aol winter warmer

worked on the AOL winter warmer gig last night at the Forum in Kentish town and can report:

MIka is the gayest pop act in town and yet he had a younger brother in his entourage that was somehow even gayer and looked more like a girl than a girl. He wore pink jeans and if you squinted it could have been johnny burrel him out of razorlight. He also brought his entire greek extended family and his mum looks like Hattie Jaques and his sister had fuzzy cheeks but was otherwsie extremely good looking.

Spent several hours unpacking , distributing and generally pestering people to take 'crazy ' blue wigs. After about two minutes people realise these are actually shit and throw them on the floor.

The first lot of teen poppets, and a couple of retarded looking forty-somethings in oxfam padded coats and jogging trousers, queued in the cold for three hours then ran in to grab their places at the front barrier. While they stared intently at every roadie coming on stage to tape down a cable, they all managed to completely miss McFly and Amy Winehouse standing behind hem having a chat.

Amy Winehouse also introduced her act with "It's ok, I'm not pissed!". Which seemed true. She also didnt actually move her feet for the entire act, somehow doing here snakey hips dance thing with no air at anytime between her feet and the floor.

Peaches Gandalf compered (ferne Cotton the first chopice being too busy and the second and third choices also not available). At the first run through of the autocue she seemed unable to get her head round the fact Lily Allen's song LND rferred to London and she should not say LDN. After several fags and whispering the script was rewritten with no refernces to Miss Allen.


Sugababes were head and shoulders above the rest - the only backstage goss was the truly phenomenal number of fluffy white towel they ordered before they even went on. Four trip, arms laden with hotel style towels. It was like they had horses out there giving birth. keisha has a little munchkin face and the new mutya is actually exteremly fit but looks airbrushed even in real life.

The female singer from Just Jack looks a bit like a prettier version of sharleen spiteri and told me "i'd rather be warm than glamourous". Fair enough but i was only pointing out the cloakroom - Which she'd just asked for?

barth-elona

Arrived back at 3am last night after a ryan air flight into Luton. We had a good trip over this time, stayed at a pretty plush hotel near the fira palace. we ate well, drank absinthe at the hippy bar in the dodgy Algerian district and even did some sightseeing this time. I've never been great with heights but had a near freak out at the top of the Sagrada familia. With the wind blowing and the tiny cramped pathways between the turrets and spires I felt very aware I was about a hair's breadth away from having a proper freak out. My gut was clenching with a cold chill inside and my head swam forward when i looked over the edge so much I kept having to hold myself flat against the walls like a big scaredy cat.


had a great shave by some Indian barbers but he took my sidies up too high so it looks like a mullet cut (only a bit but I hate hair that's cut high like that - is just plain wrong and wierd)


Had a chilled afternoon dozing ona bench in the sun up by the Parc Guell and ate hotdogs and wotsits. hmm living.

Got into a minor contre temps with a burly street hustler guy on the Ramblas. I was pointing out how they ripped punters off with the old ball under a matchbox con. First they had a gang of sidekicks who hustled one guy and distracted him while the guy ran off with the cash, thena second group did the staright forward bullying of two young guys into paying 50 euros each. Then a blatently fake woman won 100 euros and walke doff. I pointed her out to Pel and followed her as she walked round the back of a newspaper stand and joined the second lot but didnt realise one of them was checking me out and confronted me with [an approxinmate translation ]- 'eh professeuir - what the fuck are you doing who the fuck are you watching? he tried to grab me and started doing the whole 'poining-at-hiseys-pointing-at-my-eyes like De Niro's circle of trust in meet the parents. Plenty of shouder shrugging and we scuffled off.

interweb nut-job

so im trying to buy a couple of new visors for my car and found exactly the thing on ebay. We sent off a cheque from pel's account for £15 + 7 postage and packing as my paypal account isnt set up, but it took a while as the seller's based in the western isles of scotland. By the time it was presented it was the end of the month and the account was empty ( usual end of themonth situation) so the cheque bounced - Ok pretty frustrating all round but certainly an easily resolved situation with a simple email - you'd think....

so here's the mail i got from this psycho:

"I'm sure you already know this but your cheque bounced for the visors. If that was an error then you should correct it straight away. If, on the other hand you're stupid enough to think that because the deal was don over your PC so you can rip us off then you must be either really hard and own a gun or really really stupid!!! It's this simple mate, whatever your name is, you get £36.75 in postal orders sent to me to cover the item and our bank charge for your rubber cheque or you don't sign for the goods which will arrive in the next few days. If for some reason you do not do any of these then our associates from Poplar will call to collect the money for the item which at present you've stolen from us. I'll also be informing ebay that you have a false number listed as a contact number which will get you immediately struck off. It may just be a £20 quid pair of visors but I guarantee you that nobody ever rips us off. Have a good think about this before replying, the UK isn't that big!!

what a total crazy

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal has a few words on Fox , the nature of the 911 investigation
can't find the best TV talking head essay I ever saw - where his face filled the screen like Big Brother, and in 20 minutes he spanned the history and creation of America, its relation to its european roots and the essence of the country's psyche and character. amazing. Will post i can find it.

