In which I am a guidice, ad Anna.

If you’ve ever heard me talk about opera (and let’s face it, you probably haven’t, unless you have) then you’ll know I have two major blind spots. Two great wodges of the operatic repertory remain more or less closed to me, despite my admittedly half-hearted attempts to the contrary. One is the works of Richard Wagner, a situation about which the Wagner-is-holy brigade get very shocked and lecture-y, and the other is bel canto.

The bel-canto aficionados don’t lecture; they just look wistfully disappointed when I tell them that I’ve never really got it. Like the most dyed-in-the-wool philistine, I have to explain using egregious, overused phrases like ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘dramatically inert’.

I saw Anna Bolena at the Liceu last night (I’m in Barcelona, which helped with that) and although I haven’t been converted- sorry Greg, sorry John- I do come a little closer to seeing what the point might be. It’s not an opera I’ll joyfully come back to (that overture- I mean, seriously?) but it certainly has its moments, and I don’t just mean *that* one.

It helps, of course, if you have artists of the calibre the Liceu can offer. Edita Gruberova, still singing at the age of four hundred and sixty eight after a career spanning five centuries, is nothing more nor less than a force of nature. Her voice has always been more beautiful live than it was on record, and she made some transcendent sounds, especially in ‘Al dolce guidami’, which was met by a football stadium roar and an ovation lasting a good ten minutes. They like their Gruberova in Barca. Her voice is in miraculous condition (she is, in fact, 64). The middle is wirier, and she never had much at the bottom anyway, but the top still gleams and soothes and rings out as required. The highest of the high notes are something of a triumph of will these days, but she still has them. It’s a larger, more powerful voice than you might remember, too, by which I mean it’s a larger and more powerful voice than I remembered. A friend of mine described later Gruberova as ‘vilely mannered’ and I can see what he means- that whole trick of arriving on a note a few beats before the rest of the voice does (and yeah, that’s the technical term, so sue me) but the effect is breathtakingly lovely. Never an exciting actor, she nonetheless does by and large the right things (and cut quite a dash in her red hunting coat and leather pants- we’ll draw a gentlemanly veil over the fact that Anne Boleyn was 35 when she died, unfortunate given that Gruberova’s first costume, a regal frock-and-sash affair, made her look like a more recent Queen of England, which is to say the current one, as she looks now.) Reading this paragraph back I feel like I haven’t done her justice, been too picky; she knows how this music goes, she’s one of the reigning queens of this rep, and it was a privilege to be in the same room as she sang it.

Elina Garanca comes in for a hard time in certain quarters, because she has the effrontery to be tall and slim and beautiful, and is therefore apparently somehow responsible for the looksist dumbing-down of opera. REAL singers are the size of a battleship and would never stoop to something so base as a record contract, seems to be the implication. It’s odd, because a lot of the same people insist that opera should be about voice, voice and voice, and in this Ms Garanca has been as lavishly endowed as she was aesthetically. It’s a rich, full, even, big and beautiful sound from the bottom to the top. It sounds, again, like faint praise, but I haven’t heard such secure singing for a long time. Giovanna suits her slightly chilly stage presence, although she was able to access something a little more emotional and desperate in the duet with Anna and the plea to Enrico. That duet for the two women was comfortably the highlight of the evening, along with the first part of the mad scene as mentioned earlier (there was nothing wrong with ‘Coppia Iniqua’, nothing at all, bar a smidgen of an iota of a suspicion of tiredness from Gruberova). Garanca will make a hit in this role at the opening of the Met season next October, and this in a house which has arguably proved a little resistant to her. I would hope and imagine that David McVicar will give her something a little more interesting to do than the ‘stand there and look worried. Now, kneel’ that this production asked of her. One charming little extra- Garanca is the first opera singer I have ever seen corpse. During a particularly filigree cadenza from Gruberova in one of the Act 1 concertati, an audience member let out a strange, guttural groan. Garanca’s chin sank to her chest- always a dead giveaway- and she remained in that position, keeping as still as she dared, until she actually had to turn upstage to compose herself.

