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.

I caught myself singing along to Rock DJ today. It's official: I’ve changed. As far as I'm concerned, Rock DJ is the nadir of popular music. It’s as bad as it gets. Yet there I was, joining in with it: happy as Larry, smug as Robbie. The voice of a man whose face alone is enough to evoke fury had seeped into my subconscious. The song had finally worn me down, fifteen years after its release. It had become an involuntary expression of inner happiness; something to hum as I jollily went about my business. That’s how they you: they break you over time. I  was in ASDA, in my defense: a soulless, vapid place where dross like Robbie Williams’ back catalogue seems like a positive release. Even bearing this in mind, there was no excuse. It was a lapse in judgement. If I were Catholic, I’d be in my nearest confessional, begging for forgiveness. At least it proves I'm fallible. The internal radio station of a monster supermarket had ensnared me against my will. I ’ll do my shop...

Today, I popped by my friend Sarah ’s studio to exchange Christmas cards. While I was there, she made me a cup of tea in a Take That mug. This gave me ample opportunity to pull my ‘holding a Take That mug’-face. (Twat.) I never realised I had a ‘holding a Take That mug’-face until I posed for the picture - when, all too soon, it became apparent. All it took was a couple of seconds of being looked at through a viewfinder for my natural, relaxed expression to be replaced with a gurny, pointy, cuppy-holdy one. This is often the case when someone gets out a camera (except for the cup-holding bit). This leads to me to worry that in years to come, all that will be left of me will be a string of face-pulling photographs. It reminds me of the time I posed for a caricaturist as a kid. For some, inexplicable reason, I decided to pull a face throughout the sitting that I’d never done before or since. He picked up...