Produced under somewhat strained (if wholly self-inflicted) circumstances, this week's podcast is the second in a row to pay tribute to the fine English town of Bognor. As ever, there's old stuff and new stuff, chart hits and obscure rarities... plus this week, dead homosexuals, spliffed-up nutters, resuscitated pop tarts, and an Awful Warning from Germany.

With over 700 downloads of the second podcast (I know!), this caper might be playing havoc with my bandwidth - but, for now at least, it's still a price worth paying. (I investigated the possibility of installing a Paypal micro-payment tip jar, but then decided it would be a bit naff. Just buy me a pint or something.)

Update: Too late! It's gone...

Tsk, why don't people TELL me these things? Magenta is an alternative club night for Nottingham's alternative poofs/lezzers/bothways/trannies and their hetty mates, which runs on the third Friday of each month at the Bunkers Hill Inn, down at the bottom of Hockley. (Last pub on the right before you get to the Ice Stadium, and it's in the room upstairs.)

Despite minimal publicity (ie. no-one I know had even heard of it before yesterday), the event is now into its sixth month, with people turning up from all over the place... and it's happening again tonight, between 9pm and 1am. The music policy is "rock, indie, punk, electro, alternative 80s", and the previous setlists look well cool, and if I wasn't going out to watch some dodgy end-of-the-pier glamorous and talented drag acts at Cabaret tonight (with Mish, Alan, Moviebuff and the usual suspects), then I'd be getting my one and only "rock and roll" black T-shirt out of the bottom drawer (it glows in the dark; mucho Gay Goth points), sucking my cheeks in, strapping my 18-hour girdle on, and popping along myself.

If any of you do make it down there (because obviously, the Nottingham Gay Goth constituency of my readership is HUGE), then please let me know what it was like, OK?

Who says pop and politics don't mix? Don't Close The Post Office, JonnyB and MC Mr Mitt's official anthem for the Post 8 campaign, is now available on video - and what a splendid video it is too. In fact, the attention to detail is quite mind-boggling. What's your favourite bit?

(Really, seriously, honestly: if you only click on one link from one weblog this week, then make it this one. I'm over-selling again, aren't I?)

Calling all bloggers! Or at least the ones who decided to shell out for their own domains, rather than relying on "dangerous", "unstable" services like Blogspot! Have you backed up your sites recently? Or do you simply place your trust in your hosting companies?

If you fall into the latter group, then might I strongly urge you to back up your site at the next available instant, and then to continue doing so on a regular basis? Because, let me tell you, when your hosting company experiences a server crash, losing every single one of your files in the process, then you really don't want to have to trawl back through a whole year's worth of archives, carefully piecing your site back together from various directories on three different computers. Because it's very boring. And it takes hours. And even then, you still won't be able to find everything.

(What? You thought that hosting companies took regular backups of their own? And why, pray, would they bother to do a thing like that? Let the scales fall from those innocent, trusting eyes!)

Still. When life deals you a lemon, then why not turn it into another promotional stunt?

Yes, that's right. It's Win A Troubled Diva Mug time! Again!

Your task is a simple one. Of the small number of files which I have been unable to locate since July's server crash, there is but one whose absence significantly troubles me - and I'd like to enlist your help in finding it.

The file in question is called forest2.jpg. As its title suggests, it was the laboriously hand-crafted photo-montage which illustrated my lovely "Kissing Forest" posting, in which such up-for-it celebrities as Cate Blanchett, Rene Russo and Brad Pitt were to be found lurking in the greenery, ready to offer transgressive Not The Gender I Usually Fancy snogs to the readers who had nominated them. It took me ages to put together, and it was really rather beautiful, and I'd really rather like to have it back, please. (The schoolboy error was to save the file to my USB drive, forgetting to copy it to any of my hard drives before deleting it.)

Please sally forth and search your caches. The first person to e-mail me with the file (mikejla at btinternet dot com) wins a mug. Can't say fairer than that, can I?

