"Here comes success": Katie Puckrik's Lust for Life Tour 2023 at The Cavern Club, Liverpool

How many strings are there to Katie Puckrik's professional bow? How many fingers does she have in artistic pies, and irons in media fires? I have frankly lost count, but she certainly pops up in more cultural guises than you can shake Clem Burke's drumstick at, of which more anon. I knew her "on the telly" as a presenter on The Word back in the '90s, and since then she has become a focal figure on our perfume scene, with her own blog and seminal YouTube channel "Katie Puckrik Smells", which is when I got to know her in person. And along the way I also clocked her incarnations as a DJ on Radio 6 Music, book reviewer on Radio 4, journalist for the broadsheets, published author, TV presenter on Channel 5, podcaster, talk show host on Times Radio...ooh, the far from exhaustive list goes on.

Thus it was no surprise to me to learn that Katie's next project was to form an Iggy Pop tribute band to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the release of his album, Lust for Life, with Katie as lead singer and demurely maniacal Iggy Pop stand-in. Her band comprises an all-star line up of session musicians including three who have previously played with Iggy: Glen Matlock on bass (Sex Pistols/IP), Clem Burke on drums (Blondie/IP) and Kevin Armstrong on guitar (Bowie/IP), plus a second guitarist, Luis Correia (Earl Slick), and a classical keyboard player, Florence Sabeva (Heaven 17).

On hearing her announce the tour, I remembered that Katie had also been a dancer with the Pet Shop Boys and sung in a Sparks opera, so she is basically the Renaissance woman of the performing arts, and there is literally nothing she couldn't give a whirl. As she puts it herself: "I'm a show pony from way back." A many trick show pony, you could say.

My somewhat worse for wear flyer

A quick glance at Katie's tour itinerary identified the nearest gig I could attend, namely The Cavern Club in Liverpool, famous for its association with The Beatles. I was interested to note how many of the venues they were playing were ones on The Monochrome Set's circuit, from Hebden Bridge to Colchester, and Edinburgh to both the venues in London.

In the run up to the day of the gig I was quite nervous, as this was my first trip away since October due to my trapped nerve pain, which has recently been making a comeback unfortunately, as I mentioned in my last post. Then on the train up to Liverpool I was expecting the highlight to be the usual "blink and it's over" glimpse of the famous Runcorn Bridge, with its distinctive pale green girders, but in the event this gracious semi-circular triumph of Victorian engineering was eclipsed by the sight of a man sporting a shock of tousled black hair wrangling his suitcase out from the rack under mine as the train pulled into Lime Street station. Even from the top of his head I recognised the drummer in the band, Clem Burke, but was too starstruck to quip: "Have you got your drum kit in there?" or: "Lust for Luggage?", or even the faintly cryptic: "See you later". I may have mustered an inscrutable smile at best, before legging it off the train in case I bumped into the rest of the band and inadvertently appeared to be stalking them, in transport terms, at least.

Leaf ~ Source: Designmynight.com

After checking into my bargain £34 hotel right round the block from The Cavern Club - well, apart from the incredibly hard mattress and lumpy pillows, as I was to discover later - I headed out to Bold Street to meet up with Mike O'Shaughnessy for a cup of tea and a catch up on the prison perfume workshops. He told me a few more "inside" stories, and we also discussed the possibility of my supplying him with another vintage scent for the next phase of his project. He was wearing ELDO's Fat Electrician, which I had never smelt before, and which was not at all as I would have imagined, although I would definitely describe it as "fat", in a satisfyingly gourmand and not unduly sweaty workmanlike way.

The Cavern Club - confusingly cavernous

The showtime was 9.45pm, so after downing a tepid burrito in a fast food place, and instantly regretting the extra topping of guacamole (raw onion in green slurry), I turned up at a fashionably not too earlyish 9.30pm to be sure of wiggling my way insistently to the front. Katie had kindly put me on the guest list, and when I spoke to the security man at the entrance he said something like: "Go down the stairs to the bar and see the....about the...." I asked him to repeat himself but heard no more the next time, so decided to follow my nose instead. (Bad move.) I duly found the bar, and in the distance was a stage with a band already playing - Katie's support, I assumed. I saw no one who seemed in charge of anything resembling a door, as the downstairs was all open plan, so I bought myself a drink, made my way to the front, and started watching what turned out to be a Beatles tribute band. After about six numbers, they showed no signs of stopping, and I started to get a bit anxious. Had the main act been delayed? Eventually they did finish their set, only to announce a second one after a 15 minute break. At this point I knew I had made a mistake; I was definitely in the Cavern Club, but possibly not the right part of it, although it didn't look like the sort of place that might have multiple stages within its cavernous confines, Odeon Multiplex-style. It was now 10pm, so I backtracked to the bar and suddenly spied a man in a greatcoat standing by a red telephone kiosk, brandishing a piece of A4 paper that looked reassuringly like a list. I asked him where the Lust for Life gig was, and he gestured towards another room beyond the phone box. "So you caught some of the Beatles lot, did you? Well, that's all right, as they're good, you know, and only young lads." And they were, to be fair, and though it seemed I would now accidentally have a two-tribute band night, I was still rattled by my error.

Beatles Complete ~ Source: The Cavern Club

Having found the correct venue, I now I had to repeat my insistent wiggling trick and managed to get to the far corner of the stage in one seamless manoeuvre, albeit with an extremely tall man blocking most of my view. After about half an hour of staring at his back I tapped him on the shoulder and he kindly let me scoot in front of him so I was now at the very front next to his much shorter wife. I reckon I missed about five numbers from the Lust for Life album itself, including Passenger, sadly, though I definitely made it in time for Success, my favourite song of the night. The band performed the album in its entirety, followed by a medley of songs, featuring more from Iggy Pop, plus tracks from each of the band member's past careers with Blondie, Bowie, The Sex Pistols etc, including the tumultuous Pretty Vacant(!).

