Madame Galina's Doings Diary

What's In A Name?

Someone did that thing I hate yesterday. I mentioned Margot Fonteyn, and they said, “What, you mean Peggy Hookham?”

She was born Margaret Hookham. It was never going to say in a programme Odette/Odile…..Peggy Hookham.

Thank you.

Bye, Darcey...

Looking out on the street one Saturday, I saw a group of shaved headed men in England kits carrying crates of beer in Morrison’s bags going into number twenty-three. I checked the TV guide. There was an international match on. Another Saturday, I saw a group of shaved headed men in lumberjack shirts and skinny jeans carrying bottles of wine in Berry Bros bags going into number twenty-seven. I checked the TV guide. Madame Butterfly was on.

I wonder if this second group got together to watch Darcey’s farewell from Covent Garden; and if they cried as much as she and I did at the Bambi’s Mother getting shot moment that was her curtain call.

Bless the BBC for providing us with comic relief by inviting Katherine Jenkins along.

True, she seemed a little off form, and clean forgot her comedy catchphrase:

“Thank everyone so much for buying my recordings and letting me live the dream - my Nana just died.”

She didn’t sing her comedy song, either. Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You, translated into Italian by somebody who needs to be told about rendering a line as, “You will always been in me.”

I can’t wait for the Viva La Diva tour to find out which divas inspired La Jenkins. From the look on Friday, I’d say take your pick of eighties porn actresses.

Debbie Does Dylais…

But what is this nonsense about her breaking down barriers and taking classical music to the masses? Which, where, what? There never were any barriers.

Take the two women whose busts used to flank the doors to the stalls at Covent Garden. At concerts Adelina Patti sang Mozart, Verdi and Wagner alongside Twas Within A Mile, Robin Adair and Home, Sweet Home. Melba recorded the Ave Maria from Otello on a 78 A side, and on the B side a song that sounds like a French take on Knees Up Mother Brown. The same goes for Rosa Ponselle: Norma’s Casta Diva with Carry Me Back To Old Virginny; Ernestine Schumann-Heink: the Brindisi from Lucrezia Borgia with Danny Boy; and so on and so on.

Patti, Melba et al were the A List Celebs of their day, and did take the masses into the marble halls where they sang. Which is just What Katy Doesn’t, as Covent Garden, La Scala, The Met and so on don’t book her. Llangollen does. But that doesn’t count. They’re all mad up there. They booked the most degenerate, filthy and licentious character comic as entertainment on family day at the International Eisteddfod.

And I got my revenge…

In my early twenties, I had a go at Eisteddfods, and made a real arser of it.

“For every class that you enter, you should include with your application a pound coin. Please send them individually, however.”

What, rather than welded together?

Oh, spirits d’escalier’s all very well now.

I stayed with my Uncle Vic in Cefn Fforest. Vic had a fabulous natural tenor, but pissed his talent away. He’s one of those people who don’t go far enough in a career to either succeed or fail and are ever able to say, “I could have…”

It’s never been said that I’ve always been in competition with him. But I have. And it’s been like competing with a lover’s dead ex.

The druids running the Eisteddfod say you don’t have to be a Welsh speaker, just a Welsh pronouncer and getter across of sense of poemer, which I was. You send them your choice of song, and they translate it and send it back. I Will Bring You Trinkets And Toys For Your Delight came back as Gwnaf I Ti Deganau Y Thlyssau Ar Fel Rhos, for example. On the side, I’d had special Welsh coaching from my Aunt Sophia.

So there I was, terrified, at the local junior school, for the first competition I had entered by sending in my non-welded pound coin.

I introduced myself in perfect idiomatic Welsh, “Iestyn Edwards”, tapping my chest, “baritone. Gwnaf I Ti…”

One of the judges stopped the conveyor belt of contestants introducing themselves and their song and off they went to speak to me in Welsh.

Oh, shit…

I tried again.

“Iestyn Edwards, Bariton, Gwnaf I Ti Deganau”, and signed for the pianist to start playing.

The judge spoke to me again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t actually speak Welsh.”

There was a You Made Me Miss silence. The inevitable bible-black-bun-headed, Zeppelin chested, Queen Anne chair-legged soprano, who once sang coughs and spits at Covent Garden and fronted schools music programmes singing I Love Little Fishy, He Swims In The River, He Swims All Day Long while make seal-like movements with her right hand to indicate rising and falling pitch remp’d the silence.

“You have a splendid voice, you have. But we couldn’t let you go up to the field for the next rounds of the contest if you wouldn’t understand what they were saying to you, now could we, no we couldn’t. Oh…”

I was out.

