Mum & Ian (1) – with Flash!	Mum & Ian (2) – without Flash.
Me being sophisticated drinking coffee. Later I spend some time peeing while the warm up artists were on. Luckily they were terrible and worth missing.	Me.
While Jodie’s off powdering her nose, me & Ian fight over her bag. We stop to pose for a quick photo.	Jodie’s back and posing for a photo with mum.
Mum, Jodie & Ian.	Mum, Me & Ian.
I decide to be cheeky and mess up mum’s & Ian’s hair (forgetting that Ian doesn’t have any). Mum retaliates as a photos taken.

We got to the Arena and took our seats. There were two warm up acts, both of which were shockingly bad.

Ian, Mum & Jodie.	The audience go wild as the Steps logo appears on the screens at either side of the stage.
Five tubes that Steps were rise up and into on their first appearance on stage.	A vault with countdown clock on. The graphic was completely on a back screen.
The vault opens.	Steps appear on stage.
The graphics screen at the back of the stage. The screen lit up, in combination with the lights made getting photos really difficult.	Steps appear on stage. We were treated to a few Steps classics with dance moves using the back screen as a Just Dance type game.
Steps – Dancing & Singing in boxes.	Backing Dancers – Playing with Fire, while Steps sing.

To give you a feel of the hyper-active, excited atmosphere of the audience, I took a short video:

Then each member of Steps did a solo song. First Lee, singing a mix of a few songs. His performance was excellent, and there were even screams when he ripped open his shirt:

(Lee performing with his shirt open.)

Next was Faye:

(Faye performing.)

‘H’ sang Don’t Stop Believing and did some clever stuff by making it look like he was interacting with the big graphic screen at the back of the stage:

(H performing. With his use of the graphic screen, I struggled to get a good photo.)

Lisa sang next, singing a mix of different songs including her track ‘Lately‘:

(Lisa performing.)

Claire sang her solo last. Claire had put on weight, but looked better for it. Unsuprisingly she sang an opera type song (having been on Popstar to Operastar):

Then it was time for my favorite Steps song: It’s The Way You Make Me Feel. I couldn’t help feel disappointed, rather than just having H singing the male lines of the song both H and Lee sang them. There voices didn’t feel like they became one. I would have preferred just H to sing to be honest. Still the costumes lived up to expectations, see below:

Lee in his mask and suit.	H in is costume. Claire, Faye and Lisa wore corset type costumes. All keeping in the theme of the orignal music video.
H closer, a photo of the side screen.	Steps then went on to sing Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart

Steps stopped to say Thank you’s – mostly to the audience for supporting them. They even posed for a photo:

Then they slowed things down with a few of their ballot type tracks. What amazed me was that the audience sang along, louder than Steps at some points. The audience singing in mass made me aware of how many people related to the words in Step’s songs.

(Steps sitting on the stage singing some of their slower tracks.)

Steps brought back the hyper-active, excited atmosphere of the audience with Stomp and some other songs. Here’s some photos:

Stage for Stomp.	Stage for another song.
Stage for another song.	Steps on Stage performing Dancing Queen.

Then it was time for Steps to take a bow and leave the stage:

For their encore they performed the only track they hadn’t performed so far: Tragedy :

(Leaving the audience on a high.)

For me it was a bit of nostalgia, re-living my teen years. But Steps stated that they were back – so they may well release some new music. I hope they do, I really enjoyed myself and had forgotten how much I enjoy a bit of cheesy pop.

I would like to apologise for quality and size and of the photos. I should have taken my camera rather than used my iPhone, this would have improved the quality of the photos. I’ve also had to significantly reduce the size of the photos to save on disk space (see More Disk Space). But if you’ve not got tickets to see Steps, don’t worry as the tour DVD is available to pre-order here: Steps – The Ultimate Tour Live [DVD]. Also you can order the live concerts on CD here: Steps Live! 2012 [CD].

Blog soon,

Antony

I went with my good friend Simon. Here’s some photos (click on any for full size):

(Above: Me getting ready to meet my husband to be…John Barrowman)

(Above: Simon and me posing.)

(Above: Simon and me – I looked up instead of looking forward after I’d pressed the camera button.)	(Above: Simon and me possing.)

We decided to make a night out of it and headed in to Manchester City Centre for food, here we are well fed:

Then we headed down to The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester for the gig. On our arrival immediately we saw that we where in the right place. We saw a guy wearing a Torchwood trench coat (ironically wearing jeans and a t-shirt underneath with trainers as footwear) and several people proudly showing-off their 2011 tour t-shirts. The crowd were mostly OAP’s, grannies with curled white hair and granddads with either no hair or comb-overs. In the crowd were also stocky balled men taking their relatively tiny mothers and the occasional middle age short tubby gay couples (often with one hair so neat that it must have been a wig). The rest of the crowd were made up of stereotypical-looking housewives. It did wonders for my self-esteem as I think I was the youngest one there.

As we took our seats in the auditorium (which had a good acoustics) we saw a young cool-looking gay couple in the row in front of us. It was nice to see a happy looking gay couple among the crowd and they made me laugh we they bopped their heads trying to look cool when John sang. The show started with a bang:

(Above: John behind the curtain, before the curtain dropped.)	(Above: John singing.)

