BBC Essex Part 2

So I volunteered for BBC Essex for the second time this weekend and it was another great experience;

I was taken into the control to be greeted by Marshall King;
Marshall is one of the UK's and Europe's top Elvis impersonators. He was on Steve's show and was a really convincing Elvis.

Next, Eric was in the control room. Eric is really great to chat to and the more time I send with him the more I'm coming to realise that he is incredibly well conected in the world of showbiz. This week on his show he had Connie Francis. Connie is one of those people who's a bit of a legend really. She's sold millions of albums, been in loads of movies and this year Glria Estefan will begin work on a bio-pic of her life. She's not a name many people in my generation will have heard of but she's quite clearly a star.

Whilst Connie was on, Eric decided to get some guy called Don Black on the phone as well. I did a little research and discovered DOn Black is a very famous lyricist (I say famous not because you'll know his name but because you'll know his songs.....seriously you'll really know his songs). He's written lyrics for;

Ben (Michael Jackson)
Starlight Express
Diamonds are forever (Shirely Bassey)
The World is not enough (Garbage - the band not my judgement)
Self preservation society (Italian Job and most England games)

And loads, loads more!!

Finally we had a guy called Atila Huseyn come into the studio for a few minutes. He's an up and coming jazz singer from London who has a great voice.

Oh yeah we had one more guest, this guy who runs a cafe near Eric had mentioned that he was coming to Chelmsford to see some family so Eric invited him into be on the show. And my mum even got a mention this week.

I know it probably all seems quite obscure but these people are genuine entertainers. They've been doing it for years and they're really good at it. There's no pre-written scripts or autotune for the singers or earpieces with direction coming in. They're really hard-working people supported by some really excellent team (big thanks to Oliver and Cat).

I have a quiz question with this blog too;

Which TV and Radio presenter (in high demand) started his media career at BBC radio Essex??

Answers on a postcard....or in a comment......probably best in a comment.......who sends postcards??

Just let me know now

The Bank Holiday was spent with Matt L, Chell, Glyn and Christina as we headed off to Wigley in Derbyshire to see Chell's parents and family. We headed off Fridy night, spent Saturday at a lovely little river, Sunday I came back to Essex to go to the BBC while the others made a music video and Monday we had luch with Chell's family before heading back to see Pirates 3.

A lovely weekend.

It's the end of the world as we know it

Thursday was a chance for me to head off to the seaside.

I was invited by the Divisional Fellowship Band (a band made up of retired men and women from around the area who get together to play brass band music and spend time together). They were going to Lowestoft which is as far east as you can get in the UK.

The day was lovely and the band played really well and I felt very welcome.

One thing I discovered was that some of the members of the this band who go to my church have a nickname for me (I'll be honest when someone told me on Thursday that they "all call you it" I was a little suspicious. These things tend to be very hard to get to catch on and often it's only one person thinks it up and then uses it intermittently) However, I was wring as the moment he'd finished telling me it he went off and had a conversation with someone ese from my church and they both used it throughout quite naturally.

Anyway I'm sure you want to know what it is..........DULUX (Matt White paint, paint made by dulux, my name is similar to that of a type of paint)

There we are, I wonder if it'll stick - I quite like it.

Keeping it real!!

As we wandered by St. Martin in the fields we saw the rather inventive builders hoardings they've put up round the work going on there. Each on has a picture of a minister or musician or bell ringer or chorister in a hard hat. It's a quirky idea that makes the place look less building site. As we wandered by the choristers pictures I noticed something about the music they were singing;
The song they're singing as people usher by awaiting the re-opening of this place is 'O Praise the Lord all ye Heathen'

I thought that was a bit of an odd choice.

Surprise (part 3)

Finally we headed to the theatre to see 'Evita'. The show is coming to a close this weekend and I've wanted to see it since it opened. Some thoughts;

1. The whole thing is really well put together
2. Great set
3. Peron and Che are amazing
4. The girl who sings 'another suitcase...' steals the show
5. The MD clearly had somewhere else to be - everything was too quick and this has a knock on effect....
6. ......Evita was really struggling with the ridiculous tempos set by the MD
7. The show whcih is scheduled to last 2hrs 20mins started 5minutes late and was over in 2hrs 5mins

All-in-all a great show.....shame the MD didn't think so!!

Surprise (part 2)

And so from the Eye we walked towards Regent Street were I was taken to the hallowed ground
Once inside I was led to the software dept where my incredible wife told me I was getting this;
It's some awesome video editing software that I've wanted for ages - I am a very spoilt husband!!

