Yesterday, I set Anna (the second most typical reader of this blog) a challenge: to compose a critical appreciation of the 40 In 40 Days Project, in 300 words or more, by 10:00 this morning.

Having successfully completed the challenge, Anna would then be able to legitimately tick box #27 in my "typical reader" checklist - thus gaining herself an extra point, and raising her score to 26. This would put her into equal first place with Lyle, thus earning her the Troubled Diva coffee mug which she so brazenly craved.

After posting interesting first and second drafts last night, Anna presented her final draft this morning. I am taking the liberty of reproducing it here.Genius, no? I think you'll agree that Anna has more than fulfilled her brief. With this in mind, I propose to award her NOT one, but TWO mugs. One from the "classic" range, and one from the "novelty" range, featuring those irrepressible little critters, the racist ducks. One for Anna, and one for her Beau. Or one for home, and the other for her prestigious and influential workplace.

(This is what we call a marketing "push" exercise, you see: promoting the product by releasing limited stocks amongst key "opinion formers". I'm not daft!)

Anna Pickard: Troubled Diva salutes your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, your facility with rhyme, and your rampant Mug Lust.

Lyle: for ticking 26 out of 30 boxes, you too will be receiving a mug. How does the position of Official Site Mascot sound?

Non-blogging readers John and Tim: with scores of 11 each, you are officially declared Troubled Diva's most atypical readers. Mugs all round, boys! Please contact me with your postal addresses, and I'll do the rest.

As for everyone else who participated: mugs are available for purchase in the foyer. Please don't all rush at once.

Additional note: July 5th 2005. Although this piece was only originally written for the small audience who reads my weblog, Google has seen fit to give it a high ranking for the artist concerned. I should therefore sound a note of caution for people who have arrived here via search engines. What follows is a harsh review, which some might consider disrespectful or even offensive. It is, however, an honest and accurate record of the thoughts which went through my mind while watching the show in question. As a blogger, I make no claims to objectivity; however, it is also not my intention to cause gratuitous offence. If this review offends you, then please accept my apologies, whilst bearing in mind that this is just the personal point of view of some random bloke off the Internet. After all, it would be a boring world if we all thought the same way...

As this was the first night of the "Once In A Lifetime" package tour of former 1970s teenybop idols, neither Miss Mish nor I knew quite what to expect. So we were initially a little bowled over by the demographic make-up of the audience, which was almost completely comprised of very excited women in their forties. Very, very excited women in their forties. With tartan accessories. (Some of them had been awfully busy on their Singer sewing machines.) And custom-printed T-shirts. (One lady in front of us had SHANG-A-LANG emblazoned on her back, while her companion had plumped for the more direct LET ME IN.) And cellophane-wrapped floral tributes, to hurl over the barricades at Les, or Merrill, or Little Jimmy, or one of the two Davids. And, in the case of one particularly determined Bay City Rollers fan who spent a good ten minutes before the show engaged in protracted negotations with no less than three security guards: a teddy bear with a tartan bow around its neck.

(One shudders to think of the negotiation tactics she was prepared to wheel out, although the stony-faced but slightly fearful expressions on the faces of the three guards spoke volumes. At one point, she even started waving the paw of the teddy bear at them ("Look, he's saying hello!"), in a last-ditch bid to melt their hearts. Conclusion: be very, very afraid of middle-aged women bearing teddy bears.)

As the Bay City Rollers - sorry, Les McKeown's 70's Bay City Rollers (there's a clue in there for you) - took to the stage, almost the entire first three rows of the audience stormed down to the front, where they formed a kind of hormonal mosh-pit. (With so much polyester rubbing together, it's a wonder we didn't see sparks flying.) As Mish and I were in the fourth row, on the end of an aisle, we were therefore granted excellent sight-lines to the stage. However, we also had to endure the din of an almost constant pitched battle next to us, as teeming hordes of stoked-up, tartan-clad Angelas and Nicolas and Deborahs and Amandas begged, beseeched and clamoured to get past the security guards that were stationed right next to us. They never gave up, either. Sometimes, one of them managed to distract the guards long enough to allow three or four more to barge through, squealing with glee, camera phones primed and ready. You wonder whether any of them were listening to the music at all.

