Dreamboats and Petticoats

I had a great time this week at the opening of a new musical called, and I have to think hard on this, Dreamboats and Petticoats. The reason I have to pause to remember the proper title of the musical is not that it was unmemorable, but that my ditsy brain and trippy tongue keep telling me, for no reason at all, to call it Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

If I was in a band it would be Simple Minds or Thick Lizzy, but I’m not alone. A pal of mine Mike, who is forty three, tried to tell me on Thursday of the death of someone we both knew vaguely and he just couldn’t remember her name. Later he couldn’t come up with a colleague’s name, the place he’s going on holiday and even his own brother’s age. Mike works as the head of an investment desk in one of the banks so perhaps there’s a clue in there somewhere as to why the credit crunch reared its head.

Of course I’d love my Bedknobs and Broomsticks wrinkle to be airbrushed quicker than a Twiggy advertising photo, but I can’t. David Cameron had the same problem on radio this week when he used the word tw*t, thinking it meant the same as twit, and the papers seem to think he did it purposefully to “get down” with the kids. But I think he either didn’t know that the word has another meaning or, like my friend Mike, he had a senior moment.

I once used the same word in a TV game show I hosted called Press Your Luck when a contestant came out with a ridiculous answer. The audience dissolved in fits of laughter and the floor manager shouted “cut”. I honestly didn’t know that in Bristol, where we were recording, the word meant something rude.

So did Cameron have a senior moment? Is he now in the Forgetful Forties heading towards the Flummoxed Fifties? Do we all start to get this memory loss now earlier and earlier? Will I end up soon like the guy who was in a crowded pub listening to really loud music and decided to pass wind for several minutes in time to the beat? Feeling better he turned to see everyone staring at him and then remembered he was wearing an iPod.

Why I have this mental block - confusing the new musical Dreamboats and Petticoats with Disney’s true life story of a flying bed that can go under the sea ensuring anyone on board doesn’t need masks or breathing equipment - I have no idea, unless there’s a secret part of me that’s in love with Angela Lansbury.

She must have been the only star not at the opening night of Dreamboats where I spotted Cilla Black, Vanessa Feltz and various Sixties DJs and movie stars who embraced each other with the “Amanda Holden” air kiss, missing contact with a slightly bigger gap than planes in a holding pattern at Heathrow.

Also there was Jess Conrad. He’s a very nice bloke to talk to, he looks exactly like a star should look with slicked back hair and a jacket only Tony Blackburn might envy, and I’ve met him many, many times. But I have no idea why he is famous. I looked him up when I came home to find that Jess was a pop star in the Sixties and must have been pretty good as he toured with Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Then he became Jesus. Not in a confused, David Icke, type way but in the musical Godspell. He was eventually demoted in Heaven to play Joseph in the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Susan George, the actress who became famous opposite Dustin Hoffman in the movie Straw Dogs was also a guest along with her beau Simon McCorkindale, the dashing surgeon in Holby, Casualty, ER or The Royal. I can’t remember which hospital drama it is, but it’s the one where everyone looks strained and unhappy all the time and where patients refuse treatment every week because they’re worried about getting home to feed their twelve cats and four rehabilitated ponies in their top floor flat.

But I also met a couple who do more than all the stars and celebs to make the world a bit better. Bill Kenwright, the show’s producer, introduced me to a man saying he was his doctor. I, jokingly, said “Is he your prostate man?” to find that, actually, he was. He and his wife started a charity called The Teenage Cancer Trust a few years ago and with help from The Who, Paul Weller and others they have raised millions to enable kids to get access to the best treatment.

Feeling better for having met them, my idea that there’s something in the water today and that we’re all getting forgetful because of it was reinforced when I ran in to a friend I hadn’t seen in years. We hugged, chatted, laughed, exchanged numbers and then went our own ways.

The next morning I realised with embarrassment that I had never met him in my life. I had only recognised him because he had been on stage in Dreamboats earlier.

The one thing I can’t forget, because I’m reminded all the time by things like that, is that I am a right tw*t!