 - 12 are pretty much self explanatory, except to say that the book I have just been reading is Black Swan Green by David Mitchell which I highly recommend to anyone who was a kid in the 80s (there I go again with the giveaways), or in fact, anyone who was a kid, full stop. And go to the bbc website and find Guy Chambers show under Listen Again for BBC2 because it really was delicious, inspirational listening about the secret ingredients that go into a really classic hit song. You've got a week to catch this episode, and the good news is, it's a series, so there'll be another lovely episode along next week as well.

Meanwhile, Beloved just got back home, so I'm gonna have to wrap this up before he catches me on his machine - again - and domestic harmony is thus upheaved (is that a word?)

Watch this space for that Tricity Vogue Number One Hit Single...

TV

xx

Agony Corner

2007-02-22T18:15:00.000Z

A new service for the lovelorn and the romantically confused of the capital, Tricity Vogue's Agony Corner made its debut at last week's Valentine Hangover gig.

For those of you who were too emotionally exhausted after Valentine's Day to attend, here are the letters Honey Mink read out, and Tricity's wise replies.

And remember, Miss Vogue will be back soon with more invaluable romantic advice, so if you have a problem, if no one else can help, then why not write to Tricity?

agony@tricityvogue.com

xxx

TRICITY,

I WANT TO DRESS JUST LIKE YOU! I LOVE AND ADMIRE YOUR CLOTHES SENSE, AND S W O O N OVER YOUR OUTFITS. WHERE CAN I FIND AMAZING GARMENTS LIKE YOURS, AND DO THEY DO MEN'S SIZES?

"GORDON"

Dear Gordon

The advantage of hand-made original couture like mine and Honey's is that it comes in any size. As a man, you have to potential to look quite striking in an evening gown, having the advantage of height on your side.

However I'm afraid I can't pass on the details of my personal couturier to you. I can't risk you looking better in the gowns than I do.

Yours, Tricity

Dear Tricity
I am planning on seducing my Polish builder. Any tips?
Yours in lust, "Felicity"

Dear Felicity

Fraternising with workmen can be a perilous business, but if you really can't resist, at least make sure he's finished grouting your brickwork first.

I myself am still smarting from an ill-fated affair with an electrician – on our first date he turned up two hours late, didn't have any of the appropriate tools, left the job half-finished, promised to come back another day, and never showed his face again.

If you must dabble with the trades, look for a plumber. And when you find one, give me his number.

Love Tricity

Dear Tricity,

I wonder if you could help me? I have a personal problem. The Transhetrodyne Amplifier on my Servo Relay for the Sub section I am in charge of keeps going into Secondary phasing. What would you recommend, to reverse this trend in a three year old module.

Thanks, Anonymous.

Dear Anonymous

Ask a boy.

Love Tricity

Dear Tricity.

My friend's in love with the guy in the coffee bar. Her problem is she doesn't like coffee. She said "I'll have a tea" - he heard "latte". Now every day she goes in, he gets the latte ready. And she can't say anything because he makes a real effort with patterns in the milk. What does she do? If she tells him the truth - is he going to think she's weird? If they get together ever - will she have to drink coffee all the time?

Yours sincerely. A Friend.

Dear Friend

Probably, yes.

If you don't like coffee, don't look for love in a coffee bar.

Tell your friend to go and hang out somewhere full of things she does like instead – like Tiffany's for example - then she's got a chance of meeting a man who'll make her the kind of love offerings she can appreciate.

Patterns in the milk? What's that about?

Tricity

xx

Dear Tricity

My latest squeeze just dumped me even though he really liked me. I know he really liked me because he said he did – every time I asked him, which was at least once every ten minutes when we were out together. How is a girl supposed to cope when men give out such mixed messages?

yours, Baffled

Dear Baffled

I think I know where you went wrong here.

Never ask a man a question he can't answer. Men will do anything rather than admit their own ignorance – and that includes doing a runner.

In your case, the question 'Do you like me?' was clearly too complicated for the poor boy.

I once made a similar mistake myself when I asked the man I was seeing "Why don't you leave your wife and spend your money on me instead?"

Nowadays I try not to ask men any questions at all if I can help it. It's safer.

Yours, Tricity

TRICITY,

I AM 22 YEARS OLD AND HAVE NEVER BEEN WITH A LADY. I BELIEVE THAT MY WEIGHT AND SPOTS PUT THEM OFF, BUT PERHAPS IT'S THE PICTURES OF WOMEN IN MY ROOM. MY MOTHER DYED LAST YEAR, AND DOES NOT SUIT HER NEW RINSE. I AM BORED WITH LIFE AND WILL END IT ALL UNLESS I FIND A BRUNETTE LIKE YOU. DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND AND WHERE DO YOU LIVE?

CLIVE.

Dear Clive

Although I would love to go on a date with you I'm afraid I'm going to be in washing my hair for the next ten years. However, my friend Honey Mink might have an evening free.

Yours, Tricity

Dear Tricity

I am an attractive 25 year old woman, and I feel time is running out for me. I have a number of male suitors but none of them have the income to keep me in the manner that a woman of my attributes deserves. I think I'm looking for love in the wrong places. How can I find a rich husband?

Charlotte

Dear Charlotte

Has your financial adviser introduced you to the concept of long-term investment? Make it clear to your suitors that you require them to amass large amounts of dosh in order to win your heart, and send them out into the world to make their fortunes, promising them a sound romantic return for their labours.

Then when they trot back to you, wads of cash in hand, you can pick the most loaded to be your lucky groom.

This strategy always works for the princess in fairy stories.

Love

Tricity

Dear Tricity

I went on holiday and met the most marvellous girl. We sat on the beach and she wore flipflops and scruffy clothes. Since I am quite scruffy myself I thought we were a perfect match. Imagine my horror when we returned to London and she started dressing up in the most over-the-top costumes and make-up as a homage to you. I am quite shy and gentle by nature and find her vampishness quite intimidating and unsettling. Please advise.

Liam

Dear Liam

Stop whining and buy a dinner jacket.

Yours, Tricity

Lying On My Band

2007-02-17T19:47:00.000Z

We did a photoshoot last Saturday and it was a full-on production number.

Someone commented that it took more work than when we went into the studio. For some members of the band, having their faces made up and their outfits styled for them, then being invited to show off to a man with a big camera in his hand, was a voluptuously pleasurable experience. For others (mentioning no names) it was akin to being sent down the mines, then being expected to dig for coal with their bare hands because someone had nicked the pickaxes. I may have mentioned before that organising a jazz band is like herding cats, and, as Earl Mysterio observed, some extreme feline herding was required for Saturday - but not only did we successfully capture all seven members of the Slinktet in the photos at the same time, with barely a limb out of frame, we got some Very Slinky Shots Indeed.

I'll stick them up on myspace as soon as the final photoshopping has been completed (I'm not getting anything airbrushed out. Honest.). Meanwhile a big thank you to:

Sean Gibson for taking the photographs
Timo Hebditch for being camera assistant
Stephane St Jaymes for styling
Mabel Flores for helping him
Elaine Amielle and Charlie James for make-up
and a big thank you to Tryg and Lost Society for letting us pose on their property. Hope we can come back and shimmy onstage for you soon, by way of a thank you for your hospitality.

and finally

Thank you to Honey Mink, Connie Vanderlay, Sir Fitzroy Callow, Earl Mysterio, Trousers Mercedes and Bobby Fresh for submitting yourself to the camera lens for hours. I won't make you do it again, I promise.

...At least not for a while.

As for me, my favourite shot was the one where the whole band carried me, and I lay across them in my turquoise gown with my tassels dangling and a big grin on my face.

I trusted you not to drop me guys. You never do.

TV

xx

Old Unlit Flame

2007-02-03T12:39:00.000Z

Remember that guy you used to be hugely, desperately in love with before you ever had a real life relationship that involved actual bodily contact?

Imagine if you saw him again after years and years and he actually remembered your name.

It happened to me last week and I actually got hot flushes. He's still got the same wide eyed puppy dog thing going on, the same sticky uppy blonde mop of hair (all of it), the same bright, enthused way of talking. Whereas I have adopted a different name and whole new identity... but the starry eyed ingenue I used to be, is, to my own astonishment, still buried underneath the hardbitten glamour after all.

Once upon a time, I auditioned for a college pantomime, and got the part of Principle Girl. Which meant, the pantomime being Jack and the Beanstalk, that I played the Harp. In fact, I played a damsel in distress tied to a harp. Hot Flush Guy was one of the three writer/directors - but he was the only male one, and thus the one I decided to fall in love with. And when the first night came it was the HFG's job to tie me to the harp before the curtain went up.

Virginal creature that I was, this experience was the closest to sex I had ever come in my life. And the bondage overtones weren't lost on me either. I suspect that HFG felt more faintly embarrassed than turned on by the whole routine, but he dutifully re-enacted it every night that week before the curtain went up.

I think the pantomine was quite successful as well.

Two other shining moments of romantic obsession gleam out of the fogs of memory. One was when Sara, one of the girl-directors (who, incidentally, once lent me her red lipstick and consequently changed my life forever) brought the HFG with her to my room, so he could listen to me sing and play the guitar (back in those days I was modelling myself on Tanita Tikaram). I remember that playing and singing for him was like being in heaven. I could imagine no one else I'd rather have listening to my songs - which were, of course, almost entirely written about him. I think I may have had the good sense not to reveal this at the time. After I finished playing (on becoming dimly aware that he was shuffling a lot and eyeing the door) he said I was really good and I should get myself a manager and try and make a go of it as a musician. I asked him if he'd like to manage me himself, and he said "no" very quickly. But it didn't take the sheen off the first half of the conversation.

The other shining moment was Valentine's Day. I'd been unsubtly bemoaning the fact that I had never ever received a Valentine's Card to the entire cast and crew, and in my pigeonhole on the morning of the 14th, there it was.

The card itself was fairly generic, but inside was a little drawing of a harp and the inscription "Happy Valentines Day Harpie" (yes, the cast and crew called me Harpie. I was deeply touched to have a nickname of my own.) I knew it must be from him. I glowed all day. I showed it to everybody.

Then the next day I was browsing in a bargain bookshop and I saw my valentine card in the remainder bin for 10p.

Then it occurred to me. The card wasn't from him at all. It was from one of the girl directors who had taken pity on me because I'd never been sent a Valentine's Card.

It was a Mercy Card.

At the time it didn't occur to me what a kind and thoughtful gesture this was by the other director - she'd taken the trouble to buy a card for me and slip it into my pigeonhole (in between my hourly checks), knowing it would bring me joy. But now, looking back, I can appreciate her generosity.

