Skip to main content

Face in the Crowd.


Eagle-eyed viewers of this Wednesday & Thursday’s editions of Pointless may have spotted the back of my head in the studio audience. If you did, I’d question both your attention span and sanity.

Where's Wally?

This could be the highlight of my career. If nothing else, it proves I know my place. I don’t belong on the stage. I’m more suited to sitting quietly a few yards in front of it, staying out of trouble. It’s a shame it took so long to reach this realisation; if I’d known it fifteen years ago, I could have saved my dad a fortune in drama school fees.

I should have noticed the signs. While I appeared in a number of TV advertising campaigns in the past (one in just a pair of y-fronts), that was nearly ten years ago. These days, I’m much more likely to be found amongst the proles in the crowd than entrusted with the responsibility of addressing them.

It’s like when I went to see Paul McCartney at Maida Vale Studios.


While I'm in excellent company (that's Vanessa Feltz a few heads to my left and Rob Brydon at the opposite side of the frame), I’m still at a safe distance from the entertainment. Were the powers-that-be suggesting I have less pull than an ex-Beatle? Shockingly, this seems to be the case.

Both examples pale in comparison to the biggie: the time I was within spitting distance of the Queen.


That’s definitely one to show the grandkids.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Not The Bayeux One.

The Carole King album Tapestry has been my 'getting-ready-in-the-morning' soundtrack for the past few weeks.  It's been a favourite album ever since I was a student, which makes for a pleasantly gentle way to usher in the start of a day. I've always been a fan of a well-crafted song, which is something of a Carole King hallmark, ever since she started writing with her first husband in the early Sixties. Tapestry may be an unimaginative choice for a favourite LP, as it suggests I haven't delved that far into her career, but it's still an undoubted classic; anything with '(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman', 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' and 'You've Got A Friend' on it can't really fail; if nothing else, it proves she likes writing songs with long titles.  Next month, she's set to perform the album live in its entirety for the first time at a gig in Hyde Park, which I would have loved to have gone to, if it weren...
Read more

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...
Read more

'...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...
Read more