Friday, March 16, 2007

feradelaide and the chef

Last weekend I volunteered as an artist minder at Womadelaide.

Artist minding basically means being the first point of contact for artists for just about anything whilst in Adelaide for their gig – you pick them up from the airport, check them into the hotel, orientate them to Adelaide a bit if necessary, get them to the venue on time, get them into their dressing-room, introduce them to the stage manager, accompany them to publicity calls, etc etc etc and just generally be around to assist if they need it. I was assigned 3 separate groups of performers, Asha Bhosle, an incredibly famous Bollywood playback recording star (statistically the most famous person in the world), who was performing with the Kronos Quartet (also pretty damn famous), an 18 piece gamelan orchestra from West Java called SambaSunda and an 8 piece group from New Caledonia called Celenod. As you can probably tell, I had a busy weekend. And it was 37 degrees on Saturday.

I saw countless tie-dye wearing hackysack players. I saw some pretty damn impressive hippie dancing. I even saw some guy stop mid-dance, turn around and ask the general crowd "does anyone know where my wife is?". I saw an 11 year old boy wandering through the crowd wistfully singing Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind. Someone else told me they saw an even younger kid singing “We are the World”. Hmmm, next generation of emo maybe? I also ate a handmade byron bay organic jamfilled doughnut. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I think the doughnut summed up Womad - decadent, expensive, very messy, and pretending to be good for you.

I won’t bore you with the story of how hard I worked, or how hot and bloody dusty it was, because a much more exciting thing happened.

On Sunday afternoon I was standing out front of the Hilton, where all Womad artists stay, waiting for somebody or something - I can’t remember what now. Anyway, there were a few people milling around too, I didn’t take much notice of them. Then suddenly my gaze locked onto a man standing on the Hilton front steps. It was the Chef from The Cook and the Chef! (Shame on you if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and I’m not going to explain, but go here to have a look.) (Those of you overseas are excused from this shame.)

I gasped! It was really him! He was in full cheffy outfit, arms folded, chatting to some minions and surveying his kingdom (ie Victoria Square and assorted drunkards). I immediately rang Bridget to share my excitement. I then tried to nonchalantly walk close enough behind him to hear his voice, whilst still on the phone to Bridget so she could hear it too (if you’ve seen the show you’ll know what I mean). Bridget demanded that I get his autograph for her, so I went to the concierge to get a piece of paper as I had nothing - I know, so ridiculously unprepared. When I returned he had gone!! No!!! We were most upset. I won’t admit to this but I may have lurked around the Hilton foyer until I found where he was, which may have been in the Brasserie, and I may have then sat in the middle bar area so I could see him through the palm fronds as he had a very serious conversation with someone about the glasswasher (I think). I may have then rang Bridget to update her as to his location. We may be now trying to invent a reason for an expensive dinner at the restaurant, so that we can spy on him further.

x

No comments: