Author: Glen

Love London, love a laugh, love life. Visually impaired blogger, culture vulture & accessibility advocate, with aniridia & nystagmus, posting about my experiences & adventures.

Jack Dee – Stand-Up Comedy Reviews

Recently I celebrated John Bishop’s 25 years in comedy by watching and reviewing several of his great stand-up shows, including the latest one that aired on Sky Comedy over Christmas.

Another of my favourite comedians who also had a new special on Sky was Jack Dee. He’s been on the circuit even longer, making audiences laugh since he first set foot on stage in the late 80s, and really came to prominence on TV from the early 90s onwards. So he’s been going strong for over 35 years. I’ve seen him in many shows on TV in that time, and I also enjoy listening to him on I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on BBC Radio 4, as he’s proven to be the perfect host since taking over from the late, great Humphrey Lyttelton back in 2009.

Jack is of course known for his deadpan, sarcastic and grumpy stage persona, and he uses it to wonderful comedic effect. He does laugh sometimes, of course, but he’s usually very good at staying in character. It’s easiest to see him laughing more naturally in interviews, as well as the Oh My Dog podcast with Seann Walsh and guests, which isn’t the kind of podcast that interests me, but from a quick look at it out of curiosity, they do seem to have a lot of fun banter.

All that said, however, the truth is that he does actually suffer from depression, and has done for many years. So it’s good that he’s been open about it in interviews, which helps to raise awareness. He manages it well, and being able to channel his energy through his comedy has been life-changing for him.

So his latest stand-up special has given me a good excuse to rewatch and review his old DVDs, as it’s been quite some time since I’ve gone through them. Most of his DVDs don’t have extra features, but there’s plenty more footage of Jack online of course, as you can on my Youtube playlist. So I hope you enjoy looking through it all.

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 6 – Awards

We’ve crossed the halfway point in my look back at the 2023 Sotheby’s exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own. I hope you’re finding it interesting so far.

For this post we’re going to look at a whole bunch of awards, because Freddie and Queen were honoured with a deluge of well-earned accolades during and after his lifetime, so there were lots on display in the exhibition. I’m not going to list them all, obviously, but I’m going to present a big selection that I took photos of, to give you a thorough sense of what was there. Most were sold in the Crazy Little Things 2 auction while a few were in the On Stage sale.

A wall filled with disc sales awards for Queen and Freddie Mercury albums and singles.

The vast majority of the sales awards adorned the walls of a room featuring Freddie’s royal cloak and crown (which you’ll see in a later post in this series). There were a huge number of silver, gold and platinum awards there, for the sales of singles and albums, and occasional awards for videos. But there were also some awards scattered around elsewhere too. A lot of the awards for disc sales look very similar by their nature, but there are a few more striking ones in amongst them.

So let’s crack on with it. As before you can click on the images to enlarge them and the award names to find out more, and I hope you enjoy!

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 5 – Art

Freddie Mercury didn’t just love the art of music, he was also a keen fan of paintings and prints. For example, in the first part of this series looking through the photos I took at the 2023 A World Of His Own exhibition at Sotheby’s, we saw some of the Japanese imagery that he had in his collection.

So now it’s time to dig deeper and see more of the art that he owned and had on display at Garden Lodge, his residence from which I recently shared many images of his furniture here and here. Most of these pieces were therefore sold in the At Home auction, but there are some from the Evening Sale and Crazy Little Things auctions too.

Towards the end of this post you’ll also see the famous door to the house, which itself is a work of art due to the fan tributes that completely cover it. And on a related note I’ll also show you my own visit to the property – not that you can see anything from the outside, but it still feels nice to say I’ve been there.

So with a reminder that you can click the names of the artworks to read more about them and the images to enlarge them, I hope you enjoy looking through it all!

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John Bishop – Stand-Up Comedy Reviews

Back in October 2000, a depressed and almost divorced Liverpudlian called John Bishop naively put his name down for an open mic spot, despite having no experience of stand-up whatsoever, purely to avoid paying £4 to enter the Frog & Bucket comedy club in Manchester.

He didn’t expect to be invited on stage, but he was, and his off-the-cuff debut monologue that night triggered a chain of events that saved his marriage to Melanie and launched his stand-up career. It’s a really sweet story – one that’s actually inspired the new film called Is This Thing On?, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Will Arnett. It seems to be getting good reviews too, so I will watch it and give my reaction to it at some stage, if not in the cinema then after it becomes available online.

