Real-life Alan Partridge

Fatcat Slim and Big Walleted Boutique rip off party

Friday was a bit of a wipe-out after the Midnight Juggernauts. My ears were still ringing and alertness down to minimum. We had a tasty BBQ in the evening and I thrashed everyone at poker. Saturday was the Big Beach Boutique 4 down on Madeira Drive and the weather was perfect with warm sunshine and blue skies. Before our planned 4pm entrance I prepared a load of mp3 tunes for the after party at Paul and Sarah's.

We all met up including new friend Nick who'd flown in from Ibiza then headed for the beach party. I say beach party but it was actually a road and car park party. No drinks were allowed and a police sniffer dog to welcome us in. As we got in we still had about half a mile to walk to the stage going past various food stalls, bars, toilets etc. under the promenade arches with expensive looking branded signs.

We found a cosy spot to dance about 20 metres away from the stage whilst Danny Tenaglia DJed. He wasn't too bad although he did drop a couple of desperate old school electro tracks which either flopped or split the crowd. Towards the end of his set Fatboy Slim decided to come in stage and announce his presence with a hungry pack of reporters, TV camera crew and photographers. The crowd were a rich mix of Northerners on a weekender, some American rave graduates, who did some group singing (very strange) and hardly any locals. The beach and overhead road were completely cut off from the public and only marshals and police got the best views and elbow room.

For about about an hour or so things were ok until Layo and Bushwacka came on who started the set with a full score of Vivaldi (I think). The novelty wore off really quickly and the rest of the set couldn't really please the crowd. Nick and I decided to get some food, drink and other things so fought back through the crowds. It took about 20 minutes just to get through to the back and did not look forward to the return trip. After a few text messages the others saw sense to avoid the crushing chaos and returned our way. Although we tried heading as far back towards the stage to a stress-free position, the atmosphere and sound quality was rubbish. Fatboy Slim had arrived and started his set with the Willy Wonka intro song but continued with the same set as Wireless. Boredom, hunger and need for some decent music we headed back to Paul and Sarah's for a decent party.

Midnight Juggernauts at Digital, Brighton

A special school night treat for Thursday night at Digital with Paul, Sarah, Emma and James. It was a bit of a hassle getting the tickets as the club website didn't mention it; Resident, the record shop in town hadn't heard of it ; and even emailing the club they were a bit sketchy saying it was next door and tickets could be bought from a shop in Newcastle?!

There wasn't really any local promotion for them either and it was only down to a joining a Facebook group had I found out about it. With all that said the club was practically empty with an estimated 40 fans turning up.

The support act was ear-ringingly loud and just made everyone edge further away from the stage. The Juggernauts came on quite late and kept the set quite short but concentrated on their best work ignoring the small crowd. There were a couple songs where the keyboardist and guitarist swapped roles like 'Tombstone' which got the crowd rocking. Later the guitarist stood off the stage and rocked along with us dancing - bravo sir!

Back by dope demand

I've noticed lately that my blog has turned into a weekend write-up and this entry will be no exception. As soon as I returned from work on Friday we were back into the garden laying the turf. It was a bit like laying carpet but muddier and using a kitchen knife and spade to cut the edges.

Saturday was supposed to be another hard grind but ended for me at 10:30am doing my back in. Whilst lifting the boxes of old hardcore for the dump I did my lower back in. Ignoring it we drove to the local dump with four boxes of brick and concrete to chuck. After the 2nd or 3rd box I somehow twisted the wrong way whilst picking up the box bringing in more pain across my chest. The rest of the day I was doing very light lifting of tree cut-offs though I did manage to create an equivalent of a Stannah lift for our old-aged cat. Poor puss can't jump too far and is in danger of breaking his legs so I built him a platform/shelf to get over the fence.

Skydiving with her indoors
Back in April, one of Kerry's birthday presents was an Indoor Skydive experience and Sunday was the chosen day to do it. Body Flight is based near Bedford so was about 2 and a bit hours to drive to. It's located on an old military testing base where Red Bull Racing have a testing hangar for their F1 cars. We were told to be there an hour before the experience as we had to be kitted out with jumpsuit etc plus a half-hour instruction with various hand signals to recognise and to practice lying on a table arching our backs in skydive position.

The actual flight times were very short. Individually we got 1 minute 15 seconds fly time with an instructor pulling us around and signalling to either relax, chin up, arch your back or change your leg position. It was amazing and quite natural though couldn't quite believe it was over. Kerry also got the hang of it very well and we had two sessions of joint time. Every slight movement of your body made you move in a different way and the experts just showed over doing loop-the-loops, backward rolling and all sorts like a plastic bag in the wind.