---

Media = me, dear.

As if the excitement of appearing in The Independent wasn't enough, last Friday saw me gather mentions in two more daily newspapers.

Firstly, the whole How Dare They Call Me Anonymous Woman hoo-hah was deemed worthy of an extended (and charmingly catty) write-up in the Essential Gossip column of the Nottingham Evening Post's weekly arts & entertainment supplement, in which I am outed as "a fortysomething gay man named Mike". (I'd love to link, but it doesn't appear in the online version.) Many thanks to Miss Mish for saving me a copy.

Secondly, while reading an article in the Guardian Review about musical offspring of famous musical parents, I came across a quote from Stylus magazine, describing Kelly Osbourne's recent hit single One Word as "rather like Ms Osbourne herself ... utterly preposterous and strangely captivating at the same time".

Ooh, varda them adverbs, I thought to myself. That could almost be me who wrote... hang on a minute. And lo and behold, it was. (Original source here.) Except that The Guardian had made two significant alterations: changing Miss to Ms (they're not The Guardian for nothing), and omitting the phrase of which I was most proud, in which I referred to Kelly as a "pouty-faced strop-pot".

So, with The Independent naming my URL but quoting Vitriolica's words, The Guardian quoting my words but not using my name (*), and my local paper loyally quoting all three, my sights are now set on the ultimate accolade: an article in a national daily newspaper which also delivers the grand slam of name, address and accompanying self-penned copy. How about it, Daily Telegraph? (And blimey, gift horses: what huge mouths you all have!)

---

Whilst younger people spend their summer holidays getting all too publicly plastered in Faliraki, San Antonio or Ayia Napia, homosexual gentleman couples of a certain age prefer to get discreetly plastered in the comfort of their own weekend cottages, night after night after night, as they fondly gawp upon the endlessly entertaining antics of the Big Brother 6 housemates. However, such easy delights have their price. In our case, this meant having to watch (gasp!) terrestrial TV, in (shriek!) real time, far removed from the comforts of our Sky Plus box back in Nottingham.

This meant that, for once in our lives, we had no option other than having to sit through the adverts. (Goodness, but aren't there a lot of them these days?) This experience also made me confront yet another sad, inescapable truth of middle age: that I didn't understand where half of them were coming from. Time was that I could cheerfully fire off sneery armchair-pundit deconstructions of the lot of them; no longer is this so. But then, that's how they work: by ensnaring people who are young and impressionable enough to still be forming their brand loyalties, using techniques which are overtly designed to drive a wedge between the generations, thus fostering the illusion of a personal/tribal identification between consumer and brand. Or something. I am, as I say, a little rusty in such matters.

So, tell me this; because we have both been wondering. Why is it that cosmetics adverts are always recorded with some sort of slight out-of-synch quality between the actresses' mouths and the sound which comes out of them? It's a subtle effect, and easily missed - but once you spot it, you realise that it's ubiquitous.

Also, tell me this: what's with this new obsession for sticking the word "nitro" into adverts for male-targetted products, and "fructose" into those for female-targetted products? Is nitro butch, and fructose femme, or what? But WHY? What do they MEAN? Does anybody KNOW? I mean, it must WORK, or else they wouldn't do it, but what kind of weird meeting did I miss, where nitro and fructose were introduced into the popular consciousness as desirable elements in grooming products?

I know, I know: save it for the letters page of The Daily Mail, Grandad. But if you were wondering why I had retitled the blog troubled nitro-diva power plus 4 (with active fructose micro-ingredients), then there's your answer. To reel in the youngsters, by means of a series of subliminal yet powerful affirmative signifiers.

I missed my calling, didn't I?

(*) Update: On a more serious note, and lest there be any confusion, I should perhaps just clarify that the Guardian piece did correctly attribute the quote to Stylus; I didn't mean to suggest that the journalist was trying to pass it off as her own. So, all comedy glass-half-empty Drama Queen rants aside, I wasn't actually pissed off in the slightest. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Ooh, nice toy! (via) I knew that Flickr would eventually come in useful for something.





