Stage Right: Stripping Off

Hello everyone, as you should know if you've read my previous blogs this Sunday the Cafe de Paris was host to the fabulous West End Bares.

I was incredibly excited about this so much so that I was awake at 5.30am on Sunday morning as I was too excited to sleep (probably not good when I was going to be up until the early hours of Monday morning)! What made it even more exciting was that my friend Alys (who I was taking for her birthday) and I were going to meet up with our Priscilla friends for the first time. After doing a spot of bell ringing for our local church service Alys came to mine to pack and get ready for the full out day we had ahead...needless to mention the two hours it took to get ready as you can probably image how hyper we were.

At 12.13 we caught the train from Grantham station and were London bound. After grabbing a bite to eat at Costa we head to the Travelodge at Covent Garden (which is more in Holborn but oh well) and were amazed by the size of the room...it was massive!!! We quickly unpacked and then set off for Covent Garden so that I could get a henna tattoo that said 'Colour My World', which is my favourite song from Priscilla. We then ran back to the Shaftesbury theatre (literally two seconds from the Travelodge) to see Rock of Ages, which was amazing (I will do a separate blog on this later else this will be the longest blog ever written...which it may well be anyway!) before meeting up with our first Priscilla friend, Rob, and then going back to see Rock of Ages again...well who would miss a chance to see a musical!?! After the show we waited at the stage door to see the amazing Oliver Tompsett before heading back to the Travelodge to get ready (be warned the Covent Garden Travelodge is split into two hotels so we'd ended up in different hotels).

After a speedy dash to get ready (well it was speedy for Alys and myself!) we met up with Rob again and then headed down to the Travelodge bar to meet some more fans of Priscilla; Bex, Carole, Emma and Brad. You cannot believe to image how nice it was to be surrounded by people who are as passionate (or even more passionate) about the same thing you are!

However, it was soon time to head off to the Cafe de Paris for the hottest show in town...West End Bares On Your Marks...Get Set...Strip. The Cafe de Paris was absolutely stunning outside and was made even better as we followed our hero, the amazing Oliver Thornton, in. It was, also, here where we met up with the final two Priscilla fans, Sharon and Janette. As VIP ticket holders we were allowed to watch the show from upstairs, however we wanted to get as close to the stage as possible so we headed down. Somewhere in between this and getting drinks we managed to get split up, however, Alys, Sharon, Janette and I had got a space near the right near the front of the stage on the left (stage right) so we decided to stay put and find the others after the show had finished.

The show itself was amazing and my only criticism would be that it was a little too short. This year's theme was the Olympics so we were graced with acts such as and opening ceremony, a closing ceremony, table tennis, boxing, wrestling and my personal favourite...equestrian! The acts were very slick and the dancing was phenomenal. It was a pure privilege to see so much talent from our West End theatres in one place. The costumes (or rather lack of them) were amazing and very skilfully designed and the music suited each act perfectly. The best bit of the evening was the rotation, which is where the stars come out and you get to put your MAD money (which was available to purchase earlier) in their pants...we were lucky enough to manage to do so to Oliver Thornton...*swoon*. However, all too soon the show was over, nevertheless we still had the after party to go...

...to be continued...

Yes...I will blog about the rest of the evening and the morning after tomorrow but for now I will leave you with some pictures of the show...