Day: 16 May 2010

Luckily my diary has has had as much fun in it this week as work or I could be in serious danger of depression with this UK weather. As Marvin would say ‘’What’s going on?’’. We’re mid may-nearly summer and its still the temperature of winter!
Heating my life up were lots of entertaining moments. I have made 3 Sunday roasts in a row for friends who have popped in, eaten to their hearts content and fallen asleep on my now legendary sofa (Mariah name checks it in my song ‘’betcha gone know’’ in her latest album) .
This fortnight my girl Estelle was briefly in town from NYC and we spent bank holiday Monday shopping at Selfridges, Browns and Harvey Nics, where Stell bought some high dusky pink vertiginous designer heels. She nearly tempted me into getting the midnight blue satin blinged up Alexander McQueen’s but luckily my bank account managers face kept looming into my subconscious and I kept my credit plastic tightly wrapped away out of sight like a good girl.
Post shopping I dragged Stell down to our mate hip hop theatre impresario Jonzi D’s Breaking Convention hip-hop theatre weekend at Sadlers Wells which was packed full of dance loving people who wished they had been in the original Breakdance and Beat Street movies (don’t deny it-I did too!).
To end the night we had a last minute dinner in Mayfair restaurant Automat with stylist to the stars Karen Binns and other friends.

Last Wednesday and most Wednesdays recently I’ve been found down at Camdens legendary Koko nightclub (formally Camden Palace), where Channel 4 regularly record their Sunday morning T4 music show ‘’Pop’’. Estelle was still in town and really wanted to go see her mate Mr Hudson and Tinie Tempah perform, so a 10 strong crew of ladies including Virgin Media’s Jodie Dalmeda, Music Worlds Fiona Ramsey, PR mavon Vanessa Amadi, Adidas head Paola Lucktung, and I jumped around with all the young uns, and I mean young-most of the audience looked 16!  Tinie Tempah never fails to entertain, his presence onstage is so strong he had the packed venue jumping screaming and chanting-they were totally eating out of his hand!

Next my one time nemesis south London rapper Giggs called me to cuss me. Well, he actually called to invite me to his albums official playback but cussed me first because he assumed I’d deleted him from my phone contacts as I hadn’t immediately known who it was. After explaining that my blackberry had finally collapsed and was in intensive care being repaired leaving me with no contacts to hand he let me off. Phew!
Anyhoo-that Friday afternoon I took the afternoon off work and headed down to Giggs very special afternoon.
The invitation implied it would be a different event to the usual and I was excited. The address was a very old world educational institute in the heart of Londons brain centre and the college was an old Etoneque building with amazing architecture and grand painting of lords, ladies and distinguished folk from yesteryear looking down on us. As we entered the lobby we were greeted with the now expected wine, soft drinks offers and Giggs immediately came bounding down the grand staircase to greet his guests and thank us for coming. We acknowledged how far this guy had come. 30 minutes later we were ushered into a huge grand hall, like a Harry Potter movie where old world desks were set up like an examination hall. An old lecturer (was he an actor?), greeted us and played the role of our tutor explaining that we had 45 minutes to open the paper on our desks, put on our individual headphones and take the paper away with us. Well, this was brilliant! You could see all 50 of the chosen journalists were impressed. The juxtaposition of this south London, raw, grimy character placed alongside this grand ,imposing, English, establishment was enough to start with but the examination room and headphones just banged in the final nail that said Giggs was on another level. He had mentioned to me a while back that when he played his music for people ,like most music acts he wanted total silence until the track was over. Well now he had forced listeners to actually listen. Unlike your average artist playback session where journos chat drink and socialise Giggs had forced us to sit and pay attention. Like he always has. Our desks had the ‘’Giggs listening exam paper ‘’ on it, as well as a byte sized mars bar, a green apple and some water. The visual was a classic. Fantastic idea! The body of work sounded together and panoramic and I have no doubt that if Giggs plays the game, then alongside his very slick managers Jack and Archie they can come, see and conquer.
I ended the week with my favourite body jam classes at the gym and a dinner party at my crib thrown in honour of the return of my west London girl Estelle. It was a long night full of eating, drinking, screaming, laughing and after the great company I had an early start at a South London church for one of my best friends daughters christenings. I had been asked to film the blessing and so as I stood there, camcorder in hand, smart garms on, surrounded by my nearest and dearest under gods roof I thought ’’lord let me sleep 8 hours tonight!’’.

