Craggier:
Craggiest:
Wednesday August 1st: It's a good day to be Gordon. All the newspapers have had something nice to say about him. Having joined forces with the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy to propose the despatch of an international peace-keeping force to Darfur, The Guardian credited him with "a dramatic first foreign policy victory". A victory which The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon apparently called "historic and unprecendented." Add to that the much feted opinion poll 'bounce' and the fact he didn't lose his mind when flaming jeeps were being parked in the terminal at Glasgow Airport and he's doing OK at the moment. Even Iraq has had something to cheer about (Congratulations on The Asia Cup).
As if that wasn't enough, Gordon - ever the money man - announced a deal to tackle poverty in Africa, signed by a total of 14 world leaders and several global companies. It pledges to step up the efforts in order to achieve millenium development targets by the 2015 deadline.
The Daily Mail, (a little uncharitably), ran a sidebar proclaiming that Gordon was beginning to show fatigue after a month in office. They also ran a picture of him looking "tired and drawn." Personally I don't think that's called for. That's mot tiredness. That's Glasgow cragginess. Gordon is a naturally craggy dude. It is fair to say, however, that if he got much more craggy he would resemble The Thing.
Someone billed only as Daily Mail Reporter (Is this the same Daily Mail Reporter, I wonder, who ran the story about crack addicted squirrels in Brixton a while ago? You can't make that stuff up) penned a story stating that Gordon Brown is in regular communication with Blair, who is sunning himself at Sir Cliff Richard's yard in Barbados. They don't say whether those conversations involve Gordon accusing his ex-boss of switching the electricity to Npower before he left Downing Street or not. We may never know.
And as for the evening...At around 8:30pm the lights in The O2 went down. On the four giant video screens, Salma Hayek, Randy Jackson and Pharrell Williams were paying homage to someone. The stage in the shape of the symbol that Prince used for a name in the 90's lit up. The spotlights turned purple, and in a cloud of dry ice, he rose from a trap-door, looking every inch the impish pimp in a flared white suit, as the New Power Generation unleashed Purple Rain. Every single person of the 20,000 present was on their feet. Everyone from the metallers with tattooed heads, through to the kids who may well have been conceived to Prince's music, on to the middle age suburanites, right on down to the independent women clutching their Gucci bags on a girl's night out. "London," he said. "I'm here. Did you miss me?" The reply was deafening.
The only column inches I could find on Prince this morning were on Page 7 in The Daily Star. Under the headline "Picky Prince A Purple Pain", Mr Nelson's demands of the Dorchester Hotel were listed. They included black furniture, a black M&M's machine and "an oxygen bar manned by a team of foxy women." And why not? He's on holiday.
In a show that lasted 2 and a half hours, the tiny man with the voice that fills stadiums ran through the classics. "I've got too many hits" he bragged at one point. "Y'all can't handle me...I've got more hits than Madonna got kids!" And most of the hits were played:
I Feel For You, Cream, Kiss, Controversy and
Let's Go Crazy were all backed by The New Power Generation, among them saxophone virtouso Maceo Parker and twin model looking dancers (who, according to The Star refuse to tell anyone their name and prefer to be know simply as The Twinz). Tonight though the audience took it upon themselves to play the extra band member, dutifully singing along to every single song.
It was pretty easy to see that playing sets to rapturous fans in sold-out arenas is second nature to Prince. Not a single movement is wasted as he dances up and down the stage, either playing guitar or working the crowd while his band members take the weight for a minute. At one point members of the crowd even joined him on stage in a good natured invasion, dancing with the NPG and he gamely allowed them to add to the proceedings.
You can't accuse him of not giving the people their money's worth. For all the talk that his recent work lacks the punch of his back catalogue, newer songs such as
Guitar, Satisfied, Lolita and
Black Sweat drew their fair share of cheers. And I have to admit, I had a moment when he played
7. And
If I Was Your Girlfriend. And
Nothing Compares 2 U. I don't think it will be good for me to feel that way for 21 nights. Real life would lose all of it's flavour.
The first time he disappeared from sight was around 10:30, descending once more into the symbol stage in a plume of dry ice. The lights went up. He then caused near pandemonium by appearing among the crowd and then returned to centre stage for the first of three encores. Those who left early missed out. The remaining audience members left their seats and flocked around the stage.
Raspberry Beret, Little Red Corvette, Gnarles Barkley's
Crazy and
One Nation Under A Groove all got an airing. He even found time to segue into Chic's
Le Freak. At around 11:00pm, two and a half hours after he started, he finally called it a day. At this rate Gordon may have to wait another month and a bit before he is finally sole lord and master of all he surveys.
On a packed tube to Waterloo, one guy sat staring into space , completely oblivious to the late night crush. Shell shock. Seen it a million times before. I know how he feels.
Today, it was good to be Gordon. Tonight, it was perfect to be Prince.
Quotes:
"If 30,000 children died needlessly and avoidably every day in Africa or Britain, we would call it an emergency, and emergency is what it is."
"You mean I've got 21 nights to do this? Too much fun"
