In Dog News today, Crufts was won by Danny The Pekinese

Danny's kennel name is “Dangerous Liason”. His owners are a Mr Albert Easdon, 49, and a Mr Philip Martin, 50, who run a hotel together.

With this diary entry, my readers automatically fall into two groups. Those who have seen the film “Best In Show” and whose minds are now recalling certain characters and scenes, and everyone else.

Adam Faith died today.

A true London pop star. Oh, just look at him:

<img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38930000/jpg/_38930001_faith60s_bbc203.jpg"></img>

I usually have a ban in my own diary on the sort of polls and quizzes that everyone else has on theirs, but vanity and curiosity about who reads these entries (and why) have meant I just can't resist this one. Please forgive me.

This will be my one and only "poll" ever, I promise. I'll list it as a <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/memories.bml?user=dickon_edwards">LJ Memory</a> and will check it sporadically in the future for any new or revised comments.

Fill in the blanks. Post anonymously if you like. I'm not checking IP addresses or anything like that.

I ____ Dickon.
Dickon is ____.
If I were alone in a room with Dickon, I would _______.
I think Dickon should _____.
Dickon needs ______.
I want to _________ Dickon.

Do your worst.

To the Haymarket Odeon to see the film DareDevil. Unlike Spider-Man (cert 12A), the movie is a 15 certificate. Yet there's no nudity or what Mr Simon Bates once called "sexual swearwords" in those warnings you used to get at the beginning of rented videos. Also, the violence isn't any more extreme than the carnage in "The Two Towers" (another 12A).

So I have to assume the reason for the certification must be Mr Affleck's costume. Which has to be obscene to be believed.

DareDevil – the man without fear of broadcasting what side he dresses.

Someone on eBAY is selling a single by my old band Orlando:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2512582626&category=14732

The category it's under is:

<i> "Music:CDs, Records and Tapes:CDs:Rock: Progressive"</i>

So now it can be told.

I've just bought the <a href="http://www.musicismyboyfriend.com">Hidden Cameras</a> single, released on Rough Trade Records this week, on a recommendation that they were "pure Dickon".

They appear to describe themselves as "a fifteen piece Toronto gay church folk band", fronted by their singer and songwriter Joel Gibb. And no, I don't think he's related to the Bee Gees in an Alexis Arquette, queer runt of the litter style.

To these ears the Hidden Cameras are a bit Aislers Set mixed with early Magnetic Fields. Echoey, non-rocking wall-of-sound indiepop. But with more church organs. And they are very gay in every sense of the word.

<img src="http://www.rbebout.com/getfree/pix/bantrio.jpg"></img>

The single is called "Ban Marriage" and takes place at the altar during the protagonist's own ceremony. He is there to marry his boyfriend, but his female best friend rails against coupling of any kind. He has to decide at the altar whether to listen to her or not:

<i>"I was forced to take a stand on one side. It was him or my fag hag, oh well, I guess she was never that good of a friend."</i>

But then the character changes his mind. He ends up raging with new vows of his own against all varieties of marriage, and specifically that:

<i>"There is splendour in the harshness of bum".</i>

Oh yes!

So naturally, my friend Ms Goodchild heard the single and thought of me.

It's a nice follow-up to Belle and Sebastian's "The State I'm In", another God-and-gayness song that was used in the film "Storytelling" to accompany a sex scene between two schoolboys.

By way of contrast to the brash queercore-pop A-side of "Ban Marriage", one of the b-sides, "We Oh We", is a stark, sensitive and beautiful torch song. It gives the singer a chance to show off his nigh-on Jeff Buckley-esque vocal talent, and it's actually quite difficult not to be moved to tears by the performance.

There's a fascinating interview with The Hidden Cameras at <a href="http://www.rbebout.com/getfree/cameras.htm">this webpage</a>.

The band are rumoured to be coming to London soon, but it might well be for a press-only showcase gig. If they ARE playing, and I fail to see them, I shall be even more annoyed than the time last week when I couldn't get into the Momus gig at Wimbledon Library. This was entirely due to my spending too much time on my make-up and arriving late.

