KAT CALLS

Well, I’m now nearly two months behind with my ‘weekly’ column which shows you either a) how busy I’ve been or b) how deep my suntan is. The answer is a) FYI – I’m no sun-lover and my legs still look like under-cooked Cornish pasties.

In fact the only reason I’m sitting here writing this at all is because we have a power cut and therefore I can’t faff about online.

So where was I? Oh yes, I was….

GOING ON A BEAR HUNT…with Mel C and Les Dennis

It may seem a bit odd to a lot of you that I’m spending my time reviewing kids’ shows for a gay mag. If so, then shame on you. We live in the days of Elton and David having nippers, and turkey basters selling out as soon as they hit the shelves of Poundland.

Gays have kids! Yay!

Of course, we always have had, but it was a bit of a secret back in the bad old days. And if you haven’t sprogged yet in any of the new ways possible, then I’m sure you’re an auntie, uncle, fairy godfather or mother, or just a big brother or sister to a theatre-hungry nipper. And there are always brownie points on offer for taking the kids off the hands of time-short parents.

Anyway, so I was reviewing We’re Going on a Bear Hunt at the Lyric and was invited to the party afterwards.

Never having been able to resist the lure of tiny sandwiches and plastic cups of squash I jumped at the chance, which is how I found myself sitting next to a Spice Girl.

Did I chat to her? It’s a sticky situation. Do you chat to the famous person beside you and seem like a fame-hag, or do you ignore them and then seem too-cool-for-school (as they know that you know who they are – or they should do when they were in the most famous girlband of all time)?

No, I didn’t chat. I exchanged a few words about cake and stared hard at the tattoos on her leg. Then I went and got some more teeny sandwiches and squash and a huge slab of cake with thick green icing that tasted of wallpaper paste and I became engrossed in picking that off the sponge hidden below. I looked up and Les Dennis flashed before my eyes. I didn’t want to talk to him.

Partly because of the amount of green icing I’d consumed and partly because of the stupidly hot London weather, I managed to fall completely asleep at the next play I was meant to be reviewing. I’m lucky that I don’t snore. The previous day I’d been sitting in a very sparse audience when a guy two rows behind me had started to grunt and snuffle.

He was on his own with no one near him, so I quietly took my crutch, swung it over my head and gave him a gentle poke.

He woke up with that classic ‘What the fuck?!’ start to see my crutch swinging back over to me. Nothing was said and no more snoring was heard. I was inordinately proud of myself for some reason.

On one of the hottest days in London for years I headed off on a new Boris Bus to the St James Theatre. Have you been on one of these? You’d think there’d be a through breeze but there isn’t. Neither are there windows. A guy sat on the next seat and proceeded to fall asleep on me (this snooziness must have been down to the heat and us Brits just not being used to it). His forehead was touching my bare arm where it was lying in a pool of mixed sweat. Then I saw him start to drool. Enough was enough. A finger rather than a crutch was all that was needed this time. The same ‘What the fuck?!’ start as he looked at me with sleepy, heat-addled eyes. “Does the window open?” he said. I told him no but it didn’t stop him reaching past me to try, so now I had his armpit in my face. Oh the joy of London travel….

When I got to the St James’s I too succumbed to sleep.

I blew up my inflatable pillow, hid in a comfy chair behind a big, handily-placed sign, and dropped off.

For an hour and a half. When I woke up the play was due to start in 2 minutes, so I shot in to the auditorium like a lame Roadrunner and just about made it.

I liked the play, The American Plan, and although I was now bright as a button after such a good kip, I couldn’t get comfy due to their stupid, stupid, stupid seats. It’s a new theatre: they should have done much better. Like wooden pews, they sit you bolt upright and with about as much padding. The rake is so acute that if you stand at the top of the theatre you get vertigo (no balcony – it’s an all-in-one), and because of this, yes, everyone can see, but it means there’s no room for feet to go under the seats in front as your floor level is level to the person in front’s middle back (try to explain that better and I guarantee you’ll fail).

This would be fine if they’d left any amount of legroom but they haven’t.

I’m convinced that theatre designers design with children in mind. Or perhaps all theatre designers are Japanese.

The seat width is sometimes so ridiculous that you’re perched on it with your feet taking all your weight. Place any kind of average size man in these sort of seats and he looks like he’s drunk the Drink Me bottle from Alice in Wonderland. They just hurt, and you have to sit on them for a good couple of hours. It’s nuts.

