Furlough Fashion | The Furlough Fashion Archive

Furlough Fashion #699c-14 Feb 2024

Furlough Fashion #699c. With #FF700 still under construction there is still time to sneak a special Valentine’s Day post in as I have been working on my one-person show on love ‘I Heart In Your General Direction’ performing under the pseudonym Val N. Times. I discuss the many facets of love which are laid out most puzzlingly through the medium of music where it can be the sweetest thing or many splendored, a battlefield (see Pat Benatar), a crazy little thing, or something you might as well face

Furlough Fashion #699 – Oh No T’aint - 07 December 2023

Furlough Fashion #699 – Oh No T’aint. This will be the last official Furlough Fashion until the new year as I’m going into rehearsal for panto season. I am joining the Ilkley Repertory Players for their productions of ‘Whippet Out At Christmas’, about Santa going in search of his favourite dog, DEVO, at Christmas after it’s bullied by the reindeer (not Rudolph mind you as the reason he has a red nose is due to his chronic alcoholism), and the more classic ‘Dick!’ about an adult film star who tra

Furlough Fashion #698 – Space, How Low Can You Go? - 06 December 2023

Furlough Fashion #698 – Wickens Wednesday – Space, How Low Can You Go? Despite the move and the 14 acres of clothes and furniture that we needed to unpack there is one thing we would not have missed for the world, nay the whole galaxy and that is ‘Galaxicon Con’ the celebration of Canadian sci-fi series ‘Battle Cruiser Galaxicon’ which ran in the late 1970s and featured Spaff Manitoba’s father, the former 1950s matinee idol E. Jacque Manitoba, as Commander Edamame fighting the evil telepathic Ps

Furlough Fashion #697 – Master and Serpent - 05 December 2023

Furlough Fashion #697 – Master and Serpent. One of the great things about moving to a new mansion in a new area is being able to find furniture that suits the new environ. So it was that when I was trawling the internet for new items I found and bought ‘The Recline King Cobra’. It came from an online shop called ‘Only Fangs’ which has a lot of very saucy furniture indeed: plump, inviting sofas and very easy chairs (often shown from behind), tumescent chaise longues (eye watering longue), and sex

Furlough Fashion #696 – Who Gives A Flux? 04 December 2023

Furlough Fashion #696 – Who Gives A Flux? Furlough Fashion is back for a limited run before prep starts for Christmas at the new Queenswood Mansions. Yes, to paraphrase the saying “Meet the new Mansion, same as the old Mansion”. We have relocated from the rolling concrete countryside of South London to Queenswood Mansions 2.0 (hereto for known as Queenswood Mansions) in the undulating hills of the Southwest near Mer des Ongles, Wax Hole and Weston Superman.

There will be plenty of time to give

Furlough Fashion #695a–Wickens Wed–Scrump UP The Volume-8 Nov 2023

Furlough Fashion #695 – Wickens Wednesday – Scrump Up The Volume. It’s official, Queenswood Mansions is on the move! My apologies for the lack of posts recently but we have been packing up everything from the walk-in warehouse and the ballrooms to the topiary forest, follies (architectural and rock) and Gingersound Studios. We’re moving lock-stock and two smoking barrel organs (there was a small electrical fire in the instrument warehouse) to our new home near Bristol. Thanks to a language cour

Furlough Fashion #695b–Wickens Wed–Scrump UP The Volume-8 Nov 2023

#694-Wickens Wednesday – I Can’t Believe It's Not Gutter -25 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #694 - Wickens Wednesday – I Can’t Believe It’s Not Gutter. I gather saying “Winter is coming” has been somewhat ruined by the boob-centric series Game of Thrones, but it doesn’t change the fact that winter is indeed coming. Like Kate and I, you will also be preparing your own mansions for the possibility of rain, ice, freezing conditions, or hordes of white walkers attacking from the north. There are roof repairs on the walk-in warehouse, putting coats, hats and scarves on the

Furlough Fashion #693 – The Pawn Identity - 24 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #693 – The Pawn Identity. I like big things; enormous, gigantic, elephantine, Brobdingnagian objects. Travel-size might work for shampoo or toothpaste when you’re off on your holidays, but seeing something like Jeff Koons Ballon Dog or the work of artist Robert Therrien who makes jumbo versions of everyday objects gives me a tingle. I have also been learning chess recently, so after seeing an eye-watering picture of Claes Oldenburg’s large quivering shuttlecock I decided I would

Furlough Fashion #692 – Purple Arraignment - 23 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #692 – Purple Arraignment. What an exciting weekend that was. A new DVD boxset arrived featuring all 23 seasons of 1990’s Canadian legal series ‘Sally’s Briefs’ about Sally McSteel, an American lawyer with moxy who moves to Montreal and starts working for the quirky legal firm of Hugh, Pugh, Burnley, McGrew, Cuthbertson, Nibble & Grudd*. Sally is modern and independent, calling herself ‘The Sassy Lassie from Tallahassee’. The law firm has larger-than-life characters like her hun

Furlough Fashion #691 – This Sporting Strife - 20 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #691 – This Sporting Strife. I’ve never really understood sport. When I was a child – back in the days when women weren’t allowed to like it - my dad lived for football and desperately tried to get me interested. Sadly, for him, I was a fey child who loved nothing more than to twirl and twirl, singing into hairbrush while playing a tennis racket guitar and trying to emulate the fashion of my idols: Bolan’s dungarees, Bowie’s lightning bolt, Alvin Stardust’s glove and ring, or a

Furlough Fashion #690 – Circuit Bored - 19 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #690 – Circuit Bored. It takes a lot of computing power to keep Queenswood Mansions running and after a recent issue with our ancient PHAL-U5 Indifference Engine where it wouldn’t open the walk-in warehouse doors and kept playing and bleep-bloop version of ‘Don't Dilly Dally on the Way’ we have had to retire it and install something more up to date. We settled on the VJJ-M015T, which can compute a septillion nanotrites of tiktonik data using the kinds of FLOPS & MIPS used in flo

Furlough Fashion #689 –Wickens Wed–Shiny Slappy People - 18 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #689 – Wickens Wednesday – Shiny Slappy People. Kate’s birthday week rolls on like a fun juggernaut. Breakfast in a different bed in Queenswood Mansions every morning, followed by 1 hour of extreme kitten-video watching, then 2 hours of ‘Princess Time’ where she twirls and twirls and sings songs. I must keep her fully entertained and follow every request with a curt bow and “Whatever my Princess wants” before I withdraw. She is giddy with tea drinking; English breakfast, eleven

Furlough Fashion #688 – Fad To The Bone - 17 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #688 – Fad To The Bone. There’s been a real fad for fads in the last few years, mainly due to social media pouring petrol on the fire of these crazes. There was ‘Planking’ which I was good at as I have no problem staying rigid for hours on end, the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ where celebrities have ice dumped on them instead of in their bouji Hollywood martinis, the ‘Nice Bucket Challenge’ where people judged how nice your bucket was, the dance crazes of ‘Flossing’ and ‘Bob Flossing’

Furlough Fashion #687–Wickens Mon-A Card Rain’s Gonnna Fall 16Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #687 – Wickens Monday - A Card Rain’s Gonna Fall. And so, it begins. Our Postman, Patrick (for God’s sake don’t shorten his name unless you want a Postman slap) drove his 18-wheeler articulated delivery lorry up the gravel drive at Queenswood Mansions as he does every year on this day. He parped his massive horn to signal to me that I must bring the forklift round so I could start removing the many sacks of Birthday cards for Kate on her 21st 21st birthday which heralds the star

Furlough Fashion #686 – You’re Knickered - 13 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #686 – You’re Knickered. If it’s one thing the English excel at it’s sauciness. Seaside postcards, drag, double meanings and dirty limericks, both slapstick and slap and tickle. These come together in the pantomime, that seasonal opportunity to dial up the sauciness to 11. Here at Queenswood Mansions we’re workshopping ideas for this year’s Christmas ‘puntomime’. There are a number of ideas on the table including ‘Jack & The Has-Been Stalk’ in which faded celebrities and C-List

Furlough Fashion #685 – Sniff Competition - 12 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #685 – Sniff Competition. They say the road to smell is paved with good intentions and this is no more evident in a new drama I’m working on set in 19th century Londinium called ‘A Picture of Durian Gray’, about the eponymous perfumier who gets Alistair Crowley’s favourite painter Reginald B. Elzebub to create a cursed portrait of him using an unctuous potion he got from Lorna Doom, a McWitch in the deepest highlands of Scotland. The painting of Gray stays fragrant and fresh whi

Furlough Fashion #684 – Wickens Wednesday – Clock Succour -11 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #684 – Wickens Wednesday – Clock Succour. The recent earthly departure of Illya Ducky Steel reminded me of a series that Kate and I loved in the early days of our relationship: the Canadian sci-fi show ‘Sodium & Sulphur’ which was a rip off, sorry non-copyright infringing homage, to ‘Saphire & Steel’. It started with a slow motion shot of a clock exploding then coming back together with a pompous voice over saying “Time is like running water. It can flow clockwise or anti-clockw

Furlough Fashion #683 – Blow Me - 10 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #683 – Blow Me. We all know the expression ‘blew my mind’, well those clever people at JM Hell have come up with a new device that they claim helps keep the brain in tip top condition by enclosing the head in a thin lead cap which is connected to a state-of-the-art violet ray and magnetic pulse generator. During the treatment the rays and pulses are fired at the head and induce a calming effect as it gets the beta, alpha, theta, gamma and delta ducks into electromagnetic order.

Furlough Fashion #682 – Flame & Fortune - 09 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #682 – All Ginge, No Whinge. When I was a young boy I was regularly accosted by pensioners as they seemed drawn to ginger hair like a wasp to a picnic. First comes the cooing voice - “ooh, what luvley hair” – and before I knew it, one nubbly fingered hand would begin violently ruffling my wavy locks while the other would start tweaking my cheek – “oooh, look at his luvely freckles”. At school I was called every name you can imagine, Ralph Malph, Belisha Beacon, Duracell, Rusty,

Furlough Fashion #681 – Flame & Fortune - 06 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #681 – Flame & Fortune. My time as a cruise ship dancer was short-lived. I got recommended for the cruise by a friend of a friend of an enemy of a friend while I was in at Kumquat Dance Studios doing my leg-warmer thesis on the work of Fosse and Basil being in thrall to both ‘Mickey’ and ‘Sweet Charity’. I met with cruise ship choreographer extraordinaire Cissy St. Dubois who was working on her biggest oceanic extravaganza yet: ‘Ready-Claim-Fire’. The story is as follows but I s

Furlough Fashion #680 – X-Tractor - 05 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #680 – X-Tractor. What is it about a tractor? We can see hundreds of million-dollar supercars, the chrome stylings of a classic or phwoar-factor of a muscle car, but if we pass a massive tractor on the road, or see one chuntering along in a field, some excited child in us claps their hands with glee and happy-screams “TRACTOR!”. Lamborghini started out making tractors before turning to V8 door wedges and in fact, many top marques began in different fields: Porche started out as

Furlough Fashion #679 – Wickens Wednesday – Tossed Off - 04 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #679 – Wickens Wednesday – Tossed Off. Kate loves a salad and will happily plunder the allotment for kilos of leafy greens to smother in an array of toppings and dressings. She will happily sit in front of the TV clutching a couple of big bowls and munch away. We watch a lot of cookery shows such as ‘Big Choppers’, ‘For Those About to Wok, We Salute You’, the religious ‘Pastor Chef’, and Hawaiian cops in ‘Cook ‘Em Danno’. However, we noticed that salads only go from A to Y, no Z

Furlough Fashion #678 – Boiler Toiler - 03 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #678 – Boiler Toiler. I used to do a lot of coke! I know that’s shocked you and you may have accidentally snorted cornflakes out of your nose or spilled Horlicks down your new pyjamas (depending on when you read FF) and for this I apologise, but it’s not what you think. In the early days of Queenswood Mansions heating such a large complex of buildings, warehouses and dwellings was tricky and relied on coal furnaces for the heating. Nowadays we have the wind farm in the northeast

Furlough Fashion #677 – Buff Cookie - 02 Oct 2023

Furlough Fashion #677 – Buff Cookie. I spent Saturday at GODIVACON’23 in Coventry. This is a weekend event which celebrates all things naked and, thankfully, was held in a well heated ‘exhibitionist centre’. It’s named for Lady Godiva who I don’t need to tell you was a late Anglo-Saxon noblewoman, wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry* to protest her husband’s high taxes. As a brand ambassador for ‘Wig Brother’ I was asked to ride through the hall as Lad

Furlough Fashion #676 – Making a Stir - 29 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #676 – Making a Stir. Whilst smashing my avocados roughly with a fork this morning I looked around at all the gadgets we have in the modern kitchen: egg mandolins, sous vide baths, epicurean vegetable cubers, de glace pipettes, spumative frothers, winkle tongs and more. Recently we watched the detective series ‘Tales From The Zoo Morgue’ where there are Midsummer-levels of murder in a Canadian zoo and it occurred to me that there wasn’t much in the way of crime solving in the fo

Furlough Fashion #675 – What A Swell Guy - 28 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #675 – What A Swell Guy. All those birthday messages. All that love in such a concentrated form. It can be intoxicating, like a robust Malbec or a vintage port matched with some unguent Queso De Valdeón blue cheese. I drank it all in like Sally Field at the 1985 Oscars and became giddy with my own self-importance. I’m ashamed to admit that by the end of yesterday my haughty bumptiousness led me to a serious case of swaggering pomposity coupled with egotistical superciliousness.

