WHEN FIREWALLS HAVE EARS .....

I'd almost forgotten about Site Meter, which has been sitting there quietly at the bottom of my blog. Very useful, you can see how many hits you're getting, who's visited your blog lately, etc., where they are in the world. Unless they have masked their IP address, which usually indicates they're Up to No Good. I was mildly interested (not excited) to discover that hits to this blog peaked last June at over 2,000 for the month. They have since subsided. Credit crunch, no doubt. I'm obviously a luxury some cannot afford.

The person in Saudi Arabia who googled "Beast exciting woman", landed here and ended up staying 23 minutes on 19 January, is obviously either a very slow reader or found my blog more bizarre than the material he (or she) was looking for. If he (or she) was working for a secret service, I recommend they put in for a posting to Wales or New Zealand. I think you should know, Scarlet, he (or she) exited (possibly excited) in your direction. Keep the ferrets locked up.


You will no doubt remember the time I acquired a lurker from Tripoli because I happened to mention in despatches the devilishly handsome and intelligent Libyan President G*d**fi. (Hello! Back again? Long time no see, why don't you stay for some couscous and a glass of mint tea?) It freaked me out a bit at the time, I don't mind admitting, and it was only after Quarsan told me that being stalked by foreign (or better, your own) secret services was the blogging equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize that I cheered up, and even chuckled a bit at the thought of two goons from Tripoli running around Brussels looking for a woman with a fruit basket on her head.



I wish that President B*r*ck Ob*ma was as paranoid as Colonel G*d*fi. I've scrutinised my SiteMeter records, and apart from the usual suspects (Brussels, Reading, Cluj) there was no indication that I was attracting any attention from Washington. There was a 4-minute hit from "Unknown organisation" in the USA a couple of days ago. Dare I hope? Could someone be preparing the ground for His visit to Brussels in a few months? If so, I would like it placed on the record that the Presidential Suite has been swept, new curtains have been hung, a new wardrobe is on order, and the bed will be warmed by April. I'll even clear out the broom cupboard for the goons.

He'll no doubt have a couple of Kevs in tow

P.S. Art lovers will be excited (or possibly exited) to hear that part of McChe's lost oeuvre has recently turned up in Italy, and may be viewed on his website here. Don't distract him too long with flattering comments, he's nearly finished painting Milady's Chamber.

THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL

Anyway, back to my brilliant theatrical career.

The variety show at the Folies Bergère was quite eclectic. There were exotic dancers, certainly, but also novelty acts: the Gadjodildos, for example, a troupe of lively Romanian acrobatic dancers who bounced about the stage in their red boots and embroidered tunics, slapping each others' faces in time to the music. Le Grand Byard was a conjurer, or prestidigitateur as they say in France, who worked with his assistant Boyeau le Nul. Boyeau got sawn in half every night, up until the night the safety catch slipped that is, and he had to be replaced by Scarletta, who played "Jealousy" on the sax with a clog-dancing ferret. There was even a talking gorilla once, on loan from Billy Smart's, a most eloquent creature who spoke French with a delightful Congolese accent.


Bette Noire, "the Toxteth Tarantula", was one of the more exotic dancers, if you follow me, and was not allowed to perform on Sundays, as the Archbishop was busy taking mass and couldn't come to see her. And of course Hattie, Dolores, Flo and me in the chorus line, doing high kicks in our signature hatband formation. Happy days.

One evening Mr Finkelsteinburger told us there would be an important guest in the audience and warned us to keep our thongs on in the final tableau. We begged him, even offered favours, to find out who it was, but even when Pat, "Le Rossignol de Rossendale", offered to do her party piece - doing a handstand naked on the highwire whilst balancing a tray of kirs on each foot - he refused to budge.

"If I tells ya, it'll affect youse performance," he barked, chomping on his cigar.

We tried to sneak a look through the curtains but were none the wiser. It was only during the opening number that I spotted him in the third row. The dreadlock wig couldn't completely cover his prominent ears, as he tried to hide behind a copy of "Organic Fertilizer Weekly".

"Girls! Girls!" I cried, as soon as got back to the wings. "It's The Prince of Wales! Charlie Boy! Could be our lucky night !"

A chorus girl hissed at me as she marched past: "Chasse gardée, bitch! He's spoken for."

"Who does she think she is?" I asked, staring after her.

"That's Catmilla, one of the Slinky Pussies," explained Hattie. "Apparently he's come to see her act."


The Slinky Pussies were a pair of double-jointed pre-op transsexual contortionists. Catmilla and her partner, La Pouncita, wore leopard print body stockings and did things with a ball of wool you wouldn't countenance. It was, to be fair, one of the more popular routines in the show, and "Gorgeous George" Galloway, who ran the bar, never missed a performance.

Despite Finkelstein's warnings, we did sneakily remove our tassels in the tableau, but the Prince only put down his magazine when Catmilla came on stage. He didn't even look up at Lulu LaBonne's "trompe l'oeil" number where she appeared to be squeezed into peculiar shapes by a boa constrictor, which was in fact tattooed on to her skin (the peculiar shapes were her own), and we all know how much he cares about animal rights.

The Folies Bergère closed down for a number of years in the 1980s, although has reopened since, and we all went our separate ways. Dolores Entwhistle, Hattie Mildew-Spliff and 'Orinoco' Flo McCluskey gave up hoofing when the price of caribou feathers went through the roof. Orinoco Flo used to have a thing for one of the Gadjodildos, but the creep turned out to be already a bigamist, it took her a long time to get over her loss and she turned to strong drink and lesbianism for comfort. The girls all still live in Paris, and we meet up from time to time for a girls' night out, about which I have written in earlier posts. As for Catmilla, she went to work at the Paris Ritz as chief mechanic of the limo fleet, and got married in Windsor a few years ago, or so I'm told.