And when you’re a crip like me, imagine what it’s like. I’ve often sat in a theatre dosed with enough Tramadol and Co-dydramol to kill a large horse and I’ve still been in so much pain that I’ve hardly been able to concentrate on the play. Surely there’s got to be a better way? And I don’t mean forcing people to pay more for a comfy seat: there’s enough silly premium seating going on in the West End as it is at the minute. If you say you’re disabled for instance, but don’t need a wheelchair, how about shoving us in a normal chair at the side. Oh no, pardon me. Health and safety.

I did mean to look at where the wheelies would go at the St James’s but didn’t get a chance due to my sprint/hobble in, but I will have a good squizz around next time and get back to you. My money’s on them being asked to perch at the top of the Eiger.

AT THE WORLD’S END

A couple of days later I found myself in an HMV store. Yes, I too was bloody surprised.

Didn’t you all go down, down, down into the pits of retail hell taking everyone’s Christmas vouchers with you, I asked the manager. He looked miffed.

It was rather nice to step back into a record store after such a long time even if it was full of CDs (yuk). I was in Oxford Street, a place I would usually rather bite my own ear off than set foot in, but I was meeting friend James to go to the press night of The Ladykillers and he’d stipulated the meeting point as there was some sort of signing going on (you’ll remember James is the autograph addict).

When I got there I couldn’t see him anywhere in the queue so I walked down to the front where I saw a lot of my London disabled friends. I waved and stepped around a barrier to say hi. The next thing I knew, a huge film poster was thrust into my hand and I was told I could sit down in that seat there. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright then materialised through a door and so I now have a nice The World’s End quad signed by two of the stars and the director, completely by accident. I wish all life was like that….

I did manage to find James who was still in the queue and we tubed it to the Strand where he insisted on standing outside the theatre while I went to the sweltering bar upstairs and shouted down to him out of the window. No decorum. He was, of course, standing waiting with his other autograph mates to try to catch famous people which seemed a bit silly as he had a ticket to go in and could just as well catch them inside. Old habits die hard though.

I managed to coax him in eventually and we sat down, doing our best meerkat impressions, trying to spot famous peeps James hasn’t yet got – or has already got, but you can’t have enough can you James?

A couple of Inbetweeners were spotted, a brace of Easties, and a pair of Fast Show faves, Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson.

Boy, has Charlie Higson grown, but only in one way – outwards. His stomach now surpasses a Clarkson and is fast approaching a Pickles. Soon, he’ll have to use a whole two balls of string as a belt, but his face looks, well, like it’s always looked – like Charlie Higson. That’s always odd isn’t it, when someone gets huge but their face stays the same size. They don’t look fat at all, rather more as if they’ve been swimming in a big vat of puffing up liquid while managing not to get their hair wet.

Last time I’d seen Charlie was at a Young James Bond reading some five years ago when he could have contained his girth with one ball of string. I was thinking I’d seen him on Harry and Paul too, but that was HARRY and Paul, you silly cow Kat, not Charlie and Paul. Harry Enfield. Charlie Higson. What’s the difference? A 60 inch stomach so it would seem.

 

I mean, look at the sex god Charlie was in The Higsons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-DWlwo2IIo

Well, a sex god in an 80’s sort of way (so no way at all really). Now I’ll have that bloody ‘Ooh ahh bedubby dubby dubby’ in my head for the next month or two. It’s already one of those annoying tropes that kicks around my bonce, appearing at disconcerting times. I can’t think of another one at the mo, but I’m sure one will kick in between now and the next Kat Calls and I’ll let you know even more about the inside of my head.

Please feel free to email me yours at kat@gcene.com and I’ll add it to my collection.

Also hiding in the audience was Victoria Wood who we managed to miss completely, and Mel Giedroyc who sat a couple of rows from us with a boy young enough to be her son (which is what he probably was).

To read my review of  The Ladykillers CLICK HERE:

We both rather liked it, but of course seeing it wasn’t good enough for James. His autograph mate had managed to blag a ticket in at the last minute (the box office staff just came out and offered him one – you’d be surprised at how often this happens), so we all trotted round to the stage door and waited. I felt a bit of a dick to be honest when the cast started to trickle out and sign for the only people who were there – us – but I did end up with a programme signed by the whole cast (minus the one I really wanted to see – John Gordon Sinclair. Gregory himself! Oh woes!)

