Footsteps echo on the stones

Yes, dears, it is indeed Hallowe'en today - the night of the witches bitches!

To fit the occasion, how about a little selection of some newer spookier music that has caught my ear lately?

Perel - Alles

Otros Aires - I´ve Seen that Face Before (Libertango)

A Number of Names - Sharevari

Saada Bonaire - You Could Be More As You Are

And then there's this (my favourite "sinister dance" of the lot)...

Polo & Pan - Mexicali

As ever, let me know your thoughts.

Five'll get ya ten, old Macky's back in town

A mini-timeslip moment again...

We're way back in prehistory - well, 1959, actually - the year of the Cuban revolution led by Che Guevara that saw Fidel Castro become President, Living Doll, Harold Macmillan, House of Fraser takeover of Harrods, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, independence for Cyprus, the Mau Mau uprising, Hugh Gaitskell, Alec Issigonis and the Mini, the UK's first duty-free shops, Hawaii becoming the 50th State of the USA, David Jacobs and Juke Box Jury, and Christopher Cockerell's first hovercraft; and the year that Billie Holiday, Errol Flynn, Kay Kendall, Cecil B. DeMille, Lou Costello, Mario Lanza, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper all died.

Famous names born sixty years ago (many of whom I have featured on this very blog over the year) include Sade, Robert Smith, Pete Burns, Simon Cowell, Irene Cara, Paul Whitehouse, Julian Clary, Tracey Ullman, Motown Records, Hugh Laurie, Youssou N'Dour, Marie Osmond, Kirsty MacColl, Barbie, Brian Setzer, Dame Emma Thompson, John McEnroe, Susanna Hoffs, Sheena Easton, Rupert Everett, Bryan Adams, the Boeing 707, Renée Fleming, Pauline Quirke, Steve Strange, Sarah Ferguson, Gary Kemp, Marcella Detroit, Astérix the Gaul, Lorraine Kelly, the M1 motorway, Val Kilmer, Ben Elton and Morten Harket, as well as my own "other half" Madam Arcati...

...and, today - our friend John-John!

And at #1 in our charts on his birthday all those years ago..?

Bobby Darin - Mack the Knife

Cheers, dear boy! Looking forward to the party on Saturday.

PS Here's a little - ahem - something extra:

Björn Again - A Little Respect

Thought for the day - and for another forty-four days

Here we go again...

Ho Ho Fucking Ho, indeed.

Te quiero conmigo bailando muy suavecito

"Ahora no soy tan niña, pero me siento como una niña."
["I'm not a little girl, but I feel like one."]




With Celia Cruz and Rolando Laserie (Habana Hilton 1960)



At the age of 89 [her birthday is today!], Omara Portuondo is calling an "untimely" end to her career after a mere seven decades, with a final grand tour - El Último Beso ["The Final Kiss"]. We unfortunately missed her only UK appearance in July, to our chagrin.

Who is Señorita Portuondo, I hear you ask? Although her career as one of Cuba's most popular singers stretches back to the very early 1950s, it's probably for her work with the fabled Buena Vista Social Club for which she is best known.

Here are some examples of her sublime talent, four your delectation:

Ibrahim Ferrer & Omara Portuondo - Quizas

Omara Portuondo - El Hombre Que Yo Amé [The Man I Love]

Omara Portuondo - Suavecito

I could listen to her forever.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Omara Portuondo Peláez! (born 29th October 1930)

More Omara here

A Wandering Light*

Dark. Gloom. Murk. Yes - the clocks went back on the weekend, so although there may be a bit more light for getting up and going to work, the days now end around 4.30pm! So this will be a Monday where I am not just spitting blood at being in the office after a too-brief weekend, but I'll also be there till sunset...

Aaaaaaarrgh!

Never mind, eh? To cheer ourselves up, let's take a little trip once again this Tacky Music Monday to Spain (I wish) - and, appropriately enough, Spain in an era when mullets and cat-suits were considered the height of sophistication. Let's not mention the choreography, OK?

Modulos - Luz Errante

Si, Baby, Si!

[*Luz Errante = Wandering Light in Spanish]

She had to shut her eyes to shame

Ten years? Can it be that long since we first stumbled across the genius that is Steve Hayes - Tired Old Queen at the Movies, and his quirkily camp movie reviews?

