Tuesday, 25th May. I take a towel with me on my typical peregrinations around London. It’s to mark Towel Day, the international celebration of author Douglas Adams.

More info on Towel Day at towelday.org

I start at Highgate Cemetery, just up the road from where I live. Mr Adams’s grave is covered in little offerings from fans. Pens, mostly, stuck into the ground.

(Am typing this up on Sunday, staying with Mum & Dad in Suffolk. Dad reminds me that there’s a passage about a planet of lost Biros in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. So that explains the pens.)

The towel I’m carrying is one of those sci-fi Lifeventure ones you can buy in camping shops. Light, compact, and it doesn’t become smelly. Being the technology buff he was, I thought Mr A would approve.

On a hot sunny day like this, walking around Highgate with a towel isn’t actually so unlikely. The cemetery is a short walk from Hampstead Heath, with its popular Mens’ and Womens’ ponds. Plenty of flip-flops and shorts on view today. Though admittedly, not on me: I’m using the towel to accessorize a linen suit and tie.

I’d like to say the towel’s getting me funny looks in the street, but with me it’s hard to tell.

Douglas Adams died in 2001 at the age of 49. That’s young enough, but the gravestone immediately to the right of Mr A’s puts these thoughts into perspective. ‘Eddie Steele Rosen. June 1980 – April 1999’.

Eddie was the son of the children’s author and poet Michael Rosen. After his death from meningitis, Mr Rosen wrote an account of his grief, accessible to young readers. Titled ‘The Sad Book’, and illustrated by Quentin Blake, it is beautiful, moving, and quite unique. Amazon link.

I walk around the cemetry and notice a few other recent-looking graves. Jeremy Beadle’s memorial is a bookcase, and he’s labelled for posterity as ‘Writer, Presenter, Curator Of Oddities. Ask My Friends’. Most people who recognise the name Jeremy Beadle would associate him first and foremost with ‘Game For A Laugh’ and ‘Beadle’s About’, rather than his huge collection of books or his work as a writer. But memorials are paid for by individuals, not by the masses. Like the ostentatious mausoleum of Julius Beer elsewhere in the cemetery, they can sometimes be final acts of defiance: pitting the private self-image against the public reputation.

Further along from Mr Beadle: another prankster of a kind. Malcolm McClaren, his grave freshly dug. The stone is topped off with the ‘MM’ coat of arms from the film ‘The Great Rock And Roll Swindle’.

(Forgot to get my towel into shot for these two.)

3pm. I move onto St Pancras station and place my towel over one of the many sculptures of elephants dotted around London at the moment. They’re to raise awareness of the plight of the Asian Elephant (More info at www.elephantparadelondon.org). This one is called ‘Dandi-phant’, and is decorated with images of dandelion seeds against a blue sky. Rather neatly, my towel matches it.

4pm, St Pancras Station, Gawper’s Bench. Being the name Ms S & I gave to the bench in Costa Coffee directly opposite the Eurostar Arrivals gate. Here one can sit for hours, munch away on a triangular slice of Chocolate Tiffin, and contemplate the miracle of the Channel Tunnel, that dream of Europeans for centuries. Or just eye up all the French and Belgian people getting off the train. I love the idea of the first London thing they see being me with a towel.

5pm. British Library cafe. Plus towel.

6pm. St Martin’s Lane. Another one of those elephants, ‘Figgy’. Plus towel.

6.15pm. Adelaide Street. Maggi Hambling’s Oscar Wilde sculpture. Plus towel.

6.30pm. Trafalgar Square. The current Fourth Plinth occupant: Yinka Shonibare’s ship in a bottle. Plus towel.

7.30pm. The London Library, St James’s Square, Piccadilly. Specifically the North Bay Reading Room. Even more specifically, the Rose Macaulay Memorial Corner. Plus towel.

Note my current selection of Library titles. Top of the pile is Douglas Adams’s ‘Last Chance To See’, for obvious reasons. The others are typical of the rare works one can borrow from the LL.

– ‘Creation Revisited’ by Pete Atkins. Praised by Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’.
– ‘The Poetic Museum’ by Julian Spalding. A personal account of the whole point of museums, how museums ‘work’, and the path of museums for the future.
– ‘Janet’s Last Book’ by Allan Ahlberg. A privately-printed book by the children’s author, dedicated to his late wife.
– ‘The Book of Masks: French Symbolist and Decadent Writing of the 1890s’ edited by Andrew Mangravite.

