Category: TV & Radio

Thank You, Mitt Romney

We leapt off the train from Norwich at Stratford (the main gateway to the Olympic Games). It was busy but not uncomfortably so. There was no sign of the much anticipated transport gridlock that has dominated the news for months. We jumped on a bus to the penthouse pad overlooking the stadium and took our seats for the biggest show in town. As I had hoped, it was a mesmerising salute to British polish, quirkiness, individuality and diversity – funny, moving, creative, self-deprecating, inclusive, mildly subversive with tongue jammed firmly in cheek. The eccentric cultural cabaret was infused with subtle (and not so subtle) political messages to the great, the good and the incompetent both at home and away. It mattered little to me that much of the humour might have been lost on the globally bemused. It was worth all the money just to get the first lesbian kiss ever broadcast on Saudi TV. After much reticence, all but a few diehard cynics now seem to have risen to the occasion and finally taken the Games to their hearts. There’s a real buzz in the air, a buzz you can feel, taste and see. I think we have Mitt Romney to thank for this. His ungracious remarks about London’s readiness to stage the Games have galvanised opinion. No one likes a bad-mannered, bad-mouthing guest in their house, do they?

I give you one of the many highlights from the show – HM becomes a Bond girl. I hope our German friends weren’t too miffed by the Dambuster’s theme. Naturally, Her Maj was as inscrutable as ever.

Absolutely Fabulous

It doesn’t usually do to go back, to try and relive a moment. Invariably, it leads to bitter disappointment and anti-depressants. Sometimes though, there’s some old magic left in a tired old formula. Such was the Absolutely Fabulous Olympic Special shown tonight on Auntie Beeb. I loved every witty word, every caustic comment, every grotesque caricature and the sound of every sacred cow being slaughtered. Watching deliciously unreconstructed, post-menopausal Patsy light her fag from the Olympic flame was worthy of a sackful of gold medals. Perhaps I am being carried away by Olympic fever but Ab Fab was absolutely fabulous.

You might also like:

Let the Games Begin

The Voice Hits Pontin’s

Back at base camp, we donned our glad rags and pirouetted down to the Stardust Cabaret Bar (think swirly carpets and swirly ceilings) to watch the permanently smiling bluecoats strut their amateur stuff. We were greeted by pissed-up pensioners and sprightly sprogs. As far as we could tell, we were the only wooly-woofters in wonderland (apart from a light fairy dusting from one or two of the bluecoats, obviously). We’d arrived at the tail end of a line dancing hour and sat back to marvel at a small company of wrinklies giving their pacemakers a welcome workout. The dosey doe harmonies were supplied by one woman and her magnificent organ. I ordered a couple of drinks from a barmaid called Richard. She’d mislaid her badge, apparently. Taking a table next to a couple of senior citizens, we nodded a polite (if slightly nervous) hello. We needn’t have bothered. Mr Senior had already nodded off into his half-pint of ‘mild’. Mrs Senior made no attempt to check for a pulse so we guessed he hadn’t yet expired. “That’ll be us in twenty years,” whispered. Liam. “You’re kidding,” I replied. “That’s us now.”

The headline act was local lass Toni Warne, a finalist from the BBC show The Voice. Liam could hardly contain his excitement. As he shivered in anticipation, the dressing room door inexplicably blew open to reveal a startled MC sucking on an illicit fag. Once recomposed, the camp compere minced out onto the floor to introduce the star turn. “Please give it up for Toni Ward.” Ms Warne didn’t let his faux pas get her down and belted out a string of old standards and modern classics from Doris Day and Barbra Streisand to Adele and Jessie J, all bang in tune. Mrs Senior turned down her hearing aid I suspect she and the rest of the audience would have preferred a spot of Vera Lynn. Liam thought Ms Warne had a great voice for musical theatre. I felt rather sorry for her. I thought aspiring stars gigged at Pontin’s before making it big, not after.

Despite the so-so weather and jaded Seventies social club ambience, we rather enjoyed our windswept blast from the past. Thank you, Pontin’s. You perked up these weary travelling pansies and provided a quiet place to rest and write.

