(no subject)

My hay fever kicked in with a vengeance yesterday, so went to Lloyds pharmacy this morning to stock up on Benadryl Plus. The lady said they only sold packs of 12 now and they were only allowed to sell me one at a time! I can do without having to haul myself to the chemist's every four days, so here's hoping that's just a Lloyds house rule and other chains will still sell me two or three packs at a time.

Dentist's at noon for a check-up. I've been assigned a new dentist now, a foreign bloke - Portuguese, I'm guessing - who pricked at most of the junctions where the meeting points of two neighbouring teeth meet my gum (some of the pricks hurt like fucking hell) and said I had gum inflammation. I don't have to have any treatment, but he advised me to start flossing regularly and using mouthwash.

(no subject)

Went to see French & Saunders at the Guildhall this evening. As I waited for my ticket at the Box Office window I remembered the one other time I saw them live - at the very same venue 20 years ago!

I was in the Circle, in the second row from the front. To the delight of long-standing F&S fans, before the show started 'Kinky Boots' was played as background music. Behind and to the side of me was a group of women who had a fine line in banter. They first caught my attention when one of them observed "I saw them here when they first came out." I turned round and contributed "I saw them here in '88," prompting another of the women to say so had she - "I'd just left school then." "I left the year after," replied the lady next to me, getting a predictable "All right" from the second, slightly older, woman. "I was sixteen then", I concurred, and another of the group laughed "I was ten."

A topic they returned to periodically was the lack of leg room. "I reckon we should drape our legs over the person in front," said the woman right behind me. I turned round and smiled. "She's only after your ice cream," her neighbour said to me.

French & Saunders were fabulous. They're far saucier live than in their TV show! Early on they announced this was their farewell tour, to a few 'awww's from the crowd. They gave us plenty of new material - Jennifer's Madonna impression was hilarious, as was the video message from Lucky Bitches Joan and Jackie Collins - plus some old favourites like Friendly Advice ("by now the todger's about this big"), Dawn's Catherine Zeta Jones routine and Dawn's plea to the audience to give her chocolate. All she got was one pack of Tic Tacs and one tube of XXX Mints! The second half opened with a welcome appearance for Edina from Absolutely Fabulous, in which Dawn played Saffron! After the sketch they explained that they'd first performed that sketch in the eighties and that Jennifer developed it into Ab Fab. Dawn then turned to Jennifer and demanded "So why didn't I play Saffy in the series?"... Later a giant inflatable Vicar of Dibley made an appearance.

At one point they asked for requests from the audience. I really wanted to stand up and shout "The song from Saturday Live in '86 that goes 'We gave it some trombone'," but F&S wouldn't have noticed me from the circle and I'd have looked a bit of a Malcolm, so I remained silent. The 'request show' was in any case just a pretext for Jennifer to 'persuade' Dawn to do a dance, to her professed annoyance.

When Dawn, during a soliloquy, revealed "Jennifer and I have something that we always take on tour with us which makes us very happy," there was a predictable chorus of noises and Dawn announced "No, it does not have a battery! You naughty Pompeys! Naughty, naughty Pompeys!" It turned out to be a 'basket of memories' (which had got lost). One sketch was interrupted by a drunken woman from the stalls coming up to the front and shouting something at F&S, but the ladies admirably dealt with her, staying in character (as two talkative West Country women who'd emigrated to Florida) and Dawn escorted her up the stairs onto the stage and out into the wings. Moments later she was seen walking back down an aisle after words with a security guard; I thought she'd been told to go, but she came up to the front of the stage again at the very end.

As F&S announced the end of the show, they said 'We have to go out on a song', and Jennifer told Dawn "You have to sing it properly." She promised she would, and I allowed myself to hope it was the song I'd wanted from Saturday Live in '86, but their goodbye to us was a deliberately chaotic rendition of Abba's Thank You For The Music. After they'd finished, Abba's original version of the song played and the backdrop showed a series of pics of F&S's finest TV moments (appropriately beginning with F&S and Raw Sex as Abba).

That wasn't quite the end as there were two encores, the second being a very popular return for the lecherous fat men.

Thank you for 30 great years, ladies - best wishes to both of you for future projects.