West End Weekend.

My lovely mother came to visit me last week, and when people come to visit me I become this raging tourist. On any other weekend, I would find eating a cheese and pickle sandwich on Piccadilly Circus a bit of a nightmare. But a relative is down, so it is a form of forced fun/torture. We went to see two shows, which were very different. I'm about to express my thoughts on both which I'm sure you'll find highly entertaining, *Sarcastic laughter*.

The first show I went to see was 'Billy Elliot' and it was fucking phenomenal. I went to see it 6 years ago, and it was the musical that got me interested in musical theater. If it wasn't for this musical, I probably would of thought Les Misérables was a bit shit. I am not shamed in saying that I cried a lot during this musical. I'm not sure why, but recently I've become this huge cry baby, or as some might say, a pussy. The show has the same story line as the film, so if you haven't seen the film (shame on you), here is a brief plot summary. The show is about a young gay boy who's not gay, but his friend is, growing up in a mining community in the North East of England during the 1980, when good old Margaret Thatcher (sarcasm) decided to take on the miners' union, and won. Which actually had a huge impact on UK politics, society and culture. The boy's name is Billy, and he wants to be a ballet dancer, but his 'lad dad' (good phrase, isn't it?) isn't happy with this, and needs to come to terms with Billy's talent. I won't go any further as I don't want to ruin it.

The songs in the show are pretty good, but not as good as other musicals like Les Mis or Wicked. It's the plot and the visuals which stood out the most during the performance. The use of contrast in this musical is amazing, with little ballet dancers and protesting miners singing about solidarity will certainly leave you in this goosebump/sobbing state, which will stay with you for at least another week. At one point I ran to the toilet, and came back to a giant effigy of Margaret Thatcher, maybe 20 or 30 feet tall. Underneath all that was about a dozen human-sized Margaret Thatchers. I thought I fell asleep during my piss and wondered into this, what surely had to be, the worst nightmare of my life. But it wasn't. Then it sunk in. I laughed.

Before I move on to the next show, I would just like to say that Billy's grandmother is a fucking legend. Oh, and I highly recommend this show. It's probably my favourite musical that I've seen (and I've seen a fair few).

Right. Oh God. The next show I went to see was Viva Forever. Like many a child of the 90s, my awkward years of being a confused, knob-head of a child were dominated by the Spice Girls, who probably defined my ongoing love affair with pop music. I heard the reviews were mixed by the fans and negative by journalists, but I did not let this get to me. In fact I was so excited about going to see Viva Forever that I had about 6 drinks before curtain-call. I was excited, optimistic and absolutely plastered. This certainly worked to my advantage, because looking back at the show, it was pretty crap, but I had a marvelous time. Never have I ever seen a theater so full of drunk people, that got up to dance at every opportunity possible.


The plot focuses on this girl named Viva who was in a girl band that was forced to split-up during an X-Factor-like show, leaving her on her own, trying to find herself, etc, etc. You can certainly tell that the musical is written by Jennifer Saunders, with a blatant Ab Fab consciousness, and in some ways, this makes the musical a bit better. Anyway I have mixed feelings about this musical and most of them are negative, so I'm going to make a bullet pointed list of what I learnt during this survival camp musical.

• Musicals about being famous are as ridiculous/shit as they sound.
• Props that appear from no-where and revolving things are always cool, but don't make the musical any better.
• 'Headlines' is still shit.
• 'Viva Forever' should never be tampered with, especially when it's a Spanish man with an acoustic guitar that's doing it.
• Thongs are always funny.
• 'Too Much' has always been a song about pubes after all.

That is it! I give Viva Forever a 4 out of 10 stilettos, and wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless you are the worlds biggest Spice Girls fan and/or are absolutely wasted and want a good night out with your girls.

GIRLS ALOUD/TEN TOUR: A REVIEW

So I went to see Girls Aloud on Sunday and it was a pretty amazing night. Amelia Lily opened and she was pretty good at warming up the crowd. When she was announced as support act I was very happy, but like every concert I go to, she wasn't the reason I bought the ticket. The girls (ALOUD) opened up with 'Sound of the Underground' and it was absolute perfection. They finished with 'The Promise', which again, was absolute perfection. Here is a bullet pointed list of the other things I found good and what I didn't find so good.