You might also like:

Pontin’s Happy Campers

Windy City

Quentin Crisp

Mentioning Quentin Crisp in a recent post compelled me to re-watch the Naked Civil Servant, Crisp’s TV biopic first broadcast in 1975. The incomparable John Hurt played the equally incomparable Crisp (or Dennis Pratt, to give him his real name). The film made stars of them both. It was an overnight sensation and catapulted Crisp to centre stage and a new career at 67. I watched the original broadcast as a spell-bound 15 year old. The Edwardian dandy’s resolute insistence that he would be what he wanted to be, despite the considerable odds stacked against him, was an inspiration to this post-pubescent boy coming to terms with his sexuality. Looking back, it was a major miracle that he survived the ordeal to tell the tale.

The film had a profound effect on me. I wanted to be him. Not the makeup and mince but the mettle and pluck. It’s no exaggeration to say that the film gave me the courage to leap out of the closet a year later. I did so without fear or regret. Just like Quentin, I was uncompromisingly out to everyone. Take it or leave it. Just like Quentin, I was offered money but, unlike Quentin, I never took it. I had choices that he didn’t. I always worked and the coppers in my pocket were legally earned. I’d learned self-reliance, I’d learned real pride, and I’d learned both at my father’s knee. Like Quentin, I was a civil servant. Unlike Quentin, I kept my clothes on at work (except for one drunken Christmas party, but that’s another story).

I didn’t always agree with Quentin’s more outrageous pronouncements. His public faux pas that AIDS was ‘a fad’ was completely stupid and something he never fully recovered from. But, in the final analysis, he was a pansy pioneer who burst through the barriers and made the world a little safer for the rest of us. For that I honour him.

You might also like:

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Eurovision 2012

The campest cabaret has come to town. This year, the good burghers of Baku are proud hosts to the financially crippling annual Eurovision Song-fest. At least the well-oiled Azeris can afford to stage the ritzy affair without going cap in hand to the IMF. Various tone-deaf bottle blond painted divas with floaty hair, mincing pretty-boys in tight white lycra and hairy ruritanians in ethnic pantomime drag have parachuted into town to compete for the most infamous music prize on the planet. The Azeri autocrats are rubbing their hands in glee. As usual, votes will be cast along political and ethnic fault lines regardless of the quality (or otherwise) of the compositions, most of which will be badly sung in banal single-syllable pop English. It’s music, Jim, but not as we know it. Expect plenty of back slapping Balkan bonhomie between recently befriended old foes, top marks from the Turkish jury to their Azeri pals, the usual love-in between Athens and Nicosia and friendly hands across the Baltic. Pity poor Engelbert, he hasn’t got a hope in Hell. To not come last will be a decent achievement. Regardless of the shameless predictability of it all, we’ll be popping our euro-corks courtesy of a lovely Bitez Babe. We’ve promised not to trash the joint as Engelbert’s nul points come rolling in.

The glitzy shindig has caused quite a ruckus in the Caucasus. A couple of Eurovision websites have been hacked by anti-gay cyber attacks, leaving the catchy slogan “here is no place to immoral gays in Azerbaijan. Leave our country, no place to stay in Azerbaijan for gays who look like animals.”  Now, who are they calling an old dog? The Iranians have thrown a hissy fit at the prospect of all that decadent fun and frolics from the sexually suspect just across the border. The Iranian ambassador has been withdrawn in protest, there’ve been riots by the great unwashed and a fatwa or two from the mad mullahs. Like the Puritans of old, it seems the Iranians have forgotten what is it is to have a little glittery fun. These days, what passes for Saturday night entertainment on state-controlled TV is ‘Lynch the Queers, Live”.  Now, where did I put my knitting needles?

While I’m looking for them, check out the Russian entry from the singing grannies.

You might also like:

Singing For His Pension

Eurovision Helps the Aged

Eurovision Song-fest Fever

Tenko

I recently received glad tidings from Blighty, a welcome email providing light relief from my solitary confinement. Old friend, Ian and his partner, Matt, intend to join our extended leaving bash at the end of May. Ian was once my regular escort as we tripped the light fantastic across the sweaty dance floors of Europe during our misspent youth. It was he who accompanied me on my first trip to Istanbul in 2003. Our eyes popped at the dark and illicit underbelly of Turkish life. Oh, happy days.

Last year, Ian and I were summer-supping in the Duke of Wellington (the Wellie), our favourite Soho watering hole and pick up joint. He asked me what expat life was really like. This was the conversation.

It’s like Tenko.
Come again?
A great social leveller. People who, in any other situation, would neither meet nor mix are chucked together like prisoners of war.
I see. A bit like this place, then?
Precisely.