As we sing a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday to You", let us settle down and wallow in his take on a true classic romantic melodrama...

Tired Old Queen at the Movies - Back Street

We move like cagey tigers; we couldn't get closer than this

Timeslip moment again...

We've been jettisoned by The Black Fortress into an other-wordly era - 1983: the year of Cabbage Patch Dolls, Madonna, the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by a Soviet missile, AIDS, the assassination of Benigno Aquino in the Philippines (that hastened the downfall of President Marcos), civil wars in Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, Breakfast Time, fake Hitler Diaries, the murder of gay actor Peter Arne, Flashdance, Greenham Common, Peter Tatchell, Billie Jean and Thriller, Klaus Barbie, Educating Rita, Reagan's plans for a "Star Wars" defence system, Bob Holness and Blockbusters, the "Challenger" space shuttle, the IRA car-bomb attack on Harrods at Xmas, Return of the Jedi, landslide victory for the Tories that gave Margaret Thatcher her second term, the Maze Prison escape, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Tootsie and the Brinks Mat warehouse robbery; the births of Chris Hemsworth, Aidan Turner, Mo Farah, Blackadder, Mika, Amy Winehouse, Henry Cavill, Emily Blunt, the Internet, mobile phones, Swatch watches, the pound coin, Moschino and Microsoft Word; and the year that Gloria Swanson, David Niven, Ira Gershwin, John Le Mesurier, Norma Shearer, Sir William Walton, Harry James, Dick Emery, Dolores del Río, Billy Fury, Tennessee Williams and Violet Carson all died.

In the news headlines in October thirty-six years ago: the grisly story of the multiple murders of young men committed by Dennis Nilson gripped the nation as his trial began, Cecil Parkinson resigned as Trade and Industry Secretary after it was revealed he was having an affair with his secretary, to the fury of the UK government US troops invaded the British Commonwealth island state of Grenada, Neil Kinnock was elected leader of the Labour Party following the retirement of Michael Foot, a million people joined a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) march in London, and the plan to abolish the Greater London Council was announced; in the ascendant was Richard Noble (who broke the land speed record at 633 mph), but we bade a fond farewell to Sir Ralph Richardson. In our cinemas: Zelig, Class and Staying Alive. On telly: Terrahawks, Family Fortunes with Max Bygraves, and Doris Speed's last appearance as "Annie Walker" in Coronation Street.

And in our Top Ten in October '83? Culture Club and Karma Chameleon still ruled the roost, in their fifth week of six at #1. Contenders Tracey Ullman, Lionel Ritchie, Duran Duran and Howard Jones had all been thwarted in their attempt to topple the behemoth, but Billy Joel Uptown Girl had arrived and was about to do the job. Also present and correct were Rocksteady Crew, Men Without Hats, George Benson and - ahem - Black Lace. However, there was also a choon lurking around outside the Top Twenty that was about to take off, and become one of my eternal favourites in the process...

The Cure - The Lovecats

We move like cagey tigers
We couldn't get closer than this
The way we walk
The way we talk
The way we stalk
The way we kiss

We slip through the streets
While everyone sleeps
Getting bigger and sleeker
And wider and brighter
We bite and scratch and scream all night

Let's go
And throw
All the songs we know

Into the sea
You and me
All these years and no one heard
I'll show you in spring
It's a treacherous thing
We missed you hissed the lovecats
We missed you hissed the lovecats

We're so wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully pretty
Oh you know that I'd do anything for you
We should have each other to tea, huh?
We should have each other with cream
Then curl up in the fire
And sleep for awhile
It's the grooviest thing
It's the perfect dream

Into the sea
You and me
All these years and no one heard
I'll show you in spring
It's a treacherous thing
We missed you hissed the lovecats

We missed you hissed the lovecats
We missed you hissed the lovecats
We missed you hissed the lovecats
We missed you hissed the lovecats

We're so wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully pretty
Oh you know that I'd do anything for you
We should have each other to dinner?
We should have each other with cream
Then curl up in the fire
Get up for awhile
It's the grooviest thing
It's the perfect dream

Hand in hand
Is the only way to land
Always the right way round
Not broken in pieces
Like hated little meeces
How could we miss
Someone as dumb as this

Missed you hissed the lovecats

I love you let's go
Oh solid gone
How could we miss someone as dumb as this?

