Eggshell Heart, Cat Mouse Cat  :)  xx

~ Jackie Curley

Lennon is my cat.

I know I’ve told everyone about this before, but it needs to be aired once more.  Here is my bro’s band, Last Believer, at a charity gig.  Just look at who they had the pleasure of performing for. 

NB: He was like that for the full half hour set!  :D It’s funnier because he’s French.

Just like that old saying:

When a robot’s leggings fall down, someone needs to pull them up again.

Of all the dull things that the dullest festival in the world offered, at least it introduced me to this.

Heartbeats by The Knife.

(NB: The Knife did not cover this as I first stated.  José did!  Merci, @ItsGarryInnit.)

Here is a status - without a hint of irony - that recently appeared on my Facebook news feed:

Whatsherface Is worried about 2nyt but fingers crossed.xxx 

Thingymebob: good luck for what ever your doing tonight x  

Whatsherface: Cheers Thingymebob! Iv gota sign language exam

(And it’s ‘you’RE’!)

I’m doing the Birmingham Half Marathon which is almost half as impressive as doing the London Marathon. I’d proper love it if you sponsored me. It’s for a well good cause. Cheers! :)

http://www.justgiving.com/jade-curley

Love you!  :)

My new favourite person.  I want to share every single video with you all but instead I shall just instruct you to watch all 544 at your own convenience.  This here link is a good start.  May I also recommend the following:

Ghostbusters Dance

Who Are You Halloween Dance

Private Dancer Dance

Peter Gunn Dance

Mr Vain Dance 2

I’d also like to draw your attention to her second channel where she has a further 81 videos for our viewing pleasure. 

David Cameron and Nick Clegg walk into a bookshop and ask for a book on coalitions.
The storekeeper says “It’s over there on the left … sorry I mean the right … No! I tell a lie. We sold out”.

You can hear my first radio broadcast here.  You can even download it and take me with you wherever you go. 

Aw.

PS: “Does exactly what it says on the tin” was supposed to come out a lot more ironic.

…And it begins.  :)

When I was 13, I decided that I wanted to present Blue Peter and carried this lazy dream for a number of years.  When I was 19, I travelled to Glasgow to attend a TV presenter audition, but Holly Willoughbygot that job.  I was pretty crap, I admit: years of practice in my bedroom and an overly scripted rehearsal in my hotel room the night before only provided shakes and stutters and a massive loss of dignity in theatre 4 at the Odeon.  I also came across a lot of annoying arses which made me rethink my personality traits: instead of allowing my charm and wit to distill, I had to be instantly irritating, and at the time that wasn’t natural to me.

Almost ten years ago a school friend, Topher, filmed an audition tape which I sent off following an advert I’d read (possibly in TV Quick).  I heard nothing, but I’ve since watched the tape and I wasn’t nay bad - if a little scripted.

I’d always pondered, though, on radio presenting.  More mature, maybe, and less visuals.  I applied to my local hospital radio around five years ago and heard nothing from them until about a year later (the reason being that the person in charge at the time was a bit useless.  It wasn’t because of me!), by which point my burst of enthusiasm had sizzled out and I decided to go back to carving an ordinary life and hope that one day something would fall in my lap.  Although…

Around the same time of applying to the radio, I bagged myself a month’s worth of work experience at CBBC.  On my first day I casually remarked to one of the producers that ‘in an ideal world’ I’d like to go into presenting but floor management had caught my eye.  And there was my label.

At the end of my stint I arranged a meeting with a CBBC executive to discuss my options.  He happened to mention that he’d been told heard about my career aspiration.  Not the mildly unrealistic one, but the unrealistic one.  With inward panic and a massive smile I gave the answer, ‘Mr Executive.  If you came to me and said, ‘Jade, we’ve come up with this programme that just so happens to be called The Jade Curley Show and we think you’d be perfect for it,’ I wouldn’t turn it down, but otherwise, I’m not gonna chase it.’  Mr Executive laughed and I narrowly escaped a lynching.

As I grew up I realised what a horrible career TV presenting would be and that being a wacky, krazy kat wasn’t where I wanted to go.  Thank frig. 

A couple of months ago, the hospital radio left me a voicemail asking me to contact them and have since left another four or five messages on my home answerphone.  They’d want me to begin with fundraising for a few months (I just did the typo of ‘moths’.  Please reread that bit with ‘moths’ instead) and then possibly move into radio production.  It’s funny they should say that…

Four weeks ago, Topher contacted me on Facebook, having not properly spoken for a few years, bar the Facebook adding, catch up process.  He explained that he and a friend are setting up a promotions company and were putting on a live rock night in Birmingham for unsigned bands.  They were also discussing a radio show option and remembering my interest in frontline media, asked me to get involved.  Years of sitting on my arse had finally paid off.  What I didn’t realise was that I was being invited to feed from a very large silver platter.

It stayed quite quiet until last week and I have an slight inkling now, as to what it must feel like to be an X Factorfinalist.  The night is due to kick off on the 29th of this month and the radio show on May 3rd.  I went to meet Topher and Dave to look around the venue and Scarlet Harlots turned up too.  That was a tad overwhelming but mainly exciting.  We went for food to debrief and I was told that I’d eventually be hosting the night.  In front of 2000 people.  Christ.  But it was a couple of days ago when we met again and visited the station that my head imploded…

They explained the depth and length they want go and that I would be the face of Angry Duck.  May I say now, that these guys do not mess about.  Both have exceptionally strong backgrounds in PR and the like and are highly successful in their own right.  They want to make me a local celebrity and in 12 months time are hoping to have extended the show from one hour to three and take Upstagedon national tours and give my face national recognition.  They intend to take it to the level of success that I’ll be poached from national stations.  That all depends if I’m not shit. They’re fully aware of fallbacks and setbacks; I’m being given warning of the potential to check if I’m okay with it.  I think I am!  I’m also prepared for this to go nowhere and it just be bit of a giggle.