Furlough Fashion #674 – And Sew Say All of Us - 27 September 2023

Furlough Fashion #674 – And Sew Say All of Us. Every year all the big fashion brands get in touch to wish me a happy birthday; telegrams from the Houses of Primark and Peacock, Terrence and Kevin Maxx always send a random selection of gifts, and lovely George (pronounced shoooorszch) Assadassa from ASDA gives me a selection of their back-to-school range. I mustn’t forget the kind words from the Japanese companies who think that English words sounds cool, such as Artichoke Sandwich Obfuscating S

Furlough Fashion #673 – Wickens Tiki Tuesday - 26 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #673 – Wickens Tiki Tuesday. You don’t need to check your diary, it’s not Wednesday but on the eve of my birthday Kate has decided to throw me a Tiki party and woke me up early to get lei’d. It was lovely to breathe in the smell of Kate’s pikake, grab a couple of her coconuts and breakfast on her star fruit. It’s been just over a year since our last Tiki Tuesday (FF#498) and our Tiki Lodge has expanded considerably since then, now boasting two full size Easter Island Heads eithe

Furlough Fashion #672 – Big MacGuffin - 25 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #672 – Big MacGuffin. This may be hard to believe but there was a time when I was a heavier set gentleman, not the type of person who inspires words like svelte, lithe, gamine, or devastatingly photographic. About 20 years ago I lived between two near pie shops, ‘Pie Me A River’ and ‘Another One Bites the Crust’. I couldn’t resist their steak and kidney, chicken tikka or ham hock pies and just piled on the pounds. However, as luck would have it my pie-packed figure meant my agen

Furlough Fashion #671 – Flush, Ah-ha! 22 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #671 – Flush, Ah-ha! One of the businesses for the modern age is the bulk buying of toilet roll. It’s not just the hotels that want to order enough rolls to build a squishy Great Wall of China, domestic customers also want to buy large amounts to get discount and mitigate against the easily led who panic buy whenever the red tops whip them up into an angry lather. Given the high number of toilets and bathrooms in Queenswood Mansions we have tried a variety of suppliers including

Furlough Fashion #670 – Modelling Time - 21 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #670 – Modelling Time. People love a time travel story and they usually fit into certain categories: romantic – the hero goes back in time and falls in love with their own great grandmother so it turns out they are actually their own great grandfather, comedy – the time traveller is a loveable fish out of water who takes modern ideas like fire and sarcasm back to the Court of King Arthur, horror – where someone is stuck in a time-loop-a-da-loop and have to keep murdering themsel

Furlough Fashion # 669–Vendor Is The Night-Wickens Wed - 20 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion # 669 – Vendor Is The Night - Wickens Wednesday. I recently found this picture of Kate and I on holiday in the city of Stüppen, located in the vowelless former eastern bloc country Kryzkystycz. It was one of those places where tanks had rolled down the boulevards before the fall of communism, Generals had fled with stolen fortunes, statues had been toppled, and once grand buildings were now faded in the wake of conflict. The country had been formerly known as Shtanyvogne, Nosras

Furlough Fashion #668 – Ham 69 - 19 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #668 – Ham 69. Those old enough to remember CB Radio may have been perplexed by truckers on the highways of America talking about rubber ducks, bears, Smokey, and pregnant roller skates whilst asking people to “come back with their ears on” and saying “negatory” and “10-4 good buddy”. But away from the highways there was dedicated group of people whose equipment was a little more sophisticated, who could reach far further afield: the Ham Radio brigade. I’m sure I don’t have to t

Furlough Fashion #667 – Drum Chum - 18 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #667 – Drum Chum. Whether they are bashing on their bongos, clapping their castanets together or paradiddling the hell out of their tom toms, drummers/percussionists are the beating heart of music. They are purveyors of a pounding and can thwack, tickle, and brush the kit from a single-stroke to a huge splash and their firm grip keeps music from wandering off the beat like a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel. Some are known by one name: Ginger, Cozy, Ringo, Animal, and others

Furlough Fashion #666 – Ready Prayer One - 15 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #666 – Ready Prayer One. I have been dreading today’s Furlough Fashion as we are at number 666, the cursed number, the one seared into Damien’s head, the number for Fire, Police, Ambulance if you’re standing on your head in a phone box. As we all know it’s a triangular number, the sum of the first thirty-six natural numbers, as well as being 13% of timesing 13x13, 13 times. I’m not normally given to superstition (although I do believe in Stevie Wonder) but at 5am today I broke a

Furlough Fashion #665 – Right Sneer, Right Now - 14 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #665 – Right Sneer, Right Now. You will remember at the start of August I alerted you to the first International Sneer Day, a lush litany of lip-curlingly lapidatious labiomancy. Well, while I was out that snarling my way around town I was approached by a model scout who said my scowling was perfect for a new publication called MEH! It’s going to be a magazine for people are ‘not bovver’d’ by day-to-day life; readers who prefer ennui to getting involved and inertia to activity.

Furlough Fashion #664 – Wickens Wednesday–Swede Dreams - 13 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #664 – Wickens Wednesday – Swede Dreams. Kate and I have just come back from a lovely trip to Stockholm. We enjoyed many boat rides around the Archie Pelagos, named for King Archie XIV who charted them, and Pelago which is the ancient Norse word for islet. It turns out we were there during Septemberdårar where Swedes look for English tourists to join in the celebrations. We got talking to some locals in a bar on Södermalm about ‘Röda Byxans Dag’ who asked us to take part. As th

Furlough Fashion #663 – Anne Cillary - 07 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #663 – Anne Cillary. Star Trek was ahead of its time in many ways but the women in the original series, Uhuru notwithstanding, didn’t have much to do other than snog kirk or like today’s FF, Yeoman Janice Rand, who mainly handed things to Kirk, usually space clipboards that required him to sign something with a space pen. There are at least 25 actors who returned in multiple roles (such as Diana Muldaur who played Dr. Pulaski in TNG and two different characters in the original s

Furlough Fashion #662 – Wickens Wed – Taking a Slash - 06 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #662 – Wickens Wednesday – Taking a Slash. Slash fiction puts fictional characters into romantic or sexual scenarios and FF today is my volcanic vignette between Kirk and Spock.

Spock has been called to the bridge by Kirk, but as the doors ‘pissht’ open he realises Kirk is alone in his Captain’s chair wearing nothing but Tribble-skin undies.

“Captain where are Sulu, Uhuru, and Chekov?” asks Spock.

Kirk’s response is sotto voce, “The whole ship is on shore leave Spock. I wan

FF SR 661 05 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #661 – Forehead Boy. When screenwriter Gene L. Coon first coined the name Klingon he had no idea that this would be the source of many schoolyard sniggers about Klingons from Uranus but, a fun fact, they were named after Lt. Wilbur Clingan, who served with Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in the Los Angeles Police Department. However, today’s real lies about this warrior race are as follows:

• The rippled head design for the Next Generation Klingons came about when make-up artist

Furlough Fashion #660 – I Shatnered Myself - 04 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #660 – I Shatnered Myself. Star Trek was first broadcast 57 years ago on September 6th, 1966, bankrolled, by Lucille Ball who ran Desilu Studios where it was shot. This week is Trek Week and I’m going to dress up as some of my favourite characters. Today it’s Captain James T. Kirk.

Trek is so well known I have decided to do something a little different and give you some real lies about Kirk.

• The initial ‘T’ stands for Tassimo which inspired the name of the coffee machines.

Furlough Fashion #659 – The Pits - 01 Sept 2023

Furlough Fashion #659 – The Pits. Back in the late 1980s one of the many modelling jobs I got was as a cover model for book jackets. If you trawl through vintage booksellers then you might see me on the cover of titles like ‘Deadlier Than the Mailman’, ‘Blood On The Fax’, ‘Death Came the Day After Yesterday’s Tomorrow’, ‘Pinch, Punch, First Death of the Month’ and ‘One In The Chamber’. These were odd jobs until I became the muse for former gangster Harry Moody, writing under the pseudonym Glanvi

Furlough Fashion #658 - Beating Off Hamilton -31 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #658 - Beating Off Hamilton. Back in 2021 (FF#175) I talked about my own melodrama called 'Sir Charles of Bastardford Manor' where the unpleasant Sir Charles Bastard aims to marry Katherynelina Wickensian, Lord Percy Sax O'Gold, Duke of Fecundity’s daughter for her massive endowment but is thwarted when space monkeys attack. Preview audiences loved the juxtaposition between Jane Austin and laser-wielding monkeys from Cacachuck 7, but the backers pulled out as advance sales were

Furlough Fashion #657–Wickens Wed – Bewitch Is Back - 30 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #657 – Wickens Wednesday – Bewitch Is Back. I’m sure most of you will have read about the New Vaudeville scene that’s becoming popular now. It’s a reaction to the glut of observational comedians on the circuit and a desire to hark back to the days of the music hall. There are a new crop of performers on the scene such as ventriloquimist Frank & His Talking Plank, the Macrobats - who perform acrobatics feats but really close to you, Kenny Kindling - the Human Torch, Pam Biguous,

Furlough Fashion #656 – It All Adds Up - 29 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #656 – It All Adds Up. Today Furlough Fashion has a bad back, so Furlough Fashion doesn’t have much time to write about Furlough Fashion. Furlough Fashion is also aware that Furlough Fashion talking in the third person is quite annoying, so Furlough Fashion is going to stop that now. It’s a sad truth that all those years of cat walks, dog shows, and photographic modelling in awkward positions in awkward places has weakened my back. It’s hard to pull off a broken doll pose or a c

Furlough Fashion #655 – Casual Sax - 25 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #655 – Casual Sax. Whether you are winding your way down to Baker Street while enjoying street life, you may have dropped your Wispa – which is careless – or be suffering from deacon blues because you can’t afford to go to Rio to find some modern love. You may be born to run or one step beyond the money as a smooth operator (and I can go for that you maneater) but whatever your circumstance there’s nothing like a good blow on a sax to clear the cobwebs. It’s a tricky instrument

Furlough Fashion #654 – Prattle Royale - 24 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #654 – Prattle Royale. With the recent sad death of Michael Parkinson, I was reminded of a part of my past. Back in the 2000s when cable TV was in its early days, I was working as a runner for a company owned by American media entrepreneur Dick Mangold. ‘DIX-PIX’ was one of the first groups to set up cable channels in the UK eventually owning ‘DIX ONE’, ‘DIX SPORT’, ‘DIX 24/7’, music network ‘DIX ROCK’ and the raunchier late night ‘DIX-After Dark’. They wanted a host for a late

Furlough Fashion #653 – Wickens Wed–Throw Back Up Wed - 23 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #653 – Wickens Wednesday – Throw Back Up Wednesday. Every now and again it’s good to throw something up from the past and today I have this great picture from back when Queenswood Mansions was being built. We had had it designed by the architects Ivanna Roger, Roger Rogers (Richard’s brother) Boussole Ouveur and Katya Owt who had the firm Roger Rogers Ouveur & Owt. This was still in the planning stages of the walk-in warehouse, Coral Room, the pub in the East Wing, Pyramid Folly

Furlough Fashion #652 – The Name of the Game - 22 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #652 – The Name of the Game. As I was in the Queenswood Mansions workshop teasing out a drip groove and band sawing my balsa I remembered Edward Wood. Not the actor/Equaliser you understand, but a local carpentry firm and my mind turned to nominative determinism whereby your name is related to your profession. I wondered: would Edward Woodwood Woodworkers work on wood if their name wasn’t Woodwood? It’s fascinating as sometimes it’s spot on and sometimes it’s way off the mark. F

Furlough Fashion #651 – List plucking - 21 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #651 – List plucking. Here at the Furlough Fashion Institute of Wistful Studies we are keen to promote learnful musings, self-educationalisation and digestible ponderous emanations to keep the grey cells working to increase the demystifyability of life’s mental Gordian knots. Think of us a mind-condom protecting you against Perplexually Transmitted Ignorance. We have been working on British Incremental List Gathering Expansion where complex ideas are sublimated into a set of key

Furlough Fashion #650 – Slogan’s Zeroes - 18 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #650 – Slogan’s Zeroes. We may all remember the classic advertising slogans like ‘Just Do It’, ‘His Master’s Voice’, and ‘Naughty But Nice’ but there are plenty of brands who ran campaigns that couldn’t hit the side of a barn at 10 paces. I was involved in one where I was employed to style and model for JAX beer. They had a team of people working on ideas and decided that their new, improved flavour was not only ‘Off da hook’ but would fly ‘Off da shelves’. They sublimated this

Furlough Fashion #649 – Imagine Nation - 17 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #649 – Imagine Nation. I have recently joined a club called the Perspicacious Rascals of Imaginationisation and Creative Kinship (a very proud name, you must agree) who combine my passions for dressing up and weaving words together words in a rich tapestry of lexicographical lionisation. This exclusive gang meet once a month on Zoom and everyone must write a short story, delivered as a monologue, whilst dressed as one of the characters. I wanted to impress, so had penned a tale

Furlough Fashion #648 - Wickens Wed–Leather Forecast- 16 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #648 - Wickens Wednesday – Leather Forecast. Since as far back as the day before time immemorial humans have made music, and a lot of this music is rock. Some historians believe it is called rock as it dates back to cave man days when battering your boulder was the earliest form of music while other historians don’t really care. But what we do know if that as soon as films stopped being silent then films about music started being made. From The Jazz Singer, The Glenn Miller Stor

Furlough Fashion #646 – Changing Grooms - 14 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #646 – Changing Grooms. In 2021 I went through a phase of loving Americana, from the music of Gillian Welch, Lambchop, The Flying Burrito Bros, Crosby Still Nash Young Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Father Elton John Misty as well as films Badlands, The Last Picture Show, Badlands, and The Big Lebowski, where I was particularly taken with Sam Elliott. He was cool, rugged, and non-conformist and I was so taken with his look I grew my hair and moustache to look like him. I would say ‘ma

Furlough Fashion #645 – Prog Day Afternoon - 11 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #645 – Prog Day Afternoon. If you were staring through the mists of yore, back in time in the future past when the Elven people didst roam through the lush plains of Quoz to the lost mountains of Zeppole and beyond the edge of the Nether Rim, the soundtrack to this would be progressive (AKA prog) music. This weekend I will be attending ProgCon 2023, a festival of all things prog whilst wearing my Rick Wakeman inspired outfit commissioned from ‘Planet of the Capes’. On Saturday a

Furlough Fashion #644 – If You’re Looking For Stubble - 10 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #644 – If You’re Looking For Stubble. I’m sure that through the medium of Furlough Fashion you are constantly discovering things about me you didn’t know (sometimes these things feel new to me too) but that’s part of life’s rich tapestry. I have been studying partial arts for many years now, not martial arts, you must understand. Partial arts are where you learn a little bit from the various disciplines such as kung-fu, karate, judo, Luta Livre, Krabi–krabong, Shin-kicking, Catf

Furlough Fashion #643-Wickens Wed–Blood On The Slacks - 09 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #643 - Wickens Wednesday – Blood On The Slacks. We love a crime drama in the UK. Although we import a lot of shows from the US we are pretty good at generating home grown series like death amongst marine vessel movers in ‘Tugged Off’ and Detective Sid Morris solving crime amongst the folk players community in ‘Sid Mummer Murders’. I saw a documentary on the Women’s Institute called ‘Wham Bam, Thank You Jam” which said there are over 200,000 members of Women's Institutes in Engla

Furlough Fashion #642 – Ex Terminator - 08 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #642 – Ex Terminator. I had a great day at the Build-A-Dalek shop in Dartford yesterday. It’s similar to the idea of going home with a fluffy bear friend (which I’ve heard some of my male friends talk about) but this is for Doctor Who fans who want a more bespoke xenophobic mutant companion who wants to rule the galaxy. I fairly jumped into my hot-off-the-press, new companion Ruby Sunday dungarees, now on sale via high street chain ‘Who Look’ and headed down to build my own Wels