Back then, I was too busy being heartbroken.

And then last week I went to watch a puppet cabaret show based on the low-life writings of Charled Bukowski, and at the very end one of the puppeteers stood up to make an announcement and I realised who he was.

Hot Flush Guy.

I hovered around him in the bar for about ten minutes and eventually he was unable to ignore my presence any longer and said hello.

And remembered me.

He told me that until a year or so ago, that pantomime was possibly the most successful production he'd ever staged.

I'm glad I was a part of something so important in his life. And I'm glad I saw him again so that I could see - and delight in - what he's doing now.

And I don't even mind that he won't be sending me a valentine's card this year either - because Beloved will (I've made it very clear to him what my expectations are in that department, I can tell you).

And if, as my friend so wryly remarked on the night I re-encountered HFG, I did indeed neglect to mention to him that I was now happily coupled up with my dream guy, and co-habiting to boot, it wasn't out of any lingering romantic thoughts in his direction, but merely because, in a crowded theatre bar, with so many other, so much more useful, networking contacts vying for his attention, our conversation was necessarily far too brief for the subject of our personal lives to come up at all.

Funny how it's sometimes the flames that never get lit that burn for longest.

TV

xx

Down and Out in Dolce and Gabbana

2007-01-17T18:30:00.000Z

I've just spotted a contradiction at the heart of the jazz girl's lifestyle.

It's the yen for the dressing-up-box that draws ladies such as Miss Mink and myself onto the jazz stage, where we can shamelessly drape ourselves in the sort of luridly coloured full-length gowns we used to daydream about when we were 8-year-old girls (and in my case, attempt to recreate with Berol felt tip pens - i've still got the drawings somewhere, maybe I should show them to my mate Hollywood and see if he can run one of them up...).

Yet, out of all the jobs least likely to rake in piles of moolah with which to purchase said fabulous gowns, jazz singing is right down there with babysitting and collecting the balls off golf courses. Here we are with more opportunity than most to wear the Frocks of Dreams, but less means than anyone to make it happen.

This is why jazz singers, just like every other jazz musician, run their careers in a constant state of negative equity. Because the minute you get a new gig booking you start work on a new outfit for it, and before you know it you've blown all the gig money before you've even set foot on stage. It's the same for the whole band of course: new strings/flightcase/bottle of cleaning fluid/virtually-weightless music stand/elecronic tuner/jack-to-jack-lead/14-track mixer/vintage Les Paul... there's always some little thing needs buying to make the sound really perfect.

My list runs more like: new false eyelashes/fishnet stockings/liquid eyeliner/feather-boa/elbow-length gloves/marabou-feather jacket/seventeen-carat diamond earrings

but it's the same principle

Last night I went out on a fact-finding mission with Miss Honey Mink and Miss Connie Vanderlay to watch one of our Sisters In Jazz in action. Miss Corliss Randall was whipping up her weekly storm at Kinky Mambo, as she does every Tuesday night - dry-humping the audience's legs, expounding on her sax player's lewd activities with a salt and vinegar crisp packet... And singing fit to make the walls shake with her big fruity jazz vocals.

I felt the least I could do in honour of the Jazz Diva was dress up a bit - but unlike every other female in the nation, I haven't allowed myself anywhere near the sales this january, so I had to go for something from my 'existing collection' (back of the wardrobe). I found a purple lurex polo neck that I bought at a vintage clothes fair in Hammersmith town hall about two years ago. The woman I bought it from told me that her husband was a stylist and the top had once belonged to Lulu. But she'd only worn it once. Although she had cut the label out at the time, so I'd have to take the woman's word for it that it was Dolce and Gabbana. I can't remember how much I paid for it - back in those days I was on a TV Producer's wages so I was a tad more flush than I am now. Probably about £30 I reckon. Was I taken for a ride? Perhaps - but the main reason I bought it wasn't because it was supposed to be Dolce and Gabbana, or because it had been worn by Lulu, but because it was purple and sparkly.

Which led me to thinking last night, did Lulu ever have a hiatus of financial embarrassment between bouts of sparkling success akin to the one I am currently experiencing? And if so, did she dress up or down for the occasion?

Personally I don't think there's any occasion that merits dressing down, except for the occasion 'd'amour', and even then you can still slip on the odd accessory.

What's a girl to do when there's a stage to fill with glitter and no beans in the pot? Thank god for Primark, that's all I can say. I'm serious. I was in there yesterday afternoon hyperventilating with excitement at their retro print tops and black patent round-toed heels. I managed to walk away with a bag full of nothing but underwear, though, thank god. Although I can feel it pulling me back. Whispering 'handbags.... shoes.... pretty pretty scarves...' Oh god.

Honey's just come back from LA with about six pairs of stupidly glamorous shoes she bought for about £7.50. She wore the Kermit-green ones last night for Corliss. The only thing that stopped me imploding with envy was the thought that I might get to borrow them sometime if I play my cards right, us being the same shoe size and all.

I've got a handbag in exactly the same colour.

TV

xx

A Night On The Toilet Circuit

2006-12-29T23:25:00.000Z

My mate Lana was playing a spot at a showcase night in a bar in Hoxton so I thought I’d go along and support her, since it was down the road, and I’d never seen her performing solo with her guitar before, normally surrounded as she is by a crowd of adoring men clutching instruments of various shapes and sizes (usually very large). So I toddle up to one of those tatty dark little bars that only Hoxton can get away with and pay my fiver to the out-of-it looking woman on the door who seems a bit amazed – I see why when I get in. There are exactly two other people there, and one of them is on stage.

No sign of Lana – she’s probably crying in the toilet – so I go and buy myself a Corona which costs me another fiver, and sit in a darkened corner so as not to put the guy on stage off with the realization that he is now playing to two whole people. He seems to be in a world of his own anyway, and is singing a song about having a split personality – so I suppose that’s one extra person in the room. He plonks through his last number at breakneck speed and then announces that neither of his selves can stop to watch his fellow performers do their stuff (that’ll explain the other member of the audience) because there is an Arsenal match on, and disappears through the door like lightning.

Lana appears at this point and shamefacedly admits that she’s not actually on at 8, she’s on at 8.30, but she always says half an hour earlier to make her flakey mates turn up on time. She offers to buy me a drink to make up for the fact I’ve had to pay to get in, which is really lovely of her but suggests that the economy of this event is somewhat out of kilter.

Then the next act goes on and I am suddenly all in favour of the performers paying their audience to listen. This guy is from Hungary and delights in the sort of screechy electric guitar noises and moaning vocals that I can imagine Hungarian teenagers playing in their dark bedrooms before their mum calls them downstairs for a plate of noodles and boiled vegetables. Then he announces that a friend from Budapest is about to join him on stage – they haven’t played together for a year but they’re going to attempt one of their old songs and see if they can remember it. Evidently they can’t. Hungarian One covers by moaning more loudly over Hungarian Two’s ill-fitting chords. I’m sure it’s very heartfelt, but it’s also in Hungarian, so his audience, although experiencing considerable pain, is not sharing his. Lana lights another Marlboro. I lend her my coat because she’s freezing in her sleeveless top. Another of the venue’s charms.

At 8.25 Lana’s more savvy friends turn up, but the event is now running late, so they get to share our enjoyment of another act before Lana goes on. This guy is Belgian, and I start to wonder if Lana is exotic enough for this event. Belgian Guy’s first song is about how shit it is living in London, and how expensive the tube is, and his pain is as heartfelt as any of the Hungarian’s numbers, if not more so. Then he tells us he wrote his next number about his ex girlfriend who always complained he didn’t get up early enough in the morning. It’s called “You always complain I don’t get up early enough in the morning.” Then he announced his last number, which he wrote last week after his girlfriend finished with him, which was called “You’ve finished with me, you bitch.” The girl he’s come with shifts uncomfortably, possibly wondering what touching ditties he’s about to write about her. We note that another unfortunate feature of the venue is the spotlight on the soundman who has spent both of the last two acts staring into space looking pained.

At long last Lana’s up. A bit of chat with the sound guy, and she’s ready to go. But first she takes her shoes off and places her feet on the mysterious wooden box in front of her, gives it a couple of trial taps. To the audience: “Can you hear the cahon?” Nope. Nice look though, going barefoot on stage – very Woodstock. Lana’s put out that her South American percussion isn’t coming up with the goods – she was planning a bit of a one-woman-band effect – but she dives in anyway. “I was on my way to heaven but I got a bit lost… oh well, looks like I’m going to hell.”

Lana sings bouncy blues numbers with lyrics about being messed about by boys or being badly behaved generally. She’s got the audience in the palm of her hand, and not just because all six of us are her mates. She’s even managed to get the sound-man paying rapt attention, which I reckon is as objective a mark of quality you can get at a showcase night. One thing is abundantly clear from Lana’s performance – she doesn’t really belong playing the sort of let-anyone-on-stage-who-begs-hard-enough venues that make up what’s affectionately known as The Toilet Circuit. I give it a year before I’m showing off to distant acquaintances about how I saw Lana at one of her first gigs, at a tiny bar in Hoxton with no central heating.

Lana shimmies her way back to the table and I congratulate her on winning over even the sound guy.

‘Oh him – I told him we could all see him staring into space through the acts cause he was right under a spotlight.’

It’s that kind of attitude that’s gonna take Lana all the way to the top.

www.myspace.com/artistlana

Blue Shoes

2006-12-17T15:56:00.000Z

Honey Mink has found two pairs of sparkly blue heels in the Office sale for £15 that she reckons will go with our matching blue gowns - but it's a gamble without checking the colour against the dresses, and they're only exchangeable not refundable...

So Honey is proposing stopping off at Office on Tottenham Court Road on the way to the gig tomorrow. At rush hour. With the whole band and three guest artists waiting to soundcheck on the other side of town.

Of course glamour comes before everything, but I think Earl Mysterio might have had a point when he graciously turned down our offer of a lift to the gig after hearing our en-route shopping plans.

It remains to be seen when it comes to the crunch whether Sensible Me will triumph tomorrow, or whether the temptation will simply be too much and I will end up leaping out of the car with Honey for one very quick fix of shoe-shopping action. I can give up any time I like. Really.

But then on the other hand, Honey just texted me to say she's written a new song called 'Take a little gamble on me'. How appropriate.

It's just one little pair of shoes. What harm can it do?

TV

xx

Two Girls, a Futon, Fulham and a Fake Piano

2006-12-16T19:24:00.000Z

Last Sunday I lured Connie Vanderlay across London with the promise of a real, glass-topped piano to play...

