A late night visit

It's Friday night, not long after midnight. In grand English tradition, I should be standing in a queue outside a club in the rain, arguing with a bouncer about the amount of alcohol I have ingested that evening. However, after the week I've had, all I could manage to do was crawl home, shove all of the accumulated shit off my beanbag onto the floor space next to it and collapse face down onto the comforting squishy corduroy.

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only 23 year old out there who comes home on a Friday evening and wants to eat Chinese food in front of Ugly Betty rather than attempt to drink my own body weight in Sambuca. Don't get me wrong - I will be out on a Saturday night with the rest of the unruly mobs of Britain's pub and club scene but Friday? Nope. Sorry. Nada. I want track pants, chow mein and wine; not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned, it's been a busy week. I leave on Monday for my first ever gig as a fashion assistant and I've had a million things to do before then and still there are things on my list. However, in one of my few moments of free time, I found this video:



For those of you who are unfamiliar with Brian Dowling, he rose through the ranks of Big Brother to win and go on to be one of the campest TV presenters in quite some time. Although his star has somewhat faded from his glory days presenting CD:UK, he's still kicking around on one of those late night quiz shows and as such, qualified perfectly for this poor revival of 80s favourite, Family Fortunes, only now with 'famous' people.

It's OK Brian, I forgive you. Vernon, you're not so lucky.

V. Import

Those of you who have read past entries may remember that this time last year, I was slogging my guts out on a major motion film, all in the name of Hollywood. I spent seven months of my life in the middle of the concrete jungle that is Pinewood Studios filming the epic that is Fred Claus. Oh yes, dear reader, I can finally reveal that I gave seven months of my life in every way, shape and form to Vince Vaughn and co.

Last night, at the very last minute, I went along to the premiere in Leicester Square and then the party afterwards. Unfortunately, being ill, I was not in a strong position to be the life and soul of the party but there are other ways to amuse oneself at these events other than the free bar and one of my favourites is crap-celeb spotting. Oh boy, last night was a doozy. As you can see in the next two photos, it was one hell of a show they put on in Leicester Square, including the little people who played the elves in the film. Before, I could never post any photos from the set because of confidentiality clauses but last night, I finally got my photo with my little guys, whose shoes I personally dyed green - along with lots of my own clothes in the process.




One of the things that has always riled me about premieres is the politics of who gets to go. My mother, as a head of department, was automatically invited. The rest is based on how chummy you are with the publicist, producers and other ticket guardians. Very few crew members get to go and instead, random people who had nothing to do with the film end up with six tickets. The lowly cattle who do the back breaking labour are instead invited to cast and crew screenings which take place on Sunday mornings at ungodly hours, thus denying those in desperate need of a lie-in precisely that.

So, back to last night. My celebrity spotting of course began at the premiere. Two rows down across the aisle was Guy Ritchie with Lourdes and Rocco; right behind me I had Johnny Borrell, who brought his mum. I spent the entire film with his winkle picker jiggling in the corner of my vision. Later, at the party, was where the real spotting began. As we were leaving the screening, we saw Superhans from Peep Show and again at the party, we spent rather a large part of our time approximately 3 feet away from him. I wouldn't class him as a crap-celeb spot (hereby referred to as a CSS) since Peep Show is one of my favourite shows. The boyfriend and I spent the entire night daring each other to go up to him and say 'This chicken's really more-ish' but we knew better and left him to enjoy his evening. Unfortunately, in a moment of idiocy I checked my bag, along with my phone, leaving me without a camera too.

Not long after, we saw a plethora of CSSs, all of whom are famous for very little or nothing - Bianca Gascoigne (she of Love Island and former step child to Gazza), Ray Quinn (X-factor), Liz Fuller (channel five's Quiz Call), Melanie Slade (WAG in the making), Bonnie Langford (Strictly Come Dancing on Ice or somewhat), a host of other nameless faces that have graced Heat and finally, Ziggy from this year's Big Brother.

He was most fun of all. We were standing with a couple of people who I worked with from the film and he was across the room with a gaggle of blondes surrounding him and cooing, looking relatively miserable. Lil mouthed across to him you look REALLY bored and within 10 seconds he had appeared in our little circle for a little relief from the peroxide fumes. He was very amiable, pleasant and chatty before moving on to another group, which was a nice change from those who are so self important on very little worthiness.

