"Hey, guess what?"
"What?"
"I scored some tickets for the Sophie Ellis Backdoor gig on monday night. Want to go for the laugh?"
"What about
Eastenders?"
"The court case can wait."
"Fair enough."
And so I ended up in the Olympia theatre in Dublin on a Monday night, slap bang in the middle of Queen central, watching the sexy Miss Bextor shaking her bits and pieces around the stage.
I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. She looks a whole lot nicer in real life than she does in the media, and it pains me to say it, she actually has quite a good presence on-stage, tantalizing the audience with suggestive comments such as "Oh Dublin, now that I've got you here, I simply don't know what I'm going to do with all of you." etc.
We rolled in the door to the strains of "Take me home" and the crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves. We were in the lower gallery, the non-seating area, but there weren't many people dancing or going mad, just sort of shuffling about with smiles on their faces. She played a few songs that I wasn't familiar with, all very "pop", but sung well. She was helped enormously by her backing group who were excellent, the keyboard player was quite foxy too.
After an hour or so she went off-stage for about 5 minutes and returned transformed from her fifties style black dress, Chanel belt, black stilettos pseudo-dominatrix look, into a skimpy little white number that I can only describe as "sweeeet".
The woman has a fantastic pair of legs.
But I digress. She did this Spanish sounding number then, followed on by the awesome "Groovejet". This was when she really got the crowd going, and she knew it too. She had the audience eating out of her hand at this stage, banging out "Murder on the dancefloor" and some very average new material to rapturous applause with the crowd begging for more before she returned and played "Take me home" and her new instantly forgettable new single as an encore.
We stayed in the bar for a few pints afterwards hoping she would come down and meet her new number 1 fans.
Alas (and indeed alack) she failed to show.
I was escorted from the theatre in tears.
All in all it was a good gig. I went in with a bit of a closed minded attitude I must admit, but within fifteen minutes of watching her prance around the stage lookin' real good, I would have stuck my hand into a sink full of acid if she told me too.
Highly recommended for a bit of a laugh.