Mind you, one could hardly blame them for having other concerns. Alone out of the four acts on the bill that night, the music of the Bay City Rollers has steadfastly refused to accrue any modicum of nostalgic appeal whatsoever. It has always been, and will always be, wretched, piss-poor, joyless stuff: cranked out by backroom hacks to fill a lucrative niche, and performed by useful (and ultimately expendable) idiots, with no artistic or emotional investment in their craft, on any level. And I speak as someone with a considerable fondness for supposedly "manufactured" pop, providing it is done with style, or wit, or love (three boxes which the likes of Take That managed to tick effortlessly).

So imagine how much more reduced the experience would be when confronted by "Les McKeown's 70īs Bay City Rollers" - featuring singer Les McKeown, and an anonymous bunch of hired hands. OK, I'll give them their due: they were a tolerably competent bunch of hired hands, who blustered efficiently through the Rollers canon while a scarlet-jacketed McKeown (there was an inescapable whiff of Butlins about this) dutifully trotted out the sha-la-las and shang-a-langs with all the emotional engagement of the slightly sad-looking geezer on his own in the corner of the pub on karaoke night.

It was the eyes that gave him away, really. They were the dead eyes of someone who found himself shackled to a body of work which he had almost certainly grown to despise, but which - not having had sufficient wit in his youth to avoid the pitfalls of unscrupulous managers and dodgy contracts - he was obliged to perform, in perpetuity, in order to put bread on the table. Not having made any true emotional investment in his glory days, there was therefore no way for him to recoup any of that investment in middle age. Through his grim-faced, disconnected, slightly pained performance, you could see that performing had probably never held much joy for him in the first place. Yes, he was badly advised and ripped off in the past. But nevertheless, you reap what you sow.

Not that any of this really mattered to the assembled Angies and Nickys and Debbies and Mandys, for whom the years were rolling back apace. They just wanted to sway their hands in the air to Bye Bye Baby and Give A Little Love, go a little mad for a night, and relive the follies of their youth. McKeown was just the catalyst for this collective act of remembrance. It was barely even about him. (Maybe it never was. Maybe he knows that now.) All he really had to do was turn up, stay in tune, and not f**k things up too badly. Easy work, when you think about it.

Even so, McKeown was able to get away with granting himself the odd mild indulgence: a re-arrangement here, a different rhythm there, and even a barmy section in the middle of Shang-A-Lang, where the band suddenly lurched into a few bars of Deep Purple's Black Night. (Maybe that was one for the small contingent of stoic husbands who had been dragged along for the evening.) Towards the end, he even flashed a couple of broad smiles. However, and without wishing to labour the analogy unfairly, they still struck me as the smiles of a deluded addict chasing a long-vanished high.

Labels: top25

Does anyone have any idea why Bloglines isn't accepting new subscriptions to my RSS feed? This is particularly weird, since it will happily display updates to the feed for existing subscribers.

I am stumped. I'll bet it's a Blogger thing, right?

Based on the results of my recent readership survey, I am now in a position to assemble a detailed profile of this site's most "typical" reader. Maybe that reader is you?

In order to find out, take a look through the following list, ticking every statement which applies to yourself. Then total up your score, and either leave it in the comments box, or mail it to me: mikejla at btinternet dot com.

The person who attains the highest score will receive a beautiful Troubled Diva coffee mug, ABSOLUTELY FREE. As will the person who attains the lowest score. Because we value diversity.

Eyes down! Here we go!