I had visions of a leisurely evening spent lounging against a baby grand, in a subterranean piano bar in Kensington, gently crooning away while Connie tickled the keys.

I really should have known better.

First off, Connie discovered that the carol service she'd been roped into singing for at the 'city of london' cemetery was not actually in the city of london at all, but out in the farthest reaches of suburbia somewhere halfway to Norwich. This was, however, only the beginning of her epic voyage.

I offered Connie my futon for her new flat (I did remember to ask Beloved first, although he may have been asleep at the time. However, since we're planning on buying a sofa anyway I thought it might be a useful incentive to spur us into DFI action (oh god, no...) if we had to sit on a pile of cushions on the floor for a month.) We managed to disassemble the thing and get it into the back of my trusty micra (yeah, the vintage Mercedes is still on order...) but little did we know as we pootled off that this was only the beginning of our troubles.

An hour and a half later we were inching our way along the embankment, wondering if we were still going to have time to rehearse on the Grand piano in Connie's current crashpad (I think she sleeps underneath it). An hour after that we were wondering if we were ever going to get out of the car again, or were in fact doomed to circulate the streets of west london at the speed of a small toddler for the rest of our natural lives.

When Beloved announced he was going down the pub to watch Arsenal play Chelsea, and Connie invited me over to Fulham to practise a few numbers, I hadn't connected the two things in my head. It took two roadblocks, and hordes of men pouring onto the streets of Fulham at 5pm to make the penny drop.

Well we're girls, protested Connie, we're not supposed to know when and where there's a football match on. I agree - I also don't think otherworldly jazzers such as ourselves should be required to actually drive our own vehicles either. In fact, a helicopter was the only real option in traffic like that.

Oh but were our woes over when we finally parked up? Oh no. All we had to do then was carry the futon down the entire length of the street. And of course it was raining. And of course I was wearing a pair of vintage red stillettos ready for our appearance that evening. The sight of me tottering down a chichi Fulham street lugging a great big cotton mattress was, I'm sure hilarious, if you weren't actually trying to do it. I had to keep stopping to rest the thing on garden walls while I tried to get a better grip, and in the end I just gave up and waited for Connie to come and pick up the other end. Which of course involved narrowly avoiding dropping the whole thing in a great big puddle.

We finally get the thing inside and Connie says, "You've smudged your beauty spot." Sure enough it was halfway down my face. Not a great look, unless you're Courtney Love. There was barely time for emergency facial repairs and a swift glance at the shiny grand piano before we were out the door again and back on the road to Kensington. Thankfully that bit of the journey was uneventful, but when we trot downstairs into the piano bar, Connie's ears prick up suspiciously and she says "that doesn't sound like a real piano." Maybe it's just badly amplified, I suggest?

But when we get off stage after knocking out a couple of cheeky numbers, Connie is radiating outrage from every pore.

"It's a casio keyboard!"

The glass-topped piano is nothing but an empty shell, and they've stuck a keyboard inside the frame instead.

Connie goes on a ten minute rant about how promising a pianist a piano and then giving them a keyboard and thinking it's the same thing is like offering someone a cordon bleu meal and then serving them bits of plasticine and expecting them to eat it. I'm feeling a bit embarrassed, mainly because I can't believe I did a gig there before and never even noticed the piano was a fake.

The truth came out last Thursday at a glitterati party for 'members of the cabaret and burlesque community', when the piano bar's regular pianist explained that when one of the piano's strings broke in the summer, instead of replacing one string, the venue got rid of it and stuck a keyboard in instead.

The barbarians.

But at least I can feel a bit better in the knowledge that last time I sang there it was to the accompaniment of a real piano, and my musical ear is not as insensitive as I feared.

I think I might have to find Connie somewhere else to play piano though. There must be a piano bar somewhere in London that actually has one with strings...

TV

xx

adult life

2006-12-02T23:01:00.000Z

Messing about at the hob cooking smoked haddock risotto while The Paul Wady Experience and Funky Yogi made loud farty electronic noises in the front room, I thought... Did I ever imagine when I was a kid that my adult life would be like this?

I think it's fair to say that I do more playing now than I ever did as a teenager, when I was deeply concerned with being Grown Up. In the photo of me aged sixteen in my passport I look about 30. I've got a really grim perm, and I'm wearing a particularly unflattering shade of pearlised peach lipstick (which probably gives away the era a bit too much), as well as an alarmingly sensible expression. I think I've been going backwards ever since. It would certainly be fair to say that my Dressing Up Box has got better stuff in it than it had when I was ten.

Latest toy to enter the household is the PWE's new 14-track mixing desk, through which Beloved intends to DI his bass, our vocal mics, and also Connie's keyboard at the next gig. It's main starring moment, however, will be when the PWE takes centre stage for his Special Guest Appearance, armed with keyboard, synthesiser, sequencer, and another couple of black boxes with loads of lights on whose purpose remains mysterious to me. PWE has programmed the keyboard to play dog barks for the number "Tanya's Doggie" but is concerned that "the dog's part may be over-written."

For the same money as PWE spent on this rather exciting number with more knobs and faders than you can shake a midi lead at, Beloved has bought a small and unprepossessing black box to plug his bass into, which is, apparently, what all serious bass players use.

This means of course that his status as official Dep Bassist of the Slinktet is confirmed. This morning he decided on his stage name:

Trousers Mercedes

Brilliant. Like I said, not how I imagined my adult life would be spent, but hey, dreaming up jazz alter-egos is probably a more positive use of our time than, say, bickering our way around Ikea. And cheaper.

Over dinner, I invited the PWE and Beloved to come up with some quotes I could use on the band's promotional material. The PWE came up with a few left-field ones, like "A Human Jazz Pacemaker", "Great dress. Shame about the smell." and some other things equally insulting. But Beloved says I don't look anything like the back end of a horse, so that's okay. Beloved's best one was "I wear her dresses when she's out at work". Not sure any of them are actually usable but good effort boys.

They are now enjoying a hiatus in their slanging match about whether the bass part to Tanya's Doggie has been programmed an octave too high, to revel in Arsenal's victory over Spurs on Match of the Day. This could cause friction at Monday night's rehearsal, when die-hard Spurs fan Sir Fitzroy Callow may be nursing a few post-match grudges...

However, chances are we will be too busy slinkifying Kylie hits and christmas songs ready for the cabaret on the 18th, to get into any football conversations.

Or dealing with mouse corpses.

Haven't told Bobby what we found nestled under his bass pedal last time we were down there...

Beloved and Mysterio manfully carried the Departed out to the bins, and as long as no more small mammals have made the pilgrimage there to breathe their last in that hallowed musical space, the coast should be clear...

fingers crossed.

TV

xx

PS The PWE is still coming up with them...
The Jazz Tornado
A One-Woman Party
Jazz Prozac
Sings as well as she cooks
Doesn't look that bad
Beats cold turkey, salami, and everything else in your fridge
Has become a regular event in my life
Singing that kills you, and dresses to die for
A dangerous mouth and a killer body. And the hair's okay.
Addictive
A ray of cheeky sunshine in a dress
The more you drink, the better she sounds

aw bless...

Studio Antics

2006-11-30T18:27:00.000Z

I have come to the conclusion that we are not a very serious band.

Serious bands wouldn't get distracted from listening back to their studio performances by the game of dressing the drummer up in high heeled pink stilettos... would they?

Would a serious jazz singer allow herself to be photographed with a banana in her mouth? I think not.

Yes, photos exist of both of these occurrences, but no, I am not going to post either of them here.

No. Not even if you beg me.

Well, maybe if you give me flowers...

And I think it's fair to say that Honey excelled herself with the contents of her car boot this time. On previous occasions she has magically produced six ukeleles (in four different colours), and about a dozen shoes, some of them even making up matching pairs. This Sunday it was a huge bag of baby percussion - toy tambourines, midget maracas, technicolour shakey eggs, the works. The original intention was to play some hand percussion on Boys Don't Cry, but once the bag was tipped out over the floor in the control room, the place looked like a creche, and the temptation to shake things wildly for no apparent musical reason overcame us all. I doubt that carpet has ever witnessed anything quite so infantile in its entire professional career.

On another occasion our Sound Engineer returned from lunch to find an impromtu blues jam going on, with Honey stealing the show on Kazoo. Sir Fitz was feeling the icy blast of wind on the back of his neck I can tell you.

No, I wouldn't say that we were a serious band at all. I would say that we were a playful band. And I would also say that is definitely the best sort of band to be in.

'Serious' bands probably spend a lot of time having sleepless nights about whether the piano is too high in the mix in the solo. Playful bands like ours make our minds up on the day the mix is made, and decide we like it that way whenever we hear it from then on. Because that's the way it is.

Yeah, sure we probably could have inched our way to a more perfect recording if we'd sweated blood over it - but that was never the point.

The point was always to get a recording that sounded like we do live. And that meant playing live together in the studio. Which, if you were going to take it seriously, would mash your brain with the pressure.

Only by not taking it seriously is it possible to pull off this feat of daring. Having a cool, collected, gleamingly professional Sound Engineer probably helps as well. I never saw one flicker of frustration cross his inscrutable, smiling face. The man is clearly destined for world domination.

Okay, I have to confess, the week before we did all take it a bit seriously. Yes, there were nights of tossing and turning, there was angsting and indecision, there were emails flying to and fro debating whether or not this part or that part needed to be scrapped and re-recorded. And then, magically, we all calmed down and got things into perspective. All it took, I think, was a week of listening back to what we'd got already in the can, and realising that it wasn't half bad - and then, galvanised by the knowledge that we could actually make good music, we rediscovered our mojo.

Beloved was rather shocked by the inattention and childish behaviour displayed collectively by the Slinktet in the studio... but I think it is both advisable and necessary to maintain a lightness of touch at moments of stress.

Think about it - seven people all craning their ears to listen to the ultimate final, this-is-it mix of a track, focusing on the minutest of details... Was there a tiny cymbal sound just before the final stab at the end? Which of the two trombone growls sounds better over the last verse? Does the vocal go sharp at the end of the first line - and if so, does it add bluesy character to the number, or just sound like I can't sing?

All that concentration, all that pressure... you have to let off steam somehow. Serious bands probably OD on coke. We make the boys in the band try on girls' shoes. Take your pick.

When, you may be asking, can we hear these astonishing recordings?

I am going to tease and tantalise you for as long as possible, as any proper jazz vamp should, so I'm only going to put one track on myspace at a time.