Fantabulosa!

Okay dolls, y'all know what time it is

Another long, dark, dismal week is crawling its way to its conclusion, and - despite the general murk and tiresome steamed-up commuting - we need to get ourselves in the mood for a party...

A few weeks ago, the lovely AyeMatey at Mean Dirty Pirate blog featured a most magnificent pick-me-up that should do the trick! Mr Todrick Hall, a name with which I was previously unfamiliar, is apparently an alumnus of American Idol. He's over here in Blighty next month, to join the West End production of Chicago as "Billy Flynn" - but somehow I doubt his performance will include a production number as camp as this!

All together, now... Thank Disco It's Friday!

Todrick - Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels

Nails, hair, hips, heels
Ass fat, lips real
Purse full, big bills
Bitch I'mma big deal
Legs, legs, face, eyes
Thin waist, thick thighs
You, me, you wish
New phone, who this?
Pussy puss, puss, give them cunt, cunt, cunt bitch
Mama, yes, god then you pop that tongue bitch
This whole club is my runway, run bitch
Y'all five, four, three, twos, I'm a one bitch

Girl, what did that girl just say, girl?
Ooh Girl, I don't dance
I work (work), I don't play
I slay (slay), I don't walk

I strut, strut, strut and then sashay (okay)
But I don't work for free (no)
No, that's not the tea, hunty (no ma'm)
So make it rain on me (me)

And I might let you see
What you gonna let them see?

My nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels

My nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels

Head, shoulders, knees, toes
Don't know these hoes
Face, lips, eyes, nose
Camera, click, we pose

Beat mug, limp wrists
V.I.P list
Wave, wave, blow a kiss
I'm that bitch, sis'

Left, right, left, right, left with a spin bitch
Where's my sash and crown, 'cause I win bitch
I'm so fab, I'm gone with the wind bitch
Y'all six, seven, eight, nines, I'm a ten bitch

Girl, what did that girl just say, girl?
Ooh Girl, I don't dance
I work (work), I don't play
I slay (slay), I don't walk

I strut, strut, strut and then sashay (okay)
But I don't work for free (no)
No, that's not the tea, hunty (no ma'm)
So make it rain on me (me)

And I might let you see
What you gonna let them see?

My nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels

My nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels
Nails, hair, hips, heels

Okay dolls, y'all know what time it is, come on
Everybody on the floor, everybody on the floor
Now I want you to stretch out those arms, stretch out those legs
Stretch out that wrist, stretch out that weave
I don't want to see you dance
I want to see you work, come on

Drop for me, drop for me, drop
Drop for me, drop for me, drop
Drop for me, drop for me, drop
Drop for me, drop for me, drop

Tongue pop for me, pop for me, pop
Tongue pop for me, pop for me, pop
Tongue pop for me, pop for me, pop
Tongue pop for me, pop for me, pop

Pose for me, pose for me, pose
Pose for me, pose for me, pose
Pose for me, pose for me, pose
Pose for me, pose for me, pose

Now blink for these, blink for these, hoes
Blink for these, blink for these, hoes
Blink for these, blink for these, hoes
Blink for these, blink for these, hoes

Twirl for me, twirl for me, twirl
Twirl for me, twirl for me, twirl
Twirl for me, twirl for me, twirl
Twirl for me, twirl for me, twirl

Say girl for me, girl for me, girl
Say girl for me, girl for me, girl
Say girl for me, girl for me, girl (Hahahahaha)
Say girl for me, girl for me, girl (Yes honey!)

