Madame Galina's Doings Diary

The Shirley Basseyness Of Butch.

Oh my christened niece, there was an advert for a Christmas Club on cable last night.

"Spread the cost of having the best Christmas ever."

August 29th, this is. Synchronicity, because in an article for The Times a while ago I wrote that the best Christmas I ever had was one I spent alone cooking-along-a-Delia-and-Nigella and reading Rumpole for the first time, and over the Bank Holiday weekend just gone I read She and found the source for Rumpole referring to Hilda as She Who Must Be Obeyed!

And there’s more…

She Who Must Be Obeyed says, “(But) that is the fashion of these savages who lack imagination and fly to the beasts they resemble for a name", which made me think of director Neale "I Don't Care That You Got A Standing Ovation, You Were God Awful" Simpson forbidding me to use comparisons when I wrote the brochure copy for Ballet Star Galactica.

“Big whoop de doo they’re from Audience Survey Forms so you’re not making them up. You’re not using “Like a terpsichorean Pam Ayres on acid” or anything shitly like it, and that’s that.”

Neale is too big in TV to bother with poor little me any more. So I can use Audience Survey Form comparisons and he won’t know. “Must be the result of a drunken one-night stand between Tommy Cooper and Margot Fonteyn” being the most useful ever. I fed it in a press release to journalists in the North and the Liverpool Post reviewer was good enough to use it in a quote. It’s in my CV now.

I love audience survey forms. People are asked to write down suggestions for future performances (doing National Rural Touring Scheme gigs in Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire I get umpteen requests for The Old Rugged Cross, jingoism and the reinstatement of capital punishment) and to comment on the present one.

I’ve had:

“Exactly the right size for the venue”.

“I’ll make all my mates come and see him at his next gig in Brecon. Fabulous. We didn’t know what it was at first, and I was the one drew the short straw who had to come and watch to find out. All the rest of them looked at the flyer and thought who wants to go and see that fat poof?”

“We couldn’t decide if he looked more like the man who does the china on the Antiques Road Show that isn’t either someone’s father or son also on the programme – possibly dead? - or Anne Widdecombe.”

Luke Jennings writing in The Guardian recently compared Bolshoi principal Nikolai Tsiskaridze to Shirley Bassey, pointing up the way Tsiskaridze clutched at an imaginary string of pearls.

And I was wafted – poof! - back to my early twenties playing Captain Petrovich in Eugene Onegin with British Youth Opera.

The great bass Robert Lloyd, President of BYO, prophesied,

“You will perform the roles after which you most hanker”.

Which put the kaibosh on the male operatic roles as far as I was concerned. Dull buggers. I hankered to play Odette/Odile, Giselle, Aurora and Nikya. Notice that the Sugar Plum Fairy isn’t on the list. I hate it. Well, the moment she gets out of that boat on the Rose Hip River we’re off on the wrong tack. (See what I did there?) All those high flutes meant to be supporting the trickiest choreography? My juices just don’t flow when all I’ve got under my big entrance is flutter-tongue.

Now, I’m a slow penny-drop performer. Ask Jamie Hayes, who directed Thieving Magpie in the same season as the run of Eugene Onegin.

“Iestyn’s a slow penny-drop performer”, I overheard him telling an exasperated stage manager. “He gets that look on his face of someone sitting in the dentist’s chair trying to pretend they’re not afraid of the drill, and it means he’s taking it on board. I’ve learned to wait and then he’ll show me that’s he got it. Be patient.”

Bless Jamie. He later thought of me for the role of Albert in Albert Herring.

“Vocally, you’d have been perfect, I thought. (I’d have worried about the hiccup written on the top C Flat, myself.) But portraying innocence? No. Having been round the block a few times tart with a heart sort of thing could have been written for you. But unsullied? I didn’t think you’d get that quality into your portrayal.”

I never got Captain Petrovich in Eugene Onegin. Mainly because of the dancing. I had to waltz to Tchaikovsky and look military. All the other times I’ve waltzed to Tchaikovsky I’ve had to look Lilacy, Swan Queeny or Sugar Plummy. (I know. But Christmas corporates…) Even the Tony Award winning choreographer Terry John Bates couldn’t get me to look military. Though he had a good bloody go.

