Lee hates Twilight, you know

There's no reason for the title of this post other than to fiddle with the feed on a friend's blog. There is no content to this post. I'm still working on Amazing And Lovely Things in an office for a few weeks - hence the lack of updates as I'm just too tired. My idea of an exciting evening is to flop down in front of the fire, watch something on BBC Four and then crawl into bed.

I did manage to go round and see some A-gays this week. They sat there in their beautiful Shoreditch apartment. We ate pancakes (carbs) with reckless abandon (we may even have had two each).

One of the A-gays opened a box of chocolates, took out one, ate half of it and then dropped the rest onto his plate ("eurf! stuffed!" he sighed).

They may have glowed like Robert Pattinson in a wood as they told me about their weekends. I'd forgotten that gays go out and do stuff.

Last Saturday I went out for a quick gay drink then checked out Tesco for reduced bargains. At the same time, one of them had gone to a party, then a barge after-party, then all-back-to-mine-for-an-orgy.

He flapped a hand in the air. "Oh, I was busy. I was like Old Street."
"Really?" I said, "Six entrances all filled with tramps?"

I nearly... very nearly...

have finally sorted out something. Something which has been cooking since November. And which will be rather nice. As it is, paperwork has started up which reassures me that it's all real. Nope, it's not another lovely writing project, but it's almost as much fun.

In the meantime, they've finished work on the local Centre For Troubled Youth. After six months of rough Polish builders going in and out of a place full of troubled young men. Yes, it's been like one of those inappropriate films you hear about.

But what does the finished thing look like? Very odd. It's like a gay recruitment centre. It's like they've built an old-fashioned two-up two-down in the middle of a Kings Cross housing estate... but out of bronze. Like a spaceship crashed down from Planet Suburbia. I must take a picture. It's just bafflingly garish.

UPDATE: Tada!

Drag Me To Hell

Last night lovely Ben took me for an evening of cabaret.

One of the acts was a very beautiful man who explained how when he was 24 he thought he'd been an alien and had recorded an album in his bedroom called "Alienathan" which he then sang songs from. They were all awful and we all laughed and gradually he told more stories and explained his betrayal by his lover and he passed round his bankruptcy proceeding papers and it all got dark and sinister and then he sang a duet with a recording of his younger self, and some of us may just have cried at how sad growing up is.

I'm not quite sure when I remembered I'd once tried to ask him out at University, but I made an utter mess of it. Later on he starred in a one-man Hamlet with finger-puppets and self-harm which was brilliant.

He was followed by a performer called Dickie Bow who did what's probably deconstructionist drag, examining subtly why it is that men dress up as women in the first place. It was clever and moving and poetic.



Sadly, he was followed by "Miss Kimberley", an act so awful I actually felt a bit funny. It was like Dickie Bowe hadn't happened. This was a New York trash tranny in a big wig, all ancient 'tude and unfunny snap. It was like discovering an Aldi knock-off of Ru Paul. She wasn't funny, she wasn't clever - she was just there. And there was a queasy tang of misogyny on the dry ice, which doesn't look good on a gay and looks terrible on a drag queen. It's as outdated as Bernard Manning. There's a difference between a man wearing a frock as a laugh and doing it to get what felt like... revenge. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, but it somehow made me think about standing in Trafalgar Square a few months ago, and it made me wonder what the point was when there's this kind of thing on. *shrugs* But that's my view. She had her fans in the audience who loved every minute of it.

House of Dark Shadows

And, thrillingly, my Dark Shadows audio has been announced. For those of you going "Dark Whut?", it's about a vampire sharing a house with a werewolf and a ghost.

Only, this time... the house has stairways through time, there's a mad woman in the attic, the Severed Hand of Count Petofi stalks the corridors, and, while Magda the Gypsy turns over her tarot cards, the troubled daughter of the sinister Reverend Trask has been possessed by the spirit of the mystic showgirl Pansy Faye.

It's addictive stuff. And coming soon is a Tim Burton film.

In the stars

According to "Star" magazine:

Virgo - cosmic changes trigger excitement and an important project begins. For Jennifer Hudson it's playing Winnie Mandela. For you it could be a new job or a fresh routine.

One last time

My first Doctor Who audiobook comes out on the 4th March. Could this be David Tennant's final perfomance as the Doctor before he's resurrected in 3D-CGI for "The 79 Doctors" in 2150 AD? Nah, probably not. But I'm bloody thrilled with it. The research gave me a chance to re-read Kenny Everett's marvellous autobiography "The Custard Stops At Hatfield", so if there are any factual errors it's either me or the weird things Kenny was taking to try and cure his seasicness.

It is possibly the first Doctor Who text ever to mention The Singing Nun. This pleases me.

You can pre-order it from Play.com now.