Teenage Cancer Trust kicks right Royal oldies into touch

I’m pleased to see the Royal Albert Hall has announced changes to the way its members are able to dispose of unwanted tickets for charity concerts. Earlier this week there was a kerfuffle when news emerged that a couple of its wealthy patrons were making tidy profits on the secondary ticket resale market, with those for Roger Daltrey and Paul Weller's Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concert selling at up to £299 apiece against a face value of £50.

Members of the Royal Albert Hall pay around £1000 per seat to the charity – the Royal Albert Hall, this is (yes, it does seem rather incredible that such a venerable institution has charitable status) – and in return have a certain number of seats allocated for each performance. This allows them to show largesse and entertain family, friends and clients. Not no one likes every act that takes to the stage, nor has the time to go to every performance, so for those events for which they have surplus tickets, selling them to someone who can use them makes sense.

Giving them to someone who can use of them makes even more sense. Having got ‘cheap’ seats to see PJ Harvey at the Royal Albert Hall last year, imagine my delight when while queuing for the lift to take us up to the ‘gods’  at the top of the auditorium, a lady who holds a number of seats in the stalls offered me a pair for the third row – for free. It was a fantastic gift and a matter of pure chance that I was in the right place at the right time. It’s also in complete contrast to the attitude of the other debenture members who have been criticised for selling theirs and profiting from doing so.

Inability to secure concert tickets is the bane of every music fan’s life. Your favourite act finally tours and you can’t get tickets for love nor constant redial or web page refresh. Moments after the event sells out, tickets magically appear on a secondary sale site at hugely inflated prices. Entrepreneurial, yes, but one that comes at great expense to the average music fan. The same thing happens for other high profile events, but the Glastonbury Festival has become the standard-bearer for this nefarious business.

When Arctic Monkeys announced their first UK tour as a headline act, I found myself on the receiving end of this. An eBay bidding novice, I grew tired of constantly being outbid at the last minute for every ticket I went for (I soon learned about auto-bidding tools, but not before the tickets were gone and my patience exhausted).

I soon discovered face value tickets were available for the same tour in Germany and Holland, but eventually plumped for Philadelphia – an extravagant option, but less so as I was able to combine it with a long overdue return to visit a dear friend in New York and my first holiday in some years. My ticket cost $15.

Such options have now become fairly standard, with travel packages for festival fans being offered.

In the case of the Royal Albert Hall tickets, of course, something else was at play. Profiting from the fact you are automatically allocated tickets is one thing, but it feels immoral when you’re doing so for a charity concert. The performers and promoters were giving their time and talents for free (and rightly getting publicity and goodwill in return, natch).

I was lucky enough to attend the first ever Teenage Cancer Trust concerts and have been to four in all over the years. One year, having delivered to its modest office some donated items for distribution around the various cancer wards that the Teenage Cancer Trust has been instrumental in creating, I was asked whether I’d be interested in buying a ticket for one of the events. These, I was told, were tickets that supporters of various types were unable to make use of, and had therefore returned to the charity so they could be sold and more money raised.

Surely this is what is supposed to happen. That or give the unwanted tickets to the kids on behalf of whom Teenage Cancer Trust is fundraising. There’s also a group of kids in attendance at these concerts, bravely declaring their intention to battle on through a horrible disease.

I’m sure many more kids – with cancer or without but facing challenging circumstances all the same – would love the chance to attend. Now the Charity Commission, organiser Harvey Goldsmith and the board of the Royal Albert Hall have stepped in to prevent such profiteering, it’s possible many more of them will get the chance to do so. 

Masterchef mischief

Lime cheesecake - the spare bits

Masterchef has much to answer for. I don't just mean the hours we spend drooling over the incredible creations that they manage to pull off, week after week. It's the idea these so-called amateurs implant in us hapless viewers' minds that we too can conjure up incredible culinary creations. 

A few months ago, I wrote of my intention to whip up an easy-peasy panna cotta and use it as a foil for the fun-looking endeavour of spinning sugar and caramel creations into fancy shapes. On that occasion, it was Celebrity Masterchef putting foolish ideas into my head. 