Katie described the set - a generous 105 minutes in all, or 90 for me, haha, due to my bonus Beatles band bother - as a "meaty beaty crashy thrashy project", and that is a very good summary of the night. I was standing so near the stage (and, I suspect, a speaker) that the sound was deafening, and was starting to wonder if I should have brought ear plugs like another man in the centre of the front row. For me though, the music, and whether I knew or liked all of it (I wouldn't have minded the odd ballad in the mix, but I appreciate it wasn't that kind of set) was roundly trumped by Katie's truly remarkable rendition of Iggy himself. For starters she is lithe and sinuous like him, with a long dark blonde mane, and is a lot easier on the eye. Her costumes also deserve special mention: there was a pink dress in the first half that I think may strictly speaking have been a petticoat, but which looked just the part under a spangly silver jacket, while in the second half she donned a slinky silver frock and lost the jacket, for that would of course have been a case of 'silvering the lily'.

Most importantly, Katie was constantly in motion, making it nigh on impossible to take a photo of her in focus on my phone, as I was jostled in the mosh pit by the enthusiastic crowd. Her dancing was a riveting mix of the ladylike, the raunchy, and the downright weird (in a Thriller-esque zombie way), and I can think of no better poster person for putting yourself out there and strutting your stuff whatever your age. (FYI, Katie is 60, and steadily aging backwards). I really don't have the words to convey her energy and the electrifying atmosphere she created on stage - except possibly "great balls of fire". This was consummate choreography, stagecraft on steroids...Katie out-Iggied Iggy for me, and I think he should be very afraid. ;)

Eventually, even the band's generous encore was over, and they were gone, but not before Clem Burke had lobbed a drumstick and a planter of plastic flowers into the crowd. I am sure there was a story behind one or both of these items, but I sense I missed that too.

Oh, I have a Twilight Zone-y, wiggly, Iggy-related titbit to relate...firstly, Katie's band is covering Iggy Pop, who in turn has covered the song "He's Frank" by The Monochrome Set (with The Brighton Port Authority). Katie has also been to a Monochrome Set gig herself, in Washington DC in 1980, the autumn of the year I first saw them in London. And The Monochrome Set's drummer (in another of his musical guises) is supporting Katie on the last two dates of her tour next weekend at The Lexington in London, which is where I last saw the band in September. Which is all by way of saying that the music biz is perhaps smaller and closer knit than we know...

I have yet to find out whether Katie is wearing a "perfume of the tour", or a different scent each night, but that is a final detail that would be of interest. 

And I know I said that she out-Iggied Iggy...well, I stand by that, though Iggy probably clocks up more running and jumping, not forgetting hopping like a frog, "lurches, stage dives, and craning torso arches". I think that would have been a stretch in a dress and ankle boots, mind. There wasn't really room for such extreme forms of gymnastics anyway without Katie crashing into her bandmates, and she more than made up for it with her general shimmying, jerking, flailing, and imperiously pointing arms. So, I'd say she was plenty athletic enough, and I honestly don't know where she gets her stamina from! Plus, there were gravity-defying moves like this...

PS I would link to the remaining dates of the tour, but apart from Dublin on 8th March, it is a sell out!

Did you catch any of Katie's gigs so far, or do you plan to?

Katie Puckrik's tales of perfume and persona - featuring the sniffs of The Smiths and a Bonkers quote

Illustration by Lydia Silver

Perfume expert and multi-media personality Katie Puckrik has written a feature in this week's Evening Standard magazine, in which she reminisces about wearing Revlon Intimate, a raunchy animalic floral pinched from her mother's dressing table; it made her feel all grown up and ready for the sort of carnal capers that my father used to collectively - and disapprovingly - dub "filthy slop". 

"Wearing Intimate was my introduction to the power of perfume to transform dubious raw material into the person I was nowhere near being."

Katie goes on to explore this theme of "wear the perfume and you can be the perfume" with the help of fellow contributors Denyse Beaulieu, Tania Sanchez, Sali Hughes, Alison Goldfrapp, and Johnny Marr. And there is even a quote from yours truly - I am not accustomed to being in such august company!

What tickled me most about the feature was the inclusion of Johnny Marr's perfume MO. So okay, one Smith rather than the sniffs of the whole band, as the title of this post might suggest. For as I may have mentioned before, Johnny Marr and Morrissey bonded over a shared appreciation of The Monochrome Set, and were influenced by their music when they formed The Smiths. They went on to become much more famous and commercially successful, and then many years later, in one of those strange twists of fate, The Monochrome Set found themselves supporting Johnny Marr at a festival gig in Bognor Regis, which I attended. Those meringue peak canopies at Butlin's are hard to forget. So given my own close association with TMS, it struck me that there is a curious and amusing parallel in my now randomly "sharing a bill" with Johnny Marr in an article on perfume!

And at that gig in Bognor, I wore the punch-packing Salome by Papillon Perfumery, following a visit to Liz Moores' house in the afternoon. Salome perfectly illustrates the notion of trying to assume a ballsy persona that may be a little incongruous or too big for one's boots. I let the band sniff it on me as well as one of Liz's raw ingredients, African stone - here is an extract from a post about that day.

"The band duly sniffed both the remnants of Salome AND the African Stone, intrigued by my explanation that it was the fossilised excrement of the rock hyrax, an animal I tried to big up by likening it to a robust yet endearing variant on the guinea pig. They continued to chew thoughtfully on slices of the family size pepperoni pizza several of us were sharing, and didn't bat an eyelid - or flare a nostril in disgust.