Now snap for me, snap for me, snap
Snap for me, snap for me, snap
Snap for me, snap for me, snap (Ohhh snap, crackle, pop, bitch)
Snap for me, snap for me, snap

Now clap for me, clap for me, clap
Clap for me, clap for me, clap
Clap for me, clap for me, clap
Clap for me, clap for me, clap

Give trade for me, trade for me, trade
Trade for me, trade for me, trade
Trade for me, trade for me, trade
Trade for me, trade for me, trade

Throw shade for me, shade for me, shade (Oohhh)
Shade for me, shade for me, shade (Girl)
Throw shade for me, shade for me, shade (I heard)
Shade for me, shade for me, shade (She said)

Now, fan for me, fan for me, fan
Fan for me, fan for me, fan
Fan for me, fan for me, fan
Fan for me, fan for me, fan

Shablam for me, shablam for me, shablam
Shablam for me, shablam for me, shablam
Shablam for me, shablam for me, shablam
Shablam for me, shablam for me, shablam

That's all
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

Indeed.

Have a great weekend, dear reader - and "snap for me, snap for me, snap!"

Thought for the Day

Mindfuck, indeed.

Paper birds and silly string, sensible footwear and gay history, and St Albans with Debbie

It was with more than a modicum of excitement that I headed off [at first solo, but at the venue bumped into our friend Paul; as well as regulars Sexy Lexi and VG Lee, and many more besides] to the Southbank Centre last night for the latest outing of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari - for our headline guest was none other than that icon of "intellectual post-punk" combo [sometimes clumsily pigeonholed under the ghastly umbrella term "sophisti-pop"] Everything But The Girl, Miss Tracey Thorn!

But first, down to business - as our host Paul Burston opened proceedings by apologising in advance for any "costume clash", as both he and Miss Thorn were wearing leopard print, before introducing our first reader (and Polari First Book Prize winner in 2012), the lovely John McCullough.



Mr McC read for us a series of poems on themes from homelessness to homophobia from his newest anthology Reckless Paper Birds, including this one, which I thought particularly impressive:

Tender Vessels
I keep trying to slip away through the crowd
but history won’t take its mouth off my body.
What was exacted on someone else’s softness,
his cuttable flesh, is always about to happen here.
The vague kinship which exists between tender men
glowing with thirst starts in awareness of this,

how we’re unstitched by tongue prints, resurrections.
Standing in a street party one Pride, I saw a figure
stomp through, fists raised, and strike three boys.
They dropped to the ground, clutching their heads.
I witnessed everything, squeezed a stranger’s shoulder,
then, fifteen minutes on, my body was distracted

utterly by the smell of oranges. The unspeakable
scrapes a fingernail across my neck but I can only
concentrate so long before I wind up decanting
myself into the nearest fizzing light: Instagram,
house music. It’s like those inventors who tried to devise
a spray-on cast for broken bones, created Silly String.

But there are remedies worse than squirting
metres of sticky mayhem across a jubilant face,
outcomes bleaker than attempting, despite the scissors,
to inhabit this twenty-first-century skin.
I live in a dream of plummeting from the earth’s
tallest building without ever having felt more beautiful

because I’m not the only one falling. I’m in a crowd,
a loose democracy of descent, velocity with its hands
all over our bodies, but not enough to stop us
gossiping and blowing kisses as we speed
through the air together, reckless paper birds.
They will find us with our beaks wide open.



Next up was the estimable cartoonist for the Pink Paper Kate Charlesworth, who took us on a visual journey - reading some extracts from her new graphic memoir Sensible Footwear – A Girl’s Guide, accompanied by a series of illustrations from the book [click to embiggen]:



It was superb! Here's Kate herself, talking about the book:

Kate Charlesworth on Sensible Footwear – A Girl’s Guide

This evening's event was a special one for two individuals in the audience at the Royal Festival Hall - as the winners of this year's two Polari Prizes were announced [read the full shortlists for both prizes at the Publishing Perspective site]...



...the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2019, Angela Chadwick for her debut novel "XX"...



...and winner of the Polari Prize for established writers [presented by none other than Booker Prize-winner Bernadine Evaristo], Andrew McMillan for his poetry collection playtime.

Congratulations all round!

After a break, a fag and a top-up of booze, it was time, however, for our leading lady.



Opening with a pithy examination of her teenage diaries (that form the starting-point of her second memoir, Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia) Miss Tracey Thorn immediately came across as a charming and frank reader and writer, hitting right to the crux of what it was like growing up in the suburban nonentity that is Brookmans Park in Hertfordshire in the 70s:

When I try to summon up the past – when I want to remember what really happened, instead of what I think happened, and what I really felt, instead of what I’d like to think I felt – I look at my diaries. They never fail to shock me with all the things they say, and all the things they don’t.

