Katy's box

I love her. This is the first time I’d seen her live and she was amazing. Like Pavarotti, her voice is magnificent and it all appears so effortless. She could be reading the paper and scratching her non-existent arse at the same time there seems so little exertion.

She does do this one thing I’d noticed before and it makes me feel quite uncomfortable to see. She grabs the hem of her dress and pulls it up in a teasing way like a little girl busting for a wee. I’m always wincing, hoping we don’t get to gusset level. But it’s her thing, like Jo Cocker’s spasticated moves, it’s wholely her own.

Her band are superb. Sexy fun and clearly paternal towards her, thank God, particulary her backing singers one of whom is so hot to trot Zalon I think. Got some groovy 1950s dance move’s going on which I have to say, looked fantastic mimicked by me in wellies!

And I love her even more for her end of show mad mad comments. ‘you’ve been really nice….not everyone’s nice…..usually it’s boo…..booooooooo…..booo….they just go boo…boo. But you’ve been alright’ And not a mention of Blake. So good on you Amy. You slightly bonkers, fantastic, addled wunderkind.

I’ve lost my virginity. Finally at the age of the 38 I’ve actually gone to a music festival that involved sleeping under canvas – I say canvas but actually it was a 20 quid tent from tesco that would have gone up like a roman candle if anyone had been in spitting distance with a spliff.

It was, however exceptionally good fun. Despite ticket fiasco –see sosmastertickets are cunts - managed to get VIP tickets through much cooler sister which has probably spoiled me for any other festival seeing as I had access to permanently clean loos, free drinks and food, exclusive sets by featured artistes and the best cheesy DJ I’ve heard in a long time. We also –and this is most important - had a very civilised camp site. There was space. People weren’t holding parties til dawn or being sick over our guy ropes. At my great age, you need a bit of kip.

So here are my top tips for festival novices

1 – get a sister with connections and get free VIP / VUP (very unimportant people) or HO (hanger on) tickets

Failing that

Make sure you’re not camping on a slope
· Take an airbed – sooooo worth it. And an auto blow up thing while you’re at it.
· Drive. Fuck the planet. I saw so many poor buggers staggering around the middle of nowhere schlepping what appeared like all their worldly possessions, it looked like the final scene from Fiddler on the Roof.
· If it’s your thing, make sure someone you know, if not you, has some drugs. Keeps you going during the day and means you don’t have to keep going to the bar, cheaper – V sells bar tokens at 3.30 and in cattle class you could only get strongbow, Carlsberg… and for the laydees….bacardi breezer or wine. If you do like to indulge, take them early on, so you’re just coming down towards the end of the day. As friends found to their cost (when you’re on the wrong side of 30) if you have a massive bender one night, not everyone’s able to get back in the saddle again the next day. So have a nice day time peak then get a good night’s kip so you’re ready rock and roll the next day. Which leads me on to my next point…
· Take earplugs. And some knock out drops. I personally favour Kalms nighttime. The combination of the two meant that I got a great night’s sleep both evenings and if someone had being singing the Verve’s greatest hits outside my tentflap (in my opinion, that would be quite a short set) I would have been oblivious.
· Take wellies. They mess up your dancing, but are well worth it.
· While we’re at it, take a cagoule. And a brollie. I saw Kaiser chiefs in the pissing rain, but it didn’t make a jot of difference. I skidded, I jumped, I looked like a trainspotter, but I didn’t give a hoot.
· In fact, at the very least follow the packing instructions suggested by the festival website – you will be grateful you bought wetwipes and bog roll
· Don’t buy tickets from a shitty tout website – that will ruin everything

When I lived in Sheffield during the early 90s, there were many things that made the home of cutlery a brilliant city to have chosen for college. Clubbing for students was a riot with something available most nights. The Leadmill in particular is one of the best venues I've ever been to - a perfect size with a great line ups, club nights and jazz sundays and after an evening there I can testify that the burgers from the van outsde at 3 am, have never been bettered. I saw early Jameroquai there with a gig bus outside bigger than the venue but clearly necessary to accommodate his hattage. The place is so intimate it made any gig special, but with the atmosophere of somewhere like the Brixton Academy - fantastic.

However, aside from this and the brilliant access to the beautiful Peak District right on your doorstep, Sheffield has all the benefits of a large city but with the friendliness of a market town. I never tired of being called 'love' or 'duck' when I got on the bus.

But a real inconsequential pleasure that I treasured during my time there was driving up the M1 from Sheffield and passing the Concrete Flares, or the Tinsley Towers as I now know them to be called. The giant cooling towers were so impressively close to the road you felt absolutley dwarfed. But they weren't imposing, or sinister as huge looming structures often are, they were friendly and such a joy to see every time.

It's a terrible shame they're to be destroyed there's not many things you look out for with glee when driving along any stretch of road. The angel of the north is one, the striding wicker man in Somerset another, but the Tinsley towers, were not contrived as art but art they are. A feat of engeineering and beautiful for that. When much of the industry of Sheffield was swept away, the steelworks and related manufacturing industries of North Sheffield lay abandoned when only Forgemasters, they of the supergun would shoot sparks into the night during the winter, the tinsley towers stood proud and magnificent against the skyline and I just adored them - feelings I assumed were just personal to me but are clearly shared by so many others. It is terribly sad to think the concrete flares will no longer be there, cheering me up as I beetle up the motorway giving me a smile for a few miles after I say hello to them. The M1 will soon be even duller.

