The 2 Sides of Eddie Ramone.

It looks as if I won't have time to write a proper post this week as I'm rehearsing my play again; it sure is a 'work in progress' and maybe next year it will be ready – but there again is something ever really ready?

I'm due to do it at The Bossanyi Studio, 22 Field End Road, HA5 2QL; if you're in the neighbourhood or planning to head to it, put the post code into your Sat Nav and I hope to see you. I believe it will cost £8.

This will be a few times that it is to be produced; it started life at Santa Monica Playhouse for 3 nights in June 2011; then I tried it out at The Lord Stanley in Camden the night that Amy Winehouse died in July 2011; she lived just around the corner from The Lord Stanley and on the night she died the streets were blocked off by the police whilst they made their enquiries.

After that there was a 3 week run at The Edinburgh Festival where it attracted great reviews and then last year I entered it into the 'Solo Festival' at the Lord Stanley again and it won best play – who knows where it will lead?

I look forward to seeing you at about 8:00 pm. Oh I didn't give you the date, did I? Saturday June 8^th 2013.

The toilet, Amy Winehouse and The Little Chef!!

The Little Chef: somewhere in Yorkshire.

Further to my piece the other day about the word toilet and my piece about being near to where Amy Winehouse on the day she died.

First of all I went into Little Chef on the way up. They have the worst food in Britain without a doubt but I only stopped in there to use the loo and buy some coffee.

Look what I found – they call their lavatories loos; isn't that wonderful? At least they do something right.

When I came out with my coffee I passed some people sitting at the tables out front. I asked if they were eating food they had bought there or whether they had brought their own; they were AMERICAN!! They did what a lot of Americans do when they travel the roads in Britain – they'd stopped at a Little Chef – no wonder they think English food is bad if that's what they eat!!

Now to Amy Winehouse: I can't help being disgusted with some of the comments on Facebook and YouTube from nobodies – Amy Winehouse had an amazing voice. I know people who were within a few feet of her when she sang who said she was amazing and I have heard some of the songs she wrote and they were brilliant.

People are saying things that she didn't deserve – it's easy to write things anonymously (I've had things said about me on YouTube) and hide behind a nom-de-plume but it isn't easy for those nay sayers to say anything else as they have no empathy and having no empathy is the first sign of a psychotic so maybe these critics should keep quiet before someone takes them away.

I'm rehearsing this week and getting ready for my opening but I'll write again soon.

The late Amy Winehouse.

Shaftesbury Avenue, Camden and Amy Winehouse.

Amy Winehouse.

Walking along Shaftesbury Avenue in London's west end is an absolute delight for me; I have walked along lots of famous thoroughfares – O’Connell Street, Dublin; Broadway, New York; Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles – even the walk up to the Taj Mahal in India – but nothing is quite like walking passed all those famous theatres in London's west end and see their facades depicting what is playing and who is in it.

I haven't seen or heard of Simon Williams since his days in the original series Upstairs Downstairs but I see he is starring in Yes Minister – or maybe Yes Prime Minister. It's strange how that TV series really got it right with the shenanigans that are going on now in the seats of power.

When we were first married, in 1966, we went to a west end theatre for the first time; it was at the Criterion, which is the first theatre you see when you get out of the tube at Piccadilly Circus; it's not in Shaftesbury Avenue itself but the other side of Eros which is the famous fountain on the island there which is the start of Shaftesbury Avenue.

We saw Loot, by Joe Orton; it starred Simon Ward and Michael Bates played Inspector Truscott; the role was written for Kenneth Williams, who played it at other times I think, who was a friend of Joe Orton and mixed with him and his gang.

It was very funny but the one thing I remember about it, all these years later, is that the female lead seemed to deliver most of her lines to the audience facing downstage; it's something I have come across many times – there you are on the stage, having a conversation with somebody and they are showing you the side of their heads.

The show went well last night at The Lord Stanley in Camden but just as I was driving up the street, maybe a quarter of a mile from the theatre, in a really nice part of Camden, we passed a 'Police incident;' the police had taped off a whole park and it seemed they had turfed everybody out of this particular park. We thought there must have been some sort of attack or mugging but it wasn't that kind of neighbourhood.

There were a few people with long lens camera pointing across the park to the street on the other side – about 100 yards or so. We thought no more about it and went to The Lord Stanley.

Our daughter arrived a few minutes after we got there and told us that they had found Amy Winehouse dead – that's what all the crowd was and the paparazzi.

It came as a bit of a shock just before my show; it shouldn't have been because anybody that knows anything about her would be half expecting it. I don't know much about her material but I know she was tremendously talented – and self destructive.

She consumed something in her short life that didn't agree with her; a chemical imbalance that it's very easy for us who don't have that unfortunate illness to criticise - and there was nobody to help her.