Where Marabou Feathers Come From

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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