It was great when it all began - And it still is

Back in the very early 70’s, an out of work actor called Rick, decided to write a bit of a play, just to keep his hand in whilst he was resting you understand.  It was a bit of a mish-mash of Sci-Fi, B-Movie horror and simplistic ‘Blues-Box’ Rock ‘n’ Roll – And it was alright really, you’ve probably heard a couple of the songs… You might have drunkenly ‘Timewarped’ at your Auntie Vera’s wake. Or repeated the words ‘Dammit, Janet’ over and over because you’re not really sure what the rest of the words actually are (Apart from some hypothetical river being deep that is – And how willing you are to prove that you’ve swam it. Maybe you’ve planned a future, because it’s ours – I don’t really know.)

But by now, you’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about Richard O’Brien’s Internationally-acclaimed Rocky Horror Show – The original version of which, one no-one’s ever seen (Unless you were one of the people who spent real cash money going to the dismal ‘Experimental Space’ above a dodgy theatre in Sloane Square in the summer of 1973.)

But you’ve probably heard the Original Soundtrack Album – Produced by everyone’s favourite (alleged) celebrity Peadophile, Radio 1 DJ (Obvs) and record producer Jonathan King. Who oddly, was also one of the original backers of the stage-play, so you’ve got him to thank – In part at least, for its popularity.

Here’s a juicy tangent… A cute girlie once made me a cassette-tape copy of the OST, She went as far as decorating the Memorex C120 with drawings and quotes from the album sleeve and I thought I was, what we used to call back then, “Well-in” with her, but this happened not two short months before she was discovered, in flagrante-delicto with the local (married) blacksmith/jeweler – I swear, unrequited lust and blacksmiths… Ah tells thee, I used to live in your actual 18^th. Century, Henry Fielding novel. Feel free to insert your own ‘Hot Anvil/Hammer & Tongs’ joke anywhere around here that you see fit.

It only took a couple of years for 20^th Century Fox to pick it up and turn it into a film, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (Which every single human being and a good proportion of the world’s more patient farm animals has seen on multiple occasions.) – It contained a mixture of both the London and Broadway cast and it was quite popular, making $140 Million from its $1.4 budget.

Now, I’m not going to go into the plot of the play/film, because that would be redundant… You’ve seen it, you’ve probably sung the songs and you’ve had impure thoughts about Tim Curry. So, Aliens, Transvestites, Bikers, Rain, Floor-show etc. – You get the gist. Bizarrely (popular word when you’re talking about Rocky Horror), the film became more popular with audiences (more than critics) than the stage-show and it wasn’t long before people started dressing up as characters and interacting with the action on screen… There’s a whole list of prescribed actions, props and talk-backs that you can throw/shout out should the muse take you – There’s a guide here provided by Timewarp, the UK Rocky Horror Fan Club. This transferred (Bizarrely – See, told you it was popular word) back to the stage-play, which is pretty much always touring somewhere on this planet’s face – But with a slightly different set of rules.

If I can only ever give you one piece of advice – Apart from the time I explained what to do in case of a bear attack and how to change the timing belt on a 1974 Triumph Herald - It would be… If you’re going to get ‘involved’ take the time to learn the actions and get them right. Students have adopted Rocky Horror as their own; as a way to show how messianically bloody great they are, which in the words of my good friend Nathan, makes my piss fizz. But they will laugh at you when you get things wrong. Being laughed at by a 200lb Rugby-playing 19 year old who’s experimenting with sodomy whilst wearing his sister’s underwear and makeup is not something anyone really wants, well, not unless they’re paying extra for it.

