Trolls

So, I'm currently sitting in a Travelodge in a place called Talke, which seems to be just north of Stoke On Trent. The Little Chef attached to it is closed, so I've had to order in a soggy veggie burger. I feel rather tragic eating it at my little Formica desk with the Nokia television to keep me company!

So why am I here? Well, tomorrow morning, I'm due to be talking on BBC Breakfast with Ben and Andrew from the cast of Brass. I say "due to be" because I've been bumped from a breakfast show before when there was too much news, so I'm praying there isn't a nuclear or terrorist attack in the night and that the monarchy remains safe and alive!

Ordinarily I would be staying in Manchester itself, but the prices of hotels in that ghastly city on a Saturday night are prohibitively expensive. I never supported the BBC's move to Salford, not least because, even if you get yourself to Manchester itself, you have to trek out to Media City on a tram which can take half an hour.

This is all making me seem incredibly ungrateful. The BBC buildings in Salford and the area around them are beautiful and I am hugely thankful to the BBC for giving us a slot to talk about our album. It is a northern show as well, so if it's not "Yorkshire" enough for BBC Yorkshire, then going to Manchester to promote it feels like the next best thing. And this is, of course, a national platform, which we wouldn't have chased had the BBC in Yorkshire promoted the piece. Funny how things work out isn't it?

I've had pineapple for pudding, which made my tongue feel a bit funny. Anaphylactic shock after a four hour car journey would have been just my luck.

Whilst standing at the reception here, phoning the take away place, a pair of absolute trolls came in to use the loos. They were basically wearing belts, bras, stilettos and nothing else apart from mahogany fake tan and so much makeup that they looked like shop mannequins. I have seldom seen so much flesh on display. And those girls weren't skinny creatures by any stretch! 

A group of men ogled them to within an inch of their lives, which made me realise that there's something very wrong with this world! The ludicrous Loose Women can go on as much as they like about women's lib, but the fact remains that in many places in this country of ours people operate on much baser levels!

I'm now sitting watching one of those casino shows on channel 5. It's perfect fodder for falling asleep to because no one says anything of any interest whatsoever. They simply talk rubbish. For hours. Like little wind up toys.

My eyes close. I sleep.

Muggy

The weather's been so peculiar today. It's very hot, but rain in the night turned everything muggy. At the osteopath this morning I was covered permanently in a layer of light sweat. I had to keep towelling myself down with tissue paper. I felt like a wet dog.

I spoke to Nathan on the phone; "this is your least favourite weather isn't it?" He said. "No" I said "to be my least favourite weather, it would need to start drizzling so that I couldn't tell what was sweat and what was rain." Just as I said those very words, it started to rain. Joy!

Still, it brightened up a treat for the rest of the day, along with my mood, when I discovered that the wonderful Philip Carne of the Richard Carne foundation has agreed to commission the first stage of writing of my new musical, which is really very exciting. I shan't say too much about the storyline. What I can say is that it's set in Liverpool and Coventry in 1965, and that it's called Em. I'm hoping that's the shortest ever title for a musical! It's also going to offer the musical theatre canon its largest role for a young female! I cannot express my gratitude to Philip (for the second time in as many blogs) because it means I don't have to take myself to the job centre on Monday morning to get work as a bin man! Genuinely! So it's a happy man who writes this blog tonight.

There's not a lot else to say. Watch this space for some potentially exciting news on Sunday...

Sebastian and Viola

I got all the way into the gym changing rooms today before realising I'd left my shorts at home. Dreadful. Just when I thought I was getting into a routine and was all pumped up about the prospect of going... Always the way, isn't it?

I had to do a load more deliveries this afternoon, which started with a bus ride from Kentish Town down to Bedford Square to drop off a couple of CDs at the Arts Council, who have generously supported Brass through most of the stages of its journey so far.

It's boiling hot in London today and I've been sweating like a pig, largely as a result of having worn too many clothes, based on the crummy weather we had at the start of the week.

The lady at the reception of the Arts Council was like a glorious character in a Victoria Wood sketch. She seemed to keep losing focus, to the extent that she appeared to be surprised by my presence every time she glanced back at me after looking away for a few moments. At one stage she phoned the office of the chap I wanted to drop the CDs off for, had a quick chat to whomever answered, hung up, and then returned to her computer, almost as though I weren't there any more. After typing a few words, she looked up at me, surprised again, and said, "oh. He's in Manchester..." So off I toddled.