Since I'm vegetarian, it took me a while to find a suitable recipe that sounded easy to make and used agar flakes rather than gelatine to set the pudding. After much searching, the Waitrose store in the basement of John Lewis on Oxford Street came up trumps. 

When I eventually had the right combination of ingredients, time and recipe, I made a right hash of what several food bloggers experienced in Hawaiian cookery had assured me was an easy to make much loved classic, coconut panna cotta. Coconut is mildly less fattening than double cream, which is good, but I didn't manage to get my agar flakes to dissolve sufficiently. When I came to wash up, I realised a fair chunk had congealed in the tumbler in which I'd mixed it and didn't make it as far as the saucepan where it would set the coconut milk 'custard'. 

I'll try the recipe again, as it tasted good, but my expectations of what constitutes simple on a cookery show have been suitably adjusted. 

Lo and behold, one of the contestants in the final of Masterchef this year had to use agar flakes to make an item in a hold (a Michelin-starred chef wanted an edible barbed wire ring). Seemingly, Andrew's first ever attempt was a triumph. Really? Honestly? 

Today's creation looks a little more successful. I've whipped up a lime cheesecake using my wonderful new food mixer. The flan tray I have with a removable base wasn't quite deep enough, so I've got excess filling. Thankfully, some pretty glasses were able to accommodate the spare, so I crumbled in some more digestive biscuit and butter base mix, packed it down and spooned over the lime cheesecake filling. 

Smoothing off the top and neatly transferring the mixture to the glasses wasn't *wholly* successful, as some telltale smears suggest, but if the TV chefs can fudge, so can I. 

Green cross code

When I was young, I was a keen rollerskater. So I'm very pleased to see a dozen or so skaters regularly speed along the streets where I live in Lewisham. Their confidence is impressive. This evening, as they were travelling in procession and triumphantly gliding through the red lights (there was no one crossing at the time), one of them raised his arms aloft in joy.

Thankfully, the traffic in the immediate vicinity tends to be either sporadic or an absolute jam. The bottom of the road is a bottleneck, there's the pedestrian crossing awkwardly sited just after the entrance to the station and, more critically, a bridge over the railway that hides the crossing and unexpected skaters enjoying the freedom of the open road.

So far, to my knowledge, there haven't been any awkward scrapes. This despite the steep hill leading down to the intersection that car racers, skaters and cyclists all love to charge down.

It's not really the skaters I worry about though. They seem to do a fair job of keeping their wits about them; road sense (or second sense) must be a requirement for them.

It's the pedestrians that concern me. Whether skater, van, cycle or car, walkers increasingly seem to take their life in their hands. Walking out in front of oncoming traffic while on a crossing; stepping out into the road where there isn't a crossing; pushing a buggy ahead to ensure the traffic stops. This worked in the days when we all observed rules such as slowing down and stopping when a pedestrian was even vaguely near a zebra crossing. It doesn't happen half as much in London any more. Cars and vans now seem to dominate and don't necessarily cede right of way to insignificant - inconvenient - other road users.

For years, I've shouted at drivers ignoring pedestrian crossings or speeding up through changing lights. I swear at bus drivers - among the worst offenders at iinfringing on other users' road space and sitting static on crossings, forcing pedestrians to walk out into the traffic in order to cross.

At this rate, I'll have to change tack and shout at fellow walkers instead. Obliviousness in the face of other road users' bad manners as well as acting unpredictably and walking out to meet it only had to go wrong once. Perhaps if you're distracted by an unexpectedly skater.

Flowers for Amber

Our glamorous assistant Amber loved to be involved with whatever we were up to

We've been trying to think of an appropriate memorial to our lovely cat, Amber. She loved being mistress of our home and garden, so I thought some flowers or a shrub might work well. She was often to be glimpsed stealthily stalking petals and creatures through long grass or using daffodil stems as cover. She'd sit tight, choose her moment and then leap into the air, often with an insect or petal (occasionally a baby bird) in her triumphant grasp. In her element, she was elegant, graceful - and occasionally deadly. 


