The Movie Songbook • Sharleen Spiteri
The Movie Songbook
Sharleen Spiteri
42:54 min • Island • March 1st, 2010
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I’m outside the French House, drinking with Celine and her friend Dave.
I’ve just arrived and after a few pleasantries I ask them about the album they’re recording and they tell me it’s sounding good. Being mixed. And that it’s almost finished. It’s interesting to hear and they’re excited. Then Celine spots a guy in a long blonde wig and a black mini skirt and she goes off to speak to him, leaving Dave and I alone.
Dave was once in the band Soft Cell and although we’ve met a few times before, I’ve never thought to tell him how much his music meant to me when I was growing up. But a couple of things have happened recently that have made me change my mind.
The first is Gaga.
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Soho Stories
As the clock chimed six the door to the coffee shop suddenly flew open and there stood David Benson looking like a windswept Bonnie Tyler.
‘Am I late darling?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Oh good.’
Then he gave me a peck on the cheek and whisked me off to Soho’s Curzon cinema.
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Soho Stories
I’m in my usual spot. Notebook on one side. Coffee on the other. Flicking through a newspaper. News. Gossip. Katie Price’s tits. Then I come across an interview with Tom Ford, discussing the film he just directed, A Single Man (based on the 1964 novella by Christopher Isherwood).
I’m a big Isherwood fan, so I’m really looking forward to seeing this film. But what has been disappointing is that this is now the third interview I’ve read where Ford has tried to distance himself from the film’s homosexuality ‘It’s not a gay movie. Absolutely not,’ he said in one interview. ‘We edited out the gay kiss from the trailer,’ said another. And then the phrase he keeps coming out with, ‘I don’t define myself by my sexuality.’ Given Isherwood’s disappointment over the way the homosexuality was trivialised in Cabaret he must be turning in his grave at this reticence.
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8pm. I’m sitting on a small leather settee in a packed theatre bar. On my right sits ‘a sneezing’ David Benson, and on my left his friend Katy.
As they’re both actors the conversation revolves around plays, avant-garde performers and Katy’s recent one-woman show. You see, Katy is none other than Katy Manning. One of the original Dr Who girls. And as she talks, shaking her blonde locks from side-to-side, peppering her speech with show biz anecdotes, although it’s interesting, all I can think about are … the Daleks.
When I was growing up the Daleks were scary. I mean really scary. They were like the Terminators of their day. I must’ve been about eight when I first saw them and whenever they appeared on TV, like thousands of other kids, I’d hide behind my parent’s flower-patterned red velour sofa, peeping nervously from behind the arm-rest, pee spots permeating my pants. … More »
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