Category: London

Billy Elliot, Live from London

Billy Elliot1September was a bit of a cultural marathon ending in a theatrical flourish. Liam surprised me with an early birthday present, a broadcast of the musical Billy Elliot streamed live from London. Set in a small mining community in the northeast of England during the 1984/85 miner’s strike*, Billy Elliot is the tale of a young boy’s unusual ambition to become a ballet dancer set against the backdrop of a divided community on the edge of defeat and the inverted snobbery of his family.  Obviously, his nearest and dearest get behind him in the end and Billy goes on to play the lead in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. What we didn’t know when we took our front row seats at Cinema City was that the show was also going to be beamed to 554 cinemas in Britain and Ireland and to others around the world – simultaneously across Europe and with time delays to Asia, Australia and North America.

The performance began with a tribute from Elton John (who composed the score), a back stage tour from one of the current quartet of Billys (and our Billy for the day), the incredibly gifted Elliott Hanna, and an introduction by Stephen Daldry, the director of the musical and of the 2000 film on which the stage show is based. The gloriously uplifting finale was a specially choreographed foot-tapping mashup by 25 Billys from past and present. The raw energy and mesmerising talent made me feel distinctively average.

I have to confess that I’m a bit of a Billy Elliot disciple. I blubbed all the way through the film, cried buckets during the stage show (which I saw in 2008) and wept uncontrollably into my large glass of Pinot Grigio through the broadcast. I wasn’t the only one failing to get a grip. The broadcast became the first live event to go to Number 1 at the UK Box Office. It was seeing those hunky miners in tutus that did it.

I leave you with Grandma’s Song (different Billy, same grandma). If you don’t like a little bit of swearing, you’d best change channels now.

*This was the second strike-themed show of our September culture-fest, the first being the fabulous film Pride which we saw at the beginning of the month.

Pits and Perverts

Thirty years ago, the National Union of Miners (NUM) was in a desperate battle with the Thatcher Government to save their livelihoods and their communities. It was a war of attrition that went on for twelve long months. It was also during the dark days of the gay ‘plague’ with John Hurt scaring the life out of OAPs with crashing tombstones every night on national TV and a certain fire and brimstone chief constable saying that gay people were ‘swirling in a human cesspit of their own making.’ Believe me, it was no fun on the picket line or the dance floor. The Police had a habit of raiding both. At the time, I was living with a quantity surveyor who was neither ‘out’ at work or to his family. What sexuality has to do with counting bricks I shall never know but that was the way back then – most closets were firmly locked from the inside. Society had a habit of making hypocrites of us all. I was his guilty secret (needless to say, he wasn’t mine).

So what do striking miners have in common with dancing queens? Not very much you might think. I didn’t think so either until I saw Pride, a new BBC Film by Marcus Warchus, the new Creative Director at the Old Vic. On general release today, this funny and illuminating movie is based on the true story of a small group of London activists who raised money to help the families of the strikers. They called themselves ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ and they did exactly what it said on the collecting tin. Officially, the über-straight, blue collar, backs-to-the-wall-lads NUM weren’t too keen on accepting the support of a gaggle of dirty pervs, even during the worst of times. So the brave pervs took their cause direct to the coal face by sprinkling a little fairy dust (and quite a lot of cash) on a small Welsh mining village. Cue the considerable talents of some seasoned pros (Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy) who know how to deliver a line or two and some gifted fresh faces to inject a dash of youthful angst and exuberance. The clash of cultures is pure magic. Moving without being sugary, political without being preachy, candid without being gratuitous and clever without being patronising, the film is a joy to watch and one of the best British films I’ve ever seen. Really, it’s that good.

Kate Bush: Before the Dawn

kate bush1It’s fair to say that Liam is a HUGE Kate Bush fan. She was the poster girl above his student bed. He knows every note and every word of every track. So when Ms Bush announced her London gigs (her first for 35 years), he began hyperventilating and hasn’t caught his breath since. Liam was working the day the tickets were released so it was my finger hovering over the mouse at the prescribed time. It was made abundantly clear to me that failure to secure a ticket was grounds for divorce. Lucky for me then that I got hold of one in the minutes before they all sold out. Just the one ticket, mind. I like a bit of Kate but not at any price. Then the gushing reviews came rolling in like this one from John Aizlewood in the London Evening Standard…

‘The audience so desperately wanted Bush to be brilliant that by simply turning up, she had triumphed without trying. That she did try so very hard and that she was so obviously, so unambiguously brilliant, made last night something to tell your grandchildren about.’