IT’S OUTSIDE MY AREA OF EXPERTISE: I’M AFRAID!!

(That, my dears, is a classic line from Count Arthur Strong which your children, nephews and nieces will be quoting in 40 years time in the manner of “Don’t panic!”

If you don’t know what I’m on about, shame on you, you comedy philistine.

More of the Count next week).

Bracken Moor at the Tricycle was a production I’d heard a lot about so I was pleased when I got the chance to see it but disappointed to discover it was a bog standard Victorian melodrama. Right up until the very last five seconds that is, when something happened that gave me the fright of my life.

The last time I’d experienced fear like this was when I’d made the mistake of going on an observation big wheel at Goodwood Festival of Speed, a bit like the London Eye but smaller. Smaller, but high enough to make me freak out to the nth degree. Not being good with heights usually only impacts me when I want to get cheap tickets to the theatre and they’re all in the gods. I just can’t do it.

I once got so blind drunk at the BAFTA’s as I had a seat right in the gods at the Royal Opera House that I can’t remember any of the ceremony at all. And I love Stephen Fry.

I was mortified, but it was the only way my mate could actually get me up there.

So I’d seen the wheel and asked (for the life of me I have no idea why) how much it cost and when I got the answer ‘it’s free’, I jumped into a capsule with abandon. I now look back on that moment as one of the stupidest decisions of my life (and I’ve made some spectacularly stupid ones, more of which later).

Two men then jumped in beside son Sid and me, and off we creaked. It was only really then that I realised my mistake. And oh shit was it an oh shit mistake. As we rose, and the ground slowly became a lovely memory, I realised I couldn’t look out of the window at all. I say window, but we were in a see-through bubble, so my only options were to shut my eyes totally and for some reason that seemed worse than what I eventually did: I got a paper out of my bag, put my nose about 3 inches above it as if I was a short-sighted news addict, and I stared at the newsprint and I hummed. I didn’t hum anything you’d recognise; it was just a generic humming sound that occasionally went up and down but mostly stayed on one note.

Sid was revelling in my discomfort. “Cor, look how high we are mummy! Those people look like ants!” but even he, after a while, realised that I was in some real distress and shut the fuck up.

Meanwhile, the two blokes who were sitting in this transparent hellhole with us were being as lovely as lovely could be. They’d also realised I wasn’t exactly happy and said nothing at all for the whole 180 degree journey (oh god, it makes me ill even thinking about that bit at the top when you go from going up to going down).

Anyway, I’ve not been quite as scared as that until Bracken Moor. It’s a cheap theatrical trick really, and I didn’t come out thinking anything more of the play than I had when watching the bulk of it, but it certainly made it bloody memorable (although I’m not going to give it away here, just in case you ever see it).

SO I SAID TO JOHNNY….

I was going to say I’ve lost count of the times I’ve met Johnny Depp but that would be a big bulging lie.

It’s five, but that sounds a lot grander than it really is as they’ve only been brief premiere hello’s rather than convos about his….well, I don’t know. What would you have a conversation with Depp about, if you got past the film he was promoting? We’ll see….

He signed the photo of his own face that my mate Val had given me (I never come prepared) which is odd in itself. I mean, writing your own name on a picture of your own face. Must feel surreal the first few hundred times you do it, but think how many autographs Depp has signed in his life. Millions, d’you reckon? Perhaps when he’s flicking through a magazine and sees a photo of himself his first instinct now is to grab a pen and scrawl on it.

So our convo went like this:

Johnny: Well, hello there. How are you today?

Me: I’m fine thank you. And how are you?

Johnny: I’m fine too thank you

Me: That’s nice

And that was it. Never, ever give me an interviewing job no matter how hard I may beg.

I had more or less the same convo with The Lone Ranger himself, Armie Hammer (no, he’s not a toothpaste), who is a LOT better looking in the flesh than on screen which is saying quite a bit.

I was most taken with his tight red suit. Meowwww….

I was also pleased to meet the other Treadaway twin, Harry. Luke is currently in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time at the Apollo. Actually, he probably isn’t by now as I think they’ve had a cast change, but he was the first in the role at the National and stayed with it for a while when it transfered.