Now my wearing of actual African Stone may have been a lifetime one off, but in the light of this rock 'n' roll nonchalance in the face of the ne plus ultra of poo, I plan to wear Salome to the next gig without a backward glance..."

I shan't give away any more spoilers to Katie's article, which is full of memorable stories and insights into the transformative potential of perfume, so do check it out!

The Monochrome Set in sadly small print!

NB Note the perfume blotters tucked into the programme...;)

Painting The Town Red With Katie Puckrik - Part 2: A Scented Sit-Down Of Comediennes And A Stunning Sleight Of Stuntman At The Card Shark Show

After our purposeful whizz round Selfridges - Katie being a past mistress at purposeful whizzing - we speed walked in the direction of Soho. Along the way we popped into a few clothes shops, including a branch of Barbour, where Katie tried on a selection of what I now know to be called Ladies Wax Trench hats. These sported varying degrees of brim width, which distinguished your 20s flapper girl look from your country lady angler. My superior height (not by much, but even a few inches was enough to count) meant that I could fetch down the top shelf hat piles for Katie's consideration.

Once in Soho, Katie suggested grabbing a bite to eat in a little noodle place she knew, when suddenly her phone rang...As a result of that call, the evening took an unexpected - but most entertaining - turn. For the friend who rang was Hattie Hayridge, a stand-up comic and actor in the comedy series Red Dwarf, and she was inviting Katie to join her at The Groucho Club, where she had just secured a table in a prime spot by the window.

And so it was that just moments later, we were sitting down in a plush corner of the club, cocktail in hand(!), and none other than Chris Evans in our line of sight - he was standing at the bar, surrounded by a clutch of friends. It took me about 20 minutes before I realised that this place was in fact the iconic Groucho Club, and not just some West End pub with Groucho in the name - you know, like "The Groucho and Ferret" or "The Groucho's Head". And then before you could say: "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member", we were joined by another comedienne, Helen Lederer, who ordered a glass of bar Twiglets, of which we all made light work. Then the four of us proceeded to shoot the breeze in a "Grumpy Old Women" kind of a way. Somehow I also managed to shoehorn into the conversation a recent shortchanging incident, whereby a roll of Sellotape ended up costing me £11.55, and the others came through with the head-shaking empathy I so desperately craved.

From the depths of her handbag Hattie then produced a couple of vintage Russian perfumes she had picked up on her travels, which we duly sniffed, and all preferred the more honeyed one - should have noted the names really! And at one point we all sniffed Helen, who challenged us to identify her signature scent - to which I am sworn to secrecy - but anyway, it turned out to be a layering of two perfumes, so we were on a losing wicket from the off, really.

And before long it was time for Katie and me to head off to the main event of the evening, namely the press night of The Card Shark Show at The Mayfair Theatre - an auditorium housed in the hotel of the same name. Katie and I were fortunate to have been allocated front row seats, which meant that in theory we could have been called upon to participate in any of the card tricks. As it turned out, some other people in our row had already been primed for this purpose, and they jumped to their feet as soon as the call came for a volunteer.

NEVER ONE TO RESIST A CHANCE TO MINESWEEP MEMORABILIA

So what exactly did the show consist of? Well, I can best describe it as a novel hybrid of cinematic documentary and live commentary from the show's host, stuntman and magician Steve Truglia, all interspersed with his dazzling performance of jaw-droppingly slick card tricks.

As the show programme states in its introduction:

"From the middle ages through Wild West saloon bars to murderous gangsters, discover how sleight of hand techniques honed by hardened gamblers influenced modern card magic."

And here is a promotional trailer for the show, featuring a number of the media personalities who attended. One of them, the presenter Dominic Littleton (whom I was sure I had seen on TV, but couldn't quite place), was sitting the other side of Katie, and at one point during the show reached across to offer us a mint. I politely declined, then swallowed my embarrassment and said: "I am sorry, but you look awfully familiar", to which he replied, quick as a flash: "Do I owe you any money?!", which struck me as a wonderfully sharp riposte.



After the show, we adjourned to a large function room for drinks and food, in the shape of dainty pokes of fish and chips in mock newspaper. We are talking goujons, basically - I guess you would expect nothing less genteel in a hotel of that calibre! ; - ). As people milled around, I scoped the room for more celebrities, of which there was a goodly smattering. Meanwhile, Katie had her picture taken several times by the numerous agency photographers who had been sent to capture the action. And one actually asked me to stay in the shot, though clearly he didn't know me from Adam! A fine example of "collateral papping", as I remarked to Katie afterwards. That shot has also been included in the official photo album on The Card Shark Show's Facebook page, about which I must confess to feeling secretly chuffed. Or not so secretly, even, given that I just told you all... : - )

NOT SO MUCH A CASE OF 'ROYAL FLUSH' AS 'RIGHT ROYAL LUSH'

And as if the show wasn't electrifying enough, when I got back to my hotel and read the programme, I felt that my viewing pleasure was retrospectively enhanced by reading about Steve Truglia's other exploits in the course of his career as a stunt coordinator and performer. His film credits include Saving Private Ryan, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough. Specifically, his stunts include driving a car round a 12 metre high loop the loop for Channel 5's Fifth Gear, while he also holds the 2004 record for the fastest ever abseil, as well as - my personal favourite - the longest fire burn within the UK at two minutes five seconds.

Tickets for The Card Shark Show cost £50, which by the standards of London's Theatre Land, is not excessive, I don't think. It really was a complete one-off, and though the theme had piqued my curiosity when Katie first sounded me out about going, I found the show even more entertaining - nay, enthralling - than I expected.

And in a nice touch as we were leaving, all the guests were given a pack of cards specially produced for The Card Shark Show. I don't suppose for one minute that I will master how to "control the deck" any time soon, but it could come in handy for the odd game of patience.


