The script-writing progressed well today - still a lot to achieve if I want to get it finished tomorrow, but it's achievable. Once again I got most of the best work done in the evening. This year I have been gigging most nights and it's hard to get into writing in the daytime with a performance looming. But tonight I got an excited feeling in my stomach as I wrote, which is either a good sign for the project or means I had indigestion. It's rare that a script stirs me like this and I am hopeful that I might be getting somewhere. Keep everything crossed. And I am going for the final push tomorrow (though might wait til Monday so I can mull it over before I send it in).
Taking a break I watched a bit of Top of the Pops 1976 on BBC4. Showaddywaddy were on and somehow, using some incredible 70s special effects or possibly just a very bad continuity error, the band went from wearing white suits in one shot, to black suits in the next one and then back and forth. I think the nine year old me saw this and was amazed by the quick changes. We were more feckless and easily impressed back then. Which is how Showaddywaddy were able to get in the charts.
But the 9 year old me loved these cheeky chancers and the 44 year old me enjoyed seeing them again. They looked like a load of jack-the-lads who knew they had got lucky but were enjoying that luck - one of them seemed to be chewing gum as he waited to sing "Under the moon of love." I'd rather Showaddywaddy got the break than Westlide. But lead singer Dave Bartram had the showbiz swagger and a touch of Jagger and enjoyed getting down on his knees and pretending to flirt with the 15 year old girls dancing in front of him. It didn't even seem that wrong, it was such a pantomime. Though the girls seemed amazingly unimpressed with his jacket changing colour.
This band is so of the 1970s that it's actually difficult to imagine that they are not frozen in time - in fact it feels very wrong for them not to still be in their 20s or 30s. It makes me sadder that those gum chewing idiots are older than the fact that I am older. If there was a God then Showaddaywaddy would be 25 forever. But I went to look them up on wikipedia
to see where they were now, how old they were and if they were alive. Aside from Bartram the band are all in their 60s now (Dave is 59) but I was pleased to see they were all still living. Then I realised that they weren't. Buddy Gask had sadly died this year. But still not a bad survival rate for a band, especially one with so many members. Bartram is going to give up before he turns 60 though, according to the unreliable website he is playing his last gig on 3rd December in West Yorkshire. Will the band survive without him? It's sort of wonderful that they have kept going this long, that nostalgia is enough of a fuel to keep a career burning for a lifetime (if only on a low flame).
Mud have not fared as well
Fifty per cent of that band is dead including the once chubby faced and boyish Les Gray, whose rapid ageing prompted me to write a joke in the mid-90s about the Portrait of Les Gray - Les Gray has a portrait in his attic and however ravaged and skeletal Les becomes the portrait always stays exactly the same. It wasn't a great joke and wasn't helped by the fact that the intersection of people aware of both the works of Oscar Wilde and the history of 1970s bands was quite small. It made me wonder if anyone had ever done a joke with Phil Collins trying to smuggle his band through customs and stating, "I have nothing to declare but my Genesis". I know it wasn't really "his" band, but he'd be the one most likely to waver at the last minute and admit his people smuggling. I think as a genre the Wilde/70s bands jokes are probably not going to be the thing that breaks me.
Darts were my personal favourite of the Doo-wop bands of the 70s, and have as impressive a survival rate as Showaddywaddy, having only lost pianist Hammy Howell. I didn't particularly care for their music, but was a big fan of wild-eyed singer
Den Hegarty, mainly because he was always looning around and I always preferred comedy to music. He even ended up on Tiswas, the favourite show of my childhood (and still up there as an adult) though not sure his era on the programme was that golden. But it's incredible how that childhood affection transcends time. I still love Den Hegarty. Hope you're well and happy if you're googling yourself.
But I was made aware that I myself am just as much a part of that nostalgia entertainment when I was shown the
BBFC page for Fist of Fun to see we've been given a 15 certificate. Hard to believe that anyone who was 15 or under wouldn't have even been alive when this series was made! So can't imagine we really need that certificate (though I know there are a few younger fans who have discovered the show on Youtube). It's only available from
Go Faster Stripe (and from Stew and me at gigs) and will be out, so Chris Evans (not that one) claims on 6th December. So you'll have it by Christmas. Do check out the rest of their catalogue too while you're there. Some brilliant DVDs from some of the country's best comedians (and Andrew Collings).
That's it. Nine years of blogging every single day completed. We shall save any celebrations until the anniversary tomorrow, but let's just say for now what an amazingly ridiculous thing to have done. Hope you've enjoyed some of it. A monument to the pointlessness of existence.
And while I am plugging there's a generous Christmas offer from the Lyric theatre for this Sunday's show starring Peter Serafinowicz, Jarred Christmas, Joe Lycett and Helen Arney (alas Francesca Martinez is ill so unable to do it) - tickets are just £10 if you quote NOV in the code box on the order form
on the website. Or if you ring up, just say NOV! Please spread the news - this is a great bill and deserves a full house.
