Ducks

We've been in the edit most of this evening, trying to make cuts to the overall length of our film for the broadcast tomorrow night. It's a fairly thankless task, because, when a film is overrunning by five minutes or so, there are some hefty cuts which need to be made, which feel just awful. Fortunately, I have pretty much been taken out of the equation when it comes to making these terrible decisions. Sometimes it's nice not to be completely in charge!

We had a day off today. The first since our stag do. Oddly we couldn't lie-in for love nor money, and were completely wide-eyed by about 9am, so we went into Muswell Hill where we met Cindy, Silvia and Llio for lunch before embarking on a very lovely walk around Highgate and then Queens Wood. It's very definitely spring and the birds were going crazy; a cacophony of happiness. Queens Wood is such a peculiar place. It has a very heavy atmosphere, and I wasn't surprised to learn recently that it is the focus of much Wiccan and Pagan activity.

There were two extraordinarily brightly-coloured ducks floating about on a newly-created frog pond in the wood. We looked at them for some time, marvelling at their colour, wondering what sort of ducks they were. The word "mandarin" suddenly popped into my head, and sure enough, when we googled "mandarin duck", we discovered that we were indeed staring at said type of duck!

I can't really believe that the day after I got married in a crazy landmark wedding, I'm writing about ducks! Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Or is it the other way round?

Stay tuned, however, because we're going on This Morning tomorrow! The circus continues...

I got married today

It's very difficult to explain what happened to me today. Of course I can write down any number of words which explain in purely factual terms that I got married, and that the wedding took place in the form of a musical. These are all things that regular readers of this blog will already know. I don't know if I feel any different to how I felt this time yesterday. I feel relieved; like a great weight has been taken from my shoulders, but I'm still me. Nathan is still Nathan.

My friends all told me to take a series of mental snap shots of the day: moments where I should try to drink everything in.

I took as many as I could, and I shall attempt to list them. They may seem rather disjointed. I don't really have a sense of the narrative of the day, or the order that these memories occurred in, but they might offer a sense of the emotional roller coaster I've been riding.

Here goes;

Arriving at Alexandra Palace first thing this morning. Looking out across London at the sun burning through the mist. Blossom falling from the trees like confetti. Two magpies hopping about. A rainbow flag flying proudly. I understand that rainbow flags were flying outside every public building in England and Wales today. Feeling proud.

Walking into the theatre space at Ally Pally, and seeing the glorious twinkling lights inside. Watching choir members seeing the room for the first time and gasping.

Meeting Andy Bell, then hearing him singing Fiona's astonishing arrangement of A Little Respect.

Rehearsing our vows this morning, and rushing out of the theatre whilst Nathan practised his. Watching the skaters in the next door hall, whilst the spring sun glared through the atrium roof.

Walking down the aisle whilst The Feeling sang God Only Knows. Catching lead singer, Dan's eye, and then clocking Julian in the audience red-faced and laughing. Laughing because Julian was laughing.

A sea of candles during Love Conquers All. Llio and Julie forgetting to switch theirs on. God daughter Silver playing with her candle, noticing that Philippa was trying to get her to hold it still.

Hugging my mum to thank her for singing her song.

Listening to Nathan's vows in a sort of whirl. Feeling the tears prickling in my eyes and then running down my cheeks. Hearing him sing "my Benjy." Thinking how beautiful the song sounded. Feeling Fiona's presence through the orchestrations. Singing my own vows, as my legs started to feel all fizzy. Peering into Nathan's eyes as though no one else in the world existed.

Franschene, our delightful, beautiful, luminous registrar, standing bravely on the stage, singing her words so delicately, whispering in my ear just after I'd finished my vows that we were already married, even though we were only half way through the service!

A break in the service just after we were declared husband and husband, and feeling all silly, and doing a funny crab-like dance on the stage.

Peter Tatchell hugging me at the end of the service; telling us how lovely the music was and feeling so proud that such an important luminary would even attend our wedding. Talking to Lynne Featherstone and being invited to dinner at her house.

The reception in an old church hall in Wood Green. Little Lily bravely singing a song she'd written for us. Telling me I was generous because I'd given her a set of rubbers in the shape of kittens on a trip to Northumberland. John Hay, commissioning editor at Channel 4, whispering in my ear that she was destined to be the next "you."

Philippa and my brother delivering astonishing, and beautifully-written speeches at the reception. A sense of great pride at them both. Squirming as the embarrassing stories were trotted out. Feeling joy as my brother described ABBA as my very reason for being.