Photo of The Groucho Club from openbuildings.com, photo of the Mayfair Theatre from thecardsharkshow.com, photo of me with Katie Puckrik by Gabor Scott, photo of Steve Truglia from autotrader.co.uk, other photos my own

Painting The Town Red With Katie Puckrik - Part 1: Another Lippie Epiphany

Regular readers - or should I refer to you as irregular readers, as my posting frequency has been decidedly erratic since the house move - may recall that for a long time now I have been on a quest to find Holy Grail lipsticks in a variety of shades. I think I found the perfect nude-browny-pink in Burberry Nude Rose, and the perfect nude-and-not-too-vivid-or-trashy-pink in Dior Pisanelle Pink. However, the perfect red (or even a half-decent red that doesn't make me look like a clown, a hooker or Cruella de Ville) continued to elude me. Back in September, Katie Puckrik, a bit of a make up guru on the quiet, took up the discarded gauntlet / cudgels? on my behalf, and on the occasion of one of our whistlestop meetings at a cafe near Euston, her first act was to upend her handbag and spill a good dozen red lipsticks and lip glosses onto the table. (I wish I had taken a photograph of that!)

As a direct outcome of that testing session (on skin and on Katie in what I can best describe as the lipstick equivalent of a series of lightning costume changes), I went home and bought Revlon Sizzle Lip Gloss and Revlon Lip Butter in Candy Apple. Despite their being on Katie's shortlist of possible contenders for me, I couldn't quite believe in them myself. For I have a real mental block about red lipstick suiting me, partly based on my sallow colouring, but also to do with the relative thinness of my lips compared to Katie's pillowy pout. Somewhere I have taken on board the notion that red lipstick can be unflattering on mature skin. Sharon Stone gives the lie to that supposed "rule" here, but then I am not Sharon Stone, just her age.

KATIE, LOOKING EFFORTLESSLY GLAMOROUS IN A BEANIE

And then at the end of November, I was down in London again, and Katie kindly took me on a make up sampling spree in Selfridges before we headed off for dinner and the evening's (partly unscheduled) entertainment, of which more in Part 2. Sniffing wasn't so much on the agenda, as we had done a bit of that at Les Senteurs where we met up, but we did swing by the Dior display specifically so I could try Grand Bal. I am currently on a jasmine hunt for my Scandal- and Fracas-loving friend Sharon. She is a born-again tuberose lover, who is looking to branch out into other heady white soliflores, of which jasmine seemed as good an example as any. Anyway, I thought Grand Bal very pretty, like a quieter version of By Kilian Love & Tears, maybe. It was of necessity just a fleeting impression, because the sales assistant had no samples to give away. This surprised me, as Dior had always been pretty good bet for doling out those little 4ml pots in the past - hey, between me and Tara, who assiduously scored them on my behalf every time she was up the West End, I must have at least four of New Look alone!

No, the main objective of our dive into Selfridges was to slay this red lippie lemming of mine once and for all, and after a quick scope of every high end beauty counter from Yves St Laurent and Tom Ford to Benefit and Illamasqua, we narrowed the choices to Laura Mercier Crimson Tint and an Armani Sheer Red lipstick, the name of which escapes me. I plumped for the Laura Mercier in the end a) because Katie swore black, blue, white and red that it suited me, b) because it was cheaper than the Armani - I never actually got as far as inquiring, but you just know that it had to be! - and c) because my natural dark pink lip tone kept dragging the Armani red back to pinky-neutral YLBB territory. This was as unhelpful as looking foolishly scarlet, especially at that price, whatever it may have been.

ME WEARING LAURA MERCIER CRIMSON TINT, WHICH LOOKS STRANGELY HOT PINK IN THIS PHOTO

Some weeks have passed, and it is dawning on me that if I can carry off the Laura Mercier, I must have suited the other lipsticks all along, which are in similar vein really. The Revlon Sizzle is perhaps a slightly warmer, more orange-y red, while the Candy Apple is in the same sheer mid-red territory as the Laura Mercier. Crucially not too blue on my olive skin. So the upshot of all of this is that I have been wearing overtly red lipstick in public on a number of occasions since my outing with Katie. Nobody has screamed and recoiled in horror, not a single small child has pointed at me and sniggered, and no one has refused to serve me in a shop. This Christmas I may finally have overcome my irrational hang up about red lippie after all, just in time to accessorise the holly.

ME WEARING REVLON SIZZLE LIP GLOSS, WHICH LOOKS NEAR AS DAMMIT THE SAME STRANGE HOT PINK AS ABOVE, BUT REALLY ISN'T

NB Bonus points to anyone who spots Bloody Frida's pennants in the background!

Coming up in Part 2: The press night of The Card Shark Show, and an entertaining detour en route.


Photo of Dior perfume counter from speirsandmajor.com, other photos my own

No Unmarked Door Unpushed: Meeting Katie Puckrik Again And Cadging A "Smadge" Of Madonna Truth Or Dare

My recent merch selling duties in Germany meant that unfortunately I had to pass up Katie Puckrik's lively talk at the Perfume Lovers London meet-up in April. Comprehensive accounts of - and the next best thing to attending - the evening may however be found on Candy Perfume Boy and Olfactorias Travels.

As it happens, I was down in London the last weekend in April, so Katie and I arranged to meet on the Sunday afternoon for a "senior supper" and a bit of a catch up. I had just clocked her hilarious, no-holds barred article in The Guardian about her meeting with Stephen Nilsen, the perfumer behind Madonna's new fragrance release, Truth or Dare, and a few days ahead of our meeting dared to send a cheeky request of my own.

"Really enjoyed your Guardian piece and wondered if you could possibly bring a smidge ("smadge"?? : - ) ) of the Madonna scent on Sunday, as I am mad keen to try it, having recently enjoyed a bit of a white floral epiphany."

