Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

  This is Barney.  He has to be kept on a lead on the beach because A: He thinks all cars are sheep and hurls himself at them from fifty yards away.  B:  Last winter, he ran into the sea, set off swimming and only ran out again at Sizewell.  Meanwhile, his owner walked along the surf line coaxing and cajoling the whole three miles.

    He said, 'What you do is in the real world.  Social Media isn't at all that. It doesn't work.'   I can't convince him to share posts, retweet, and so on - even though we have a joint product on sale: the audiobook of My Tutu Went AWOL .    I've told him today that we co-own the dog in this fight, thanks.    And I asked how he can possibly know if Social Media is working or not.  'A tweet about My Tutu Went AWOL is like a poster blue-tacked up in the ether.'   'Okay,' he said. 'Good analogy.  But still...'   He'd already fallen into my trap. I said, 'So, following my good analogy let's take the twenty-two posters that I used to put up for my early shows in Aldeburgh. I wasn't able to sit with even one of those twenty-two posters in view day and night for as long as it was on display, making a note of how many people looked at it. Get it?  So, retweet, already.'   #socialmedia #socialmedia...

    Thrilled to be included in this, thank you Sorcha Ra. Pretty sure, by the by, that even Fonteyn had stopped fouettes by this age...   What did you want to be when you were a kid, Iestyn?   ME.   Wonder Woman, the doll in the music box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and estranged from my psychotic parents...   Click here for the full interview #drag #event #ballerina #performance #theatre #variety #cabaret #gay #biography #iraq #afghanistan #remembrance

       'My spoken material is about the facts of life,'  I was explaining to the Mother Superior.  'I've been asking people what they were told, how they were told it and did they ask questions.  Terrible funny...'     During my show at the Metrodeco Café, Brighton, a superfluity of nuns stopped at the window to listen.  In the street later that week one of them glided up and said how much they had enjoyed hearing me sing.  " And we wonder, might you please sing something for our charity evening?"   I said, of course, sister.     The nun nodded.  "That's very good to hear.  But just to correct you: not sister - but  Mother Superior."   She then asked about the spoken material in the show, in case we might include some of it on the night?  I said I had asked people how they had been told the facts of life... Bernard, 72.     My sist...

  Indeed, she will go far.   #fridayfeeling #friday #childhood #childhoodgames #childhoodmemories #games #family

  Stacks, Royal Marine, seeming to forget that in a bait in Iraq he had dumped me on a tank turret and demanded a song, said that I had a tendency to involve myself in random acts of singing.    He was referring to the time on the US base in Kandahar when I was heckled by Private Stanton, a New Yorker, infuriating Grace-Anne and Maybelle, Southern canteen staff.   Grace-Anne did the shouting for both of them.  'We were as angry as my white turkey who used to puff up its feathers prior to gobbling.  What, the cat got your tongue all of a sudden, Private?  Your formerly oh so loquacious tongue? Well, release that tongue of such former loquashioshness from the jaws of the cat, for a hymn will now be sung.   And this is the hymn we all sang: https://soundcloud.com/oliver-nelken/there-is-a-balm-in-gilead #sunday #church #gospel #gospelsong #hymn #religion #singer #god #USA #USArmy

  My Tutu Went AWOL!   Latest ***** from the author of The Guardian Book of the Year. And still my mother pretends it doesn't exist.  Please Click here to Buy

    Are you listening to the right music in the gym to get the best results?   No, tests show, if you're not listening to Mozart, Tchaikowsky, Wagner, et al.   We know what uber-fit Royal Marines Commando Stacks had to say.   Now wondering what the gym boffins think? #gym #workout #gymhacks #fitness #results #trainhard #training #PT #music

'In it for the Game not the Money,' says genius entrepreneur Gary Vee.   We try.   I try.   I do.   But how to translate his use of social media for his conglomeracy into my little corner of clown niche? The Bottom Line?   I see posting on here, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc, as the modern equivalent of - FOR FREE - putting up posters for my shows.  As I did back in the day around Aldeburgh. In the doctors surgery. In the pub and the charity shop.   The church porch only if my show's material was swear-free.   And why wouldn't you, says Gary Vee.   Whose game I play.   I do.   I try.   Just that - the video kvetch - there's always someone with that bigger game.   Not a surprise in my case, given that clown niche, my age, that I don't sing anything composed later than 1937 or dance anything post-Nutcracker.   But still, let's put the trainers on - £12.99 - and get out ...

