Last night, I spent eleven hours in a nightclub.
The first eight or so of those were as part of a shoot for "Kash Point TV". I have no idea whether this is for cable, Internet or tea-towel, but I am grateful to Kash Point for letting me in free so many times, feel the club is the best in London, and am happy to help them out in any way I can. I trot along to the venue "Moonlighting" in Greek Street at 4pm, and do not leave until 3am.
During the shoot, I play a dancer in a video for the artist Crazy Girl, help out with a bit of make-up, button pushing, sound mixing, and even a spot of emergency microphone repair. I also perform a couple of short "Dickon Edwards – Letter From Hysterica" monologues to camera. I draw on my diary, but it quickly becomes apparent that writing to be read and writing for speaking to camera are very different genres indeed. This is my debut as a spoken word solo artist. Foolishly, I thought that the combination of being able to look striking and write striking things to read out would be enough. It is not. I am a mass of nerves, and will be quite understanding if my footage is not used.
But I will do it again, and do it better. It has made me want to work harder on the art of speaking in performance. I'm keen on trying one of those Open Mike nights at various London performance-poetry or alternative comedy nights. Dickon Edwards – stand up comedian? Why not. I'll try anything once, except bungy jumping and bestiality. Of course, I would be careful not to be one of those wretched two-a-penny blokey comedians who point out the difference between cats and dogs, the trouble with their girlfriend, or something to do with Star Wars. I would not certainly not try and appeal to the audience as if I was one of them. My own observational comedy would have to be along the lines of "Don't you really hate it when you're sawing up the body and the blood won't scrub off the walls?"
If I DID try something like that, I wouldn't tell jokes or even try to make the audience laugh. Just make their attention toward the stage vaguely worthwhile. Give people something memorable they can't get elsewhere. It would be more akin to Mr Alan Bennett's Talking Heads monologues, with Thora Hird as David Byrne. I think they call it character-based comedy. In my case, it would be as The Tragicomic Character Of Dickon Edwards.
I know comedy doesn't have to be funny – I have seen "Coupling". But I am an admirer of humour that is more unusual and engrossing than laugh-out-loud funny, whether it's the Kids In The Hall, the third series of The League Of Gentlemen, or the fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I still haven't seen "Nighty Night", but I am told it's My Kind Of Thing. I also enjoy the show-and-tell style of performance verging on anecdotal monologue, from the late Spalding Gray and Laurie Anderson's more wry pieces, to Dave Gorman, and Richard Herring's Talking Cock show.
It's true I am cruelly disfigured with a comedy speech impediment, and am given to gabbling, nervous stutters, and people asking me to repeat myself. But I was gratified to recently discover that, as unlikely as it could possibly sound, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, lately in the news for refusing an OBE, has a similar vocal affliction to me. Yet he manages to perform his work fluently and articulately. So it's just a case of practising like mad. And then practising more. And then trying out the work at open mike spots. Perhaps that's how I should bill myself – Dickon Edwards: A Speech Impediment A Bit Like Benjamin Zephaniah's.
Back at Moonlighting, the Kash Point TV shoot finishes as the Kash Point nightclub begins, the last weekly KP ever. The club will return in the summer, on board the Tattershall Castle boat, but will be monthly, perhaps even members-only. I think this is entirely advisable.
I keep Mr Matthew Glamorre company as he puts on his own make-up, a process of titivation (not transformation, mind) which takes even longer than my own. Truly someone I can learn from. Tonight's Kash Point theme is Hat Night, with champagne and prizes for the most exotic form of Easter Bonnet. I myself wear a brand new top hat made personally for me by Bid. He once made hats for Alice Cooper.
Little Richard, one of the club's resident Superstars and described earlier in this diary as Kash Point's dancing Pillow-Biting Lobster, tonight wears an all-over hat suit. It is a creation of his trademark gaffa tape (does he buy the stuff in bulk?) and cardboard, dotted with silvery spaceboy domes and topped off with a long horizontal box enclosing his entire head and extending the best part of a metre before him. To speak to him, one has to press one's face against the end window of the headpiece's viewfinder and peer deep inside. Naturally, he spends some time on the dancefloor like this. Watching him drink a bottle of beer is a sight to remember.
The winning hat-wearers are a couple decked out in lights and arrows, but mention must be made of French Thierry wearing a colourful silky butterfly hat affair, and very little else below the neck. Likewise the gentleman with a gigantic foam letter "A" on his head.
Once again, having a costume parade packs out the club to the rafters, and I am told all sorts of horror stories going on at the door upstairs – even death threats from people refused entry. Mr Glamorre and his brave crew do their utmost to ensure the badly-dressed are directed elsewhere, but some always manage to slip in. Even a guest DJ does the equivalent of playing badly-dressed music. There is a strict ban on any four-four music one might get in Normal Clubs, and when the DJ puts on "Gay Bar" by Electric Six, Mr Glamorre storms onto the mixing desk, slams the fader down, and firmly tells the DJ , face to face and terrifyingly serious, "NO. SHIT." Quite right too.
What we do get towards the giddy end of the night is Mr G performing Minty's "Useless Man", which is always a sign he's in a good mood. And the last tune played at Kash Point Weekly is "One Singular Sensation" from "A Chorus Line". Perfect music for top hat wearers.
I make it back to my bedsit at close to 5am, thankful that my next appointment isn't until 3pm the next day, and in Highgate too.
I wake up at just after 3pm, realize the time in horror, and dash outside. Ms Claudia Andrei, photographer and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1902588118/qid%3D1081537769/026-5023342-2176401">"Transgender London: London and The Third Sex".</a> who I have kept waiting, remarks that I look as if I've just crawled out of bed. She is entirely correct.
She brings an interesting bit of news for those who think I look vaguely like David Sylvian, the singer with the band Japan. Though I quite like his music, I am not an expert on it and have never made any deliberate attempt to emulate his 80s look. Or indeed anyone else's. But after the umpteenth such comparison, I can't help but be intrigued to hear that Ms Andrei has recently shown her photos of me to Steve Jansen, also of the band, who in turn has shown Mr Sylvian. The response from the latter was that he was "amused".
I wonder what Mr Sylvian thinks of "Coupling".
