Saturday 11.30am (GMT +4); At Sea en route to Mahe, Seychelles
You can tell the class of a ship by the quality of its sun loungers.
Not-so-posh ship: metal frames, plastic slats, average cushions.
Posh ship: a creation so perfect you must go through a rigorous selection procedure to be allowed access to it. The criteria being:
- You must be Thin (there is to be at least a foot of space either side of your body to show off the wooden structure and à la mode upholstery)
- You must be Hot (in the attractive sense)
- You must wear Designer Swimwear Only
- You must have Freshly Manicured Feet (For the ladies. And gentlemen.)
- You must be holding (but not necessarily reading) a politician’s autobiography
I’m dressed in a Calvin Klein midi with LK Bennett strappy wedges – not ultimate haute couture but not too shabby either. I’m still buzzing from last night’s last-minute show but am physically nowhere near this time zone yet so am in need of some restorative vitamin D.
On a not-so-posh ship, it would have taken me 10 minutes from waking up to be out here: rise, sundress, flip flops, hat, glasses, book and out. This morning it has taken me over an hour to go through the following routine: rise, shower, exfoliate, sun cream, make up, hair, outfit, wrong outfit, outfit, wrong outfit, outfit, wrong…
I am now the ship’s property and, although I can enjoy the perks of guest status, I am still considered an ambassador for the line. That’s a roundabout way of saying the following: from now on I Will Be Judged. The guests, lovely as they are and as successful as last night’s show appeared to go (although the closet critics have yet to appear), now know who I am.
It’s not enough as a Guest Entertainer on a cruise ship just to deliver a good show. In fact, that’s possibly just 77% of it. You will only ever get asked back again if you behave well off stage too, and on a posh ship, for a woman, that also means dressing ‘well’. And by that, I mean dressing smartly and fashionably, never sexily or provocatively. I’ve mastered the art of walking around a ship displaying enough confidence to warrant my status of a headline entertainer, but not so much as to appear arrogant, or, heaven forefend, noticeable. It’s a hard one to pull off but the key is to walk slowly, breathe deeply and look distant whilst repeating the mantra ‘Grace and Detachment’. And the look? Well, three years ago I bought seven sundresses in Macy’s, San Diego for this part of the world, for this type of ship, for this clientele. And I simply hope one of them will do.
I find a free sunbed away from people and drink in the rays. This is lovely. I’ve done my show, I have a few days out here in the Indian Ocean (Seychelles tomorrow, Maldives after that) and then I fly home. There’s a beep on my phone with an email coming through. It’s from my agent. I’m just about to open it when I see guests coming towards me. My face automatically switches into ‘smile’:
‘Hhhhhello. Are you singgger?’ they ask, heavy ‘Manuel from Faulty Towers’ accent.
‘Yes,’ I reply in a singsong way.
‘We were verry disappointed with show.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I say trying to hold onto the smile and remain, goodness, polite, I suppose. ‘Is there anything in particular you would want me to change?’
‘We want Andrew Lloyd Webber. Why you no sing Andrew Lloyd Webber? Everyone like Andrew Lloyd Webber. No? Andrew Lloyd Webber is good. Yes? We all fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Why you no sing him?’
I take a deep breath, adopt the empathy voice which is more Customer Service Team at Virgin Airlines than Basil Fawlty, and try to explain that everyone ‘does’ Andrew Lloyd Webber and I’m trying to do something a bit different with my brand of show and they did get West Side Story and quite a bit of Rodgers & Hammerstein and a lot of Sarah Brightman’s classical crossover repertoire for that matter, tunes which are popular and which everyone knows. But that does nothing to appease these particular passengers. They go away disappointed – presumably to complain to the bar tender that their ice cubes are melting in the sun – and I sink back into the lounger. Deflated.
I begin to wonder whether I need to change my show around a bit, although if you take a number out here or there, you can totally destroy its equilibrium. Maybe I’ll play around with some ideas on the flight home. The show currently charts my own musical journey, with stories and ‘witty’ anecdotes punctuating the transition from one song to another. Witty. Not Funny. No one wants the soprano to be funny. I can poke fun at myself and make some on-brand observations, ‘the shoe must go on!’ being the closest I get to a punchline, but pure comedy would shatter any illusion an audience may have of the Ave-Maria-singing soprano.
It’s probably a good thing I hold back on the ‘funny front’, as comedy, especially on a ship, can be so divisive, mostly because post-millennium the world seems to be embracing a new word: offended! Not everyone can sing a top C, but everyone, absolutely everyone, has a joke inside them and comedians are often taken to one side by a passenger whose opening line is ‘here’s one you can use…’ followed by a critique of the show and the strong advice to take out 40% of the material because it offended his wife. It’s the toughest of all trades, in my opinion, especially when considering the following conversation I overheard outside the lift one morning:
‘Did you see the comic last night?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘What was his show like?’
‘OK.’
‘Oh! Just OK? Glad I missed it, then.’
‘No, don’t get me wrong, it was OK.’
‘Oh. OK, then.’
‘Yes, it was OK. If you like laughing.’
It’s time for lunch so I put my ‘help I need to re-write my show’ thoughts to one side, and head up to the grill where the speciality is lobster sandwich. Whilst waiting in the queue, I’m tapped on the shoulder. ‘You were ARS-ARM last night!!!!!’ a young couple in baseball caps, designer swimwear and Prada sandals exclaim in unison. ‘You’re just so ARS-ARM!!!!! That VOICE!’
‘Thank you so much!! So glad you enjoyed it!’ I reply with a semi-beam, the backdrop to this exchange being… but the Spaniards over there, yes them, more specifically him, yes him there, yep, he didn’t like it…
But I keep quiet and chat to these lovely people who are super excited about their snorkelling trip tomorrow and I mentally re-name them Mr and Mrs Let’s Enjoy Life. Thank heavens for humans like this. We talk about places we’ve seen, people we’ve met and trips we have planned. My mood lifts and I’m reminded of my singing teacher’s favourite quote regarding the pressures of a nomadic entertainer’s life: ‘You’ll have big Ups and big Downs, but it’ll be worth it.’
I say goodbye to the positive people, arrange to meet them later for a pre-dinner cocktail, order the lobster sandwich and get back to the email from my agent. It’s the flights for my next contract. I do a quick calculation:
11 hours at home in between flights = Down.
The ship is sailing to Antarctica = Up. Yes. Now, that’s a definite Up!
Photo Credit: Engin Akyurt
Loved it, been there suffered the slings and arrers