Then, if we fast-forward to… Well… About a week ago (If you are reading this in early November 2016, which is when I’m writing it) the remake was released on FOX (Bizarrely)…

When you get right down to it, it was a pretty faithful recreation with an entirely new cast (With one deeply sanguine notable exception) but ‘brought up to date’ visually. It was pretty much universally despised by anyone who had seen, participated in or even heard of the original. Which, in my opinion, is doing everyone involved a massive dis-service.  I can understand people not liking it – Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, I even agreed with people who hated the Phantom Menace when they first saw it. But this film has to get some kind of award for the number of people who were monumentally butthurt without actually seeing it. I’ve seen it called filth (and not in a good way) – I’ve seen it blamed for the reappearance of actual medical conditions – I’ve seen it accused of shitting all over the memory of the original… All by people who haven’t gone to the lengths required to actually watch it.

Let me take you through a few of the things that are different, to relieve the tension (see what I did there?):

1. The general ‘feel’ – It was made for a new audience, it wasn’t aimed at us old, opinionated people who idolized the original
2. Frank ‘n’ Furter is played by a WOMAN! – It might temper your fury somewhat if I said that the very talented young lady in question, Laverne Cox, used to be a guy – So, a real Trans-sexual playing an Alien from the planet Trans-sexual (Can you smell the irony people?) She does a brilliant job – Getting a lot of Tim Curry’s mannerisms cock-on (if you’ll pardon the expression) a lot of the time
3. The guy who played Dorian Grey in Penny Dreadful does a great Richard O’Brien impression as Riff-Raff
4. Magenta is BLACK! ZOMFG!!!1!!!1eleven – Played by Christina Milian (Whom I understand is a noted Popstrel, popular with the younger generation)
5. Trixie the usherette is played by Ivy Levan – Who is, as I believe the young say nowadays, hot AF. and is not in the film anywhere near as much as she should be
6. IT SHOWS (some of the) THE AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION – So, there’s a clue there for newbies who want to go and see the show
7. You don’t see any female nipples during the floor-show at the end, which is a pity, but I’m sure you’ll survive.
8. It features 100% less overt cannibalism than the original
9. There’s no Christopher Biggins – which is a crying shame
10. Tim Curry plays the Criminologist… This is the only part of the film that I, personally felt uncomfortable watching – Mr. Curry had a major stroke in 2012 and is still suffering some of the effects, one of which is being confined to a wheelchair, combined with a stilted voice, made all the more heart-wrenching when you remember its strength in the original.

I’ve counted some of the major differences out for you, so there’ll be no big surprises to upset you and stop you seeing it. 

Look, just watch it, suspend your disbelief that anything could ever be better the original – It doesn’t try to – It’s a cover-version, an alternative – Well made by some very talented people who’ve done their best to capture the soul of the original and drag it kicking it’s tranny-shoes into the 21^st. Century.

Watch it, then say you don’t like it… Or watch it, and say you do – But just watch it - I've watched it and it did me no harm.. See!

One of these people is me!

Oh yes, whilst I remember, Frank ‘n’ Furter’s Castle/Spaceship in the 1975 film was Oakley Court in Windsor UK – Which had provided scenery for many of the original Hammer Horror films of the entire 70’s so that was a bit of a cyclic reference.

Then I posed, and he took my picture

Some of you, mainly the people who've known me a while, or worked with me, or attended a formal event that I've gone to, or helped me celebrate a birthday, will know that I occasionally make and wear kilts. Not for any real ancestral reason, although the Dandy line is almost certainly blessed with a bewildering array of Scottish blackguards and jackanapes.

I just like messing with people's heads, and, as has been mentioned in multiplicity before, I am a massive show-off - And there're few things more likely to get you noticed in public than having your knees out and not wearing any underwear - You ask any woman between the ages of 16 and 40.

However, there are times when even wearing a kilt sees you fading into the background, Highland events for instance, or weddings of whacky and/or self-important people. The thing to wear on these occasions, for the fashion concious Dandy at least, would obviously be something like full Roman Imperial battledress or the rear half of a pantomime horse. This situation vexes me greatly, the Chimping Dandy does not do 'fading into the background' easily.

Which is bizarre really, because on one occasion, I was in a room with over a thousand, like-minded, people - And I was probably one of the most conservatively dressed people there, and I had a marvellous time.

