The green thing on the right is attached to me!
LOL
Pigalle gig
I had been slightly stressed on Tuesday because I had to leave early for
no real reason apart from the fact that I was seeing George in London that
evening. But because it was relatively quiet at work, it didn't seem to
matter much that I left at 3 PM. I had had my one-to-one with Amanda
earlier during which she revealed the shocking news to me. Shocking to
me only - very happy news to everybody else! When I came out of the
meeting I sat glaring for a while and Muriel asked if I didn't feel like
working. And then she asked: "Has she told you?", and we cracked up!! John
doesn't know yet, so for once I know something he doesn't. Or maybe he
knows but hasn't told anybody yet...
I arrived in London on time and was at the hotel by 6:30. I was ready to go out by 7:30, which was very early. Sybille and Kristine, and Kenneth and Tanya, were already dining right in front of the stage, whilst I had to wait behind the invisible line that separated the awkward "Standing" guests fro the dining VIPs. I was talking to Julia and drinking a lot of cranberry juice. Helga was there as well.
Amanda started the show at around 9, looking gorgeous in a black knitted jumper dress. She played 2 new songs, and was doing very well. George was on about 30 minutes after her. (I'm not going to turn up before 9 next time!) He had the whole crew on stage with him: John, Kevan, Ritchie... etc. He started with Czech, and also played Only Are, which was unusual, but worked really well!
After the first song or so, he suddenly pointed directly towards where we were standing, finger outstretched and said: "You......are following me!!" I have learned by now not to take things too personal, especially when my short-sighted eyes are blurring and I'm standing in a crowd of other fans. But he had seen me, and Helga, who was standing right next to me. Later, after the show, Helga turned to me and said: "Wasn't it nice of him to say hello to me personally?!" I had already made a joke before saying that what he was actually saying was "You're stalking me!", which she didn't find funny. Now I joked again saying: "..or to ME?!". But she was having nothing of it. There was a logical reason why he could ONLY have meant HER, but I didn't stay to hear her explain about that special reason. Later still the mad Italian women asked me to confirm that he could only have meant THEM and the whole Italian community, but they had been standing nowhere near he was pointing - just goes to show that we're all mad and it's not worth making a fuss about it. I believe he was using the plural "you" anyway, as there was quite a cluster of us hard-core fans towards where he was pointing.
Kylie Minogue was in the audience - I wouldn't even have noticed, because she's so tiny. She was sitting at Walt (Friend of the Stars) Utz's table, I think. No wonder he was all fluttered. Bless her - when George started DYRWTHM, she and Amanda started dancing, and in a matter of seconds the whole "Standing" section gladly joined in and rushed to the front of the stage. It was a really happy, supportive atmosphere - just imagine: the rest of the kingdom was watching that dreadful documentary at exactly the same time! He introduced Do You Really Want To Hurt Me by pointing to Kevan and saying "This man showed me the new Culture Club singer on MySpace. And he's supposed to be a Christian!!" He carried on about how it was no more than an avergae karaoke effort, and how "This is the real thing:..."
I ended up standing quite close to Kylie, right next to her friend, and was immediately surrounded by paparazzi! My elbow ended up on GettyImages, but luckily the photographers were smart enough NOT to have me in the picture! Kylie was definitely bigger news than George. The few reviews I saw of the event were also going on about Kylie more than about the concert - like she saved his ass, and that he has no real problems compared to hers anyway. How clever! Like how "bad taste" is was of him not to get breast cancer but only a sentence for community service?!
After the concert we leisurely strolled around the back of the building, chatted to each others. Frank, Jeremy, and eventually George emerged, and immediately a group of paparazzi approached and started snapping away. How unusual! George complained that he wanted a cab not a photo shoot, and came over to us. What impressed me was how the paparazzi immediately retreated. They were like "flap-flap-flap---and gone!!". Like moths, or bats, or some sort of flapping (flashing) animal.
We had a couple of seconds until that cab finally arrived, and I got some questions in before George left. Surprisingly I managed to involve him in a conversation about Mac movie-editing software because somebody had mentioned youtube. He said that he's already got all the movies ready, and confirmed that it does take AGES to make the videos.
I went back to the hotel with Sybille, because we were both leaving early the next morning (Sybille even earlier than me), and Kristine, Kenneth and Tanya went to Babe to see Dusty.
I didn't take any good photos of the gig, but Julia taped the whole thing, so I hope we will see some videos soon! By the way - Youtube has taken my Brit Awards video down and is threatening with legal actions... why me?!