“Stand in a strong position.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘No.

‘Nearly…

…no.”

“Hand upturned and arm straight when you waltz, how many more times? You’re showing that you’re a sex-on-legs killing-machine, you’re not simpering under your right wing while the Prince has it out with the Muppet owl thing in the upstage right corner.”

“Don’t clutch at the collar of your uniform like that. If you’re going for hand over heart Russian formal, then it’s flat and strong with the hand. What you’re doing looks like a hyphenated hag from the Cotswolds clutching at her pearls.”

See? It happens to the best of us.

In Heaven It Is Always Autumn

I just quoted John Donne while looking out of the window.

But it’s August at the moment so can heaven please wait? Oh, and talking of looking out of the window, someone please put a stop to the man opposite. The way he stares into his window boxes really annoys me while I’m trying to write.

Anal, anal contemplate the blooms. And now shift gaze oh so definitely to the next spray. Contemplate contemplate. Analize on ad nauseum.

He doesn’t have a job, you see. And as Noelle Barker, head of vocal studies during my time at Guildhall, said: “You must learn the total concentration of contemplating flowers, for one example, to get you through the tough times when you’re not working.”

Ah, I knew there was a point to the man and the flowers: advice.

As a number of people e-mailed asking for more advice (see Advice, funny that) here we are with some. Wait…hang on: this is aimed at the Alex Warren actor toing and froing between the Hen And Chickens* and Edinburgh type bod: I’m not expecting ballet regular Tuck Owen to suddenly appear in full frou-frou giving the regulars at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern Italian fouettés and four-letter words.

Though of course she must feel free.

*Where I did Edinburgh previews of Ballet Who?! And NB it’s called The Hen And Chickens, pace Michael Nunn calling it The Chicken Shed.

I thought we’d cover networking today. It’s on the stocks because I shamelessly approached PR guru Faith Wilson at the general of Class/Elsinore/The Upper Room and told her she needed to know who I was so she could network on my behalf.

On Networking.

Take every opportunity, I say. But one thing before we go any further, and writ large: Never work a room after someone else’s show unless they’ve said it’s okay.

When you are introducing a fellow performer to networkees, do it properly. Don’t do a Sam. Sam’s an ex (because he’s a twat) pupil of mine. In the bar after a profit share he produced, directed and starred in, he introduced me to a TV producer.

“I’m stringing him along”, Sam whispered, leading me to the table, “giving him just enough of an impression that I’ll bite the pillow for him.”

Now that Sam’s nose, paunch and ego had outstripped his late-teen prettiness, I wouldn’t have thought...

“Everybody”, Sam trilled, “this is Iestyn my voice coach.”

I took him to one side as I was leaving.

“Sam, being your voice coach is way down my CV after my being the reigning Prima Ballerina, the man of choice for a semi-sentimental Sea Song, stalwart of the National Rural Touring Forum, Sex And The City slash Mapp And Lucia slash cleaning with Bicarbonate Of Soda aficionado.”

Try to emulate Diana Quick. She can slip a whole CV into one brisk sentence.

“This is Miranda Hart, who does a fabulous one woman show that gives me asthma laughing…”

“This is Lizzie Roper, you probably saw her on BBC1 in…”

When you ring someone for their contacts, be up front about it. I much preferred getting this text after my Whirlwind Guide to Ballet aired on Channel 4:

…“You jammy bastard. What can you do for me?”…

to being rung up by Sam.

“Hi, sweetie”.

“Hi, Sam”.

“You gorgeous?”

“Not for me to say.”

(I would have answered “yes” at any other time, but I knew what he was after).

“I hear you were just prime time. Talk me through that”.

“Oh, you know, it…”

“I googled”, Sam interrupted, as somebody other than himself was speaking, “and it was a Sceptre Production for Channel 4. Did they read your unsolicited script, or something?”

“No, they heard about me”.

“From that church hall thing you put on in Aldeburgh?”

Four years before, for Christ’s sake…

“No. From touring”.

“Suffolk, still?”

“Europe.”

