The central line station at Oxford Circus has been lit and decorated to resemble the set of a relentlessly gritty 70s post-apocalyptic nightmare-vision-of-the-future-with-second-world-war-imagery-thrown-in film.
The people using the station appear to have taken this onboard and are very much the faceless, dehumanised survivors crowded together in the barren underground remains of the mostly uninhabitable planet.
Go visit it, if you want to see the most depressing sight London has to offer.
Although from the performance art scene, she is wary of being lumped in with the trendy return of burlesque that has been catching on in London, at least.
“I was aware of it, but not really involved,” Palmer explains. “Most of the acts were really poor. A lot of people in the scene say it’s great to see the revival, but depressing to see a whole slew of girls say, I can take my clothes off, that sounds like fun.”
(From Friday’s Independent.)
…and if the lead singer of the Dresden Dolls agrees with me, I must be right.
A quick word of praise for one of my earliest childhood heroes – yes, going back even before the days of Jason Donovan worship – the great Play School presenter Floella Benjamin.
Where is she? What has she been doing? Questions I have long been musing on, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Well, we need wonder no longer; she has a part in the BBC’s new adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s slightly unpleasant but strangely compelling novel The Line of Beauty.
And to be honest, Floella Benjamin was a bit of a highlight for me. Not that I’m knocking the typically well-cast, well-shot adaptation – Tim McInnerny is absolutely superb and it’s grand to see Dan Stevens looking so pretty in the central role (if he’d bothered turning up to Footlights committee meetings looking so impeccably coiffured my minutes might have taken quite a different direction). But there’s something about the production that feels a wee bit stilted, to me at least. Maybe it’s all the old Tories in it.
Shame they didn’t think of casting Big Ted.
Check out this franky hilarious story.
If you are a racist and want to respond to this article, I’m delighted to say there is already a forum dedicated to it.
…was, in all honesty, one of the most incredible things I think I’ll ever experience, and quite unlike any ordinary gig.
For a start, not many bands have supporting acts like this:
…or this:
…or this:
Yes, that one was disturbing. But not as disturbing as the guy in a gas mask who serenaded her, which was like The Empty Child but without Christopher Eccleston’s reassuring grin.
Most incredibly of all, this:
They sure as hell know how to put on a show. Essentially, it is what I feel burlesque, at its very very best, ought to be like.
(If you want to read about previous terrible experiences I’ve had with burlesque shows, look no further than Fringe, which is published on 7th July.)
Not just that, but no less than two supporting bands, plus a drumming group they’d picked up in Edinburgh (apparently) which Phil Stott would have hated.
(If you want to read about my personal views on drumming ensembles, look no further than Fringe, which is published on 7th July.)
The first supporting band wasn’t anything special, but they were named “Conscious Pilate” which I thought was pretty inspired. Bizarrely, the lead singer and guitarist looked like the Mitchell Brothers, and the guy twiddling knobs to make weird electronic sounds looked like a slightly more sulky version of David Mitchell – as if they’d got together and said “hey, we all look like famous Mitchells, why don’t we form a band? And call it Conscious Pilate?”
The second supporting band was considerably more interesting, the unusual and rather wonderful Devotchka. You’ve got to love a band with a tuba player.
There was a wonderful coup de theatre when the Dresdens themselves emerged to perform with Devotchka, and there they were in the wonderful wonderful flesh being absolutely bloody brilliant.
I won’t post any blobby mobile phone pictures here, as there are beautifully focussed professional photos of them on their website. In any case, I didn’t want to be thinking about getting my blobby mobile phone pictures less blobby when I wanted to be fully enjoying such a fantastic show. Though the way some people were carrying on, you’d think the only way they knew how to watch a concert was through a grainy digital screen.
And it has to be noted, there were a lot of twats in the audience. Including the tall guy with long hair who ought to know not to stand in the middle of an audience because he is always going to stop at least three people from seeing anything. Also he should know that long hair looks crap on him, especially from behind, and I know this because I spent much of the gig watching it.
But these are minor gripes. How a single singer with keyboard and drummer with drum kit can make such a broad, noisy, even orchestral sound, I have no idea, but they did. They were also hypnotic to watch (when the tall guy wasn’t in the way), particularly Brian who is no mere drummer but an insane drumming mime stroke comedy act.
And because there were so many acts, performing all around the space, the whole four hours was so slick that there wasn’t time to pause for breath. Or go to the toilet. As I said, they sure as hell know how to put on a show.
If you haven’t bought their new album (Yes, Virginia), do so. I’d say it pales in comparison to their live performance, except there’s nothing pale about this album – but it’s worth remembering that it’s not the result of a slick, engineered, studio sound – what you hear is what they do on stage. Just the two of them.