I shall be playing "Ban Marriage" in my DJ set tonight (see my previous diary entry).

I am Dj-ing once again this Friday February 28th, although this is my first time solo at a proper night club.

The club in question is <a href="http://www.funcitynights.com/">Fun City</a>, at The Verge, 247 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 8PB. Printable flyers are available from their website <a href="http://www.funcitynights.com/">here.</a>

I am "on" midnight to 1am.

I shall try my utmost not to play every song on the TATU album. Their delicious pop songs would be enough, but the inner CD tray of this album (the UK version, anyway) has a close-up photo of their white socks. This alone meant I had to buy it, frankly. More pop groups should wear white socks.

White Socks Are Top Of The Pops. I always knew it was possible.

The many discussions on "TATU – Right Or Wrong" are rendered somewhat academic in my eyes by the simple fact they and their string-pullers are Extremely Russian. All bets are off. Rumours of terrible exploitation behind the scenes have never affected my enjoyment of girl groups before: I'm a Supremes fan. Plus anything that gets scatty accidental-shoplifter Richard Madeley in a self-righteous moralistic strop has a special place in my heart <i>de facto</i>.

Arguably the most shocking thing about TATU is the standard of the English translation on their <a href="http://www.tatu.ru/eng/news.shtml">official Russian website</a>. You'd have thought with all that international success and number one hits in every parallel universe, they could afford to hire a translator whose grasp of English wasn't a step below those of a "funny foreigner" character from a TV sitcom of a time outworn.

Then again, I'm not sure what a better translated version of this recent statement from their producer (taken from the above link) could possibly <i>be</i>:

<i>"Being a psychiatrist, I have serious suspicions that the British Channel 4 presenter Richard Madeley tends to have pedophilia… It is possible that Richard Madeley could be cured."</i>

How could you not love any band that says such things?

It's the <i>"tends</i> to have" that gets me.

Meanwhile, the UK Top Of The Pops apparently censored the girls kissing… by cutting to a <i>straight</i> couple in the <i>studio audience</i> kissing. Presumably BBC1 were trying to outdo the group with some incredulity-soliciting of their own make. You'd have thought they did more than enough of that already, being a channel that happily commissions "This Week" with Andrew Neil.

The one defining comment on TATU has to be the one Ms Lena Katina (the red-haired one) recently made, on hearing another such kiss had been cut out of their performance on the US Jay Leno show:

<i>"It is Fuck!"</i>

Foreign countries are foreign countries. They do things differently there. To each other, mainly.

I would just like to assure the friends and immediately family of Mr Luke Haines that my previous entry was in no way intended to be an unkind slight on Mr Haines' physical attractions. I just don't think I look like him, that's all. I realise all too well that I am hardly an oil painting myself. Well, I suppose I could be one of those more grotesque Francis Bacons. But not a Young Man By Bronzino, anyway (click here to see my favourite painting at the National Gallery.).

Although I've never quite adored The Auteurs, I do admire Mr Haines' other band Black Box Recorder, and today I bought their latest single, "These Are The Things". Last time around the band happily confessed wanting to make records as good as those of Ms Billie Piper, a statement which would make the Radioheads and Coldplays of this world explode in rockist umbrage. Now they appear to have gone in, and I wince to say it, an bleepy Ladytron / electroclash "direction". The song is instantly memorable, and I can't think what it reminds me of, which is probably a good thing. But I do rather like it. It'll be interesting to see if it makes The Proper Charts like "The Facts Of Life" did a few years ago.

At Stay Beautiful last night, a stranger buttonholes me.

"I just wanted to say you look like…"

(Place your bets now, dear reader!)

"…Luke Haines."

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/lukehaines.jpg"></img>

Much as I admire Mr Haines' numerous musical incarnations, I am aghast at this physical comparison, and am compelled to leave the club at once in a state of pronounced mortification.

I have just posted my one and only Valentines card.

It's to myself, naturally.

In it, I have written:
<i>
Dear Mr Edwards
You are a sad and pathetic man.
But you're basically a Good Person.

Love,
Dickon.
xxx</i>