His biography Palimpsest is a good read - with the full complement of bitchiness, name dropping and arch snobbery you'd expect from anold politico family (the Gore in his name comes from the same Gore family as democrat Al Gore)

AOL winter warmer

crack out the smash hits, next wedensday is the AOL winter warmer at the Forum in Kentish town, and i'm signed up to help out on the day. Sugababes, Amy Pisshead Winehouse, McFlyyyyyyyyyy and soem other pop monkeys will be knocking out a set each for an assorted crowd of competition winners, corporate guests and media blaggers. So expecting to see Mr Prigg at he front then ; )

Think I may be expected to be running about handling comp winners merchandise - at least i fully hope so - so that could be chrissie sorted. Ah the old days. But am expecting a reasonable back bar at some stage so sitting through a mcfly gig wont be totally wasted.

Elfin beauty Natalie Portman smacks her shit up here.

Booth gets down with the reggae massif

oh lord.... Cherie Blair's sister Lauren Booth on Im a Celebrity get me out of Here... getting down with the stroppy black chick from from Footballers' Wives.

celebrity.itv.com in the videos highlights bit . She certainly can lay claim to being massive south of the river - she's got an arse the size of a Luton van. When he sits around the house... she sits aroooooound the house ... when she rolls over there's an eclipse in Leeds... etc etc ... I'll be here all week

So here's Les - accidently papp'ed at Hoxton Bar couple of friday's ago smiling over Peaches Geldof's shoulder. This picture was in The London Lite celeb spot type thing. Me and Pel were round the corner watching some band - The whole gig venue must be fairly knew - it used to be a door to the loos back in my day .... it was all fields before that. Now it's a dirty great big gig stage. Zlata was there and her mate's boyfriend, the singer in a n odd Hoxton / new rave /trash band came with us to Herbal afterwards. He wore a crap hat by the way.

Dwarf fight

Really wierd Dwarf fight. Why does he crawl along the floor?

Him off of Pulp

Got two tickets to see Jarvis (he's just the one name now mind) at Koko on wednesday - got the tix for 50£ off ebay and they only just arrived. There's going for £75 now and am tempted to cash in for some weekend boozin as funds are low but wont - mainly cos I'm expecting him to be great. Songs
like this help.

duck a l'orange

on the subject of bird recipes

(for chinese style - pierce the skin with small knife marks and cover with boiling water - letting the fat out. then hang to dry for a night

Duck à l’orange

Serves 4

1 duck, weighing between 1.5 and 2kg (dressed weight with giblets)
Salt and pepper
3 sprigs of thyme
1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters
1 orange, cut into 6 wedges

For the orange sauce:
a smear of duck fat (or butter)
4 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped
The duck neck bone, coarsely chopped
The duck gizzard, cleaned (ask your butcher) and coarsely chopped
The duck wing tips, chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1tbsp Cognac
2tbsp Grand Marnier
150ml Madeira
150ml well-flavoured chicken stock
Juice of 4 oranges
1tsp rindless marmalade
1 heaped tsp arrowroot, slaked with a little water
Juice of half a lemon
Zest of 2 oranges, cut into thin strips
Watercress

bird catching

Saw this recipe today - How to cook a cormorant in The Times and was sold by the opening line: " Once you've shot your Cormorant... ". This is no ready meal. You need to keep it at arms length cos they're famed for being covered in 'verminous lice', tie it up, set light to it with petrol and bury it for two weeks before you even go near a kitchen.

I have some small experience in dealing with cormorants. While fishing in sydney harbour last year - sat in a little tinny getting bashed around at the sow and pigs reef - I was fishing with some small live bait trying to catch some bigger fish ( it wasnt much more technical than that). basically u catch some small yellow tails about the length of your hand on hand lines with prawn, then gang hook them. This is pretty brutal and means a big hopok through the tail and one through the chops. pel's a natural at catching them but hates it when i do this bit. We'd often get seagulls, even Pelicans take a swoop and a look at your bait fish as it gets cast out and slaps onto the water but they amostly always seem to tell its no good.

But this time, a huge brown and white cormorant swooped down - its wings were pretty big and it landed, picked it up in its mouth - had a wiggle getting it sorted, liifted its head up and swallowed the whole thing, gang hooks and all. We were desperatelytrying to shoo it and pull it away but next thing it tried totake off and ended up turning our boat around on the anchor and draggng out line. I ended up reeling it in a bit and we were desperately trying to hide th fact from the surrounding boats that we'd caught this big bird. I think they may even be protected species there. In the end we chopped the line and fcked off sharp feeling really bad.

p.s even worse the same thing happened with a seagll in new zealand once - but for some reason it felt much worse and sadder with the cormorant - birdist that I am.