Katie replied that that would be no bother, but could I please bring a vial with me, as she hadn't got any decanting tackle with her in London. She gave me the address of a club in East London of which she was a member, and said she would meet me in reception, adding that the door was unmarked, but that I should just push it and go on in.

So I got to the address with five minutes to spare, only to find that every single door in that particular street was unmarked, not with building names or even numbers (though I only had the name of the street anyway). Suffice to say that if I was in the signage business, I would give that entire postcode a very wide berth. But okay, I thought, not to worry, I will push every last one of them and see if any yield to the touch and lead into something resembling a reception area. I say "resembling", because East London is noted for its trendy warehouse conversions and other quirky developments, so one should keep an open mind as to the possible layout of any given building.

Some eight doors later, I asked a passing American for help - on the principle that if Katie is an American living in London, there may well be others with good local knowledge, and so it proved. "That's the one you want" he said affably, "you see where those people are going in?" Aha - I suppose I should have taken the party of four club members filing in as a bit of a clue. After all, no one had made any attempt to gain entry to those other unmarked doors I was scoping in my ten perplexed minutes wandering up and down the street.

Shortly after that, Katie herself arrived, and after a quick tour of the building (also a warehouse conversion!), we ensconced ourselves on the squashy sofas of one of the lounges, and proceeded to "download" our news over a late brunch of portabello mushrooms and poached eggs, which we recast as a "senior brunch". This was washed down in my case by a pot of tea, because I had a lot of "catching up" to do on that front too to meet my copious daily requirement.

The meal over, we got down to the serious business of decanting my sample of Truth or Dare from Katie's handbag size bottle. We both had a go in the end - with and without funnel - and I ended up applying the not inconsiderable overspray to both wrists and neck. That was my SOTE sorted, then! We did finally coax a couple of ml into the atomiser I had brought with me for the purpose. My first thought was that the juice itself was a pretty peachy pink, not unlike Shalimar Parfum Initial, to which I have recently taken an unexpected shine.

Before setting out to write this post, I couldn't resist taking a peek at the reviews already out there, which are all favourable as far as I can tell, and with good reason. For Truth or Dare is a cut above your usual celebuscent all right.

As I type I am wearing a number of diva-ish floral fragrances at once to see which ones Truth or Dare most closely resembles. Robin of Now Smell This dubbed Truth or Dare "Fracas Lite" in her review, while Jen of This Blog Really Stinks likened it to "Fracas Candy" (as in Prada Candy).

Well, I'd say that those are two very good analogies: in the case of the latter, you've got a big white floral bouquet with tuberose and gardenia at its heart, like twin prom dresses with swishy, bouffant skirts, and underneath all that you have a sweet, candied, fluffy layer not unlike the base of Parfums MDCI Promesse de L'Aube. I detected a syrupy vanilla, and at one point could have sworn that a toffee apple accord flitted in and out again. "Miscellaneous calorific desserts", let's just say. Or one of those Ben & Jerry ripple-type ice creams with crumbled bits of pavlova.

Notes: gardenia, tuberose and neroli, with jasmine, benzoin tears, white lily petals, vanilla absolute, caramelized amber, and sensual musk

Now Truth or Dare may sound a bit full on, but it really is soft and caressing in a little while, like a musky meringue - the drydown is reminiscent of the perfume Kate Middleton didn't in fact wear on her wedding day, ie the "wrong" batch of White Gardenia Petals that accidentally came my and Birgit's way... I am also wearing "correct" White Gardenia Petals, and it is not much like Truth or Dare - too sharply green, wan and metallic to my nose.

As well as being these variants on Fracas, another scent which I feel Truth or Dare resembles is Gardénia Pétale, from Van Cleef & Arpels' Collection Extraordinaire.

Notes: green notes, citrus notes, lily of the valley, jasmine, and gardenia

Like Truth or Dare, it is a plush white floral blend featuring lily, jasmine and gardenia. Okay, LOTV in this case, but at the risk of playing note bingo, that is still a fair bit of crossover.

For fun, I just tried layering Gardénia Pétale with its stablemate, Lys Carmin, which has a very sweet, gourmand facet that I thought might possibly mimic the edible drydown of Truth or Dare. And d'you know, it isn't a dupe by any manner of means, but there is a marked likeness between this layered combo and Truth or Dare - much more so say than between it and either of the Van Cleefs in isolation. Now Lys Carmin doesn't have the same kind of sweetness exactly - it is too spicy for one, and generally darker in feel - but texturally it is very similar in terms of the fluffy nimbus thing it has got going on. And it adds the vanilla in our note bingo game, and yet more lily!

Notes: Lily, pink peppercorn, ylang ylang, vanilla, and sandalwood

You may not be surprised to learn that the next day in Selfridges I came this close to buying a 50ml bottle of Truth or Dare, but ended up "fondling and replacing" it as is my practice these days. Even though it cost a mere £25 for 30ml, £32 for 50ml and £42 for 75ml. Clearly the more you spray, the more you save, to annexe Mr Bonkers' beer mantra for a moment. So that is a "Fracas Lite" price to boot!

I don't know what stayed my hand. Quite possibly the bottle, which looks a bit plasticky in reality, and reminds me of a kitschy replica of an altar my dad bought when I was a child - at Lourdes, or somewhere like that selling cheap religious souvenirs. I distinctly remember that this white plastic altar also had accents of gold, plus a red chalice (coated to look like burnished metal and concealed behind a little door, for all the world like a chocolate in an advent calendar). And Madonna was of course brought up as a Catholic, so it is perhaps not surprising that those early influences might assert themselves later - in a scent bottle with ecclesiastical overtones, or the dodgy outfit of her Like A Virgin video.

