The sweetest of sensation

Friday the Thirteenth again - and Microsoft systems (especially Outlook) have been hit with a global outage! Coincicence? Hmmm...

Tonight, Madam Arcati and I are off to the V&A for In Celebration of Winifred Atwell, the first black music artist to have a #1 single in the UK, so that is something to look forward to.

In the meantime, however, let's get ourselves in the right sort of mood for a party weekend, in the company of a different type of Diva altogether - who always brings us some cheer. And luck, of course...

Kylie Minogue - I Should Be So Lucky (Kiss Me Once tour 2014)

In my imagination
There is no complication
I dream about you all the time
In my mind, a celebration
The sweetest of sensation
Thinking you could be mine

In my imagination
There is no hesitation
We walk together hand in hand
I'm dreaming
You fell in love with me
Like I'm in love with you
But dreaming's all I do
If only they'd come true

I should be so lucky
Lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love
I should be so lucky
Lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love

It's a crazy situation
You always keep me waiting
Because it's only make believe
And I would come a-running
To give you all my loving
If one day, you would notice me

My heart is close to breaking
And I can't go on faking
The fantasy that you'll be mine
I'm dreaming
That you're in love with me
Like I'm in love with you
But dreaming's all I do
If only they'd come true

I should be so lucky
Lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love
I should be so lucky
Lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love

Have a good weekend, dear reader!

Of happy boroughs, hard-won gay rights, Dame Jilly, good vibrations, farewells, bankers and "If half the things they say are quarter true of me"

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth news: Richmond upon Thames [pictured above] has apparently been voted Britain's "happiest place to live". It used to have a great cottage, right next to the gay pub [so convenient!] - but both are gone now, so I'm not so sure about that.
• Let's have a gay Caribbean holiday! news: A landmark judgement by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has ruled that Trinidad and Tobago’s laws criminalising gay sex are unconstitutional. Hooray! At last. Prior to this judgement, Trinidad and Tobago was one of some 34 Commonwealth countries that continued to criminalise homosexuality based on colonial-era British laws [so just another 33 to go...]. The case was brought by Jason Jones, a human rights activist, who has been fighting the campaign for gay rights in his home country for 11 years. What a man!
• Rutting, She Wrote news: A typewriter on which the late Dame Jilly Cooper typed some of the "bonk-busters" for which she was most famous is coming to auction at Christies on 9th December. Jolly super! Also featured in the auction Love & Lust: A Literary Guide are posters and artwork from famous film adaptations such as Metropolis and Dracula, love-letters written by Admiral Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Dame Margot Fonteyn's costume for the ballet of Sleeping Beauty, and Keira Knightly's green frock from Atonement [nope, me neither; never seen it].
• Good vibes news: Apparently, half-an-hour on a vibrating mattress can help with Alzheimer's disease! Deeply weird...

[click any pic to embiggen]

• RIP, TV handyman Tommy Walsh, mainstay of the wildly popular late 90s-early-noughties makeover show Ground Force [with Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock]... and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer star Stacy Keach.
• It doesn't open on Sundays any more so what's the point? news: Upstart on our high streets, Metro Bank - which launched in 2010 with an unique selling point of opening outside "normal" office hours seven days a week (and stopped that in 2024) - is up for sale again! It was launched by a Yank, and bought out by a Colombian, so I wouldn't be at all surprised it it turns Chinese next year. Sigh.
• And finally: Happy - gulp - 70th birthday today to Mr Ian Craig Marsh, co-founder of the Human League, the British Electric Foundation (B.E.F.) [which relaunched the career of Tina Turner], and... Heaven 17!

Heaven 17 - Come Live With Me

I was thirty-seven
You were seventeen
You were half my age
The youth I'd never seen
Unlikely people meeting in a dream
Heaven only knows
The way it should have been

Here today, my tomorrow
Where you lead
I will follow
All that kissing
No passion missing
Come live with me

Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me

Dinner parties followed
And all my age implies
My friends began to talk
I began to realise
If half the things they say
Are quarter true of me
Then how can I eclipse the youth
You gave to set me free?

There was something in your smile
That was hard to reconcile
The time had come to testify to reason
Though years will not erase
Remembrance of those days
At least there's
No submission to heart's treason

Here today, my tomorrow
No more shame, only sorrow
All that kissing
There's something missing

Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me

Love it!

And the weather? Definitely autumnal!

Lest we forget... they won't let us

Every year Remembrance Day is marred by leftie traitors failing to observe correct poppy etiquette. Here is how the scum of society disrespect our heroic fallen:

Buying the wrong poppy
The only acceptable poppy is a green plastic stalk with red paper petals and a black middle bit. A fancy brooch-style poppy which actually contributes more to charity means you think you’re better those we lost at the Somme, and a white poppy means you didn’t want Germans to die, which is a disgusting thing for a British person to think.

Not stapling it to your forehead
It’s not enough to merely wear a poppy, you should ensure it can’t fall off or be obscured by clothing by stapling it to your forehead. Yes, it will be painful with a risk of infection and scarring, but it’s nothing compared to a shrapnel wound so just grit your teeth and do it. It’s definitely what Spitfire pilots gave their lives for.

Failing to be obsessed with TV presenters wearing them
Enlisting in the Poppy Police means closely monitoring the likes of Clive Myrie and Bake Off contestants for poppy compliance. Is Sky’s Sophie Ridge not wearing one? It’s not because it fell off in her dressing room, it’s because she supports Kaiser Wilhelm and you’re leading the online mob to say so.