The first one is the last that we recorded - in two takes - and it is dedicated, with thanks, to a young man who once declined to accept my offer of a repeat performance. I was pretty miserable at the time, I can tell you, but it just goes to show that something good can come out of the most ill-advised of romantic encounters.

It's called Well I Didn't Want You Anyway.

Thanks to Mysterio and Sir Fitz for making it into studio magic.

Enjoy...

TV

xx

Self-consciousness: the enemy of creativity

2006-11-22T14:14:00.000Z

There we all were in the studio in our own little bubbles of stress, convinced we were shit and letting everybody else down...

i was convinced I couldn't sing. Fresh was thinking of throwing in his sticks and resigning himself to a career in educational administration.And Beloved was ready to go and lie in the road - having managed to convince himself he had failed me and us so absolutely as a stand-in bassist...

then we put the cd of the performance bounces on last night... and whaddaya know? it sounds great.

phew.

spot of mixing, a couple of cheeky drop-ins, and we'll have another killer track or three on our hands.

who knows, we might even get the album out by Christmas...

thanks guys. And sorry if I was so busy thinking i was crap to remember to tell you you're all brilliant.

You're all brilliant.

TV

xx

In The Zone

2006-11-17T16:06:00.000Z

Lovely gig last night... lots of warm vibes from all our friends in the audience, and the band were all having a lot of fun, enjoying each others' company up on stage, enjoying knowing the numbers well enough to relax into them like a comfortable bath.

i had the weirdest experience in the second half... it suddenly felt as if the song i was singing had a life of its own, and didn't really have anything to do with me singing it at all. I almost felt like I could have stepped off stage and the song would have carried on without me. Like the music was moving through me of its own accord...

that sounds really wanky probably, but it was a mad feeling - and brilliant.

And I'd only had one rum and coke.

i think it would be fair to say that we are in a really good place to go into the studio on Sunday... even without a bass.

But we've come up with a cunning solution to our bass dilemma:

Honey is going to play bass on her own song - I love you for all the wrong reasons - and is busily practising her part ready for our rehearsal in the Cellar Of Dusty Tramples tomorrow afternoon.

And Beloved is going to play bass on my song, My Side of The Bed, which is, appropriately enough, about the joys of cohabitation. Connie is coming over tonight for a bit of a run-through of the arrangement with him, and I'm going to cook them both a spot of tea while they get down to some musicking (poached smoked haddock in cheese and chive roux sauce, with mashed potato and broccoli, I thought).

Then if there's time in the studio, we might also record some intimate duo and trio numbers: Well I Didn't Want You Anyway, with vocals, guitar and trombone, Is it Because with piano, trombone and maybe a spot of light brushes from Bobby Fresh... and perhaps even a vamped out version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye, with just me and Earl Mysterio, since it went so well last night...

Whatever we end up doing, I know we'll have a brilliant time doing it anyway

better get the chocolate biscuits in for Vanderlay

xxx

Bass Race

2006-11-12T18:29:00.000Z

The good news is we're going back into the studio next Sunday...

The bad news is, we haven't got a bass player to take with us.

Magic J is going to be making punters' watches disappear in Croydon somewhere, so he can't join us - and so, for the last month, the other five of us have been asking every one we've ever met who plays bass if they're free on the 19th (including that guy from the party who said he'd played a bit of bass when he was 17 before he sold his instrument to take his girlfriend on holiday but even though he's now 43 he's sure he could pick it up again really easily). Now Magic J's getting more and more bookings to make things disappear or blow things up, it's getting quite pressing to find ourselves a new magician-of-the-bass, as it were, not just for the studio, but for the gigs as well.

Somewhere out there is the future bass player of the Tricity Vogue Slinktet. I'm dreaming of a double bassist, but at the end of the day I'm not fussy as long as they know their G string from their elbow. (That pronouncement sounds eerily familiar: I suspect that in the past I may once have said something similar about my search for love...)

Of course, there is one last resort... Beloved does number bass playing among his many talents, but I'm terrified of roping him into the band... because what if it all goes wrong and the music doesn't come together, and then me and him end up having a massive row and splitting up? Not that we've ever had a massive row about anything - but the trouble is that when you make music with your squeeze it's never just about the music: the music becomes a metaphor for your entire relationship. One 'bold note' can seem like the end of the world instead of just a slip of a finger. Is it fair on him, asking him to step into an established, tight band, that his girlfriend also happens to run? He's got no choice but to be blindingly good, to preserve his own chutzpah - and that's not a good position to put anybody in. And is it fair on the band either, when I'm getting all cozy with my fella instead of giving everybody equal attention? And if I don't give Beloved the attention that a girlfriend should, he's going to be really hurt because i'm being weird and distant with him... Apart from anything else, this is not the kind of behavioural dilemma i want to put myself in when I go into the studio and attempt to feel as relaxed and confident as possible, so I can deliver that killer vocal.

oh good grief.

One last desperate solution...

last night Beloved gave me a bass lesson and he said I was picking it up really fast and had a really good sense of rhythm and timing... and maybe I should play bass myself in the band???

mmmm... somehow I can't see that quite working. Not before next Sunday, anyway. And yes, girls playing bass do look really cool, but I think I might save that up my sleeve for another band, another day... I'm not really feeling a lowslung bass over a satin full-length gown, never mind trying to play one in evening gloves.

Still, it's a Look...

TV

xx

Exceedingly Good Cakes

2006-10-31T22:34:00.000Z

There we were again last night, down Earl Mysterio's cellar, but this time we had Mr Kipling's Cherry Bakewells to keep us company, not to mention Bramley Apple Tarts.

The cakes were courtesy of Magic J by way of atonement for making us change the rehearsal date at the last minute because he had to go and let off fireworks tonight for the Scissor Sisters (all part of Magic's secret double life as a Special Effects Man...)

Connie was laying into her corner of the cellar with a dustpan and brush, trying to make it all nice and clean, which seems a bit pointless to me since she's right under the hole in the roof, but some girls just have that homemaker instinct, I suppose. I think Beloved will be the first one to draw attention to my sad deficiency in that respect. I must be missing a gene.

The good news is that we're gonna reintroduce Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps into the repertoire - most famously sung by Doris Day, as featured in that classic of camp modern cinema, Strictly Ballroom. I plan to make Honey sing a verse in the original Spanish for a bit of continental sex appeal.

This may mean I have to then sing something in German so as not to feel left out of the multilingual chanteuse game: how about Falling In Love Again, as sung by Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel? ("Ich bin von kopf bis fuss auf liebe eingestellt - I am from head to foot besotted by love..." Or something like that. I dunno. German just doesn't sound as glamorous as Spanish or Portuguese. Or maybe only on the lips of Dietrich...)

We can both speak French, which means lots of opportunities for cheeky gallic numbers in the future. I quite fancy doing Sympathique by Pink Martini:

www.myspace.com/pinkmartinitheband

i think it's been on an advert but I can't remember what for. Can't stop singing it at bus stops though (forgive me, I hate to ruin my mystique by admitting i ever even stand at bust stops)

exciting future social engagements for the Slinktet include tomorrow's 'brand design meeting' when we are going to get our heads together to conceive the artwork for the demo sleeve, promotional material etc... and an even more exciting evening of Cellar Crap Clearance when we will all get drunk and sling Mysterio's old crap out of the front cellar to make space for new Band Crap. We are going to be transporting it all the way to the back cellar. Still, one room nearer the stairs, come the day when it actually makes it out of the front door into a skip (which will no doubt require the consumption of yet more alcohol).

What will Tricity be wearing for this enterprise? Possibly something from Beloved's wardrobe. He's got all sorts of army trousers and other 'alpha male' items of clothing which can only be enhanced by smears of chalky old whitewash and cobwebs. In fact, I'd probably be doing him a favour breaking them in for him. Then again, what am I thinking? I don't want to undermine his masculinity by doing manual labour and leaving him standing by watching. I'm sure he'd much rather it was the other way around.

Maybe I could offer to mix the cocktails while everyone else does the heavy lifting?

TV

xx

Men Prefer Women Without Make-up: Discuss

2006-10-11T23:32:00.000+01:00

Up until a few months ago I spent half an hour every morning diligently putting my face on before I left the house. Then I got together with my Beloved in a flurry of passion, and stopped bothering. This was only partly because he said he preferred me without: mainly it was because of laziness. That half hour could be better spent luxuriating in bed with him until I couldn't put off leaving the house any longer.

Now that our romance has mellowed into a more comfortable, less frantic state, I'm still not bothering with the slap. Partly because this summer's monster bout of hay fever gave me itchy eyes, and partly because, thanks to the near-drag-queen glamour of my onstage persona, make-up has started to feel like hard work. I sometimes catch myself thinking about my stage make-up the way I used to think about the A-line nylon dress I wore in Boots when I was sixteen: it's a uniform, and I can't wait to get it off. Before every gig I sit down to the painstaking ritual of bringing Tricity Vogue to life: first, create a blank canvas of thick foundation, then add the sparkly pink eye shadow, then paint on the liquid eyeliner with as steady a hand as I can manage, sloping up from the eyes at the corners to make them look bigger (a trick I learned from a drag queen, funnily enough), then layer upon layer of vibrant lipstick, strongly arching brows, blusher, a round black beauty spot, and finally, the moment of truth .. the false eyelashes. These are, quite frankly, a bugger. The glue sticks to your fingers, and the first couple of attempts usually leave your eyelid smeared with rubber and the eyelash hanging off one end of your eye by a tendril of glue. The secret is to attach them to the line you've drawn in liquid liner, rather than your real eyelid, but if you botch the first attempt you have to draw the line all over again, and wait for it to dry before you glue up and go for a second take. It's worth it though. False eyelashes are my favourite dressing-up-box toy. The number of times friends have come up to me and stared bemusedly into my face just before I go on stage, muttering 'You've got amazing eyelashes, I've never noticed them before,' without a clue they're fake - even though they've seen me, and the stunted little lashes nature gave me, pretty much daily for months.

But false eyelashes only work in their proper context, as I've learnt to my cost. In my early twenties I got into wearing them when I went out clubbing, until one night I brought home a charming young man, and left my make-up on when we went to bed (as you do, when you've got a charming young man with you). I woke up in the night screaming that there was a spider on my pillow. Closer examination revealed it to be a false eyelash. Which meant that one of my eyes had a blank white patch around it where the eyelash had peeled away, but the other one was still fluttering at full-throttle, making me look a bit like something out of A Clockwork Orange. Needless to say, after his disturbed, and disturbing, night, the Charming Young Man didn't stay for breakfast.

