This morning I washed the dust of Suffolk out of my hair and was really pleased to see the water turn brown. Often there is not much point in washing my hair but this time it was dirty enough to be quite stiff. I actually fantasised about never washing it again, thinking that the dirt would build up the volume rather nicely.
The Festival was incredibly crowded but only the Eddie Izzard show was unpleasantly crowded. Eddie didn't swear or say anything dirty, which made him a lone voice in the comedy tent, where the level of humour revolved around sex and self-abuse, er, fucking and wanking, in the common parlance. Oh God, it was so depressing. Ah, no, I am forgetting Nina Conti, who was really naughtily funny without being dirty. She had a monkey puppet and a Polish Builder puppet, and she persuaded a member of the audience to participate in the show by dressing up in the Polish builder puppet while she operated his mouth and flirted with him. She then cast another 2 members of the audience as seekers for love, and gave them half masks so that she could operate their mouths, which was incredibly funny and quite creepy. She smiles all the while like a primary school teacher whose class is lovely but getting out of hand, and you would never guess she was saying the risque things that she was saying. Very skillful and hilarious.
The Saturday night headliners were Kraftwerk, performing their seminal album, um er. It features the lovely melody, Fun on the Autobahn. We were promised 3-D graphics and excitedly donned our polarised screens in cardboard frames - err. Why? The 3-D effects didn't work unless you were straight ahead of them and the level of interest was minimal - it was like pac-man or a child's cartoon from the mid 70's when nothing moved and they showed the same pics again and again. Yes, a VW beetle. The background seems to be retreating to show that the car is moving, very clever. There was a pretense that 4 guys were needed on stage to "play" this music, but of course this is nonsense. They could have left us alone with the computers. You could say it was all retro and just displaying to the young people what a seminal work it was - electronic music! How clever! But I'm afraid it was just incredibly boring and I spent an hour and a half longing for it to end. If you want a good version of the robot genre try Flight of the Conchords, The Humans are Dead . At least it is witty.
My second favourite was Stuart Maconie, in a somewhat tetchy mood, but we laughed heartily at his jokes, of which there were many. He read from Cider with Roadies, which I have mentioned in an earlier post, and also talked about his latest work The People's songs, which I shall buy very soon as it puts pop songs of each year since the war into their social context, and talks about various aspects of British life through the filter of the songs.
I also enjoyed Robin Ince talking about his scientific heroes, but he did shout into the microphone which I found extremely painful and I think he should have stopped doing that by now.
Bryony Kimmings is trying to create a role model for, and invented by, her niece Taylor. The resulting alter ego is called Catherine Bennett, a pop singer and dancer who wears knee length skirts and is a paleontologist. She taught us how to do an animal dance, that was really good fun even if you're rubbish at dancing, like me. The idea was that Taylor experiences "a wholesome rave" cos you can bet that Bryony has experienced a number of unwholesome ones. Here's the song and dance.
A review of Sex Idiot, a previous show is here.
The star for me was Germaine Greer. she was very delayed and the continuity entertainer had to work very hard to keep us amused, which was very good fun, and expectations were high when she finally arrived. She spoke without notes on the subject of the Disappearing Woman and was funny and informative and clever. The only thing I wanted to argue with her about - how ironic! was when she said that somebody's 14 year old daughter shouldn't be taking advice from a 74 year old woman (herself). Ageism! What does it matter how old Prof Greer is; she is still cleverer than practically everyone else so we should all be interested in what she has to say, however old we are. She is fab anyway, more like 60 than 74. Not that it matters.
I'm sure someone said that Prof Greer was delayed by nudists on the roof of her train, but when I Googled this I couldn't find anything.
P.S. Success. Prof Greer was delayed because a man had climbed onto a platform roof at Ipswich station. He climbed around in a way that endangered himself and so the overhead cables had to be turned off. He had no shirt on, and for a while took off his shorts and wore them on his head. Ah, the English summer!
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