Liam is at the concert and I’m home alone. I now rather regret my decision.

Lauren Bacall, RIP

Lauren Bacall died today. I’m not easily star-struck. As a young gay about town along Chelsea’s Kings Road, I worked in Habitat during its heyday. Stars and celebrities were ten a penny. I even had a ding dong with a famous actor once. It was no big deal. But one day, during a frenetic Saturday afternoon on the tills, Miss Bacall breezed in from the street and stopped the traffic. Her name spread through the building like flu and the store froze, jaws dropped and cash registers fell silent. Now that’s what I call a Hollywood moment.

 

Say it Again, Sam

I’m like a stick of rock. No matter how much you nibble, you always find the word ‘London’ running through me. But, my love affair with the Old Smoke has cooled of late. Now I’m older, slower and stiffer, I’m less in the mood for the no-time-to-talk, coffee-on-the-go fast lane of many colours that is the great metropolis. These days I’m content to dip in and out as and when. And each time I do, London whacks me across the face to remind me not to neglect my ardour. Just like the time, during the Turkey years, we returned for Christmas and found ourselves surrounded by a gaggle of girls painting the town red and having a ball. We’d got so used the absence of women from our Turkish townscape, it felt totally liberating. Then there was the afternoon we emerged from Tottenham Court Tube Station to be swept along by a tsunami of people drawn from the four corners of the world demonstrating how truly international London has become. And just recently, I stood in the concourse of Victoria Station and noticed how young everyone was as they darted around me. I suddenly felt ancient. Norwich, by comparison, seems positively geriatric despite her two universities and student vibe. Wasn’t it Samuel Pepys who famously wrote, ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’? I may have slowed down a little but I hope I will never tire of either.

Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss DaisyApart from a half-hearted attempt at learning to drive in my twenties (booked some lessons, took a test, nearly killed someone, didn’t bother with a replay), I’ve never seen much point in getting behind a wheel. After all, the Tube has always been the best way to get around the Smoke; only plummy-voiced wankers in Chelsea tractors and micro-dicked Russian oligarchs in Jags drive through Central London. And let’s face it, I’ve always been partial to sipping the sauce, so a night bus was always the obvious choice as I tottered off home in the wee small hours with a drunken Yank in tow. I do admit though that I’ve always taken the precaution of stepping out with a bone fide driver;  a chauffeur comes in very handy for those out-of-town errands.

Liam was driving a company VW when we first met. I can’t deny it was convenient and the cross-Channel lunch in Le Touquet via Le Shuttle was a fun date. My pert booty slipped quite nicely into the front passenger seat and the sound system was loud and fabulous. When we took the momentous decision to jump ship and paddle ashore to Asia Minor, the Golf went back to the dealer and we didn’t buy a car in Turkey. Why would we? We were neither mad nor suicidal. Four years later, with family duties to perform in London, we pitched our tent in Norwich and parked a sexy-arsed Renault Megane outside it. And now, with a new flat and different duties, va va voom has been handed down to my sister and we’re car-less once more. They’ll be no more driving Miss Daisy here. And anyway, Sainsbury’s deliver the Pinot Grigio free of charge.

Births, Deaths and Marriages

Over the cold winter on the sofa nights, ITV, Britain’s main commercial broadcaster, ran a documentary series featuring the activities of the City of Westminster’s Register Office where births, deaths and marriages are recorded. It was a distracting little show, a  funny and touching fly-on-the-wall human interest fest for a chilly midwinter’s evening that helped the digestion and wasn’t too taxing on the brain. There is something rather dignified and valiant about the ordinary people – the hatch, match and dispatch squad – who deal daily with the relentless cycle of life that we must all face and the relentless cycle of emotion that goes with it. Veteran registrar of 28 years, Patricia Gordon, confessed that she was none too comfortable with the notion of civil partnerships. But, through friendship and by example, fellow registrar Tommy helped her see the light; now she can’t wait for him to find his own soul mate so she can do the honours. And guess what? Patricia officiated at our Civil Partnership in 2008. Here is she doing the business:

Thank you for changing your mind, Patricia. 

The Biggest Cock in Town

On a recent trip down to the Smoke, Liam and I decided on a post-matinee snifter. We headed towards Trafalgar Square to the stage of our inaugural meeting, a chilly evening in the spring of 2006. The chance encounter is best described in my first book:

PtP_Excerpt

The rest, as they say, really is history.

As we hurried past the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, we were confronted by the biggest cock I’ve ever seen, glowing bright blue in the late afternoon sunshine. It caused quite a stir, I can tell you.

