FollowLuckily 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!’’.
