11 April - Sony Walkman & Johnny

Went to launch party of new Sony Walkman (well, we have fond memories of life before an ipod) with Jody Harsh probably earning quite a bit for 20 mins of djing and some photo opportunities and Johnny Borrell performing an acoustic set in place of the now behind bars Pete Docherty. My friend said ‘the cast of Sklns is in the next room’. I answered that I wouldn’t recognise them if I fell on them. I have watched a couple of episodes and one centred on a girl not knowing what to do about being pregnant at 17 or whatever age they are. I remember thinking ‘Not a problem I identify with’ and switched, but the actress was very good. As we screened the rooms for bodies of our age, we identified only the sheep farmers from NZ with the dancing sheep already on Youtube. We chatted to them and they invited to a forthcoming Home show at Earls Court. D. really liked one of them so she’s already arranged for tickets for us… it seems that I’m now going too as was original witness that she’s met her future lover to be. On the net I found out he’s only 36, sleeps in his truck, smells of dung (his words not mine). Clearly they have a lot in common she being a sophisticated extra well read political animal.

She said as we queued to go in behind a Sarah Harding lookalike with orange skin and huge eyelashes, ‘I wouldn’t want to be a Pr girl if you paid me’. I said dude, they’re 20 odd years old, they’re loving it, that clipboard has magic powers, they try to invite who they would like to meet, maybe one of them dreams of marrying one of the boys in Skins. The boy in the queue in front of us announced to clipboard lady that he’s from the London Lite and is looking to introduce himself to, let’s call her Suzanne. A flurry of she’s not here but she’s inside she’s wearing grey follows or better still let’s escort the young guy and off he gets taken down the parade of paparazzi who clearly don’t flash at me and D. as we walk past. He must be feeling like royalty. He’s cute, in his prime, staring at a career at whose pinnacle he may just rub shoulders with Lindsay Lohan or some such.

Conversely D. tells me about her 40 something friend at the magazine who cannot stand to do another celeb so called interview ever again. Well of course, all you get is tosh, you’re not writing for Vanity Fair so you’re only getting the Pr line on whatever they’re pushing, and even VF is so controlled and manipulated you couldn’t say a thing about anything you observe that’s controversial or you couldn’t express in your article an opinion and say that JLo is mental to spend hundreds of thousands on her 2 babies’ rooms and so on.

Once inside and after the few lovely drinks and happy that we found the tokens to win a new Sony Walkman (gorgeous it is, has wifi so technically if I’ll ever understand the instructions which seemed very complicated but then again I was reading them on the tube home and I was not all there, I’ll not have to download anything but just ride on young people’s hip selections) we witnessed the acoustic set by Johnny Borrell.

He is simply gorgeous, I take it all back (have a 40 something mother of two friend who’d like to stalk him and I simply didn’t understand why, now I know). And he was very gracious to this little nothing of a French girl with a ukulele called SoKo who was drafted into singing along with him and bashing a drum kit for his acoustic performance. He has a fantastic voice. Ok, I still don’t think I’ll bother with a Razorlight album but, wish he’d taken me home instead of French girlie (gossip on websites today, not terribly good gossip but still). Instead, we stretched it to 10.30 to claim our prize and fled into going home as fast as possible. It was a Thrusday after all and today my bones ache and I can only imagine it’s the mint juleps and the wine that did it.