The Event
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June 3, 2000

By Jinty Rowley

Where do I begin? An age old dilemma, easily sorted by beginning at the beginning and working onwards; not always the most artistic and satisfying of ways for a writer to record events, but it will do for me.

And my beginning starts at 5 am – after a night lay listening to the TV played loudly while Susan’s son sleeps through it. Not the most auspicious beginning to a ‘Michael’ day. And, the morning doesn’t improve my temper when, at 7am, cutting through the same shopping centre in which the security guard refused to let me doss last weekend, we pass another such chap who clearly sees Susan and I as some kind of middle-aged tarts looking for a last customer. An opinion maybe reinforced by the fact that Susan is wearing a nightdress for an under slip and I am walking along singing some ‘Michael’ song or other, purely to try and put myself into a better mood. I should have taken a photograph of his expression-full face – you would, I know, have enjoyed the sight.

The train, for once, is on time. Because there is an offer on 1st class fares, the carriages are full to bursting point with all us cheapskates who are never prepared to pay full fare. The breakfast when it finally arrived is ‘full English’ but little – barely enough to keep a gnat alive, much less a growing woman like me. And boy, am I growing? Unfortunately it’s outwards instead of up. The train is typically speedy, again as much as 30 miles per hour must have been achieved on the straightest stretches, I think the suspension was shot to hell, because each time we took a bend, the butter and cutlery from our table shot across the carriage almost into the lap of the woman sitting opposite. (An unwieldy sentence – rather like the train)

You will be pleased to hear that before I made any comment, on any subject whatsoever, I carefully looked around the carriage to make sure that no-one was paying undue attention to us. I am a quick learner.

On arrival at London we were to meet Vicky from Leeds at Kings Cross, and Ros and Laura at Paddington, from where we were making our way over to the Event hotel. We were all on time and all our human connections, for once, went without a hitch. We had a short delay waiting for Vicky so I passed the time with my usual ‘spot the shoes’ game – I usually choose men by the shoes they wear. If a guy ain’t gonna splurge to buy himself decent (i.e. expensive) shoes, then he sure as hell isn’t gonna splurge to show a woman a good time. (You listening, Jay?)

As usual, I was so pleased to see Ros and her lovely daughter who was to see Michael for the first time. She was so beautifully excited that we gave her permission to be as ‘girlie’ as she liked, we even told her that, should we feel the urge to scream, then she could do it for us as well. We were somewhat early for the functions so, as Ros and I like to arrive fashionably late, we called in a small café for drinks. Susan, who would have preferred to be there well before time, was champing at the bit to get to the hotel, but she was outnumbered, the café it was. The café was so small that our small party filled it to bursting point, had any of us been any bigger we would have been spilling out on to the pavement.

We strolled over to the hotel, found our way to the Michael Ball Event Function Room. "Hell," I thought to myself, "better not drink too much and get lost, don’t fancy having to ask some desk clerk the way to the Michael Ball Event Function Room unless the mouth is very soberly in gear." Unlike Sue and Bernie – we had not had Bacardi Breezers during our journey down.

The room was heaving. There were queues left, right, centre, up and down. Some were queuing for raffle tickets, some for ROC merchandise, some MBFC merchandise, some to pre-book wine for lunch, and others for the bar for an immediate drink. There were queues of which I never got to the end, so I’m not quite sure what was on offer there. At one point seeing a queue for the ladies loo, and the gents then being empty, Angela (Ballpoint) and I led a foray into their territory. Someone stayed at the door to forbid the men entry; that was not my idea – I was quite happy to begin assessing the men by something other than their shoes. However, the gents in waiting, one of which was Bernie, clearly knew me by reputation and did not reclaim their pissoires until I left, other women, it appeared could be expected to avert their eyes.

Having queued for a bottle of wine, then again for a brandy, and having bought 100 raffle tickets we went into lunch. We were table 36 and shared it with Karen Cain of Forum fame, nice to meet you Karen, a Linda, and 2 other women both of whom looking less than pleased to be sharing with our motley crew.

The MC began the Event by announcing that Michael could not be with us, that lunch would be an hour late, and that he would get the head chef to come out and explain about lunch. But no-one was fooled and most had cameras at the ready as Michael walked in wearing a chef’s hat.

Sadly for us, Michael’s plans had changed and he was flying to Spain at 4 and so, could only spend the next hour with us before rushing off to check-in for his flight. So he was doing his ‘turn’ before lunch rather than after. But none of us minded waiting to eat if it meant we could see Michael – feast our eyes instead of our stomachs, so to speak. And what a feast he was. Dressed casually in light jacket and trousers he sat at ease swinging his legs like a 10 year old boy invited in to do a ‘turn’ for his mother’s cronies. He looked pretty fit and still nicely chunky – quite cute in an adult but boyish way.