Josep Bros started a little nasally, and his voice isn’t an immediately beautiful one, but like Gruberova he was singing his music on his patch and the technical confidence he brought to the role was very welcome. In fact, it struck me that on my last two opera visits I had seen Guleghina, Licitra, Carosi and Cornetti, and one of last night’s great pleasures was the (for me, recently) novel experience of seeing a cast of singers in roles that were eminently suited to them, and which they were comfortably able to sing. On the interest, as they say, not the capital. Having sad that, Carlo Colombara has gone in my file of competent but dullish basses. It’s a big file. He didn’t do anything wrong (bar a slightly underpowered, husky first scene with Garanca) but he didn’t really do anything exciting either. The conductor, Andriy Yurkevich, made sure that the endless tonic-dominant cadences tootled away as rumtitumishly as necessary (what? I said right at the start I don’t like bel canto).

All in all, a very good night at the opera. It could have been worse. I will admit that before I took my seat I was worried about my antipathy to the genre, about Gruberova’s age, about the people I otherwise trust who had told me that Garanca was dullsville. I was especially worried when the curtain rose to reveal a bunch of dancers dressed as ravens. These ravens were clearly a favourite touch of director Rafel Duran (beware research: he’d obviously read about the legend of the ravens at the tower) and they popped in and out, pointlessly, throughout the evening, inevitably turning into Anna’s angels of death at the end. Duran introduced a few of these odd nods towards regie (Enrico and Giovanna’s Act 1 duet took place in front of a video backdrop of some koi carp, and no, I have no idea) in what was otherwise a fairly routine, stand-and-deliver kind of production. I have two things to say to this director. One is can we please have a moratorium on the whole ‘in this society everything is watched on cctv’ thing? Every production of Hamlet I’ve seen in the last ten years has used it. It’s become a kind of shorthand for a dictatorship and sure enough, there was the CCTV room downstage right, with a bored looking extra studying some footage of people who, the pinsharp clarity of digital video revealed, were clearly singing opera at each other. The other thing I would like to say to him is ‘Dogs on stage? Never a good idea’.

I really don’t want to gloat, but I have to stop now as I’m off to watch a match at the Nou Camp. Gruberova, Garanca, and the Nou Camp in one 24 hour period. Who am I kidding? I’m going to be gloating for MONTHS.

Ha'porth of tar, ship, etc.

Here's how it happens.

You start with the best of intentions. Christmas- with all its excesses- has been and gone, you've had all the wassail of New Year... That's why I always insist on a 'dry January'. I like the discipline of it. I don't do it for health, or for losing weight, or even for smugness. I live an indulgent enough life- it's good to exert a bit of will power, even if only for a month.

The problem is, wagon day. The day that the first drink happens. After a month, it tends to hit one like a juggernaut. I am rather, perversely, proud of the tolerance for alcohol I've built up over my 37 years. Every Feb 1st, though, I become a mewling, drunk-on-one-pint heap. Every Feb 1st, I do something stupid.

This year's is a doozy. Other Feb 1st achievements have included retaking-up-smoking after a month's easy abstinence (and, as a result, finding myself painfully wedgied on a London street), groping- and, alas, I mean groping a dear friend on a crowded tube train, and... well. Too many to mention.

This year's, though, is a doozy. I think it was the successful achievement of my tax return- submitted yesterday, pre-back-off-the-wagon, which led me into this mess. 'I've submitted my tax return' went my thoughts. Because my thoughts are evil, they continued with 'I've been good about money. I should spend some money'.

A couple of years ago, some lovely friends of mine responded to my craving for New York by buying me some Virgin Atlantic vouchers. That way, I could book a flight whenever I found myself at a loose end; I was free to plan my holiday around my availability.

I have a small amount of available income at the moment (well, I don't any more, as you're about to see). Because it's Feb 1- wagon day- I thought it would be a great idea to do for myself what my pals did for me, so I bought myself some Virgin vouchers. That's still just about acceptable- I can more or less afford a wee break in New York, and it's probably a good idea to buy the flight now, so I can use it to cheer myself up when I'm a little skinter. So, I did. I bought some Virgin vouchers, to use at, literally, my leisure. Wow... have I actually been sensible? Have I used my Feb 1 blurriness to do something reckless but wise, brave in its impulsiveness?

