Last Thursday. A gentleman from the venue Proud Camden emails me out of the blue. Would I like to put on my own club night there? A bit like Beautiful & Damned, but a bit more dark and twisted and arty? With live acts and dancing?

I say: yes.

To try me out (and for me to try them out), they offer me the smaller room – the South Gallery – for the first Wednesday night of every month. Fine. Except that the first one would be May 5th. A mere 12 days away. We’ll understand if you can’t quite get the numbers in, they say. Just see how you get on.

Three days and much emailing later, I have a bill of four for the 5th: boyish TV magicians Barry & Stuart, dapper musical comedians Moonfish Rhumba, surreal jazz-rockers the Rude Mechanicals, and sassy cabaret songstress Tricity Vogue. As these are some of my favourite acts around, it feels like my own miniature Meltdown Festival. For the next few dates, I hope to include performance poets, alternative burlesque dancers, spoken word. Whatever fits. Or rather, whatever doesn’t fit.

I’ve also hired my very own door person, and even my own sound engineer, thanks to kind friends with connections. And I’ll be the main DJ and host.

Good, I think. Done. Well done. Except that now I have to book an audience too.

It’s far too late to get the May 5th details into the listings of weekly magazines, let alone monthly ones. But I have a kind friend designing a logo, flyer and poster right now, which I hope to get quickly printed and distributed around Camden, even if there’s just days to spare.

Plus there’s still the Internet. And I do forget just how many people read this diary. Twice in the last week I’ve had people at London cafe tables shout ‘Love your blog!’ as I pass. And today a man from the BBC World Service emailed to say they wanted to use one of my entries on their programme. It was too last minute and didn’t happen, but at least it reminded me that my main publicity outlet may be right here.

So!

The new club night is called AGAINST NATURE, after the Huysmans book. Proud Camden, first Weds of the month. Please pass it on.

There’s a Facebook group for the club here. Please join if you want to receive details of the various dates.

***
Here’s what I’m sending out to listings:

AGAINST NATURE
Dickon Edwards invades Camden with his very own twisted speakeasy for dressed-up dandies and vintage vamps. Dance to a decadent mix of easy listening, showtunes, pastiche pop, and all that deviant jazz. Plus a suitably eclectic yet aesthetic gaggle of live acts. Every first Weds of the month.

LINE UP FOR WEDS MAY 5TH:

– BARRY & STUART
Boyish BAFTA-nominated comedy magicians, who regularly perform wonder invoking, laughter inducing, and awe-inspiring trickery. Presenters of such TV series as ‘Magick’, ‘Dirty Tricks’ and ‘Tricks from the Bible’.
http://www.barryandstuart.com

– MOONFISH RHUMBA.
Immaculately-groomed musical comedy troubadours. Finalists in the Hackney Empire New Act and Amused Moose competitions.
http://www.moonfishrhumba.com

– TRICITY VOGUE
Offbeat & sassy songstress with a colourful history of romantic misadventure.
http://www.tricityvogue.com

– RUDE MECHANICALS
Miss Roberts and her exotic cohorts unleash their brand of surreal art-jazz-rock, with the distinct possibility of lessons in toe sucking.
http://www.rudemechanicals.co.uk

Plus elegant DJ and host Dickon Edwards (Beautiful & Damned, Latitude, White Mischief, Last Tuesday Society).

Doors 8pm.
Live acts 9.30pm-11.30pm.
Dancing to 1am.

Advance tickets: £5
Door charge: £5 before 10pm. £7 after.

DRESS CODE (preferred): Vintage & dandy-esque.

VENUE:
South Gallery at PROUD CAMDEN,
The Horse Hospital, Stables Market,
Chalk Farm Rd, LONDON NW1 8AH.
Tel: 020 7482 3867.
http://www.proudcamden.com

Stacy in Pittsburgh sends me a link in the manner of ‘I saw this and thought of you’:

Exercises For Gentlemen: 50 Exercises To Do With Your Suit On

Originally published 1908, now reprinted. Reviewed by the New Yorker here.

“Not that this is a hint.  You appear to be in good shape.”

I’m pushing it, I have to admit. My days of eating precisely whatever I like are long gone. I did dally with jogging a few years ago, but abandoned it for aesthetic reasons: I looked ridiculous. I made one enquiry at the local gym, was taken aside and presented with (a) the information that I have to sign up with a personal trainer, and (b) the cost, and, well, legged it.

I also realised you can get more or less get the exercise you need if you walk briskly for an hour or so every day, ideally via the steep incline of Highgate Hill. On top of which, I always try to take the stairs instead of using lifts. And London is so good for walking. Soho in particular favours the walker: all those little streets and no buses.

I treat the London Library as my all-in-one gym, with its labyrinthine corridors and stairs. You pay a subscription and get access to miles of rare and lesser-known books, all to browse and to borrow, all on open access shelves. Serendipity is a work-out, too. In addition to all that exercise for the mind and legs, there’s the chance of spotting Robert Pattinson. Or Natascha McElhone. Or Alan Bennett. Or, let’s face it, the chance for them to spot me.

Adding comments about the new episode of Doctor Who to the Internet seems highly redundant, but I did think it was wonderful. I thought Matt Smith’s Doctor felt instantly iconic, and that the programme now has that Harry Potter-ish feel about it – world-beating, while still distinctly British. Just the right balance of funny bits and magical bits and scary bits and thrilling bits.

These are hardly unique thoughts, so here’s five things – other art – that the Doctor Who story (‘The Eleventh Hour’) made me think about. Not so common connections, I hope.

