Masturbating Welshman Turns Don Juan

On Tuesday I was in a pub in the West End with a friend of mine, knocking back a bottle of red in front of a fake fireplace, when my friend suddenly said: “That guy’s an actor, right?” I looked at him; towering over everyone there, blonde, dressed smart, looking around and eventually catching the eye of us wine-sipping blondes by the fire. It hit me. “It’s Hugh Grant’s room mate in Notting Hill” and she replied, earnestly and deadpan, “Ah! The masturbating Welshman!” adding, “He’s shockingly handsome in real life, isn’t he?”

This pretty much sums up the transition between Hugh’s furry friend in “Notting Hill” to Rhys Ifans’s role as Don Juan in his new play at the Donmar Warehouse. In the 1999 film he wasn’t… the romantic leading male for a reason. Now, looking at him, he does look – as she put it – shockingly handsome. Not necessarily in the classic sense, but he has a presence. Unfortunately we had to depart from the pub shortly after he walked in. Mostly due to a somewhat high alcohol level mixed with hysterical suppressed laughter regarding her initial statement. Very professional, indeed.

PS Does PervyHotelChat.com exist? asks George in his new diary.

Earl’s Court, Tuesday

I swear, until about midday yesterday I wasn’t going to this gig. I got an email from someone saying they couldn’t go, and would I want the ticket? Who am I to say no to (another) free gig? (Thank you, thank you – you know who you are!)

I’ve seen Earl’s Court from all three angles now; left of stage, right of stage, front of stage. I think I’ve conveyed by now that I think the show is fab, so I just wanna say something about what he said.

He opened with “Let’s face it, it’s not easy being a George Michael fan these days, is it?” adding, “But I fucking love you all for it!” Then he said, “I’m running out of original things to say now, and I promised myself to not repeat myself.”

Later, after “This Is Not Real Love”, he said he had read some of “these online fan things” and that people wondered what this song was about, adding, “Obviously it’s not autobiographical. I do see the irony. And yesterday in the car I made up some new lyrics for it” (and this is when he started singing a’capella) “…I’m not here enough…” (don’t quote me on this, I’ll have to check my mobile for the correct wording).

In the end he said he was nervous about playing Birmingham next, cause Earl’s Court has been fucking fantastic, but then added, “I realised there are no Birmingham crowds, London crowds or Barcelona crowds – just George Michael crowds. And you’re all fan-fucking-tastic! What did I do to deserve you all?”

He also said after a few songs that “you give the Saturday crowd a run for their money” but still didn’t worship this crowd as he did the Saturday one. So me thinks the Saturday one may still be in the lead

UPDATE:

About halfway through the 2nd half some commotion happened by where we were sitting, and everyone thought it was odd that some tall ape of a bodyguard rushed past us, hiding someone. So we all turned around, trying to see who this was (could be the bloody Queen for all we knew) and in the end it turned out to be Rod Stewart. Looking rather miserable, probably as he realised George has more of a buzz at his gigs than he does. Then he got up and left halfway through “Careless Whisper” after about 3 1/2 songs. Odd.

Earl’s Court, Sunday

It’s 1:15am and I just got back home. First of all, I gotta extend a massive thank you to Ann for being so kind to offer me her spare ticket for tonight, cause otherwise I wouldn’t have been there.

I’ll update with quotes and stuff tomorrow, after I’ve been to the doc to get my final test results.

But it has to be said, it kinda warmed my heart a bit when he said – at the beginning of this show – that “You have a lot to live up to tonight, because yesterday was the best show of my career!” Yaaaaaaaay! It was the most intense sing-along I’ve experienced thus far. Of course, I’ve not been to every gig he’s done, but it was pretty wow.

Mutya was back again, “You have been loved” still out of the equation, he did a more extensive speech about the uncle today cause there were members of his mother’s family there yesterday. This was after he came out, sat on the stool and everyone were just screaming like there was no tomorrow, and he couldn’t stop grinning in disbelief. Probably, at this point, thinking, “Which year is this, again? I could have sworn it says 2006 on my calendar, but it reminds me more of 1986″. Once people stopped screaming for a moment, he said that he was sad that he hadn’t realised sooner that this – touring – was the thing to do. More screaming, him adding a dry “Moving on…” and got onto the story about the uncle. I’d rather do it word for word than to pretend I remember correctly right now.

God, I feel like I’ve slept 10 hours this past week. And I still gotta be up at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Yawn.

But anyway, his voice keeps getting better, less mistakes in the lyrics (with the screen prompting the lyrics, the fact that he wrote them AND has done them about 36 times in the past months should be the explanation for that…! Seriously we know’em better than he does!), his grin gets wider, his spirit better and his moves… well, some things just never change. lol.