“All that time I spent being chased round catering tents”, said my aunt Sophia, “by those red-faced, string holding up their trousers, reeking of sheep-shit farmers wanting me to line my wellies up with theirs at some back door in the Brecon Beacons telling them “na na” as I ran, which I spent how long teaching you to say because if you pronounce it in the right way you sound legitimate Welsh and everything, and now look. You’re just like the rest of the bloody Silcoxs. None of them would be content with saying two little words – no, come again: just the one word said twice - when a whole bloody irrelevant spiel is there for the saying that’ll get you only something bad.”

Flash-forward fifteen years and I’m back at the Eisteddfod. This time being chauffeured to and fro from Bristol, where I was performing Ballet Star Galactica at the Tobacco Factory. All for my ten minute Scarf Pas De Deux skit. The fee was five months rent.

I was warming down from my set, when a steward ran up.

“Please, they say can you come back and go on again, the audience is leaving ever so sharpish, please.”

Holding my tutu against my belly, I trotted back across the grounds with him. The audience was nearly gone, scrambling up the side of the amphitheatre space like sheep away from one of Aunty Sophia’s farmers. I went into character and cajoled them into coming back for a second Scarf Pas De Deux skit.

“What on earth happened?” I asked the stage manager at fouettés end. She indicated a performer standing chatting to a St. John’s volunteer.

“They thought they’d booked a children’s entertainer, but he wasn’t.”

I could have told them that! I knew him from late night Cobden Club gigs. Which should say it all, but regarding the act in question, doesn’t.

“They booked him for the childrens’ space?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic!”

“No, it’s really upset people. Look how pale everyone is.”

They were. Because the act they’d booked as a childrens’ entertainer actually plays a childrens’ entertainer. Who’s drunk, has a potty mouth, a fake penis hanging half out of his trousers, and a sign across his belly saying Free Sex Here For The Kiddies.

There would be a welcome kept for him in a very few hillsides.

On Politeness

Here's a titbit pertaining to the government initiative to make people more polite.

A few weeks ago juggler Timo Wopp was a guest on Midweek, talking about performances with Medium Rare, a forthcoming season with Cirque De Soleil, and his work as a motivational speaker using the techniques of juggling to solve issues in the workplace. He stayed in the Pink Boudoir at the top of the house where I lodge, and I was asked by Chris Paling, producer of Midweek, to get him to Broadcasting House by eight-thirty in the morning.

Coming back from a fodder run to Tesco Metro the night before, we went via the bus stop for the sake of Doubting Timo.

“About every ten to twelve minutes”, he read out. “Would that not be okay for us tomorrow so early, even though they have missed out from it specific times? Must we really walk as you say?”

“They’ve also missed out from it the words Once Upon A Time. Sorry, but I really think it would be better to walk.”

And walk we did. It took about fify minutes door to door, and we went the scenic route through hard cash and chestnut lined streets. Timo had a suitcase on wheels with him.

“It is so early, I must pick this up and carry it. It will disturb.”

There speaks the artist.

The Show Can't Go On

Yes, I know, it must. And I hardly ever cancel. Maybe seven times ever. I get ice out of the freezer compartment of the fridge to put on whatever ails me, meanwhile making a note to self that there are things to eat in said fridge, think on. And I’m the first person to quote the story of Dame Antoinette Sibley dancing with her cartilege trapped in her knee joint. Not to mention opera singer Maria Malibran getting blisters all round her mouth after she misaimed a bottle of Sal Volatile, and cutting them off because they impeded her jaw drop in Norma. Or Kathleen Ferrier going on with the second act of Orfeo after her femur had crumbled. But this time, the show can’t go on. I’m truly over-injured.

For a while on and off I’ve had arthritis in my left knee. It has been very on since I was dropped mid Pas De Deux at the Old Queen’s Head by an off-duty RMP, and I’ve been walking differently to avoid the pain. How many more times must I be told not to do that? Half way down York Way last Tuesday, my right calf seized up on me. Experience led me to diagnose that it was, and this is a medical term for you here: bruised to buggery. But I had to gig on it that night, because the gig was a corporate, which means a fully stocked chest freezer. And re this particular fee we were talking chest scale of Jordan’s. The show went on.

Can anyone tell me why I wasn't up for this advert?

The gig was for Medium Rare, so I was among friends. I walked quite a lot of the way to the venue, to get things moving. Occasionally, I would stop walking and try to get up on my tip toes. Nothing doing.

Timo, German Juggler, was doing his sound and lighting check when I hobbled into Bush Hall.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh”, he said. “This does not look good with you.”

Preparing for a performance, Timo goes into a focus trance, which his fellow performers quickly learn never to disturb. He’s also very stressed preparing for a long stint with Cirque De Soleil, his motivation business is mushrooming “without that I am trying”. Oh, and it has to be said, he could be the butt of the following joke in place of the tenor:

A baritone comes home to find said tenor shagging his wife.

“What are you doing?!” he demands.

The tenor answers, “Rodolfo at Glyndebourne, a Winterreise at the Wigmore, Tamino in Hamburg...”

