"Is it from the horses?" (NONBOND NIGHT 3: BULLDOG DRUMMOND)

(originally posted on myspace here)

Of course, while plugging all those shows I completely forgot that this very evening Mark Evans' glorious Bleak Expectations II hits our ears again, with Richard Johnson and my excellent sister no less. I am perhaps a little biased, but the studio recordings of these shows were perhaps the happiest I've ever attended. Hear the love in that room. And tonight's choice of Non-Bond was therefore obvious:

It turns out Richard Johnson had a brief career as Bulldog Drummond, a thirties sleuth re-invented for the sixties by bringing on the ladies and shooing the helpful schoolboys and scarfed Germans lurking in sewers... Reinvention is nothing new, which might be at the heart of what bugs me about The Dark Knight sorry to return to this but I don't want people looking back going oh yes that was the torture decade. Anyway this should hopefully clear the palette after Gareth Hunt kicking a ninja in the briefs.

But if Joanna Lumley and Johnson in a tux isn't classy enough, here's a coach. My friend Melanie invented it today when we popped into the Education Centre of the Royal Mews. Everything else was sold out so we pottered before the bored bay stallions in their stalls and the gold splurges of palm-tree and cherub (when it dawned on me that I actually know nothing at all about the eighteenth century, except that it turned out a lot of stuff like this... Was it really just one hundred years of nothing until someone somewhere carved one triton too many and they all started killing each other and painting and writing again? And we could tell the stallions were bored because one knocked his bridle off a hook with his muzzle and then, when it was replaced, tried to do it again, learning. They should be given something to do in there, handed some paints or a trampette or something, like that elephant). I haven't sat down in a tiny plastic chair testing coloured pencils and looking over to see what the girl next to me is doing since I was, well actually quite old now I come to think of it. And I fell back on the old standby of drawing lots of carnivorous plants. And Mel got to keep that. And I got to keep this. And then we ate and smoke and drank. Harumble!