1. I am male.
2. I am 28 years old.
3. I am heterosexual.
4. I am partnered (but not married).
5. I live in the UK.
6. I live in London.
7. I am in full time employment, but I am not self-employed.
8. I am reading this survey (for the first time) at home.
9. I am a university graduate.
10. We have never spoken to each other by e-mail.
11. We have never met in real life.
12. I have never won a prize on this site.
13. I have my own weblog, and have made at least one posting to it since January 1st 2005.
14. Troubled Diva has linked to my weblog.
15. Mike has left a comment on my weblog.
16. I started reading Troubled Diva in 2002.
17. I first found Troubled Diva via a link on someone else's blog.
18. I read Troubled Diva every day, or whenever it is updated.
19. Compared to a year ago, I read Troubled Diva just as often as before.
20. I come here on the off-chance that you have updated; I don't use any form of RSS reader or other update monitor.
21. I read most posts, but skip or skim-read the ones which are less interesting to me.
22. I read between 10 and 25 weblogs on a regular basis.
23. I do not particularly mind either way about this year's increase in music-related posts.
24. I have never bought any Troubled Diva merchandise.
25. I have never bought a CD as a result of a recommendation on this site.
26. I have discovered at least one blog through this site, which I have then gone on to read regularly.
27. One of my favourite pieces on this site is the 40 In 40 Days Project.
28. I have used the links on the sidebar to read old posts on this site.
29. This site has made me laugh out loud, but it has never made me cry, and it has never made me angry.
30. There is nothing in the world that I would like more than a FREE Troubled Diva coffee mug.

Good luck!

Update: At the time of writing, Lyle leads the Typicals with a score of 26, while John leads the Atypicals with 11.

However, as the comments box will reveal, Anna is mounting a bold (and some might say "nit-picking") challenge for the lead, with all manner of "Yes, but if you count this, then..." provisos and sub-clauses. In recognition of such crazed Mug Lust, I have therefore set her a challenge, to be completed by midnight tonight (Thursday). Watch this space, as they always say in corporate newsletters.

(With apologies for the break in service; this was occasioned by my retiring to my sick bed for a couple of days, in a heat-induced swoon.)

Right then - let's knock this tired old warhorse on the head once and for all, shall we?

23. Have you ever used the links on my sidebar to read old posts on this site?

I've often wondered whether it was worth the effort of providing a "best of TD" section on the sidebar - because surely no-one actually reads the old stuff, do they? It therefore came as an immense surprise to discover that 92% of you answered "yes" to this question - proving that, with a bit of strategic thought and some artfully seductive post titles, weblog archives don't have to disappear into obscurity after all.

24. Excluding the comments boxes: Has Troubled Diva ever made you laugh out loud? Has it ever made you cry? Has it ever made you angry?You know, I was almost tempted to count this one as a "yes" to the third part of the question. But in the end, 58 people went Ha Ha, 9 people went Boo Hoo, and just 7 went Grr Grr.

Personally, I think I've got off way too lightly with the Grr Grrs, as there are times when I look through the archives and think: get over yourself, Mary. But then there's no greater critic than oneself, is there?

If only I'd had the nerve to add "Has it ever made you horny?" We'll never know now!

25. Do you have any other comments?

"A faster comments system!", you cried. "Another blogging management system!", you implored. To which I say: nay and nay. My comments boxes may be slow at times - but the amazing body of content which they have accrued over the years is just too valuable to chuck away. Also, I never get spammed. Never.

A large number of people were worried that I might use the results of this survey to change the future direction of the blog. Nope, that was never the idea. However, the survey has been the springboard for an awful lot of reflection over the past couple of weeks. Don't worry: I'll spare you the gory details. However, I'll just say that the period of reflection was much needed.

And then lots of you said lots of very nice things, which made me blush and simper, and cross my legs, and duck my head, Lady Di style, below my long-vanished floppy fringe. For which much thanks.

To reward you for helping me with this survey, I'll be running a small competition tomorrow. Because it's been, ooh, weeks since I last offered a prize on this site, and it's high time I did something to promote the merchandise.

Oh, and by the way. If you've been having trouble accessing the RSS feed via Bloglines, I've now added a second feed via Feedburner. Both links are up on the top right hand corner of the sidebar, just above the search box. Hope this helps.