Furlough Fashion #641 – Beige of Consent - 07 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #641 – Beige of Consent. Another weekend, another clear out and this time I uncovered a real rarity from my days modelling for the MMC record label at the tale end of the 1980s. Vinyl was still king and MMC produced library music which ‘borrowed’ from popular tunes of the day but could be used in films, TV and corporate training videos. If you’ve ever seen cop shows like ‘Bastard Squad’, ‘The Swiney’, or ‘Chopper Coppers’, sitcoms such as ‘One Up The Neighbours’, café comedy ‘Br

Furlough Fashion #640 – Curl Harbour - 04 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #640 – Curl Harbour. Good news everybody, it’s the first International Sneer Day (ISD) today a chance to unpack all those boxes of bitterness, donate all your bad blood to a worthy cause, animate all of that passive aggressivity, and vent like the mother-chucking water providers dumping sewage into our rivers. If you’re a shop worker who has had one too many stupid questions or a surfeit of patronising customers, if you’re boss is asking you to work late when it’s already beer o

Furlough Fashion #639 – Wish You Were Sphere - 03 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #639 – Wish You Were Sphere. I don’t have to tell you that a sphere is a solid geometric figure whose surface is at all points equidistant from the centre - put it simply x2 + y2 + z2 = r2. You’re probably wondering why I haven’t referred to the sphere’s eleven properties as discussed by David Hilbert and Stephan Cohn-Vossen in ‘Geometry and the Imagination’ but I don’t want to dumb down this post; I want to live in the sphere and now. In their podcast, ‘Talking Sheds’, Prof. Pa

Furlough Fashion #638-Wickens Wednesday–Bellow Dolly - 02 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #638 - Wickens Wednesday – Bellow Dolly. Rummaging through Kate’s memory box I found she had kept a promotional shot from our time on the cabaret circuit as Willy and Wanda with our show ‘I Like a Firm Hand On My Squeezebox’. I was accordion player Willy, billed as ‘the man with the flying fingers’, ‘he likes to squeeze, he likes to please’ with his trusty antique Spremiagrumi piano accordion always strapped on ready to push and pull. Kate was Wanda the ‘wild warbler of Wandswor

Furlough Fashion #637 – To Dull and Back - 01 August 2023

Furlough Fashion #637 – To Dull and Back. People love a craze; you could even say they were crazy about crazes, we’re f-f-f-f-f-f-fad to the bone. Whether it’s Deely-Boppers, legwarmers, roller disco, wassup, jazzercise, boxercise, exercisercise, Zumba, Sea Monkeys, planking, Furbies, Rubik’s Cubes, Ice Bucket challenges or twerking we just can’t help ourselves. Remember, back in the 90s Mad Donna brought Vogueing to our attention and you couldn’t move on the dancefloor for people not moving. We

Furlough Fashion #636 – First Class Lounger - 31 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #636 – First Class Lounger. The fashion audit was finished in record time this year so we paid the migrant workers for the full week and Kate and I decided we would we use the opportunity to go on a holiday. I was owed a favour from a new mid-priced low-cost budget carrier AirToday GT who recently introduced a new Budget-First Class-Economy service for people who don’t have enough money but want to spend more. AirToday want to be transparently opaque in their pricing and treat p

Furlough Fashion #635 - What’s In The Box? - 20 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #635 - What’s In The Box? It’s time for the annual fashion audit and deep clean, where Furlough Fashion shuts down for a week so that everything from the walk-in warehouse, footwear wings, and accessory annexes at Queenswood Mansions can be catalogued, filed, stamped, indexed, and numbered. We will spend a week turning our efforts from the outward promotion of sartorial elegance to the inward sorting of our vast fashion collection.

To undertake the task, I will slap on my fines

Furlough Fashion #634 – Wickens Wednesday–Bespoke Folk - 19 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #634 – Wickens Wednesday – Bespoke Folk. Sometimes, when Kate can hear me twanging away in a room she will come and join in. Such it was last night when I was in the cork-lined songwriting room where I keep a sofa that used to belong to singer Roaming Roy Tampion, a man who once served a port and lemon to Norma Waterson in the Upton Snodsbury Club for Old Folkers. Roy was a master at alternative tunings and would play songs in Drop D, FAGCEC, DADGAD, and DADBOD. The trouble was

Furlough Fashion #633 – Lip Disservice - 18 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #633 – Lip Disservice. I have noticed a worrying trend amongst young people: the return of the cruel moustache and the mullet. I know that things are cyclical and every decade or so some fashion no-no tries to exhume itself from the crypt such as rah-rah skirts, the man-bun, legwarmers, flares, frosted tips, mega-flares, shoulder pads you could launch a drone from, ‘The Rachel’, safari suits, Croydon-facelift, or tie-dye. You can understand why sports stars will have a mullet be

Furlough Fashion #632 – What’s Mine is Chores - 17 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #632 – What’s Mine is Chores. Having just seen the new Mission: Impossible film I was reminded of something that Kate often does to get me to do things around the house (no, I know what you’re thinking but you should wash your minds out with carbolic). While Ethan Rhyming-Slang is running around the world clinging on to the outside of aeroplanes, riding his bike fast in London, dodging exploding fish tanks, riding his bike fast in Paris, fighting on top of trains, riding his bik

Furlough Fashion # 631 –Bard As Nails - 14 July 2023

Furlough Fashion # 631 –Bard As Nails. Back in the 1990s I spent a year at Ray Winston’s ‘University School Learning Actors Good’, or USLAG as we all called it. There, I was like a butterfly broken on the wheel of hard knocks and had to toughen up my normally fey and soft-handed-self in order to play roles like sensitive, but tough, Ruck Hodson in ‘Bastard Town’, tough but misunderstood ex-para, Sgt. Vince Beowulf in ‘Salute of Death’ or Reggie Cobra in the ‘Peckham Ninja’ series. Much as I enjo

Furlough Fashion #630 – Pump Up the Front Room - 13 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #630 – Pump Up the Front Room. When you’re a mover and shaker in the world of fashion your opinion counts for something and it’s not uncommon for companies to approach you for endorsement or to try out new products. One such company is ‘Inflata-Balls’ who have been making all kinds of spherical objects for years such as beach balls, foot-balls, and zorbs. They want to branch out into a more diverse range of items including furniture including the ‘Sofair’ and its matching ‘Ch’ai

Furlough Fashion #629 – Wickens Wednesday – Copy That - 12 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #629 – Wickens Wednesday – Copy That. As an erstwhile musician there’s not much money in making your own music but there is medium-sized money in playing covers. There are so many bands the world over who trade on the successes of other musicians, such as The Cheatles (AKA the Fab Forgery), Pink Fraud, Phoney M, Sham-Sham 69, and The Faux Fighters. Another trend gaining popularity is the mash-up tribute act where you get two music stars for the price of one. Current practitioner

Furlough Fashion #628 - The Vest is History - 11 July 2023 Double

Furlough Fashion #628 - The Vest is History. Going through boxes as part of de-cluttering can either be dull, dull, dull or a dopamine time machine. On the dull side I cannot fathom how we accumulate plugs like a doomsday prepper believing a post-apocalyptic world needs a choice of voltages, amperage and connectors like coaxial, 4-pin, right-angle DC, type-C, mini-USB or mini-DIN and SCSI. There are always plastic covers orphaned from their devices, random buttons, keys of all kinds from long-go

Furlough Fashion #627 – Great Bails of Fire - 10 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #627 – Great Bails of Fire. If I think of it - ponder as hard as I can, chew the mental cud, cogitate, contemplate or ruminate, could I call myself a cricket fan? The answer is no, not really. Truth be told I am ambivalent about most sports like footballing, rugball, running, jumping and throwing things, and tennis. I thought I would like curling until someone told me it had nothing to do with hair. But I admire the effort and dedication that goes into all sporting pursuits and

Furlough Fashion #626 - The Whining - 07 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #626 - The Whining. We have a ritual when frustrations with life, the universe and everything start to build up. In the shed we have an old door with a gaping hole that I caused due to a hammer-nail-interface that went horribly wrong. After the hole ‘happened’ I stuck my face through and ranted vehemently about the breakage. This came to be known as ‘The Whining’. So, when one of us needs to let off steam out comes the door, head through the hole and rant!

Today, I am caught w

Furlough Fashion #625 – Faux Business - 06 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #625 – Faux Business. People think that the ‘mockbusters’ which exploit blockbusters by making a low budget cash-in versions such as Atlantic Rim, Jurassic Predator, and Sunday School Musical, are a modern phenomenon. However, while researching the life of songwriter/lyricist Cole Minor (FF#284, 342, 403, 551) I discovered this also happened in the theatre in the late 1800s. While Oscar Wilde was lauded for ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ at the St. James Theatre, the pseudony

Furlough Fashion #624–Wickens Wednesday–Thrust for Li fe-05 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #624 – Wickens Wednesday – Thrust for Life. As a lover of Canadian science fiction TV series such as ‘Avo Larrikin: Moon Soldier’, ‘Wanda Lust-Space Mercenary Rebel’, and ‘Space Pants Patrol’ starring sci-fi legend Spaff Manitoba (first discussed in FF#157) it was great to find another lost Canuck classic ‘Neutron Knights–Thrust Warriors’. Only six episodes were made about Commander Crunt Starsplitter (Spaff’s Brother, Skeet Manitoba) last warrior of the Neutron Knights, who is

Furlough Fashion #623 – Planks For The Memory - 04 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #623 – Planks For The Memory. It now makes sense that I keep returning to ventriloquilisticism as my recent trips down the branches of my family tree uncovered Cecil Cook. He was a vaudevillian turn from the late 1800s who billed himself as ‘The Great Cecil, Purveyor of Virtuosic Ventrilomequesmiscism and Vaniloquence’. He would take to the stage in a carboard suit, paper shirt and tie brandishing his fast-talking timber companion ‘Viscount Wormwood the Vambrace of Victoria’. I

Furlough Fashion #622 – The Oldest Tick In The Book - 03 July 2023

Furlough Fashion #622 – The Oldest Tick In The Book. I have been looking at my family tree via the Italian owned site ‘Genealogy Lolabrigida’ and discovered that in the late 1600s I had a relation called Josiah Cockalorum-Cooke (this is back before my family pulled off the Cockalorum and removed the ‘e’ from Cooke). Accounts from parish records and newspapers such as ‘Ye Olde Londinium Chronicalanus Bibendum’ and ‘Winniberton’s Litanical Almanack of Correspondentation’ state that he was a man of

Furlough Fashion #621 – Plop Music - 30 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #621 – Plop Music. Pop-a-doodle-do and pop-of-the-morning to you pop pickers. Older members of the Furlough Fashion community may remember the Top of the Pops series of records which ran from 1969-1985, younger ones the ‘Now…That’s What I Call Music’ series from 1983 to date. Pre-streaming, these compilations were the only way to consume the hits of the day. All well and good, but what about the flops of the day, those chart-averse releases that withered on the vine? Whereas som

Furlough Fashion #620 – Snuff and Nonsense - 29 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #620 – Snuff and Nonsense. Alongside my erotic fiction I also like to dabble in some horror. My quill name is Lord Leo Doomsayer and I’ve been trying to sell my horror anthology series ‘Tomb With A View’. Today’s picture is a promotional shot of me as Doomsayer who lights his 9-inch taper at the start of every show before saying “Ask not for whom the candle flickers, it flickers for thee”. My outfit is from German occultist and naughty shop ‘Sechs-Sechs-Sechs’ who sell crisp bla

Furlough Fashion # 619–Wickens Wed–Handling Emissions - 28 June 2023

Furlough Fashion # 619 – Wickens Wednesday – Handling Emissions. Some of you with long enough memories may recall my desire to launch some ‘Furlough Passion’ titles (FF#95), a range of erotic fiction with one eye on couture. Titles in the works included set-in-the-70s ‘A Prawn For Your Cocktail’, steamy medieval love in 'Joust In Time', hot hospital action in 'Mercury Rising' and boardroom bawdiness in 'Coming to a Head'. These are still with saucy publishing house ‘Stiff Covers’, but I recently

Furlough Fashion #618 – Advice, Advice, Baby - 27 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #618 – Advice, Advice, Baby. The local folk know that on the first Tuesday of every month that is preceded by a waxing gibbous full moon when six magpies have been spotted (and saluted) on the green in front of the ‘Batsman’s Crease’ pub I run a fashion advice clinic. With the hot weather I help people choose between culottes, Capri Pants (the Mark IV Capri pants are best) or chinos. I am also asked about my stance on socks and sandals which is mildly threatening with a lot of f

Furlough Fashion #617 – Zoot 66 - 26 June 2023-Cropped

Furlough Fashion #617 – Zoot 66. This weekend I played live for the first time in a while with a fellow Furlough Fashionista and fine friend (try saying that fast after a few sherries) Danny ‘Boy’ Jones. We did a set of folk standards such as ‘I Moaned While Ahab Whaled’, ‘He Played With His Coracles On The Water’, ‘Twas Awful Ironic, She Died From the Tonic’, ‘Dick’s The Dandy of Darlington Drive’, ‘A Little Bit of Liquor Makes You Quicker Than A Vicar But Too much Booze and You Lose Your Shoes

Furlough Fashion #616 – Skate Expectations - 23 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #616 – Skate Expectations. In this current UK heatwave, I was looking for things to cool down my alabaster skin. A paddling pool full of ice cubes didn’t last very long, same with a onesie full of cold packs, and my invention of a ‘wine-cooler-helmet’ worked okay until a bottle got lodged in my ear. Then I caught a late-night documentary on ice hockey and the great players of the 1970s such as Jacques Bagarreur, ‘Toothless’ Vinnie Lysiak, Guillaume ‘The Guillotine’ LeBlanc, Lund

Furlough Fashion #615 – Aaaarts & Crafts - 22 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #615 – Aaaarts & Crafts. I love to handle a pirate head. While Kate is covered in oils and pastel I will often be down in the Queenswood Mansions crafting room with the smell of glue in my nostrils, paper strips cut and ready, and a reel of chicken wire unspooled so I can get my papier-mâché on. I did try potato-mâché, but I ended up eating more than I was creating and, for some reason, I couldn’t stop making sculptures of the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

I don’t want you to think

Furlough Fashion #614 – Wickens Wednesday – Comedy Sketch 21 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #614 – Wickens Wednesday – Comedy Sketch. Kate has recently followed up on her art lessons (FF#598) by watching American YouTuber Randy Brushman (who is like a more exuberant, less loungewear Tony Hart). He covers everything from landscapes, seascapes, still life, realism, neo-realism, abstract expressionism, expressionistic abstractism, cubism, trapeziumism, mom art and pop art. He also deals with all types of mediums from the simple joy of macaroni pictures through to airbrush