However, he was topped in the amusement levels by two sloaney blondes who had me laughing all evening. Desperately trying to show off their cool, they walked around braying at each other, repeatedly calling out 'Vee Import, daah-ling, Veeee Import!' at random intervals. Clearly, whatever they were referring to was so important that they could not waste an extra second to add the 'ant' to their declarations.
Nor, apparently, could they remove the labels from the matching Chloe sunglasses that they wore on top of their heads. (Indoors. At night. On one of the wettest nights of November.)

To make sure that everyone knew that they were Chloe, they had left the little logo stickers on the lenses and one was toting a Chloe bag with the tag hanging off it. As they marched around, their try-hardness almost reducing me to tears through my laughter, I had to pray that they were part of some illicit hidden camera type show. Even Ziggy had a little giggle with us about them. I swear, I wouldn't have been surprised if one of them had suddenly pulled out a miniature dog from her handbag.

And therein lies the difference between the people who deserve to be there and those who are lured along to make sure the pages of Reveal and Now are filled up with posed photos of zelebs capering with snowmen. Those who have ties from the project arrive straight from work, makeup fixed up and work clothes glammed up with a pair of heels if they're lucky. They'll have a few glasses of bubbly on the company coffers and bugger off before midnight for their 6am call the following morning. Those who don't will come covered in sequins, sprayed to an inch of their very orange lives, hoping to make it into a tiny corner of Heat's spotted page and stay way beyond the free bar, rolling out in the early hours of the morning, hoping to be papped flashing their bums as they get pushed into a black cab.

And there, ladies and gents, ends a tale of two very different worlds within the same galaxy that is the meed-ja, dahling.

Trust in God but keep taking the Nurofen

Last week, I was reading an interview with Jemima Khan about her ex-husband's involvement in the political unrest in Pakistan at the moment and she mentioned an old Pakistani saying that goes something like Trust in God but tether your camel. All week, that phrase has been floating at the back of my mind with new interpretations since I don't have a camel but I really liked the phrase. Most of the week, I've had what seems to be the most appropriate the London equivalent of Trust in God but lock your car.

Since I haven't been able to step out of the house all weekend, I once again updated it to the new version of Trust in God but keep taking Nurofen. Tonsilitis is meant to clear up by itself within about four days and seeing as this is more or less the third, it should be gone by Tuesday but as the saying goes, back up your options just in case and in this case, my back up is Nurofen. I have to be back in the office and face the wrath of the faulty air vent again tomorrow but my bag contains large supplies of over the counter remedies to help me through the day as my GP can't see me until sometime after I get back from my trip so antibiotics are out of the question. Someone remind of what I pay so much tax on such a small wage for precisely.

Re-reading that, I've come to the conclusion that the Nurofen has gone to my head and I should stop rambling about ancient phrases, the size of my tonsils and the NHS' short fallings before I say something truly stupid.

The Joys of Autumn

I love autumn. I love the array of colourful leaves, crunching along the pavement and crisp, cold mornings. However, the one thing that spoils it is illness. Over the last few weeks, I have watched those around me drop like flies with heavy duty colds, whilst I have been smug with only a light cold that in capacitated me for a weekend. Until Thursday.

Thursday afternoon, I'm sitting in my office when I suddenly feel a chill creep through me. I ignore it, blaming the broken air conditioning and go about my business. By the time I got home that night, it was clear all was not well. I woke up on Friday morning feeling as if I'd been run over by a mucus truck. Against the good advice of those around me, I decided to go to work as I basically had to.

One of the reasons I haven't blogged recently is that I've had a semi-promotion in the form of a freelance fashion assistant position. It's an awesome opportunity to prove myself and I've been throwing myself at it full throttle. Unfortunately, I appear to have been spreading myself a little thin because of it - doing my normal job, doing another shoot last week, as well as this freelance thing. As such, yesterday when I felt rubbish, I knew that despite it all I had to go in and get on with the job as we fly out to our location the week after next.

Needless to say, what was a cold is now full blown tonsilitis and I will be spending this weekend in duvet country, buried in the comfort of my bed, drinking copious amounts of tea and trying to hack into my work email which some oaf decided is a freelance address and requires copious amounts of paperwork to access. BLARGH.