So it might have been that, or the fact that the sales assistant in Selfridges and I were discussing the intended demographic for Truth or Dare, whose upper limit of 45 stops a good 8 years short of Madge's actual age. The SA told me that it was in fact selling to ALL ages, including a lot of teenage girls, and maybe that was what put it beyond the pale for me. Which is plain daft - and cutting my nose off to spite my face - because this is a well-made fragrance, which I like a lot!

But meanwhile, I have a bit of my sample left, and thanks to Katie have also inherited a scented candle featuring the fragrance, which would doubtless have taken up her entire hold baggage allowance on the flight home. And if those two things are not enough to sate the Madonna scent lemming, I reserve the right to dare to crack - by which I mean "fondle and take to till" - the next time I am in Selfridges, which may very well be next week...


Photo of East London from macnovel.org.uk, photo of Madonna Truth or Dare from fashionison.com, other photos my own

“Getting Lippie”: A Holy Grail-Hopping Tale, And How I May Yet Bite The Burberry Beauty Bullet...

Oh dear…my unintentional Wikio Beauty Blog rating just took another tumble, from 70 to 99. At what point do I stop trying to arrest its fall by knocking out another make up post? No that is not fair, for ever since Tara and I got lost in the wonderland of Harrods’ beauty counters, I have been planning to write about my luxury lippie epiphany, and so here finally is that post. It did cross my mind though, that at the rate things are going, there may come a point when my Wikio (aka ebuzzing) ranking is so embarrassingly low that I might as well take the badge off my blog. Or conversely brazen it out and leave it up there for its not inconsiderable comedy value. And if I do on occasions put up a cosmetics-themed post right after my ranking has plummeted again, it is more in the spirit of patting a toad to see how far – or indeed if - it will hop, rather than any serious belief that I could climb up the greasy pole (greasy because it is of course well moisturised) to a top 20 or even a top 40 Beauty Blog ranking.

But back to our muttons - or muttons made up as lamb - which is of course an ever present risk when you get to my age.

In a post last year, talking about her favourite sensory discoveries of the autumn across a variety of product categories, Katie Puckrik posed herself the question:

“Does makeup count as a sensory discovery? In my book (admittedly an absurd, rather disjointed book) it does.”

When I discovered the world of fragrance in my late 40s, I felt I had stumbled through a wormhole into a new sensory dimension which had more or less passed me by up till that point. I wondered at the time – and still do - if perfume was acting as some kind of HRT, evening out my moods through its ad hoc style of aromatherapy, and bolstering my femininity as I stood on the cusp between what it pleased me to think of as my “late youth” and the slow descent towards old age and invisibility.

For a long time I pursued my ideal of a Holy Grail Scent, and thought I had found it in Guerlain Plus Que Jamais until the “dark actors” at IFRA chopped its legs off. I still nurse the fantasy that one day I may smell the scent that is quintessentially me – or the me I would like to be, even – but for now I content myself with some near misses and my remaining stocks of PQJ.

And meanwhile I have recently discovered high end makeup...! Like Katie, I do consider it to be another type of sensory discovery - one that has the potential to be as good for my morale as it could be disastrous to my wallet.

Now I should point out that I haven’t made a purchase yet (aside from a Dior tester lipstick on Ebay that has yet to arrive), but I am eyeing up a few ranges – of lipsticks particularly – like a hawk circling its prey, and it can only be a matter of time before I go in for the fill. Okay, so that was a really bad pun, but lipsticks with alleged plumping properties are top of my wish list.

Then I have got it into my head that somewhere out there are my Holy Grail pink and peach lipsticks – maybe even a subdued orangey red, though anything else might be pushing it, "true reds" being a notoriously difficult shade range to pull off. That way lies a look which, on the wrong person, one beauty blogger tellingly likened to “the business end of a chicken”. Yes, I am proceeding with caution, keenly aware that for most of my adult life – for even longer than I went scentless – I probably wore lipsticks that were not especially flattering, some of them even featuring the derided characteristics to which Katie Puckrik also refers in her post of “yack-attack glitter, sparkle, or other gleamy crud”.

Slovenian chickens not showing their business ends

These klutzy choices I put down to a number of factors: misguided yet persuasive sales assistants - like the one in Boston who sold me the frosty orange MAC Jist and some super tacky clear gloss to go on top when I was well into my 40s - compounded by my own slavish belief in a matching look: “Oh look, there’s a neon coral red in a matt finish that goes exactly with my red Sloppy Joe sweatshirt!” Never mind that the occasion for wearing such a vivid red (even were I much younger and blessed with the appropriate skin tones to work the look) was never going to be a jogging outfit...

Beyond that, there were the many free lipsticks that came in those little cosmetics bags you get given when you buy two items of skin care or make up of a certain value from a high end brand. The GWP fosters a certain defiance in the purchaser: “Look, this Highland Heather Diamond Sparkle Shimmer lipstick was free, so I am damn well going to wear it.” And the catch-all reason for my other bad acquisitions is simply my general nerdiness and lack of fashion sense. Down the years I have displayed an unerring knack of wearing styles that a) do not suit my body shape in the first place – especially not in those ice cream pastel colourways and b) have come and gone and not yet come back again. I think the word for this may be “counter-cyclical” – when speaking of the economy certainly – but I do know that in fashion terms it is Not A Good Look.

But before I could correct the mistakes of a lifetime, and pursue a series of HGLs (Holy Grail Lippies) in the main shades I have a hunch I do in fact suit, there was a serious need to purge my many tatty cosmetics bags of their existing crud, both “gleamy” and otherwise. This is in fact a subject I have touched on in an earlier post in reference to make up generally.

Yes, it was time to pull the pillar box reds, bin the bolder browns, nuke the nudes, lose the lilacs, and give the hot pinks the old heave-ho.