                                                 Does My Undertaking look Big in This?   Monday Motivation has kicked off with a review of My Tutu Went AWOL .   'A book unlike any other, of a story unlike any other. Totally mad, very funny and highly recommended.' ***** Dr Adam Kay. Author of runaway international bestseller, This is Going to Hurt . The Nation's Favourite Book.   Now, onward. Let's smash this week!   Actually, I'm going back to bed. #mondaymotivation #monday #bestseller

Woman's Hour - What Makes a Forces' Sweetheart .   Please follow link for interview   At the request of Ms Murray, I put on the whole tutu and slapiana.   #bbc #bbcradio #bbcradio4 #womanshour #bbcwomanshour #bbcradio4womanshour

...I was born: Freddie and the Dreamers "I'm Telling You Now".   What was number one on my fourteenth birthday, which, apparently defines my life?  Art Garfunkel: "Bright Eyes".   It's one of only two 45s I ever bought.  Along with "Angelo", by Brotherhood of Man.   I asked my mother if she had owned "I'm Telling You Now" and explained why I was asking.   She said, 'Oh, God, this what was number one when I was born is going to be another of those send away in instalment things, isn't it?  Like for Princess Di plates, the Waltons action figures and tins of lychees.  Or are you you going to insist you can remember hearing that record from in the womb, like you swear blind you watched The Woodentops through your umbilical cord like a placenta periscope?' # whatwasnumberonewheniwasborn  #whatwasnumberoneonmyfourteenthbirthday

Tomorrow, perhaps we'll drive off?!   Don't bank on it. #gps #gpstracker #satnav #driving

    We've all been tempted.  I for one sit there sighing many times a day, 'Please make Google Search Console love me, I have a book to sell here!' The bottom line?   I remind myself that, as Google's algorithms track clicks onto my page, they track clicks away from my page, as well as the time lapse between.  If it's mere seconds, then Google pulls some sort of computerised sneer of contempt. Which is far, far worse, apparently, than when you search YouTube for Judge Judy episodes and get the 'Sorry, guys...click the description...' message.  Google Bears Grudges!   Not to mention that Google's grudge is held so long it made me think of the Yorkshire saying, 'Keep a stone in your pocket seven years, turn it, keep it another seven years, then throw it at your enemy.'   Don't risk it.   No, step away from going through all your blog posts and adding, thrice times three times: 'I Committed Trans-Cistic XXX Fisting Adultery i...

It's hard at times to - and we know we should - just get straight to that work. Focus, go for goal.       There are rewards, other than Angel Delight.

  Holidays, you'll agree, can be fraught with families. I can hear your teeth gnashing, some of you.  I've written on this before. See:  I'll Be Lone for Christmas...You can Envy Me!   Now...here's a holiday bucket list idea for some me-time.    I don't have those gardening tips, ideas for stately homes to visit, how to D.I.Y., how to master whatever high quality backlinks may be, cheap deals on seaside getaways, recipe ideas, last minute city breaks, deals on the Eurostar, cheap theatre tickets, last minute hotels...   Bottom line?   I have this:                                          Audiobook: My Tutu Went AWOL      Produced by Oliver Nelken at Mornington Media.  Self-narrated, including opera as sung privately for Her Majesty, ad libs, extra material and bloopers. By which I mean that Oliver left ...

By clicking here...   I also meant that I'm hearing from people - chuffed - who say they've listened to the book scouring the bath - all part of the art of tidying up, apparently - while being careful to never miss leg day, in M25 traffic, as part of their hula hoop 15 minutes a day regime, being part of the makeup revolution (decanting what's still useful of older products), varnishing a yacht, on guard duty, in daily ballet class, before Matins (in a convent, sister?) and trying to make out the lyrics to the on hold music while waiting to talk to HMRC.   Tell me where you listen. I feel a thread coming on.