I walked to Piccadilly Circus and took the tube to Gloucester Road where I delivered two CDs to Philip Carne, whose "Richard Carne Foundation" basically bankrolled our entire cast recording. Without the donation from him, and the equally generous donation from the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation, we just wouldn't have been able to do the project. So, frankly, a little excursion to Gloucester Road to deliver some CDs in person is the least I could have done. Gratitude doesn't begin to sum up my feelings towards both foundations.

The tweets have continued to fly around, with two cast members being ludicrously assiduous in their search for celebrities to "retweet" the YouTube films. Alfie Boe, Jodie Prenger, Ruthie Henshall, Nathalie Weiss, Ali Jiear and Jenna Russell were all badgered into/ gracious enough to "share.." We're a long way off the films going viral, but everyone seems to be enjoying them thus far.

I got caught out by the miserably confusing District Line on my way to Earlsfield in the late afternoon, where we were due for dinner with Abbie and Ian. All hell breaks loose around Earls Court with the district line splitting into three and the Piccadilly Line running parallel but not stopping at every stop. To make matters worse, there are no conventional dot matrix signs to tell you which train goes where, so you end up looking at these rather quaint 1930s signposts which never quite seem to tell you the information you need, at least not at a glance. So, cutting this rant short, I went six stations out of my way and ended up feeling like a right plonker, turning back and having to wait ten minutes for the right train at Earls Court.

The thing about the south west of London is that it's really badly serviced by trains. It took an age to get there! It's incredibly leafy and pretty down in Earlsfield, however, and everyone is incredibly posh!

Abbie's house is lovely: light and airy. We had a sort of light curry for tea with paneer in it, which is an Indian tofu-like cheese which keeps its shape when cooked. I'd never had it before and it was delicious.

We were entertained all night by two cats called Sebastian and Viola. I'm not normally that fussed about cats. I find them rather pointless and haughty, but these ones were affectionate and like to play, which gives them an advantage over many other felines.

We exited Abbie's block via the back door by mistake and ended up stuck in a garden of some sort surrounded by locked doors. At that point Nathan realised he'd left his phone on the sofa and, for a brief moment, I couldn't get reception on my phone. That would have been an interesting end to the night!

Trending on Twitter

Today we launched the CD of Brass, so, before I forget to mention it, do feel free to buy yourself a copy on the National Youth Music Theatre website @ www.nymt.org.uk! It's fab.

If you can't afford to buy a copy (all proceeds go to the mega-important NYMT bursaries fund for less privileged young performers) check out one of our two films at:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi3gOoH1rRs

And:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x04M171_fT4

If you're feeling in the mood, watch them a couple of times, and that all-important view-o-meter will continue to rise!

Plug done!

So, the day started at shit o'clock with a live interview on BBC Radio Leeds. It was one of those interviews where you wake up all bleary-eyed and suddenly have to sound all perky so that listeners don't think you're a recovering heroin addict. I don't know who I spoke to, but she was very chipper, and played an excerpt from On the Shelf, which surprised me a little because I thought they might have gone for something a bit more up-tempo and Yorkshire-centric. Still, it was nice to hear it playing out on the radio...

The morning was spent taking one final look at the script before sending it out to producers and such in the early afternoon.

I dropped Nathan off at the dentist on the way to the gym and picked him up again to discover he needed route canal work, which is apparently going to cost us huge sums of money. Our financial situation just gets more and more ludicrous. It's highly stressful, but we keep on keeping on...

The NYMT students, whom I keep wanting to refer to as the Kids From Fame, have been busy tweeting all day, telling the world about Brass. And they were telling the world... For a three hour period in the afternoon the show was the fifth most talked about thing world wide on Twitter.

We decided to duck out of London in the mid afternoon and took ourselves to Thaxted, which looked idyllic bathed in beautiful sunlight. We had tea in the pub and then went for a glorious evening walk across the fields as the sun set. The birds were chirping for England, and all the verges were full of flowers; buttercups, celandine, cowslips, cow parsley. It struck me how lucky I am to have links to such a beautiful part of the world and furthermore how quintessentially "English summer's day" everything seemed.

This evening we went to see Stuart and Sally, friends of my parents and fellow team members in the North Essex quiz circuit. Their house is so beautiful. It's a ramshackle medieval town house on Newbiggen Street, which runs through the centre of the town, and, I'm told, is the longest unbroken medieval street in Europe, which surely makes it the longest in the world?

Their garden is particularly delightful, with a big old wooden barn hanging over it from the house next door, plenty of established trees and hedges, and a chicken coop with five hens. They grow tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers and fruit (including nectarines) and I could really imagine myself living there.

