So I sat up for the Oscars even though my eyelids frequently objected and tried to disobey me and close for the night – especially when the Sky coverage flipped back to the studio in London where Emilia Fox, Ben Miller and Boyd Hilton were sat like three effigies on a couch. If they had been hired not to be insightful. lively and entertaining then they did a terrific job.
In Hollywood I was surprised by how many seasoned actors muffed their presenter roles. There was more fluff on stage than in my belly button. And my belly button is deep. Sweaty upper lips, speed-talking Pinky and Perky style and freestyling with the pronunciation of names was the order of the night. John Travolta, who looked like Herman from the Munsters, renamed Idina Menzel live on stage, introducing her as Adele Dazeem, Maybe that’s her scientology name?
‘Nood’ should be banned as a frock shade of non-choice . It should be compulsory to razzle dazzle the pj wearing viewers with a lot of colour. Do it like Lupita Nyong’o. Her dress was a burst of joy in the proceedings, although if my late mother was watching she would have warned Lupita about the bronchial dangers of not keeping her chest warm.
And what is it with peplums? They make women with big bellies and bums look like Jabba the Hut and small waisted and teeny assed women look like, who knows because you can’t get a look at what lies beneath.
Liza-with-an-eek Minnelli looked alarming in a blue nylon trouser suit that needed to be accessorised with it’s own fire extinguisher. Her sister Lorna Luft was wafting around with a piece of timber up her frock. If kitchen tables could walk Lorna is what they’d look like.
Mathew McConaughey’s wife came as the Queen of the 3,457th most important country in the world in a bridesmaid pink gown with a natty built in cape.
Ellen was a laugh and a half all night and proved that a big smile and a great personality work a lot better than surgery and/or botox when it comes to looking good.
You might think I am daft but I love this joke:
A three-legged dog walks into a Saloon in the Wild West. He tells all the cowboys sat there, “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.”
Having had four babies in three years I know all about the post-partum period and it’s thrills and , ahem, spills. Characteristics include a jelly belly, extreme knackerisation, eyebags the size and colour of coal sacks and boobs that spurt like the Trevi fountain.
So what I want to know is how Lauren Silverman, baby Eric Cowell’s Mummy, just 5 days after delivering can, according to photos in the Daily Mail, be into spray on tight leather trousers? Where is her new-mommy-nappy hiding? The woman’s eye liner is perfectly applied and her hair actually brushed up into a ponytail?
And if that wasn’t enough to be baffled by, the very next day more pictures appeared of the new family on a beach in Miami. In these Mum and Dad are having a little snog, their dog is having a lick of the baby’s face and the newborn is sucking on a bottle of milk that no-one is holding. It’s just stuffed into his mouth. Lauren’s wafting around in some baby-dollesque number and Simon is topless. It ‘s like a celebrity version of Shameless
I know they are uber-loaded and in their luxury homes there are maternity nurses swinging off the chandeliers in every room – but Lauren and Simon should try spending a day in their dressing gowns, sat on a sofa and taking turns to nuzzle their newborn. In private. It’s a million billion trillion dollar feeling.
On Saturday I drove to to the little fringe theatre , parked nicely and neatly and legally on their forecourt and Mr Anna May and I quick-stepped in from the wind and the rain to collect our tickets.
In the queue for the box office I began was counting down in my head until he said it, and I didn’t have to wait long. It was 53 and a quarter seconds before he announced, “I won’t be a minute” and dashed out the door.
“I won’t be a minute” is code for “You are an almighty gonk who is incapable of parking a car and I am now going outside to to move it two inches to the left and straighten it up a bit because if I don’t the future of mankind will be in jeopardy.” Pointless precision parking is a kind of four-wheel tic he has developed in his senior years. I think it’s linked to his prostrate.
While he was outside doing his superhero parking thing there was a ‘happening’ going on in the foyer. In front of a small audience three women,who were dressed like the Homepride Flour people, were preparing giant Iced Gems(the bite size biscuits with a blob of icing on top, not the lettuces) and being filmed. The room was Church silent.
I was baffled.com. Was it stand up comedy? But no-one was laughing. Was it dance? But no-one was dancing. I asked the woman on my right if it was a performance of some kind and she hissed back “Ssssshhh!” She had three plaits,smelt of chick peas and was wearing a tartan sofa cover.
Mr Anna May arrived back and asked in a voice that would have been conversational if everyone else in the room was talking. But because they weren’t his remark boomed around the space, “What’s this load of wank about, then?”
ps: Apparently it was tactile performance installation art, donchaknow?
It was BAFTA night 2014! So I slapped on some sparkly eyeliner , popped a cocktail umbrella into my Ovaltine and settled down for a night with the stars.
I was yearning glitz and glamour but instead got Stephen Fry who is looking very much like a bloodhound these days. He spoke mostly in words of 5 syllables or more – and none of them were interesting or amusing.
I yawned a lot,and not because it was bedtime. Seeing Lupita Nyong in that divine green dress was the only moment when I wished I was a movie star. The rest of the actress pack looked like they’d shopped at the Debenhams Blue Cross Sale event.
Angelina Jolie couldn’t even be assed to climb into a dress. She went for vampire make up and a louche dress suit finished off with an ‘I am soooo bored’ expression. Cate Blanchett, also in black, exuded smug.
Oprah Winfrey looked like a balloon that was ready to pop in a Stella McCartney frock. Sartorial style note to Stella.. ….one must measure one’s client’s bosoms before trying to stuff them into a lace bodice.
