Hello everybody, after a long break due to lack of internet in Italian hotels and venues, here is another bit of tour diary. We are currently sitting at the venue in Turin where they’ve put up a sign saying “The Chap (USA)” and which used to be a cinema, Italy’s oldest cinema, in fact: The Lumiere brothers came here to present Italy’s first moving picture show. I’m hoping that tonight’s audience will be as baffled by our performance as those watching that first movie no doubt were.

Tonight is the last show of the first half of our winter tour. It’s been very pleasant, cold, hot, confusing and nutritious. The best of many amazing food experiences was a late lunch presented to us during soundcheck in Pisa, featuring an amazing Sicilian salad containing oranges marinaded in Tabasco. Also in Pisa, the backstage room was the communist party’s local headquarters PLUS Panos’ favourite pose for photos finally found its ideal setting:

The audiences have been pleasantly large and mostly well-behaved. The sound has been, well, you know what sound can be like, so this occasionally led us to develop a sort of punk rock guerilla-style attitude towards performing, namely in Cagliari and Rome. During the latter show, this was particularly interesting as the crowd largely consisted of people who looked like they just walked off the set of “Friends”.

Tomorrow, we have a huge monster drive back to London, from where we will post another entry containing a nice video. Bye!