25 years on from that first appearance, having since become one of the most successful comedians of the 21st century, John has been celebrating the milestone with a new tour, from which one of the performances was broadcast on Sky in December. He’s also posted a few shows from the past couple of years and a video diary from his new tour over on Youtube.

I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, having bought all of his stand-up DVDs that were released between 2010-2018. I just think he’s a very funny observational story-teller and a really nice, down to earth guy, and I like how he does something a little bit special or different at the end of some of his shows, rather than just finishing with a joke. In the past I’ve seen a few TV programmes that he’s been in as well, including his self-titled shows, but most notable for me was his stint as companion Dan Lewis in Jodie Whittaker’s era of Doctor Who, and last year’s cameo in the ITV drama Code Of Silence alongside Rose Ayling-Ellis.

So now’s the perfect time for me to mark his anniversary by having a Bishop binge on his stand-up material, revisiting his DVDs that I haven’t watched for a while and then checking out his newer material that I haven’t seen at all before. And I’ve also compiled a playlist with a selection of clips and interviews. So I hope you enjoy!

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 4 – More Furniture

Hello again. Yesterday I presented many items of furniture and accessories from Freddie Mercury’s home at Garden Lodge, which I saw at Sotheby’s in the exhibition A World Of His Own in August 2023.

But there were so many things to see on that theme alone that I had to split them up. So here’s another batch of beautiful and interesting items, where you can click on the names to read more about them and on the photos to zoom in. Enjoy!

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 3 – Garden Lodge Furniture

Welcome to the third part of my look back at the exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, which took place at Sotheby’s in London in August 2023, prior to the big auction in September that year. Last week I gave an introduction to the auctions and looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion and other items from that country, and now for this post we’re going to start looking around his famous home in London.

Garden Lodge was the 7-bedroom house in Kensington where Freddie resided during the 1980s until his death in 1991. He really made it his own, purposefully decorating and furnishing each room in its own unique style. Reading about it in the accompanying book, with the photos used to illustrate it, emphasises how utterly exquisite it was.

Double-page spread, from the book accompanying the Freddie Mercury exhibition at Sotheby's. This section of the book is entitled Behind The Green Door, with text about Freddie's life at Garden Lodge on one page, and a picture of the garden on the other page.

Back in 1980 he bought it for £500,000 in cash (over £2 million in today’s money), as he was keen to snap it up after his first visit. But when it went back on the market in February 2024, estate agent Knight Frank was seeking offers of over £30 million! It’s not clear if it’s been sold or for how much since then.

A white board on the Freddie Mercury timeline in Sotheby's. Alongside a picture of the wooden front door of Garden Lodge, with bushes each side of the narrow pathway, is text that reads 1980 - Garden Lodge. In 1980, Freddie took possession of Garden Lodge, a Neo-Georgian, eight-bedroom townhouse in London's Kensington district. Freddie's beloved sanctuary was surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, accessed through a distinctive green door.

The At Home auction didn’t fetch quite that much, but the huge myriad of items, which had to be spread across multiple gallery rooms in Sotheby’s, altogether fetched a massive £5,314,823!

So I’m going to share a wide selection of furniture and accessories from Garden Lodge that I saw in the galleries, which I’m spreading over 2 posts as there’s so much of it. Most of these items are from the At Home auction, but there are a few from the other auctions mixed in.

As before, you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to see the Sotheby’s descriptions. I hope you enjoy!

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Christmas 2025 Favourites – Part 2

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a wonderful time this festive season. Or if it’s been a difficult period, or even a tough year overall, then I hope 2026 works out better for you.

My mother and I are certainly hoping it will be more positive after everything we’ve been through in the last 12 months. I’ve written a lot about being a carer for her, and recently brought our story up to date by reflecting on the year and the considerable progress we’ve made. We did have a lovely, relaxing, over-indulgent Christmas, I’m pleased to say, so that’s put us in the right frame of mind for the year ahead. The future of my job is very uncertain, granted, but whatever happens with that I’ll be alright. So fingers crossed things continue to go well for us.

I previously posted about the things I enjoyed during the advent period leading up to Christmas, so now it’s time to catch up with all the other entertainment that’s been keeping me occupied since then. So let’s jump straight into it, and I hope you enjoy!

