Skip to main content

I'm Spinning Around.

Since yesterday, I have been suffering from vertigo.

It’s not actually vertigo; it’s labyrinthitis. I decided against using its proper name initially, for fear of the David Bowie connotations it provokes.

Labyrinthitis is an infection of the inner ear, which causes incorrect information to be sent to your brain regarding balance. This makes you think you’re spinning around when you’re not. When it strikes it can be very debilitating, making it hard for you to even walk down the street.

I first caught labyrinthitis in 2010, when I was in the midst of a West End run of the musical Dreamboats & Petticoats. Whilst I was standing on the stage one night, moments before curtain up, I suddenly felt like I was going to faint. The floor beneath me became blurry and indistinct; I thought it might open and swallow me up.

I went to see the doctor the following day, who explained the problem (this being his job). He told me that there was no cure for labyrinthitis or definite timeframe for it to be out of my system; I would just have to be patient and sit it out. He said it was often brought on by tiredness and stress, and exacerbated by bright lights and loud music - all of which played a big part in my job. He may as well have told me I was allergic to theatre.

I took a few months for that first bout to pass. Unfortunately, I had to leave the show to concentrate on recovery. Thankfully, any instances since have been brief and less severe.

I hope this will also be the case today. The timing is awful, as I open in a play on Friday that involves a lot of throwing myself about. I’m doing my best not to panic.

Trust me to suffer from a ridiculously-named illness. Why can’t it be called The Goonies?

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

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.