I've learned the hard way that when you like your look extreme, you risk scaring the looker out of their wits. I once had a part in a children's TV series where I played an evil jewel thief who stole a pearl necklace and was chased across Birmingham by a small yellow car. I took a Dior ad in to show the make up artist - white face, red lips, black eyes - and she sighed resignedly and told me I'd need to be there an hour earlier (5am) to give her time to do it. I thought I looked fantastic - but when they showed the video to a five-year-old focus group, they all screamed at the screen when they saw me: 'Arrrrgh! She's so ugly!' Lesson learned.

So when I went to a big party recently with my Beloved in tow, I toned it down a lot. Okay, I still had the red lips, but the rest of my face was looking almost natural. Only to have my Beloved staring all agog at a young actress-musician all night, who was wearing the most immaculately applied, 40s-siren style make-up job I've ever seen. White face, black eyes, and red red lips. Apparently the standards of grooming which my beloved applied to me, did not apply to the goddess before him. In fact, I don't think he even saw the slap. To him, she was an iconic beauty who belonged to another, more glamorous, world. When men say they prefer women without make-up, do they actually mean it, or do they mean they can't be arsed sitting around for half an hour while you're putting it on before you go out? - even though, once out, their eyes may be irresistibly drawn to a mysteriously more vivid face than your own, without them necessarily making the logical connection between half an hour messing about with little pots and brushes, and the finished work of art?

Or am I attributing my Beloved with more gullibility than he deserves? Here's a thought: does a make-up-free face signal to other men that you're off the market? In which case, a man encouraging you to lay down your lip brush, and your doing so for him, is a sort of unspoken pact of commitment between you. I've certainly never been encouraged to go bare-faced by any of the glamour-bedazzled men I've pulled at gigs. (In fact, many of them have asked if I..d consider wearing the full stage ensemble in the bedroom - but that's a whole different story.) If they took me out, there was a tacit understanding that it was my job to look like a jazz singer, not the girl-next-door. On the discovery that an off-duty jazz singer is the girl next door after all, they would beat a hasty, disillusioned retreat. I reckon my Beloved might be a keeper.

So what have we learned? That the inappropriate use of make up may bring on extreme reactions of fear, hostility, or, if you're lucky, adoration. That make-up makes you look different to your everyday self. Which is maybe why your fella might ask you not to wear it: if he's fallen in love with your real face, that's the face he wants to look at all the time, which is fair enough really, and a lot less like hard work.

Meanwhile, I've decided not to be churlish about my actress friend looking like a million dollars at the party the other week. This actress-musician (let's call her 'Charlie') was at a crucial turning point in her career, with her band's single due for release on the Monday. She could have been catapulted to stardom by the end of the week, or not. But she was dressing as if she was already there. Her immaculate make-up put her up there among the 'beautiful people' - and it told everyone that was where she belonged. Good for her. Because you're never going to get there if you don't act like you deserve it. And late in the night, when my own red lipstick had wiped itself off on glass rims and male cheeks (only my Beloved's of course), she rummaged in her handbag and whipped out a small pot and brush with a conspiratorial air and invited me to try on her red instead. It was in a pot because the lipstick case had broken, but she'd managed to salvage the lippy itself. She had the same lip brush as me. But no mirror. So I painted it on blind, the way she must have been doing all night. And, as she nodded approvingly at my good aim, I felt a moment of powerful female bonding. I loved the fact she kept her favourite lipstick in a little plastic pot. And I loved the fact that she knew it didn't matter, because it was just a tool - like a carpenter's chisel.

In fact, I felt so warm towards her after our lipstick moment, that I invited her to come onstage with me and do a duet at my next gig. Then again, maybe that wasn't so wise. I'm not sure I want to share my stage with someone who can do their make up so much better than me.

What's the Giggle Gap?

2006-10-09T00:13:00.000+01:00

According to this naughtly old gentleman at the gig last night, it's the gap between the top of a girl's stocking and the bottom of her skirt (or whatever)... and it's called the giggle gap because, if a man gets that far, he's laughing.

I was deeply flattered to be told that I had brought on three near coronaries with my stockings last night. They should issue medals for that.

Then again maybe I should have dressed a bit more demurely for a 70th birthday party...

Pretty sprightly crowd though - some fine shapes being thrown on the dancefloor. I don't think we've ever seen so much dancing at one of our gigs. The senior citizens of Kent put our regular crew of bright young things to shame. Honey kept sneaking onto the dancefloor in the instrumental solos to Give It Large, but was completely out-shone by an 8-year-old girl in a pink tutu. They soon teamed up and started working on some spectacular routines though - and Connie joined in as soon as she could slip out from behind the keyboards.

Meanwhile my Beloved juggled manning the DJ decks (okay, the DJ laptop) with charming the waiter into serving him not one, not two, but three bottles of Veuve Clicquot - and even found a Magic Mushroom growing in the field full of sheep behind the marquee. Then, paralytic on champagne, he expertly reversed our little car out of the driveway past two porsches and the soundman's trailer at one o'clock in the morning, after I'd made two very pathetic and girly attempts at the manoeuvre and given up in despair. I didn't let him drive home, though.

I only had one glass of champagne all night but I felt as if I'd had three bottles myself - that's what playing a good gig does for you.

Oh, here's another jazz joke, courtesy of Honey Mink:

What do you call a big grey animal that sings jazz?

Elephantz Gerald

TV

xx

Expensive Date

2006-10-05T00:17:00.000+01:00

It seems like nobody wants me except the people who can't afford me at the moment.

I'm not talking about my love life (for once) I'm talking about the sorry plight of our gig diary.

After a year of indulging our every whim, Lovely Tom at the Shepherds Bar has noticed that our monthly residency is bankrupting him. Bless him though, he hasn't actually sacked us, he's presented me with the harsh economic reality of the situation (never a pleasant experience for a girl), and invited us all to come up with a solution. So what we're going to have to do is take a brutal pay cut. Which means I'm going to be saving for 8 months for a new gown from Hollywood, instead of 4. Oh well, the old ones aren't looking exactly shabby yet, I suppose.

The biggest downer of this new state of penury is that Bobby Fresh will now be actually paying for the privilege of playing a gig, because the taxi fare to bring his drums to the venue will actually be more than he'll get paid for hitting them. He pointed out that it wasn't any of our faults that he'd never learned to drive or bought a car, but I still feel bad about it. Especially as they are such a cute set of drums. Maybe we should pass the hat round for driving lessons?

Spurred on by the realisation I might have to look further afield for a home for my cheeky slinktet, I've been busily firing off emails in all directions to every bar, club and agency I could think of. But clearly my email account must be malfunctioning because, mysteriously, I haven't had a single reply.

Frankly I'm baffled. Who wouldn't want to pay through the nose for the privilege of squeezing a seven-piece band into their venue - with not one but two sultry songstresses in slinky gowns? (not to mention Sir Fitz and his fruity brass, and don't even get me started on what the rhythm section get up to). I know I would. If I had a venue. Or any money.

Which brings me on to my antics this evening.

Meet Tricity Vogue, Jazz Gatecrasher

I was strolling up Newington Green Road on my way home from the recording studio this evening and as I passed the Alma pub I heard the unmistakable skitter of jazz drums, and the fruity plunk of a double bass. Sure enough, there in the window was a poster advertising a performance that night by BBC-best-jazz-soloist award winner Anita Wardell. I was all set to mosey on in when I noticed that tickets were £30. Bugger.

I must have looked like a little puppy with my nose pressed against the window pane, because this dapper gentleman in a smart black suit came out and ushered me inside, telling me not to worry about tickets, just put something in the hat when it came round. I went up to the bar to get a drink, opened my purse... and discovered the grand total of £1.95 inside. Did they accept cards? Not for under £10. A half pint of Kronenberg was £1.65, leaving me exactly 30 pence for the hat. Luckily it was all in ones and twos, and the 'hat' turned out to be a proper collection bucket with a discreet slot, so my coinage made a lot of noise when it went in, and nobody was any the wiser.

Anita and her trio tripped delightfully through some favourite standards, and a few I hadn't heard before (which is always a delight) while I took tiny ladylike sips of my half of lager and made it last an hour. Lovely warm vocals over properly feather-light piano, bass and drums. As the Fast Show guy would say: "Nice".

Now all I've got in my purse is two plectrums. Handy in case the sudden urge to play the guitar comes over me (I haven't touched one for about three months, but you never know) - but not much good for anything else.

There is something fundamentally awry with the economics of being a jazzer. Have you ever heard the joke about the jazz musician who won the Lottery? They asked him how long he was going to carry on playing jazz now he was a millionaire and he said... "Until the money runs out."

TV

xx

The sunshine of your love

2006-09-28T23:32:00.000+01:00

Was listening to Radio Two while I was cooking supper, and they had a feature on about Cream. They kicked off with Sunshine of Your Love, and I thought - how about me and Honey doing a cover of that?

Texted Honey who zipped straight back with 'That's one of my favourite songs'. I reckon it would really swing. Could get nice and dirty and bluesy. Will put it to the ladies and gentlemen of the Slinktet poste-haste for consideration.

Had another thought after Sunday's gig - well, that combined with a long telephone catch-up chat with that elusive couturier of ours, Hollywood. What about matching costumes? Looking at the stage of the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club reminded me of the opening of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (my favourite film, unsurprisingly) in which Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell burst through a glittery curtain just like the one at the BGWMC (well, maybe in slightly better nick) and launch into a big number about how they're 'Just two little girls from Little Rock' (aren't we all?) in matching red sequinned outfits.

Honey says she's always had fantasies about a blue sequinned dress. I can see myself in blue sequins. The question is, do they sell them in Goldhawk Road?

the other question is, I suppose, which one of us is Marilyn and which one is Jane Russell?

Since we're both brunettes, that could be a tricky one, although now Honey's taken to sporting a red wig, I suppose that brings her slightly closer to blonde.

Connie Vanderlay is a natural blonde of course, but I can't imagine ever exciting her at the thought of wearing blue sequins, or indeed sequins of any colour. She's only interested in music, and would be quite happy going on stage in a hockey mask, if it weren't for the fact it would probably impede her ability to communicate with the rest of the band. Bizarre.

I've a sneaking suspicion she might not have heard the Cream version of Sunshine of your Love - I bet they banned rock music at the Conservatoire. I look forward to introducing it to her. On the other hand I have no doubt that our resident rake Earl Mysterio knows all the guitar licks for it like the back of his hand...

