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Showing posts from May, 2024

My Audiobook - the Shameless Plug

                              Here’s my audiobook for you.   Click to buy My Tutu Went AWOL!   It’s self-narrated: with songs, adlibs and bloopers as standard. ‘Achingly funny!’  Daily Mail ‘A book unlike any other, of a story unlike any other. Totally mad, very funny and highly recommended.’ ***** Dr Adam Kay, author of  This is Going to Hurt:  the Nation’s Favourite Book  Guardian ‘One wanted more of his rather lovely singing!’ Her Majesty Here’s the story… I sang in private formally for the Queen on HMS  Victory , and then accidentally auditioned to take my drag ballerina act out to entertain troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In full tutu. When I realised my mistake, I thought I’d go anyway. Cut to: with tutu and tiara in a Primark bag, me arriving bedraggled in Basra. As Stacks, the Royal Marines Commando, commented: ‘Being flown out to one of the big two — Iraq and Ghanners —...

Singing the Asterisked Verses

In the nineteen fifties, my grandmother Atkinson got herself into a state of wretched cowment because neighbours up to three doors down on either side might hear her at her business in her new indoorsy toilet. She explained, 'The council took it upon themselves to send round what looked like a chain gang, except not in the stripy flannelette pyjamas they do have - or the bed hats - who did damage my nerves with their banging.  And there it was.  A toilet.  Indoors.  Looking very bright and new.  And I immediately settled it in with some Jeyes Fluid, of course.  Standards.  But I've also got my pride, so I'll be sticking with the privy.  Not to be overheard...'   'Why not sing hymns like the rest of us, Nancy?' the neighbours asked.  Fair question.   But how to admit that adequately drowning out the effects of Nancy's ever-upflaring bit of bowel would take all the verses, including the asterisked ones, of "Guide Me, Oh Th...