Furlough Fashion #613 – Dress to Compress - 20 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #613 – Dress to Compress. Even a fashionista like me must concede that there are certain stylistic choices that should remain consigned to the landfill of fashion history. Clothing combinations so heinous not even Kate Moss or David Gandy could pull them off. I recently found a picture of me from the early 1980s in Watford’s top nightclub/casino, Studio 69 (having been previously known as Caligula’s, Rapunzel’s, The Twinkle Lounge, Yo-Yo’s, and BJ’s). It’s the clothing combinati

Furlough Fashion #612 – Cravatavism - 19 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #612 – Cravatavism. I’ve been doing some research into a project called ‘Planet of the Napes’ which is looking at the various different neck coverings we have used throughout history. The ruff, bowtie, bandana, boa, dog collar (clerical and naughty), muffler, snood, scarf and more. This weekend I have been on a deep dive into the cravat (or Ascot as the Americans call it), that forerunner of the modern necktie. FF historians will note that cravats have featured in posts #223, 33

Furlough Fashion #611–Wickens Wed–Lights, Camera, Acton - 14 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #611 – Wickens Wednesday – Lights, Camera, Acton. For a brief stint in the late 1990s I ran a film studio in the west London suburb of Acton (a name derived from the Old English words āc (oak) and tūn (enclosed garden, enclosure)). When I joined, they were mainly turning out corporate training films such as ‘Punching Is Not Customer Service’, ‘No one Wants to See Your Winky’ and garden centre induction video ‘The Full Monty Don’. They needed to make money quickly or the business

Furlough Fashion #610 – Hip, Hip, V-Ray - 13 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #610 – Hip, Hip, V-Ray. Tesla, the name synonymous with electric cars, is named for Nikola Tesla the Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. The thing about being a futurist is that you are always disappointed. For example, yesterday I told Kate that today was the future but when I woke up it was today and it turns out that the future was actually tomorrow (I’ll believe that when I see it). Anyway, back to Tesla. He was a prolific inven

Furlough Fashion #609 – We all scream for sunscreen - 12 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #609 – We all scream for sunscreen. Being someone who has the kind of alabaster skin that is pale as marble and as reactive as chromatography paper, sunny days have me scurrying for the shade hissing like a film vampire. If fact, over the years I have grown to have sympathy with these creatures of the night. Not so much the neck sucking and bloodshot eyes but certainly hiding in rooms protected by thick drapes with blackout lining. Even high-quality photographs of the sun causes

Furlough Fashion #608 – Louche Cannon - 09 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #608 – Louche Cannon. I enjoyed yesterday’s moustache so much I decided to let it tickle its way into what I am calling Louche Friday. Back in the mists of Furlough Fashion #320 (October 2021) I talked about my fashion CV describing me as a louche canon, foot louche and fancy free and having a screw louche. Well, that hasn’t changed, as I must indulge my louche side from time to time and Fridays were made for all hell to break louche.

So, it’s on with the mustard paisley smoki

Furlough Fashion #607 – Hypotenews - 08 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #607 – Hypotenews. Leaning forward is the new sitting back. There, I’ve said it. I hope I haven’t offended anyone. Sitting back has had it its own way for too long and leaning forward is next big thing. I have conducted extensive research into the many benefits of leaning forward (or what Generation Z are calling LENFO). Here are just four great reasons why leaning forward is so popular:

The emphatic positioning of your argument such that it has more gravitas (pointing at some

Furlough Fashion #606 – Wickens Wed – Court in the Act - 07 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #606 – Wickens Wednesday – Court in the Act. Court dramas have long been a staple of entertainment, from Perry Mason in the US to the over-lit wonkiness of Crown Court in the UK all the way up to Judges Judy and Rinder, both queens of the TV courtroom. We’re all in thrall to a barrister (not ones who make coffee and write your name on the cup) leaning on the lectern, glasses in hand saying “I put it to you…” or “…and yet you caught the apple I threw to you in your left hand” and

Furlough Fashion #605 – Wax in, Wax off - 06 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #605 – Wax in, Wax off. One of the down sides to listening to a LOT of music loudly, is the build-up of wax in the ear canal. There is a theory expostulated by Prof. I.M. Aycock of Kennebunkport Online University who says the amount of wax build-up is determined by the type of music. In his study, playing classical music caused the smallest wax increase whereas the biggest was caused by genres such as Pirate Metal, German Techno-Madrigal, Industrial Ska, and Speed-Oompah, but od

Furlough Fashion #604 – 8-Track to the Future - 05 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #604 – 8-Track to the Future. The one recurring anxiety dream I have involves being in the Radio HMV DJ booth at HMV Oxford Circus in the 1990s. The track is running out and I haven’t cued up the next one. As the seconds count down, I am frantic to avoid ‘dead air’ but can’t find another CD. Time runs out, I fade up the mic and start fumbling my way through an announcement, still wildly searching for the next track. I wake up screaming “Gift vouchers available at the tills!”. To

Furlough Fashion #603 – Hawai’ian Mighty - 02 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #603 – Hawai’ian Mighty. There are few sounds more evocative of their origin than the drums at the beginning of Hawaii 5-0 (boom…ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-boom, biddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-thump…bah-bah-bah-bah-baaaaa-bah etc.) or the slide’n’twang of a steel guitar, or kīkākila as the Hawai’ians say (see Pa’ahana by Brozman & Kaapana). Kate and I are lovers of Tiki culture and Tikipedia says ‘in Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man’. We have a Tiki bar based on the 20th Century explosion o

Furlough Fashion #602–Wickens Thurs-Listing By The Pool 01 June 2023

Furlough Fashion #602 – Wickens Thursday - Listing By The Pool. On a triumphantly sunny day we will head down to the split-level rockery swimming pool (not to be confused with the Olympic-sized pool near Queenswood Mansions’ topiary maze (or the leafy labyrinth as Kate calls it). We’ll make up a tray with grapefruit halves, a large pot of tea, and two of my own inventions: sourdough muffets (half muffin/half crumpet) and fondled eggs which are four eggs with some cream and Fuchsia Himalayan Moun

Furlough Fashion #601 – Boozer Interface - 31 May 2023

Furlough Fashion #601 – Boozer Interface. After the rigours of shoving nobs up and down, avoiding peaking in the red, and watching LEDs twinkle in the low lighting of Gingersound studio to get ‘Material Girl’ finished, I am spent. So today I have retreated to one of the few remaining real pubs in the area, The Cocks Inn. It’s a no-nonsense hostelry that serves beer and spirits and not cocktails. I can take a hard liquor without gagging but they serve things that can take the veneer off a Victori

Furlough Fashion Bank Holiday Special #3 – 8 May 2023

Furlough Fashion Bank Holiday Special #3 – Plate Expectations. The commemorative plate is part of the heady galaxy of commemorative items produced by companies such as Scambury Mint & Cashin Commemoratives. Some of my favourites over the years have been ‘UK Roundabouts’, lesser known royals such as Winklebutt the Fair, Tsar Baglione, and King Rollo (the plate for King Cnut had to be scrapped after an unfortunate typo wasn’t spotted), Queen Elizabeth II opens Milton Keynes’ giant ASDA’, and from

Click the image to see all the text; dreadful puns and all

Furlough Fashion #499 – Angora phobia - Wickens Wed. 07 September 2022

Furlough Fashion #499 – Angora phobia - Wickens Wednesday. It’s one of the sad truths about fashion that it is not immune to global troubles. Take angora, that super-soft, fluffy haloed wool produced solely from rabbits. It might have been beloved of Ed Wood, director of infamous classics like ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ and ‘Glen or Glenda’ (which I think about someone who dresses as both Glen Campbell and Glenda Jackson), but 90% comes from China. There have been some animal cruelty concerns in

Furlough Fashion #498 – Tiki Tuesday - 06 September 2022

Furlough Fashion #498 – Tiki Tuesday. Deep in the grounds of Queenswood Mansions, just passed the topiary Stonehenge (where the children dance to the Pipes of Pan) is our Tiki Lodge, a lush wooden haven full of beanbags, recliners, faux fur, and those cushions you scatter everywhere that I can never remember the name of. Whether I have been shredding guitar as easily as cabbage, making my crumhorn wail, getting friction burns from my güiro or pounding on my cahons it’s a great place to relax and

Furlough Fashion #497 – Titanium Copper 05 September 2022

Furlough Fashion #497 – Titanium Copper. You may remember FF#416 and my idea for British versions of dystopian films like ‘Escape From New Cross’ well, shortly after my post I was contacted by a cult sci-fi/horror UK film company ‘Full English Films’ (sometimes referred to as makers of Sci-Fry) who want to work with me. They were so impressed by my tale of Grass Snake Pitkin rescuing Sir Kier Royale from New Cross maximum security prison they asked me if I had any more ideas. Funnily enough I di

Furlough Fashion #496 – Chirpy, Chirpy, Leap, Leap -02 September 2022

Furlough Fashion #496 – Chirpy, Chirpy, Leap, Leap. When I was telling you about Doctor Armand Van Skull of Kintyre yesterday it put my mind of other well-known Vans such as the lovely-lovely trainers, the white vans driven by ruddy-faced shouty men, Morrison the Irish singer and supermarket owner, Gogh, the mono-eared painter of chairs and sunflowers and, most importantly, the rock poets of Eddie and Alex Van Halen. This morning I was feeling a little sluggish and unprepared to face the day unt

Furlough Fashion #495 – Ghouls Allowed - 01 September 2022

Furlough Fashion #495 – Ghouls Allowed. Ever on the look out for new enterprises to expand the fashion empire into I’ve been realising that getting into niche markets can be lucrative and rewarding. There are many markets already making the cash registers ring, but I don’t think anyone has fully tapped the potential of the Gothic Pound. The image may be of doom-laden, seekers of the night who hang around war memorials drinking cheap cider and sighing, but this cliché is wrong. Goths are often hi

Furlough Fashion #494–Wickens Wednesday–Seen And Not Herd-31 Aug 2022

Furlough Fashion #494 – Wickens Wednesday – Seen And Not Herd. Cowboy and Cowgirl fashion is coming back thanks, in part, to the promotional work being undertaken at Queenswood Mansions. You may have seen some of the recent articles in the fashion press such as ‘Chaps Who Love Getting Into Chaps’, ‘How The Udder Half Live’, ‘Branding by the Brands Who Like To Brand’, ‘Rope Springs Eternal’ and ‘Ranch Dressing’.

Kate, in particular, can’t get enough chaps and often swaps them over four or five t

Furlough Fashion #493 – Gear As Folk - 30 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #493 – Gear As Folk. A relaxing time was had on holiday in Essex despite there being much to do i.e., lounging, yawning, getting to the fridge for beer, opening crisps, yawning again, afternoon snoozes, opening crisps, moving the chair out of the shadows and back into the sunshine, and opening crisps. Coming home for a post-vacation weigh-in was a bit of a shock to the system and I realised I needed to do more to shift the heft. However, on the last day of the break I came acros

Furlough Fashion #492 – Patch Of The Day - 19 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #492 – Patch Of The Day. Furlough Fashion #500 is fast approaching but I need to go dark for a week in order to start constructing the FF500 song which will celebrate the last 100 posts. The identity of this will remain a carefully guarded secret known only to those brave souls who have agreed to be part of the Furlough Fashion singers (you still have time to take part if you want to let me know).

I have already started inputting all of my data: measurements, styles, and images

Furlough Fashion #491 – Thank You Beret Much - 18 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #491 – Thank You Beret Much. The beret dates back to the bronze age (ironically a name also given to our current century due to the high number of fakes tans everywhere). It can be revolutionary or Rastafarian, military, or Michael Crawford but whatever your reason for wearing this millinery masterpiece it seems unlikely to ever go out of fashion. Research by the French southern coastal ‘Institut de la Nice Têtes’ (there motto: “si tu veux aller de l'avant, prends un chapeau”) h

Furlough Fashion #490 – Wickens Wednesday - Oh Beehive! 17 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #490 – Wickens Wednesday - Oh Beehive! Everyone knows that Kate is the real power behind the fashion throne. While my brain is made up of candyfloss and whimsy, Kate’s brain is held together with check lists and maths (I can only do maths with my fingers and toes which is embarrassing in a restaurant, and we don’t talk about the time I had to go to count to 21 and the Police were called). But Kate realises although she is the grown adult while I am the profligate man-toddler the

Furlough Fashion #489 – Rotary Club - 16 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #489 – Rotary Club. There’s nothing like nostalgia to make you appreciate the past and while rummaging in Kate’s boudoir recently I found a large trunk with contained old telecommunications equipment. I found my old pager, which for younger readers was like texting but more expensive than gold, there and most of the mobile phones I’ve ever owned including classics like the Nokia 3310, 6310i, 8110 and the rare mobile for farmers, the Nokia E1E1O.

