Hello, this is Oslo calling

This week Man About Town - as I am also known to some - is Man About Oslo. Yes. I'm here for the Eurovision Song Contest. It's my ninth year at the annual circus of schlocky horror and dodgy dancing in the name of pop music.

It's not camp at all really. Take last night and the official welcome party at City Hall. We had to walk up a big pink carpet surrounded by paps and TV crews - it was like the Oscars, and some of the outfits were tackily Oscar-worthy. My pointy white shoes, by the way, looked particularly fine on aforementioned carpet.

Then we were entertained by first Norwegian winners Bobbysocks, who are completely faboo, and then a gay men's choir called the, er, Faggotkur. It couldn't have been more camp if the mayor had said "Call me Brenda".

Anyhoo, The Mark of Style was beady-eyed re the fashion. There were some horrors, I can tell you, and some of the performers were OTT as you might expect in Eurotrash mode. Though the style of the night for the average Euroboy seemed to be the  little blazer (H&M, Zara et al much in evidence), skinny jeans and tie, plus the occasional waistcoat. There was a handful of bowties (and you know what I think about those). Yours truly was in in slim grey jacket and waistcoat, white shirt with cutaway collar, black tie, faded black skinny jeans and my "occasion shoes" - shiny, white and pointy. Seemples but classy, I thought.

More of the contest and songs to come. Just don't ask me who's going to win!

The history boys

I felt part of a major piece of history this week. And I'm not talking about the election and the well-hung Parliament.. 

To the Trafalgar Studios in London's fabulous West End to see Holding the Man, a play based on a cult Australian autobiographical book by Timothy Conigrave. It's a love story really, from when Tim fell in love with the football captain at his Catholic boys' school in Melbourne, their relationship through uni, drama school (in Tim's case), early gay politics and sexual freedom (again in Tim's case) - until both men died of Aids in the early Nineties.

I remember that time of fear (mine) and loathing (other people's) all too well. I came to London in 1982 and was able, for the first time, at the advanced age of 25, to enjoy the burgeoning sexual freedom for gay men. I'd barely had time to shake a big pink stick when Aids arrived.

Sex with another man at that time meant standing on opposite sides of the room waving at each other - wearing Marigolds. I've been having safe sex ever since - that's about 27 years...

So  a lot of memories came seeping back as I watched the production - which is also very funny and has Jane Turner of Kath and Kim fame, who actually knew Tim and his lover back in Oz, stealing many a scene in various roles.

When I looked around the audience there were a lot of young guys and I realised that this was actually a history lesson for them. It was a sobering (and depressing, age-wise) thought. The production also brings home the fact that the battle against Aids  - both medical and in terms of social attitudes    - may have been more or less won in this country, but that is far  from the case in other parts of the world.

This really takes the biscuit

I was gobsmacked by a recent TV ad for Belvita biscuits. According to Lisa Snowden and Johnny Vaughan, it's a "new way to eat breakfast" I'm surprised they didn't call it a "new breakfast system". It's a friggin' biscuit!
This after Vanish Extra Hygiene which advertisers tell us we must put in our wash or our sheets will be crawling with bacteria. Oh really?
It puts me in mind of a TV ad for some night-time drink back in the 1950s, which was claimed to combat "night starvation", whatever that was. It's amazing what ad types will come up with to sells us stuff we don't need. And don't start me on all that science guff in cosmetics ads...
In a related topic, I see that the Hairy Bikers now have their own range of crisps. Now I quite like Si and Dave (and I can't say that about many TV chefs), but I was just a tad wary on opening a packet of Prosciuto and Blue Cheese flavour (which still tasted a bit like smoky bacon) that I might find, well, a hair!

Today I am mostly wearing....

Slim grey one-button jacket by Filippa K of Sweden, grey waistcoat, white cut-away collar shirt and slim black tie with white horizontal stripes, plus faded black skinny jeans and black Chelsea boots. Simple but sharp!

That Mitchell and Webb Look

Interesting to see in The Times last week the summer fashion piece using the comedy double act of David Mitchell and Robert Webb as models. They even featured on the front page of the main paper (must have been a slow day) garbed in the cardy and shorts look, with comedy hankies knotted on their heads (ho ho). What's with that, anyway: if it's warm enough for shorts, why do you need a woolly?

But I digress. Further investigation of the piece in the glossy mag revealed them modeling - wait for it - check shirt and jeans. How original! The check shirt is so ovah, I can't tell you, but they cost £125 here. And a Dunhill pair of jeans were more than £300!

This drives me nuts. I know mags want to be aspirational and high-end but in these straitened times £300 for a pair jeans - which look not much better than a £30 pair from H&M or Uniqlo - is a joke.

By all means pay £640 for a cream linen Paul Smith suit (seen in another pic), which seems more reasonable, and to be fair the spread also featured a striped blazer from Topman. GQ has to be commended for this year doing supplements with H&M and Topman, showing you can mix high-end and high-street fashion

Shortlist (which I love, when it doesn't do whole spreads on "duffle" coats spelling it wrongly all the way through) usually takes an item of clothing and presents a range of prices, though recently it seemed to suggest that adding  a couple of pleats to the front of trousers (skinny flat front is out, apparently) now means they cost more than £200. That's fashion for you...