My Night Out With Julie Andrews

Julie Andrews is so on my Bastard List. Do you know how much that hurts, o my brothers? Fraulein Maria. That wonderful woman on the big screen, singing aloud to the green hills and that? The last person I thought would ever get there.

But I think that after saturday's concert, the people from Walton on Thames should hang their heads in shame, I really do. So should the 02 arena! What a dreadful place that is! Makes the Barbican look attractive. And at £85 a ticket, why the hell was I seated up in the Gods, looking straight through a bloody safety-bar! And why, oh why, did the performance start 30 minutes late, when we were told by email that Julie started strictly at 7.30? Oh, did I let those bastards have it this morning! Such tardiness was inexcusable. And how much money do they want to screw out of people! Gits.

The sad thing being if Julie Andrews had actually sung, if she had delivered what she led us to believe she would, £85 and a £12 programme and the tube fare would have been cheap at half the price. She is - WAS - my idol after all.

But no, five cheesy "friends" she hauled on stage to sing the songs for her. One cheesy hour of boredom - except when she sang Do Rei Me at the end of the first act. Was so glad that was the last song I heard from her as I got the hell out of there. Unlikely too that I would ever see her again.

I was initially thrilled on saturday night to be in the same room as Maria from that film my mum took me to see when I was 10 years old. That life-changing, iconic film from where I cried and cried in my bed that I could not be one of those Von Trapps. But this all fell flat, o' my brothers. Mainly by Julie getting on five cheesy "friends" of hers to sing what I thought was an odd array of songs in the first place.

And then the second half was to perform the children's book she had written with her daughter: well, I and many others got the hell out of there at the interval. Plug your bloody book somewhere else, Love!

The hills are no longer alive. Certainly not around North Greenwich station anyway.

Husband and kids are going to see Lady Ga-Ga at that dreadful place. At least the bitch will sing.