I know I’m lucky enough to get into most places i want to, and am grade A competent at blagging too, but last night took the biscuit – and I didn’t have to do a thing.

Recently I have been *coughs* banned from writing for any other section of my newspaper on the basis that if I am investing extra time, it should be for my own section (economy). Tardis it back six months and I was rather brutally uprooted from entertainment from a Thursday to the Monday (exact same thing happened in London back in 2003) and at the time the only similarities I could find between the two sections were the letter ‘e’. It was a difficult transition, but I took it on the chin, continued to cover gigs for my radio show, BA live, and learned how to discuss subject matter beyond the tracks in last night’s episode of Glee.

I’ve talked about the *ban* to several people, most of them journalists, and we none of us get it. I don’t interview Fatboy Slim or the Stereophonics every day and it only benefits the paper. Back when I was a kid, the ultimate insult for anything, person, band, place, even your mum, was *village*. So I’ll say this. It was Village People who *banned* me from writing for other sections until March.

And it was also the real singing, dancing the Cop, Indian, Biker, Soldier, Cowboy and the other one Village People I met twice last night. Thanks to my mate Mike who knows the Indian (I know…), my flatmate Karleigh and I went backstage pre-show for some photos. Mental. Which band does that just 30 minutes before show? Shouldn’t they be getting high or doing yoga?

It was awesome not to be reviewing actually and just sing along contentedly to In The Navy, You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), DiscoTrash – an absolutely awesome medley of every single disco track you can think of – and of course YMCA. The Village People actually taught us how to do it properly: “no monkey M above your head at weddings and birthdays any more” and then the C is meant to move delicately into an A above your head with a slide of your left arm. Who imagined it could be so complex?

Good times, great show, and the Biker’s chest was in pretty good damn condition. I had mentioned this to Mike, whose cousin knows Biker Eric’s girlfriend (yup, he’s straight) so when we were backstage after the show, I was summoned to give it a test-drive. The shame. Really, the shame. I did decline, but we had a good old chat whereby I told him his look (think Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel) should clearly have a name, and I was incredulous that he didn’t, and we also discussed also the dangers of squashing cockroaches.

That’s right people, village or otherwise, my conversation skills are so much more sophisticated ever since that move to economy.