Wheeee – Kalki the hula girl!
There was a woman from Spymonkey who ejected things with force from under her skirt. There were was Marjo the acrobat-contortionist, trapeze people and a really good ukelele player who sung Minnie the Moocher and Creep by Radiohead. There was a fair bit of piss-taking out of burlesque. There was Frank Sanazi (“he may not be a real nazi but he’ll give you one hell of a gas”) who came on dressed as Hitler and sung reworked Sinatra songs interspersed with stand-up about the Iraq Pack. I thought he might fuck up but he didn’t I don’t think. The Sinatra theme was kind of random I thought, but he was very funny. Stealing glances round the table I saw that everyone else was enjoying it too. Afterwards the only Jewish bloke in our group was the only person wondering what anybody else thought of it – I opined that he lumped Hitler together with Hesbollah, Bin Laden, Saddam and the shoe bomber and that was OK by me, and that as long as Hitler remained an unsympathetic or alien figure, which he did throughout, then it was all OK by me. If, like I say, kind of random (or am I missing a reference somewhere – I’ve never seen Cabaret) and trading just on being clever with lyrics and provoking about taboos. What was it he said – “So Osama killed a lot of people. Well that’s OK. There are plenty of people in the world – that much we know.” The Churchill Comedy Club in Bromley banned him (not sure if they relented later), nevertheless.
Miss Behave, whose variety night this was, is a very funny and commanding woman who swallowed swords in a rubber suit which flung big splashes of perspiration about every time she gestured. As soon as she got started I realised with a sickening jolt that this was Amy Saunders whom I had heard on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek a few months back (jump to 8 minutes 20 on the recording) recount how she nearly died after nicking her innards without realising and slowly haemorrhaging over the following hours. After that I couldn’t look (I usually I prefer to watch difficult things like this, violent drama and the last 400m of the men’s 10k open water marathon swim, reflected in Matt’s glasses where they’re diminished in size and I can see his beloved face at the same time, but being in public this would have been unacceptable to him) so I turned away and squeezed my eyes shut until I heard the applause.
This ends tomorrow – I think it’s very good.
Beforehand we ate at the (vegan) Thai Buffet close to Camden Tube where you can get seitan (mock duck – i.e. gluten – wheat protein) in 10 or so different formats and salads, rice, noodles and dumplings aplenty. These are all over London now. Buffet is the most enjoyable way to eat out in my opinion – this particular one is not for the gluten-intolerant though.
And now to my friend’s bbq-cum-gig. This has been an excellent holiday so far.
Flesh is Grass 