*Tenko was a BBC TV series of the early Eighties which dramatised the experiences of British, Australian and Dutch women imprisoned by the Japanese after the Fall of Singapore in 1942. Think ‘Bad Girls‘ in the tropics.

From Top to Bottom

Now we’ve unplugged Digiturk, we’re gradually re-acquainting ourselves with our DVD library. This is more troublesome than it sounds. Our LG home entertainment system is rejecting discs at random. Again. This tiresome business first started last November. At the time, the system was still under guarantee and Liam called in the service man. The burly, surly boy who turned up at our door had a brilliant suggestion. We were trying to play the ‘wrong kind’ of DVD. I quickly disabused him of that and he grudgingly took the machine away for repairs. It was returned a week later and worked fine. For a few months. Naturally, it’s now out of warranty. When we move back to Blighty, our top of the range system will be at the bottom of the bin.

You might also like:

Life’s Good

From Local to Yokel

It’s Sod’s Law. As soon we decide to paddle back to Blighty on the evening tide to become country yokels, two things happen to make life in battered Bodrum just that little bit easier and that little bit cheaper.

First off, the Town’s highways and byways are being laid with fibre optic cables. A battalion of dusky, sweaty vested navvies is carving out mini-trenches along every street. The deep furrows are being backfilled badly and dribbled with lumpy tarmac. In some of the crazy paving alleys, zigzagging troughs look like hastily repaired earthquake cracks.

The project is a joint venture between Super Online (internet) and Turkcell (mobile phone). Fibre optic cables provide a much faster and more reliable internet experience and the new service will give the current whore’s drawers service from TTNET (Turk Telekom) a run for its money. Who knows, it may even drive down prices. I hear there are also plans for cable TV in the pipeline. Oh, what joy: the chance to tell Digiturk (Satellite broadcaster) where to shove their overpriced packages.

And so to the second piece of good news. Dolly drivers on the flat fare blue-liveried bus routes now charge us the tariff usually reserved for locals (2 lira instead of 2.75 as advertised in English). It’s only taken two years. Sadly, we’ve yet to get the local rate at cute Ali’s barbers for our one-round-the-side-two-on-the-top crops. He’s worth it though. Even without the ‘extras’.

You might also like:

Something for the Weekend Sir?

Back, Sack and Crack

Britain’s Got Loads of Talent

We caught the opening episode of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent on catch-up TV. A genuine attempt to discover the best (and worst) amateur talent that Blighty has to offer, or a cynical commercial exercise in crass oversentimentality? Probably both and so what? It was brilliant. From the weird to the truly wonderful, the eccentric to the frankly insane, we lapped up every last drop.

First to have us on the edge of our IKEA sofa was a duo of male, married (to each other) ballroom dancers called the Sugar Dandies. Their sweet dance of love had the audience swaying in the stalls and cheering from the aisles. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Then came the Welsh all-teenage boys choir from the Valleys called Only Boys Aloud (get it?). Their sublime rendition of a traditional Welsh folk song brought the stunned crowd to its feet and sent shivers down my spine. Who says the only thing the so-called illiterate teenagers of Blighty do these days is shag, take drugs and riot?

The soaring triumph was Jonathan, a shy, overweight 17 year man with big hair, clumsy demeanour and self-esteem in the sewer. Charlotte, his pretty singing companion had to virtually drag him on stage. After a slightly shaky start, jaws dropped as hesitant tenor met pretty pop opera voice. The hairs at the back of neck stood up in tribute. Fabulous.

Cue the videos (if you get an error, just click into You Tube)

Dancing on Ice

We’ve been watching a lot more British TV these dark and damp evenings. We became a bit bored with Patsy Kensit’s woodentop acting on a continuous loop courtesy of Auntie Beeb’s international offering. This was one reason for dumping Digiturk (that, and buggering off back to Blighty). We recently caught Dancing on Ice, ITV’s trashy and less cool answer to the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. The friends of Dorothy have always loomed large on the entertainment payroll but none so obviously as Louie Spence, the campy Gatling gun judge and leading dancing queen. Louie lispily declared to one of the Z-list contestants attempting to revive their dead-as-a-dodo careers:

“You made a short but perfectly formed homosexual very happy.”

Remember, this is prime-time terrestrial TV with the little-uns watching. While I generally find Louie a bit too much of a stereotype, this short but perfectly formed homosexual loved the fact that nobody battered a moral eyelid. Larry Grayson must be turning in his grave.

You might also like:

Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly No Dancing