But the real joy was the model y

Furlough Fashion #488 – Dry Society - 15 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #488 – Dry Society. What a Summer! Reservoirs running low, hosepipe bans, and the mercury still won’t come down from the thin atmosphere at the top of the thermometer. We all have to do our bit, so Kate and I no longer have morning, lunchtime, pre-dinner and post-dinner bubble baths. We’ve have shut down all thirty of the dancing fountains in the grounds of Queenswood Mansions and, sadly, the acres of manicured lawns are now the colour of Caramac and the topiary menagerie looks

FF SR 487 12 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #487 – I Ennui’d Myself. Well, it’s a week to the day that I performed with the band @Skylon and the applause is still ringing in my ears due to me playing it from a BBC sound effects record (it’s the applause from a 1978 edition of ‘Cheggers Plays Pop’). Our three-hour set comprised of Swiss Schlager, Estonian goat herding music, and an electronic kazoo crescendo which left the audience speechless (we’re planning to release an album called ‘Daddy’s Taking Us to the Kazoo Tomorr

FF SR 486 11 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #486 – Think You Under The Table. How many people really think about thinking? When you think about it, the thoughts we have regarding thinking about thinking are not high. In contemplating this issue I realised that we have become a far too reactive society and now live in an age where we’re hooked on the instant stimulus from social media, streaming services and the fluffy tidal wave of cat videos (NB: don’t search for ‘cute pussies’ again on the company PC). With this in mind

Furlough Fashion #485–Wickens Wednesday–Reach For The Bars-10 Aug 2022

Furlough Fashion #485 – Wickens Wednesday – Reach For The Bars. Last night we had the inaugural session in our new pop-up bar: ‘Liquor In The Sky’ (we did toy with other names such as ‘The Quaff In The Loft’ and ‘Brew Sky Drinking’), a temporary structure for summer which sits 200ft high looking out over the inky blackness of the Queenswood Mansions estate. It offers a panoramic view of the former plague pits of South London, the old gasworks that’s now a quinoa farm, and the sweep of Crystal Pa

Furlough Fashion #484 – Civil Serpent - 09 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #484 – Civil Serpent. Can you feel the excitement building? Have you been ticking the days off your calendar? The new series of The Great British Snake Off is coming to subscription TV. Yes, move over Ru Paul, it’s time for the world’s premier dress-up-like-a-snake contest to return. 30 contestants will be whittled down from the simpler costumes in Week One: ‘Snakes Honour Plain’ on their way to being crowned King or Queen Cobra in week 77. Who can forget Nelson’s enormous creat

Furlough Fashion #483 – Spot the Difference - 08 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #483 – Spot the Difference. Given the success of FF #86, #266 and more recently #469, Giant Animal Print Discount Warehouse ‘FEE-FI-FAUX’ contacted me to do a promotional shot for them and their range of ‘leopatards’ which are “animals prints for the playtime at the watering hole” (I came up with that slogan). They gave me extra cloth so I could dress up a corner of Big Game room and I draped it over the intersection of the 10-foot Jenga tower and 6-foot pop’o’matic dice from Fr

Furlough Fashion #482 – Shed Admiral - 04 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #482 – Shed Admiral. In my design shed in the grounds of Queenswood Mansions I have been working on stage outfits for the Skylon show tomorrow. Here is one of the outfits that didn’t make the cut: The Butterfly, based on the many species that floof their way round the wild meadow near our topiary sculpture of a 1951 Fender Telecaster (the one with a pine body, bridge pickup, and flat polepieces). The outfit was rejected when I tried it out at a rehearsal and my vigorous guitar s

Furlough Fashion #481 – Wickens Wednesday – Suit Camp - 03 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #481 – Wickens Wednesday – Suit Camp. 80s power dressing is back! Before the trend for super-tight peacock blue suits, pompadour haircuts and perma-stubble so beloved of estate agents and greed-eyed traders in the city, we had the frankly bonkers mash-up of styles in the 1980s. It’s like fashion designers were permanently drunk or tripping as they matched colours that should have a restraining order prohibiting them from being within 100 yards of each other, putting tiny people

Furlough Fashion #480- Chuck-up Tuesday - 02 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #480- Chuck-up Tuesday. This is part of an occasional series I’ve not done before where I chuck up a random picture from my past. This week I was inspired by the sad death of 2000AD editor and contributor Alan Grant. He oversaw the golden age of the comic and was responsible for giving a break to a then unknown writer, Alan Moore. 2000AD was a huge part of my childhood, and my grown-up childhood, and I loved reading Judge Dredd with everyone saying ‘Drokk’, ‘shut up you Drokker’

Furlough Fashion #479 – Life In The Fasten Lane - 01 August 2022

Furlough Fashion #479 – Life In The Fasten Lane. Well, the annual fashion audit for zips and fastenings is over. A team of auditors rooted around in my drawers, rummaged in my chest and, of the 30 that went into the walk-in warehouse, two got lost and we had to send the sniffer dogs out to find them. One was found under a collapsed ziggurat of cloaks which they had disturbed while trying to locate my BSi certificate for EN 16732 (Slide fasteners -zips) and the other, who should have gone right a

Furlough Fashion #488 – Get a Grip - 22 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #488 – Get a Grip. It’s that time of year again when what happens every year happens now. Next week it’s the annual fashion audit for zips and fastenings conducted by the firm ‘Zip It, Button It & Shutyahole’. Given that the walk-in-warehouse now covers several acres this is a mammoth task requiring a team of auditors (the collective noun is ‘a Desiccation’). Next week I’ll be knee deep in paperwork as they ask for forms such a 69FU which proves that we conform to BSi patent Z1P

Furlough Fashion #477 – Hot Weather Blows - 21 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #477 – Hot Weather Blows. It is now cool enough to let my hair down, but I still need to keep a firm grip on my vintage fan from J. McLane Ltd (their motto “Dry Hard With A Vengeance”) in order to stay cool. I love a vintage fan, and also have models by Dango, Tasise, Nies, and Zine. Like most people, when I get in front of a fan I will risk lip injury by moving close to the blades and making the Darth Vader voice and I will also impersonate every 80s/90s pop video; the decades

Furlough Fashion #476 - Wickens Wednesday - 20 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #476 - Wickens Wednesday - The Pineapple Of My Eye. Not music time to write today as, due to the heat had subsided, we have dashed down to Queenswood Mansion’s artificial beach for a cooling dip in Lake Veronica. Sporting our his and hers sporting wear from ‘Kenny Joggins’ we also made sure that we are topping up on the minerals that get lost during excessive bouts of sweating by grabbing the huge juicy melons and plump pineapples Kate has in her fecund plots. So we’ll be frolic

Furlough Fashion # What An Ice-Hole - 19 July 2022

Furlough Fashion # What An Ice-Hole. Deep at the bottom of Queenswood Mansions we have a massive ice-hole. It’s dark and clammy and it’s where we keep our ample supply of ice. Normally this stays relatively untouched apart from our annual skating shows such as ‘Skate Outta Compton’, ‘Barton Rink’, ‘Spice on Ice’ (our jukebox icescapade about the Spice Girls), and of course family favourite ‘The Human Centipede – On Ice’.

But given the weather I have been in and out of the ice-hole for the last

Furlough Fashion # Mirrored Balls - 18 July 2022

Furlough Fashion # Mirrored Balls. Enough is enough, I had to do it. I needed to send the UV rays back where they came from and away from my alabaster skin so I dismantled the largest mirror ball we have in the Queenswood Mansion ballroom and turned it into a sun reflecting outfit. Much as I love to strictly come dancing, organza fun will have to take a backseat to staying cool for the next few days until the woman goes back into the weather house (sunny, dry) and the man pops out (wet). Our fol

Furlough Fashion #473 – Swish You Were Here - 15 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #473 – Swish You Were Here. I love a tassel (see FF#72 the Beerkini, #73 sheer silk tassel, #146 the Golder Shower of Tassels, #288 ‘Fanny Might Get Her Gun, and #457 Tassel Hoff) but I did not know that one of their early uses was to help religious types remember all the commandments like Thou Shalt Not Kill Bill, Thou Shalt Not Take Jack Lord’s Name In Vain, Thou Shalt Remember to Honour Black Sabbath and The Sandal Shalt Not Lie With the Sock. Tassels were also designed to w

Furlough Fashion #472 – Party Like It’s 1995 - 14 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #472 – Party Like It’s 1995. In this heat I was reminded of another heatwave back in 1995 where Britain saw temperatures of around 30 degrees in July and August. The nineties was a watershed decade as we shifted from the analogue to the digital, from Tory to Labour and from pop to rap and rave. It was the decade of Gladiators, Sex & The City, Pulp Fiction, Mr Blobby, and Julia Roberts and Keanu Reeves, who were in nearly every film released, including undocumented cameos in man

Furlough Fashion #471 – Wickens Wednesday - Hot Box - 13 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #471 – Wickens Wednesday - Hot Box. It’s Hot! How hot is it? Postmen in speedos, train carriages that smell like locker rooms, seaside exodus, ice cream vans with queues you would expect on Black Friday, and if you’re a fan of sales then sales of fans have gone through the roof and gallons of iced-lattes are being consumed, people are flocking to iced-Pilates classes and Cold Yoga, and there’s been a run on triple frozen ice where you freeze it, thaw it and freeze it again three

Furlough Fashion #470 - Dangle Berries - 12 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #470 - Dangle Berries. In another attempt to cool down I’ve been WFH. WFH is one of those new fancy acronyms young professionals are always using, like ROTPFG (Rolling On The Parquet Floor Guffawing), IMHOWYDW (In my Humble Opinion, Which You Didn’t Want), and the Tory Ministers favourites SOTDO (Say On Thing Do Opposite), and OSSWYAC (Only Say Sorry When You Are Caught). In this case WFH stands for ‘Working From Hammock’ and I bought this string beauty from Scottish manufacture

Furlough Fashion #469 – Hot Spot - 11 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #469 – Hot Spot. As the mercury climbs pale creatures like me, who have the Scandinavian gene shrink further into the shadows and, if it wasn’t for the environment, would consider pulling up a chair to the chest freezer with a view to getting frost on my nipples. But I decided to try something slightly different and embrace the heat by dressing hot to stay cool. I recently took delivery of a quarter mile of leopard print from the Giant Animal Print Discount Warehouse called ‘FEE

Furlough Fashion #468 – Your Tick In My Box - 08 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #468 – Your Tick In My Box. With all the hoo-ha and de Pfaffery going on at the moment I have been wondering whether this is my time to turn a fashion franchise into a velveteen vote winner. I haven’t quite decided what platform to stand on but I have plenty of practice standing on platform heels, and if I was going to throw my hat into the ring then you know it will be a high quality fedora, Sinatra or a felt beret. Aside from the lying, bullying, threats, fibs, hypocrisy, lyin

Furlough Fashion #467 – I’ve Karted - 07 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #467 – I’ve Karted. Queenswood Mansions has it’s own go-kart track, not one that we put in but from a previous owner: Ricky Larder, the 2-Stroke Terror from Yorkshire. He was a regular champion on the Formula 13 circuit, racing at Tinstone, Donington Services, and Brands Hutch (near the rabbit sanctuary) and he made his considerable wealth advertising Hutton-le-Hole Lard with the immortal phrases “You can’t spell Larder without using Lard” and “Ma wife loves me dripping on her t

Furlough Fashion #466 – Wickens Wednesday - 06 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #466 – Wickens Wednesday - Pulled Off on The Hard Shoulder. As you know, Kate and are devotees of cult sci-fi TV series like ‘Spacepants Patrol’ and ‘Wormhole Wars’. However, we also like a classic drama series, and some older readers will remember the US motorcycle cop series CHiPS that ran from 1977 to 1983 and starred Erik Estrada as hirsute hunk Ponch and vanilla dreamboat Larry Wilcox as the straightlaced Jon. All those great episodes when they got on their bikes and solved

Furlough Fashion #465 – Frizz Master’s Voice - 05 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #465 – Frizz Master’s Voice. It’s hot, it rains. It’s hot, it rains. It’s hot, it rains. For someone with the kind of hair that used to get used to clean the steps of a terraced house in the early 1900s all the humidity plays leads to the dreaded frizz, havoc with my ability to tease it into shape. Before Kate gives me tongs and I set to teasing, tweaking, primping, and pampering my locks my hair often looks like a terrier having a fight with a candyfloss machine. So, today I th

Furlough Fashion #464 – Skin & Tonic - 04 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #464 – Skin & Tonic. “How does he stay looking so young?” I hear people ask and assume they’re talking about me. Is it 19 hours sleep a night? Vitamins? A full morning skin care regime with scruffing, buffing and moisturising? Seaside negative ions and getting my face in the spume? Virgin’s blood? Well, no, it’s none of those things, my secret is cod liver oil filled daylight balanced lightbulbs. I don’t want to bore you with the science but my online degree in ‘Fluid Photonics’

Furlough Fashion #463 – Sucking Amazing - 01 July 2022

Furlough Fashion #463 – Sucking Amazing. A bit late in the day but that’s one of the downsides of the trainset lifestyle when you are heading all over the country spreading fashion joy. A catwalk in Crewe, a runway in Runcorn ending up with libation in Liverpool; it’s all part of the heady world of a fashionista. So, before the sun sets over my cocktail bar, I wanted to share with you my new favourite tipple: Mootopia, a milk-based concoction with an extra something of your choice to make it sin

Furlough Fashion #462- Servicing My Fans - 30 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #462- Servicing My Fans. Life at the top of the middle of the bottom 20% of the fashion market means that people want a piece you. Sometimes it’s a literal piece, like the time I was on the red carpet and someone snipped my Issey Miyagi ‘waxonwaxoff’ gown with some pinking shears, or people stop me in the street and ask questions about the other designers I know, such as “what’s Vivian Westworld really like?” or “is it true Goatier’s conical bra was originally two gold Slinkies?

Furlough Fashion #461 Wickens Wednesday–Ambling Addiction 29 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #461 Wickens Wednesday – Ambling Addiction. Most nights Kate and I like to participate in an evening trudge around the grounds of Queenswood Mansions. Whether we have just finished an immersive box set such as ‘Dragon Scroll Boob Warriors’, ‘The Mighty Swords of Netherton’ or sci-fi series ‘Spacepants Patrol’ or ‘Thrust Pilots of The Twin Mountains of Mammilla Prime’ or just be in need of some fresh air after drinking Kate’s delicious cocktails (her Vespre Martini is really dry)

Furlough Fashion #460 - Söt Och Siskig - 28 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #460 - Söt Och Siskig. Over the years our love of Swedish culture has grown; ABBA, IKEA, meatballs and more recently Noir dramas like The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge. There are still many things we don’t fully understand, like an open sandwich, which I think is a sandwich that is free to see other products like rolls and buns, how accents can change the sound of an ‘a’ into an ‘oo’ except on every other Friday during Midsommar where an umlaut appears, and it becomes ‘errr’. T

Furlough Fashion #459 – Reelin’ In The Tears - 27 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #459 – Reelin’ In The Tears. ‘The Repair Shop’ has become one of the nation’s favourite shows with its heart-warming moments as people bring in their precious objects for the team to work on. Who can forget when they re-upholstered a drug dealers’ sofa and got super-high and rode penny farthings to the nearest garage to buy all the Mars Bars, and the time they rebuilt a trebuchet and accidentally fired Jay Blades into the next county? But there is a darker side to the show. When

Furlough Fashion #458 – Crossing the Channels -24 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #458 – Crossing the Channels. With the release of Paramount+ this week it means another TV channel to subscribe to if you want to see the latest, greatest, most blockbustery, mega series. Whether it’s Star Trek, Star Wars or the forthcoming biopic Starmer (where they’ve spent millions using CGI to remove everything exciting from every shot to get it as authentic as possible). We’re awash with channels such as Netflix, Prime, HBO, Hulu, Starz, AppleTV, and Disney+ (apparently rum

Furlough Fashion #457 – Tassel Hoff - 23 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #457 – Tassel Hoff. Summer may bring sun, poolside cocktails, red foreheads and toasted buns, a deficit of carbohydrates before one’s grand tour to Marbella, shots (vaccinations and flaming Sambucas), lotions to avoid burning (I use Krypton Factor 50) and salves to cool you down if you do burn (I use the brand ‘Aloe Vera Duckworth’ with their tagline ‘Takes care of your Coronation Heat’), and buckets full of ice and beers with fruit stuffed into the top in the same way people tr