We played games all evening and laughed continuously. I haven't belly laughed a great deal of late and it felt so good to be doing so!

We walked home through the darkened streets of the town, admiring the stunning church, and taking deep gulps of the richly-scented evening air. It's a beautiful place, Thaxted.

Odyssey

I woke up this morning and immediately dived into the set of notes which Nathan had given me after reading Brass last night. I'll confess to having panicked initially that the notes might throw a massive spanner in the works and put me into something of a paddy of indecision, but they were universally concise and very well thought-through, so they slipped into the show in a manner not dissimilar to the way that I used to consume Malteesers!

I went for a run at lunchtime in the driving rain and gale force winds. Yes, I know... What June? I never mind running in inclement weather, however, particularly when I get to run through moisture-laden fir trees, which always provide a much-needed refreshing blast, like something from a Tango advert. Although I would say that when people get showered in thirst-quenching drinks in the adverts, I'm always left worrying about the sticky residue they'll be left with when the moisture dries. Whilst working as a bar man, 100 or so years ago, I once spilt an entire bottle of Pernod over myself. Going home on the tube was the stickiest experience of my life! (And not in a good way!)

This afternoon was all about a central London mission to drop the Brass CDs off to various key players, or at least various individuals, theatres and companies I like to think might like to become key players in the show!

I had twelve CDs to deliver and meticulously planned a snaking route from Oxford Circus, where I alighted from the tube, to Waterloo, where I dropped a CD off at the Old Vic. The journey took me to Cameron Mackintosh's offices, and various producers and publishers. I felt a little like an old school hawker, or perhaps one of those First World War veterans who returned from France, jobless and penniless, and was forced to wander about in silly costumes selling penny trinkets from an usherette's tray. That said, people were far nicer to me than they perhaps might have been to a veteran. I had some lovely chats and was offered some delicious-looking chocolate which I was virtuous enough to turn down!

On my way across Waterloo bridge, the wind very nearly took me off my feet on several occasions. The railings on that particular bridge feel excessively low, so I was worried my phone was going to be blown out of my hand! I was reminded of an entry in Samuel Pepys' Diary, where he talks about crossing the old London Bridge during a very blustery storm;

"It was dangerous to walk the streets, the bricks and tiles falling from the houses that the whole street were covered with them; and whole chimneys, nay, whole houses in two or three places, blowed down. But, above all, the pales on London-bridge on both sides were blown away, so that we were fain to stoop very low for fear of being blown off of the bridge."

By the time I'd reached the Old Vic, my feet felt like stumps of wood, which I took to mean I'd lost some weight! Bonus. Walking back to the Shaftesbury Theatre was a trial though and I stopped off at a cafe Nero near Covent Garden to stretch my back, rest my weary legs and give my eyes a chance to rid themselves of the accumulation of grit which had been blown into them!

As I sat in the cafe, I stared up at a union flag on the top of one of the buildings over-looking the Thames. It was almost being blown off by the force of the wind. I remembered the day Nathan and I got married, and the fact that all public buildings in England and Wales flew the rainbow flag to signify the special day. What a moving and welcoming sight that was. It suddenly struck me how astonishingly significant that particular flag is, and how it's one of the few flags which unifies people in all countries of the world. It tells people that they're safe. How special is that? I wonder how many other flags can claim to do that?

This evening we met lovely Matt Lucas, had some food in Wagamama's, and took Nathan on a busman's holiday to see Memphis at the theatre where he works in the box office. We had wonderful seats, right in the middle of the stalls, and it struck me what a proper treat it is to see a big old show. I'd been excited about going all day.

The show is great. Let me rephrase that: the cast are great and it feels like a well-financed, glitzy West End show. Killian Donnelly is a remarkable performer; brave, extreme, effortless, cool... And in the eleven o'clock number, he opens up his pipes and whips out a top D. Boom.

Beverley Knight is quite simply one of the world's greatest vocalists. I ended up feeling rather sorry for her, because my expectations were so high, I slightly took for granted the extraordinary vocal tricks she was pulling off effortlessly. I kept having to remind myself how I would feel if I'd turned up to the show without knowing her voice and heard someone singing like she did. I concluded that I might have wet myself! She is divine.


The plot's a bit meh. The songs hit all the right buttons, but remain a bit meh, but it's s brilliant night out, which I heartily recommend!


I'll sleep well tonight!