Well, no. Not so much. It didn't stop there. I went on to choose a weekend, and buy a ticket for the Met opera and for a Broadway show. I went through all the pages and pages and pages of online booking for both. It was only when they were both safely purchased that I realised I had, in my off-the-wagon giddiness, booked my New York theatre and opera tickets for a weekend when I absolutely, totally, unequivocally have to be in London. Maybe the most important weekend of my whole entire year.

So what I guess I'm saying is- does anyone want to see Orfeo ed Euridice at the Met on 29 April? Or How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on May 1? Because I need to sell my tickets.

What I'm also saying is that I should probably stay away from my laptop on wagon day. Sigh.

Probably shouldn't. Will though.

Here's the tweet:

'Piers Morgan: Breaking News- I'm now a twit! Official!'

Here's the joke we did about it, as broadcast:

'Just a 'twit', Piers? I think you're being a little gentle on yourself there'

Here's something I saw when I was daft enough to google the show:

'Cynical, useless, stupid, lazy dog-shit. Piers Morgan said he was "a twit", and you seriously think it's acceptable to make a joke out of how closely that word resembles "twat"? Write some material! '

Thing is, I don't think we did do the 'it sounds like twat' joke. Do you? I can see a joke about the mildness of the word 'twit'. I can see an implication that Morgan might use a more insulting word to describe himself. It's not a woofer- there have been better jokes in history- but I quite like the way it leaves the audience to join the dots. It's undoubtedly a 'fill in your own punchline' joke, an ellipsis.

What I can't see is a joke about how closely 'twit' resembles 'twat'. That's pure projection.

Of course, it could be said that I'm overreacting to one misinterpretation of one joke in one episode of one show. But it's actually a spot-on example of one of the ways this wonderful, horrific internet works. People who don't like the things you say, for whatever reason, will happily ascribe to you all kinds of motives and motivations which they may utterly believe, but will nonetheless be light years from the truth- so that, for example, a gag which scrupulously avoids a particular word ends up being accused of the precise opposite.

I didn't write the gag in question, in case you think I'm being personal and precious, but the horrid thing about doing stuff on the telly is that sometimes people will think your work is 'useless', and 'stupid', and 'dog-shit', and they'll be entitled to their opinion. As an adult you have to deal with that, even though it makes you want to wail like a kid.

I love the show I'm working on at the moment, I think it's really rather good- but I have to be grown-up enough to accept that some people will love it and some will hate it. Indeed, I *know* that some people love it and some hate it. And that's fine.

But it's not fine to be called lazy and cynical, because I'm not, and nor are any of the people I'm working with. So, you know, say it's not funny if you like. Say it's useless dogshit. But I think you have to stop there. You can't call us corrupt. And if you do, make sure that the gag you find so unacceptable is the gag that was actually being made.

Slight Return

Well, not slight I hope, but as a son of Britpop I couldn't resist a bit of a Bluetones quote. Hello! Anyone still here?

I didn't mean for the post about Jerome to be the last for nearly three months- it's just that it was very tricky to think what to say next. I wasn't maintaining a respectful silence or anything pi like that, but at the same time I didn't want to follow my tribute to my pal by posting, oh I don't know, something about getting annoyed by a Haribo ad the following week. That's not to say that Haribo ads aren't intensely annoying; they are.

Anyway, I've also been hella busy. People in North West London are now no doubt beginning to get used to the sight of the red faced panting man in the too-small vest pounding the streets of Cricklewood and West Hampstead. When Jer was ill, my pal Julia and I decided that- whatever happened to him- we'd raise some money for cancer research by running the London Marathon. It was one of those grand gestures that's easy to make but which sends your stomach doing flipflops when it comes to fruition. I think part of me didn't believe we'd get a place- that honour would be satisfied by having made the offer.

But. A place was forthcoming, and now I have to run a fucking marathon. I don't know if anyone's told you, but it's TWENTY SIX AND A BIT MILES. All the way from Greenwich to Buck House, and not even the direct way. Just so IMPRACTICAL. Apparently short cuts are frowned upon though, so I've had to start training.

