Photo of self sent today from Richard Smith of Gay Times. Taken by Piers Allardyce, a charming man who once photographed Orlando at Club Skinny in Camden, circa 1995. Ten years later, he’s still snapping away and I’m still posing away in London clubs. In this case, Kash Point at Moonlighting, Soho, May 2005. Though in 1995, he couldn’t show me the results instantly via the back of his camera.

The lighting makes it look like I’m wearing nail varnish. I’m not. That would be overdoing it, even for me. Apart from anything else, the fumes give me a headache.

After having an email address for ten years, I finally get Broadband. The child in a sweetshop element has yet to die down.

The numerous BBC Radio Listen Again streams are a particular favourite. No excuse to miss anything half-decent on the radio now. There’s the mp3 podcasts of the intellectual discussion show In Our Time, currently holding its Who Is The Best Philospher poll, or Mark Kermode’s deliciously ranting film reviews on Five Live. For the film Palindromes, he manages to not only slag off the director Mr Solondz, but poor old Mr Brecht too. “Brechtian distance? I don’t need to be reminded I’m watching a film or play. I know I’m in the theatre, because I entered a building with the word ‘THEATRE’ on the outside!”

This week, David Mitchell, of the shows Peepshow and Mitchell & Webb, shines on Armando Ianucci’s satirical show Charm Offensive. Proof that, in the hands of experts (ie not 99% of people who write on the Internet), sarcasm can actually be the highest form of wit. He has this to say on the subject of Bob Geldof and the forthcoming Live 8 concert:

“I think he’s saying the real power doesn’t lie in the established forms of government. It lies in a man who by swearing can make credulous people assemble.”

Fosca at Cafe Kosmos, Gothenburg, June 4th 2005.
L – R: Kate Dornan, D.E., Rachel Stevenson.

Back from Sweden in one piece. We are looked after by Erika, Victor and the band Compute in Gothenburg; Said, Mikael and Dan in Malmo. Fantastic response from audience at Gothenburg – where they know all the Fosca lyrics far better than I do. The experience of watching an audience singing along to one’s own lyrics is one that makes everything worthwhile.

On the way home, I manage to set off the Gothenburg airport metal detector. The culprits are the metal clips on my braces. As in the types that hold one’s trousers up. For some reason the machine’s Stansted counterpart isn’t affected. Either the Swedish security devices are more powerful, or the Stansted device is deliberately calibrated to allow for old-fashioned trouser accessories.

Have to write up my notes as a tour diary for Plan B magazine, but readers may be interested to read the blog reports of my bandmates Ms Dornan and Ms Stevenson. Ms Dornan has an additional moose teaser here.

Big piece on The Boogaloo by James Brown in this week’s Time Out magazine. It concludes thus:

Holding court in the corner is inevitably [Shane] MacGowan, these days a Dickensian character who has a live-in butler who serves him sausages. ‘The butler’s a former New Romantic called Mr Dickon Edwards,” says [manager] O’Boyle. “He used to be in that band Orlando. I’ve made him the Ambassador of the Boogaloo. Only Shane could come to the pub with a butler.’

I’m rather pleased about that. Since then Mr O’Boyle has asked me to host bingo nights at the pub. I do hope these happen.