Then the J4′s (John’s four dancers and backing singers) got to do a song :

(Above: J4′s doing their stuff.)

Then it was time for Jody Prenger to sing. After her first song she had a chat with the audience. I couldn’t believe that someone which such broad northern accent could produce such fantastic vocals.

(Above: Jody Prenger singing.)

Throughout the show John told stories about himself, his family and his partner (Scott) inbetween tracks. John also used the opportunity to shamelessly promote other buisness ventures including his skin care range HIM, his music (The Very Best of John Barrowman (CD), Music Music Music, Another Side), his books (Anything Goes & I am What I am) and his DVD’s (John Barrowman Collectors Edition [DVD], John Barrowman Live At The Royal Albert Hall [DVD], An Evening With John Barrowman [DVD]). But we (the audience) didn’t mind as he’d won us over as soon as he’d come stage being his camp and lovely self. Plus he wiggled his arse rather expertly at the audience pretty early on!

Simon and I agreed that John’s vocals had vastly improved from previous years. My opinion came from his previous DVD’s I had seen and Simon’s opinion came from his experience watching him last year. Well done John! I did notice at points that he appeared out of breath with the dancing and singing, but as an all round entertainer he delivered an excellent performance. I didn’t realise that he’s forty-five years old this year, he looks really good for his age.

(Above: John performing.)

It was time for the interval and after a quick leg stretch Simon and I returned to our seats. The screen at the back of the stage was showing photos and I caught this one while playing with my iPhone 4 camera:

(Above: John on a beach in small swimwear definitely a must click for full size photo.)

The second part of the show began with John doing a few tracks before introducing his parents. His father dressed as a construction worker and his mother dressed as a police woman to which they did YMCA! Photo’s below:

(Above: John singing.)	(Above: John and his parents.)	(Above: John and his parents.)
(Above: John and his parents.)	(Above: John and his parents.)

Then John and Jody did a duet entitled So Close:

(Above: John and Jody singing.)	(Above: John and Jody singing.)

Then John did a holiday songs remix with the J4′s. The two scrumptious male dancers ended up wearing practically nothing apart from some blue swimwear which was fantastic. After the song the male J4′s bent down to pick up some props from the back of the stage showing their perk arses to the audience. John jokingly told them off for “milking” it but we (the audience) didn’t mind:

Then John performed a few slow songs before changing into a fab sparkly suit for his finale I am what I am:

Throughout the show John made good eye contact with the auidence and pointed at certain people in the auidence to make them feel special – an old entertainer trick that works. At one point in the first half John asked if there were any gay people in the audience and Simon and I whooped! John made eye contact, smiled and waved. Alas he didn’t see me, fall in love, take me on stage and get down on one knee – but hey you can’t have everything.

I throughly enjoyed the show, so thank you John Barrowman.

Write soon,

Antony

I’ve also had an email to say that Russell Howard will also be touring again and boy has he gone up in the world. When I say him on his Dingledodies [DVD] [2009] tour he was in Bolton at a small venue for his gig. Now he’s playing at BIG arena’s. If you want to buy tickets you can at his website: http://www.russell-howard.co.uk/.

Related Posts:
Last Night’s TV: Question Time & Good News
Russell Howard’s Good News
Is Russell Howard gay?
Russell Howard, Campness & Heating

Blog soon,

Antony

I was introduced to Eddie Izzard by my good friend Simon and have loved him ever since. Here are some short random clips off youtube.

I’m intending to order the box set as a Christmas / Yule gift to myself.

Write soon,

Antony

Three men came on and never said a word just started playing, we assumed correctly that they were the warm up band. I have to say the warm up band was crap. I’ve known better pub singers (honestly!) and then there was a long wait. But boy….was she worth the wait!

The crowd was mixed but of the standers they were mainly lesbians. Lesbians for those of you who don’t know the gay world, worship pink. Literally worship. Through out the show she was thrown and given gifts. T-shirts, teddy’s, gift bags and plenty of bra’s.

In typical Pink style she started out getting the party started. See photos:

(Pink coming on stage, what an entrance!)

(Indeed she pandered to the lesbians sexual fantasies, although she didn’t need too. Perhap’s sex just part of her personality?)

Then she slowed it down. It was fantastic to see the emotion when she sang and obvious meaning some of these songs had to her:

(Pink slowing things down.)

But it wasn’t long before Pink was back to her upbeat music, with some interesting acrobatics:

And an interesting costume change:

Then when we thought we had seen it all and it was nearly the last song, she slowed us down and got involved with the acrobatics:

(That’s pink up there.)

Mum and I (see below) had a really good night and it gave us time on the journey there and back to talk, we don’t see enough of each other. Mum says she loves how Pink really put on a show, whereas I say I have decided: Pink is Sexy. This is high praise from a gay man, I’ve never even said that about Kylie. Well done Pink.

(Oh and the random girls behind us sussed out after several attempts to get a decent photo of us both, that they were in the picture and decided to smile, or at least I think that’s what they were trying to do?)

Blog soon,

Antony