It’s always very obvious to see who he fancies in the audience. Tonight it was a guy in a suit and red shirt up front. I was quite far up but I saw the sparks flying even from up there. lol. Hell, he was hot, so I don’t blame him. Yesterday it was the guy that was jumping up and down like crazy for 2 hours.

We did some good sing-alongs tonight too – but it has to be said that it (the sing-alongs) didn’t measure up to last night. My guess is that the audience consisted of a horde of hard-core fans alongside family and friends that just gave that extra buzz. His performance, his everything just keeps blowing my mind.

Between “Careless Whisper” and “Freedom 90″ he came back out on the stage flying. You know, arms out, running around. We make him feel high. See, all he has to do is do gigs instead of smoke

What a weekend

Earl’s Court, Saturday

Oh-kay. Today, I woke up without a voice. Literally non, nada, nothing. Phone rings, I can pick it up, no problem, but say anything? And no, it’s not because I was screaming myself silly yesterday. I tend to let others do that part for me. I did sing along to some songs, but no screaming came out of my mouth. So what is it? Laryngitis. Of the actual kind – not the fake one George has when it suits him.

Anyway, the gig… fan-fucking-tastic. He did talk a lot. (I’ll go into more detail when I get home tomorrow, so bear with me.) About his uncle (obviously finding it really difficult – saying how “his kind” back then were threatened and murdered etc), adding how great it was to be gay today, especially being him. He then said how he had dreaded Earl’s Court beforehand (ie, the same speech as Manchester), thinking it may be lame cause it was the first all-seated gig (was it!?), adding: “How fucking wrong was I?” He told how this venue was the first he went to. Either Elton or Cream. His mother waiting for him outside, considering he was 13 at the time. “At 13 this seemed huge, but tonight we’ll shrink it into a cozy living room.” Made a crack about being from Finchley. We also got the speech about “I did not have sexual relations with that van driver” adding “I mean… c’mon!”

He did bring Mutya on with him, and they sounded, well, amazing. Crowd went nuts. He obviously swapped this for “You Have Been Loved”. There was a guy up front that kept jumping up and down like nuts every time George came over – which he did often. From what I could tell, he was cute, so I can’t blame him. At first we thought it was Kenny, but… He also kneeled down in front of the front viewers a couple of times. Speaking of nuts…

Anyway, he didn’t get a word in whichever way he tried for either “I’m Your Man” or “Careless Whisper”. The crowd wasn’t having it at all. This is my third gig, and I haven’t heard these songs being sung back to him with THIS much strength before. And I’ve seen a lot of YouTube clips as well, but this was just insane – and he was grinning like he couldn’t believe what he was experiencing.

He was clearly moved by the end of it, holding his hand over his face, looking like he was trying to make sense of it all. He broke down to his knees and worshipped us as we had worshipped him for the past two hours, adding the “boom-boom into his heart” gesture. And – I believe we got an exclusive, which was “I LOVE YOU!” Can’t say I’ve heard him say that to an audience (at least not on this tour?) before. Then again, I could be wrong.

Can’t wait to go again tonight, that’s all I can add right now. Woo!

Right

Ho ho ho, off to London I go

A weekend of George should be exciting

People Still Love Wham!

I looked at some of the search terms of this blog today alone, and they added up to in excess of 900 views these past 23 hours. The top 10 hits:

1. Wham Reunion
2. George Michael special announcement
3. George Michael Wembley 17 December
4. George Michael + 17 December
5. George Michael 17 December Wembley
6. Wham official
7. Wham ticket 17 December
8. Wham “17 December”
9. 17th December Wembley Stadium Wham
10. Careless Whisper basement flat (lol – yeah, I don’t know what it means either)

Isn’t it interesting – 20 years later – that Wham! is still in people’s vocabulary? George Michael, sure, but Wham!? People clearly want to see Wham! reunite – why do you think that is? Sentimental value? The recent 80s revival? Would people really want to see George and Andrew poncing around in small shorts singing “I wanna hit that hiiiigh”?

What do you think?

Wank Me Off Before You Go Show

A mole drew admiring glances backstage at George Michael’s Manchester gig last week by sporting one of HM’s ‘I Wanked Off George Michael’ t-shirts.

One of those particularly impressed was Sally Whittaker from ‘Coronation Street’ (who plays Sally Webster, owner of the pokiest nipples in Weatherfield). “Have you really?” she asked, followed by “You lucky man!”

Shortly afterwards, the mole was accosted by the rightful owner of the t-shirt, Mr. Kenny Goss, who became quite excited at the sight, hyperventilating and squeaking, “Where DID you get that t-shirt? I want that t-shirt. Can I have it?”