Forgetting the two-minute silence
At 11am you must fall completely silent for the full two minutes, even in the middle of a phone call. Forgetting to do so is worse than spray-painting ‘Should’ve ducked, mate!’ on the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. This applies to everyone with no exceptions, even air traffic controllers.

Not having a car poppy
There’s no excuse for not having plastic poppies or stickers saying ‘Lest we forget’ on your car when they’re easily available from shops and Amazon vendors profiting from fakes. Is going to Asda in your Qashqai particularly relevant to WW1? Yes, if it proves you’ve got more respect for the dead than everyone else. Remember it’s a competition.

Your house is not plastered in silhouettes of soldiers
Your house should barely be visible beneath the poppies, silhouettes and ill-conceived knitted teddy bears in uniform cheerfully headed for the trenches. It hadn’t occurred to you to get a party fog machine to send yellow mustard gas billowing across your lawn, but why not start the trend?

The Daily Mash

Of course.

[Just one of the "real" stories]

It's not worth tryin' for

Even Monty Python's Always Look On the Bright Side of Life couldn't shift him!

Good grief! Can you believe that it is 35 years since the joke that became known as "The Bryan Adams Years" was inflicted on this country? In this very week way back in 1991, Mr Adams' croaky love ballad and theme song from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was finally - mercifully - departing the UK Top 10, where it had been since the end of JUNE.

Sixteen weeks of that time was spent at Number 1! I mean - who the fuck was still buying it after more than four months??

Needless to say, I'm not going to be playing it. Meanwhile, what songs did this behemoth keep from their rightful positions at the top? Quite a few classics, I am afraid to say - like these...

Right Said Fred - I'm Too Sexy

Salt'n'Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex

Extreme - More Than Words

The Shamen - Move Any Mountain

The Prodigy - Charly

Scorpions - Wind Of Change

2 Unlimited - Get Ready For This

Oceanic - Insanity

Ce Ce Peniston - Finally

... and this one!

Erasure - Love to Hate You

Shameful.

All, all, all, all night long

It comes around too soon..!

As we embark on another fun-filled, action-packed week in work, so we also take a collective gulp with the news that former teen heartthrob Leif Garrett turned 65 years old yesterday.

What better way to welcome in a new week on a Tacky Music Monday than with his one-and-only hit?

Leif Garrett - I Was Made For Dancin' (1978)

They knew how to wear trousers in those days...

Have a good week, dear reader.

Of multi-storey car parks and Bollywood

Zombie Apocalypse comes to mind

"Day Fever"? My arse! Eighteen quid for a visit to a venue with all the ambience of an underground car-park, but darker, with a massive screen playing "ironic" clips of vintage telly, while the "DJ" digs out the inevitable I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Show Me Love? I lasted around fifteen minutes before I was heading for the lift to get out of this Blade Runner-esque hell-hole...

Sigh. We had a far better time (after escaping) in the Village bar in Soho, for their cock-a-tails Happy Hour, so all was not lost.

Meanwhile, as well as Remembrance Sunday, today is Diwali - so let's have something jolly to help with the hangover, shall we?

Aishwarya Rai - Thoda Sa Pagla

I'll have a Lamb Jalfrezi with Pilau rice, please...

La selezione dei successi

As I head off to rendezvous with John-John and our other old chums we worked with years ago, for a daytime Disco [gulp!] - it's time, methinks, for another collection of some of the "newer" music that has caught my ear of late...

To open proceedings, one of my ultimate favourite groups - that played an integral part in my teenage development - still going strong after all these years! This very welcome "comeback" is in conjunction with former Smiths guitarist (who also plays guitar here) Johnny Marr. Dear Debs does sound a bit like Marianne Faithfull these days...

Blondie - Spectral Eyes (visualiser)

Speaking of favourite bands - a "new" old track from Scissor Sisters? Released from their archive of previously unreleased material as part of the - gulp! - 20th anniversary celebrations of their second album Tah-Dah!, this is as camp as old tits, and I love it!

Scissor Sisters - Don't Ask

Next up, someone who appears to have been force-fed on a diet of '90s Steps and Alcazar songs [no bad thing!]. He's an ageing X-Factor alumnus, apparently. {{{shrugs shoulders}}} I don't care - it's catchy as hell!

Joe Mcelderry - Phantom Of The Discotheque

Summer may be well-and-truly over, but the "Ibiza party sound" still haunts us - like this banger!

D.O.D & Aya Anne - I'll be there

Here's something rather eclectic, courtesy of a combo I haven't featured in ages, the former-classical-chamber-musicans-turned-dance-chart-toppers Clean Bandit, with an Italian-Arabic fusion that I rather like:

Clean Bandit x TÄRA - La Dolce Vita

It was somewhat inevitable that our favourite weirdos Haute & Freddy would have released a single and video to coincide with Hallowe'en last week - but apparently, so smitten is he with the duo that the producer of the new remake of Carrie streaming on Amazon apparently re-wrote parts of his own series to include their music in his show, including this one!

Haute & Freddy - Film Noir

And finally, saving the best to last - here's a girl after our own hearts! She says out loud what every queen secretly thinks:
"I wanna vogue like Madonna
Say a prayer like Madonna
Get hung up, dress it up
Wanna fuck like Madonna!"

Amen.

Maisi and the Disco - Madonna

As ever, dear reader, I love to know your thoughts...