So much had been made of Whitney’s live show that it was impossible not to arrive at the docklands 02 arena without preconceptions of how bad one of the worlds living legend divas show could be. The uk press had been salivating at her ‘’terrible Birmingham show’’ with predictable headlines like ‘’Houston we have a problem’’ etc. but my guy and I turned up out of respect for who she once was and the fact that she is after all still Whitney. Legend. Icon. Badass mama with a voice that once reigned supreme.
It seems thousands of others felt the same cos the arena was heaving with anticipation early and as Whitney walked out with no extra pomp or regalia the crowd went nuts. The beginning part of the show saw her mentor and record industry label head Clive Davis watching her from his seat alongside Whitney’s mother. The family were in full support as her daughter bobbi Christina also took the mic briefly to show those melodic genes carry through the Houston household.
When she performed ‘’its not right but its ok’’ I sung along and smiled at the irony of the title song. It wasn’t right that clearly the years had taken their toll on Whitney’s voice in certain parts of songs especially those notorious high notes, but it was ok. We were there to see the legend in the flesh.
Similarly In “Greatest love of all” she wasn’t hitting the high notes but it really didn’t matter. The fans must’ve read the bad reviews but sang along hard and kept her going.
Interestingly in more gospel flavoured tracks like ‘’Preachers wife’’ movie song “Jesus loves me” , she hit every high note sounding amazing!. Clearly her vocals are more at home with the music of the church she was raised with.
There was a long segue with her brother singing “drifting on a melody” which predictably had fans running for the loo and hot dog stand whilst Whitney changed into her next outfit which was a red rubber satin looking gown which unfortunately for her clung in the wrong places and made her look a little lumpy and unflattering but nevertheless there’s no doubt that her figures great for her age. For me it was a sack the stylist moment.
The show was worth seeing a songstress with a reputation and catalogue that Whitney has. Her banter with the crowd was full of feistiness as she cussed 2 front row audience members for not participating as much as she liked, and again as she acknowledged the haters as the crowd gave her a rousing applause.
Her encore showed a more youthful Whitney in boots, jeans ,ruffled white shirt and waistcoat prince charming style. She came, she sang, she may not have conquered but she came correct and gave us her all and it was more than enough in this current day when many acts cant sing live to begin with.

Straight afterwards it was off to the Mayfair hotel uber glam bar for a party thrown by former international male model elo in honour of his business-the London motor museum.
Now, I’m not a car fan in any sense of the word. I cant tell one make from another and distinguish them from one another by describing their colour. But last week elo convinced me to travel out to Hayes in west London where he opened up the museum after hours on a Sunday so I could have a private tour and viewing. It blew my mind. And my mate who is a car fan was gob smacked by the spectacle. The museum houses over 150 classic carts from Europe and America from every era and genre. There are classic cute cars, flash cars, cars from movies, videos, celebrities and so on. Cars with statistics like ‘’fastest, most expensive, oldest in the world’’.
So when elo invited us to the pre party just before the annual infamous celeb packed gumball rally I agreed to go. As we pulled up to the venue a few of the classic cars from his collection were on display outside and passers by were gawping and taking photos in excitement as if tom cruise had just passed by.
The usual ultra trendy, sexy model types and rich kids inside were sipping cocktails and nibbling on finger food. Just as I thought at 1am that the night was over elo explained that he was dragging us to the after after party at cirque club. I protested that I had an early morning the next day. The protest was in vain and lasted 3 minutes.
The outside of cirque was heaving and reminded me of a hype New York that people from every fashionable walk of life were desperate to enter. Once we were in we were guided to the basement where it was like a scene from a video as strippers knelt gyrating on the bar in frilly pink lingerie, carnival girls and circus inspired characters were mingling with street kids. There were even midgets jamming hard (are we till allowed to say midgets or is it vertically challenged people?).
At first the dj was playing house music that didn’t have me ecstatic until I spotted a group of home boys jumping up and down like crazy on the still pretty empty dance floor. On further inspection it turned out to be none other than Dizzee Rascal wearing a nirvana t-shirt dancing hard to the hypnotic beats with 3 of his crew. As if that sight wasn’t bizarre enough , next to him Shane from boy band Boyzone was hosting a table heaving with drinks that the whole club were guzzling from.
Once the dj started spinning hip hop & R&B the dance floor got blitzed and it turned into a sweat fest up in there.
I finally dragged myself out of there at 3am dreading waking up 2 hours later as a car was coming to scoop me up at 6am to do my slot on the BBC RADIO LONDON breakfast show with my old BIG BREAKFAST colleagues Gabby Roslin and Paul Ross.
Yep-I was a wreck but hey-life’s for living right?. As someone once said, you can sleep when you’re dead.