I was – seriously – gonna get one of them, cos it made me laugh hysterically, but chickened out. LOL!

Bring On The 17th!

I have three words:

 

FRONT… FUCKING… ROW!!!

 

The Capital Announcement

I put on Johnny Vaughn’s breakfast show, saying – very casually at 8:37am – that tickets for the 17th will be on sale from Sunday at 10am. They’re giving away front row tickets throughout the day today on Capital. One chick already won tickets by guessing how many seconds George would stay awake in his car listening to “Fastlove” on his stereo. (lol)

Another interesting competition they’ve got going on: “Who’s Doing Who?” I’d say a safe answer is: “George Michael’s Doing (insert any name – as long as it’s not old, white men driving vans)”.

Surely that can’t be the el grande announcement that was supposed to be at 9am? Or am I missing something?

UPDATE:

OK, so seems this exclusive is on Magic FM and Heart FM as well. So, to be guaranteed entrance to this thing one must then skip between Capital, Magic and Heart. (The radio equivalent to “How would you most like to die? Shot, poisoned or hanged?”) Then CALL when you hear a GM song. Like 50000 other people will attempt to do at the same time. Are there even gonna be anything left TO attempt to buy on Sunday?

Paranoia: When You Think Something Is Wrong

You know when you have the feeling something may be wrong with your health, and you don’t go to the doctor cause a) maybe it’s nothing and you’re wasting everybody’s time or b) it is something but you don’t really wanna know?

I’ve had this going on for the past few months. I went to have a bump on my throat checked out some months ago, and the specialist nurse told me to go see a dentist. I thought this was kind of odd, but fine. When said bump was still there months later, I found myself thinking it could be something. Cause, surely, if I had a tooth infection, I would feel it? God knows I’ve felt it in the past.

After driving myself nuts for ages I decided to bite the bullet and get the damn thing checked out properly. By an actual, qualified doctor. I showed him the thing, he touched it, touched my stomach (added “You work out a lot!”) and his conclusion was pretty much “Hm” and ordered some blood tests to “make sure it’s nothing serious”. Thank you, that helps. So I’m told to come back to get emptied for blood the following morning, and to order an appointment a week later. Great, one week to probably worry myself sick (literally). The nurse that morning started by raping my right arm with her needle without getting any blood out of it. Minutes later she started stabbing my left arms instead, but the blood had to be practically convinced to come out. Which is odd, as my veins are usually very easy to empty.

Fast forward to one day later, I get a phone-call from the doc’s office, saying, “You came down here for a blood test earlier this week. We’re going to have to ask you to come back.” Insert horrified thought along the lines of “Oh God, they’ve found something, this is it.” I get an appointment early the following day – but what about the 20 hours in between?

This is where paranoia kicks in. Random thoughts: “The doctor asked if I felt under the weather. I didn’t then. Maybe I do now? Kind of? My throat is acting up a bit. It’s not really sore as such, but I can feel something coming on. Maybe that means something? Fuck, maybe if that first nurse had seen past her ego and actually made me see someone that knew what they were doing months ago,  my prognosis may be better right now. What if it’s too late? What if it’s what’s crossed my mind before, what if it’s fucking cancer and I’m gonna fucking die cause I was wrongly advised by some incompetent c*nt? My knee is hurting a bit. Could it be that blood clot that hospital in Norwich said I could have when I came in there with what turned out to be a severe chest infection last year? Maybe that throat infection was a tell-tell sign and I’ve been on the road to hell ever since? I had another one some months ago too, maybe that was related to this as well? I wonder which song I’d like to have played at my funeral…”

Seriously, I’m not kidding. I’m not usually paranoid or a hypochondriac, but waiting for tests that could show something horrible, is just… a test of character, I tell ya that.

So, back down again for Round 2 of blood tests. I get there, turns out they forgot to reserve the appointment. Funny, as it was they that called me. 20 minutes later they managed to fit me in, an elderly Scottish nurse started apologising on behalf of her fellow nurse – cause she had written my name wrong, which is why they had to do it again. She asked if they told me why I had to come back – I said no. She got angry. I rolled up my arms – at this point sporting about seven different colours – and she shrieked; “Jaysus, did that happen here?” I confirmed. She said it looked like the other nurse had stuck  the needle through my veins – which would also explain why she couldn’t get any blood out. She could inform me that the blood test that was taken to detect anything “nasty” had come back and was normal. I nearly jumped up and hugged her. During this exchange she’d even managed to draw blood without me noticing the needle. (Now that is talent!)

I guess I won’t be ordering a one bedroom flat with flowers on the roof just yet. lol. But Jesus, if I’d had to wait a week to hear that, I’d have positively gone insane.