8.30pm. The Cross Kings venue, York Way, King’s Cross.  Wasim Ki. Plus towel.

11.30pm. Royal Vauxhall Tavern, Vauxhall. Bar Wotever. Debbie Smith. Plus towel.

1.30am. Bus stop, near Vauxhall Station. A couple from Bar Wotever, who chatted with me while we waited for buses. I give them one of my business cards with ‘flaneur’ as my occupation. Plus towel.

The first Against Nature took place without any deaths. The acts were all splendid, and it was lovely to see so many friends, many of whom I’d not seen for a while.

My main obstacle was simply getting a decent crowd to turn up. There were 35 paying people, which looked a bit sparse in a room with a capacity of 200, but then that was 35 more than I’d expected. It had, after all, only been booked with ten days to go.

The deal with the venue was that, on top of them taking the money from the bar, I had to also give them a flat fee of £50 from the door takings. In return, I got the room (a 200-year-old former horse hospital), with its own staffed bar and toilets and a fairly good-sounding PA with mics (though one or two of the cables were faulty and had to be replaced on the night), CD decks and a DJ mixer, a DVD player & screen, a dressing room, extra tables and chairs specially laid out, a security guard, a cashbox and float, and their PR services. They could also provide a sound engineer and door person, but I’d have to pay them extra. So I found ones who would do it for next to nothing. Or, as it turned out, for nothing.

The rest of the door takings I divided up among the acts and guest DJ. It was awkward to have to pay The Rude Mechanicals (who had to bring in all their amps and drums), Moonfish Rhumba, DJ Ally Moss and Barry & Stuart rather less than they usually get – B&S present their own TV shows on Channel 4, after all. But I hope they understood.

Thankfully Tricity Vogue did her set for free, as a belated (or early) birthday present for me. Ms Del Des Anges did sound tech duties gratis as a favour (and we both had to butch up and set up the PA from scratch, which was a shock), and Sarah Heenan took money on the door – in the cold outside – purely out of the goodness of her divine heart. I’m utterly grateful to them all.

I took no cash for myself. In fact, I lost money; through buying drinks for acts (the venue only provides free non-alcoholic drinks), buying a few props (silk petals, scented candles), and investing in my own DI box for the PA. Unless it becomes a sell-out night, Against Nature is going to be a pay-to-promote affair.

So, why am I bothering?

Because I get the chance to put on my favourite acts, sharing them with the world. Because coming up in July is a bill featuring a drag king singer and a ‘boy-lesque’ performance artist, alongside an eccentric indie band and a camp Eddie Izzard-esque comedian. I am confident there is nowhere else in the known universe with such a bill. If creativity is about Adding Unique Content, club promotion too can be a creative act.

And I’m doing it because I like the idea of carving out a little corner of Camden Town that is Dickon-shaped, for one night a month till September, if not forever.

And because, all the fiddly bits aside, it is Fun. I like Fun. I don’t know about you (I must stop saying this).

I shall definitely do it until September 1st. After that, either the venue will kick me out for not being fabulous enough, or I’ll find it too expensive or stressful or time-consuming to keep doing. Only one way to find out.

The experience has left me with a newfound respect for promoters and PR people at every level. It’s hard enough to persuade friends to come along to your event, let alone strangers.

In many ways, I am just the sort of person ill-suited to club promotion: I’m aloof, passive, stand-offish, lazy, and do not regard myself as a normal member of the human race. I believe the best way to persuade people to do things is to leave them alone and just… live in hope.

Perversely, I believe this is exactly why I should have a go at club promotion.

But Kevin Costner lied to me. If you book it, they will not necessarily come. You have to tell people. And tell them, and tell them, and tell them. It’s such a leap of faith.

I have also learned that the Facebook Events utility can be misleading. The FB event page for the May 5th night said 139 people had ‘Confirmed’ they were attending. Foolishly, I believed this would actually would be the case on the night. But then, more than a few of those who’d ‘Confirmed’ appeared to be near-naked young men and women, with model looks, perfect bodies and addresses in the Philippines. Looking further, their own list of FB friends seemed to be suspiciously meagre. I have learned that it you book it, there will be spam.

This time I’ve managed to inform about 20 different listings organisations, and have had posters and flyers printed. They look like this:

(Designed by Jo Bevan, image found by Maud Young: more favours from friends)

If you know of somewhere in London which would display a poster or provide a space for a small pile of flyers, please do get in touch.