The flashes of colour from deep brown and black to orange and yellow bewitched us, as did her affectionate ways. When we can home of an evening, she'd stretch out luxuriantly on the rug and show us her tummy, ready to be rubbed and tickled. A small cat, she managed to double in length when stretched out awaiting her tummy rub. 


We have some video clips that immortalise her agile movements, but pulling up a video file is not the same as the flash of colour unexpectedly catching the eye. 


I like the idea of assembling flowers and plants that symbolise her beauty and that have their own majesty. I've found some black velvet petunias and some burnt orange 'crackling fire' trailing petunias I hope will fit the bill.

All about Eve

There seems to be a designated day for almost everything. It's British Pie Week, which is an easy enough cause to get behind and gives us the perfect excuse to indulge in some hip-expanding pastry delights. Crank's Homity Pie is my top choice here. 

But other causes are even more worth making a song and dance about. Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month is this month. My friend @AmieDeana told me about it a couple of weeks ago. She's an official representative for The Eve Appeal, an important charity specifically addressing gynaecological cancers. 

According to an entry posted on Wikipedia by The British Gynaecological Cancer Society, gynaecological cancers are the fourth most common type. Most of us have heard of cervical cancer and ovarian cancer. Endometric cancer, uterine cancer and vulvar cancer are less known. Needless to say, the effects of getting any of them can be life-threatening. Yet the fact that there are three types of female gynaecological cancers few of us have even heard of - let alone know their symptoms - suggests there's a lot of awareness raising needed. 

Sadly, Amie's reasons for being involved in The Eve Appeal are very personal: she lost her mum to ovarian cancer. This weekend she's hosting an event under the banner MakeTime4Tea - a fundraising day of pampering, clothes swaps and more. Many such events are taking place this month in a bid to increase awareness as well as increase the charity's funds. 

And if you don't know someone hosting a maketime4tea event, you can help the cause by buying hand creams and lotions from Urban Retreat. 

Most of all, please take a look at The Eve Appeal website and find out what they do and why. Learning about these cancers and how they can affect your fertility as well as your general health is a must if you're a young woman. 

And if you don't think it's worth having that smear test you got a letter about, take it from me: it is. Routine smear tests more than 10 years apart caught my early stage cervical cancer and (thankfully non-cancerous) ovarian cysts. 

Positively Ambassadorial

I'm extremely proud to have been chosen as one of the 7790 people who will help visitors to the London 2012 Olympics get the most from the experience.


Essentially human tourist information centres, we'll be stationed all over the capital and its entry points. Luton, Gatwick and Heathrow Airports, for example, have a complement of Team London Ambassadors, as do all the London rail termini. 


Most of us will be sited at kiosks or information pods, with an intriguing 'hub and spoke' splaying out of team members around each. We'll be very visible: the uniform is a very bright pink with some purple or orange thrown in for good measure (I didn't trust the projector display that much) with a side order of pink backpack, waterproof jacket, water bottle and trilby with pink trim. I fully expect our headgear to invite droll tourist comments along the lines of "Make mine a 99, love" and "Just one Cornetto".


I know all this because this week was my first training session (of three). These have been taking place across London and will continue to do so for the next few weeks. Luckily for me, our day-long briefing was only a couple of miles away in Greenwich - venue for the Olympic equestrian events. I'll also be based in the Greenwich area during my week-long Ambassador stint in July.


What I didn't know until a couple of days ago was the implications of having been assigned to the 'Ambassador flying squad'. It sounded quite Juliet Bravo; in fact, it could be one of the coolest roles there is. As well as filling in at locations that are particularly busy and delivering much-needed supplies of water and more, I'm expected to create a video diary of the comings and goings of Olympic visitors and volunteers. We'll need to conduct vox pop interviews and capture a flavour of the week, all of which will eventually be corralled into a souvenir video given out to all 8000 Ambassadors after the Olympics is over. I can already foresee plenty of hilarity as we try to fit our helmet cams on our pink-trimmed trilbies. In all, it's rather a result.