A Day, Backwards

A few weeks ago I saw an ad for the documentary Upstairs Planet about Martin Newell being shown at The Regent Street Cinema so I bought a ticket. I read Giles Smith's book Lost in Music years ago, lent it to a friend, and had to buy it again because it was so funny.
I like that little cinema and I've never seen a bad film there so I decided to go.
The documentary maker Graham Bendel was there and the film was so lo-fi it made Stories from the She Punks look like a Hollywood movie, but it was utterly charming. I loved the bloke from the original Cleaners from Venus pretending to talk to Martin using a brick in place of a mobile, threatening to throw it though his window and then accidentally dropping it on his acoustic guitar and smashing it. Although that might have been faked.
And any film with such a long list of people who refused to appear in it has to be good!
I can't describe how brilliant Martin Newell is.
I've never listened to any of the songs in much depth before but I am now a complete fan.
He sang some songs live at the end, then my heart sank when he slid pages of poetry out of a brown paper envelope, but the one above made me yell with laugher and blub too, which would have been embarrassing because I went on my own, but by then I felt I'd recognised a complete kindred musical spirit and something inside me said 'Hooray! Mad people stalk the earth and write music, and that's where I belong!'

John Cooper Clarke was there and so was the artist Peter Blake. And Stuart Moxham was in the film; it was almost impossible to decipher what he was saying though.
I loved the wife who doesn't like his music at all. Now that's proper love.
This isn't the last you'll be hearing about it. I took notes!

Nearly missed it, innit. I woke up at six a.m. and was writing by 7.30. I wrote for three hours, rehearsed for Sunday's gig at The Spice of Life, did the ironing (a once yearly event: there was a lot of it), watched Bargain Hunt, then wrote for another two hours. I went for a little siesta and accidentally slept for three hours, so I only just got to the West End in time.

Backwards day: I hope tomorrow is more normal.