 ...preferably not offending sixteen retired Admirals...                                                             At a happier occasion...   I sang "The Holy City" in Aldeburgh Catholic Church at the funeral of Gerard Minden's Great Uncle Jasper.   Gerard introduced to both me and this blog here...     There had been a muted scandal some years before.   Gerard explained, ‘Uncle Jasper would say that, being Catholic, we all have our peculiar use for rosaries...'    Jasper's mother, for one, told his aunt during the second world war that a cyanide capsule was a vitamin pill.    'Anyway, Great Uncle Jasper was telling his specific Rosary while he taught English...hand in trouser pocket fuddling his privates.  At times of high stress (possibly an Emily Dickinson)...

  Stacks, Royal Marine, inherited his love of music from his granny. Sadly no longer with us, she was a church organist.   Until one Easter.   As Stacks tells it, 'She was playing for Devotions.  One hymn every hour, on the hour. The churchyard gate was opposite the Dog and Feathers and she was going over there in the interim. The head verger had to help her up into the organ loft for "There is a Green Hill.." He decided after that she was better left. And left.  And left. Christ had long since risen while she was still beer-snoring.'

    Clearly, we're not expecting out front at Stanford's that Dagenham stag do, the shopping channel staff on a corporate bonding night, or the congregation of St Peter's as officiated over by the non-elected Dean of  Bocking...   At the Woman's Insitute, Ear Soham, Celia was the only member wearing her name badge. Coming into the Green Room (village hall kitchen) she said if I was going lower than knickers-on level, I should go into the ladies' as she had to be in the kitchen just then to meld her mini-pavlovas.   During audience questions, she asked how I'd gained early experience working a crowd.   'I was working at the Walworth Road McDonald’s during sixth form to pay for singing lessons after my tuition grant passed its use-by date.'   The chemist in East Lane couldn't give me enough hours.  Not to mention that on my first day a woman came to the counter with something wrapped in tin foil.   'Sonny, you’re new.  What are you ...

  My first time at the Eisteddfod, 1994, I’d competed as a baritone in the operatic/songs class in Bargoed.   And pretended to be a native Welsh speaker.   On the panel was the front woman for the now defunct Welsh Schools Television equivalent of Dame Joan Sutherland telling puppets the stories of popular operas.  Schools Music Programming, now sadly defunct.  In the Welsh version, slick thigh over slick thigh, the presenter wore a dyed black chignon and a velvet titty top, an a-line skirt and fuck me boots.   ‘I am a little fishy, I swim in the river, I swim all day long,’ she would sing, and move her right hand up and down to show the tune rising and falling.   Let’s not bother remembering her name.   I thought I could get away with saying my name in the vernacular – and how natively Welsh sounding is Iestyn David Edwards? – and the name of my chosen aria: ‘Gan Mozart.  Non Piu Andrai.  Diolch Yn Fawr. (Thank you very much.) ...

Please pre-book to avoid my being disappointed...   A truly lovely Tutu book gig last night for the Earl Soham WI - great welcome, sold out of books, divine spread: all home made: quiche, sausage rolls, dates laced with marzipan.   Celia asked about Combined Services Entertainment sending The Other Iestyn to spy on me in North Wales.  The video below has the the short answer to her question. (A longer one is included in the book My Tutu Went AWOL.           Hope to see you at Stanford's, Long Acre, 6.30pm, April 12th.

   Click to pre-book your place, nicely   Stacks, Royal Marine, central figure in My Tutu Went AWOL, thinks that driving a car can't be classed as travel.   I said, 'Not even something on the level of Route 66?'   'No.  It's still driving a car.  Travel implies someone else has their hand on the wheel. Or the tiller.  Or the throttle.'   We were having this conversation between Christmas and New Year in the walk-in health centre.  Cut a long story short, I was house sitting, had been feeling default setting ill for months, and had now begun to feel really sick.  Looking up my symptoms online, I realised that I couldn't rule out bowel cancer.    Yes, I know.  Never look up symptoms online.  We had the Reader's Digest medical pull-out in the seventies.  When my mother had swollen glands; my father had to physically stop her giving herself a tracheotomy with a Bic Biro.  God knows what she'd be like...