Finally, here’s the listing for the next Against Nature, on June 2nd. Please pass it on. The live acts are superb and unique, and they really, really deserve an audience.

AGAINST NATURE
Weds June 2nd, 8pm to 1am.
Proud Camden (South Gallery),
The Horse Hospital, Stables Market,
Chalk Farm Rd, London NW1 8AH.
Tel: 020 7482 3867.
http://www.proudcamden.com/

Dickon Edwards (Beautiful & Damned, Latitude) curates a 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 in Proud Camden’s South Gallery.

LIVE ON WEDS JUNE 2ND:

THE MYSTERY FAX MACHINE ORCHESTRA
Singer-songwriter Martin White’s 20-piece ensemble, as featured on BBC4’s ‘Nerdstock’. “Wonderfully eccentric” – Time Out London.
www.themysteryfaxmachineorchestra.com

THE VICHY GOVERNMENT
Polemic spoken-word synthpop, purveyors of such albums as ‘Carrion Camping’.
www.thevichygovernment.com

CRIMSON SKYE
Burlesque performer of questionable sanity, fresh from her appearance as a guest star judge in this year’s Tournament of Tease.
MySpace: Crimson Skye

JINGO & BUTTERFIELD’S TALES OF THE EMPIRE
Victorian-themed improvised comedy, courtesy Fat Kitten Improv’s James Ross and Daniel Barker. Ripping yarns and tales of derring-do from the four corners of the globe.
Facebook: Fat Kitten Improv

Guest DJ: SOPHIA WYETH

Plus resident DJ & host DICKON EDWARDS

Doors 8pm.
Live acts 9.30pm-11.45pm.
Dancing to 1am.

I’ve put up a batch of even cheaper tickets at WeGotTickets.com
Door charge: £5 before 10pm. £7 after.

NB: Latecomers may have to wait until an intermission between live acts.

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

Facebook Event page

To the Roxy on Borough High Steet with Ms Shanthi and her friends Helen & Matthew. It’s a rather cosy lounge bar with sofas and a proper-sized cinema screen at one end, and it hosts all kinds of film events, art house and popcorn alike. Although there’s a membership scheme, you can just turn up and pay on the door. If I lived closer, I’d make it my local.

Tonight’s event is a screening of Patrick Keiller’s 1994 film ‘London’, with a Q&A from the director. It’s followed by the premiere of a similarly themed art piece, ‘LON24’, by The Light Surgeons.

‘LON24’ was made to be part of an installation at the newly refurbished Museum Of London, and is a giddy parade of very up-to-date images: distributors of free newspapers on the street, the Gherkin at sunrise, people getting in and out of modern buses and tube trains, and so on. It does use a lot of ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ style timelapse effects, though, which I find distancing. The slow and static style of Patrick Keiller’s films, coupled with their wordy narration by Paul Schofield, may render them relatively obscure and difficult to market, but it also makes them more personal; which I like.

Funny how speeded-up footage always feels anonymous, and never the work of one particular artist.

Well, unless it’s Benny Hill.

***
Although it’s been a while since his last film, ‘Robinson In Space’, Mr Keiller mentions that he’s in the editing stage of another: ‘Robinson In Ruins’. It was made during 2008, and covers rural areas of Britain that year.

‘I was asked to give it a… “tag line”, he says drily, wincing at the phrase. ‘So I supplied the following:

“A marginal individual sets out to trigger the collapse of neo-liberalism by going on a walk.”‘

He was going to make ‘London’ in black & white, but plumped for colour because ‘it brings out irony much better’.

With a nice sense of symmetry, ‘London’ covers the city from the perspective of fictional flaneur Robinson, and happened to be made in 1992, so we get his angry feelings before and after that year’s general election. It was the last time the Conservatives won until May 2010. And so here we are again.

Aspects of 1992 that ‘London’ reminds me about: the last sighting of bowler hats on older City workers, a Concorde flying over Heathrow, and the old Routemaster buses – although this week’s news says they’re coming back, with a sleek and futuristic redesign.

Most of all, though, I’d forgotten just how regular the IRA bombs were. The film features three: the major one in the City that blew out the windows of several skyscrapers, but also one on Wandsworth Common and one at B&Q in Staples Corner. As the narrator says, Londoners were so used to the devices by now, there were sometimes eight explosions in a single week that year, and people didn’t turn a hair. Even when the bombs actually killed people. There’s also an Eddie Izzard routine from about the same time where he remarks how Tube travellers just shrug at such news and re-jig their route home in their heads.