Post Brass regime

I spent the day today attempting to get my life back into shape after the mayhem of Brass. I spent a long time in the gym, started a wheat-free regime, cut out all sweet stuff and fizzy drinks in favour of fresh fruit and vegetables, and am determined to walk everywhere for a bit! I look like a bloated whale right now. In two months I'll be sylph-like and gorgeous with bright, shiny eyes, so watch this space. I don't want a heart attack just yet if I can possibly help it!

The rest of the day was spent working on the twelfth draft of Brass, whilst making contact with the various producers and theatres I'm hoping might be interested in reading it. It's all about striking whilst the iron's hot; capitalising on the growing buzz about the show. My gut instinct was always that the script needed to be ready at the same time as the album, and this was somewhat bailed out today by one of the producers I contacted asking if he could have the script by Friday.

I'm trying to write all my cover letters in long hand, old-school-like. The only problem is that it appears I've forgotten how to write! My handwriting has always verged on the illegible, but today, the scrawl might as well have been the product of a spider roller skating across the page with paint spattered wheels!

Nathan is reading the latest draft late into the night so that his notes are with me by tomorrow, for one final pass of the script before it goes out to everyone on Wednesday, which is also our official release day.

The cast, and those who were present yesterday, are still saying lovely things about their experiences of the show and how much it's meant to them over the past year and a half. I feel very proud, and hope they will always look back on the world of Brass as glorious, halcyon days.

We had soup for tea and I'm still hungry. I think I may be hungry for a few weeks whilst my body settles into this new fitness regime. Being healthy is a bit boring isn't it?!

Premiere

My day started with a start after waking up from the most peculiar dream... I'd gone back to my senior school to reprise the role of Alfred P Doolittle in a production of My Fair Lady. The only issue was that I'd entirely forgotten the lines, having foolishly assumed they'd merely come back to me after an absence of 24 years! It's fair to say I didn't know them properly back then!


So anyway, the show had already started, I was hiding in the loo, and I could hear my drama teacher angrily shouting my name. It was a classic anxiety dream brought about by the forthcoming final day of this phase of Brass.


So today was the day when the cast, and a series of friends of the production, got to watch the films we'd made and hear the album for the first time. It all happened at NYMT Central, better known as Westminster Under School in Pimlico.


On the way down, I could feel my stomach churning with nerves. This was the last day on this project that something potentially could have gone disastrously wrong. The films could have been in the wrong format, for example, or the CD might have sounded dreadful on the system we were playing it on. I was frantically trying to work out what could go wrong as we drove along. Nathan calls me a pessimist, but I like to have at least considered every negative outcome so that I can have a plan B formulated in my mind.


As it happened, Jeremy had brought NYMT stalwart Charlie in to deal with all the technical issues, and he immediately got stuck into a persistent buzz on the sound system. He's a techno-God and basically ensured that my task today was simply to relax and enjoy the experience of sharing my creativity with everyone for the first time.


It was such a special and magical day. The vast majority of cast and musicians were there, and watching them responding to the music and the films was a great joy. They whooped, cheered, wept, laughed and felt proud of themselves. The cast introduced the songs, and, in the process, shared some of their memories and thoughts, many of which were deeply moving. Andrew Nance dug up a chilling quote about the Leeds Pals: "We were two years in the making and ten minutes in the destroying..." There was a collective sigh from the audience as he said it.


I made a little speech at the end, encouraging the wonderful cast never to become jaded or grand, and always to find the time to offer their skills for free to young creatives, particularly writers, who might not be able to afford to pay them. That is, after all, how the world of theatre will continue to turn, particularly now that the arts are being strangled by successive governments.


Jeremy sold CDs in the interval and they literally flew off the tables. Everybody wanted one.


After a presentation of two films and three recordings, everyone milled around and had some wine and nibbles provided by the lovely Victoria, before sitting back down again to listen to the entire album. At the end of every song, I encouraged the singers and musicians who'd featured most prominently in the number to stand up and take the applause from the room.


When we'd listened to the last song, I noticed that everyone in the room had started standing up, so I went to follow suit until Nathan whispered in my ear that they were standing for me, at which point I obviously became incredibly emotional!


I sincerely hope that people will now go away with their albums and listen to them on a loop to enjoy every subtle nuance that PK has imbued them with. I have already had some wonderful feedback. People have talked of listening to the album repeatedly on their way home and weeping copiously. Many parents came up to me afterwards and shook me firmly by the hand to thank me for giving their children such a fabulous experience.


We went to Pizza Express afterwards to put the experience to bed with stodgy dough, tomato sauce and side salads. I shall miss it hugely.