Bloody, bloody BBC

Did anyone read in the Evening Standard on Friday about the free Red Hot Chili Peppers' gig at the BBC today?

You did? So did my brother, Simon.

And today's his birthday (happy b'day, bro)!

What better way to celebrate than rocking out with one of his favourite bands? (As long as they don't do the 'sock thing,' 'cos otherwise I'm right out of there)

So rock along to BBC Television Centre we did, and joined a queue of reasonable length (and by that I mean juuuuuuust about long enough that you think you'll get in).

And we queued. For two and a half hours. In the rain. Still, we passed the time with our usual witty banter (which mainly consisted of shouting lines from Green Wing at each other), and were entertained by a group of drunken pikeys who kept singing Chris de Burgh's 'Lady in Red' to some, er, lady in red...

And then some important BBC people stumbled along the pavement (they must've been important because they were wearing microphone headsets - either that or they were just on their way to a mass recreation of Madonna's Vogue video), and muttered that no one would get in unless they had a ticket.

A wha...?

A bloody ticket?!

Oh, or a wristband. Do you have a wristband?

I'll give you a wristba-

Did no-one at the BBC look out the window and think "gosh, that queue looks a bit longer than the 600 tickets we handed out." Could they not've sent someone out earlier? Could they not've printed some signs!?

Anyway, the BBC people, after condescendingly telling us that the BBC car park can actually only hold a few hundred people and blaming the Evening Standard for everything, wandered off to their Vogue dance club, leaving a rapidly dissipating queue behind them. We strolled, slightly disheartened, back to the car, to the strains of yet another drunken reprisal of 'Lady in Red'...

So, that's it then. The Evening Standard and the BBC ruined Simon's birthday. And the rain made his hair go frizzy.

I'm blaming Fearne Cotton. Bitch.