After this we entered the Quicksilver shop and having wandered around the downstairs we decided to go upstairs, halfway during this ascent Christina slipped a little (this is not unusual as sh was wearing ne flip-flops and these take time to wear in) However what was unusual was the way i which she then found herself falt out on the stairs, I have no idea how but she was literally at full stretch, lying on the stairs much to bemusement of the man coming down them towards her. She now has a nasty bruise......and I have a great preaching story (only kidding!!)

We then took a wander down Carnaby Street and visited Christina's favourite Mac shop
Before heading to Starbucks, stopping ont he way to see Man U robbed of the FA Cup, and spending a few hours just reading.

Surprise (part 1)

Last Saturday was my day with Christina to celebrate my birthday with a range of surprises arranged by my lovely wife.

The day began with a train ride to London and then a walk along the south bank of the Thames before arriving at the London Eye to have a lunch and river cruise - the views were lovely, the food was great and we were served by Sylar from Heroes (if you haven't been watching it you should start)
I had to take this as we were leaving for fear of my skull!!

We then boarded the London Eye for some more incredible views of the city.

Last night I (very) nearly died!!

And so having been upset about the prospect of tuning 25 (3 times in convrsation yesterday with Christina did I mistakenly still label myself 24) I had a lovely day in the end.

I opened my presents from Christina on Wednesday evening - I got some shorts (which are very cool) and some trainers which look like old school guttys (I think over here you call them plimsoles but they'll always be guttys to me - oh and it's pronounced 'guddys')

Thursday morning I opened some other cards and stuff from family receving lovely cheques and gift cards.

Then I went to the office.

I came home for around lunchtime to do so more work on some video editing stuff and had a long chat with top bloke Phil B who I discovered 2 things about;

1. He reads this blog - hello Phil
2. He used to be in a band with Duke Special!!!!!! Anyway that was awesome and before anyone starts harassing him for backstage passes or free tickets or meeting up or anything else.....it's too late - I've done it all.

Anyway it was good to chat with Phil and then I had some lunch

Christina came in and we went to Pizza express for tea (try the new romana pizzas - all good)

We came back in and Matt L popped round to say hello and before too long I knew something was going on - it turns out he, glyn and chell had organised a birthday treasure hunt for me which involved watching youtube videos he na dglyn had amde and then going places to find the clues - some highlights;

One clue was currys - I wandered round the local curry house car park really winding some guy up who thought I was nosing into his conversation before going in and being handed the clue from behind the counter!!

Another was a phone number hid in different places around my house - I rang the number (it was Chell) and gave the phrase - I got the reply 'The camels are wearing pink necklaces'.......it was supposed to be 'giraffes'

The we headed up to Baddow Rec to find another one

And finally to Glyn's office here I received my gift certificate for a personalised monopoly set!!!!! It's awesome!!!!!!!

So far;

I've decided my 4 stations will be schools and universities I've attended
Other properties will be places I've lived

Anything leftover will be dedicated to friends and family in the form of shops;

Mum and dad's bank, Simon & Beths Bonsai shop, Adam's gadget shop and a few more ideas

It's been fun coming up with shops for people's personalities and likes and I'd like one space on my board to connected to my blogging life so if you'd like to be considered for this space please comment what type of shop you would be.

I'll post the winner soon

*Please note - entrants can submit multiple entries. All entries must be funny and/or accurate.

Woo-hoo.........by the way that's sarcastic

Today's a day I've been dreading for some time now. May 17th is a day celebrated aound the world for many reasons;

In 1970 the world was given Jordan Knight from New Kids On The Block
In 1978 the body of Charlie Chaplin was found after it had been stolen from a graveyard
In 1980 Peter Criss left KISS to pursue a solo career
In 1985 Bobby Ewing died in the season finale of Dallas (he wasn't really dead)
In 1990 Kelsey Grammar was sentenced to 30 days in jail

For me it's celebrated for other reasons.....well one other - it's my birthday.

And today I've reached a new stage of my life in turning 25 and I'm not that chuffed about it........23 was a good age for me.

Anyway I'm now 25, I'm closer to 30 than I've ever been and unless I can find some Hiro-esque time stopping powers I may be beginning an annual May 17th blog theme for the next few years.

Duke Special Shepherds Bush

Last night I took a bit of a risk, I didn't go skydiving or bungee-jumping or anything I went to see a gig in London!!

The thing is the person I went to see I'd barely heard of before, I'd heard maybe one track before and had some friends who think he's awesome (big thanks to Matt L & Mel for the recommendation)

And so so last night myself, Matt L, Glyn (happy, happy, happy times) and James Vigurs (rhymes with Tigers) went to see DUKE SPECIAL. A couple of things;

1. We bought the tickets at midday yesterday and yet managed to be in row B with no-one in front of us meaning we were literally centimetres from the stage

2. As we arrived in the venue some man in a tux was playing 1920s Jazz music on 2 old gramaphones, I told him that in Argos he could pick up 2 turntables and a mixer for £80 - he will hopefully be there today.

