And here come the waterworks....

So...I'm reaching back into my memory banks here. I'm usually quite like a goldfish in terms of memory length but this is important so I will share it with you.

My final Club Smooch was April 9th and what a show. We were dogged by poor lighting, terrible sound and a sparce audience. But nothing could dampen our party spirits and I most of all was determined to P-A-R-T-Y? Because I gotta!

Bea Devile and I had been working on a special double act, a one-night only affair that we'd been considering for such a long time. The WI cake bake. We are both almost obsessive about cake and had long said we needed to combine the two passions - cake and burlesque, in an all out food fight extravaganza. I got to play the ultimate in trophy wife stereotypes while Bea tried every possible way to sabotage me. It was slippery, it was messy and it was so bloody funny!

The Vegas Showgirls (me and Therese la Tease) and our gimp rocked it Pulp style and I got to debut my new balloon pop I mentioned such a long time ago. It worked so much better than I thought it possibly could and I've decided that I make a damn good blonde!

But the moment I was not expecting came when I was dragged onto the stage, like the oscars and given the most enormous bunch of beautiful pink flowers before Bob, Zerrin and the cast played me a leaving video of all my Club Smooch highlights. There were tears aplenty and it felt so surreal it just didn't feel possible that it was my last CS night. BW, who so rarely comes to my shows also shed a little tear.

I missed most of the performances unfortunately, including Marianne Cheesecake who was on straight after me. Also Coco Deville who I did end up seeing twice more over the next few weeks!

After managing to catch the last couple of acts we pushed back the tables and got down to dancing. Given the rare opportunity to cut loose being in my home town (I never drink much if I've got to catch the last train from god knows where), BW and I finished off a small bottle of whisky and boogied on down!

I don't know where the future of Club Smooch lies as the organiser looks to other creative ventures. What I do know is that the group of women involved in this night are the most fabulously creative, interesting, different, powerful and supportive group as I could have possibly had the pleasure of knowing.

I take my hat off to you ladies.

The Bunny is back.

Club Smooch Backstage

Ok, I realise I have been a little quiet as of late but that's only because I've been hard at work creating my first true comedy act.

I always have a couple of pages of act ideas at all times and picking ones I want to work on is so hard because I want to do them all! But I must stick by my own mantra of less acts, better quality.

Last time I was in town before a Club Smooch after my sound check and run through I popped out to pick up some false eyelashes. It just so happened that the local costume shop was having a sale of it's ex rental costumes. I wasn't expecting to find anything but I had a bit of a snoop amongst the rails and found a scraggy looking bunny costume.

I've always wanted to go to Halloween dressed in a big fluffy bear outfit, if only so I could run up to people and cuddle them like an overgrown teddy bear. So I was drawn to the bedraggled looking bunny. I managed to talk them down from the overambitious pricing and left the store with a new act in the bag. Well not quite, but you get the picture.

Music was the next stumbling block. I knew I wanted to use Run Rabbit Run, simply for the fact that the cheeriness of it would juxtapose so nicely against what I was going to do to this poor little bunny. But how to finish it.

A chance evening in with nothing to watch but 'Top 100 sexiest music videos' was to be my saviour. Never mind thatthe woman co-hosting sounded like she should have been on one of those ads that crop up at about 1:30am. You know the ones I'm talking about, 'Sexy girls in your neighbourhood are just waiting for YOUR call.' Nonetheless, I found myself tapping my toes to a completely over the top pop/hip hop song and voila! I had my music.

The process was a lot of fun for me. More acting than dancing, it was just a bit of silly fun. I could never have predicted just how much the audience at Club Smooch was going to love it. The reaction was overwhelming. I often have people come up to me after a show to say they liked the act, etc. This time I had people copying the bunny moves!

Speaking of Club Smooch, all puns aside, the Halloween event was a hell of a night! I also performed my La Belle Femme en Rouge act which was the complete opposite of Rabbit Pie. It's a 30s jazz era fan dance with an exquisite costume from Curve Couture. You can see it here where Vanessa, our Club Smooch maid has snapped me backstage waiting to go on.