I was hobbling down the steps at Leicester Square tube with James the other day when he said as we got to the bottom ‘That’s Luke Treadaway isn’t it?’ I’d missed him as I’d been so concentrating on the steps (as you have to when your legs are shonky), but

I looked up and there he was, disappearing upwards in a very 70’s lime green t-shirt and looking gorgeous.

Harry’s not a patch on Luke, looks-wise, which is strange as they’re identical twins. Ah, but that’s just my opinion. It’s the teeth, you see.

Enough wittering about twins. Where was I? Oh yep, at The Lone Ranger premiere. We walked the white carpet. Oh those wacky PR peeps at Disney. “Having a red carpet is so passé. How about white? Yeah, cos his horse, whadayacallit, is white isn’t it!”

Some other bright spark had then added to the mix by suggesting bringing the ACTUAL HORSE that played Silver over from America to be at the prem. That’s what the loud speaker told us anyway. Horseshit, I said.

They’ve just got a horse from the nearest…..horse place, and got someone dressed as the Lone Ranger to drive it (drive?!) along the white carpet, thus in very quick smart time making the white carpet a brown carpet.

Honestly. Even I could have seen that one coming and as you can see, I’m no equine expert.

So with the mix of horse shit and London dirt carried on people’s feet, by the time we got to walk it (late, as we’d wanted to meet the stars), it was the colour of the Thames on a bad sewer day.

We took our front row (I dunno how I did it either) seats and watched footage of the last hour in Leicester Square on the big screen. Thus, I saw my scintillating Depp convo played out on a 30 foot screen and so did the other 800 people sat in the cinema with me. Thank god there was no mic near us is all I can say.

At premieres, the director, producer and actors always come on stage to introduce the film, so I managed to take some rotten pictures of them in a row before the film started. Now, I’d already managed to see the film at an advanced screening so I put my earplugs in, blew up my pillow and nestled down into the very comfy Odeon seats. I woke up to see the chase scene at the end.

It’s not a great film and it’s now reckoned to be a bit of a turkey, losing Disney millions. I could have told them that for nothing.

Depp always seems a most overrated actor to me. He’s got tics and shtick that get him through a film still looking cool, but there isn’t much behind that mask. It’s the cheekbones that make him eternally popular though. I’ve seen grown women and men simply melt in his presence. I just become rather mundane and chat about nothing.

SO I SAID TO BRUCE….

Actually, I said nothing to Bruce Willis as he’s a bit of a meanie when it comes to meeting people. I was at the Red 2 premiere the next day, and did meet Helen Mirren. I was tempted to look closely at the back of her head to see if I could see the pegs holding her face taut, but refrained. I do hate to be horrid to her as she’s always lovely and gracious and sweet, but I did wonder why I’d never noticed how much work she’s had done when watching her on screen. Does she now eschew close-ups? I can’t remember but will try to remember to look next time.

Her cleavage, of course, gives the age game away. It looks like a leather purse that’s been left out in the rain (as does mine).

Getting into the building on the proper red carpet proved a bit of a challenge as they’d built a bridge from the square to the cinema, so as not to impede the flow of tourist feet from the tube station to M&M World (honestly, the amount of bags I see in London from that place!)

This meant I had to hike up two flights to get up there, then another two to get down, but it was worth it just to stand on the top looking down at the people in the Square looking up at me.

I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep at this one as my mate Cathy sat next to me and nudged me whenever there was a ‘funny’ bit in the film just to make sure I was still awake. I sat there grumpily. It is a dire, dire film. Dreadful. And a waste of all the talents involved.

If I’d have seen the film before the director got on the stage to introduce it, I’d have booed him off.

Why do they make films like these? Well, presumably because the first one made money, but still…..

What I’ll never understand is that there’s a huge market out there that goes largely untapped – us oldies who’d not go to see a film involving car chases if you paid us. And when a film does come aong that we like – say, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – we go to the cinema in our droves and make it number one just like that. Perhaps it’s simply easier to make the likes of Red 2, although I can’t see how. Those cars being crunched must cost, and Helen Mirren’s cosmetic surgeon can’t come cheap.

Righto, well, that’s enough for today methinks. Loads more to catch up on but that can wait for another bloody power cut (living in the country they’re more regular than village buses so I expect you won’t have to wait long).