So, the way Timo helped me through the evening really touched me.

“Do you think you are able to dance?” he asked.

“That’s the point. I’m not sure. It won’t actually do what I need it to. It won’t move. I’d be okay if it was just a case of going on and dancing through the “ouch” factor.”

As I’ve done in the past. The Bath Festival, for instance, with a double groin strain, Afghanistan with a pulled right calf – Never Has So Much Of Giselle Been Done So Often For So Many On The Wrong Leg – and Swansea with Welsh people.

Sorry, couldn’t resist that. Just a gesture at revenge, there. I had a gig at the Exchange; and I thought, “Exchange as in Corn or Hay”, and expected a theatre. I got into a cab at the station.

“The Exchange, please.”

“You can walk there.”

“Yes, but I don’t know where it is, and the organisers are paying, so it’s fine.”

“But I’m not taking you to that place, so get out of my cab.”

He was already opening the passenger door.

Because The Exchange was a gay club, natch.

I also did a potted (Potty? Ed.) Swan Lake circa 1997 having jumped and gone over my ankle playing Run Outs as Anne Boleyn at Orford Castle, as organised by Beccy Oliver.

Beccy and her games. She planned them for us all summer holidays. The first question she asked when we first met on the sea wall that year was, “Are you still Anne Boleyn?”

“Yes.”

“When does she die?”

“Following through on our time scale: this year.”

“We’ll have a farewell game of Run Outs at Orford Castle for her.”

I was obsessed with Anne Boleyn. All day I’d wear one of the arm protectors from the sofa on my head, sit with my right hand lodged between my man boobs, and wistfully say things like,

“Our happy sighs still murmuring echo at Hever.”

“Henry can give me death, but infamy, no.”

“Queens of England – all of it! - don’t do the Co-op, Ben. And no you can’t keep the change.”

Where Did She Get That Hat? DFS, that's where...

We staged a tableau at the castle. Me in my Anne Boleyn hat, with my Anne Boleyn stick, surrounded by Robbie, Ollie and the Somerville twins. When we got bored and played Run Outs, I did my ankle in.

Holding the X-Rays in her hand, the casualty sister was curious about how developed the muscles in my left foot were. I could tell that she was thinking, “as opposed to anywhere else in your body.”

“I hop on it for Giselle”, I explained.

“Well, that has its minus side: the muscular development has held you back from having a clean break which would have healed quicker and been less painful in the long wrong.”

“But I wouldn’t be able to lame ducks at all on a broken leg”, I said. “So swings and roundabouts.”

Beccy helped me into her 2CV.

“No-one ever knows what you’re going on about, you know that?”

Another of Beccy’s games that year was sending homophobes to talk to me in the pub, “to promote awareness”, she said. After three or four of them, I had quite a routine worked out.

Our finest hour was with Kitty Alderson’s boyfriend, Jeremy, a pig farmer. His complexion was not so much peaches and cream as pork and pink porridge. His hairline was so receding, I thought: give it a couple of weeks and it’ll emerge from his Saville Row collar. He was wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, and I guessed he would have a degree from agricultural college. Not in anything so exciting as cultivating garlic according to the cycles of the moon. No: there was a definite whiff of field drainage about him. He said he had some questions for me.

I looked round a pillar at Kitty and Beccy both smiling at us. One with encouragement, the other with malice.

“There was a gay chap, you see, at my school.”

“Where were you at school?”

“Eton.”

“And there was just the one?”

They can’t pass many statistics exams at Eton, can they?


Old Etonian FJMT. Too much of a temptation, surely...

“I hope you don’t mind me asking these things", said Jeremy. "If it’s a bit impertinent, then tell me to stop.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think what you are is biological?”

“No, that’s washing powder.”

I slapped my thigh. He looked worried, as though this might be some obscure mating ritual.

“Joke”, I explained.

“Oh. Thank you. So, are we saying that it is or it isn’t biological?”

“Isn’t.”

“Then is it hereditary?”

“From which parent?” I answered. “I’d either not be here at all or I’d be a lesbian in that case.”

He wrestled with that, and lost the bout.

“Do your parents know about you?”

“Oh, what!” I said. “Big baby like I was, my mother was sore for weeks afterward. That’s hereditary. She was on such a big scale there was room for the fifth division of the Welsh Guards to join in with her pelvic floor exercises.”

“Do they mind?” he asked.

“Who, the Welsh Guards?”

“No, your parents?”

“Mind?” I said, “mind? They ran it for all it was worth. There’s an old joke, way before your time: Mum, the milkman’s here: have you got the money to pay him or shall I go out and play? Well after I hit sixteen it was my parents that went out. And it wasn’t just the milkman collecting. Oh, no. I had 'em all. The insurance man, double-glazing salesman, Red Cross, Scouts on Bob-A-Job, Meals On Wheels (meant for Big Lill three doors down) – and we must have been the only people in Kennington who had to pay for The Watchtower.”