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 2 – Other Japanese Items

Yesterday I began sharing photos from my visit to the Sotheby’s exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own back in 2023, which was a wonderful experience and a great privilege. It’s taken all this time to go through my pictures, figure out what most of the items are and what they sold for, and then organise it all here, but I managed it in the end and I’m excited to share it with you. You can click on the photos to enlarge them, and on the item names to see their full descriptions on the Sotheby’s website.

In the first part we looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion, so now I’m going to share a myriad of other items from that fine country that he owned and treasured, including vases, tea sets, ewers, incense burners, presentation boxes, books, dolls and more.

Most of the items were sold in the auction In Love With Japan, but some were included in the other auctions as well. In any case, they further demonstrate just how deep Freddie’s fascination went. And you can’t blame him. So I hope you enjoy this wide selection.

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 1 – Japanese Art & Fashion

Over two years ago, back in September 2023, Sotheby’s auctioned off nearly 35,000 items (in roughly 1,500 lots) that once belonged to the legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, from his home at Garden Lodge in Kensington. The event was called Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, and included everything from fashion to furniture, artworks to awards, ornaments to instruments, printed books to handwritten lyrics, and much more, proving that he was quite the avid collector to say the least! There were 6 auctions spread over a week, with the total sales coming to a whopping £39,936,046!

Before the big sell-off, however, Sotheby’s put most of the items on public display for a month, and I was one of the lucky 140,000 fans who went along to check it out. I certainly couldn’t afford to bid on the auctions, so this was as close as I could ever possibly get to it all. And it was an absolutely incredible privilege – a kind of magic if you will – as Freddie had such exquisite taste and attention to detail.

I came away with some lovely souvenirs as well, including a massive album of photos that I took, a large tote bag that I bought in the shop and have made good use of since, and the beautiful limited edition hardback book I ordered.

At the time I briefly mentioned the exhibition in my 40th birthday roundup, as going to see it was one of my big treats for myself. But it was always my desire to go through the photos in my collection properly, by finding details about the items and how much they sold for, using the Sotheby’s website and the accompanying book, before sharing as much of it here on my blog as I could. So I’ve been working on it bit by bit when time allows, and I finally finished going through it all this Christmas. It’s been a truly fascinating project for me.

So to mark the 50th anniversary of Bohemian Rhapsody in late 2025, and the 10th anniversary of my blog in early 2026, it gives me great pleasure to present hundreds of my photos of items in the exhibition – each of which you can click on to enlarge – along with links to all the details on the Sotheby’s website. You can see even more items on their site that I haven’t included of course, and it’s easy to create a free account if you want to see the final sale prices.

Neither Sotheby’s nor Queen, nor anyone else connected with the auctions or Freddie, have been involved with this, I’m just a big fan. While I could have just picked a few favourite items, I wanted to do the exhibition and Freddie justice, especially as many of these pieces may never be seen in public again.

The exhibition was split into 4 main sections – Japan, Home, Crazy Little Things and On Stage – and there were 6 auctions along the same lines (plus a second Crazy auction and an Evening Sale for the most significant items). So my posts will generally reflect that as well. Within each section of the exhibition, most items were from the auction of the same name, but there were often items from the Evening Sale or the other auctions mixed in as well, because they fitted the theme.

So here’s the first part of my extensive look back at the exhibition, with an overview of what it was like to visit, and then a closer look at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion. I hope you enjoy!

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Caring For Mum – Part 5 – Reflections

What a year this has been. It was always going to be the case that Mum’s health would decline in some way at some point, given her age and disability, but neither she nor I had bargained on the spiral that took hold during the past 12 months, especially during the spring and summer. That’s why I started writing my carer’s journal posts – partly as a cry for help and a bit of therapy for myself early on, but mainly to raise awareness of what it’s been like for me as a carer, as it’s the sort of thing that goes unnoticed behind closed doors.

I’ve always been my mother’s carer to some extent, ever since I was old enough to help her out with things. But it’s only in this past year that it’s really felt like it, given how much more attention I’ve had to give to her, at the expense of my leisure time and wellbeing, because of the mental and physical consequences of her sight loss and all the falls she’s been having.

However, I’m pleased to say that we’ve actually ended the year in a much better position than when we started it. Things aren’t exactly the way they were before, and never will be, but given all the support we’ve received, Mum is in a much better frame of mind and we’re on a much more stable footing for the year ahead, and therefore we feel like we can get on with our lives in a similar way to how we used to.

So as a bumper post to finish the year, I want to reflect on the events of the past 12 months and bring things right up to date, and I hope you find it interesting.

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