Day of the Launch

It's Wednesday morning. The day of the launch. I can't believe it's really a whole year since the last festival. It's gone so quickly. The office is piled high with bales of brochures ready to be distributed. Last minute touches are being made to the box office in Merchant's Quay shopping centre - tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 10am. This year's festival is much bigger than last year's - 3 weeks long. There is a bigger variety of events than we've done previously and things are spread out a bit more so you can see 3 or 4 things each day. The team has worked really hard and at the moment final preparations are being made for this evening's launch at the Bodega. At last year's launch I abseiled down the wall of the Bodega as a stunt - so I've had to think of something for this year too. So, I'm dressing as Marilyn Monroe and doing a duet with David Hoyle, the host of our late night Spiegeltent show The Last Resort. David is an extraordinary comedian and cabaret artist who shot to prominence in the late 1990s with his own late night Channel 4 show The Divine David Presents. He played the Dave Stewart character in Nathan Barley and was also in the cult film Velvet Goldmine. He is very funny and very controversial and I was so excited when he agreed to host The Last Resort - he's really going to take Cork by storm! Anyway, enough blogging - must go and work on my speech now, as well as practicing my song (and walking around in high heels), for tonight ...