1. The Tardis swimming pool being somewhere in the Tardis library. This made me think about the novel ‘The Swimming-Pool Library’. (I imagined the Doctor adding to Amy ‘It’s all gone a bit Alan Hollinghurst in there.’)

2. A huge disembodied eyeball. Three other oversized ocular orbs suggested themselves. There’s Odilon Redon’s eyeball-balloon, in his print ‘L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini’ (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity). As used on book covers like Ian McEwan’s ‘Enduring Love’.

3. Another eyeball, this time the sky-bound one in ‘Flan’, the early 90s apocalyptic album and novel by the New York musician Stephen Tunney, aka Dogbowl.

I’m pleased to see that the novel’s just been reprinted. It’s like ‘The Road’, but with more floating eyeballs.

4. One more giant eyeball (they’re like buses): the one behind the door in Clive Barker’s story ‘Son Of Celluloid’ (from ‘Books Of Blood’), which quotes ‘Casablanca’ at its victim: ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’. A tale of a cancerous tumour becoming sentient and doing impersonations of Hollywood movie stars in order to kill people. Outrageous, gory and really rather brilliant.

In fact, because I read too many biographies, I’ve just realised I’m sitting a few blocks away from the house where Mr Barker wrote the story – along with much of his 80s output, including the source material for ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Candyman’- in Hillfield Avenue, Crouch End, London N8. I’m cat-sitting in nearby Middle Lane. Here’s a panel from the comic adaptation of ‘Son Of Celluloid’:

5. Finally, my favourite tale about sinister voices coming from cracks in the walls. ‘Flies On The Ceiling’, by Jaime Hernandez, from the long-running comic book ‘Love & Rockets’. After an abortion and divorce, Izzy Ruebens finds herself in a dingy rented room somewhere in Mexico. There, riddled with guilt and neuroses, the Devil speaks to her through a crack in the wall. Perfect for Easter:

Another birthday party where I know the host, Ms Shanthi, but few of the friends. Though at least it’s seated. It’s a drinks gathering at the Duke pub, on Roger Street off Gray’s Inn Road, embedded deep within the mishmash of streets between Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, Farringdon and King’s Cross. Quite a bohemian, arty place. No Sky Sports, no pool table, no TVs.

For some reason, though, the pub stereo plays Robbie Williams’s greatest hits. We muse on ‘Old Before I Die’, his early, desperate attempt to Fit In with the Oasis crowd, followed by ‘Millennium’, when we try to remember what we were doing on New Year’s Eve 1999. I wish I could keep quiet that I know the song uses a sample of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’, but I blurt this factoid out at the earliest opportunity, like a knee jerk reflex. I live alone.

I go to the pub straight from writing an aerogramme near the enormous Mount Pleasant sorting office. The building’s post box has a collection at 7.30pm, the latest in the Central & North London area. I often sit in a cafe near there and write letters, knowing I have this extended deadline in which to post them. At the pub someone tells me Royal Mail are actually planning to sell off Mount Pleasant, as it’s prime Clerkenwell real estate.

Once again, it’s a party where I feel I only know the host, and at first – as ever – I wonder if I’m the Token Strange Person, surrounded by Normals Who Speak Fluent Mortgage. But I manage to chat away for hours with them, and no one sets fire to me. The wine helps. The wine always helps.

People ask me how I know Ms S. I tell them it was at Prom Night, a semi-ironic club night held at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury Corner, where they played the sort of 80s tunes heard in John Hughes movies. Like the US slang usage of the S-word I mentioned earlier, for years school proms were entirely baffling and alien things British people only knew about through watching movies.

Prom Night the club had its own Prom King and Queen crowned at the end. Shanthi was a regular, but when I went it was my first time. I managed to be crowned Prom King – to my joy – while Ms S was roped into being my Queen.

She was utterly appalled.

As a regular, she knew it was only a matter of time before the distaff crown came round to her, but on this particular night she felt dressed down and not looking her best. There’s a photo somewhere of us together in our sashes, me beaming, her looking horrified.

After the photo was taken, she tore off her Prom Queen sash, threw it to the ground, and flounced off. So I donned it and posed for photos as the Prom Queen instead. Anything for a camp laugh. Some time later she apologised, and we became friends. I still have the sash.

At the pub tonight, one young (British) lady tells me her school had a Prom Night in her GCSE year, which I suppose is a sign of the times. She adds, however, that it didn’t go as far as having a King and Queen. I wonder if that’s because the British are still riddled enough with genuine class differences as it is, without having to compete for ersatz ones.

I go on to tell the lady how ‘Hello’ magazine used to have bona fide aristocrats on the cover, with coverage of upper class society debutante balls, ‘coming out’ parties, that sort of thing. That all still goes on today, but it gets a lot less mainstream media coverage. Today, showbiz celebrity has utterly taken over, though it’s still something that can be inherited by birth or by coupling.

So now there’s the case of Peaches Geldof: someone who is famous by an accident of birth like any duchess or princess, it’s just that her surname is her title. Likewise people who go on celebrity TV shows: often they are only famous by association with others, like Lillie Langtree and Wallis Simpson before them. The definition of primary fame may change, but secondary fame is eternal. There will always be a fascination with tapping into the sap of privilege.

I mention to the young lady one upper class cliche during my own student years in Bristol. In 1990, the running joke was that Bristol Uni was full of all the posh people who were not clever enough to attend Oxford or Cambridge.

And then of course, she then tells me she’s a graduate of Bristol. I apologise until I fall over.