Two cocks for the price of one
Two cocks for the price of one

The puffed up rooster, by German sculptor, Katharina Fritsch, is the latest temporary exhibit on the empty corner plinth of the Square. The work is intended to poke fun at the vainglorious imperial statues of puffed-up men (Nelson, George IV, and generals Havelock and Napier) that surround it. There have been many fleeting displays on the podium down the years, from the daft to the inspirational, the profound to the whimsical. The reason there is no permanent statue has been an open secret for years. The plinth is reserved for an effigy of Her Maj after she drops off her throne. Given her mother’s longevity (the last Empress of India lived until she was 101), the chances are they’ll be a more temporary erections to come.

Back in Norwich, the cock of the coop theme continued.

Coop

Personally, I’d rather win a week in the Maldives but then, this is Norfolk, the nation’s bread basket and home to Bernard Matthews, king of the gobblers. It’s a funny old world.

Bath Time Blues

One thing I won’t miss about the Weaver’s Cottage is the bath. It’s enormous. I’m not the mightiest of men (at 5’ 5.5” and shrinking in my socked feet) so it’s like lying in a flotation tank. I have to grip the tap with my toes to stop myself from going under. At 6′, Liam fares a little better, but not much. Thankfully, our new gaff has a bath of standard dimensions. I’m looking forward to giving the shower a miss messing about in the bubbly hot tub, glass of chilled white in one hand and a copy of ‘The Week’ in the other. Fabulous.

Mind you, I didn’t always covet bath time with such decadent relish. As a child of the Sixties and the youngest of four (until my sister accidentally came along and usurped my position as baby of the family), I was last in line for the soak and sponge. Back in the day, we lived in the married quarters of the former Royal Army Medical College along Millbank next to Tate Britain in central London. Accommodation was strictly army-issue utilitarian, no central heating and only rudimentary hot water. Like families up and down the realm, Sunday night was bath night in the Scott household and we all took turns for a scrub. It was done in chronological order so by the time I climbed into the bath, the water was tepid and covered in an oil slick. Disgusting really. These days it would be considered child abuse. But then we’re talking about the era before deodorant, when men were men and pits were ripe. The Sixties stank as well as swung.

The Medical College closed in the Seventies and the buildings now form part of the London University of the Arts. It’s a sign of the times and one I rather approve of.  This was our billet:

Chelsea Schoolof Art

The parade ground once had a small children’s playground on the right of the image and that’s where I did my swinging while my father counted beans in the offices on the far side. I’ve passed the building many times in recent years. In fact, Liam and I got hitched just round the corner in the Sky Lounge in what was the City Inn Hotel.  It’s the Hilton now. You see, nothing stands still and in my book that’s a good thing.

Oi Speak Narrfuk Oi Do

Anyone living on these damp little islands and anyone who visits them knows that Britain is a nation of a thousand and one accents and dialects. Homespun and imported lingo twists and turns through town and county. We may live in a global village and in a mass media world where ‘Globalish’ (the cut-down version of English-light) dominates, but that hasn’t stopped many regional accents kicking against the tide. In many cases, they are thriving. English in all its variants is constantly evolving and because the language is such a magpie, words are being dropped and added, borrowed and adapted, created and extended all the time. Our cousins across the Pond might be forgiven for thinking that there are only two English accents: posh and Cockney. But even those stereotypes are changing. These days, only the Queen speaks like the Queen and the word on the street, the inner city London street, is a marvellous infusion of words, phrases and pronunciations from right across the world. Quite different from an Eastenders episode.

Unfortunately, many English dialects are truly indecipherable to an untrained ear. Pity the poor foreigner, jumping into a cab at East Midlands International Airport to be greeted by:

“Ayup me duck.”

The thick Norfolk accent, aptly named “Broad Norfolk” is no less difficult to fathom and notoriously difficult to imitate. Norwich may only be 115 miles from central London but that’s far enough away for Broad Norfolk to survive the onslaught of the insipid Estuary English, the dominant accent of southeast England (and the one Liam and I speak). There’s even an organisation, the Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND) which is…

…dedicated to conserving and recording Norfolk’s priceless linguistic and cultural heritage, thus keeping ‘Broad Norfolk’ alive.

Broad Naarfuk is rich in local words and phrases, some of them variants on standard English, others completely unique. A year in and Liam and I are only just beginning to look a little less baffled. Here’s a few to give you a titty-totty taste:

Norfolk_Words

Want to know how all of this sounds? Take a look at this. I’ll be testing you later.