3. Beth Rowley was supporting - she was quite good although it did appear her lighting engineer had learnt everything he knew from polive helicopter academy.....either that or there was a borrower loose somewhere on the stage that needed to be found.

4. Ben Castle was playing - he's awesome

5. Duke Special (Peter WIlson) was incredible!! His band were incredible!! His songs are incredible!!

6. Some Duke SPecial fans need to get better heckling skills!! Shouting 'yes' and 'your name's Duke Special' are not filled with hilarity.

7. Chip the percussionist was immense.

8. The lady behind us was convinced she could whistle along which was pretty awful until she decided to take it to the next level and whistle a 3rd higher - it wasn't pretty!!

9. The security was obviously a man of the people he was not good at getting people out of the aisles or even to stop leaning on the stage!!

10. Here's little video so you can get an idea of the softer side of the music - enjoy!!

Seriously take a few minutes and just enjoy this, it'll be worth it I promise.

SUNDAY

And so after a really relaxing Saturday (our first for 6 or 7 weeks) Sunday was back to normal!!

I was up at 6am to go on BBC Radio Essex to be the 'reflector' now this is not to be confused with a Tony the Tiger shaped thing that goes on bikes wheels in the early 90s, instead think 'Pause for thought' or 'Thought for the day'.

Having done that I came home to grab another couple of hours sleep before heading off to Hadleigh Temple to join them for their youth Sunday. The young people and their leaders did a great job in the meeting and it was a really good service.

I came home again in time to do some housework before heading back to BBC Essex to volunteer as an assistant for the afternoon. This was a great experience and I really enjoyed it. I started off by meeting Steve Cherelle;

Steve's a country singer from Essex who hosts the country music show and he's a really good bloke.

Then walked in Mr Eric Hall

Eric is a famous music plugger and football agent who hosts the SUnday afternoon show and has a whole bunch of dedicated fans who love his 'monster, monster' and 'Bubalah' catchphrases. He's also a very nice bloke.

Halfway through the show I got instructed to put Martin through to the studio so Cat rang uo Martin and we put him through only to find out that Martin was actually Martin Lee from Brotherhood of Man who won the EuroVision in 1976!!

I was well impressed. Anyway it was a great laugh and I leant a lot from it and hopefully I'll be doing it more often.

I came home and Simon and Beth came round to give me my Birthday presents from them and Adam (it's Thursday but don't feel you need to send a gift) and there were a lot of presents!!

Waynes World 1&2 DVD Box set
Rent DVD
Thank you for smoking DVD
RISK - Junior edition (it's easier)
A Statler and Waldorf garden ornament -which Christina broke within 17 seconds of me owning it!!!!

All in all a lot of great presents.

Then Ben and Rach came round with another Birthday present (seriously....no pressure to get me anything) which was a Bill Bryson book about Australia which I'm looking forward to reading.

Then we were once again joined by Matt L, Chell and Glyn and I made eton mess dessert, Matt L made chocolate cake and we watched Gavin and Stacey on BBC3 which is really good, I'm looking forward to seeing a bit more of that one.

Finally congratulations to Glyn on passing his driving test on Friday!!

Slightly Half Mast

I love EuroVision!!!!!!!

I know the voting is all political and I know the songs are cak and I know it's just a big joke but I still love it!!

Anyway my review of each country;

BOSNIA & HEZEGOVINA - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
SPAIN - A weak boyband effort
BELARUS - A sort of strange James Bond effort
IRELAND - 'Oh tiddly dee it's us the Irish, we hate your jokes and stereotypes about our nation until we get here and then pass my sheleighleigh and call me a leprechaun'
FINLAND - A poor attempt to be evanescence
FYR MACEDONIA - A dull song which the artist tried to mke interesting by wearing a very short dress.....it didn't work
SLOVENIA - Some woman with a glow stick on her hand singing out of tune
HUNGARY - A nice little blues number but the woman sang as if she didn't give a monkeys.....not the way to impress Europe
LITHUANIA - A sort of Katie Melua thing - nice song, well sung, but unfortunately easily forgettable
GREECE - A Ricky Martin-esque number with lots of shimmying and a great performance - we had this down as a potential winner!!
GEORGIA - Another decent song (wow 2 in a row) girl with a great voice and a Bjork sounding tune
SWEDEN - A complete rip off of Showaddywaddy's 'Shang a lang'. Pretty rough.
FRANCE - I think was an attempt to be funny......it wasn't......it was weird and a bit scary
LATVIA - An operatic group singing in Italian. This looked like the group hadn't turned up so they'd gone out onto the street found a few blokes, given them top hats and put them on stage and said 'sing us a song'.
RUSSIA - This was a great tune, I think the lyrics were probably a little bit too raunchy for eurovision the 3 girls singing are a bit sugababes and the song could actually sell well. We had this down as a potential winner as well.
GERMANY - At this point we just all agreed this should win!!!! It's a great song, well sung nice switch to English at the end - it's in my sidebar, have a listen while you continue reading!!
SERBIA - This song was nothing. A Jimmy Krankee lookalike singing a dull song.
UKRAINE - Timmy Mallett in Tinfoil running round like an eijeet.
UK - A bit of camp fun, pop, probably again just an innuendo too far.
ROMANIA - I hated this, how many languages can we sing in??.....mmm don't care!!
BULGARIA - Some drumming thing - not great
TURKEY - Not bad
ARMENIA - Should've been renamed 'my toilet paper tree' - not a great tune
MOLDOVA - Random outfit, random song!!