Follow this link to nicely book tickets, please...   So grateful to be going back to the legendary Stanford's Travel Bookshop. April 12th, 6.30. Do please pre-book tickets following the above link.  Their Olympia show earlier this year was fantastic. Brilliant organisation.   Artistes - huh! - often forget what a strain gigs are for the organisers. My mate Gerard reminded me after I'd gigged for his mother, Allegra, in Suffolk.   'Thank fuck that whole Allegra shebang’s over, Iestyn.  No offence - your show was okay.  One less thing for her to be frantic about.  “Oh, where are my combination Bach Flowers, Gerard?  Actually, pass me the gin - tonic-shmonic! - are you sure you don’t have any drugs in the house?  To destress I'll have to go for a swim - have a Thai massage - eat charred-in-the-Aga bay leaves - do Yoga in front of the open airing cupboard door as that upgrades it to being Bigram - give myself a beta blocker suppository -...

  I’ve inherited Eirwen’s sense of entitlement. (She's my mother.)  After I was confirmed, I expected to be casting out demons.  And I’m miffed at the low impact nature of my paranoia.  I should be unable to watch television because I think the canned laugher is at me; be convinced that anyone’s mobile phone ringing will be the Freemasons checking up on me; be unable to go to a barber’s or clip my toe nails, because a witch doctor would use the hair and the clippings to make that planned voodoo doll of me.   Oh, and I had stress-sinusitis when I was went to a funding circle to pay for my own audiobook.     The beggars outside Morrison's, Wood Green, all believe that they alone are entitled to work that pitch.  Each in turn will go and fetch security to see off the others.   One was sitting holding up a sign that said I am dumb and homeless.     'See,' said another, 'having that sign is an unfair advantage.'   'But he'...

    I've collated these results from audience survey forms.  I use them as material in my live show.   He was exactly the right size for the venue.      The two people in front of me didn't like him.   I think I may have liked him more readily than did other village folk, because my great chum Lord Julian was one of the earliest people ever to suffer a death from AIDS.     This act should be on some kind of TripAdvisor or Google Reviews or talent finder for cross-dressed clowns.  Before we booked Madame Galina Ballet Star Galactica, we used to have classical string quartets and classical piano recitals.  I suspect we'll be going back to those.   His book is ideal for a second-home spare bedroom!   He's an interesting racial mix, isn't he - obviously half Maori, half Jewish.    What on earth must his parents be like?   No wonder his shoes were in that state when he went ...

  So sorry, but due to freeze and flurries, my Portsmouth Book Fest talk is postponed.  When sunshine returns, says Fest chief exec Clare Forsyth, we'll reschedule.   She added, 'Because of all the different aspects of your show, we're not restricted to Book Fest time, either...'   No. I've done everything from Royal Marine shows in hangars in the Helmand Province, through Christmas Lunch for music execs at the Hilton, to Flower Festival appearances in St Peter's Church for the non-elected Dean of Booking.   RMC Rink-Dink said he's sad to miss my return to Portsmouth. 'Snow stops play. Honking. But your background what would we send to bring you down to Pompey when there's no trains?  Apache Helicopter, winged chariot, Liberace-like spangled winch?'   #mytutuwentawol @unbound_digital @lisaeveleigh #book #booktalk #booktour

              I love library gigs, because I love libraries. Currently doing a library search nationwide for a tour.   Years ago I bought a copy of Cenerentola , for some Glyndebourne open day master classes.  That there were no markings in it from a previous library borrower made me feel oddly lonely.  No previous library borrower to hail as comrade for writing the instruction "Take bloody big breaths like  the stampeding horse".  Pristine page after pristine page.  Though  soon marked by me: “Too bloody ”, “Much too bloody fast”, “Supersonic boomingly too bloody fast”. #library #theatre #lgbtq #book