Katie Puckrik herself urged me to be ruthless:

“Lipsticks: I beseech you to turn in any arms older than 5 years of age, and that's pushing it.”

In all, I chucked out 18 of my 27-strong lipstick collection, some of them dating back to the mid-80s. It wasn’t too much of a wrench once I got going, because when I put all the wrong ones together, they somehow managed to look wronger still en masse.

And even the ones I allowed myself to keep – partly on the grounds of their relative youth, but also my perception that they may suit me – I am not wholly sure about at this point, especially not the darker, slightly magenta-y end of the pink spectrum that narrowly escaped the cosmetics cull.

Red and pink pariahs

Peach and brown baddies

Pink probationers

Peach and brown probationers - note that brown on the far right doesn't come up nearly as dark as it looks, and was a personal recommendation by Wordbird, so trust me on this...

Going forward, the problem I have is that my skin is naturally yellow/sallow in tone, while my lips are quite pigmented with an almost mauve tint to them. The bottom line is that my complexion doesn’t go with my lips, so the deal is either to find something that will cover the pigment of my lips and work with my skin, or let my natural lip colour take precedence and match my lipstick to that, thereby running the risk that my mouth will clash horribly with the rest of me.

I have found a few new shades I like such as Burberry Beauty Lip Mist in Feather Pink, and have also earmarked A TON for future investigation: the Chantecaille Lip Chic and NARS Lip Gloss ranges, plus other untested shades in the Burberry Lip Mist and Lip Cover ranges, but for now the HGLs continue to elude me.

And then just yesterday, Mrs Bonkers Senior gave me a freebie Clinique lip gloss she had no use for – Clinique Superbalm Moisturising Gloss - in Ginger. Mrs Bonkers Senior is more of a Vaseline person when it comes to lip care. So I put it on today and it was very moisturising – a bit sticky and a bit too glossy maybe - but most of all what struck me was the colour: it was YLBTS – "Your Lips But The Same".

So now at least I know that if anyone asks me what exact colour my lips are naturally, I can truthfully say "ginger"...

UPDATE: I hope that if I do get around to buying one of those ultra-slinky bullet shaped Burberries, I don’t literally bite it, as the title suggests. For I have just watched a Lisa Eldridge make-up tutorial on YouTube about five different ways to wear the same lipstick (Tom Ford Black Orchid). There was in fact one understated look that Lisa demonstrated which she referred to as a “stain”, but grape-coloured stains on your teeth wasn’t it.

And I realise we have been talking about lipstick, but I have now watched a bunch of other videos by Lisa and it has been a revelation! I feel I am being mesmerically sucked into a vortex where magical transformations happen, and that I am poised to make a slew of purchases of tools and make up items in other categories. Brow care! Eyelash curling! Armouries of brushes! Yes, it has been a real eye-opener – or it would be if I put a white dot in each inside corner.


PS Thanks to the Get Lippie blog for inspiring the title of this post. : - )

PPS Any lipstick recommendations for my challenging sallow skin-and-mauve lip combo gratefully received!!


Photo of girl with red lips from re_ via Flickr CC, photo of tree from tubbus via Flickr CC, photo of Shiseido office from DaraKero_F via Flickr CC, photo of Clinique Superbalm Moisturiser in Ginger from harlowstar.co.uk, photo of Burberry Lip Mists from Burberry's website, photo of Lisa Eldridge from sweethealthnut.com, other photos my own

KLOUT: A Force To Be Reckoned With Or Kommercial Klaptrap Koncealed As Kudos?

I used to do Pilates. Then in December, my instructor upped and emigrated to New Zealand, and I haven't done any exercise since. December was probably also the last time I did any "klouting" to speak of. For anyone not familiar with Klout, it is the latest social media craze. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where you can have actual conversations (after a fashion) with other members, the way you interact on Klout is by awarding...well, klouts...to other people whom you consider to be influential in a chosen field, be they journalists, TV presenters, bloggers or whoever. A klout is like a token of approval, a recognition of merit, and the more you receive, the higher your ranking on an index that runs between 0 and 100.

But awarding klouts to other people is just one way in which your overall Klout score is calculated. A raft of variables is taken into account, including numbers of @mentions, retweets, likes, and comments.

As Klout explains on its website:

"The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

True Reach: How many people you influence

Amplification: How much you influence them

Network Impact: The influence of your network"

Note the phrase "drive action"...It is significant and I shall come back to it later.

I just checked and my own score has gone up 3 points (to 50) since I last looked. Yes, people have kindly carried on klouting me while I stopped dead in my tracks six weeks ago. So why did I do that? Well, partly because I was travelling most of that month, but also because I started to doubt the meaningfulness of the whole Klout system.

For starters, my fields of expertise or influence include Perfume and Travel & Tourism (which are fair enough, given the focus of Bonkers), but also Chocolate, Weddings, War, and to a lesser extent Hot Chocolate, Toolbar and Cougar. Okay, weddings...hmmm...that might be something to do with my posts on Kate Middleton's wedding scent, Illuminum White Gardenia Petals. But war? And hot chocolate? And toolbar??? It is baffling.

So that was one thing, and another flaw as I saw it is that it is considered good form to klout back people kind enough to klout you, so to a certain extent the mutual klouting cancels itself out, like when you retweet somebody's blog post and they return the favour. Ironically therefore, my being paralysed with indecision lately and failing to klout anyone in return may explain why my score has risen in the interim.

But the main reason why my confidence in the Klout system faltered is the fact that notable blogs, personalities or organisations such as Now Smell This, Katie Puckrik, Chandler Burr and Roja Dove, Andy Tauer and Ormonde Jayne, IFRA North America and the Fragrance Foundation (to name but a few) - none of whom were registered members, but who had managed to clock up Klout scores anyway - had rankings that were behind my own. That's like saying a marathon runner isn't a sports person because they've never entered a 1 km fun run wearing fancy dress. As a measure of influence - even confined to social media - Klout's net was surely way too narrow.