TV

xx

Do You Know The Way To St Tropez?

2006-09-26T14:43:00.000+01:00

Clearly I don't, because I managed to sing it in the wrong key at Sunday's gig.

Sir Fitzroy Callow is blaming himself for putting me off, because he launched into the introduction for Boys Don't Cry without realising everyone else was playing St Tropez. Maybe I did pick up the wrong cue from him somehow, but the weird thing was that once I'd kicked off in one key I just couldn't get myself off it - it was like train tracks. Honey was singing the right tune really loudly in my ear but that didn't work, and neither did Connie bashing the chords out super loud on the keyboard. I'd got two thirds of the way through the song before I finally managed to pitch it right.

Honey said to me after the gig, "Never mind, the good thing about live gigs is that nobody ever remembers the mistakes afterwards." But of course St Tropez would have to be the one song that two of my friends decided to video on their mobile phones, wouldn't it? So I got to conduct a full post-mortem on my cock up. This has enabled me to ascertain that I did indeed pick up my wrong note from the trombone, but no hard feelings Sir Fitz, because I should have been listening to the bass, piano and guitar, and you were outnumbered three instruments to one. Four if you count Bobby Fresh, who claims he was definitely drumming in the right key.

I don't fuck up very often, but when I do, I do it spectacularly. I can't decide if this is a good thing, or if it would be better to fuck up little and often. Obviously not fucking up at all would be best of all.

TV

xx

We Dance Even When Nobody's Watching (And Other Secrets Of The Studio Revealed)

2006-09-19T14:34:00.000+01:00

I've decided I love recording studios.

We've just spent the weekend at Alchemea Studio in Islington, recording three tracks for our demo. It was the first time we've all been into the studio together, and we weren't sure how it was going to go, especially since we'd boldly (some might say foolishly) decided to record all the tracks live. But we're pretty chuffed with the results. Here they are, on the myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/tricityvogue

All the studio cliches about hanging around for hours before anything happens are true of course. Bobby Fresh's drums took about 2 hours to mic up, as per, and then there was Mr Mysterio's Fender amp to sort out in its own little room, so he could play with all his effects pedals properly (what, if anything, do they all actually do???).

Me and Honey had a little studio to ourselves which lulled us into a false sense of privacy, until Honey struck up a whispered conversation about the sexual proclivities of one of our paramours - which was, of course, broadcast to the entire band and the sound engineers through their headphones. I ended up swapping microphones with Honey because I liked the sound of myself better through hers, which was an AKG instead of a Neumann, for those among you of a technical bent. All right, it was gold instead of silver, but that really didn't influence my decision. Honest. And yes, we wound up doing little dance routines to all our numbers while we were singing, which got us some funny looks from the sound engineers on the other side of the glass, who weren't wearing headphones and couldn't hear what we were dancing to.

Connie confessed she got a kick out of being in a small, sweaty room with 'the boys'. They didn't have any vocal mics in there so it was harder to make out exactly what was going on, but the drum mics picked up enough ambient sound to establish they were having a good time.

And Sir Fitzroy was in a soundproof room by himself, which was a far cry from his usual recording experience of being jammed in a room with 20 sweaty brass players. This VIP treatment put him in a sunny mood all day, despite all the waiting around which usually drives him mad at rehearsals.

We came up with some inventive ways of passing the time while the mixing was being done:

Earl Mysterio acted out everyone's Horoscopes.

Honey covered everybody in the band with sticky gold stars.

Connie ate kebabs.

Magic J slept. (In fact, there was a lot of sleeping going on. Honey managed to fall asleep lying on the vocal studio floor with her headphones on, while I yorped out the vocals to St Tropez in her ear).

And we told jokes. But I can only remember two.

Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide.

A woman walked into a shop and asked the man for a Double Entendre. So he gave her one.

There were loads of knock knock jokes as well, but I've blanked them from my memory, possibly because they were too painful to record for posterity. If any of you other guys can remember any more, can you post them up as a comment?

Loved every minute of it. Even the knock knock jokes.

Big thank you to Ian and Alchemea

and lots of love from us all

xxxxxxx

xxxx

xx

TV

xx

The Secret Life of a Jazz Singer

2006-09-13T13:19:00.000+01:00

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Inhaling Dust

We had our first full band rehearsal in Earl Mysterio's cellar last night and I've been coughing ever since.

I've just given up smoking (three weeks without a single puff so far...) but I may have just undone all that good work by inhaling three hours worth of brick dust.

But apart from that it was a good rehearsal.

Connie set up the keyboard under the hole in the roof, and it didn't cave in on top of her, (so that's good), but she did manage to get white chalk off the wall all down her back. That'll teach her to slouch when she's playing.

Earl kept hitting his head on the plastic flower garlands hanging from the ceiling, but I don't think it hurt.

Bobby seemed to be sitting on a computer monitor to drum, because he had to squeeze the kit in next to three boxes of junk, but he managed to find enough floor space for his beers so he was happy.

Magic J didn't have to bring his bass amp because Earl had a spare one. So he was happy too.

Fitzroy doesn't have to worry any more about leaving puddles of water on the floor when he's emptying the spit out of his trombone. If anything, this could be the perfect solution to the dust problem - damp it down.

Honey and I even had enough room to dance. I think that might be where all the dust came from: we might have kicked it up during our soft shoe shuffle.

So a good night all round.

All the cables are covered in dust now though, which is a whole new gig-night hazard. Brick dust on a satin gown is not a good look.

TV

xx

Monday, September 04, 2006

singing for my supper

This weekend i've been a proper jobbing musician with a gig on Saturday and a gig on Sunday, and very delicious free dinners at both.

I tell you what, it beats earning your crust by sitting in an office in front of a computer.

On Saturday I was on a riverboat cruise from Putney pier singing jazz standards for the esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the Rotary Club, while we cruised up and down the thames looking at the sights through the drizzle.

And last night Connie and I played at the Portobello Gold in Notting Hill. It looks like a 'rock pub' when you walk in, but it's got this amazing conservatory at the back where they have the restaurant and you can sit among palm fronds and mirrors and eat the immodestly billed "best sunday lunch in london". I have to say, my tuna steak with nicoise salad was quite possibly the finest I have ever eaten, so they may actually be telling the truth.

The barman built us a stage out of beer crates and boards, and rigged up the PA for us, but it felt slightly odd at first, standing above a pub-load of beer drinkers crooning old-fashioned jazz. Like a door had opened from another dimension and I had accidentally stepped through onto the wrong stage. But we had enough of our own friends there who knew what we were all about to turn the tide of the pub in our favour, and some very unlikely-looking punters seemed prepared to embrace jazz nostalgia - including a guy who looked as if he'd have been more at home at The Brian Jonestown Massacre, who didn't take his eyes off us for the whole first set, and thoughtfully mentioned in the break that the mix needed a slight adjustment to bring the vocal up so he could hear every word of the lyrics.

Then Tommy the promoter grabbed me and said there was a jazz singer in the pub on holiday from Hawaii, and could she do a number with us? Sherri got up and duetted on Girl From Ipanema, which would have gone slightly better if she could have remembered the words, but she attacked the number with plenty of enthusiasm to make up for it, and the crowd embraced her bravura performance with a kindhearted sense of fun. I got my first breaks in London being invited up on stage by complete strangers after brashly announcing myself as a jazz singer, so I'm all for it. Honey Mink was, in fact, one such kindhearted and brave musician - and I don't think she's ever lived to regret it. But that's a story for another time...

I managed to end the evening with a spectacular piece of girly ineptitude, which took the shine off a bit, and also jeopardised the future of my 50s dress. I pulled into a petrol station at 11 at night and couldn't manage to get near a pump where I could fill up from the left hand side - so I tried to pull the pump handle all the way around the back of my car instead. And of course the minute I pressed the handle petrol spurted all down my dress and over my arms and feet. I went flapping into the shop squealing like Nikki off Big Brother, demanding hand towels. The guys asked me why I didn't just turn my car round and approach the pump from the other side, which of course hadn't occurred to me. Oh and they also charged me 17p for the petrol I threw down myself.

Whether my dress will survive its misadventure remains to be seen. It's currently in a bucket soaking in Sainsbury's stain removal powder.

Note to self not to engage in any physical activities involving common sense or manual dexterity after singing for two hours.

TV
xx

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Goodbye Boscombe Road

It's the end of an era.

Ever since the band began, about two and a half years ago, we've been rehearsing in the front room of my old flat on Boscombe Road - and for decades the house has been a haven for actors, writers, and musicians. But the house has been sold - and this week we all moved our gear out and said goodbye forever to the crumbling Victorian pile, with its elegantly wasted leaking conservatory (home of many a messy party), its vast, overgrown garden (home of an impressive array of fruit bushes and a whole den of foxes), its eccentric electrics (including the fuse you have to push back in every time you turn on the kettle and the toaster at the same time and trip the power), and its giant front door (complete with beautiful lion door-knocker, and erratic yale lock, prone to jamming and locking you inside the house, so you have to go out via the conservatory and climb over the side gate to escape).

I love the place.

Luckily, we're not out on the street, with our piles of dodgy amps and pilfered keyboards. The stupendous Mr Earl Mysterio is in possession of a cellar which is not only big enough to fit us in, gear and all, it also has electricity. All right, so it also has a big hole in the ceiling, but as long as none of us stand under it, we should be okay.

But, no offence to Earl and his generous hospitality, it won't be the same...

Goodbye Boscombe Road, and thank you for being an inspirational, bonkers, totally brilliant place to live, work and play.

love

Tricity

xxx

Strange Glamour Dreams

I'm a bit worried about my subcoscious life

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was giving someone make up tips - for some reason I was taking her step-by-step through my make-up routine on a beach. We were sitting on a rock promontary at the edge of a lovely sunny beach, looking out to sea. There I was, dolled up to the nines, complete with false eyelashes - and then I realised that to get off the beach, I would have to wade through the sea. I'd made it halfway across, when I saw a huge wave coming. Oh no, I thought, my make-up is going to be ruined! The wave hit me - but only came halfway up my face, leaving my false eyelashes spared. I was hugely relieved. What disturbed me, when I woke up shortly afterwards, was that I hadn't been remotely worried about drowning in the vast wave I saw coming straight for me (we are talking Old Spice Advert scale here, for anyone mature enough to recognise that reference) - all I was worried about was all that hard work on my face going to waste.

Have I got Glamour Issues? Should I be consulting a psychologist?

TV

xx

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Going Festie

I know I'm not the sort of girl you would imagine doing this but... last weekend I went incognito to a music festival.