We went away with a DVD of our flights (included in the price) and five photos at £6 each which were a rip off. An extra £2 would have got them emailed to you as well! I've since scanned these photos and put them up on FlickR though I don't think the scanner did them justice. The DVD was ok but they added a soundtrack of f*cking Nickleback...grrrr! Not quite the same as our NZ souvenirs.

I ain't getting on no starship fool!

Digging the scene

I've been a bit crap lately including updating the blog. Work's been quite monotonous which just gives way to researching my Bonfire Night of the Living Dead costume, party props and the strange desire to get on with the garden renovation. I surprised myself how addictive it was to keep working, digging, forking to get the railway sleepers in for the new landscaped backyard. I got quite excited Saturday to buying my first wheel-barrow and sledge-hammer and nearly every evening we've been doing something or other to the garden until it gets dark.

Saturday evening was to celebrate James and Trudy's belated 40th at a very cramped Little Buddha restaurant, a Thai place in Fiveways, Brighton. Amazingly they served up about 40-50 people in good time but decided to split the bill by table but forgot to tell us who was on which table. This meant half an hour of chaos as someone complained they wanted to pay just their meal instead of paying a share all for the sake of a few quid!

Still, it didn't spoil the mood too much as we bundled back to Paul and Sarah's recently renovated place in North Laines. Paul's studio was looking great though was more DJ booth than dancefloor looking like a record store. Nice to see some very old party pals who had given up over the years for parenthood. Kev was lapping up the opportunity of studio skipping around and jumping about with ease under the low ceiling. Shame Kerry had to go home early with illness but it seemed others were feeling the same way through something or other ;-).

Dirty stop-outs Karol and Kev carried on without us through Sunday whilst I attempted to do more gardening. They didn't come back until 6pm then left for home straight after fearing Karol wouldn't wake up if offered a bed.

A letter I had hoped would never arrive finally dropped the bomb. Instead of the expected £300 verbally quoted before all the crap he caused he cheekily invoiced me over £900! I'm holding back the volley of abuse to send back and trying to compose myself enough to write a legally sound letter.

Family Guy meets Mario

The Mighty Boosh new live show review

Thanks to my Modwolves fan club connections I managed to win exclusive tickets to see the brand new live show from the Mighty Boosh on Saturday. After our (unsuccessful) Thames boat ride we made our way over to 3 Mills TV studios in Bromley on Bow. If you don't want to know what's in the new live show then you'd best not read this as it will spoil the surprise. However if you want to know a summary of how it went then I'll say now, the performance was slightly worrying with only a week to go. There's a lot more mini-sketches and no real story compared to the previous tour. There's some great gags, some surprises but if it wasn't for their natural talent and personality the show would be slightly disappointing. Hopefully they'll put in some practice, improve the sketches that didn't quite work and maybe even come up with some new ideas. So, if you really don't want to know what happens in the show stop reading now, you have been warned.

Mighty Boosh live show review
The stage was basically a huge Mighty Boosh face logo and some staircases around and over it. Later the face rotates to reveal their drummer and bassist for musical numbers. Nice touch with the Kill Bill Crazy 88 gang/Boosh costume look. Behind the stepped stage was a huge video screen used for later scene changes.

The show started with the Future Sailors song and a great opening from the lead characters then some funny banter about costume and props differences as well as an inner monologue joke which worked well. Vince introduced his giant hairdryer prop which worked quite well which was something to do with an advertising job he did for a French fashion designer (can't remember the name). Vince and Howard summarised what the show was going to be with some 'modular' sections for the first half and a set piece on a 'bleak future'. Vince seeded the line that he was not happy with the 'future' story being acted solely by Howard and mentioned some pictures him and Lee-Roy had come across for blackmail.

More introductions continued with Bollo and Naboo. Naboo's new moustache must have been the inspiration for his character's introduction using Snoop Dogg's music and pimped up image. The classic joke of turning his back on Howard was performed this time using a chaise lounge on wheels. There was some joke regarding an ostrich which I'd missed (perhaps there was so much happening on the stage) which was referenced later. I had a minor freak out as Bollo tried pushing the wheeled chaise lounge off the stage to the sound of a car trying to start as Naboo quoted 'you haven't put diesel in it again'. See my blog entry 2-3 weeks earlier to understand why.

Bob Fossil appeared as a stage manager with clipboard to give the boys some time for scene and costume changes. His Lithuanian taxi driver character was okay, it got more laughs for what he was wearing instead of his mock-Eastern Block spiel but generally he went on too long on his own. I would even say he's more suited as a support character in any scene as (controversially) I never liked his Snuff Box show.

A firm show favourite, Tony Harrison made his first live appearance being pushed out on a leather sofa. Noel looked quite uncomfortable inside the chair-on-top-of-a-wheeled-box costume and joked at this to the amusement of everyone. The scene elaborated on Tony's new career as a chat-show host which Bollo was the first guest. Expectedly, 'It's an outrage' catchphrase came out but I expect that due to Noel's comfort levels the scene didn't quite pull off.