A London where eight bomb explosions in a week was no big deal. Today, it feels as distant as the Blitz.

Last Friday I was kindly invited to the press night of the play ‘Dirty White Boy: Tales Of Soho’, at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall.

It’s based on Clayton Littlewood’s book about the various colourful and sexually graphic characters he encountered when he ran a shop on the corner of Dean Street and Old Compton Street, the Dirty White Boy of the title. He kept a diary, which became a MySpace blog (this being 2006), a newspaper column and finally a book. Then he teamed up with the actor David Benson and turned it into a series of sketches, with Mr L as himself, and Mr B as everyone else. I was fortunate enough to see the duo perform at the Colony Room – a suitably iconic Soho venue – just before it closed.

So now they’ve expanded it further, this time into a full-length stage show. The sketches have become scenes, the characters have dramatic arcs and follow-ups, there’s as much tears as there are laughs, and the scenes are punctuated by songs from a talented young third player, Alexis Gerred. Being not exactly ugly, he also doubles up perfectly as one wealthy character’s rent boy. I’m not so keen on the use of hits by Blondie, Petula Clark, and the Pet Shop Boys as illustrations to the action (though a few years ago I would’ve been; my tastes have changed). But there’s a rather good original number at the start, and his rendition of the Mae West song, ‘My Old Flame’ is absolutely stunning.

Otherwise, it’s as it was in the Colony, with Mr Benson on convincing form as a Quentin Crisp-esque old queen, a pensioner who blows his income on thongs (‘what else is a pension for?’) a motherly transsexual, and even a black drag queen from Chicago.

One aspect of the show that occurred to me is how people in real life often present themselves as types, if not full-blown stereotypes, as a way of dealing with the world. Once you get to know the person, the assumptions dissolve. It’s been said before that camp can be a defence mechanism, but no more so than any other parameter of mannerism or appearance. Choice of hairstyle or clothes, too, will put you into one tribe or another.

Even those who don’t think they’re a type can find themselves ticking boxes unconsciously. I recently saw a photo of people campaigning to save BBC 6Music  and noticed their shared similarities: band t-shirt, jeans, thirtysomething stubble, knowledge of Wire box sets, both Wire the band and The Wire TV series. It’s social type as interface. (Radio-wise, I’m equally mindful of jokes about the stereotypical Radio 4 listener being stuffy and out of touch with youth culture, while the joke about Radio 3  for years was that all the presenters wore black polo neck jumpers.)

‘I am much more than I appear’, we say in our choices of self-presentation. ‘But at least you have somewhere to start. And it’s a comfort. And sometimes, something to cling to.’

It could be argued that Mr L has the hardest job of the night, having to play himself throughout, and – as he says right at the start – he’s no actor. However, his gentle, even-toned, unassuming style of speaking is what holds the show together, and keeps it both original and personal. Had he been replaced with a proper actor, the show would be a lot less special. I hear it’s selling out, and rightly so.

***

Sunday sees me at the Arch Hotel near Marble Arch, for afternoon tea & cake with Ms Alex Paynter and friends. The hotel specialises in eclairs, and I get my introduction to the savoury incarnation. I suppose it’s not far from a kind of stretched vol-au-vent or a canape with extensions.

High Tea at the Arch comes with Bruce Weber coffee table books to peruse, over artisan bread with gentleman’s relish. I gingerly try an Earl Grey-flavoured martini (billed as a ‘MarTEAni’, groan), which turns out to be absolutely delicious, if a little potent.

Not only are the prices reasonable, but they throw in – o joy of joys – their limited edition Election Eclairs.

I’d been envious of my American friend Jennifer’s Barack Obama chocolate bar, and wished UK elections featured more edible merchandise. At the Arch, I’m delighted to report, faces of the party leaders have been printed in edible ink onto marzipan squares, with which to decorate various appropriate flavours of eclair. For David Cameron there’s Blueberry & Coconut, for Gordon Brown there’s Rose with Raspberry & Champagne Jelly, while Nick Clegg’s flavour is Grapefruit & Champagne.

I love this photo of Ms P caught devouring one of the Gordon Browns.

It should be pointed out that her choice of eclair in no way reflects the way she might vote on May 6th.

(Photo by Chris Amies)