Before going into the banqueting hall, we had been given slips of paper on which to write a question we would like to ask Michael. I hadn’t bothered filling one in on the assumption that someone would spot my name and probably bin it. These slips had been thrown into a box and Michael began to pick them out one at a time to answer the questions. I can’t remember all the questions but, it’s been pointed out that I am the only person to ever write reviews of Michael’s shows without naming the songs he sang, so, with the help of Susan, I tried to remember as many questions as possible and jotted them into my diary on the journey home. (see last pages)

Michael is surprisingly quick at apt quips and can quickly turn round the most innocent of questions - quite an entertainer, I was surprised.

He told us that he had given up smoking – for all of 7 days.  He gave us permission to slap him if we ever saw him with a cigarette.  He also said that he would now get fat – as did we all. But I think I’ll start a Stay-Chunky campaign so he won’t feel too bad about putting weight on. We like him chunky – he’s our Chunky-hunk of the Year.

And, oh, oh, oh, Michael reads the Forum. His last question was one to himself:

Q Why did I ever make that CD with Marie

A I’d thought that I was only doing a demo-disc and couldn’t believe my ears when it was re-mixed and pressed and released. (A LIKELY TALE, MICHAEL)

Unfortunately Michael’s time was soon used up and he made a hurried exit after saying that his raffle prize was something rather special – more of that later.

Before we go on with the motley – I must cast my eye over my fellow fans. We all know that Michael attracts a high proportion of fans from women of a certain age (including me – I’m certainly 15 ha ha), but it was great to see such a wide age range represented. One of Michael’s oldest fans, Barbara was there, and I guess the youngest there would be Ros’ Laura. He also attracts more than his fair share of big women (including me) and there must have been enough cellulite and wrinkles in the room to equal that of a large safari park stocked with rhinos. But we didn’t care! We were having a good time.

There was clearly no universal dress code. Gold shoes and bags, jeans and trainers, ill-fitting dresses, suits, rent-a-tents, all were to be seen in each part of the room. My outfit was not to everyone’s taste – I deadpanned the less than flattering stares, that is apart from when I was in the loo. A Dutch child was washing her hands at the same time, she glanced up at me in the mirror, caught my eye, smiled, then her cute, little, blue eyes lit (lighted?) on my t-shirt. Her head started to slowly swivel round so that she could look at it more closely rather than through the mirror. She leaned further towards me, peered at the shirt examining it inch by inch until her nose was about 6" away from my bust. Bless the child, she was still staring as she walked backwards towards the door. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or not.

I’ll skip the description of lunch – the menu was sent round from MBFC if I remember correctly so you can all imagine it for yourselves. I did manage to persuade the waiter to make a pot of tea for me so that I didn’t need to drink any coffee.

After lunch the fun began. Yippee! Competitions! Now, I’m sure you all know that I hate to play any game I can’t win – and that includes competitions of any description. But, it was done on a team-a-table basis and I presumed that there were enough ‘proper’ fans on our table to be sure of winning. Boy, did they let me down. They were a real bunch of know-nothings, every last one of them. They didn’t recognize songs played backwards. They couldn’t place lyrics or videos. I ask you. What kind of fans were these that Gill and Maureen had lumbered me with? We weren’t even near the top few tables. I am so ashamed at having to lunch with such a bunch of losers. :-)

Of course, you know who won. That’s right – guessed first time, Ballpoint. So, not only did Nadia not let me win her competition but she also robbed me of the MBFC one. I guess one can go off people pretty damn quickly. :-)

Then next came a video of Michael telling us about his surprise. This surprise prize was a disc of the new song he’d written himself, recorded with his session musicians (I think) and signed by him. It was a one off original. Wasn’t that such a great prize? And, guess what? I didn’t win it. Neither did one of all you kids. We didn’t win a thing. Nada, nothing, zilch. All fixed, sez I. :-)

I have lost track of the order of things but sometime during the afternoon several videos were shown including some Dutch interviews and an Irish one. Now, my ears were doing their usual dumb thing which meant that even Michael had sounded strangely strangled and vocally scrambled, and when it came to the foreign interviews I was completely lost. Not only could I not understand the Irish and Dutch interviewers (speaking English - I think) I couldn’t even understand a word Michael said in them. But I think that the Dutch ones, at least, are on Ballpoint.