Going right back to the start, I try to picture myself on the day I first decided to keep a diary: 29 December 1975, when I was 13 years old. I must have been given it as a Christmas present, and although it was for the year 1976, its first few pages invited entries for the end of the previous year. So I began as the old year ended, just before it turned to face the new.

29 December 1975 – “Went to St Albans with Debbie. Got a belt. Could not get a jumper or skirt.”

That’s it, that’s all she wrote. No starting with a bang, no announcing herself to the world, or to a future reader, no declaration of intent. Nothing along the lines of “Dear Diary, draw closer and listen to what I have to say. Here I am; this is me; let me tell you the story of my life.” Not even the guileless enthusiasm of a 13-year-old self-introduction – “Hello, I’m Tracey and this is my diary.” Instead, I draw a circle and leave it empty, my eye caught by an absence. And it wasn’t an aberration; I carried on in that style for years, making countless entries about not buying things, not going to the disco, not going to school, a piano lesson being cancelled, the school coach not arriving. It’s a life described by what’s missing, and what fails to happen.

My second ever entry is just as banal:

30 December – “Went to Welwyn with Liz. Didn’t get anything except a bag of Kentucky chips.”

Was it me or was it my surroundings? Was it just that I was the dullest child in existence, noticing nothing, experiencing nothing, thinking nothing, or was it at least in part an embodiment of something in the air, something vague and undefined? Even when I write about it now, I realise that the time and place in which I grew up, 1970s suburbia, is easier to define by saying what it wasn’t than what it was. Brookmans Park was a village but not a village. Rural but not rural. A stop on the line, a space in between two landscapes that are both more highly rated – the city, and the countryside. A contingent, liminal, border territory. In-betweenland.

1 January 1977 – “Went to Welwyn with Mum and Dad to get some boots but couldn’t get any.”

8 January – “Liz and I went to Potters Bar in the afternoon to try to get her ears pierced, but she couldn’t.”

Anywhere with a tube station, however “end of the line” that stop may be, still feels to me like part of London, physically linked by the tunnels and rails. Things would still happen there. But beyond the reach of the underground lies a different and less certain terrain. Where things might not happen at all. Where you might continually try but continually fail, in endless small endeavours.

19 January 1979 – “Deb and I went to St Albans. Tried to get some black trousers but couldn’t find any nice ones.”

17 March – “Tried to go to the library but it was shut.”

When I came to write a song about the place, Oxford Street, I fell back into this habit of describing by subtraction, stating what wasn’t there – “Where I grew up there were no factories” – and only then going on to admit that “there was a school and shops, and some fields and trees”. But although there were fields, there was no agricultural life. No one worked as a farmer. All the men got on the train every morning with a briefcase to go up to town. Nature writers would have found little there to describe; it was not a place of shepherds, or hawks. There was no real scenery – no hills, or lakes, nothing in the way of a view.

Here I am again, talking about what it is not. What is it about the place that it demands to be written about in such an equivocal way? I rebelled as a teen and so have often felt that I abandoned the old me and invented a new one, casting off the time and place I came from. But as I get older, I sense its presence inside me. I want to reconnect with the self I left behind. It’s partly that common impulse of curiosity – which informs a TV programme like Who Do You Think You Are? or a song like Where Do You Go to My Lovely. I want to look inside my head and remember where I came from. Because I can’t quite believe it was as lacking as my diary suggests.

Excellent stuff, indeed. Then, in an absolutely engrossing and in-depth conversation with Paul Burston, she delved deeper into the hows and the whys that led her creative mind out of that stifling environment - and her feeling that she had never, quite, escaped it. Her revelations about her parents, for example - they never could come to terms with her musical fame, and apparently it wasn't until she married (her co-member of Everything But The Girl Ben Watt) and had kids that they even began to treat her as any kind of "normal" being; even then, they simply "tutted" at her later solo musical efforts, and she never quite understood why...

