Fairground, Fairness and Financial Frugality

It' s been a strange week. All over the place work wise and some peculiar highlights.

I managed to set off for a job in Preston on Monday and leave all my credit and debit cards at home. With just £8.56 in my pocket it became a matter of ingenuity to last the course.

Thanks a million to the lovely Sikh taxi driver who took me to the hotel for £7.30 when the fare was £15 and thanks to Maria my fellow actress who I met there for lending me a tenner. Thanks be for pound shops of which Preston has a lot so that one can stock up for the train at three chocolate bars for a pound.

I didn't leave anything behind on Wednesday night when we went to the Press night of "All the Fun Of The Fair". the new David Essex musical at the Garrick. I only wish I had - namely all my critical faculties. Its a travesty of a show. It looks like it's been touring since 1980. The set is so tired. It's the first time a set has made me angry. Running away to Doncaster - as near as damm it my home town, the two young leads sat in front of a station sign and bench saying "Doncaster"that looked as though it had come out of Brief Encounter - don't they know we have tel and perspex in Donny now - it may still be dirty, but it's not vintage.

The less said about Mr Essex the better. he's not young anymore. In the last number of the show, guaranteed to induce paroxysms of giggles in any sane person,( or at least me and the critic next to me) he sits on a motorbike to sing as a fellow member of the cast who has been killed in the action (Lucky boy) descends from the flies on another bike while they sing - you've guessed it "Silver Dream Machine" - lamentable. I have the fondest and slightly arousing memories of David Essex in a white suit singing "Rock On" on Top of the Pops. I sang along to "Lamplight" in my parents front room with a hair brush in hand- memories now slightly tarnished by a traumatic night at the theatre.

However the level of sincerity there was stellar compared to this morning's quasi rhetorical guff from the lovely Mr Brown that I as forced to sit through in South London. It's not been a good week for Gordon. First the redoubtable Mrs Duffy and then this morning - me!

Inspire is a brilliant community project on the Walworth Road run by the stunningly winning Charlotte Benstead, and university friend of Richards and now, I'd like to think, a good friend of mine.

This morning they were subject to a visit from GB. It's in the constituency of Harriet Harperson so we had double squirm factor to endure.

We were packed into the main hall at Inspire, a superb reworking of the church crypt, and left to stew for nearly an hour waiting for the arrival of himself.

I chatted to Ali who founded Real Drama, the group I worked with just after Easter. A clever, impassioned and articulate young girl who made the waiting time bearable, and then He arrived. To my shock and horror, I was sitting right behind Sarah Brown and therefore the subject of a handshake from the not so great man. It was like having a bunch of half thawed fish fingers stuffed into ones hand. Presentation technique good- Lots of eye contact and pauses. Content - absolute twaddle, He took three questions from the floor. Two were obtuse and long winded questions which he managed to avoid answering completely. The third, from Benstead herself regarding security of funding for such voluntary organisations provoked a bit of back slapping on his part and no guarantee that a new Labour government would do anything more for such a project. the finest moment came as he was leaving from a pensioner grabbed the microphone to speak. He wanted to say the he would vote for Gordon and wished him luck, but the sheer terror as to what the man was going to say showed in GB's eyes an no doubt in his underpants.

Now at least we know why he's called Gordon Brown!

All this and a role play delegate in Dudley who had the temerity to call me tosser - I mean, please - it was she who lived in Dudley - now who's the tosser?