Skip to main content

Inside Europride 2006: The Show

We were only singing during the second part of the show. The first part was therefore spent c'leb spotting (there were lots of them around) or watching the show on TV with a crap sound backstage. I saw Jennifer Saunders (who looked rather pissed off), Graham Norton, his dog and its walker, Sandy Toksvig, Dame Ian McGandalf (aka Sir Ian McKellen) who was organising the whole thing and appeared singing on stage as Widow Twanky.

We had already spent the afternoon rehearsing and learning our positions. During the warm, Heather Small and her Musical Director came to say hello and were apparently quite impressed by the short demo we gave them of our vocal talents.

Before the show, we had a break for dinner and a few of us found themselves sitting in nearby Hyde Park checking out a bunch of hunky guys playing football who turned out to be members of the cast of Mama Mia also having a break before the show. At 7.30, I went to great Slightly and his borther who were benefitting from the free tix we had been given for the show. More c'leb spotting... We saw: Brian Paddick, some woman or other from Eastenders, Peter Tatchell and author Ian Stewart (together!)...

Rula Lenska (who performed with us at our Christmas show at the Barbican) and Martina Navratilova were also there together apparently.

Our performance went well and was well received although you can never really tell these things. Heather was fab. She was, in my opinion, the best act on the night, managing to get the crowd on their feet, clapping. Something even Elton John did not manage later on. Elton who, although he kindly said "hello boys" to a few of us as he arrived and we were waiting to go on stage behaved like the true drama queen he is supposed to be. He had obviously stipulated that David Furnish had to introduce him (and no one else), which he did as "my husband, Sir Elton John". That did not stop him however from turning up late on stage forcing the hosts to fill in. Before that the piano had been rolled in and polished (!), a glass of cola prepared in an ice bucket and the autocue plugged in. Still it seemed that something wasn't quite right with on of the feedback speakers and Sir Elton made it quite obvious.

We were given invites to the after show party but the show had lasted four hours. I was too tired and decided to go home.

A few insider's pictures of EuroPride 2006 the Show taken (with a cameraphone) during the tech rehearsal:

Heather Small and Charlie Beale (our director)



The Chorus on stage



"David Furnish's husband"



Members of the Chorus watching the first part of the show backstage



Read the Evening Standard's (rather catty) review (which doesn't even mention us)...

Other bloggers who were there (in no particular order): Liam, Czechone, Chris (scroll down), Slightly Lost, Slightly Lost again, Gaypop, Wishbone, Qenny, wirelessoxygen and Zombie Coterie.

Who just shouted "name dropper"?!


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Comments

  1. So thats basiclly a name dropping entry?

    I thought this blog was one of the bastions of intellectual debate, not a "gossip" coloumn!

    This is all because you sat next the Daily Mail newspaper on the bus yesterday!

    SL xxxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. You were right - Heather Small killed the lot of them - Boy George was dire and Sir Elton was too middle of the road - yawn. Thanks for the link!

    Chris (scroll down) ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at...

pink sauce | life, with a pink seasoning

As of tonight, my blog Aimless Ramblings of Zefrog , that "place where I can vent my frustration, express ideas and generally open my big gob without bothering too many people" which will be 6 in a couple of months, becomes Pink Sauce . While the URLs zefrog.blogspot.com and www.zefrog.eu are still valid to access this page, the main URL now becomes www.pinksauce.co.uk. There is a vague plan to create a proper website for www.zefrog.eu to which the blog would be linked. Why Pink Sauce , you may ask. It is both simple and complicated. For several years, I have grown out of love for the name of the blog. It felt a bit cumbersome and clumsy. That said, I never really looked into changing it, seriously. Tonight, for dinner, I had pasta with a special pink sauce of my concoction ; single cream and ketchup. I know most people while feel nauseous at the very though of the mixture but trust me, it's gorgeous. Don't knock it till you've tried it. After having had my platte...

Tick, Tick... BOOM! - review

Tick, Tick... BOOM! (by and on Netflix), titled after one of its hero's musicals, is the film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the acclaimed creator of Hamilton . Perhaps appropriately, it is about musical theatre and, itself, turns into a musical; covering the few days, in early 1990, leading to star-crossed composer Jonathan Larson's 30 birthday.  At that time, Larson, who went on to write Rent , was in the throes of completing his first musical, on which he had been working for eight years, before a crucial showcase in front major players in the industry. With social puritanism and the AIDS epidemic as background – with close friends getting infected, or sick; some of them dying, Larson, a straight man, struggles to write a final key song for his show, while confronting existential questions about creativity, his life choices, and his priorities. The film features numerous examples of Larson's work meshed into the narrative of those few days. Some are part o...