Furlough Fashion #456 - Wickens Wednesday – PJ Probe -22 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #456 - Wickens Wednesday – PJ Probe. Kate is big fan of the magazine ‘Up The Wooden Stairs: Monthly’ which reviews night-time wears; everything from bog standard pyjamas and gowns all the way up to the slinky-saucy end of the market and all those see-through diaphanous naughty nighties (I call them diaphanus as you can see your bum through them). She recently wrote to them to tell them about my status as one of the country's greatest fashion effluencers and they snapped at the c

Furlough Fashion #455 – Drain of Britain - 21 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #455 – Drain of Britain. I am in a little bit of a rush today as, due to the train strike, I will have to leave home two hours before I went to bed last night in order to catch a train that isn’t going arrive, especially as I think there’s been a what’s-the-points failure on my line this morning. But I thought I would quickly show you the work we had done in our bathroom recently by ‘Effit & Bojit’. In a cruel twist of life-imitating-art I had drawn the bathroom design on a napk

Furlough Fashion #454 – Bleach For The Stars - 20 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #454 – Bleach For The Stars. It’s been a long time since I’ve dusted off my indie trousers, plugged in my delay and reverb, fired up my fuzz and adjusted my flange, but with a gig coming up in a week I have been furiously practicing my fingering and trying not to fret. But much as the screaming solos and power chords are as important as the dry ice and wind machines and a monitor to put your foot on, a man of my fashion credentials must always make sure that finding the perfect

Furlough Fashion #453 – The Pun Has Got His Hat On - 17 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #453 – The Pun Has Got His Hat On. To hot…hotter than Satan’s piles, words not formation right in brain which is sweating on inside. My sweat is sweating…I’m wearing hot pants…not the fashion ones. Go lie down now…ice cubes in nethers…paddling pool…bland salad…sit in front of the open freezer in the nip…watch Arctic documentaries…swelter skelter…off putting feeling when sweat runs down bum cleavage…legs in shorts so white they could be made of Spectralon (look it up)…words not w

Furlough Fashion #452 – Rug Dealer - 16 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #452 – Rug Dealer. We live in a world that is less carpeted than it used to be. Homeowners now favour the bare floorboard above the Axminster so living below this can sound like Frankenstein’s Monster Riverdancing and pubs, having lost all their soft surfaces, now resound with the bouncing sonic needles of clinking glasses and staccato conversations. But the compromise seems to be having a throw or rug to cover parts of the floor and soften the sounds in the room so, with this i

Furlough Fashion #451 Wickens Wednesday-Big Purple Head 15 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #451 – Wickens Wednesday - Big Purple Head. In the days when the internet was just a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye a lot of the TV channels produced showreels full of bloopers, outtakes and specially filmed segments for their Christmas parties. Some of you may have seen the sweary edition of ‘Rainbow’, but there’s also the saucy ‘Paddington Bare’, ‘Bagpussy’, and ‘Randall & Hopkirk: Diseased’ (where they get treated for STDs), and no one wants to see ‘Scatweazle’ ever again.

Furlough Fashion #450 – Pumping Irony - 14 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #450 – Pumping Irony. My mottos used to be ‘get fat now, ask me how’ or ‘Come and have a go if you think your lard enough’ and I was also a member of the ‘Fatness Fast’ Reddit group where we gorge on recipes for the quickest way to ingest full fat, high calorie food such as grilled-cheese sandwiches with Cadburys Butons, Reese’s Risotto, battered butter, and lardons, double-cream and cheese string pasta known as Carbs-onara. But now I have eschewed the chocolate path in favour o

Furlough Fashion #449 – Hot Diggety Doug - 13 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #449 – Hot Diggety Doug. As most of you will have been aware, this weekend included the annual Doug McClure Appreciation Day.
His break came in the TV series ‘The Virginian’ about cowboys who hadn’t had sex which is why they were always so angry. They were always shooting off their pistols because they weren’t able to shoot off their pistols. He then brought much needed gravitas to B, C, D, E and F-Movie classics such as ‘Satan’s Decagon’, ‘Cannonball Run XVIII: Mobility Scoote

Furlough Fashion #447 – Flapper’s Delight. 08 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #447 – Flapper’s Delight. ever since I introduced her to the work Cole Minor (FF#284, #342, #403) Kate has become obsessed with the 1920s and 30s. She has taken to wearing intricate dresses from ‘The Need for Bead’ and has taken up the slang of the time (just the other day she said I was “a complete dewdropper and shouldn’t take any wooden nickels from a floor-flusher who was just after giggle-water or a gasper”). At the weekend, during cocktail hour, she had sucked dry a Tom Co

Furlough Fashion #445 Owner of a Lonely Fart - 07 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #446 – Owner of a Lonely Fart. I have wanted to do more outside the dressing up box and in the world of invention as I feel that style is nothing without form and function to back it up. So, I have set up the Furlough Laboratory and re-tooled into a purpose built home just behind the north-east corner of the southwest wing’s east face. I call it Furlough Laboratory’s Acme Performance Systems (or F.L.A.P.S. for short). I’ve been in and out of F.L.A.P.S. sweating over a number of

Furlough Fashion – The Ticker Man #445 - 06 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #445 – The Ticker Man. Back in the early 2000s I spent some time working for TickerMaster who provided a global messaging service via tickertape. Pagers and mobile phones were still unreliable, and most were the twice the size of 30% of a large melon cut into the shape of two house bricks cut in half. Each company had an office which contained the TickerMaster Box, and these were known as the Box Offices which were all connected to the MotherTicker 3000 back at TickerMaster HQ.

Furlough Fashion – Quince Charming #443 - 02 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #443 – Quince Charming. In all the furore over the monarch’s 75-year reign it has been completely overlooked that it is also 75 years since the invention of the Quince. It was created by Harley Quince who had led a chequered life before becoming a successful fruit grower. So, I wanted to celebrate this Quince Jubilee and discovered that back in the early years, those who wanted an early start with their jam making and enjoy the 238 kilojoules of food energy and moderate amount o

Furlough Fashion – The Very Nerve of the Centre #442 - 01 June 2022

Furlough Fashion #442 – The Very Nerve of the Centre. I thought I would give you a rare glimpse of life behind the scenes at Queenswood Mansions. We get so many requests for me to wear designer’s clothes, set up photo shoots, and give out fashion advice to some of the world’s top touchers of cloth, we set up the Central Nexus Hub. It’s a place where we can coordinate the Furlough Fashion Empire and it’s been styled like an over lit 80s sitcom set. For this picture, we dug out some vintage clothe

Furlough Fashion – Top Pun #441 - 31 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #441 – Top Pun. It’s something you wouldn’t know from the eloquence of the way what I write about fashion, but I am also fully trained in the art of paronomasia or as lay-people-persons say, puns. In the late 1980s the military funded a number of fringe projects looking at non-conventional warfare and one of them was to use language to amuse and bamboozle the enemies capabilities. Being a cunning linguist, I was recruited to be part of their Top Pun programme and spent time work

Furlough Fashion – Just Another Man Pink Monday #440 30 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #440 – Just Another Man Pink Monday. After a few days of stoicism, and being away from home, it’s great to be back relaxing and letting my hair both up, down, and out. I also added a little fringe (Americans call them bangs, probably because of their love of guns) and got to thinking about the phrase ‘teasing hair’. But then I remembered that, on the rare occasions I have been into a salon, I have seen stylists saying things to hair like “you’ve put on a bit of weight”, “it’s no

Furlough Fashion – The Eve of Distraction #439 26 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #439 – The Eve of Distraction. It’s the day before my Dad’s funeral and, having checked into the Waits Motel near the crematorium. These are a part of a chain of motels themed on the shabby chic stylings of gravel voiced Tom Waits. Just as the Chelsea Hotel has the lineage of artists and musicians such as Andy Warhol and John Lennon, the Waits Motel seeks to create somewhere that appeals to gonzo writers, hobo troubadours and leftfield, atonally ambient, non-traditional neo-prog

Furlough Fashion – Wickens Wednesday - Brass Kisser #438 25 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #438 Wickens Wednesday – Brass Kisser. I’ve recently become obsessed with brass band music after reading Hermann von Helmholtz 1885 treatise: ‘On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music”, where he talks about the instrument creating “a harmonic phenomenon wherein a passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness”. Who can resist vibratory bodies or external vibrations? It was also eloquently put

Furlough Fashion – Neck Mate #437 24 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #437 – Neck Mate. I thought yesterday’s picture of my snooker outfit would attract a lot of attention on my well tooled cue but I was wrong. Imagine my surprise when an email arrived at the Queenswood Mansions press office from the ‘World Cravatlas’, a book which shows the most stylish cravats from around the world. They said I would be the perfect ambassador for cravats which are coming back into fashion. The cravat has a glorious history; invented by the Romans, popularised by

Furlough Fashion – Cue Do You Think You Are? #436 23 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #436 – Cue Do You Think You Are? It’s true that the British love a cue, and have ever since billiards morphed into snooker amongst officers in the Indian army in the 19th century. The name snooker comes from the phrase ‘cock-a-snook’ because, well quite frankly those officers got up to some pretty questionable things. Snooker and music halls often went hand in hand during Victorian times, meaning you could sink the brown one minute and pop next door and see Fannie Leslie or laug

Furlough Fashion – Fuddled Friday #435 20 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #435 – Fuddled Friday. Back in the days of vaudeville there were lots of novelty acts that trod the boards. Long forgotten stars such as Peter Poker, The Perspicacious Piercer who did unmentionable things with sharp objects, Senior Nuts and His Mexican Tap-Dancing Squirrels, and Deptford Dave, the Dapper Dandy of East London with his popular songs “She Gives A Squeal for My Jellied Eel”, “My Raspberry Fled the Khyber Pass and Made Her Hampstead’s Chatter” and “I’m Comin’ Up Your

Furlough Fashion – Thigh Will Be Done - #434 19 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #434 – Thigh Will Be Done. On such a grey and rainy day the only physical antonym to this is to pop on something that sticks two fingers up at the slate coloured sky and says “do your worst”. In fact, the phrase ‘do your worst’ is actually a bastardisation of ‘Mach deinen Würstchent’ which came out of 1950s Germany when American rock ‘n’ roll music first arrived and a new dance craze, The Hotdog’ spread through the clubs and dive bars of Berlin after Ekkehard Prezleyteddybärherz

Furlough Fashion – Space 19,999,999 - #433 - 18 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #433 – Space 19,999,999. As you know, Kate and I have a love of long-forgotten Canadian sci-fi series such as ‘Wormhole Wars’ (FF#61 & 70), ‘Spacepants Patrol’ (FF#157, 160, 330, 369) and ‘Wanda Lust – Space Mercenary Rebel’ (FF#296) but we have recently discovered a series that is suspiciously close to a Gerry Anderson series from the 1970s. It’s the year nineteen million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine and it’s nineteen million nine hundred a

Furlough Fashion - The Gist of my Wist 2 #432 -17 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #432 - The Gist of my Wist 2. One more photograph of my month of indulgence, away from Furlough Fashion. In the midst of my wist I spent a lot of time in the East Wing boudoir which is decorated with lots of neutral colours that help calm the mood. There’s a whole range from paint sellers ‘Slapiton’ I used including ‘Mint Indolence’ and a ‘Fey Grey’ carpet from ‘Get Laid’ which were balanced by the crisp white of the crocheted bedspread. I would spend a lot of my time there in m

Furlough Fashion #431 The Gist of my Wist - 16 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #431 The Gist of my Wist. Like that phrase “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” this year has been odd and challenging and full of highs (new job) and low-lows (bereavements) so, as you can imagine, fashion has not been high on my list of priorities. During the last month I have taken to staring wistfully off into the distance and sighing deep plangent sighs. I grew my hair out (everywhere), and heard that sun on your areolas is healing when sadness descends. Appar

Furlough Fashion #430b - Return of the Mac - 15 May 2022

Furlough Fashion #430b - Return of the Mac. Well, it's been a month I can tell you. Some months slip passed unnoticed and vague, some months are full of fireworks, ice cream and winning raffle tickets, but some months come with metaphorical stones in the shoe or shopping trolleys that refuse to go the way you want them and are full of clocks that need stopping.
But more on that another time. For now, I am ready to pull on my flat cap from 'Nice Titfers', raincoat from 'Leader of the Pac A Mac'

Furlough Fashion – Frock Oeuf #430 15 April 2022

Furlough Fashion #429 – Frock Oeuf. Here we are again in the UK: the long weekend where we buy enough food for a week and still moan when the supermarkets are shut on Sunday and we’ve forgotten to buy some potatoes and have to go to the corner shop to buy some green potatoes at three times the price, we aim to park the car on the A303 with Stonehenge a speck on the horizon for 5 hours, families get together for a reminder of the arguments they had at Christmas and we enjoy 2 grammes of chocolate

FF SR 429 13 Apr 2022

Furlough Fashion #429 – Did You Just Art? – Wickens Wednesday. With the moth infestation slowly being dealt with by Bill Wyman who now runs bug exterminator company ‘Tumbling Lice’ (with the motto “You can get satisfaction from this Rolling Stone who gathers some moths”). So, Kate and I have been using the rooms in Queenswood Mansions that have no clothes and little in the way of soft furnishings and that’s when I suggested staging an art exhibition in the QM gallery space. I immediately started

Furlough Fashion – Slack Adder #428 07 Apr 2022

Furlough Fashion #428 – Slack Adder. As some of you many know Kate is very good with numbers, she’s a whizz with a spreadsheet and can do long, short and quite close division, as well as adding, subtracting, subcontracting, and multerplacations. She insists on keeping two sets of books for the household and says one of them is kept wrapped in plastic and in the toilet cistern in case of fire. She does all this so we can live within our means, and we regularly go through everything together; me w

Furlough Fashion – Sitting Proud In The Morning #426 05 Apr 2022

Furlough Fashion #426 – Sitting Proud In The Morning. As a fashionista you are used to seeing me in all my finished finery having been primped, plucked, powdered, and preened (which I think was the follow up to ‘Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered’), but today I thought I would give you a glimpse behind my velvet curtains and show you where the man becomes the myth. I am pictured in the corner of the master bedroom, where my vanity is covered in Kate, and I am calling down to the kitchen to order

Furlough Fashion - Brolly-Olly-Olly #425 04 Apr 2022

Furlough Fashion #425 - Brolly-Olly-Olly. We love talking about the weather in this country: “Raining cats and dogs”, “nice weather for ducks”, “One swallow doesn't make a summer” (depends on how good your summer was). Sadly, these expressions are becoming redundant and we may have to make up different ones, like “Raining Parrots and Penguins”, “Nice weather for amphibious trucks” or “Weather’s changing quicker than a Tory U-turn”. We can no longer “save for a rainy day” because we only get to a