It was about time for some Boosh crimping which cleverly led into the Honey Monster appearance which got its comeuppance as Bollo decapitated the Sugar Puff character. Although the idea was fantastic, this scene really did need some more practice as it was chaos on stage. I can't quite remember whether it was the same scene but Naboo appears straddling an Ostrich a la Bernie Clifton. As he descends the stairs he trips over his fake feet landing on his face. I instantly laughed but then had fears the show would be over as it took awhile for him to recover. Luckily he had his crash-turban on to save him.

Old favourites
Some old TV show favourites turn up with Techno-mouse conveniently in a shoebox with Noel testing the soundtrack timing. More music later from Rudi van Disarzio, the afro-wig-with-door character singing Isolation. This seemed to be another filler for scene/costume changes and didn't quite fit in.

Within the 30 minute break we were lucky(?) to share the same toilets as the crew and stars of the Boosh. If only I timed it properly I could have been pissing at the same time as Noel or Julian!

The future is bleak and robotic
The second act was the bleak future story which Howard predicts the end of the world and becomes the sole survivor of the human race with only a shop window dummy's head for company. Unfortunately, most of the cast have to use the script to get through the scenes with Noel making a joke out of his concerns of only a week to go before the proper live tour. A few miss directed positioning and cues made the scene fail in places plus they lifted almost the same dialogue from Mutants, an episode from series 1. However, it was rescued by the blackmailed photos which Vince mentioned earlier with a Jazz mag porn shoot called 'Tromboner' - hilarious!

The second half of the second act featured Noel's new character of an angel-like alien with Rich Fulcher as an over-weight camp looking Tin-man. Noel's made up accent of half Chinese, half Chav went down well. The scene finished with a mutated rubbish bag monster (which ironically looked 'rubbish') operated by the rest of the cast and was blown away by the giant hair-dryer. At this point I thought they missed the opportunity of using Crack Fox, another show favourite especially with the absence of a villain like the Hitcher.

The curtains fell to close the scene and Noel and Julian stepped out to say thanks but also apologised for their 'worst' performance, again mentioning their worries at next week's tour. I really expected another scene but that was it and the night was over.

Don't get me wrong, I felt privileged to see this show and to see it so close-up. As a loyal fan who missed their festival (Wireless with Underworld took priority and having to deal with teenage Noel fanciers), I really wanted to see a good, original show with perhaps more band stuff. I'm guessing having to write the third series, organise a festival, write the up and coming film, various special appearances elsewhere, the tour must have been squeezed in to their busy schedules at some point.

Update: See my review of the Brighton gig

Bonfire Night of the Living Dead dated

The masses have spoken. Saturday 8th November 2008 will see the dead rise again in Brighton.

Hansel & Gretel vs. Godzilla

Last Sunday I had a shopping splurge buying this T-shirt. Completely mad design and just thought it was from the mind of some weird designer trying to combine a Star Wars reference and other random things. As I described it to a work colleague I decided to type in the above heading as keywords into Google to see what would come up. Amazingly, the image is actually a Tim Burton film that was only once transmitted on the Disney Channel and has never been seen again. According to SlashFilm blog, he made this short film in 1982 and can not be bought, downloaded or seen again.

Hänsel und Gretel vs Godzilla By
Keptn EMPYSTRING

Zombie Poll: Can you make 31/10 or 8/11?

After a great BBQ on Saturday with Emma & James and Paul & Sarah, we're now cooking up a party for Halloween/Bonfire night. The problem is that Underworld play on Saturday 1st November so are people willing to come down to Brighton for a tame Halloween on the Friday night or would rather save themselves for a Saturday night. Either way we only have one proper room for guests, though Paul & Sarah may put up a few, or you'll have to make your back by train or car.

Email, text, call us to say which you'd prefer: Friday 31st October or Saturday 8th November (If you can't make either then please say as well)

Whichever date we go for we want to make it a memorable one with Kerry's Pumpkin Lantern Competition which there will be prizes. Have a look at these websites for some ideas and guidance. Our back garden bank will be a gallery of spooky lanterns amongst the bamboo, trees, plants and tree-stump.

• Pumpkin Carving 101
• Zombie Pumpkins

More details to come soon but please get back to us so we can decide the date.

Lewes Bonfire Night
Another event to get excited about is the Lewes Bonfire Night on the 5th November. This is a proper pagan party where there's about six organised fireworks displays that try and beat each other with bigger bangs and the maddest street processions with floats and burning crosses etc. Check out my FlickR set to see how amazing it is then get back to us if you want to come down and see this spectacle.