But success, it certainly was, albeit slow. The band itself was a sort of "meeting of minds" [both she and Ben were in different groups, and only reluctantly decided to work together at first], emerged from the unlikely environs of Hull University in the post-punk wave in 1981, and became a "cult" hit with serious music journos everywhere - they even had a Top 3 hit with their cover of the classic I Don't Want to Talk About It in 1989 - but it wasn't until after they had been dropped by their record label sixteen years later, that one of their songs caught the attention of a certain "super-cool" American DJ/remixer, and the rest is history!

Everything But The Girl - Missing (Todd Terry remix)

It's years since you've been there
Now you've disappeared somewhere
Like outer space
You've found some better place

And I miss you
Like the deserts miss the rain

How appropriate.

What an evening! We absolutely loved it.



And thus, with a final "curtain-call" it was time to say farewell again. The next Polari - its 12th birthday, featuring the multi-talented Russell T Davies as headliner - is apparently completely sold out (shame!), so (if tickets are available), the next outing will be A Very Polari Xmas, featuring Lisa Jewell, Will Brooker, Ben Fergusson and Carolyn Robertson, on 9th December...

J'adore Polari!

Urban Jungle

We had a lovely afternoon exploring the exotic beauty of our beloved Kew Gardens on Sunday...

Let your hip go hippety pump pump

Once again I wonder how the weekend has zoomed by with merely a blink, and I find myself office-bound and bored even before I get there?

Sigh.

There's only one thing that can lift "the old ennui" on this Tacky Music Monday - Eurovision... and it's one of the most preposterous moments in the musical song extravaganza's history!

Laydeez'n'genilmen, put your hands together for Fredi and Friends!

Fredi and Friends - Pump-Pump

I'm not so much bored now, as stunned...

Have a good week, peeps.

'Cause every day is the same day

We're trolling across London for a much overdue visit to the lovely Kew Gardens today, and it looks like the weather's going to stay OK, which is a relief. Nothing worse than trudging around a botanical garden when the ground is wet and the plants are all drooping...

Meanwhile, sharing the day as she does with a right mix of unlikely bedfellows such as Bela Lugosi, Snoop Dogg, Sandra Dickinson, Dame Anna Neagle, Danny Boyle, Margaret Dumont, Adelaide Hall, Kathy Kirby, Tom Petty, Mark King of Level 42 and Jess Glynne - it's "the other Minogue sister"'s birthday!

Take it away, Dannii:

Dannii Minogue - I Begin To Wonder

When I'm walking down the street I call your name
Inside my head I go insane
Don't you know that it's really making me crazy?
There were days when I went completely blind
No time to think and I lost time
Won't believe what's happened to me lately

'Cause every day is the same day
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before
And every day is the same thing
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before

And I begin to wonder
Don't you know that it's really making me crazy?
And I begin to wonder
Won't believe what's happened to me lately

'Cause every day is the same day
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before
And every day is the same thing
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before

And every time I think I'm breaking free
These thoughts return to trouble me
Hanging on to love has left me empty
You're a sinner but you told me you're a saint
Too fast I tripped and lost my way
Can't believe what's happened to me lately

'Cause every day is the same day
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before
And every day is the same thing
Different faces with no name
Places I've never been before

And I begin to wonder
Don't you know that it's really making me crazy?
And I begin to wonder
Won't believe what's happened to me lately

Many happy returns, Danielle “Dannii” Minogue (born 20th October 1971)

A word from our sponsors...

Break on through to the other side, yeah

It's been a miserable, wet - and fustratingly busy, work-wise - week and I will be glad to see the back of it, especially if, as predicted, the sun does shine this weekend. Our little "gang" had a rollicking night out at Carradine's Cockney Sing-a-long in our beloved Witon's Music Hall last night, which was a great pick-me-up - but, as is our wont, we cannot let the party stop there...

...not when there's another "McClintock Mash-up" to enjoy! Thank Disco It's Friday!

The Doors vs The Temptations - Break on Through (to the Funky Side)

Have a fab one, dear reader.

You know you're getting old when...

...you find out that the toothsome Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet is 60 years old!





This, of course, is how we prefer to remember Gary and the boys:

Spandau Ballet - Paint Me Down

I've got my filbert out as we speak!

Many happy returns, Gary James Kemp (born 16th October 1959)