The latest topical insight from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs.
Shelley Shingles, showbiz correspondent and Miss Fetteresso 1983
O E actual G! It felt sooooo good to finally be allowed to crack out my glad rags from the back of the wardrobe and get back into Aberdeen’s bangin’ club scene.
OK, I’ve not been a regular dance floor diva since I was on the VIP guest list at Barney Rubble’s, but as your entertainment oracle I felt it was my duty to report from the reopened nightlife frontlines and show these young ravers a thing or two while I was at it! Even if they did keep offering me a seat.
I was really pleased to see the city centre is already totes geared up for clubbers, with a large portion of Union Street pedestrianised so that when we pour out at closing time we aren’t faced with the old inconveniences of trying to avoid being hit by a taxi, before trying to find a taxi.
There are also a number of handy concrete receptacles, thoughtfully provided in case anyone is feeling, as I was, a little bit delicate in the tum-tum. Good to see them getting fully utilised at chucking out, and, indeed, up, time. Plus, there are plenty of vacant shop doorways in which to shelter from the elements while enjoying a late night repast of chips, with or without cheese ‘n’ gravy.
Anyway, after an absolutely enchanting evening in Aberdeen’s glittering The Grill, I ended up at The Pipe club night, upstairs at O’Neill’s. By this time I felt I might have had a few too many sambucas, as the face of the person before my eyes seemed to blur and melt. But one of the young groovers told me not to worry; I was just dancing with Michael Gove.
Ron Cluny, official council spokesman
“It’s a funny old game”, as that great political philosopher, Jimmy Greaves, was always keen to tell us.
Conventional wisdom would have suggested that it might in some way be a bad thing for a senior politician to be pictured gurning like a loon and throwing shapes to phat beats while on an unaccompanied foray into town. In the past, we might have thought that this somehow indicated questionable judgment or a lack of seriousness. It might just have been the kind of thing which people held against him.
But now we live in a world where the currency of celebrity is of more consequence than competence, and giving folks a much-needed titter is more important than the orderly administration of the country. Well, it’s not as if Britain is up to anything important at the moment is it?
If there isn’t shaky footage of you doing an approximation of the macarena while wearing an inflatable flamingo around your waist, then, sorry, you’re just not fit for high office
Through the looking glass as we now are, Gove’s decision to perform what looked Mr Bean’s version of the Birdie Dance to some heavy, heavy house music has done nothing but improve his standing among the public. From expert-bothering brainiac Fauntleroy to Lord of the Sesh in one fell swoop. Your move, Rees-Mogg.
In my capacity as local authority spin doctor, the lessons are clear. I shall be revoking all previous policies around media engagement. Competence and control is so last season.
If there isn’t shaky footage of you doing an approximation of the macarena while wearing an inflatable flamingo around your waist, then, sorry, you’re just not fit for high office.
J Fergus Lamont, arts critic
The recent Nuart festival has come and gone without much comment, perhaps, but for me it is once again proof of Aberdeen’s welcome pre-eminence in the field of “street art”.
And so it was that while “taking the tour”, as is my wont, I rounded the side of the New Market and found myself face to face with quite the most inspiring piece of public art I have ever encountered. Standing a full 15 feet tall, stark and monochrome against the grubby walls and a bit to the left of a whale painted on a doorway, the giant portrait of Eastenders’ Pat Butcher is a surrealist meisterwerk.
The “Great Pat”, redolent of the work of Hokusai, stands, of course, as a vivid metaphor for the city of Aberdeen itself. We may be grey, somewhat terrifying and imposing, it says, but we are tough, redoubtable, and will carry on regardless and finally win through, eventually, after many years, a lot of pointless arguing, and many identical cliffhangers which are never satisfactorily resolved.
It truly spoke to me, and when it spoke it seemed to say: “Shut it, you plum.” I wept.