This could also enable me to use Horribly Rude Words, without troubling the delicate sensibilities of those pesky corporate profanity filters. But I don't quite care to be so vulgar.







Bored now. Next craze please.

Update: Aha: a practical use! I've been meaning to set myself up with a 404 Not Found page for, like, years.

Look, you don't want me to churn out the obligatory What I Did On My Holidays piece, do you? Because, although I could, I suspect that it might come out looking like a slightly grudging homework assignment, and that would never do.

But, yes, very nice holiday, thank you for asking. Yes, very relaxed. Yes, it could have been a little bit sunnier, couldn't it? Still, I've somehow managed to end up with a tolerably tanned face and forearms, plus that little "Old Man's V" just below the neck. However, the rest of me remains pasty white, as there's virtually zero privacy in the PDMG, and I'm not having my flabby middle-aged tits on display to the village at large.

(Ten years ago, I could barely keep them under wraps. How times change.)

I've also put on yet more weight, as evidenced by a shopping trip to Manchester towards the end of the fortnight, where I was obliged to purchase my first ever pair of 33-inch waisted trousers: biscuit coloured cord jeans, with that ever-fashionable "low slung" look. Thank God that high waistbands still haven't made a serious comeback. Maybe this will be like the "untucked" phenomenon, which kicked in around the time of Acid House/Madchester, and has never gone away since?

(To my chagrin, it has to be said. Tucked in looks so much neater, and it gives you a clearer view of, well, you know. I've had the most awful faces pulled at me over the years for saying that. But I speak as I find.)

Anyway, there comes a point in many people's lives where they stop trying to keep up with the vagaries of fashion, and instead stick with the clothing style that suited them in their prime. (You used to see this a lot with former debs.) To this end, I think that "low slung" is where this boy will come to a graceful rest.

(The other great rule of fashion: never wear a revival of a style which you were wearing the first time round. Revival styles should only ever be worn by people who were too young to live through the original period, as a kind of idealised tribute to a lost golden age.)

33 fricking inches, though! This is further evidence of the dismayingly linear progression which led me to purchase a pedometer earlier in the year. Standing in front of the mirror, I feel like the King Canute of my waistline, powerless to stop the surge.

(There again, I could always stop drinking pints. But, as Peter says today, who wants to be a skinny hermit? I suspect that the ultimate solution may well be vodka-based.)

And another thing. We went to Manchester specifically to schmooze round Selfridges and Harvey Nicks - but, sheesh, when did high-end fashion become so boring? Now, you can spare me your "designer labels are evil" rant, as I fear you might be confusing exquisite production values with the conspicuous branding of the High Street mid-market: your Hacketts, your Hilfigers, those ghastly little Polo ponies. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be about swanking off, if you've got a genuine interest and a particular aesthetic sensibility - and besides, the best labels are always worn on the inside.

With all that said, why should two such formerly devoted style bunnies find themselves mooching past the racks in such a desultory fashion? Because, try as we might, it was all either Same Old, Same Old, or You've Got To Be Kidding. In the end, we made our actual purchases in a shop called Gant, which had nicely styled classics, free from excessive adornment, and bright, personable staff who clearly had lives beyond clothes. Hence the biscuit coloured cords.

Time to stop flogging that dead old clothes horse, then. Just give me Paul Smith for the decent classics-with-a-twist stuff (suits me perfectly; fits me perfectly; beautiful attention to detail; lasts for years), and good outdoor clothing stores for the really hard-wearing stuff (puffa jackets, fleeces, lightweight waterproofs, non-stick T-shirts, comfy shoes), and I shan't need to bother with anywhere else again. Lack of imagination? Nah, blessed emancipation!

(This isn't what I meant to write about at all. Never mind. Freestyle is valid.)