I was over in London on holiday and attended a taping of the TV show "Surprise Surprise" on Tuesday night when they managed to "surprise " me with Cathy (yes it was her birthday). The details of how they set me up are unimportant and overly complex, it's enough to say that Caroline was there too (Hi Caroline)
So Cilla Black (the hostess for those of you outside the UK :-) gave a little intro about "surfing the net" and so on and read out my domain name. I raised a hand, said "That would be me" and went up on stage.
Twice.
Due to the magic of television I went up the wrong set of steps first time...
So, up I went, had a little talk to Cilla who eventually managed to get me to admit to liking Cathy, while I developed a distinct nervous twitch (on the side of my face away from the TV cameras fortunately). Cathy was wheeled out with a lovely framed signed photo, CD single of Why?, 7 inches of Just Another Dream (the original pressing) and Everybody Move and a copy of Am I The Kinda Girl (my third).
She then went on to sing the new single which is (drumroll please maestro):
Afterwards Cathy, the band, Caroline and myself all went backstage. We had a chat, Cathy signed lots of stuff including the singles and album she'd brought with her.
So, what exactly did we find out. Not a huge amount actually. As I said When Dreams Turn To Dust is the next single, Cathy says it should be out in May sometime (Polydor say late April, I tend to believe Cathy at this point) and that's it really. We talked a lot, but not too much about Cathy's music.
One sensible question (quite possibly the only one) was when Caroline asked why there was such a big delay between the release of West End Pad and Waterloo Sunset, Cathy says it was because the video was not ready for the proposed October release date, and she was in the Far East, so couldn't tape it! They didn't want a single without a video, nor did they want to release it in the midst of the Christmas rush. So it was kept back forever!
Like I said before, we wished her a happy birthday, and gave her a nice card (she liked it), Cathy admitted to being pretty much computer ignorant, but has heard of the websites (yes!). She was really nice in person, and seemed to actually care about her fans, she talked to us like real human beings.
Oh, and when pressed on the album I admitted that Fickle was probably my favourite I got a response along the lines of "oh that's interesting, I like it, but it's had a fairly mixed reaction all round".
Other notable things... Well, I got a copy of Too Many Walls (my favourite song ever, by anyone, period :-) signed with "Keep up the good work", Cathy was very impressed (not to mention shocked) by the fact that Caroline and I both had promos for Am I The Kinda Girl along with us, and kept asking where they came from, Cathy has a seriously firm handshake, the band are really nice, and I got a kiss.
And now it's back to the dull drudgery of life in the slow lane. But overall it's something I'll remember and treasure for the rest of my life. Sorry we didn't get answers to any of the "burning questions" of Cathy fans everywhere, but there you go, what we did do (I hope) is find out a bit about our favourite singer, let her know she still does have real fans, and show that her fans are pretty normal people.
Anyways, Cathy's a really nice person in real life, I think (or hope) I speak for both Caroline and myself when I say it was an absolute blast.
I'd also like to thank Caroline publicly for helping set me up, and also for the CDs...
Since the stuff on the CDI has gone I'll probably try to put the scans of the photos and things like that up here. I hope... Keep checking in to see.