Yes, that's right. Mud, wellies, the works.

Admittedly, my Beloved and I did have a designer tent, complete with inflatable double matress, duvet and pillows... but in all other respects we threw ourselves enthusiastically into the full festie experience. I even wore the free plastic poncho that came with the Guardian. I hope to God there are no photos...

Most decadent festie activity of the weekend was the stalls selling balloons filled with nitrous oxide for £2 a pop. Festies everywhere were sitting on the ground in little circles inhaling from party balloons then whooping, giggling and swooning as the laughing gas kicked in for, ooh, seconds of thrill. I daresay by next year someone will have found some reason to make it illegal - or limited the sale of whipped cream dispensers to certified catering companies only, thus cutting off the nitrous oxide dealers' access to the tools of their trade...

I may have been there incognito but if there's a stage going begging anywhere you can count on me to muscle my way onto it somehow or other... and getting onto the mainstage was definitely the highlight of my festival. Honey Mink was booked to play at the festival under her alter-ego, 'Lana, and she asked me if I fancied doing backing vocals for her. She didn't have to ask me twice, I can tell you.

It was very exciting getting the green artist's wristband, swanning past the security to the backstage area, having real roadies shifting our gear onto the stage, free bottles of water, and a stage manager asking us where we wanted the mikes set up. But most exciting of all was standing up there and looking out at the crowd from the stage. I was really crap - I actually waved at Beloved from the stage, which is sooooo uncool. But I was excited.

Lana's songs went down a storm - and so they should. They're catchy, simple bluesy rock'n'roll numbers that are stupidly easy to dance to and almost impossible to get out of your head. I danced my little socks off... and, just as Lana predicted, the sun came out specially for the half hour we were on stage.

Magic.

http://www.myspace.com/artistlana

love

Tricity

xxx

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

"What have you done to your back?"

Gearing up for this week's gig, I've been hit by an unforeseen crisis.

My Beloved, possibly the most well-qualified boyfriend in the whole universe ever, is not only a yoga teacher, but also trained in the art of massage, and last Friday he generously offered to give my shoulders a good strong pummelling because they were giving me gyp. And very pleasant it was too.

But the next morning as I was dressing he asked, "What have you done to your back?" Peering over my shoulder in the mirror, I noticed what looked like two carpet burns - right where Beloved was pressing away some particularly stubborn knots of tension the day before. Beloved vehemently denied these were actual grazes, but claimed instead they were some sort of internal burst blood capillaries which would disappear within a day.

But sitting on the grass in Regents Park at the Fruitstock festival that afternoon, Honey suddenly said, "What have you done to your back?" and confirmed my worst fears that they were actual proper scabs, like the sort you got on your knee when you fell down in the playground aged five.

Beloved is very embarrassed, bless him - it seems that while he was flinging all his strength into massaging my shoulders, he was also grinding the cloth of my top into my skin in an unintentionally abrasive fashion. More fool me for leaving my top on. I'm not really angry with him - he was pouring all his energies into being a devoted and loving boyfriend at the time. He just doesn't know his own strength.

But it does leave me with a terrible dilemma for Thursday. All my gowns are backless - in fact Hollywood, who designs them for me, has decided to make a bare back my signature feature. But I don't particularly want to raise gasps of horror and concern every time I turn my back on the audience and they get an eyeful of my spectacularly unsexy scabs. It's too hot to keep my kimono-coat on for the whole gig. And I can't see a couple of plasters cutting the mustard either.

I've got two days to come up with a solution. Answers on a postcard please.

TV

xx

Friday, August 04, 2006

Honey can't come out to play

We've been offered a gig at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club - which is brilliant, because we've wanted to play there for ages - but when everybody got their diaries out at rehearsal on Monday night to book it in, Honey pipes up:

"Oh no! I'm not allowed out of the house that day!"

What's this? is she under house arrest? Some kind of excessive punishment for her bad-girl activities (smoking too many marlboros, picking up strange men on the tube)?

No, apparently there are two days in the entire year when she's not allowed out of doors, and this is one of them. It's Rosh Hashanah. So that means while we're hefting amps about, trailing microphone leads dangerously across the floor, and applying Rocket Red to our lips (well, maybe only me) in preparation to large it at the Sunday Large Club, she'll be draped elegantly over a couch eating milk and honey (how appropriate).

We'll just have to manage without her - but it won't be the same. I haven't done a gig without her shimmying along beside me for months, and I can tell you, shimmying is a lot more fun 'a deux' as the French say. But you probably knew that.

Maybe I can coax Connie out from behind the keyboards to join me for a quick wiggle now and again. And come to think of it, Sir Fitz has been known to indulge in the odd dance move (and I use the word odd advisedly) when he's not got his 'bone stuck to his lips. So I think we'll muddle through...

...but I'm glad there are only two days of the year when Honey's not allowed out to play.

TV

xx

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Too darn hot

Everybody's wilting a bit in this London heatwave, but spare a thought for the special hardships of jazz singers like me and Honey Mink. It's hot enough on stage at the best of times, what with the lights and the dancing around and all the over-excitement generally - but in this weather it's a killer. When you've got a boned, corseted gown on that's so tight you need a friend to zip you in (thanks, Honey) you get to know the meaning of the word overheated. I'm thinking I may have to dress down for the gig on August 10th and try and find something with a few more airholes.

Honey's having terrible trouble with the heat, and had to cancel a rehearsal the other week because she was too hot to move and therefore unable to travel. She also experiences massive sartorial dilemmas in this weather. She hates her bra-straps showing, but she can't go out without a bra, and bra straps show under most of the summer tops you can buy, so the net result is that she's leaving the house as little as possible.

But she has promised to come to the park with me tomorrow so we can practise our harmonies. So if you're wandering through Clissold Park tomorrow afternoon, and you hear the lilting sound of scat, that'll probably be us rehearsing. Practising in a park is a pretty good idea, because hopefully you can find a spot far enough away from everyone else that they can't hear you. Much better than rehearsing on the tube, I can tell you. Mind you it depends what Honey decides to wear - depending on how hot she is, we might end up attracting more attention than we bargained for...

TV
xx

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Who is Connie Vanderlay?

I'm often called upon to answer questions about my mysterious and exotic fellow band members (musical history, sexual availability etc etc...), so I'm going to do my best to satisfy your curiosity, starting with pianist Connie Vanderlay, whose erstwhile biographer, Rosa Conrad, has kindly supplied me with the following document for publication:

"Connie's musical background remains an enigma. It is generally accepted
that at some point she went to a prestigious music conservatoire but did
not attend the full term. One version of this story is that Connie went
AWOL in search of the strange sounds she had heard at night when listening
to her favourite radio station, 'Weird Waves' and was spotted some time
after on horseback clutching a Tuvan throat singer for warmth somewhere
east of Ulan Bator.

Another version is that she had fallen foul of the conservatoires
sensibilities by becoming obsessed with jazz chords and improvisation,
going off on wild tangents inappropriately in the middle of Beethoven
sonatas and Bach fugues and tried the patience of the masters by having the
uncontrollable urge to make tri-tone substitutions of the dominant and
scattering minor sevenths and sharp ninths where they weren't invited. The
final straw being an infamous re-working of Schumann's Kinderscenen joined
as a kind of hybrid with a jazzed up version of the 80's Alice Cooper
classic, 'Poison'. She had a good ear, they say, but she was out on it.

Since these shady times, she seems to have been spotted in several
extremely far-off locations conducting some kind of musical odyssey. She
was heard playing her strange improv whilst necking back the wine in a
pricy restaurant in the geothermal wonderland that is Rotorua, New Zealand.
Then she was spotted busking Irish folk music with a frighteningly virtuoso
accordionist for mere cents in the country's capital, Wellington. Further
sightings were made in hicksville sheep country: deepest Taranaki where
first she was spotted playing Aerosmith dities on keyboards in a Maori hard
rock band, then later seems to have re-visited the region only to get
entangled with an all-female sect whose raison d'etre is to deify the
ukelele.

She was also spotted singing folk songs and playing a surprisingly small
guitar in a Kyoto cafe, and in several places around Japan on the country's
highly organised underground bluegrass circuit with a wayward Japanese man
who appeared to be half man, half mandolin.

And of course there was her extended stay on the tiny tropical island of
Cuni-Longo where she was entranced by the Melanesian rhythms and harmonies
and became so involved with native life that some believed she would be
lost to the coral reefs and palm trees for good.

As for men, she's been linked to various slightly unhinged drummers;
legendarily, Tricity Vogue's ex-drummer, the dapper Ferdinand Lips, who
inexplicably ran away to join a Parisian cult circus troupe who hold firmly
to the belief that the moon is made of camembert. Any link with this sudden
departure to the fact that the night before Connie had taken him to an
extended performance of Arnold Schoenberg's 'Pierrot Lunaire' and Anton
Weber's 'Wozzek' is mere conjecture.

But Ms. Vanderlay insists that music is her true love and that she won't
let herself be sidetracked from her passion by such irrelevancies as men,
unlike her deplorable friend Ms. Vogue. Although some might say this may be
less to do with a righteous stand for independence than a hopeless raising
of her standards as a result of her past intimacy with the beautiful
cannibals of Cuni-Longo."

So there you have it.

Anyone still willing to risk a liaison with Ms Vanderlay after learning of her taste in cannibals is a braver man than any I've ever dated.

Then again, that isn't saying much...

love

TV

xx

Comments:

I think I was there in that Kyoto cafe. Good times. I'd had quite a bit of sake but am pretty sure she was doing a jazz-folk version of 'Honey, suck my rose', by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers I think.

Posted by The Goldhawk Road Slush Fund on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 12:41 PM

Wow... corroboration! And there was me thinking some of it might actually be made up... I feel so ashamed of my lack of faith. Sorry Connie.

Now all we need to find is some witnesses from Cuni-Longo...

TV

xx

Saturday, July 08, 2006

my sparkly new website

I'm so excited! It's been a labour of love, and it's finally finished. My very own website.

www.tricityvogue.com

The more observant followers of my career may have noticed that I've been using the word "soon" a bit loosely on the holding page - which has boldly stated "website coming soon" for the last year. But now it's finally come, I hope you'll forgive me for making you wait.

Of course, there is a school of thought that making people (especially men) wait for something will make them appreciate it more when they get it. I've never actually been able to put this theory into practise, especially not with men, being too impatient myself - but it really wasn't a deliberate strategy this time.