Naturally, my concern lies with my uni work.  Come September, I’ll be starting my third year.  I’ve been told not to worry and it will be dealt with at the time.  They’ve used to the term ‘breed familiarity’ for times when I won’t be available and there’s also the possibility of a co-host.

The next week will have me in the studio getting practice and learning the ropes, as well as recording sound bites.  It’s all go.  I’m not as overwhelmed as I was on Monday, but I’m still feeling a little taken aback and I’m somewhat cacking myself.  I’ll have to have a photoshoot for my online biography and I need an awful lot of mental preparation and relaxtion.  Maybe now is the time to go for that full body massage I’ve been fantasizing about.

So yeah, any unsigned bands in The Midlands contact my bosses at Angry Duck and everyone else (as well as the unsigned bands) join the Facebook group for news andupdates. 

Wish us luck!

LOOK WHAT I MADED!

I took inspiration from a much neater and professional version  and as I cannot knit for sh.. I used some old clothes.  My nan will be turning at her sewing machine when she sees what I’ve done to the language of stitch.  Cute though, yes? 

I think it’s a boy but I’m still trying to find a suitable unisex name and although his wonkiness is endearing, he’s a prototype.  I need to get handy with some more effective stitching techniques and/or borrow a machine.  Like all good parents, I shall continue to make babies until I am completely satisfied with a child.  If you are the first born, your worth is over as soon as new sperm breaks new egg.  This process keeps going with every next sibling and is the reason why the youngest is always the favourite.  Only children are perfect human beings. 

I have one older brother. ;)  

I’m also trying to think of a name for my, shall we say, ‘personal company’ (I realise this sounds like I’m starting up a brothel).  My produce needs a title.  I used to use Try Again Again and now I’m on Curley Says Yes, but I tend to exude discontent and Curley Always Tuts isn’t quite what I’m trying to express.

I have sought help from an anagram machine.  Here are the results for Jade Laura Curley and the ones for Jade Curley.  The latter set of results are somewhat more refined, but all I seem to have got from this exercise is that I can make the word ‘ulcer’ from my surname.  I can also adverb it.  “How’s the ulcer?” “Ulcery.”

So yeah, making a child in a rabbit suit is how I ended my yesterday, which should’ve been a nondescript day but turned out to have things in it. 

I went into Birmingham to finish off my outfit for a wedding next week.  In New Orleans.  Yeah, the American one.  (Our flight is unaffected by the BA strikes, by the way - as yet - so we will not be taking part in the anticipated three year sleepover at Heathrow. *unpacks tent*) From the upstairs of the bus came the incessant tss tss tss tss of some dis dat rude’s phone and behind me a Drum and Bass ringtone.  The conversation went as follows:

“Hello?  I’m literally two, three minutes away…Yeah, I’ll be literally five minutes…Okay, see you in a minute.”

Then a man sat in front of me and was followed by a pong of cologne and he would - approximately every four minutes - swing his head to the right then throw it to the left to crack his neck.  Watching it was much more distressing than hearing it.

I headed straight to Primark to avoid the crowds and spent three thousand and twelve gazzillion pounds, mostly consisting of shoes, bags and sunglasses.  The shoes are going back; the bags and sunglasses, not so much.  I bought the same bag in three colours.  My justification being that because I no longer need to carry an Epipen nor inhaler, it means no medical bag which means I no longer need to carry a big bag wherever I go, and am now allowed small bags.  I am using a medical burden that didn’t quite exist as an excuse and I am sticking to it.

On my way into the shop though, just outside, I could hear this voice amongst the stream of folk.  (This happened really quickly by the way, and it left me a little startled.)  A lady, who I didn’t notice at first because the camel colour she was wearing blended her in, was heading straight for me and saying stuff that I couldn’t hear.  Then I saw the pieces of heather.  She was holding one up at me.  I reckon she thought I had a lapel or a button hole because she made a couple of attempts to put it on the collar of my coat.  I walked a bit faster and she said, “Today will be lucky for you,” and I replied, “No, thank you!” and jumped into the shop.  I said no to luck.  I looked luck in the face and turned it away!

Every time I have a gypsy experience, it reminds me of a scary gypsy experience I once had.  Three Halloweens ago I went to a house party and one of the housemates wanted supplies, so we filled his car, still wearing our costumes (because we were Krazy like that) and went to the shop.  I was dressed as a murder victim, complete with a very realistic looking head wound.

In the shop were a couple of gyspy ladies and a couple of gypsy children.  The women were holding cans and were wasted, a little aggressive and harrassing the man at the counter.  The eldest child, a girl of around seven, joined in with confident quips.  I was feeling uneasy and even the three grown men I was with felt the same.  I whimpered at them to hurry up and tip-toed to the counter to buy some chewing gum.

“What happened to ye?” came a very loud voice.  It was the eldest gypsy child.  I put on a reasonably disturbing voice and told her I’d been murdered.

“Did yo’r husband hit ye?”

Now, I’m not making any suggestions…

Heather Gyspy was right about having a lucky day.  I managed to get my outfit sorted and even got some bits to do some customising.  I also found some great flat leather shoes in the vintage warehouse.  For my holiday.  In New Orleans.  The American one.  Bad luck is that it’s pretty clear that the previous owner had bunions.