mostly david ephgrave

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.

Do daddy longlegs adopt a one-per-room policy? I leave my bathroom window open most evenings, which is an enthralling fact in and of itself. This time of year, every day without fail, I’ll return to find a daddy longlegs flailing about by the opening, unable to work out how to get through it.  Crane flies* are useless. They’re a species going through an awkward evolutionary stage that can't end well. By rights, they should be extinct, or at least the recipient of an honorary Darwin Award for Shit Insects. They’re like gangly teenagers uncomfortable in their own skin and desperate to take up less physical space. They’re like me in a nightclub, though I’m bigger, less aerodynamic and have fewer legs. I’ll also buy a round. Why is there only ever one? Perhaps they’re like spiders: solitary and desperate for supremacy. Or maybe it’s always the same insect. That’s the problem with daddy longlegs: they’re too small to fit an electronic tag to. It's the sa...