What happened was that my brother offered to build me a website, and we sat down for a meeting and came up with loads of brilliant ideas together, like, why don't I hand-draw all the captions and the decorative bits? And then we discovered that for every hour I spent doing lettering by hand, my brother would have to spend about five hours painstakingly cleaning it up in photoshop so it was actually legible. But we stuck doggedly to our plan.

However, work on the site hit a slight hiatus in March 2005 when my brother produced something else:
Lily Mae

Quite rightly, Lily Mae got first billing for a while, but my brother promised me that he would finish my site come hell or high water. Then he found out he had to move to France for his job. Luckily, France isn't in hell or high water, however, so work resumed on our hand-crafted piece of virtual real estate, as scanned images, photographs and emails commuted from London to Lyon in a glamorously continental fashion. This may be whimsy, but I have to say that I think a touch of French chic has attached itself to the site in consequence.

I sent an email to all the Friends of Tricity this week to give the site its grand official launch, and lots of people have been complimentary about it, which is delightful - I feel like a proud parent showing everyone my new baby, even though, strictly speaking, it was my brother who went through all the labour pains.

I've even started getting letters to my agony page, from troubled souls hoping to draw on my extensive experience in affairs of the heart. (Some might say too extensive, but that's nonsense. If you were looking for a plumber, you wouldn't choose one who'd never fitted a pipe before, would you?) Having learnt my own lessons in love from the School of Hard Knocks, I'm only too happy to share what I've learned along the way, and hope that it saves someone else a few bruises.

If I can help you out with any romantic dilemmas, don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Meanwhile I'd love to know what you think of the site... and whether it was worth the wait.
www.tricityvogue.com

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The warm glow of a gig well done

I don't usually admit this, but I was a bit scared before last week's gig. Not because I was worried about our performance - but because I was worried about England's - in the World Cup game right before the gig. If, God forbid, England lost - and lost against Trinidad and Tobago of all people, then no amount of flirtatious leg-wiggling from me was going to raise a smile from any male audience member - let alone a glass of champagne. If on the other hand we won, there was a high chance that the bar would be filled with boisterous males more interested in thumping each other on the back and roaring banal footie anthems, than sitting still and listening to finely-honed jazz. Or, if the mood was right, and the crowd was still basking in the warm glow of victory... it could be one of our best gigs yet.

Honey Mink and I sat together painting our nails and listening to the radio commentary on the match with rising trepidation. As the clock ticked on towards six thirty, we applied coats of "Vino" (tragically, a now discontinued Mac shade) with increasingly shaky hands as the commentator reiterated how angry he was getting at the disappointing England play, and I envisaged hoards of raging, red-faced England fans venting their frustration by hurling half-empty pint glasses at my shiny pink frock...And then - oh blessed relief! - a goal. And then another! Victory snatched from the jaws of nondescript play at the last moment... I positively bounced to the car with Connie's keyboard (lucky she was holding the other end).

It took a good hour to get ourselves set up for the sound check, what with persuading the footie fans sitting in our stage area to make way for a drumkit and pile of amps, moving sofas, and encouraging drunken revellers to remove their drinks from the surface reserved for the mixing desk... but once we got stuck in to the first number it quickly became apparent that the crowd were on our side. By the second number, people were dancing, and by the third, an impromptu dance-floor had formed. We played straight through til ten, and despite my fears that the audience would have a low tolerance threshold for quieter numbers, even that sorry tale of being dumped, Is It Because, went down well. And there was as much dancing to original numbers My Side of the Bed and Under Your Thumb as there was to the cheeky eighties covers.

The second set saw no let up in enthusiasm from the crowd, who I was quite prepared to see sloping off after ten - and, delightfully, they wouldn't let us off the stage, demanding not one, but two encores. There were even cries for a third, but by then we were all jazzed out and in need of a stiff drink. Special commendations must go to the gentlemen of the National Geographic Channel, who desported themselves very commendably on the dancefloor - I will of course give one of their number's request to join the band in the role of backing dancer serious consideration.

Special mention too, to my beloved, who thought the embarrassment of being singled out for a Birthday dedication would be lessened if he banned us from singing Happy Birthday or mentioning his name. How wrong he was. But I feel sure that he was deeply touched - and reassured - by my bespoke performance of Aint Misbehaving, during which I assured him emphatically of my fidelity and virtuous behaviour, while shimmying hell-for-leather in figure-hugging satin.

A big thank-you to my partner-in-crime Miss Honey Mink (who's made some major new conquests at the National Geographic), to Lovely Tom, the Shepherds Bar Manager (who, despite having had to pack about three days-worth of work into one, still stayed to mix the sound so exquisitely for us) and to the band, who reached new heights of cheeky aplomb, and kept everyone grooving away on the dance-floor:

The melodious Sir Fitzroy Callow on Trombone

The mischievous Bobby Fresh on Drums

The marvellous Magic J on Bass

The mellifluous Earl Mysterio on Guitar

and, finally,

The magnificient Miss Connie Vanderlay on piano.

It was so so lovely to have her back, and, despite the fact we were performing together for the first time in more than a year, it was like she'd never been away... but even better.

TV

xx

Friday, June 02, 2006

The Return of Connie Vanderlay

She's back! After a year travelling the world with her cheeky little baby guitar on her back, Miss Connie Vanderlay has returned to the bosom of the family Vogue.

Our inimitable pianist will be launching herself on London musical society anew at our next gig on Thursday 15 June. After playing in festivals across Australia and New Zealand, and even a Japanese birthday party, it's back to the glitz and glamour of Shepherds Bush. Let's hope it doesn't go to her head.

What she is actually going to play ON is still a minor puzzle for us to solve. I can't imagine, even if I turn the full beam of my charm on him, that I can persuade Lovely Tom the Shepherds Bar manager to install a grand piano in two weeks. Bassist extraordinaire Magic J, true to his name, has revealed, astonishingly, that he happens to have a full-size Roland keyboard with a stand, weighted keys and the whole caboodle lying around in his loft. Apparently though his loft is in Croydon. Also the keyboard is longer than his car. I doubt I can persuade Tom to buy us a roof-rack.

So maybe I can attach one end of the keyboard to my bumper, Magic J can attach the other end to the front of his car, and we can put some coasters on it. Magic J, when not thumbing the beefy strings of his bass, has a nifty little sideline in Special Effects, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed he can come up with something magical to transport his ivories to the Bush. Nothing would be more disappointing for our audience than a pianist they can't hear, because she's been forced to play thin air.

However we solve the quandary of the Missing Piano, the return of Connie means one thing very important: the band is getting bigger... and I'll have my very own Big Band again before I know it. Only 16 more musicians to go...

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Post Gig Bliss - and the search for an Angel...

Ah, last week's gig really was lovely...

It was the hottest day of the year so far, and everyone was sitting outside on the terrace while we crooned away inside for the first half... then, in the second half, we got a few hardcore fans inside to listen properly - and, indeed, sing along. I must confess I got a bit raunchy at one point, thanks to the influence of a particularly flamboyant (and possibly homosexual?) member of the audience.

Bobby Fresh has got himself a new drumkit in fabulous canary yellow, which was a fine addition to the stage show, and contrasted deliciously with my bright pink gown. Honey Mink and myself found it tougher than usual to squeeze into our stage-wear. Which might have been to do with the temperature, or alternatively an excess of indulgence... One of the nice things about sharing your stage with a lady friend is that you have someone to help you in and out of your frock. Honey's has an inner corset as well, so there are two zips to wrestle with - all I can say is, I'm glad of all that yoga training. Both our frocks are boned and corseted to within an inch of our lives, and we both felt quite light-headed with relief when we finally unfastened them at the end of the evening... we may have to source some Victorian-style smelling salts if the weather gets much hotter over the summer. Or try tequila. That's Honey's cure-all for most ills, and I have to say, she may be onto something. It's certainly less gassy than champagne.

The dresses are not the only thing feeling tighter these days - the boys in the band are on exquisite form, and we glided and swished and sassed our way through out set with a relaxed aplomb that makes me feel certain that now is the time to record our demo. Of course, all we need to do now is find a kindhearted angel with an empty unused studio just waiting to be filled with jazzers for the day...

If you are that angel, do please drop me a line. Much as I love singing in tight satin gowns, I can't wait for the opportunity to sing without wearing one for a change, in a more intimate studio atmosphere...

Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The Joys of Rehearsing

Who said that trying to get a bunch of musicians together in one place was like herding cats? Jazz musicians are the coolest cats of the lot of course, and so it took a week of solid planning and negotiation to make last night's rehearsal happen - but once you get us all in a room together we find it hard to leave...

Sir Fitzroy Callow couldn't help but stay for one more number, despite his urgent desire to return to glamorous Tottenham for an early(ish) night - but once we started up the slinky rhythms of Trust In Me, how could he resist putting in his saucy snake noises? It's amazing what he can do with that rubber mute of his. Who would have thought one horn could produce so many different sounds?

Jazz in-jokes of the night included a spontaneous rendition after I said 'Okay guys, take five...' and smirks at the phrase 'I like a good rim-shot'. Possibly the cans of 'wife beater' were a mistake for musicians of such refined sensibilities, but they certainly made three hours of rehearsing go by in a flash, and by the end of the night we were certainly tight, both in the muso-speak sense, and the classic debauched sense.

We will probably have even more fun on Thursday - not just because the Shepherds Bar has a more refined range of beverages than my refrigerator, but also because there'll be a discerning audience of likeminded cool cats and kittens to play for...

Hope to see you there.

All my love,

Tricity

xxx

PS:

Sincere apologies to Sir Fitzroy Callow, who has corrected my misapprehension that he currently resides in Tottenham. Although he is Tottenham born and bred, he is now living in Southgate, which, confusingly, is not in the south of the city at all, but even further north than Tottenham.

All the more reason to appreciate his dedication to the jazzerly cause in trekking all the way to Shepherds Bush for rehearsals.

TV

xx

Thursday, April 20, 2006
A New Residency

I've been wandering like a little waif from venue to venue ever since my Big Band ditched me, but the lovely Tom, manager at the Shepherds Bar (so charming, so KIND...), wants me back every month from now on. I can't tell you how excited I am - of course variety is nice, but a longterm relationship with a single venue is much more satisfying than one night stands in a different bar or club every week. You never know what the dressing facilities are going to be like, what you'll sound like through the PA, or, even more crucial, whether you'll be properly lit...

I really hope that this one lasts... I think I've been through quite enough upheavals for one girl, and, although Shepherds Bush may be a little further from the West End than I'd been led to believe, sometimes being a little hard to reach is good for a girl's image...