Seconds away. Lost again.

“That was all another joke, right?”

“One of my stage routines, yes, I have to admit. But I hope all this has helped?”

My favourite game of Beccy’s that year was played on the Meare, in Thorpeness, down the coast from Aldeburgh.

As usual, we tried to steal a boat to take out. After a short detour into the craft shop to look at Hugo Moore in his work vest, we went round the back way over the little fence, out of sight of the boatman.

And we nearly all made it.

“Oi!”

But there he was, all ninety-two smelly stone of him hitching his jeans up galumphing in wellies along the decking. I climbed back over the fence.

“Now look what’s happened”, shouted Beccy.

“Sorry”, she told the boatman, “they went to that school with Sun in the name where they don’t have to do lessons other than creative out-letting, and they have no concept of discipline or morals or consequences. I told them you wouldn’t want them to do that”.

“I don’t care where they went. Pay or you’re not having the boat.”

“You have to give the nice man some money”, Beccy called over.

We had a whip round. The twins rowed. Beccy whispered that you could see up Hugh’s shorts. He had no pants on. This thrilled us.

We passed the theme islands. Wendy’s House, Crocodile’s Lair, Pirates’ Den; and thought up alternatives. Herod’s Grotto, Childcatcher’s Tea Party, Chuckie’s Puppet Theatre. Out of sight of the boathouse, we played Beccy’s new game.

Passing a lone unsteady as she goes kid, we made a note of the name and number of his boat. A few minutes later, we went back alongside.

“Are you in Sheepshanks 367”, Beccy called, being school ma’am. He stopped rowing, checked us out, and looked over the side of his boat.

“Yes, I am”, he said.

“And what’s your name?”

“Tom”.

“Tom what?”

“Tom Baines”.

“That’s him”, Beccy said to our boat. Then back to Tom, “We have a message for you from the boathouse. Your mother rang. You’re to go straight home, please”.

“Are you sure?” Tom asked.

“Don’t question your elders”, Beccy said. “Straight home!”

Tom dipped his left oar to turn the boat.

“And, I hate to have to tell you”, Beccy hurried him along, “but it’s something for you to worry about”.

He lost an oar threshing back to shore.

He was beginner’s luck. We tried four more and got two don’t believe yous, one my mother died, and one just f**k off you big bloody bastards from the tiniest little dolly girl in a yellow cardigan and Alice band.

I wasn’t so much as an eighth of the way into all this before Timo stopped me.

“Let’s keep it on tonight’s show, Iestyn.”

He shadow-boxed, winked when I clocked how pumped of bicep he was looking, and quoted Rocky at me.

“It ain’t over till it’s over.”

“A woman cries, a fighter fights, a ballerina…”

Does the most impossible solo in her repertoire, I decided.

“If I’m going to conk out, it’s not going to be during a Shade’s solo. Bring on Medora from Corsaire. In the Kirov version. Kunakova vintage.”

I had a word with the sound technician, went out there, and nailed it.

“I could see the pain on your face. But only me”, Timo said, when he had finished his own set.

“They started a standing ovation”, I said.

He shrugged. “And they finished it for me.”

Everyone would see my pain today, even way up here on Golgotha. But it’s lonely, just lying in bed waiting to get better.

When I was little I would get my teddy bear, Robert, involved in my ailments, and have him brought to see Dr. Halfpenny with me. I put lipstick dots all over him when I had measles, daubs of cochineal and Parker’s blue-black Quink when my mother got in a frenzy at me with the handle of my toy broom, and sewed chick peas somewhere strategic into him when I had mumps and they spread down where you never want them to.

Okay, okay, I made up that last o...

Stop press…stop press…Mike, my agent, just rang. Some TV people just asked if I could fill it for a pod-cast last minute today.

“Oh no. Not today. I’m injured.”

“You wouldn’t have to do your Pacquita or anything”, Mike said, “just as long as the jokes are there.”

“I can’t stand up for longer than a couple of seconds.”

“They’d probably go as low as Dying Swan…”

“I can’t, Mike. I had to roll out of bed, adagio leapfrog across the carpet and climb hand by hand up the wall till I was standing.”

“Then what?”

“I tried letting go of the wall.”

“They really want you.”

He mentioned a fee.

A future of a fridge full of Waitrose, rather than Morrissons, flashed before me.

I’m now preparing to leave for the studio. I have the CD of Pacquita with me. I’m wearing so many support bandages on my calves, I look like the offspring of Colonel Blimp and The Mummy. I’m about to dose myself with maxi-strength Ibuprofen via a drip and funnels at my either end.

So if I nail it at the filming later on, somebody, finally, had just better name a pudding after me, that’s all!

One that’s suitable for freezing.