24-hour Party People

The onset of ‘24-hour drinking’ may not have meant more drunken behaviour in our towns and cities, but it has certainly meant that more of it gets photographed. The Daily Mail, who are of course against the new licensing laws, uses these pictures of young people pissed and misbehaving as though they constituted an argument in themselves (even if they might easily have been taken five, ten, fifteen years ago). I experienced all the excitement of the transitional period myself, in Brentwood: O’Neill’s was open until 11:30 on Thursday; the Slug and Lettuce until twelve on Friday. The most dramatic thing I saw from the window of the latter was a fake fire engine stopping to offload a group of girls in little black dresses. A ‘fireman’ had to carry them out of the vehicle and deposit them on the pavement. It was supposed to be a fantasy come true; it looked like hard work. The fire engine, which previously had been real, now resembled a toy, labelled as it was with stickers that read (to take one example) ‘Blazing Squad’. It really did look like the prop in a sex fantasy - a bit sad in the cold light of reality. You kept thinking: what if a fire broke out? They’d just have to stand there watching shame-facedly.

On Saturday I attended a ‘Hollywood’ fancy dress party. After weeks of agonizing, I finally hit on the idea of going as Ed Wood, the legendary ‘worst director of all time’, a transvestite with a thing about angora. Obscure? Well yes, but how many film directors have had a film not only made about them but named after them, a film in which they’ve been played by a major Hollywood star (Johnny Depp)? My excitement when at the last moment I found a scarf with angora trim in Edinburgh Woollen Mill knew no bounds; it was as though I’d somehow contracted the late E.W’s fetish. There were problems with the stick-on moustache, but eventually I was sorted (the scarf being my only concession to transvestism). And nobody had a clue who I was, of course. I left before the party really got going, unable to cope with any more variations on the same conversation (‘Who are you?’ ‘Ed Wood.’ ‘Edward who?’).

tv

A visit to a friend’s provided a perfect opportunity to watch a whole evening of TV. Normally, of course, I am very selective in my viewing, watching only the classier programmes such as Eastenders. Now I found myself actually watching Tranny and Suzinna, or whatever they’re called. It was quite disturbing. Members of the public, already quite unstable (as is indicated by their willingness to be on the programme in the first place) are taken into a hall of mirrors and systematically broken down until they admit their worthlessness, at least in terms of clothing choice. If this was made in the former Soviet Union, people would say that it was symptomatic of nostalgia for the good old days of Stalin. Then there was Grand Designs, where people make houses out of unlikely things like rice krispies, and the presenter looks on waiting for it all to go wrong.

On this particular night, as luck would have it, there was a documentary about Take That, in which they were reunited. Except Robbie failed to turn up, of course, leaving the others sitting in a room chatting a little awkwardly, as at a party that hasn’t taken off. Only Jason Orange, now based in Ibiza, failed to give (within my hearing at least) any account of the years since the split, except to say that he’d been suffering from insomnia. It was as though he’d spent all of the intervening years just trying to get some sleep.

Perhaps I’m now addicted to junk TV, since today I even found myself watching a documentary (if that isn’t putting it too strongly) about H from Steps trying to make it as a performer in the West End. I learned a lot about him I hadn’t known before. He’s Welsh. Maybe that’s why he didn’t appear to know that Henry V is anything more than ‘a character in a play by Shakespeare’. And he only knew that because he was having Shakespeare classes. Like Jason Orange, he complains of insomnia, though in H’s case it may be the camera crew in his bedroom that’s to blame.

Saturday night

We went to see a band playing the Essex Arms. They weren’t on, but another band was. Since the only reason we’d been going to see the original band was that they formed part of a regular, rival pub quiz team in the Green Man, there was no real disappointment involved. It wasn't like we'd been going to see Radiohead, and 'Freebird' were on instead, playing covers. In fact, 'Freebird' were good. At least, their guitarist was. Guitar solos are often flabby, yawn-inducing things, especially on occasions such as these; this guy’s were crisp, succinct. The singer was… enthusiastic, managing somehow to remind me of both Will Ferrell and Roland Rat, and the bass player was as concerned with his (blond, shoulder-length) hair as he was with his bass-playing. And rightly so: the way it fell around his head when he tossed it (in a kind of slow-motion, as in the hairspray ads) was something to see. A flyer discovered on the bar told us they were fully-booked until December 2006 (albeit mainly at the social club in Silver End).

Afterwards we went for a curry at the Jubal Raj. Their definition, not to mention their spelling, of a chicken chat masala was quite different from that of the Sakura on the High Street. Well, we were past the station now, on the wrong side of the tracks, as was confirmed when, after leaving, Mat and I watched some drunken woman slapping her (drunker) partner about in the middle of the road.

We got a cab from the rank by the station, this gleaming white space fronted by a miked-up woman in black who looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. She greeted us, and led us to the cab when it came. There was something of the holiday rep about her and indeed the whole place looked like the setting for a minor reality TV show. You had the Chinese(?) guy talking Chinese(?) into his mobile. The Indian(?) guy who greeted Mat familiarly as he walked in, though Mat had no idea who he was. The bloke at the switchboard explaining over and over again to the same caller that there were no cabs available because it was busy. A voiceover was needed to set all this in context: then the whole thing could have played on the fuzzy TV in the corner. And been entirely ignored.

fishy

What have they done to Captain Birdseye? Boatless now, beard and manic excesses trimmed, he sits - in the latest ad - at the front of a classroom, solemnly assuring us that there are no hard-to-pronounce chemicals in his products: ‘Not in my food’, he growls. It’s as though the real Captain Birdseye has been replaced by a government spokesman/tyrant, and all those (potentially embarrassing) hijinks on the high seas with a boatful of prepubescent kiddies have been edited out of history. This guy doesn’t look like he’s even been near a boat. Clearly, he just likes the uniform. You can see a sinister gleam of ambition in his eyes - only the name rankles. Captain Birdseye? It’s just embarrassing. Why can’t he be Admiral Sharkstooth? Or Commander Crabsclaw? Even held back by all the guidelines governing classroom behaviour, you still wouldn’t trust him with your kids.