My initial, still-a-bit-in-denial plan was to start training in the New Year and live high on the hog until Christmas. However, the quizzical reactions of some friends (where 'quizzical reactions' means 'saying don't be so bloody stupid' and 'some friends' means 'literally everyone') convinced me that I'd better start taking it all a bit more seriously. Yes, Jade Goody managed 21 miles on no training and having had a curry the night before; however, this is not useful knowledge and can people please stop telling me it.

So, the Virgin Marathon Official Beginner's Plan it was. My first reaction on reading it was 'Oh, the first run is only ten minutes, that should be fine'. My second was OH MY GOD THEY EXPECT ME TO RUN SIX DAYS A WEEK FOR TWENTY FOUR WEEKS ARE THEY MAD?

I'm five weeks in now and although I haven't managed all thirty training runs (I make it *counts on fingers* twenty-five)it's getting marginally easier. What made it much, much easier was running in proper running shoes. For the first four weeks of training I was banging around in an old pair of Evisu plimsolls- pretty, but not really up to the job where things like one's ankles and shins are concerned. When I finally shelled out proper money for some proper shoes (after the exquisitely embarrassing torture that is 'gait analysis') the difference was extraordinary- like lying on a featherbed after having previously slept on something made of sandpaper and vinegar. Distressing thigh/underpant interface, leading to inner thighs the colour of pepto-bismol and a proper John Wayne swagger, was dealt with by the purchase of some lycra running tights. These have the added bonus of making me feel a bit like a pervert every time I put them on.

And I'm getting to know the 'hood I've lived in for ten years. I had literally no idea that just past the gym and off the main road was a magic little pathway through a gorgeous cemetery (I like cemeteries) which suddenly, magically opens out onto Fortune Green. Sadly, I have to do a lot of my running after work, which means after dark. The pretty pathway becomes a little more sinister at night, when I become acutely aware that I'm running through an unlit cemetery wearing a brand new ipod. For any muggers, murderers or rapists who may be reading, I'd just like to point out that I'm over six foot and gradually getting fitter, so there's only a 90 per cent chance that you'd get away scot free with your mugging or whatever.

All courting of danger aside, I couldn't yet say I'm enjoying the training. But I'm doing it. I even did it when I was away working in Spain sans running kit- there I was, running on the spot in my jamas in a Spanish hotel room. It was actually one of my more enjoyable 'runs'- I was able to read a modern novel and listen to Das Lied Von Der Erde. I'd like you all to picture that, if you will. And, of course, it's nice that there's, ever so slowly. less of me than usual. Apparently it's the 'core weight' that is last to go, so I'm slimming down nicely (I have HIPS! and RIBS!) everywhere on my body bar my stomach, which is now hanging off my newly lithe frame like an obscene water balloon. I'm told even that will eventually diminish (and that the fat will turn to muscle quicker if I eat protein within 20 mins of running; I'm getting through a lot of boiled eggs) so there are plenty of consolations.

At the moment, though, it's pure solipsism. I'm doing it because of my dad, and because of Jer; but when I'm slogging through a cemetery in freezing rain, hoping I'm not about to be mugged, with my every muscle screaming 'Why are you doing this to me? I am for wine and sofas!' it's not, embarrassing to say, the thought of my lost loved ones that keeps me going. It's the thought of that day in April, specifically mid-afternoon onwards, when I will be taking as many tube journeys as I can so that everyone sees me wrapped in tinfoil sporting a medal. And it's the thought that for ever after I will be able to drop, ever so casually, into conversation the thrilling phrase 'when I ran the marathon...'

If, that is, I succeed in running the marathon. Watch this space.

Oh, and point any extra pennies in the direction of www.justgiving.com/sodcancer

You'll Follow Me Back With The Sun In Your Eyes.

I've watched the World Cup in some strange places. In Scottish pubs, full of people proudly wearing the team colours of anyone-but-England; backstage in theatres, desperately hoping that the penalty shootout will be completed before I actually have to go on stage; even in Kingston-Upon-Thames. This year I watched the scrappy, ill-tempered affair between Holland and Spain on a tiny bedside screen in the Royal Marsden Hospital, and it's this year's final which I will remember more vividly than any that has gone before or that is to come.

