Edinburgh Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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