NB: When you guess what is on somebody’s up to date CV, guess up, not down.

Or get punched.

“Oh, right. Yes”, Sam went on, “they’re telling me to get my arse over to Europe – and America. Not literally get my “arse” over there…I’m not needing to getting jobs that way yet.”

(See previous comment re nose, paunch and ego.)

“But to get to the point. I’m putting on a showcase lunchtime event at a just slightly off west-end venue. Do you know the Etcetera in Camden?”

Yep. From when I always say “no thank you” very politely to the dealers standing three deep outside on my way first to KFC for a Popcorn Wrap and then to Prowler for porn.

“Always stuff going on there”, I said.

“It’s tomorrow at one thirty. I would have invited you before, of course…”

But you hadn’t heard I’d been on TV then.

“It’s taken me forabsolutelyever to find your number. Ransacked everything. You know how it is.”

I don’t: never having blitzed my bed-sit while not looking for someone’s number in my mobile even though I know that’s where it is.

“So, listen. I’ll put you down for a freebie, plus one. I’m sure you’re best buddies now with the Sceptre crowd, and one of them would jump at the chance for a spot of lunch and loveying with you.”

Oh, he was good.

“I’ll bring my mate Trevor”, I said.

“Is he from television?”

“Architecture.”

“What?”

“Trevor’s an architect. Own company – that’s why he could work round coming to the play at lunchtime.”

“Iestyn – I don’t want to build houses.”

Going back to what I said about coming to the point, don’t be an Anke.

Anke’s a Marlene Dietrich tribute act. She’s slightly unusual in that she’s female. When we had been on the same bill at Club Kabaret a couple of times, she asked for my number. And rang me. This is what she said:

“Hello darling, it’s Anke. Lovely to hear your voice. Didn’t the audience adore you whenever it was we performed together?”

How could you tell when most of them were in toilet cubicles snorting off their plastic?

“And I was amazed that I got asked to do all those encores.”

She didn’t get asked. The DJ was getting head in the back of his booth again and he let her backing CD run on. And on. And on. And on. Tattoo’d Jewess Burlesque stripper Marissa eventually flapped out of the dressing-room and pressed “stop” during the second verse of Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

“And I was still a bit under the weather, you know.”

She had been sent home the week before because the rash clearly visible through her fishnets looked like small-pox.

“But I have to pay the rent, and my landlord is saying he will put it up again.”

That’s one way of paying it.

“So I’ll be scrabbling around for every last penny down the backs of chairs, the sofa, old handbags, the rubber round the door of the washing machine. Do you know my friend, who does the lesbian act ranting in the braces wearing nothing on top? She says she’s started going round the rubber in the launderettes round…where does she live again? Can’t remember. Maybe Ladbroke Grove. Anyway, all round wherever it is that she lives and she gets the odd pound coin, you’d be surprised. One time she even got a couple of pfennigs. The managers now throw her out when they see who it is. She’s a bit conspicuous on the crutches, isn’t she?”

She broke her leg in four places when she fell out of a penis with Prince Albert birthday cake, through a table and off the stage while ranting lesbianically topless at a surprise fetish party.

“But at least she can look back and have no regrets about the launderettes because she made hay while the sun was shining. How are you, darling?”

I said I was very well, and waited.

“Because I notice that you are performing at the Popcorn Club. Shall I send my publicity to them? Maybe you have a number for them? Could I say you recommended me?”

“I got it through a mutual friend, so I don’t know the booker, so it would mean nothing to him being told I sent you, but send the stuff in”, was the most tactful way to put it.

You must be careful about recommending and letting people use your name.

But bless Anke she always tried to give something back.

“And in return, I can give you the number for the cruise liner I’ve just been on. It’s only the sales department, but they can put you through – you’d be perfect for what I just did. It was across to Zeebrugge and back”.

To Calais it’s a beer run, to Holland dope, to Belgium it’s a bore.

Doing what, I wondered.

“And they wanted…”

Sorry, can I just flag up how wary you have to be of people that say “they”. That’s twice now, counting Sam before. To avoid the albeit rudimentary forensic examination, Lizzie Borden took off the dress that she had 99.999999% certainly been wearing when she made parent steak tartare and said it was because “they” told her to. Why would “they?” Mr. and Mrs. Borden were found looking like someone had used them as get-your-hands-dirty art, but “they” were worried about how presentable Lizzie looked?