During the afternoon several women had approached our table asking if ‘Jinty’ was there. Each time I said "that’s me", I looked nervously to see whether or not the visitor was carrying anything that could be used as a weapon. There was no way I was going to get into a crossed-handbags at dawn scenario. Thankfully, everyone was well-intentioned, among them: Maggie, Mirjam, Janice, etc, etc. Jean from Ballfest came to our table looking for a ‘Sally". "Hi" , I say, "I’m Jinty". I don’t know if she’d expected to see me there or not. I met Dee, too. Great German/American accent there, Dee.

Then, joy, oh joy, oh joy. We got to see Michael’s copy of a video made at Chippenham. What a fantastic surprise! We were so pleased to get to re-live that gig, Michael couldn’t have done anything better to make my day – I guess I’m getting to be quite a fan. I would love a copy and am going to pluck up the nerve to ask him if he would get me one made. I s’pose he can only say "Get lost".  Do you think if I offered to leave his fan club and never darken his Fan Sites again that he’d send me a copy – and a signed photo?

We got to renew Chippenham new friendships and spent some time after the Event finished catching up with these new friends as well as most of the old ones.

The problem with being a Michael Ball fan is that I spend such a lot of time saying "Goodbye", and it was all too soon time to leave Ros and Laura. I don’t know what becoming a Michael Ball fan did to me but I’ve certainly become soft and mushy. Again I let myself down and started to blub when we waved Goodbye to Ros. She was blubbing too. I bet I caught it off her in the first place. Emotions must be catching.

I stood in the corner of the tube carriage where no-one could see me, hiding behind some 1999 MB calendars. The calendars were facing in to me so no-one could tell that I was an MB fan. Then, to my horror, on the way home, Susan points out that not only could I be seen crying away, but, my sniffs as I tried not to sob out loud could be heard, everyone could see my mopping the tears with my hanky. And, AS IF ALL THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, one of the calendars was back to front so everyone would think I was clutching MB to my chest to console myself. As if! :-)

And, of course, some days turn full circle and end as they began. At 1.40 this morning I stormed downstairs and told Son of Susan that if he and his noisy friends didn’t shut up and turn the TV down I was gonna tear their heads off their shoulders. Another sleepless night I could do without. Of course, he is now quiet but I am so darned mad that I can’t sleep at all now which is why you are getting this long very, very boring review. If I’m gonna suffer sleeplessness then I’m gonna make my friends suffer just to support me.

And, getting mushy again, as the dawn lightens St Anne’s trees, every one of which has now plucked up the nerve to clothe itself in green, I guess being an MB fan means having many friends to support one through everything. On the train tonight I thought of you all, of all the great friends I’ve made through slipping sideways into fandom. I guess Michael’s fan spiel is right on.

The Gist of Question and Answer Session (as much as I can remember)

Q Favourite Song.

A Gethsemane (at the moment) but also partial to Let the Rivers Run.

Q Any plans to do a movie

A None

Q Any plans to do another musical

A He’s going to Germany to see Jekyll and Hyde – may do it if it’s suitable.

Q Favourite game with new playmate

A Swishy water and Crocodiles – his father had played the same with him

(that could explain a lot!)

Q Most treasured possession

A Grandmother’s ring now worn on chain round neck because it was cutting into his fingers – diet time obviously. The chain round his neck was a present from Cathy bought in Dublin.

He also sang a few lines of songs to a couple of women "You made me love you, you woke me up to do it" As I said a 10 year old boy.

Q What are you doing later tonight

A What do you want to do

Q What’s it like to have fans like us

A Great. Then the spiel about fans getting together as friends and one big family. I think the spiel came there but where ever it came in, I’m sure you know what he said. Bless him. He’s cute.

Q When’s new album out

A 2nd week October so those at the early tour shows will have a preview.

Q Who would you like to duet with

A Tom Jones (already done this privately)

Celine Dion (great voice

Andrea Bocelli

He also said that he’d have like to have Betty Boothroyd on his show. He thought it a great idea – she didn’t. Sometime during the proceedings Leslie Garrett’s name came up – a mutual appreciation he said.

Q Where do you like to holiday?

A Far East is Wow!

Q Have you plans to go to Australia

A Why? Am I big down under (looks at trousers – told you – 10 year old)

Q What qualities do you like in a woman

A Unconditional love and loyalty

Q What was your most joyous moment.

A (He thought about this first – didn’t want to be glib) When I found out that someone we thought had an awful disease turned out to be clear)

Q Can you cook?

A Going to appear on Celebrity Chef but doesn’t know what he will cook yet. Whatever he chooses the family will have to eat it for months while he practices. Does a mean leg of lamb.

He kissed someone. Showed someone how to get rid of a headache by using pressure points - and loads of paracetemol.

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