Furlough Fashion – Old Dog New Wicks #425 01 Apr 2022

Furlough Fashion #425 – Old Dog New Wicks. I know that when I say when people are surveyed on their favourite objects there are two things that consistently top the list. That’s right, codpieces and candelabras. It’s hard to imagine the popularity of these ever waning and hardly a day goes by when I don’t spot an enormous, decorated bulge on the street or pass a codpiece or candelabra shop like ‘Battle of the Bulge’, or ‘Teenage Wicks’, ‘Cod Bless Us All’ or ‘Candle Bars’, ‘Cameo-m-g’ or ‘Waxplo

Furlough Fashion–Wickens Thursday–Kung Foolery #423 31 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #424 – Wickens Thursday – Kung Foolery. After taking yesterday off from fashion Kate was keen to make sure I wasn’t going to get out of shape, so we crunched our way down the gravel drive to the parade ground by the east wing gates where she introduced me to her own brand of martial arts called Cháhú Zhī Dào (or The Way of The Teapot). There are many forms of the martial arts around the world including Huka-huka from Brazil (you fight on a thin strip of grass), Turkey’s Oil Wres

Furlough Fashion – Tiramisuits You #422 29 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #422 – Tiramisuits You. I forgot to mention that at the weekend I took part in the local annual tiramisu making championships sponsored by hardcore baking company X-Sponge. Local businesses all make their take on the classic dish including solicitors Stuffem, Billalot, Shaftingus, and Smith who make their tiramisue-you every year which only takes them an hour but costs £2000. The cobblers make a Tiramishoe, a giant shoe-shaped desert that always buckles, the Opposites Society (t

Furlough Fashion – Show Us Your Tints #421 28 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #416 – Show Us Your Tints. Given the state of the world at the moment I wanted to test the theory that looking at everything through rose-tinted glasses would make a difference. I started by sticking some rose petals to a pair of sunglasses but, despite everything smelling like Turkish Delight, mainly I just walked into things. Then I use a rose-coloured Sharpie to ‘tint’ the lenses, but this had the same effect and I ended up wandering into the Queenswood Mansions maze where I

Furlough Fashion – True Love #420 25 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #420 – True Love. I know that everyone loves ‘Love Actually’ with its ten stories including a Prime Minister falling for a junior staffer, that Bob Dylan man showing signs to his best friend’s wife and a tiny drummer wooing a tiny American. But as heart warming as millions of people seem to find it, it is sadly lacking in a lot of information about the mechanics of love. I have therefore started producing a short film called ‘Love Factually’ which outlines what’s ‘actually’ happ

Furlough Fashion – Frights in White Satin #419 24 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #419 – Frights in White Satin. All the work I have been doing as an Axe-orcist reminded me of those old portmanteau shows like which had either a horror or sci-fi theme. I miss those old shows so have decided to approach the streaming services with an idea for a new show. I’m calling it ‘Ornate Armchair Theatre – Tales to Give You The Willies’ where I play the part of Baron Skrämmande Skräck, a gravelly old cove with a voice resonating heavily with doom who reads from his ‘Chron

Furlough Fashion – Throwback Wickens Wednesday #418 23 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #418 – Throwback Wickens Wednesday. It’ hard to believe it’s been nearly 12 years since a pompadour-haired estate agent handed us the keys to the sprawling acreage of Queenswood Mansions and took this picture of us in the clothes of the time (an outfit from ‘Tweed the Birds’ for Kate and one from ‘Twill Power’ for me). From the first moment we passed through the gates and drove up the 8 miles of the gravel path to the main house we knew it was the place for us.

We had a lot of

Furlough Fashion – Ghouls Aloud #417 22 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #417 – Ghouls Aloud. A few years back a shelf of DVDs collapsed in the media room, and I was hit on the head by a copy of the Exorcist and a documentary about luthiers called ‘Hole Lotta Rosewood’. After that I realised I had developed second, third and sometimes even third and a half sight. Then a guitarist friend was having trouble tuning their antique Martin and when I touched it I instantly knew that it was had been inhabited by the spirit of a tone-deaf turnip farmer from t

Furlough Fashion – Who Wants to See My Snake? #416 21 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #416 – Who Wants to See My Snake? This weekend I watched John Carpenter’s 1981 dystopian classic ‘Escape From New York’ starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken and I thought to myself that we rarely make these kinds of films made in this country. So, I have decided to make my own version set in London and called ‘Escape From New Cross’.

Set in the not to distant future (next week or the week after, I’m thinking) when New Cross has become a lawless sector of London, walled off

Furlough Fashion 3-Piece Sweetness - 415 18 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #415 3-Piece Sweetness. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and reach for the jogging bottoms or lederhosen and at other times you just know that today is the day you want to be the dapperest, most debonairest, most urbanified gentleman around. This morning was such a morning. So, I whipped out my cutthroat, got my phizog as smooth as buttered silk, scruffed and buffed and then lathered myself up with some of the finest lotions and unguents money can buy, such as ‘Cuthbert’s Ol

Furlough Fashion-Things Are Not Always What They Seem #414 17 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #414 Things are not always what they seem. This looks like a beautiful picture of me enjoying an al fresco guitar playing session on the artificial beach at the bottom of the imported cliff that runs behind the South Wing of Queenswood Mansions. However, I had to put the guitar down as I was feeling a little bilious and Kate snapped this picture of me nearly beating the current world record for holding the longest burp which stands at 1 minute 13 seconds 57 milliseconds. Annoyin

Furlough Fashion - Wickens Wednesday - Drum Chums #413 16 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #413 Wickens Wednesday - Drum Chums. We all know one of the best ways to relieve tension for couples. Oh dear, I know what you’re thinking, you must have such dirty minds, No, it’s drumming. Hammering on the big bass drum, twatting the tom toms, and getting red raw hands from your bongos. So, from time-to-time we withdraw to the soundproof drum lab, next door to Gingersound Studios, for a massive pounding session. However, playing drums on a drum is not without its problems, we

Furlough Fashion - Gluteus to the Maximus #412 15 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #Gluteus to the Maximus. I love mussels, plump little guys, all pillowy and flavoursome. One of my favourite meals is mussels in Pernod, garlic and butter which friends introduced me to when we went to Savoir Faire in central London. Yum! So, when I got a call from Mussel Boy magazine asking me to be their cover star I was over the moon. I thought I would be in for a day of posing and putting away several kilos of freshly caught mussels while the camera shutter clicked away. I h

Furlough Fashion - What Wattage for Your Cottage #411 14 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #411 What Wattage for Your Cottage. FF was posted slightly late today as a fuse blew in Queenswood Mansions and took out a number of the 10,000 lightbulbs in the various rooms, wings, dancefloors, studios, conservatories, and spas. So, I have been off on the golf cart dragging a trailer of replacements and changing the ones that had blown. We’ve got energy saving, LED, incandescent, fluorescent, filament, strip (my favourite) ones that flicker and ones that change colour with an

Furlough Fashion – Frubbles #410 11 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #410 – Frubbles. Yes, Friday bubbles are now officially a thing. In keeping with new guidelines issued by the Bubble Marketing Board we are all advised to indulge in something sparkling on a Friday. As you can’t all avail yourself of my sparkling personality in a one-to-one setting, I would urge you to include something sparkling in your trolley or basket today. Bubbles are fascinating things and offer examples of elasticity (the thing that stops your undies from succumbing to g

Furlough Fashion–Yellow, Is It Me You’re Looking For #409 10 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #409 – Yellow, Is It Me You’re Looking For? Woke up with a slight case of ennui (which is not to be confused with the even worse English phrase ‘on wee’). After scrolling through my online wardrobe to choose today’s outfit I found something that would suit my mood and jumped onto the Queenswood Mansions golfcart and headed off to Sector 76 to pick up my selection: an outfit designed by ‘The New Sour Generation’.

Somehow, I felt that yellow matched my mood and the word Lemonchol

Furlough Fashion – Wickens Wednesday - None More Noir #408 09 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #408 – Wickens Wednesday - None More Noir. Since my time at film school (“was that just after the talkies were introduced?” I hear you say, you cheeky monkey, you) I have loved a film noir. The high contrast tones, the hard-boiled nature of the stories and the hats. The film industry periodically tries to revive the style but usually with modern sensibilities like blood, gore and a lot of sexy-fun-time scenes. But I prefer the era of one-punch knockouts, women with inexplicable

Furlough Fashion – Saint Misbehavin’ #407 08 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #407 – Saint Misbehavin’. Happy St. Bernard’s Day everyone (whether you pronounce it Bern-ard or Bern-ood). It’s that time of year when all the good little boys and girls wait with bated breath for the treats that St. Bernard has brought them. Small deposits of Holy Crap (well, really just Cadbury’s Picnics) and Yellow Snow (lemon slushies) and 20 litre polypins of Rum for the adults. All of these treats symbolically help us survive the winter months and make it safely to spring

Furlough Fashion – Worn to be Mild #406 07 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #406 – Worn to be Mild. Sometimes you have to go back to the fashion classics, the LBD, a Fred Perry, turtleneck, the codpiece. This weekend as I had been inspired by watching a couple of classic motorcycle documentaries: ‘Fight With the Wind’ and ‘Pour Me A Cup of TT’, the 50’s Spanish biker film ‘The Wild Juan’ and that classic of the female cycle gang subgenre ‘Savage She-Devil Motorcycle Angels From Hell Ride At Dawn’. So, I reached for a white t-shirt and leather trousers f

Furlough Fashion – Fizz Dark Materials #405 04 Mar 2022

Furlough Fashion #405 – Fizz Dark Materials. I’ve noticed it’s popular to put up pictures from the past. So, I wanted to share something from my past that might be a lesson for us all. Back in the 90s I had a huge Coke problem, there I said it! I was working hard during the day and playing hard at night going to some of the trendiest clubs in London such as ‘Touching Cloth’ (which became Fabric), Ministry of Sand (they had a beach in the club), the New Romantic ‘Lace of Spades’, and gay clubs su

Furlough Fashion – Always Believe In. #404 03 March 2022

Furlough Fashion #404 – Always Believe In. Of all the many plaudits I have received for my tireless work in the field of fashion it’s been my great pleasure to be contacted by exclusive electric car manufacturer LKL-SASF (or ‘Leistungsstarke Kraftstoffeinspritzung Lässt Schickes Auto Schnell Fahren’ to give it its full name) as they wanted me to model for their new hood ornament. Rolls Royce’s has its ‘Spirit of Ecstasy’, Bentley has the ‘Flying B’, BMW the ‘Middle Finger Extended’ and who can f

Furlough Fashion - Wickens High Kickin’ Wednesday #403 02 March 2022

Furlough Fashion - Wickens High Kickin’ Wednesday. Ever since 2016’s ‘La La Land’ musicals have been back on the radar. Tinsel Town has always been in thrall to boas, sequins and turn-turn-kick-turn, one-two-three- kick-turn. Who can forget recent classics such as ‘Red Hot Tamales’, ‘Three Hips and a Hooray Henry’, ‘Big Bust on Wall Street’, ‘The Mango Tango Fandango’, ‘A Wonderful Night In Rio Ferdinand’, and jukebox musicals like ‘Wurlitzer Wonderful Life’. I am spearheading a revival of the

Furlough Fashion – Getting Blade Tonight #402 01 March 2022

Furlough Fashion #402 – Getting Blade Tonight. Ice Skating has never been more popular; whether it’s the many rinks popping up in winter to minor celebrities wobbling about on skates for ratings. There are many more TV shows currently being planned such as stars in Victorian dress for ‘Skate Expectations’, ‘Ice To See You, To See You Ice’, the show that Bruce Forsyth was planning before his death, and, to celebrate skating’s origins in Finland I’ve been working on a show called ‘Happy Finnish’ w

Furlough Fashion – Deadly Wood #401 28 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #401 – Deadly Wood. How much Chuck can a Nunchuck chuck? After a week of COVID symptoms I needed to get into shape, and I remembered British 70s action star Nunchuck Norris who extolled the virtues of fitness through martial arts. You may remember Nunchuck Norris from those low budget-big explosions films like ‘Missing In Acton’, ‘Mortal Deadliness’, ‘Mortal Deadliness II: Fatal Lethality’, ‘Fist Man’, ‘Fist Man II: Fist & The Furious’, ‘Shaolin Kung Fu Dragon Master Warrior Ass

Furlough Fashion–Calm B4 the Storm In a Teacup #399 - 16 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #399 – Calm Before the Storm In a Teacup. Wickens Wednesday. Valves are being warmed up and nobs are being oiled to stop them sticking because Gingersound Studio is ready to put the finishing touches to FF#400. I’ve laid down the bass (yes, I can go very low) and broke my G-String shredding guitar. I aim to bring you the best cover version I can; not just a static inducing nylon slipcover but a proper Egyptian Cotton duvet cover.

FF400 also means that Kate morphs into her music

Furlough Fashion - A Scale of a Time #398 15 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #398 A Scale of a Time. We don’t do it very often, but matching clothes to decoration does have its place at Queenswood Mansions. As demonstrated by today’s picture where I had bought an outstanding fish-tailed outfit from ‘Cod Is In The Details’ and thought, ‘that would make great wallpaper’. So, I created a room where you could live the life aquatic, relax and have a little nap, I called it La Dozy Mer room. It’s where I lounge around listening to Gill Scott Heron, Clam & Dave

FF SR 397 14 February 2022

Furlough Fashion – Starter for Ten #396 11 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #396 – Starter for Ten. With the sad passing of Bamber (Paul) Gascoigne this week I was reminded that, in the early 1990s, I worked on a spin-off of his hit show called Polytechnic Challenge. It was thought that the questions should less complex than those given to Toffington College Cambridge or Spyhome College Oxford. Having had a Polytechnic edukation like what I did, I impressed the TV Execs with my ability to skin up and down 6 pints in 6 minutes.

In the pilot we had two

Furlough Fashion – Battle of the Bulge #395 10 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #395 – Battle of the Bulge. I deal with a lot of couriers as I get a lot delivered round the loading bay at Queenswood Mansions. Whether I am ordering vinyl by the foot, receiving this month’s shipping container of trainers, or getting our bulk orders from JM-Hell (we recently got the lightless bulb which, once installed, saves you having to turn off the light, ‘Holy Pluck’ tweezers for hirsute clergy and the Storage 2000 System, which saves space by allowing you to store your s

FF SR 394 09 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #394 – Wickens Wednesday. Hoe-M-G. We’re close to that time of year when a certain woman of the house is looking to get some forking done in the undergrowth. Every Spring it’s the same, the bush is out of control, borders need a good trim, the hothouse needs a good clean, you need to check your butt is full and there’s plenty of compost. Kate has green fingers (as do I, but not for the same reason) and last year we had a cornucopia of produce from the walled garden behind the Ea

Furlough Fashion – Up Diddly Up #393 08 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #393 – Up Diddly Up. For quite a few years, wherever I go, people have shouted at me. When I was young it was related to the colour of my hair: ‘Ralph Malph’, ‘Beaker’, ‘Duracell’, ‘Belisha’ and so on. As I have faded from ‘on-fire’ to grey via ‘russet-in-the-gusset’ the epithets have changed and now, as I wander the Earth like Caine in ‘Kung Fu’, I have been perplexed as to why one particular rude word has been aimed at me.