And then, out of the blue, right around the time I was having my dark night of the soul about the fallibility of Klout's measurement methods, I received an email from Katie Puckrik herself, congratulating me on my ranking and explaining that she had just signed up, having read about Klout in a "well-placed article" in the NY Times. However, her early enthusiasm was already tempered by a reservation about which social media were being analysed, Katie being of course famous in particular for her blog and her YouTube perfume reviews.

Katie: "...unless I'm mistaken, they only seem to take Twitter/Facebook into account, at least judging from the stats they pull up. I have a sneaking feeling that my YouTube activities aren't factored into my ranking."

So I wrote back, explaining my own misgivings, and a Klout-centric "Perfume Pen Pals" exchange ensued. Katie sent me the link to the article in the NY Times, which further confirmed my surprise that I had such a high score - a score that would gain me admittance to exclusive society bashes in Manhattan, no less - which seemed a very silly state of affairs, given the relative nobody I actually am.

Vanessa: "Well, I found that NYT article really quite surprising - in a strange Emperor's new clothes kind of a way. At 47 (my Klout score at the time, not my age), I might just be admitted to those velvet rope do's - seems quite topsy turvy really."

Katie, meanwhile, wrote to Klout, inquiring about the basis of the rankings, specifically whether her YouTube and Blogger presence was factored into her overall score.

It sounds almost too good to be true, but the person who replied to her email was called Kameron (with a "K"!) Maybe all the staff have to kloutify their Christian names as a condition of working there... : - )

Hi Katie

I apologize for the delay.

At this time, the only networks that contribute to your Klout score is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google+. The other networks that you can connect for your Klout profile, we are still testing.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thank you,
Kameron

So far, so lopsided. I had not even heard of Foursquare, for instance, so how influential can that be? And Google+ is pretty new.

Vanessa: "...YouTube is absolutely massive - think of the reach and impact of those viral clips of cats playing the piano etc that are seen and circulated by millions. How is that not influence? And what about the luminaries who are very influential, but do not engage with social media particularly - like Luca Turin? At least I don't think he does, whereas I have seen photos of Andy Tauer's hotel rooms in London and Chicago, and one of a chicken in his oven."

And then I started wondering about what Klout is trying to achieve at the end of the day, and have a feeling it might be something to do with linking up influential people (as determined by Klout) and brand owners.

"Free Stuff

Klout Perks are exclusive products or experiences that you earn based on your influence. Influencers have earned sweet Perks like laptops and airline tickets."

Sweet perks, eh?

"Don't Stress

You have no obligation to talk about the product. You're
welcome to tell the world you love it, you dislike it, or say nothing at all."

No worries - I had no intention of stressing!

Then in the FAQs on Perks we learn more about how their location is determined:

"Often companies are interested in giving Perks to influencers in a specific neighborhood. For instance, pizzerias in North Beach don't care how influential you are if you live in NYC. We look at a collection of data to determine your location, including the zip code that you put in your Klout profile, your Facebook location and your Twitter location (don't worry, we never share our data)."

Well, hold on a minute...the Klout people don't appear to have determined my location very closely. The only perk I have earned so far is a $10 voucher off an online sports gear company that I have never heard of, and which I can confirm is nowhere near where I live and exert my all-important influence... ; - )

And finally, when you click on the "Business" tab of the Klout website, the full purpose of the scheme becomes apparent.

"Klout measures influence based on the ability to drive action, not potentially misleading metrics like follower or friend count."

"Drive action" is the key phrase here - it isn't about driving action for its own sake but ultimately - or so it seems to me - about driving consumer purchases.

"Klout has analyzed over 85 million people on major social networks, and is used by over 3000 brands and applications."

And now for the bottom line:

Your customers don't trust advertising, they trust their peers and influencers. Get your product into the right hands and let them do the talking for you.

So by engaging with social media generally and by busily klouting one another and increasing our scores, we are grooming ourselves to become better brand ambassadors for a host of consumer products, like self-fattening farm animals.

Katie: "There I was thinking it was a simple aggregator, ranking influence in a social stock market kind of way, when in fact it exists primarily to make Klout bigger. And in such a clever way, because here we are scrambling around to get Klout to acknowledge us, while all they are interested in is that we acknowledge it."

So tell me, are you bothered about "doing the talking" for a pizzeria in North Beach or wherever you may live? And if consumers don't trust advertising, having seen how we may be being used as brand "mules", do you still trust Klout?

Now I gather that HR Managers are starting to look at Klout rankings as a measure of what sort of "mover and shaker" a job candidate might be. Perhaps they are the new gap year or Duke of Edinburgh award. So I am not saying that an individual might not benefit in terms of career advancement or admission to fashion shows and the like on the strength of his or her Klout score. However, fundamentally it smacks to me of a peer network marketing scheme built on vanity.

In fact, on an impulse I just googled "Klout" and "vanity", and found an article describing it as the "ultimate vanity metric". So there you go - there's an actual term for it!

And to everyone who has klouted me up to this point, thanks for that, as I know it was done in good faith and I appreciate the support. Only now I am not so sure that Klout has all the klout it's kracked up to have. And neither does Katie, despite having a "K" in her name...


Photo of Klout screen from offthegrid-pr.com, photo of graph from ubergizmo.com, photo of chocolate from en.wikipedia.org, photo of Katie from beauty-video-tutorial.com, photo of Katie Puckrik Smells from handpickedmedia.co.uk, photo of velvet rope from howtobeamoneymagnet.com, photo of cat playing the piano from curezone.com, photo of pizza restaurant from foodhoe.com, photo of Klout logo from level343.com