Many, many, years ago, I used to work with a young lady, quite pretty, moderately shy, and very efficient at her job. If you looked up the phrase 'Butter would not melt in her mouth' in a dictionary of phrases (if such a thing exists) there would be a picture of her. After we both left the company, we kept in touch by eMail, as Facebook etc. did not exist at the time.

One day, I received an email from her that said something along the lines of, 'We're going to a show in London and can get you some cheap tickets if you're interested'. Now, not being blessed with children at the time, both Mrs Dandy & myself jumped at the chance and immediately started to prepare.

Prepare? I assume that you're asking, 'Why would you have to prepare for a London Show? Unless it was Rocky Horror? Was it Rocky Horror?'

No...

It wasn't...

The young lady in question, and her significant other of the time, had developed certain... erm... Shall we say 'Peccadillos'? that made them very popular with other, like minded, couples (Don't get excited, that's not where this story is headed - Not exactly anyway) - And the show in question was: Skin-Two Magazine's Rubber Ball.

Google it... But probably not at work...

It's a jolly get-together for people who enjoy dressing up and pushing the envelope, or being naked and being sealed in an envelope. And they really won't let you in if you're wearing 'Smart-Casual'. So I put on my Seamstress' head (The one I keep in the freezer for situations just such as these) And knocked up a couple of costumes. I made a PVC hobble-skirt for Mrs Dandy - Which was more zips than PVC. And for myself, I made a kilt, also out of PVC (Which, for those who wish to replicate the experience, is a right, royal, bitch to iron pleats into).

We booked a VERY nice hotel in London, a couple of First-Class train tickets, and waited.

On the night in question, we'd all agreed to meet in a pub around the corner from the venue in, I think, Hammersmith. Of course, when we got there, they were nowhere to be seen (Turns out that they'd 'bumped into some old friends in the hotel' - repeatedly, in several different positions, I'd imagine), but the place was full, almost to bursting, of clinically odd people. We found a table with a couple of spare stools and proceeded to wait.

We shared the table with three giant transvestites, I don't mean they were really, really, transvestite... I mean that they were all just shy of 7 feet tall. I really wish that I could remember their actual names, but I'm just going to have to make them up, they were great... guys?... And introduced themselves with both their male and female names - 'I'm Patrick-Mary, He's Brian-Fifi and that guy at the bar's Steve-Tracey'.

One was dressed in an outfit completely made of car-mats, which gave... him... a distinctly Female Klingon vibe, one was dressed as a bald Nun, with a PVC habit (the clothing item, not the lifestyle choice), but with the buttock area cut out, and the other was dressed in sort of a neon Flashdance ensemble which left very little to the imagination for either his male or female 'identities'.

We spent a happy couple of hours, swapping stories, such as we could with our limited knowledge of this type of thing - it turned out that we'd all turned up unfashionably early. And 'Patrick-Mary' was just telling us about the time his wife came home early and found him dressed in her wedding underwear and pleasuring himself with the toilet-brush when I felt a hand on my shoulder and a German voice said,

'Excuse me, may I haf a vord?'

I looked up and saw a bald, stocky gentleman, with a magnificent handlebar moustache, wearing a tight white T-shirt and a significant amount of rubber/leather.

'My friends unt I noticed vat ju are vearing vhen you vent to ze bar, ve vere vonderink if you minded us takink a few photos?'

I looked at Mrs Dandy, she shrugged, I looked at our new found friends, they grinned and excitedly gave me the thumbs-up. I stood, and then followed the German chap to the other side of the room, where a table of similar gentlemen, clad in various wipe-clean outfits were sat, along with a collection of suspiciously professional looking cameras.

'Ju stand zere und ve take a few photos, yes?'

I nodded, still not 100 percent comfortable with the situation, but did my best to strike a pose that didn't make me look like I'd stepped from the pages of the Littlewoods catalog.

