Entertainment

Back again, I've been too busy till now to read many blogs or comment on them but glad to see hundreds active and many are new. Today was warm for the first time in weeks, although I spent it indoors playing a live quiz and ordering my 2nd photo album to get a two for one offer before next month. I managed to get enough new photos this week to pad it out as getting 100 plus photos worth immortalising in a book is not that easy. I made the second of mainly people, most who had accidentally crept into view when I took somewhere else and turned up when I uploaded them. I've started doing a few choice ones deliberately but the main ones didn't show up till I got them on the computer and I blew them up.

I've been consistently busy this week although nothing in particular was done it was all done well. It's a relief having a mobile phone working again, I really rely on it and am waiting to pick up someone's spare one when he bothers to bring it so I have a reserve. The unexpected highlight of the week was being told I look like Manfred Mann. Now if you compare any Jewish guy with dark hair and glasses we all look like relatives, David Baddiel, Ian Broudie and the not quite Jewish Ben Elton, so hardly a surprise I suppose, I'll need to ask a few other people to decide as well. There is clearly a basic similarity we all share but I'll be interested to see if there's more than that- another reason to grow that beard again, although mine would now be fairly hard to define as not much colour is left in it. At least it would give my grandma something to moan about every time I saw here, 'Oh no, you're growing a beard, what do you want a beard for?', 'Why do you keep that beard, you look homeless' etc etc. All I need. But I will see. 4 weeks is all it takes for the full rabbi or just a goatee. And 5 minutes to get rid. I am approaching 50 so looking old is hardly something worth trying to avoid any more, and Manfred seems to have had his since it started growing and no one complained then, although till the mid 70s beards were a lot more popular. No more moustaches for me though, I had them for years and the photos are embarrassing, I just looked like Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

A few other people have finally tuned into my 60s pop videos, I posted them all over Funtrivia but only weeks later have a couple of people responded, both Manfred fans, and although my own musical abilities are going to need at least a year of work to play well enough to get 3 minutes without a mistake at least I feel more the part now. I played in practice bands for years, most were shit and one was OK but boring, and we never played in public, they just seemed to want me to practice the songs with as I could play them all by ear. I think I only ever played in a real group playing folk songs for someone's leaving party at work a couple of times (the room was too small for one party). That was me on keyboard/drum machine, a rhythm guitarist and three singers. Great fun actually, I must listen to the tape again now if I can find it, that was 22 years ago!
I did however play a number of solos, besides the only other time when I was 20 and my musician grandpa asked a bar band in our hotel in Washington if I could play with them, and I spent about 15 minutes playing blues piano with about three others on drums and guitars. That was pretty amazing although there weren't many people there to listen. My usual performances were boring routines as background for parties, although once I played in a comedy evening interval (OK, I've told this one before) when the main act didn't turn up and they let me fill in, where I sang Ivor Bigun songs (I'm a wanker, I've farted and My Brother's got Piles...). It went down pretty well except my friend's mother didn't speak to me for 6 months. Her problem. Jenny Eclair topped the bill talking about periods so I reckoned I was only continuing the theme.

Since then I've rarely played at jewish functions, the last being about 6 years ago. I was fed up playing the same bloody routine to many people who didn't care or listen, and am now branching off into other related areas, but youtube at least gave me the chance to try out some new ideas which I did totally unrehearsed and often improvised, just for the fun of it. Just look up user satguru and you will see them. Had I got a digital video (not a still camera with a few seconds of extra movies) I would polish them a lot better, but they are purely experimental. But I think I've proved it's not how old you were in the 60s that counts but whether it left an impression on you. I was formed then and am now being reformed in that image regardless of the decade around me. Like a time slip, an oasis of 1967 in permanent existence, growing more and more into the authentic person I would have been had I been this age then, until it becomes my total being and affects those around me. Already just the memories that have come flooding back from my own efforts finding material to remind them has set the ball rolling, and if I end up looking the full part then it'll finish the job.

I was relieved Jonty lasted the eviction in Big Brother last night (by 0.1%). Sadly looking around people think he's mental so is unlikely to win, but he's not mental, just too interesting and intelligent for the plebs to understand him. He is easily the most entertaining member since Eugene and Jon Tickle and deserves to win for that reason alone. You can't put on a character like his, it's pure realism. If you're in the UK give him a chance, stop the evil twins from shitforbrains land winning. That'll be the lowest point in BB ever. Class not banality or curiosity (Nadia) should win for a change. I got on TV myself as I told Jason in 2004 I voted for him 5 times and he shook my hand, which was shown on C4 in winner's week. I spent £1 and got my reward 100 times over. I didn't even remember them filming that bit but they were follwing him the whole time he was with us.