One of the delights of this job is that you occasionally get to play weird and wonderful venues. Cue, Madame Tussauds this Thurs 7th October. This was a gig through agents Prelude and a ‘slap on the back’ type party for a company called Sodexo (we think). We’d played the same event for them last year, so we at least knew the form and were able to relax into the event.
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| Mr Depp and Ms Clayton-Scott |
After waiting for the hordes to subside at around 6pm, and the building to be given security clearance we got the kit in upstairs into the World Stage room. Surrounded by such dignitaries as Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill and Saddam Hussein we set about setting ourselves up. Flanked by Michael Jackson and Gary Barlow (who knew?) we sound-checked ‘Valerie’ and then retired upstairs, as we didn’t have to be on until 10pm.
Our dressing room was in the meeting room up on the top floor. I don’t know if you’ve thought about what happens to the old unfashionable celebrities when they leave the main stage. I think they are fairly ruthlessly melted down and the wax and body parts recycled. For some reason though, JK from Jamiroquai, the cat in the hat has escaped this fate and been preserved in the offices upstairs to preside over account management meetings.
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| Marcus gets fruity with JPG |
Having made our way down a floor to get our tea in the A-List Celeb room. We had an hour or so to be silly and do the tourist thing. The photographic fruits of our work can be seen elsewhere on this Blog. Rozz’s posting of her and Leo on Facebook fooled more than a few in the end. Marcus, got cuddly with Davina. Chris got cheeky with J-Lo and Dave pushed Stephen Hawking’s buttons.
Come 10.30pm the novelty of being alone in a room full of celebrity waxworks was starting to wear thin and even become a little creepy, we were itching to get on. We delivered a back-to-front condensed Love Junkies set of around1hr and kept everyone dancing until the event finished. Good audience, danced all night, which is how we like it.
It wasn’t until we started packing up that the fun began. Tussauds is a bit like a rabbit warren and we were back in the dressing room when the Fire Alarm went off. Take the red stairs (as Gemma had told me earlier) but alas that way was locked. Then suddenly we were on the brown stairs and it all went a bit Spinal Tap ‘Hello Cleveland’. After about 20 mins of going through narrow corridors, visiting almost every wax display in the building and having doors close behind us, not to be able to get back through them again, we happened across a security guy who managed to do what we had failed to, and shepherd’d us out of the building.
Still, could’ve been worse. Actually a lot worse so we were pleased to find that the fire was actually a malfunctioning sprinkler. Annoyingly, the rigmarole of fixing the sprinkler and getting the ‘all-clear’ took about an hour and so we were left outside on the pavement, not packing away our gear for an hour. Got away at about 1.30am in the end. Now that’s virtual insanity (sorry, sorry, sorry.)
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