'Nein, nein, nein... More... er... GRRRRRR!'

I did the 'Hulk-Smash' pose, you know where you grit your teeth, and sort of bring your arms into your chest and bend over (towards the camera, before you ask).

'Jah, Jah, ist gut... Now er... More sidevays!'

We were starting to attract a bit of a crowd, and if I'm honest, I was well out of my comfort zone, but it was all in fun and no-one seemed to be taking themselves too seriously (apart from one of the photographers, who REALLY looked to be enjoying himself) - It probably didn't take more than five minutes, it felt like a lifetime though.

'Gut, jah, I sink zat iz enough... Can ju just sign zis?'

They handed me what I assume was a model release form and offered to buy us all a drink, which we accepted. We were there for about another hour before we decided to head off to the event proper. As we left, the chap with the moustache waved and called,

'The magazine should be out next month!'

I might save the sights, sounds and smells of the actual Ball for another episode - I think it probably deserves one of its own.


So, if you ever find yourself rambling in the German countryside, and happen across a gentleman's art pamphlet, designed for one-handed reading, lying unloved in the bottom of a hedgerow, and think you recognise someone in a two-page photospread...

You might not be wrong.

That wasn't the year that was.

Well, I suppose - As it's the last day of 2012, I should do some sort of hoitsy-toitsy review of the year... High points, low points, mid points - What trended on Twitter, how many people found the Blog interesting, how much my personal Facebook index flopped around like a halibut in a Zumba class.

But I'm not going to, I have a memory like a sieve and the few things that I can remember actually happening, I can't remember when it happened or to who and with what.

I might make some stuff up I suppose - Hey, that might work - In fact, that's what I'm going to do! A month by month guide to things that didn't happen in the last year.


January.

An early news report from Khazakstan informed us that civilian contractors were transporting a Sperm Whale by air, using one of those huge Russian sky-hook style helicopters and an intricate system of thin straps and pullies - It turns out that the whole thing had been organised by an Italian company and the instructions had been translated from Italian to Khazakstani by the same Icelandic chap from the Dutch East Indies who writes out the instructions for Ikea. Within minutes of taking off, the poor cetacean suffered terminal garroting and fell into six neat pieces. Luckily, local villagers were able to follow some supplementary instructions, and fashion the remains into three free-standing bookcases and a very avant-garde table-lamp.

February.

Shoppers in Sheffield, UK, were startled to find that due to an issue with autocorrect at a local advertising agency, a launch event for the BluRay release of the X-Men origin film 'Wolverine' had become a little more feral than expected. Where the original instruction had been 'Make sure the guy in the Wolverine suit gets to Meadowhall by 09:00' - It appeared on the Talent-Wrangler's iPhone as 'Make sure you release 900 live Wolverines in Meadowhall - Guy'. In the ensuing chaos, four people were bitten to death - two seriously, one by a policeman.

March.

March will be remembered, more than anything, for the temporary repealing of the laws of conservation of momentum by the US Senate. The reason that this was a temporary change was that not much research had been done beforehand and no-one realised that this would make any form of 'Coasting' impossible - This alienated one of the largest US demographics - i.e. The 15-35 year old, itinerant, disallusioned skateboarding company director - And Google threatened to launch a class-action suit due to lost productivity at its HQ, as no-one was able to use the swings and slides.

April.

Apple fanboys were shocked to learn that they had been taken in by a complex ruse perpetrated by Samsung. An email had been sent to anyone with an @overpricedtoy.com or @moremoneythansense.org email address, offering them the chance to take part in the new Beta Test of the printable iPhone 5. The 'dupes' queued for hours at their own home printers, after being told that the device would be launched at 00:00 on April 31st, a completely new day, that would only exist for the Apple glitterati - At 11:59 on the 30th, a print job was generated that printed out a picture of a house-brick with a smiley-face painted on it by a duck. The joke was on Samsung however, as this proved to have slightly greater functionality than the standard iPhone 5.

May.