THE ALOUD

•  THE FUCKING ENTRANCE!!!!
• THEY FLEW ACROSS THE AUDIENCE ON A HUGE 'GIRLS ALOUD' BANNER. Amazing.
• Nicola Roberts .
• Two words. Act Three. It included probably everyone's favourite Girls Aloud songs (Sexy! No No No..., Untouchable, On The Metro and Call The Shots).
• UNTOUCHABLE!!!
• Nicola Roberts.
• They covered the much respected, cultural icon that is, Carly Rae Jepsen.
• Something New was fucking mental.
• Doing 'The Promise' choreography with some stranger.
• BIOLOGY!!!
• Nicola Roberts.

 THE NOT SO ALOUD

• Nadine Coyle's accent.

And that's pretty much my experience summed up. Before I go to watch 'The Devil Wears Prada', here are some Instagram pictures I took during the show. You can follow me on Instagram here.

 BYE!

Bikini Bottom of the Love Chain

Moving to London was one of the best decisions of my life, and like most Londoners, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my flat should I get killed during the day. What if someone pushes me onto the underground tracks? Or if I accidentally blow up? Or if a lady with a pram studs my big toe making me fall in front of a double-decker bus? What then? After I get rushed to hospital and the sheets cover my face. After my funeral and all the cheese and pickle hedgehogs have been demolished. What will happen?

Back in my little room will be an unmade bed with my dishes still unwashed in the kitchen. The day I get shot in the corner shop (buying fags, naturally) will be laundry day with all my clothes on the floor, but I opted to watch 'Modern Family' all day in my onsie instead. I picture, quite frequently, my parents coming down to London to collect my things and clean out my room and they enter a room so disgusting that they'll actually be angry with me, even though I'll be six feet under.

Whilst my parents are discovering my huge collection of gay lifestyle magazines, and finding my giant stash of 54 condoms I took from the university nurse during freshers week. They will also probably come across my mini Spongebob Squarepants figure collection kept in a shoebox under my bed. There are about 8 mini figures that I have collected since my mid-teens. Every time I saw one of those toy vending machines that had a Spongebob inclusion, I wouldn't hesitate to waste a £2 coin, even if it was shiny. The sad thing about the collection is, that the most recent addition to the collection was only three weeks ago, when I saw a vending machine at a M4 services.

I'm not exactly sure how the Spongebob thing happend, but it has happened, and there's no going back now. I was quite a Spongebob fan as a youngster, but not in a way where I would ask my parents for paraphernalia. I guess I just like the fact that they're little and cute. Plus I always thought that if Spongebob was in office he would legalise gay marriage immediately. And thus the Spongebob shoebox came to be.

It's uncomfortable to admit, but I've been given Spongebob figures on two occasions by my past lovers. My ex-boyfriend back when I was in Wales gave me one on Valentines day. I know it seems like a pathetic gift in comparison to chocolate, but we'd only been seeing each other a week before V-Day. Then before Christmas, when someone came back to mine after a night out, he found the Spongebob collection. A week later I had a little gift from the same person, a limited edition, baywatch-esque, mini Spongebob figure. These figures are becoming a symbol that marks the beginning of a relationship. Kinda cute, right? But I was thinking last night, that the whole Spongebob thing is equally as cute as it is creepy. The Spongebob gift is the beginning of a romantic repertoire of private jokes within my relationships (which is how I think all relationships are focused on), and a chance for all my future boyfriends (every member of One Direction) to see how much of a slut I was before them. So I'm not sure what to do with the figures.

What if, these Spongebob figures, if by accident, come to represent the most overtly sentimental parts of my life? Because both relationships that had Spongebob gifts included, have ended, and ended badly. But I couldn't throw them away because I already had a collection before both relationships. They are my odd little secret, if you will.

Unfortunately the creepy overrides the sentimental and whilst writing this, I've put the Spongebob shoebox in the bin, and the bin is almost ready to go outside and into the skip. I created this ideology and now I need to uncreate it. When I fall down a montain, get trampled on by scaffolding or eaten by a Lion that escaped from London zoo, a shoebox will not represent my pathetic love life. The real proof that I was loved and did love could never fit in a converse box.