Daniel, Ellie and Izzy forming an unlikely allegiance and searching for music to dance to at the reception in the absence of a cable to link our stereo to our iPods. The same trio sticking a microphone next to Daniel's telephone and dancing like loons. Ian and Harry Bolcombe doing Morris Dancing. Me taking a series of weird selfies.

Uncle Bill telling me that the Rebel Chorus had bought us a present and unveiling the mini-piano I'd fallen in love with when we were last in London together. Me bursting into uncontrollable tears and burying my head in Nathan's shoulder.

So you see, it's been magical, surreal, love-filled, emotional, terrifying, glorious and above all fabulous. I feel loved and a sense of great pride. Well done England and Wales.

Glorious

We received a beautiful bunch of roses today from Katie Melua! How mad and wonderful is that? I adore Katie Melua, and think her voice is just fabulous.

We also received a letter from Michael Stipe from REM! Another great thrill. It's absolutely insane to think how many people around the world support gay marriage and how special we feel to be the poster boys for March 29th.

Derren Brown just tweeted the news and, to quote the opening number of our musical, "twitter's gone crazy!"

Today was a day of wall-to-wall rehearsals, the odd mini-tantrum, a few muffins and a lot of very cold feet.

I'm not sure it could be classed as the best set of rehearsals in the world. We ran out of time before we got around to some of the stuff I was keen to get to... But we have a lot of time for rehearsals tomorrow before the wedding itself, and the venue looks remarkably beautiful. I mean, properly stunning. Awe-inspiringly amazing. I can't believe how hard the people from Wingspan must have worked to get everything looking that good. I think guests will gasp. They can't not!

Obviously we're shitting bricks, and sadly our state of mind has been really badly effected by Radio 5 Live, who requested an interview with us, firstly for 10pm, then for 11pm, then kept us waiting on the phone listening to a horrible debate which they wouldn't allow us to comment on for 45 minutes. It was a terrible waste of our time, and has really wound me up at a time when we should have been relaxing and thinking positive thoughts, not hearing the ghastly whinging of religious zealots saying that gay people shouldn't get married "because of the children." It's a flawed, rather tragic argument. It strikes me that people always "think about the children" when all other arguments are lost. Very shoddy work on behalf of the producer. Very shoddy.

Roller coaster

Life is a wonderful thing, isn't it? If you trust it and open yourself up to its infinite possibilities, you'll have an astonishing ride!

We're riding a very exciting roller-coaster right now. Quite where it will eventually take us, or how perilous it's going to be, remains to be seen, but at the moment we're having a huge amount of fun.

This afternoon we went up to the wedding venue and saw it beginning to take shape. The staging had been fitted, and loads of lights were being plugged in and tested. It was quite staggering, and a little frightening to think that everything was being done for our wedding. We're both still pinching ourselves, really. Neither of us really believe what's happening. It's like being in some sort of dream.

We went down to the edit suite in the late afternoon to see the opening sequence and our mother's duet beautifully graded and colour-balanced. They looked absolutely exquisite! The guy doing the grading was wonderfully eccentric and filled with absolute excitement about the film. He was very open about the fact that when they'd told him he was doing the project, he was a little non-plussed and slightly unimpressed, but when he saw the footage, he'd become entranced. He'd graded the Mother's duet rather darkly. It was a brave choice which I rather liked, so I asked him about it. He went into the most extraordinary monologue about how in each of the shots he'd seen shafts of light which he'd interpreted as hope, and pools of darkness which he'd interpreted as sadness. I never knew a process like grading could be viewed in terms other than, "that shot's a bit grubby, let's make it zing..." and I loved the fact that he'd treated the process with such creativity and intellectual rigour. His attention to detail shows very much in his work, which is just excellent.

At 7pm, we went up to Gray's Inn Road to film a live debate about gay marriage on Channel 4 news. The debate was kicked off with a little film they'd shot on Monday, which seemed to consist of my looking bloated and crying a lot, followed by a second film about Grindr, which is a social media site for slightly more promiscuous gay men. The two pieces were supposed to represent the two sides of gay culture, but I'm not sure they entirely worked back-to-back!

We were in the studio with a young girl columnist from the Spectator and a turd of a man called Milo, who we all felt rather sorry for. He couldn't look any one in the eye and has obviously put himself in the professional role of someone who says shocking things about gay culture for effect (and money.) He's religious and claims to be struggling with his own sexuality, but the poor lad should be in therapy, not sitting in television studios spouting spurious nonsense. It's astonishing what people will do for a "career."