Anyway, Anke’s on this ferry…

“And we were in the bar to add to the atmosphere, you see, all being look-y-likeys. There was a Humphrey Bogart, a Frank Sinatra, a Marilyn Monroe…and I thought you could go next time.”

“As what?”

“As look-y-likey Margot Fonteyn.”

Of, of course. All fifteen stone of me.

People would think Margot had never died.

The Light Of Aspiration Needs Its Bulb Changing

I got lost on the way back from the library and ended up walking past the Emirates Stadium. Oh good, I thought, Highbury Station must be nearby and I can get the tube into town and won’t be late for the Bolshoi rehearsal. Outside the stadium was a film crew. Oh, God, I thought: all that starting up again. Hours and hours and hours of it all over the TV. (I’ve just signed up for Virgin’s Three For Thirty package and got Sky TV apropos, so could now watch Football, Will And Grace and Most Haunted all day every day.)

“But not one broadcast of the Bolshoi Ballet in the best form ever”, I said aloud, getting a look from some teens wearing Arsenal shirts.

Why do football supporters feel the need to wear their team’s kit? Balletomanes don’t wear tutus. And what’s all this “we” business as in, forgive me if I simplify here, “We should have kicked the ball more in the other team’s goal?” You don't hear balletomanes saying, “We should have been more on straight legs underneath with more epaulement on top and not overdone the ruffling of the imaginary wing feathers.”

“Not one…”, I said again, stopping to a packet of reds only Starburst from a kiosk.

Later, when I saw that in an ad for a pizza restaurant the model licking her finger was grimacing and that in an advert for a gym the model had the greyish colouring that Mrs. Thompson (Sue) will tell you is a sign that blood is not getting to the skin and death’s sting is unsheathed, it hit me. Even advertisers don’t want us to aspire any more. This pizza isn’t very nice and you’ll look like a steroidal zombie if you go to this gym. They’ve caught on that telling us that something is excellent will make us pass on it.

For me, it’s all in the TV personalities. We used to have the likes of Sister Wendy. Now we have the disgusts of Jade Goody. And, follow me here, we have Jade Goody Does Opera in the form of Katherine Jenkins et al, following in the wake of the Channel 4 programme Operatunity where we were led to believe that it was possible to train opera singers to a standard of excellence without nine years of slog.

Bull, Madame, bull…

The Bolshoi Ballet is a last bastion. Fast track a Nikya to Zakharova’s standard, or Lunkina’s? No. And the proof that we are not all born equal and that some go so far as to strive are what would make it unpalatable viewing for the ignorant.

And we wouldn’t want any misaiming of Jade Goody Plump And Pouty Glitter Lip Gloss, would we?

Wot, No Bus Stop?

I’ve been to the Bolshoi.

Can I first remind anyone who thinks that the Corsaire was too long that it’s a classical ballet not an episode of CSI? Perhaps you’d like a new edition of Anna Karenina where the story starts with her setting off for the station.

Out in force at the Coliseum were members of the Orpington Society For The Prevention Of Foreign Ballet.

“Of course the Russian brass sound like that: mafia flat heads punch the players in the mouth repeatedly to tenderize their embouchure.”

“Of course Lunkina uses her back that expressively: Putin had it broken in four places and reset before her house debut as Nikya.”

“Of course Zakharova uses her feet like that. When she was three her mother cut them off and sewed them back on slightly skewed.”

At least OSPFB members don’t get nostalgic about the Russians as they do about Lesley, Bruce and Johnny; though one did lean at me with that doctor’s got your test results and the news is grim smile to point out that the cabriole Shade solo that Osipova had surely just done better than anyone had ever done it “Was Monica’s, of course...”

But how’s this for nostalgic silliness? As the three-ninety bus turned left at the Dominion last Tuesday afternoon, I overheard an old Spanish woman sigh, “There used to be a bus stop just just there. They took it away or something. You never see anyone waiting for a bus there any more now.”