MY SPLENDID ISOLATION
The awardwinning singer on dusting down his old model railway, and the delights of playing ‘cathedral Top Trumps’ What I’m watching
I’m going back to watch the entirety of Channel 4’s
A Dance to the Music of
Time (1997), since doing that is somewhat easier than getting through all 12 of Anthony Powell’s novels. This adaptation comes from the period of TV before the emphasis was on surface glamour – it rather gives an honest, authentic version of the narrative. Plus it has Simon Russell Beale in it as a series-stealing Widmerpool. Simon and I crossed over leaving and arriving in New York as the Covid-19 crisis was about to kick off – he has, however, returned home and is going to write a book on Shakespeare in the lockdown!
What I’m listening to
An impromptu and unschooled podcast called Private Parts, from Made
in Chelsea stars Jamie Laing and Francis Boulle. They did one recently with the comedian Lloyd Griffith, who said he was a vehement spotter of cathedrals. You can show him a picture of any cathedral in Britain and he can tell you which it is. I too share this curious aptitude and thought I was the king of cathedrals. So I challenged him on Twitter and we’ve thrown some ecclesiastical gauntlets back and forth, sending each other pictures of bits of cathedrals to identify. Lloyd used to sing for a living and gave a bit of countertenor around the London circuit – now he is touring the UK with his own stand-up show or supporting Jack Whitehall. I like to believe his severance with falsetto and small victories in Cathedral Top Trumps are classical music’s gain.
What I’m reading
The memoirs of erstwhile Condé Nast director Nicholas Coleridge, The
Glossy Years. I always like reading diaries and memoirs. It’s comforting watching somebody’s life unfold before you in hindsight. Coleridge (a distant relation of the poet) has always been in the right place at the right time. Like when he and his wife went on honeymoon to India to stay with friends and Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley turned out to be staying at the bottom of the garden – long before they would grace the covers of his magazines. There’s a lot of cheerful serendipity throughout the book.
The hobby I’ve taken up
Perfecting the negroni and digging out the remnants of my childhood model railway, which recently got disinterred from my parents’ attic. Like, I suspect, many unforthcoming men, I may be flirting with the odd GWR pannier tank in the next few weeks. I’ve also been walking around York (once a day!), where I live, and appreciating the fact that the quiet streets right now remind me of what it was like when I was younger, before such things as Sunday trading. Maybe it’s a good time to reflect on how society in general has simply become too frenetic. I’m also putting up a daily reading as the voice of Alan Bennett on Twitter – suggestions for readings welcome at #dailybennett.
The thing that made me laugh this week
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s The Trip To
Greece on Sky, which I’ve just binge-watched. There is a very, very good scene in a car where they are competing to sing falsetto, and it’s exactly how I imagine I would have to explain to someone what it is to be a countertenor. I also deeply appreciate Brydon’s attempts at turning “Gregorian Chant” into a one-liner: “I don’t mind who sings it; Greg or Ian, it doesn’t bother me.”
‘I may flirt with the odd GWR pannier tank very soon’