For anyone who may be thinking about buying gig and festival tickets from agencies other than the genuine ticketing companies – masterticket, seeticket etc - please take heed of this tale of woe.

Naïve Madonna fans including me have recently bought from an agency called SOSmasterticket.com who have been selling tickets for a Madonna night that didn’t exist – Sat 13 September when the only night is actually Thursday Sept 11.

It’s a frequent ploy of promoters to announce additional nights after the initial nights have sold out. Die hard fans often go to gigs on several occasions, and it’s a way of getting a second bite of the publicity cherry. So to hear that there was an additional night available that hadn’t yet been announced wasn’t that surprising.

At the same time, we purchased tickets for V from the same company: the prices looked pretty good, not massively exploitative unlike some but a reasonable mark up.

However, several weeks after ordering, I started to get slightly twitchy. A mate heard a radio competition to win tickets for the only London Madonna concert and called me about it. I’d been trying to ignore the niggle in the back of my mind for some time, on why my tickets hadn’t arrived and when friends started asking what camping area we’d be in for V I decided it was time to chase.

Repeated calls informed me the V tickets would be sent out 3 weeks, then 2 weeks, the 7 days then 5 days prior to the event.

I then received an email informing me that I could pick up the tickets at the venue on Friday the 15th, the day before the festival but the day most people go down to set up tents etc. To get my tickets I would have to contact a bloke called Richard. On his mobile. I kid you not.

So furious, I contacted Richard who I can’t actually believe picked up the phone – clearly all very professional as I heard a child whining and the tinkle of an ice cream van in the background during our conversation (maybe that’s how he delivers the tickets “so that was a 99, a solero and a couple of tickets for Madonna at the Hackney Empire?”) I asked him about the situation and he assured me that according to the terms and conditions they are allowed to deliver tickets up to an hour prior to the event.

Apparently this particular company operates out of Spain – not illegal but not confidence inspiring – though according to one of the people I spoke to they also have an office in Farringdon – this was later denied by another person I spoke to.

Don’t credit cards have a black list for companies like this?

So, I’ve written to my Visa company hoping I’ll get money back from them. There’s also a facebook group - don’t touch sosmastertickets with an elongated bargepole - group which in 6 days has 46 members. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome from Visa, and if you’ve ever been affected, please join the facebook group, for what it’s worth.

But as a word of warning, don’t bother with this company. Some forums have said they’ve received tickets from them without hassle and I’m sure that’s the case. But there are also many who haven’t. Another individual who unfortunately bought his tickets by debit card has been trying to get money back for 9 weeks – they keep promising it but it’s yet to appear.

As for the Madonnna tickets, the additional night they were promoting was never going to happen. They said it had been cancelled – a phone call to Wembley proved it had never been considered - and when we asked why hadn’t they informed us they didn’t answer just said our tickets would be transferred to the one and only night. I’m thinking, that’s pretty unlikely and even if legitimate would surely be attempting to get a pint into a half pint pot. Web comments indicate that those who have received tickets have received fakes as the genuine article states doors open at 5.30pm with those from sosmasterticket state doors open at 7pm.

I’ve learnt several lessons on this

· A dodgy ticket tout is a dodgy ticket tout and a flash website instead of no teeth and smelling of lager doesn’t make them any more likely to provide a decent product. In fact less so as they are virtual and almost untouchable - at least the old fashioned way, you get to see the product.

· Always read the terms and conditions for any organisation for which you not 100% sure of.

· If you are in doubt but go ahead anyway, always buy by credit card and a straw pole suggests that Visa are company of choice in terms of getting money back.

· Do some hunting round the web under the ‘name of the organisation’ plus the word ‘problems’: it generally makes quite interesting reading.

I’ll keep you posted, but for those who have bought stuff from any dodgy online outfit, hassle your credit card company into blacklisting them. If these organisations can’t get money through credit cards their business is as good as dead.

Radio 4 has a policy of letting the author of a memoir or autobiography read it themselves. It's not always the most professional production but it's always authentic. But should there be a point where authenticity should sacrificed for quality?

Grevel Lindop's memoir of his travels round south america to expand his experience of latin dance was a delightful story but his reading of it was just cushion bitingly awful. The man veally veally cannot say his rs. Not in a Jonathon Woss way, but in a Jonathan vross, or Danny the drug dealer from 'Withnail and I' way. This was a memoir about the sexiest dances on earth. I could not lose myself in the story without imagining what this guy looked like with his ridiculous speech impediment, and it wasn't a sexy image. As a result, I've had to google him and I wasn't far off

When we read or hear a book, there is an interaction between the words and our experience, expectations and imagination. All collide to ensure that our experience will be qualitatively different from anyone elses.

This was awful. Radio 4 - this should have been read by a sexy voice, or even an unimpeded voice. But not a voice that makes me think uber-geek. This pipe cleaner of a man, shaking his thang, talking about dancers skin and breasts made my flesh crawl. He must have willfully crammed in as many rs as he could - at fvree o'clock, I met a fvwriend of a fvwriend of a fvwriend called fvwRaphael .... Vradio 4 - for fucks sake you must have vrealised you were entering Welease Woderick tewwitowy? creative licence is necessary sometimes - here accuracy and truth just ruined what could have been a beautiful production.

Dear Reader, I urge you to listen while it's still available - as it's unintentionally hysterical.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml

Sorry, Grevel. Grevel? Grevel???! Says it all really.