I dreamt that I had finished my Britten biopic and it was being made with Philip Madoc playing the young Benjamin Britten, and I remember thinking how he looked just perfect for the role, even if he was a little old. I mean, you can see where my sleep-deprived brain was coming from:
Madoc was wearing a long wig and 18th century clothing for the role, and I had decided to reinstate a scene (even though it was not strictly speaking from the correct part of Britten’s life) in which Britten commanded his housekeeper Mrs Grose never to see a boy called Mal, or possibly Miles, (though he was known as Edward) again.
The implication was that Mal/Miles/Edward had been having some sort of relationship with the aging housekeeper and Britten was jealous. I dunno…at the time it seemed like a really good scene.
A quick “congratulations” to Dr Who for its success at the Baftas. If it keeps up the standard set by The Girl in the Fireplace then it’s well-deserved indeed.
I realised that the fannish prudishness which made me have a spasm when Paul McGann kissed Grace back in the 90s has all but evaporated – I honestly don’t care if the Doctor wants to have a bit of fun, especially if it’s with a very attractive French lady.
On the other hand, I feel he’s maybe morally responsible to tell people just how old he is before he gets going. I mean, otherwise he’s hiding behind his youthful appearance in the same way as an internet pervert hides behind a computer screen to pretend he’s much younger…surely?
Perhaps he should just show potential suitors a photograph of each of his previous regenerations, spelling out very clearly that’s me, that is.
Instead of addressing any of the million things waiting for me to do this weekend, I became increasingly obsessed by an idea I’d had for a duet between my alter-ego Deon Vonniget and the bastard offspring of children’s entertainer Keith Harris, Orville the duck.
This was mainly because I thought it would be funny to pair “Orville and Deon” on account of it sounding a tiny bit like a famous ice-skating duo. But during my research for the song, which involved listening to I Wish I Could Fly twice in a row, I developed a (probably fairly rational) hatred of the duck. It dawned on me that this sickly-sweet, horrifically ugly yet wannabe cutesy, totally uncharming, unironic and unfunny puppet has no redeeming features whatsoever. And yet Orville was definitely present throughout my childhood and I can’t help wondering if I’ve been damaged in some way.
So what started off as a project based on a single misguided pun became a mission of pure hatred and I would not sleep easy until I had done something to express my pure loathing for the duck thing.
You can hear the fruits of my labour – if you could really call them fruits – here.
I just had a conversation with somebody on MSN which went thus:
Adam says: d’you know, i saw a comedy act yesterday. they said it was the first improvised comedy show ever to exist in cambridge.
James says: I hope you corrected them
Adam says: they split the audience down the middle and asked them to name random words.
James says: ah
Adam says: the similarities were startling
James says: maybe WE copied them…?
Adam says: it was rather more amusing in its entirety than any of the stuff they actually did. it was like ‘uncertainty division rejects’. there were two women with extremely small breasts, a very fat person, a dwarf and a sad-looking geek with long hair.
Adam wasn’t able to recall the name of the group in question, but it’s a pretty detailed description, so does anybody have any information as to who these people may be?
We have been copied once before by Cambridge’s Comedy Iceberg, who reproduced our poster and flyers for No Second Thoughts but with stick men instead of lego men. So, the same, but a bit crap.
Surely this can’t be them, though? Knowing as they do of our existence (and our posters) they wouldn’t claim to be “the first improvised comedy show ever to exist in cambridge”??? Even we haven’t been bold enough to make that claim, since it makes sense that anything anybody does in Cambridge comedy is bound to have been done four years previously.
Anybody with information about these upstarts, do let us know.
Was I the only person watching Doctor Who today who desperately hoped Sarah Jane Smith would say, “yeah, alright Doctor, I’ll stick around for a few more adventures”?
Never mind, it was great fun. So many things to fit in – Sarah Jane, K9 and his demise (sort of), the return of boring Mickey and, at last, an actual storyline involving the possible restructuring of the universe (or something) no less – meant that none of them quite got the time we wanted them to have, and Anthony Stewart Head was rather wasted. But frankly after last week’s offering it’s a relief to see so many things packed into a single episode (including a storyline! gosh) and wasn’t it fantastic to see the Doctor already in the middle of the situation at the start of the story so we didn’t have to go through all that “where are we going now, Doctor?” “to the most mind-blowing place you’ve seen yet!” “oh, wow Doctor, can I just say it’s AMAZING travelling with you!” crap.
I do hope the Executive Producer was watching, he might have picked up some useful tips.
Talk To Rex 