As I left the Marsden that night, an unwanted thought crept into my brain. Would my dear friend, the man who I'd been visiting, be around for the next World Cup final? I dismissed it as a craven, weedy, disloyal thought. It didn't for a second cross my mind that I had just seen him for the last time, but I had. The magnificent Jerome O'Donohoe died on Friday morning, at the obscene, devastating, laughable age of 37.

I first met Jerome a few days after my 30th birthday, which is to say a couple of months after his own. It wasn't a good time for me. My father was already ill with the disease which was to take his life; the same bastard that has snatched Jer's as well. I remember in particular a night at a little Sam Smith's pub in St Giles', which has a small conservatory running alongside it. My phone rang, which in those days only meant bad news. My mother told me of dad's latest symptoms, treatments, ailments. We were both becoming aware of the fact that this was a battle dad was not going to win, and I strode up and down the conservatory becoming more and more agitated and scared. I had no idea how to return to the pub table and behave normally once the call was over; fortunately I didn't need to. The moment I hung up the phone, Jerome came to where I was standing, gave me a wordless but infinitely comforting hug, and gently led me back to where the others were sitting. He didn't try and say anything, didn't feign concern; he just helped, supported and understood. What will give you the measure of the man is that this was just the second time we had met. Essentially, he didn't know me from Adam. But he recognised exactly what was needed and quietly, unflashily, generously and selflessly provided it.

The problem with writing about the death of someone wonderful (apart from the practical problem of typing through the mist) is that all the things one wants to say have become obituary clichés. Everything that made Jerome so special sounds like something from a Hallmark sympathy card. But it's all true. He DID have the biggest, warmest heart. When I conjure his image, he IS always smiling or laughing. He DID possess, to an extraordinary degree, that elusive quality, the gift of friendship. He really HAS left behind him a gap so vast that nobody who knew and loved him will ever adequately be able to find ways of filling it.

And, so you know I'm not just mouthing platitudes, I can give you chapter and verse for everything. His big heart and extraordinary generosity, for example. I eventually learned not to express enthusiasm for anything he owned, because he'd be as likely as not to give it to you. My house is full of bits of kit, books, even a five disc Eddie Izzard box set, which Jerome just handed over and said 'it's yours. I didn't need it anyway'. As for the smile and the laughter, one of the incidental pleasure/pain aspects of his passing is that whenever the sound of his voice pops unbidden into my head, it's never morose or grumpy sounding. Try it, if you knew him- listen out in your head for his voice. See? A cheerful inflection, a sense of mischief. Only ever seconds away from a joke. And as for the gift of friendship, well. Jerome knew everyone, and to meet him was pretty much to become his friend. So many of my friends became his; so many of his became mine. Because he was interested in people, because he loved people, because he was truly a social animal, he was also the most cohesive kind of social glue. He is utterly irreplaceable; I can only imagine how that irreplaceability must feel to his adored and adoring wife Geri, and to his close and loving family.

In the last dazed few days since he left us, one image comes again and again into my brain. It is Jerome and me dancing around a chintzy living room with two other friends and my housemate of the time. I'd been doing a rep season at the theatre in Pitlochry, miles and miles from home. Jerome came to visit, sharing the long drive with our friend Julia. He saw the show I was in (bellowing out a standing ovation amid a crowd of politely clapping highland pensioners) and then joined me and some of the cast in the after-hours bar near the theatre. There was a song out at the time, an anthemic little number by one of those bands that shifts units by the bucketload but which nobody ever actually confesses to liking. One by one, my housemate, my colleague Fran (who was subsequently to become a close friend of the O'Donohoes- that gift again) Jerome, Julia and I all confessed to having a soft spot for the song. Come chucking-out time we were yelling it antisocially in the quiet streets. When we got back to my digs, Jerome did some business with a mac and some wires and the telly and there was the song, playing through the TV speakers. It took him seconds, and in 2004 the idea that we could talk about a song one minute and have it playing through the TV the next seemed like the most thrilling magic. But that was Jerome, and that is how I will always remember him. On holiday, at parties, at the pub, at weddings, in conversation- he'd come in to the room and suddenly, from somewhere, there'd be music.

Ten Things About The Edinburgh Fringe 2010.

1: A capella groups get quite old quite quickly. The all-female groups are drippy. The all-male groups are smug. Get a piano.