Helen Mirren was so far up herself I am amazed they found her in time to present her with her lifetime achievement award. Poncy Bonkers is my summation of her acceptance speech.
And has anyone ever told Emma Thompson to ‘calm down, dear’ before she launches into her hop, skip, jump routine at every televised red carpet event? That woman needs to make friends with 2mcg of Diazepam before getting into the cab on a big night out. No wonder Greg Wise looks so exhausted.
The most fun I had was betting on the getting high stakes. I am talking hair. Helen McCory romped home with a Pompidou-do, closely followed by Oprah, Fearne Cotton, the previously named and shamed Emma Thompson and Noel Gallagher.
For The British Assortment of Frumpy Tired-looking Actors I have a message from a super fan – do better in 2015.
So I was pouring porridge into my saucepan this morning and I noticed the photo of the Quaker Oats bloke on the box, and it occurred to me I had seen him somewhere else this week.
He was the Grammys dressed as Madonna! And here is the evidence….
HELLO! with a cheery wave! I have been to see The Book of Mormon that opens with the brightest ever HELLO song and an assortment of waves that are hilarious, and I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it.
Before the show, as part of my down with wine, chocolate and anything yum January, I decided to eat in a vegetarian organic restaurant. It’s clientele were all at least half my height and weight and I felt like the not jolly green giant in there.
It had very low toadstooly style seats that, trust me, were a lot easier to sit down on than to stand up up from. The seats were nursery school height but the communal tables weren’t. So unless you were a gymnast or very strong of knee you had to lean on the table to lever up into a standing position. I did this manoeuvre and sent the dinner of the stranger in front of me sliding towards my lap. It was funny all round the first time, but the second, third and (cringe) fourth…..
The restaurant drill involved a lot of up and down as you had to fetch your own food from the buffet and then present at the till point to be weighed. The plate, not the diner.
I had read the instructions written on the wall in foot high letters so chose lots of lightweight salads and cous cous. Mr Anna May, who didn’t bring his glasses, assumed it was an eat as much as you can type arrangement. This explains why my plate cost £8.90 and his was £24.70.
The good news was they did desserts, so I tipped the table again to stand up and go in search of a luscious looking apricot cheescake with a coconut base I’d spotted earlier. I fetched it back to the table with two spoons. When the women sat opposite saw me approaching they fell forward, like they’d been shot, onto their dinners to keep them safe from sliding.
At a guess I would say that the main ingredient in that apricot cheesecake was earwax. My husband disagreed, he thought it was playdoh.
When the pair sat across from us were ready to leave they used the table to push themselves up which sent my cheesecake rocketing and it came to land on one of their handbags . The woman sighed and said, “Mulberry” and I replied, “No, apricot.” I can report that some organic vegetarians have no sense of humour.
It was the Golden Gawps, I mean Globes, this week and there were a lot of Hollywood stars who stepped out without looking in a mirror first.
I have said it before and will say it again – yellow is for babygros – but Lena Dunham just won’t listen.
Drew Barrymore arrived wearing her garden and she was pregnant and gave a masterclass in how to make a big belly look like a huge belly.
Palo Patten wore wedding white with what looked like a duvet, albeit an artfully arranged one, over her shoulder.
The ’Oh no she didn’t wear that…..did she?’ screamer award went to someone called Lady Victoria summatorother. M’Lady is narrow of nose and broad of daftness because she’d taken the sort of stocking you’d wear for a bank raid and dragged it own down to her ankles. She must be the proud owner of a very neat lady garden and sport no spots at all on her bum to be confident of getting away with a 2 denier dress.
It was a dress to get noticed in – but the pity of it was that she made me snort but I still don’t know who she is.
I am resting up for Oscar night when your fashion correspondent will be wearing floor length BHS – in a pastel floral print fleece fabric – and drinking vintage Ovaltine.
All Christmas confused, that’s me. After all the woop woop and routine busting I am not sure what day of the week it is any more.
And I have sustained a Christmas injury playing snap with my son. We are both so competitive that we almost chopped a coffee table in two as we played and I now have my arm in a sling with tendonitis and am taking painkillers four times a day. Such fun.
I wish good health and great times for all visitors to this blog in 2014.
See you there xxxxx
It was a hootin’ and a hollerin’ final sponsored by Kleenex.
In the last analysis:
I’d like Sophie Ellis Bextor to be my son’s wife because she is so sweet. Although I hope I wouldn’t scare her.
I’d like Natalie Gunmede to be my boss because she’d surely be super-understanding about any sudden urges I had to throw a sickie.
I’d like Susanna Reid to shutthefookup and stop with the over emoting. It was the gushing like Niagara Falls that lost her votes.
I’d like Abbey Clancy to do my eyelashes for a big night out. And not to leave her husband for Alijaz, easily the world’s most gorgeous man.
It was a finale turbo charged by girl power and, in the end, I would have been happy for any of them to win bar Susanna- she was beginning to proper creep me out. The Joker from Batman came to mind when she was doing that ‘I’m a lovely person, I am’ grin.
And I think I must be officially Strictly senile because when I saw the cast reunited I couldn’t remember ever seeing most of them dance.
Can’t wait already for the wonderfulwonderful Dave Arch and his band, crispy hair, loadsa lip liner and plenty of bare chest in Strictly 2014.
|
|
