Girls just wanna have fun

"I'm a great admirer of yours"

... said Belinda Carlisle, rather loudly, to Will Young as he passed by her seat.

"Thanks," said Will.

It was all a bit embarrassing.

---

It was the Sandra Bernhard opening night last night, and thanks to the grace of a wonderful friend, I was there... in the press seats. These are of course those same group of seats that PR people also give to famous fans of Sandra. And so it came to pass that for the second time in a week, I was in the presence of Chrissie Hynde (that's her arriving, above, hard as it is to believe). We clearly both go to the best events. But not just "in the presence of"... Chrissie was on my row - three seats down. And she wasn't one of those shy retiring, wallflower types, as it turned out. But then this wouldn't have been a great surprise.

"I've got this amazing signed photo of Siouxsie, from, like, 1981, which I got for you," said Chrissie to this extraordinary PVC-clad, peroxided creature in heavy makeup, who turned out to be Pam Hogg [check out the catsuit she designed for Kylie!], "but I didn't know if I was going to get to see you, so I left it in Paris"

I should clarify that Chrissie was actually leaning over me as she said these words. She had moved along the row so everyone had stood up that she could pass by, and then the two of them stopped immediately in front of me and began the above conversation.

Then, as Chrissie returned to her seat, suddenly witnessing a freshly minted icon in structured black evening-wear, I hissed under my breath, "oh. my. God. It's Mary Portas" and all thoughts of Chrissie (three seats along), Belinda (two rows behind), let alone Will and Will (Baker) (the row behind and along a bit) evaporated.

Then the lights went down... and on came Sandy.

She was fantastic. Totally hysterical. I had read before going that she sang a curious collection of songs to accompany her stand-up comedy, so was interested to see how this mixed together. She made her entrance from the rear of the theatre and took the hands of her audience members to ensure she didn't descend the stairs in an undue hurry. She sang a song about being a black woman meeting Nina Simone, and it was all so deliciously bizarre and hilarious, everyone lapped it up.

Funnily enough, it was that mixture of comedy and singing which I was sort of expecting for the rest of the show - it seemed to me the perfect mixture of her two great talents. However, she didn't really do that, which I thought was a slight shame. I don't think it would have taken much to send her to that realm throughout. I'm not suggesting frivolous cabaret, but the song choices seemed at times somewhat unconnected with Sandra's train of thought.

"Angelina Jolie descending from a plane, holding Maddox as always. That child is nine years old and has never walked".

I guess it was all in her delivery, but the show was full of deadpan one-liners like that.

And this:

"Chrissie came round to my house on Thanksgiving. She's a vegan so we ate the turkey early, and put out some pumpkin and apple pies. I mean, Chrissie hasn't eaten in years, so when she came round she was hungry, and she dug into those pies and wolfed them down. It was only later I realised they were full of butter and full cream, but at the time it didn't seem to bother Chrissie. I guess sometimes a vegan girl needs pie"

After Sandy was done, the question arose: did I want to go to the after-party at the new London branch of Bungalow 8?

Uh... yes.

Bungalow 8 - a slightly re-heated Brief Encounter

The past week I have been positively hermitic, so the chance of a little glamour and the sniff of celebrity got my pulse racing. Little did I realise of course that "Bungalow 8", the nightclub made famous in SATC, would actually be a re-vamped Brief Encounter - that dodgiest of gay bars which Ian Schrager has been desperate to evict ever since the hotel took over that building. Anyway, I guess it went bust or Ian prevailed because it's this chi-chi little thing now with reserved tables and zooming black and white stripes all over the place. We got a free cocktail, that's what I was concerned about. And a bottle of water. Fiji water. Which you can't otherwise buy in London. In a specially-shaped metal holder. Quite what this achieved, I do not know. I removed my metal holder as it made the bottle too heavy. Form over function.

Mary Portas arrived, and surrounded herself with Power Lesbians. Their circle was impenetrable: she was their Queen Bee. I was longing to go over and ask if she planned to do a second series of Mary Queen of Shops, but her militia had the full guard up. However, so much for Mary: there was only one true ruler of the party. Sandy made her entrance, stalked down the centre of the bar and sat at the far end in a position of maximum visibility with a Will on either side. The Will in the hat, which he kept on indoors and out, was at the bar fetching drinks (he took a sip out of each to avoid spilling them on the walk back - quite a cocktail). Watching this, I suddenly realised that the cliché-d flow of affection (or lack thereof) between gay men and lesbians was reversed: Sandra had gay acolytes pouring admiration and delight upon her. I mean, it takes quite a lesbian, quite a woman, to achieve such a phenomenon. But then, this is the woman who broke the veganism of Chrissie Hynde, and 'fessed up to her in public. Gay love-ins have been created by far less than that.

Sandra Bernhard's tribute to Nina Simone

Comments

[xolondon]

Will probably had no clue who Belinda was, she looks so different. Which reminds me, I hope Mr. Young is taking notes on Ms. Lennox's resurgence. He would do well to follow her lead.

Chrissie looks great! I owe you some tracks...

[TRICKY]

So true. Will's A&R people should have taken one listen to 'Songs of Mass Destruction' and had Glen Ballard on the 'phone to arrange Spring '08 recording sessions with tracks co-written by Eg White, Anne Dudley and Nitin Sawhney.

The story I didn't tell above was how Sandra kept us waiting quite a long time before she arrived. Chrissie was *impatient* and started clapping and chanting "Sandy! Sandy!" which the audience then followed. She also yelled "siiiing!" after a prolonged stand-up section of the show. Chrissie is no shrinking violet.