It was all great fun, although I was a little insulted at the way Nathan and I were credited on screen. The girl from the spectator got to be credited as a columnist, and Milo was whatever Milo is, but we were just credited as Benjamin Till and Nathan Taylor. Like being an actor and composer respectively was somehow not quite interesting enough!!

Kate, Tori, ABBA

We're speeding up the Victoria line from the King's Road where we've just watched Abbie doing a wonderful solo cabaret. She really was delightful, and very excitingly gave I Make The Shells from Brass its first public performance. She sang it beautifully and made a true emotional connection with the material. I was very proud.

She was pretty brilliant throughout the set but gave a couple of world-class performances which included a stoic rendition of Send In The Clowns and a deeply emotional performance of a song from Lord of The Rings, which she dedicated to her father who is currently rather ill in hospital. Nathan and I were in bits by the end.

Julie Clare and Little Michelle joined her on stage for a couple of guest slots. It's difficult to imagine three more different voices, but they blended together wonderfully. That'll be the work they've done together in the Rebel Chorus! Michelle has started to amaze me vocally. Something very special is happening there.

We've been in central London all day today, having hair cuts, doing shopping things, collecting rings, thinking all day that we'd be heading home at some point, but eventually acknowledging we were out for the duration.

The whole press and marketing campaign for the musical is in full swing. We're doing all sorts of telephone interviews and there's even a trailer being screened rather regularly on Channel 4. It features Shirley Bassey singing The Impossible Dream. It won't do anything to convince doubters that our show is anything other than camp nonsense, and as a direct result, the back-lash has already started on Facebook and such. It's a little hard not to care. You just want to shake the haters and say; "at least wait til you've seen it..." But then again, if they're complaining now, they're lost causes, and my work has always been like marmite. You hate it or you love it. Nothing could top some of the things they said about my Metro film, which was, I'm told, "the worst thing to happen to the North East since Thatcher" and "written by a gimp." If you're gonna diss, diss with class! Until you can come up with an insult wittier than the first of those two, I'm not interested!

I had a column in the Independent newspaper today, which was a little surreal. It says a fair amount about the quality of my friends that not one single person I know actually spotted it!  Our piece in the Standard, by contrast was spotted by the world and his wife!

We spent this afternoon in the edit suite looking at more sequences; primarily the messages of good will which have come in from famous people. The list is rather astonishing. I won't go into too many details but the most exciting for me, apart from a message from Sri Lanka, was Tori Amos. I actually flushed bright red when I saw it. There she was in front of a grand piano; an absolute heroine of mine actually saying my name. Gosh, there are few things in life sweeter than that! If this whole thing falls flat on its face, I'll always have the memory of that video clip!

And guess what? This Saturday is officially world ABBA day. How's that?! We're getting married on world ABBA day! The world's two biggest ABBA fans are marrying on world ABBA day. God officially loves the gays!

To make matters even more exciting, Kate Bush is playing live this summer, and I have a ticket!

Can life get much better than that? All we need now is to win Eurovision!  Yeah, yeah. In my dreams!

The glorious Julie Hesmondhalgh

I picked up the trousers I'm going to be wearing for the wedding this afternoon, and, at the same time, across town, Nathan, picked up my waistcoat, which was made by Sally Livingston, who did all the costumes for Much Ado About Nothing last summer. It is beautiful with glorious golden buttons chosen by a committee of Nathan's closest friends, which makes me feel very special indeed. I now have a full set of clothes to wear, although I've not yet tried anything on, except the waistcoat, of course. I obviously had to put that on as soon as it arrived!

I had a bit of hassle in "A Child Of The Jago" where the trousers came from. The chap working in the boutique on Thursday was deeply gracious and went out of his way to help me. He got me to try on all sorts of different pairs of trousers to make sure the ones that were made in my size actually fitted. We had a discussion on the day, that the factory making me a new pair would only charge me the same price as the pair I'd seen in the shop in the wrong size, and frankly, seeing as they are being worn on prime time telly, I though this was a fairly good deal from their perspective!

