Trips out.

First of all, I'd like to say a sad farewell to Loleatta Holloway, who by the sad coincedence of dying at the same time as Liz Taylor didn't get the send off she deserved.  We'll always remember you as  the voice of disco and a thousand unofficial house tracks, we'll add this link to Ellis D My Loleatta as it captures her at her best even if it was bootlegged by Brian Forest.

Secondly we had a grand trip out to the Ideal home exhibition in Earls Court.  Our primary objective was to find the Nintendo stand and blag ourselves a go on the new 3DS, however despite being advertised, we never actually found it.  Our record of trade show stuff is pretty woeful,  Last time was a go on the Phillips stand circa 1994.  They offered up Hotel Mario and Burn Cycle which were pretty average if I did say so myself.  Burn Cycle was a sort of Interactive Movie shooter in which a woman kept saying shoot now in your ear, and Hotel Mario is a bastard mix of door closing and Elevator Action with execrable animation, utterly redeemed by Youtube Poop.  It could easily be reworked for the SNES if the shonky cut scenes were erased or left as stills thats how basic the game is.

Anyway if you couldn't make it or weren't bothered enough to go, the exhibition in a nutshell is basically a live version of the kind of home shopping channels running at the higher limits of Sky.

Hi. I'm Billy Mays.

With Prominent posters of Linda Barker, and Fiona Phillips the show itself was dedicated to the expensive and the gadget orientated.  A load of food stalls and home beauty stands mixed with the occasional toy or big business stand, (Nissan and Virgin Media this time) Ideal Home is the perfect balance of the unaffordable and the Rinky Dink in one.   They recreated the Rovers Return pub from Corrie and had a big lake in the middle of the center for some reason.

Certain stuff was nice if you had the room, the games company could do you a cocktail mame cab for 6 grand, or the latest pinball (Stern's Rolling Stones) for 4.  There were the usual rubbish adjustamatic beds, non sexual massagers and beauty therapy stuff.  Oh and free samples of food which is always nice.

We will leave you with what could be the worst celebrity snap of all time.  Linda Barker.

Is that her? Behind the camera?