I blame Phidippides.

There are three things in life for which nobody is ever prepared. One, of course, is death. The second is University finals.

The third is running the fucking marathon tomorrow.

Gulp.

If Only We Could Know!

Well, this post was due to be a travelogue-type deal about my (flying) visit to Moscow, which I'm sure those of you who have read my travel 'writing' before will have anticipated as eagerly as turkeys look forward to December 20th. Unfortunately, the one and only opportunity I had for tourism has just been curtailed by some pretty central-casting Russian weather. I struggled halfway from my hotel to Red Square but eventually had to accept that what I was in was a blizzard, and that I was so covered with snow that I was in danger of Aled Jones or Peter Auty singing about me. Now I've made it back to the hotel, of course, the sky is almost sarcastically clear, but I ain't risking it again.

The hotel has provided one moment of amusement, though. In the information/map magazine provided, there are the usual depressing escort ads (Why do some hotels do this? Why? Actually, the answer to that might be even more depressing). In among them was one agency promising 'friendly, sophisticated girls' alongside a photograph of... Girls Aloud. Davina McCall didn't say anything about *that* on Popstars, did she? 'You could live the dream! Your picture could be misleadingly used on an ad for Russian Hookers...'

But that's all I've got, I'm afraid. Tonight was my only chance of breaking the hotel-training room- airport cycle and the snow wasn't having it, so I am unable to discover the magic that so appealed to Olga, Masha and Irina in the greatest play of the 20th century (you may disagree, but I am factually correct and you are wrong).

Actually, since we're on Chekhov, I have a small recommendation to make. I recently watched the 1975 US TV production of 'The Seagull' and it was a revelation. I've written before about a regrettable tendency in British performances of Chekhov for the sets, costumes and performances to be beige. What this production captures so vividly is that unhappiness can be as ENERGETIC as it is torpid. Nobody languishes in this production, and it's all the better for it. Blythe Danner (yep, Gwyn's mum) is the best Nina I've ever seen, and Frank Langella is just extraordinary as Konstantin. A jolt, too, to see how beautiful he was as a young man, when one is used to seeing him as craggy ol' Dick Nixon. But the whole cast (Lee Grant, a heroine of the McCarthy hearings who refused to testify and was blacklisted is ideally mercurial as Arkadina; Olympia 'Anna Madrigal' Dukakis is a wonderful tragicomic Polina) oozes quality. I can't recommend it highly enough.

So, in summary- I went to Moscow and it made me think about a DVD.

Judging Anna, MkII

One of the most disingenuous- and most pompous- of critical clichés is the 'I really wanted to like it' review, which usually means 'I was looking forward to hating it and hurrah, I did'.

But now I have to write one of my own, although there's no disingenuousness in my saying that I really, really wanted to like 'Anna Nicole'. And although I didn't hate it, I certainly didn't like it anywhere near as much as I wanted to.

That makes me sad partly (mainly?) because I don't want to be allied with the people who wanted it to fail. The mere existence of the work illustrates what is, for me, one of the most important of artistic principles- that great art can be made out of any subject, that any story can be made worth the telling. We can all give our examples (perhaps the most famous being that Godot is a play in which nothing happens, twice). So I have no sympathy at all with those who believe that dramatising Anna Nicole Smith's life is a Vulgar Desecration Of Our Holy Lyric Art, and in fact I think in the main that they are philistine snobs who are going to have a heart attack if anyone ever tells them about 'Lulu' (that's the opera, btw, although they probably wouldn't like the other Lulu much either).

Plus, I admire everyone involved. Mark-Anthony Turnage wrote 'The Silver Tassie', so his place in my personal pantheon is safe. Richard Thomas wrote the wonderful 'Jerry Springer', so ditto. The production is slick, smooth and clever, the cast unimpeachable. But, the thing is, I just didn't care. Two people die in this opera, a fact which was more affecting in the programme synopsis than it was on stage, and that, kids, is a problem.

The problem lies largely, I think, with Thomas' contribution. It's all very meta, very ironic, commenting on and contextualising every event rather than just letting it happen. We're never simply told a story- we're told we're being told a story, and then, we're told what it meant. But, crucially, we already know the story and we already know its implications. Nobody left the ROH tonight thinking 'Good God, I had no idea women were objectified in our society!' or 'Wow, being famous for being famous sure has a potential downside!' and it was the opera's lack of anything new or insightful to say about the sad, inevitable decline of its heroine which was its major disappointment. The only thing which could have saved the story from its familiarity would have been a hefty emotional kick- after all, we know what's going to happen to Gilda and Mimi, too- but the libretto opts for cool detachment from the start, never a good mood to set if you're looking for withers to be wrung. No decision has been made as to whether the heroine is amoral or admirable, whether we're supposed to root for her or judge her. There's not even any real ambiguity about her portrayal- just some fairly brutal, unearned gear changes between 'isn't she empty?' and 'isn't she tragic?'.

And while it's funny at times, it's not funny enough. Sondheim's set the bar pretty high for lyricists, and that means we all know that merely rhyming is not enough, especially if you can spot what's coming. When a group of women at a cosmetic surgery sing, crowbarishly, about being 'restless' we're not going to coo with delight when the rhyme turns out to be 'breastless', to give just one example. Thomas overuses the arch anti-lyric, too. 'We're lapdancers/We dance in laps' or 'It's a red carpet/It's a carpet/ That's red'. That kind of gag works once, if you're lucky, and there are a few too many iterations of it here. In defence of the jokes, though, some of them hit the spot dead on, quite an achievement when the surtitles blow every punchline twenty seconds before it's delivered.

Musically things were better. Without access to a score I've only heard once, I'm not going to attempt the kind of musicological analysis other people will do much better. What I will say is that, as in 'Greek' and 'The Silver Tassie', Turnage is brilliant at creating a musical language which defines the world his characters live in, and which defines them. There are definite personalites to the scoring of each character; Anna's melodic language is different from her mother's; her husband's different from her lawyer's. This ought to go without saying, but it's rare enough in even the most celebrated of operas to merit a mention.

What these singers were doing in it is perhaps another matter. Don't get me wrong- there wasn't a performance among them that was less than excellent, but why we needed a Minnie, an Ariadne as Anna, and an Onegin as the lawyer is beyond me. None of the MT professionals I know would have any problems singing this score. Don't get me wrong, part the second- I'm not suggesting, as others have, that this is a musical. It's just that it seems rather perverse to have cast such opulent voices and then given them not much to sing. As my friend John mischievously pointed out, the role of Anna Nicole would not stretch Danielle de Niese; it's not as big a sing as Despina. Eva Maria Westbroek was as terrific as everyone has told you, but it must have felt a bit like a night off. Gerald Finley, too, was vocally and dramatically underused in the musically and theatrically slim part of the Svengali-like lawyer. As the octogenarian husband, Alan Oke had a great deal of fun, although his healthy voice was at odds with his frail physicality (has anyone suggested it for Placido...? Hem hem).

There's nothing bad about Anna Nicole. But it's not as good as it could have been, not as good as we needed it to be. I don't see much life for it beyond this run. If opera is to remain as robust and contemporary as theatre and not dwindle into a succession of glorious museum pieces, issues such as celebrity, the morality of media voyeurism, addiction, feminism and social mobility are exactly the kind of things it should be grappling with. 'Anna Nicole' had the potential to do all that, and while it's not the shabby little shocker some people gleefully predicted, it's a missed opportunity. Slick, professional, interesting and intelligent, it nonetheless ends up taking aim at a very stationary target, and hitting it flabbily.

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