2: There is no competition between a twenty-minute walk and a five quid cab ride.

3: The EUSA shop needs to order more Double Cheese and Onion Ginster sandwiches.

4: My flatmate is not after all the most obsessive kitchen-tidier alive.

5: Acrylic wigs smell if you sweat in them.

6: You're pretty much guaranteed a good show at the Trav, but innit pricey?

7: Not everyone who you think is a lesbian is a lesbian.

8: One of this year's Footlights is a way more committed flyerer than any of the others.

9: A wooden platform will bear a combined weight of around 25 stone for just over a month. After that it's touch and go.

10: Even at the advanced age of 37, it's still the best fun it's possible to have in August.

Bad internet. Naughty internet.

During a break in rehearsals (www.jumpthemusical, you know you want to) yesterday, I embarked on my customary five minute tour of internet inspection. It goes something like this: email,to find out who's been spamming me and to receive countless facebook notifications; facebook, to re-read the notifications my email has just shown me; and then, just for the hell of it, twitter.

Yesterday two names seemed to appear more often than is usual. One, you will probably be unsurprised to hear, was Clare Balding. The other, less predictably, was Gethin Jones. Let's take the latter first.

Initially I wondered why several tweets on my feed seemed to be making reference to the easy-on-the-eye, otherwise uncontroversial Blue Petering health-shop pusher. You might be, too- it was, as it turned out, a minor twitstorm- but it illustrated rather perfectly how the flawless wonder that is the internet can sometimes be so depressingly abused by the flawed wonder that is people.

Here's how the mini-kerfuffle happened. Someone tweeted that Jones was 'no Alastair Stewart', a reference to the former presenter of a programme he now fronts. Jones was somehow made aware of this- perhaps he searched his own name, perhaps someone told him about the tweet- and decided to reply. His reply was 'No shit, sherlock. YOU get the degree for stating the obvious, well done "numbnuts"'

As a reply it isn't Wildean, and I'm bothered by the inverted commas, but it seems like a fairly commonplace exchange. Someone unfavourably compared Jones to his predecessor, Jones responded with mild irritation.

But in doing so he broke one of the internet's most unpleasant unwritten rules. The potshots, you see, only work one way. His flash of anodyne annoyance became a 'hissy fit'. People started tweeting him to say how 'pathetic','Z list' or 'self important' he was, or to affect to mistake him for Steve Jones of T4. In other words, an unremarkable exchange between two people who annoyed each other became, for some, an excuse to hurl abuse at a man who had dared to commit the double offence of (a) being on television and (b) responding in kind to someone who had slagged him off.

People who aren't in the public eye- 'real' people, if we're being tabloidy about it- get to stand behind a wall and say BUM to whoever they like. But if anyone even a smidge famous says 'Don't you say BUM to me! Bum YOU, more like!' that is a pathetic 'hissy fit'. I'm fairly sure, by which I mean certain, that there's a stinking double standard going on there.

I think it would have been wiser of Jones not to reply, and nobody ever claimed the moral high ground with the word 'numbnuts'. But I also think it was understandable- human- that he did reply. And the pearl-clutching over the fact that he may have found the tweet through 'self-searching' is particularly, hypocritically, daft. Have you never put your name into google? I know I have, and so has pretty much everyone I know. Twitter, of course, has a link to search for '@' replies so people can see what tweeters they don't follow have said to or about them. It's human nature occasionally to get curious about what might be being said about oneself, and it doesn't make Jones a preening idiot for wanting to know.

The way twitter reacts to behaviour its users consider unacceptable is now an established social media phenomenon. Stories such as AA Gill's vile playground sneering at Clare Balding (see, you thought I'd forgotten), the man who was prosecuted for making a terrorism joke on the site, the horrid article in the Express about the survivors of Dunblane or (ahem) Jan Moir on Stephen Gately, develop a momentum of their own and quickly reach a tipping point (or twipping point, as someone will doubtless one day christen it). As a way of gently reminding more established forms of media that we won't necessarily accept what we might be fed, it's invaluable. It would be a shame if that precious right-to-reply were allowed to degenerate into throwing random snowballs at people, and running to teacher when they throw one back.