When I arrived in the shop today, the man who had served me wasn't there, and his boss, a rather surly creature, immediately informed me that, because the trousers were "made specially", I'd have to pay her more money for them. I took out my receipt and showed her that I'd already paid. "That was a deposit," she said, "but you're only asking for £40 more. Why would I have paid a deposit for 75% of the cost of the trousers?" "Some customers," she barked "like to pay most of the amount up front." "But it doesn't say that this is a deposit anywhere on the receipt." "In which case the difference will be coming out of the wages of the man who served you!"

How ghastly! I went a little ballistic and told her I'd never heard anything so cruel. What a terrible way to treat your staff who've been nothing but polite and eager to help. If it weren't for her employee, I wouldn't have bought the trousers at all, and frankly, how dreadfully short-sighted to treat a customer like that who's about to go on telly wearing your lovely trousers!

Now of course if someone asks me where I got them, instead of saying "a lovely shop with helpful staff called A Child Of The Jago" I'll be more likely to say, "A Child of the Jago," but try to avoid the nasty woman with bleach blonde hair. She's a proper piece of work!

I should say, however, that they have some lovely pieces of clothing in the shop, so don't boycott them!

This morning we did an interview at our house for Channel 4 news. At least I think it was for Channel 4 news. It was all a little emotional for me. I don't know why. Probably because I can finally see the end in sight. I started talking about growing up gay, and the whole terror we felt about HIV/AIDS and the tears started to flow. It was a little embarrassing, of course, but I guess it might have made good telly! The most important thing for us both is that this piece is viewed as political and moving as well as silly and fun.

We went on to the edit suite later and recorded Julie Hesmondhalgh singing her solo line. How blinking lucky do I feel to have that epically wonderful woman in our film? She is exquisitely charming, desperately polite, witty and amusing and has a beautiful, beautiful soul.

From the sound suite we went to a row of edit suites, each of them with another part of the film inside. We walked along the line of doors, being shown into each to see another part of our film, and OMG they look brilliant! It's so exciting. My little duet with Philippa, Llio glowing, Julie coquettishly looking at camera, Ian and Jem drinking champagne and looking gloriously handsome, Ted and his enormous sausage! We almost floated away from the studio.

And that's about it for the day. Time to watch a bit of telly before bed. Nighty night!

To beard or not to beard

So it would appear that the powers-that-be are not altogether convinced I made the right decision to shave off my beard. I know my mother will be happy I've done it. And Nathan's mother. Jon Snow will surely similarly be glad I no longer look ten years older than my (older) partner. But others, well, perhaps mostly those who have met me more recently, must have become rather used to the hairy-polar-beary look and decided they rather like it. Perhaps a beard gave me gravitas. Or a sort of bloke-next-door charm. I for one thought it merely made me look even more like Captain Caveman. Or a hedgehog in snow.

Beards are "in" right now, however. Even my long-legged, model-esque Tai Kwando-fighting osteopath is sporting a beard. Beards remain the one physical attribute, apart from tattoos, that straight men feel okay to comment on. You'd never hear a straight boy complimenting a bloke on his hair or eyes, but his beard? That's a different matter.

Today was manic... Again! I had osteopathy first thing and then we went into Muswell Hill to buy card onto which I printed all our musical scores. I went for a cream colour. It's less reflective and looks classic and classy on camera. It took about three hours to glue them all together down at Archie's office, whilst around us the office buzzed with wedding activity. It's not just Nathan and me who are working flat out. The wingspanners are knee-deep in spread-sheets, edit suites, press releases and guest lists. It's an absolute hive of activity down there. They're an incredibly hard-working bunch. It just seems rather surreal that it's all for our wedding.

I think everything was rather put into perspective today by the emergence of a very well-written two-page spread about the wedding in The London Standard today. I think it reminded us all that we're doing something rather remarkable. And, more to the point, something remarkable which is happening in five days!

We went from Achie's to Camden where Sharon D Clarke was rehearsing with the London Gay Men's Chorus at Cecil Sharp House, that glorious ode to Arts and Crafts architecture just next to Regent's Park. We're lucky enough to have both of these acts singing at our wedding. Sharon D Clarke, in my view, is a living legend. She won't remember it, but our history goes back to 1998, when she gave a private audience to Julie Clare singing songs from my show, Letter to a Daughter. I remember watching her nodding her head to the groove of one of the numbers and feeling proud as punch. Sharon D Clarke was nodding her head to my music! It was the ultimate accolade, even then.

Those London Gay Men's Chorus boys really know how to raise the proverbial roof. The wall of sound that comes off them catches you in the pit of your stomach, like only a decent-quality male voice choir has the ability to do.