Oh, the glamour of it all

Tonight was Bette Midler's annual Hulaween fundraiser and our presence was requested on the red carpet at the Waldorf to be photographed with our lead producer. It meant coming in to the theatre a few hours early and getting the make-up on and then being driven across town on a minibus but we were assured we'd be back in plenty of time to get ready for the show. I jokingly said that we'd probably be hustled through a rear entrance at the Waldorf like "the help" so we wouldn't offend the REAL guests and I wasn't far wrong.

There was so much security throughout the building that we were looked at very suspiciously on our arrival (I was in a dressing gown and furry slippers) but we were told that we could get into our costumes upstairs in the Cole Porter Room. We were then shown to a corridor with no chairs, clothes hooks or mirror.  The Cole Porter Room, it seems, had no working lights so we were assigned the hall outside it.

I'm pretty used to this sort of thing after all these years but our dear publicity man went ballistic and had to throw his weight around just to get us some water. Once we were dressed we were told there was no elevator to the ballroom so poor Nick and Will had to trudge down stairs in their big clodhopping shoes. The press seemed bemused as to who we were and why we were there but we were eventually thrown into Miss M's path as the cameras flashed so mission accomplished. We got back to the theatre just in time for the show and by the time the overture struck up the whole thing felt like it had been a dream.

Oh, Cole, we hardly knew ye.....