It’s very easy to scoff at Covent Garden, what with its chain stores and grown men in dog outfits – actually in baskets! – and groups of tourists in shiny designer-imposter puffer jackets and a market that sells brick ‘n’ brack ‘n’ nick ‘n’ a whole bunch of tat. But the people behind Covent Garden (there are people! Behind it!) are trying to bring some sophistication back into their ‘hood, and this includes encouraging the opening of smart-for-town restaurants, like this one, Raymond Blanc’s latest (he’s on the telly so it must be good). Called Brasserie Blanc (ego, much?), it has taken over the rather lovely Opera Terrace overlooking the Piazza, the food is French, it is in the style of a Parisian conservatory, and it has a rather fancy arched glass ceiling. And it’s billed as ‘affordable’. We’ll be the judge of that. It is also a part of the Brasserie Blanc chain, but at least it’s not Cafe Pasta.

www.brasserieblanc.com

You remember Jessye Norman. Big woman? American? Loud voice? One of the foremost opera singers of her generation? Once seen draped in a French flag hanging around the needle in the Place de La Concorde to celebrate the bicentennial of the revolution? Anyway, anyway… She’s been away too long but is back, back, back at London’s modernist masterpiece The Royal Festival Hall for an evening of American Song, by which we assume she doesn’t mean ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ and ‘It’s Raining Men’. In fact we’re being silly and know full well it’s a selection of Gershwin, Rodgers, Arlen, Bernstein and Duke Ellington. We were just playing with you. The concert is on Monday and you will be able (or may not be able) to get your tickets here.

We all love disco, right? Especially the soulful end of disco from the early days. Well, what you probably already know is that much of that early disco and the music that preceded it and danced around it is what the kids on the street used to called Phillie. In layman’s terms that means records on the Philadelphia International label (we are actually learning stuff about popular culture here, aren’t we?). We’re talking early Three Degrees, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes, Jean Carn, Billy Paul, names, names, names. And the songs are just as exciting – ‘Me & Mrs Jones’, ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’, ‘Year of Decision’ – alongside some you won’t know like the genius ‘Easy Money’ by Dee Dee Sharp Gamble, for example. Anyway, long story short, to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Philadelphia International there is a 10-disc box set with nearly 200 delicious tracks that take you from the early days to later loveliness like the Jones Girls’ ‘Nights Over Egypt’. It’ll set you back just £40 but will have you dancing till your hips pop and your garters break. Delichoix qui mal y pense.

Now, we’re not keen to make this organ a weekly Matthew Bourne update (what’s he ever done for us, after all?) but following last week’s report on the 3D film of Swan Lake plus Q&A-type thing, we are now pleased to report there is a season of Mr. Bourne’s early works at Sadlers Wells. And as that season – Matthew Bourne’s Early Adventures – features a work about young men jumping around in their underwear, we thought you wouldn’t thank us if we let that particular opportunity slip through your feverish fingers. The season to celebrate 25 years of work features Spitfire (that’s the underwear one), Town and Country from 1991 and The Infernal Gallop, which features a take on the can-can. It starts on 21^st of May, which is next Monday in old money, and you can get your tickets by calling 0844 412 4300 or clicking here.

We love a bit of Bauhaus round our house, we do. Which is why we will be getting ourselves down the Barbican Art Gallery for a spot of Bauhaus: Art as Life, the most majorest of major Bauhaus exhibitions in this country for, ooh, must be 40 years. From Paul Klee to Mies van der Rohe, the exhibition takes in every aspect of the influential German school, from painting to architecture to chairs to stairs to you name it. With a host of related events accompanying the exhibition it’s a must for anyone who likes clean lines, clear surfaces, has been to Tel Aviv (the largest collection of Bauhaus buildings in the world is there) or is just smart and clever and erudite. The Barbican is near Moorgate and Barbican Tubes and is, quite frankly, quite difficult to get to.

Eurovision – or Eurovish, to give it its full title – is next Saturday (not this one. The next one. The one after that’s the Queen’s) and gays the nation over will be donning their jauntiest bonnets and cooking dishes from their allocated nation in honour of a whole bunch of pretty crappy songs. By which we mean crappy songs, that are pretty. Engelbert H’dink does stand a pretty good chance with his/our ditty – by which we mean we don’t stand a chance. Even Spain’s got the hump all over again about Gibraltar – but if we do win, we’ll eat our jaunty bonnet. We digress. Over in London’s East End, the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club is putting on a same-sex oriented Eurovish party (the same-sex thing was kind of a given), and your hosts for the evening are Sink The Pink. Who know a thing or three about same-sex oriented parties. It starts at… Oh, look at the poster.

In case you didn’t get the memo, Jake is taking over Somerset House (not all of it. We’re not coup-y) on *checks notes* Monday 18th June. We could leave it there, really, couldn’t we? Kinda gets the message across. Pithy. Straight to the point. No ramblings just to use up space. We didn’t even mention the weather!
RSVP here, please.

Not to be confused with Betty White of Golden Girls/Snickers fame (though we hear her comedy timing is impeccable), Betty Wright is a formidable R&B singer-songwriter who sashay, shantayed onto the scene with Clean Up Woman back when you were knee-high to a pop-sock, and has since maintained a whole load of credibility – and a four-octave vocal range – with songwriting credits and collaborations galore, including with Joss Stone on her acclaimed The Soul Sessions album (segue: Joss may be slightly annoying and decided an aubergine rinse was a good look, but she can sing the hot-pants off Kylie and was threatened with decapitation – with a samurai sword! – at her lovely Devon home. Give her a break!)
Still with us?
Anyway, the lovely and talented and large-haired Betty Wright is doing a little turn down Camden’s glittering Jazz Cafe from Wednesday 11th July for three nights, and if we weren’t sipping complimentary champagne on that inaugural Virgin flight to Cancun, we’d be there. With pop-socks on!

www.jazzcafe.co.uk

Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 is the razzle-dazzle exhibition that celebrates the newly renovated Fashion Galleries at the V&A. Featuring ring-a-ding clobber such as Princess Diana’s ‘Elvis’ dress, a Norman Hartnell gown designed for the Queen Mother, catwalk dresses from McQueen and Giles Deacon and eveningwear from Jonathan Saunders and Erdem – as well as gowns from the very backs of Bianca Jagger, Elizabeth Hurley and Sandra Bullock – it’s two floors of 60 designs that have graced state occasions, royal balls, red carpets and our kitchen-cum-diners. This old thing…?

www.vac.ac.uk

Matthew Bourne has been flogging that dead swan for many a year now but some people can never have enough of boys jumping around in short skirts and we salute that. Now the famous all-male Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake has been lovingly captured in 3D for your cinematic enjoyment meaning you can talk through the slow bits – or even look at your magazine – without getting shushed and tutted at by the hoary matrons of Sadlers Wells. The screening is on Monday, 14^th May at 6.15pm at the Soho Curzon (great café on the ground floor, nice bar one floor down, cute staff, pricey snacks) on Shaftesbury Avenue and the film is followed by a Q&A with Matthew Bourne. Look at tickets here.