Plans were unveiled by NASA to recreate the original Starship Enterprise in Earth orbit. The $60 Billion dollar project stalled however, as not enough people could be found who were willing to be boarded into the walls for the entire five-year mission and operate the sliding doors whilst making the 'Shhhht' noise.

June.

June played host to the hottest day ever recorded in the history of the known universe. It occured when an office party prank at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland went horribly wrong. A group of scientists, bored with making drinks that changed colour indicating the arousal level of the drinker, decide to see what would happen if you accelerated a shish-tikka-donner mixed kebab (with extra salad) to lightspeed. The effect was devastating, but thankfully shortlived. As the chilli sauce reached 299,792,459 m/s its quantum state changed to anti-chilli and a small, but quite fragrant sun was instantly created - raising the local temperature for Western Europe to approximately 74.2 bajillion degrees.

July.

On the 8th. Due to an unusual weather pattern, 95% of the world's remaining 17,600 White Rhino performed The Timewarp - from Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror show. The quake produced when they all initially 'Jumped to the left' caused massive flooding in Botswana and large cracks to appear on the peak of Kilimanjaro - It's not known why the remaining 5% didn't join in, but the prevailing research shows that they were probably Mama-Mia fans.

August.

August shall be remembered for the temporary cessation of all sporting activity on the UK mainland - Absolutely nothing competetive happened. TV programming that would normally have been sport related was replaced by re-runs of Come Dine With Me. Even conkers was outlawed. Anyone caught flouting this new ruling was taken to Sebastian Coe's underground hideout and birched ruthlessly until they'd learned their lesson.

September.

Danish inventor Myrtryk Von Hunboltzon premiered his world-beating new invention - The Cat-a-porter, a method of instantly transmitting cats from place to place globally. Initial trials proved effective as cats of all sizes, colours and personalities were transmitted around the world. Unfortunately, it all turned out to be a massive con, as the cat that was being 'transported' was in fact, being minced by hidden equipment and not transported at all. All Von Hunboltzon had actually invented was a device for spontaneously creating cats out of thin air.

October.

The world of Fortean Research gained another martyr in early October as Brigadier Hawksworth McTavish-Silverplib (Retd.) completed his two year stalk-fest of the Beast of Bodmin in spectacular fashion. The Brigadier, known to local Beastarians as 'Mad Dangler McTavish' due to his habit of hunting the beast a Magic-tree car air freshener tied to his genatalia to mask his scent, was believed to have cornered the animal in a disused barn. His mangled remains were discoved in various places scattered around Cornwall. He is survived by an English Springer Spaniel called Leonard.

November.

Almost nothing of any note happened in November, the tides continued in their sploshey up-down motion, birds flew south, cheese matured and the complex system of checkes and balances that we call life continued unabated. Right up until the point where every man, woman and child who lived through the 1980's was discovered to have been some kind of pedophile or assorted rapist, sheep worrier or sodomiser. Apart from Bruce Forsythe, he was outed as a vampire and ritually staked by Tess Daley on the set of 'Strictly Come Dancing'

December.

Hollywood news that peaked in December was centered around the revelation that Kristen Stewart, 'Star' of the Twilight films and Snow White and the Huntsman, did not actually exist. She was outed as a completely digital construct by her ex-partner Cedric Pattinson. When questioned by a representative of the Jo McCarthy Rights for Real Humans group, Pattinson admitted that he thought it strange that Stewart dissapeared every time there was a power outage at their shared apartment in East Compton, LA. However he thought that this may have been due to her childhood spent in California. It was also discovered that it was during one of these power outages that her facial expression subroutine had been deleted.


Well, there you go, a month by month list of things that didn't happen in 2012 - I hope to continue making youse guys shake your heads in mild disbelief in the new year.

Let me leave you with a quote from my good friend Pedro Vader that I think sums this year up.

'If you stick your hand right inside, and I sort of make a sawing motion like this, do you think you can feel it?'