If Time Out isn’t available where you live, then I’ve just discovered that you can have the whole magazine delivered to you electronically, exactly as it appears in print, for the paltry sum of just £2.35.
Having picked up my copy this morning (a surreal event in its own right – see below), I have to say that I’m delighted with the way that the Eurovision article has been laid out. It’s the lead article in the music section, spread out over a full page with no adverts, with little national flags for each country, and even the bookies’ odds for each song mentioned. Oh, and they’ve even been nice enough to leave in that all-important plug for Troubled Diva at the end. (Best get on with writing the rest of those previews, then.)
If you’ve seen the article, then maybe you’ll have noticed my adoption of the royal “we” in a couple of places (e.g. “Top Three certainty, we reckon”). Yes – my first ever article in Time Out, and already I’m trying to pass myself off as the collective voice of the magazine. Such presumption! (There was actually a sound original reason for this, but let’s not obsess.)
Buying my copy was, as I’ve just said, something of a surreal event. Just as I entered the newsagents, my iPod switched to the song which is currently Number One in the Belgian singles charts (again, there’s a sound reason for this, but let’s not dawdle) – a cover version of Irene Cara’s Fame, as recorded by the contestants of a Belgian TV talent show called Star Academy. And – I’m not exaggerating here, honest – at the precise moment that I opened the right page and found my name at the top of the article, the first line of the chorus kicked in. “Remember my name! FAME! I’m gonna live for ever!”
Sometimes, I love my life.
troubled diva 