Chrissie (boss lady at Curve Couture) also had a fashion show during Club Smooch. Her fashion shows are never ordinary and although I saw them rehearsing and had a little peek from behind the curtain backstage I didn't get to see the full show until I was going through the footage from the show with Bob on Saturday. Wow! It was very, very sexy.

In fact, on the Halloween night I was onstage no less than 4 times! We all got out on stage for a boogie to one of Trixy Vixens songs Moloko, and I was also part of the Club Smooch Troupe. It reminded me of all the things I miss about theatre. In particular a nice Sunday roast before rehearsals!

A little midnight magic

Well that's not where my weekend ended. Oh no.



Friday I went into Chrissie's studio for another fitting of the new costume for the relaunch of my Red Angel act. The process of creating a costume is a strange one. From the image I created while curled up in front of a film one night, the idea has sprung forth into reality and each week it gets closer to realisation. Quite amazing really.




Chrissie and I have also had to play around with the original idea as a picture you have in your head is not always possible given the laws of physics. Additionally the 1930s dress design I found and an original 1920s pattern with the most beautiful back line that Chrissie found had to be tweaked and combined to create something that suited the needs of the act, and my figure.


I am a curvy girl and as much as I have willowy Coco Chanel fantasies, the 20s dropped waistlines make me look like a hippo. The 1930s silver screen style is much better suited to my frame and looks far more elegant on me. It is all about understanding your own shape.




I grew up in a very large family and my mother had 3 sisters. One for each season you might say, and quite interestingly as far as complexions go, they were. If you've never had a season colour analysis of your skin, do one...now...Google it! Some say this is old fashioned but it has never, ever let me down and if you are wondering, I am a Winter.




Each sister is a different season and each dresses with such style. Add to that a myriad of female cousins and I had a perfect base for learning how to dress to suit myself. When other girls my age were reading Dolly or Girlfriend, I have memories of scouring the pages of Vogue in my aunt's living room.




I can't say that I dress with Glamour all the time as I love a pair of jeans and hoodie as much as the next girl, but style I can do.




The same day I also had a meeting with a friend about my new showreel. We met some time ago when I first performed for the Burlesque Against Breast Cancer folks and he shot a little film of one of my acts. We met for coffee to discuss the film shortly after and ever since we've met up every now and then to discuss performances.




Affectionately known as Bob by the Burlesque crowd, he always has some excellent insights and ideas on my acts and it's so nice to be able to discuss them in such a focused way. I feel like I must drive BW crazy sometimes as I'm so burlesque obsessed my nearly every thought is related to act ideas, costumes, vintage, other shows and performers, and so on.




I also think I can take the credit for introducing Bob to cupcakes (don't tell his sister!), when the cafe at Waterstones was full and I was craving a sugar hit. So I took him down to Angel Food Bakery on Meeting House lane which went down a treat.



Bea DeVile, who shares my obsession for cupcakes, had introduced me to this cute little shop which is now one of my favourite places in Brighton. She now regularly tortures me by sending me links to anything cupcake related (did you know you can get cupcakes delivered, like pizza!). Something about their daintiness makes them so incredibly desirable to girls who like pretty things.




Anyway, I'm getting distracted again. The new showreel is quite a nice step for me. Naturally I can't help but pick my own performances to pieces, but any decent performer does. Bob filmed the two acts I did at Club Smooch in September which we've combined and will post on the website shortly under Film. An additional 'teaser' (so to speak!) trailer will go up in a few months time when we've filmed all my acts.




A showreel, along with a website and some good recommendations, is a key part of any performers arsenal, particularly to send to promoters who haven't seen or heard of you yet as it can be difficult to tell a teaseur just from their pictures.



So onward into the night. The day is not over but I will continue the story later... Bonsoir!