La Pouncita hitched a lift to England with a truck driver who she promptly married, had her gender realigned and changed her name to Edie Stobart, then resurfaced at Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal where she runs the Casey Jones Bar & Grill, still sporting her trademark ocelot leotard and occasionally climbing onto the bar to blow her own trumpet.


As for me, I did a course in Cordon Bleu cuisine and catered for glittering diplomatic receptions, which was how I met my dear departed Harold. The quickest way to a man's heart is not always with a twelve inch blade. Once he had nibbled my vol-au-vent, he swore he would nibble no other. But that's for another episode.

CRAZY RIGHT NOW

This drove the girls at work crazy today. "Très feucquable", said one of my French lady colleagues, huskily, with the same look I saw in Beyoncé's eyes as she sang "God Bless America" the other night. If there is going to be any hanky-panky, I'd put money on her being involved. Beyoncé, not my French friend.

We're all leaving work on time to be in front of the TV for the anointing of The One and Only. McChe is even having a bath for the occasion.

YES WE CAN CAN

2009 marks a number of anniversaries, not least 50 years of Motown, but it just occurred to me that it was 30 years ago, almost to the day, when I departed Albion's shores to live Sur le Continent. In early January 1979 I received a phone call from an American impresario who had auditioned me earlier that day in London, who seemed to be saying "Can you be here in 10 days?" I heard myself replying coolly "Just a moment, I'll check my diary ...", ruffling the phone book a bit, and then resuming: "Why certainly I can. I trust accommodation will be arranged for me?" before putting the phone down and shrieking "Mother, I'm going to Paris!!!!!"

It was round about the 17th of January, I believe, when I departed from the White Cliffs of Dover for La Belle France, with my steamer trunk packed to the gunnels with feather boas, sequinned thongs, nipple tassels and jars of Vaseline. Now my late husband Harold is no longer with us, I can be frank about my career on the boards. He didn't have a clue, the truth would have killed him. The Folies Bergère was still going great guns in those days, and English dancers were prized for their long legs and enthusiasm for the casting couch. I was very innocent and when Mr Finkelburger asked me to come to his office for a special job he needed doing, I trotted up the stairs in my little (fake) Chanel suit, oblivious to the knowing looks of the other girls.

"Ayup our kid, don't wear navy blue next time, you'll save on't dry cleaning bills" advised Dolores Entwhistle, a plain-spoken Yorkshire lass (is there any other kind?). Dolores and two other hoofers "Orinoco Flo" McCluskey and Hattie Mildew-Spliff became my bosom buddies, in a very literal sense. We choreographed our own dance routines which became more and more audacious. One, involving a gerbil, a live eel and two parrots, actually provoked an official complaint from the Animal Protection Society.

With apologies for the Spanish subtitles, but I gather we were big in Costa Rica.

THE MESSAGE

Obama is coming to Brussels in April. I gave myself a long, hard look in the mirror and asked, can I get him to notice me?

"Yes you can!" replied Barack in the mirror. I blushed like a young girl at her first prom.

"You're leaving Michelle at home, right?"

"Baby, you know I only has eyes for you. You wanna be my ho? Well, shift that lilywhite butt out on the street and make me some money."

"Ooh daddy, I love it when you talk dirty."

"I ain't kidding, girl. That motherfuckin' white bread Bush administration done left me jack shit to get the economy restarted. I need my homeys out on the street corners dealing, and my ho's on they backs squealing. But you ain't gonna fit in no hotpants with a ass the size of Russia."

"Barack?"

"What, bitch?"

"D'you love me?"

"Girl, you a glutton fo' punishment! Ah gon' love you when you lose about twenty pounds. An' I gon' whup you white ass if you don't. Now git to work."



I got the message. I have to get fit to retain my self-respect as a woman.

DEJA VU

So that's another festive season survived. I always have the most immense sense of relief when it is over, and usually so does my credit card. Remarkably, I did not spend a fortune in the UK as I had anticipated, as I was not near any shops at the right time, and the one afternoon I had free they were mobbed and I ran away to Tesco. However, when the Visa purchases I had made came through translated into Euros, I thought seriously about getting right back on Eurostar. If this exchange rate lasts, I shall be needing a frequent traveller card. I have also been catching up with Christmas TV which my lodger was kind enough to wake up and record while I was away. Hamish Macbeth, the History of Scotland, Rab C Nesbitt ... now I am a great fan of bonny Scotland as you know, but I have to say his range with the remote control is a bit limited.

Paul Merton's retrospective of the work of Morecambe and Wise was a joy. Pure genius. How weird is this though: I had planned to post the Greig's Piano Concerto sketch, and entitle this post with a quote from the sketch, "For another four quid we could have got Edward Heath". This rang a vague bell, so I checked my back catalogue and found that on 4th January 2008 - i.e. exactly one year ago today - I had posted the same clip, with the same title (and the same mistake in the quote).

I think I'm on a loop.

Oh what the hell, it's still funny.

OUT WITH THE OLD

I'm not optimistic about 2009. I feel the financial crisis has hardly shown the tip of its nose yet. It will be not so much a question of make do and mend, as do without altogether. Maybe even sell something.

*Takes long meaningful look in McChe's direction*