And so the voting began - the rest is unimportant - Jimmy Krankee won.

Ho hum roll on next year!!

FRIDAY

So I woke up on Friday with a clear plan for the day;

1. Wake up too early
2. Take Christina to work (her car was at her work from yesterday)
3. Go to work
4. DO some work
5. Pack the car full of AV gear
6. Go and do AV at a schools event for Glyn
7. Unload all gear and drum kit at Church
8. Go to Alton Towers

Parts 1 - 7 all happened as expected and then we realised that going to Alton Towers was going to be really tiring and not as relaxing as we needed it to be and so we chatted to Matt L, Chell & Glyn and decided instead to just hang out for the evening and then decide what to do in the morning.

So the 5 of us and Rachael & Ben headed to Mashbury for Chinese and Wallace & Gromit.

After the movie B & R headed home whilst the rest of us decided to have a 'sleepover' and so Matt L, Glyn and myself played RISK until 3am and then all headed to sleep.

Friday - a lovely day

THURSDAY

Thursday night was spent playing drums for Roehampton University Big Band (RUBB) my brother Simon runs this band and it was a great night. The uni have some great players in the band and he also manages to get some great deps for the parts he can't fill including 2 awesome trumpet players who were having their own 'who can hit the highest note' competition throughout the evening!!

Lots of fun and some video to follow - I'll be sure to post.

The weekend - TopLine

So begins my look back at this last weekend

I've been lacking recently in blog terms so I'll give you a day by day!!

No foam hands please we're ROOTS delegates!!

So this past weekend was ROOTS and I had a new and interesting role a the event this year, I was the ParkLife (young adults venue) leader.

Some lights (some high some low);

Arriving on Wednesday night to be told after a 5 hour drive that I had no room at the travel inn (the truth was I did but because it wasn't booked in my name I couldn't have it!!) Big thanks to Carrie for sorting it out and Adam for getting up and letting me share his room.

Thursday morning was spent carrying lots of things around southport with some great people (only 4 of us altogether carrying everything for the whole event around is not mnormally my kind of fun but with Ad, Phil and Richard it really was) moving 45 boxes of leaflets 10feet was one highpoint.......oh and of course the attempt to get 2000 event guides over a slight bump in the tent is in there too;

Yes they were all wearing camo except me.

Anyway.....moving on. Friday evening I was preaching in ParkLife and if I'm honest I wasn't really that happy with myself. I felt I missed points and didn't deliver very well but thankfully the very wise Sandra Ryan was on hand to remind me of 2 things;

1. Speakers are always more hard on themselves than they should be
2. Self esteem is an easy attack point for evil and if we want feedback we should be on our knees asking God for ir.

Good advice!!

Lots of other lights including;

Friday night chat show - I really would love to host a TV or radio show

Sunday evening curry with friends

Everyday lunch with the YaYA team, Phil, Grinner, Carrie, Sandjea, Steve and Becca thank you for all the fun

Going outside for Sunday evening's response with the whole venue and the world's worst megaphone

Matt Leeder's worship leading - awesome

Electralyte and Dave G - awesome

Matt Williams choice of tracks - awesome

Carrie and Glyn hosting - awesome

Grinner's Bible studies - awesome

The whole ParkLife and ParkLife engage team - awesome

Seeing Geraldine Latty leading worship with a foam hand on that I'd designed - awesome

One memory - the look of disgust on some delegates faces when I sold the foam hands outside the Big Top. It's quite incredible how worship can begin inside a tent yet on the way there people can be plain rude (not everyone of course and lots of people smiled and encouraged).

Anyway a foam hand for your enjoyment;

FInally a lesson learnt - those that can laugh at themselves tend to have more of a laugh.