But, by chance, when I was searching for Dutch aircr

Furlough Fashion - Shoe Dares Wins #392 07 February 2022

Furlough Fashion #392 – Shoe Dares Wins. During my week away from fashion passion I did a variety of things such as spending time in the metaverse as Lord Silver-Horn Goldmane III (a plush unicorn in rainbow-kitten-butterfly land) a little time looking at camp sites online as I hate camping and like to remind myself how nice it is to sleep in a real bed in a warm, rain-free home with walls and a ceiling. But one of the major jobs during the week was an audit of all the shoes, boots and trainers

Furlough Fashion - Jumper Week #5 – Fluff Trade #391 28 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #391 - Jumper Week #5 – Fluff Trade. Well, it’s the final day of Jumper week and The Society for Pullovers, Undergarments, Nylons and Knitwear is very happy that they have shifted a lot if units (especially the heavy one in the kitchen that holds all the plates and cups). But we wanted to end on the cutting edge of jumper-science where designers are working at the top of their game unincumbered by convention, splicing V-necks with turtlenecks, re-wiring cable knit, and creating

Furlough Fashion - Jumper Week #4. Sew What? #390 27 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #390 - Jumper Week #4. Sew What? The Society for Pullovers, Undergarments, Nylons and Knitwear, with Furlough Fashion, has been working to raise the profile of Jazz. Like most people, I tried jazz in college where a small group of friends introduced me to trad, big band, and swing which turned out to be the gateway genre to bebop. From there I got hooked on free jazz and polyrhythmic atonality and soon I was spending all my grant money in clubs like ‘Daddios Sauce’ and ‘L’Orycté

Furlough Fashion-Jumper Week #3 #389 26 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #389 – Jumper Week #3. Wickens Woolly Wednesday. The world of inspirational talks and books is a crowded market and we’ve all heard of ‘Think Yourself Taller’, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Nuns’ and ‘Dazzle! Sparkle Your Way To The Top’, but there’s a new player in the sandpit and they have chosen to use Furlough Fashion and Jumper Week as a platform for their books. So, all aboard ‘Loco Motovation’, the train-based book that will help you stay on the rails and “choo-choo-c

Furlough Fashion – Jumper Week #2 #388 25 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #388 – Jumper Week #2. Today’s jumper was brought about by a discussion I had with a few unlearned gentlemen about how they had tried to watch some TED talks but really struggled to understand anything about the subjects such as ‘The Duality of Singularities and How They Affect Polycarbonate Structures’, ‘The Cynicism of Cynicism and How Optimistic Cynicism Can Be Utilised in Critical Thinking’ and so on. So, I thought why not start a series of lectures on simpler, softer subjec

Furlough Fashion – Jumper Week #1 #387 24 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #387 – Jumper Week #1. The weekend has been spent in a cloud of wool as I have been preparing for International National Jumper Week which starts today (I’m sure you have seen the social media campaigns and billboards in your area). It’s become apparent to the Society for Pullovers, Undergarments, Nylons and Knitwear that people don’t know that jumpers can be worn all year round, not just at Christmas covered in bells, lights and 3-dimensional objects like Christmas Puddings or

Furlough Fashion – Wig Out Friday #386 21 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #386 – Wig Out Friday. “What’s that on your head? A Wig! What’s that on your head? A Wig! I say what’s that on your head? A Wig! What’s that on your head? A Wig! WIG! WIG! WIG! WIG! WIG! WIG! WIG! WIG!”. Wise words from the B-52’s I think you’ll agree. I bring this up as the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that very, very, very, very occasionally, in some of the pictures I post, it’s not my actual hair. Some of you may not have even noticed. Every so often I suffer stres

Furlough Fashion - The Red Baroness #385 20 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #385 - The Red Baroness. I can’t seem to keep away from the colour red this week especially as I uncovered something I bought a while back but had yet to wear. It’s a delightful diaphanous vintage 'Red Baroness' outfit from a small 60s boutique called ‘The Giraffe Laughed While the Taffeta Carafe Autographed the Chronograph Scarf’ (God knows how they got that on the shop front). This particular dress caused a sensation when it was worn by Anoushka Von Velch at Cocoa Giselle’s Lo

Furlough Fashion-Wickens Frost In Space Wednesday #384 19 January 2022

Furlough Fashion # Wickens Frost In Space Wednesday. When one starts to get a reputation for style gurudom and cunning linguistic dexter-fletchery when one has a drop bread gorgeous girlfriend-partner-lady-person, people naturally want some of that sparkle to rub off on their products (something I once got thrown out of a John Lewis for). Endorsing products goes with the territory if you’re an enormous effluencer like what I am so I will entertain putting my heft behind something if it’s on bran

Furlough Fashion - Red Wedgie #383 18 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #383 - Red Wedgie. Well, after wearing the Thighscraper boots yesterday I was much admired for the vibrancy of my redness (something that normally means a trip to the Doctor). People couldn’t decide whether the colour was pillar box or fire engine red but after two small children tried to post things in my knees, we’ll go with pillar box red. When I got home, I pondered lonely as a cloud (during a red sky at night) about a second day of redness and went off digging through the w

Furlough Fashion – The End Is Thigh #382 17 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #382 – The End Is Thigh. As I come close to the end of my current work contract it’s time to reveal a little more of myself to my temporary colleagues. Part of my admin duties has been to organise the stationary cupboard. They used to have a moving cabinet, but people got sick of never knowing where it was. It’s a mammoth repository of all the things that make a stationaryphile such as me weep with joy. They have hole punches, hole kicks, staplers, staple-removers, staple staple

Furlough Fashion - The Pipes Are Calling #381 14 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #381 - The Pipes Are Calling. I dodged a problem this coming weekend when a friend invited me to a karaoke competition up in Sheffield. I was a bit confused when they said I should work on my upper body strength, so after a few questions I discovered it was the annual ‘Carry Oakey’ competition where people take turns carrying Human League singer Phil Oakey round an obstacle course. I apologised and said I didn’t feel any fascination for this, but really wanted to sing this weeke

Furlough Fashion – Columbo Selector #380 13 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #380 – Columbo Selector. It’s dress like a detective day at work. I had wanted to go as Dalziel and Pascoe, but Sarah Pascoe wasn’t free, so I have chosen to go as the man who bumbles and shuffles and really pisses people off. No, not Boris Johnson as he couldn’t detect the killer if they were standing over the body shouting “It was me, I did it, I am the killer. Over here, it’s me the killer” but Lt. Columbo the Los Angeles detective who spends his time tracking down a famous s

Furlough Fashion - Wickens Operatic Wednesday #379 12 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #379 - Wickens Operatic Wednesday. While eating a huge plate of mashed potato and listening to some opera at the weekend a lightbulb went off over my head; it was Kate turning on the main light but that’s not important. Then I had the idea to ‘mash up’ opera with popular culture and so make it more accessible to young people (or sic, lit, GOAT or on fleek as they would say down at the youth club disco). So far, I have plotted out ‘La Bohèmsworth’ which features Thor, topless thr

Furlough Fashion - Remote Remote #378 11 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #378 – Remote remote. You hear it all the time “Where’s the remote?”, “Who had the remote last?”, “Yes, I checked down the side of the sofa cushions”, “Has one of you put it in the fridge again?”. Life is hard when the remote becomes remote. You can’t change channel, but the last channel selected only shows ‘The Real Housewives of Lewisham’s Big Gypsy Bake Off on Ice’ but you really want to watch that documentary on BBC4 about how the discovery of penicillin saved the artisanal

Furlough Fashion – Chairman of the Orb #377 10 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #377 – Chairman of the Orb. Ever found yourself thinking “I want to listen to Americana music at the same time you have your fortune told”? Well, my current venture is so far up your street you’ll think I moved in next door. I bring you Father John Mystic: he sees all, and he sings all, especially arch post-modern lyrics on tracks like ‘Nunhead Cemetery Forever’, ‘Rye Wit on Rye Bread with a Super Rye Guy’, ‘Tea for the Tillman’, ‘Gateaux Lobbing #9.5 (in DmajSus9 for Two Virgin

Furlough Fashion – Well Hung #376 07 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #376 – Well Hung. As the weekend fast approaches, I have been thinking about the fact that pictures become invisible when they have been up the same place for too long so I have started rearranging some of the best Furlough Fashion images I display in the long corridor between the East, South West and North West South wings of the house. I call it the Ufitzme Gallery.

It’s the back end of the working week so it’s time to ease myself into the weekend, and what better way to do t

Furlough Fashion – FRA(LOST)NC #375 06 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #375 – FRA(LOST)NCE – Bit of a misunderstanding at Queenswood Mansions after a discuss last night. Kate was watching a TV programme and I came into the room as she was saying how much she wanted Bonnie Tyler. Never one to deny my princess I did an immediate U-turn and headed off to the walk-in warehouse to see what I could do about it. I managed to locate the perfect top from vintage 80’s outfitters ‘Pullover the Rainbow’ and spent several hours bleaching and back combing my hai

Furlough Fashion – Wickens Grapple Wednesday #374 05 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #374 –Wickens Grapple Wednesday. Back in February 2021 (FF#165) Kate set up the WWF (Wickens Wrestling Foundation) on Zoom and I was wrestling under the name The Urologist. We had to shut it down for a while after I pulled a muscle (although it wasn’t one of mine) but in order to shift some of that Christmas weight we’re starting up again. I’m trying a different character this time and drew inspiration from the turn-of-the-century strongmen to create Arsen Prolapski with Kate as

Furlough Fashion - Call Me The Wild Mauver #373 04 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #373 - Call Me The Wild Mauver. One of the worst things about going back to work after the Christmas break is that people can see every ounce of what you’ve been eating and drinking. Everyone has their snack traditions and favourite tipples and this year I have binged on a K2-sized bag of Brazil nuts, Christmas Wagon Wheels (with the snowball marshmallow centre), the new Over 18, alcoholic, hipster Newberry Fruits with risky flavours like dragon fruit, quinoa, and durian, After

Furlough Fashion - Fists Up In 2022 #372 03 January 2022

Furlough Fashion #Fists Up In 2022. Some years need to be approached with respectful genuflection and others with vigour and gusto, but I thought the best strategy for 2022 was to come out the corner fighting. I know how much some of you appreciate boxing, or ’The Nobel Art’ as Laureate, fight enthusiast and notorious street brawler Kofi Annan called it. We can all appreciate the power of a fist in the ring, and I have a strong feeling that 2022 is not averse to hitting below the belt and a bit

Furlough Fashion – It’s a Wrap! #371 31 December 2021

So before Old Father Time wields his enormous chopper and cuts away the vestigial remains of 2021, I hope you have a fantastic New Year’s Eve guzzling down the liquid of your choice (Custard Cream Bourbon with Risky Business and Lambrini mixers plus Quorn Star Martinis here at Queenswood Mansions). I also wish you all an amazing 2022 when I hope you are able to adequately defend your compound from marauding hordes of looters, armed Brexiteers and Tory party members who, rumour has it, will legal

Furlough Fashion – Cover Me! #370 30 December 2021

Furlough Fashion #370 – Cover Me! I’ve just been updating my portfolio to include recent Furlough Fashion outfits that have been featured in some of South London’s biggest magazines such as ‘SMELLE’ which is a big glossy that deals with fragrance and fashion and where ‘Fur L’eau’ was featured (see FF#93 in July 2020), 'Harpo’s Bizarre’, started by the honking Marx Brother to celebrate tramp chic, Liverpool’s ‘Good Scousekeeping’, because a Liverpudlian is for life not just Christmas, ‘Marie Clai

Furlough Fashion – Handling My Bolex #362 28 December 2021

Furlough Fashion #362 –Handling My Bolex. One of the great presents from this year’s cache was a vintage 16mm cine camera. I’ve been telling Kate about the Bolex I played with during my time at college. The thrill of exposing the cans after popping out my light meter, the rush when hearing the motor whir as it captures over 10 seconds of action in one go. However, I got the deluxe version with a double power pack which gives over 5 minutes of filming time before you have to charge them for 12 ho

Furlough Fashion - BFPO. #361 27 December 2021

Furlough Fashion #361 – BFPO. I hope you all pulled off a fabulous Christmas but as you were straining the waistband on your clothes, I hope you spared a thought for those serving the fashion industry away from home: British Fashionistas Posted Overseas. This year I was contacted by Fashion Lovers Overseas United National Council (of) Exhibitionists (or F.L.O.U.N.C.E.) to broadcast a thank you message to all those currently serving the couture cause overseas. I headed straight down to the Furlou

Furlough Fashion - Happy Christmas - 25 December 2021

I wanted to wish you all a very merry Furlough Fashion Christmas from all of us at Queenswood Mansions. Now I'm off for some breakfast cocktails such as The Slay Ride (lots of vodka, cranberry with a dusting of icing sugar), a Dirty Rudolph (a bloody Mary decorated with 2 glacé cherries stuck to the stick of celery) and 'A Slow Comfortable Scrooge Against the Wall' (a mixture of 3 spirits).

Furlough Fashion – My Christmas Package. #365 24 December 2021

Furlough Fashion #365 – My Christmas Package. Today I invite you to come and experience my Christmas package as I don the mantle of Paul Effington Cook, crooner at large. You may remember the many albums I have released over the years such as ‘How Croon Is Now’ my lounge versions of Smiths songs, ‘Dark Side of the Croon’, my lounge versions of Pink Floyd songs, and ‘A Croonful of Sugar, Helps the Medicine Goes down’, my lounge version of Disney songs. Well I thought it was time I disgorged some

Furlough Fashion - A Nod’s As Good As A Wink #364 23 December 2021

Furlough Fashion #364 – A Nod’s As Good As A Wink. Kate said she wanted mutton chops for her Christmas Eve-Eve tea. I instantly knew that mutton chops was code for the fact that it’s not really Christmas until you hear the steel vocal cords of Noddy screaming. So, you can imagine the surprised look on Kate’s face early this morning when I brought her a cup of tea dressed in my 70s finery, with my whiskers bristling, and screamed “It’s CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII