I certainly can’t fault this production: it’s well-staged with universally excellent performances, especially from the actors playing Jamie and Ste.

The film adaptation was the first gay-themed film I ever saw, as a 20-year-old proto-gay. I remember racing upstairs with the Amazon package and holding the DVD in my hands, regarding it with the same sense of wonder that Jamie and Ste have for the smuggled copy of Gay Times. I watched the DVD with the remote control permanently in one hand, ready to switch to something more innocuous if my mum barged in unexpectedly, as she had a habit of doing.

The final scene of the play, as with the film, doesn’t fails to bring a tear to the eye.

Anyway, the play is on at the Royal Exchange until 3rd December. I highly recommend you go and see it, but be quick – tickets are reportedly selling out fast!

The dress worn by Nurse Poltis in the Pavilion Theatre production of Robin Hood originally had red crosses on the hat and tunic.

These were changed to green crosses after the British Red Cross informed the theatre it was breaking the law and could face prosecution.

Apparently, the Red Cross symbol is protected by law. According to the British Red Cross, depicting its emblem in this context could lead to its effectiveness being diluted. Personally, I doubt many people living in war zones will have a chance to visit Glasgow to see the show.

I’m not sure how seriously the Red Cross pursue infringers, but I think the makers of hen party sexy nurse outfits should be very worried.

According to the Glasgow Pavilion web site, the show also features Colin and Justin. Given Davidson’s previous form, I bet that led to some — ahem — “interesting” backstage conversations.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

In February I learned that the iconic Mersey Ferry, the Royal Iris, was sitting unloved and derelict in a dock in Woolwich. As usual, lots of people got angry, but no-one actually attempted to do anything. Also apparently unloved was BBC 6 Music, threatened with closure by the corporation’s bosses despite being a textbook example of The Sort Of Thing The BBC Should Do.

The Facebook login fiasco proved that a lot of people are far too thick to be allowed anywhere near the Internet.

A recurring theme this year would be the police and other authorities abusing their powers. The Twitter joke trial got its first mention towards the end of the month and amazingly is still rumbling on now.

March kicked off in excellent fashion, with that rarest of events: me being a winner. Also a winner was Glee, which had started on E4 in January but had seemingly taken over the world within two months.

One of my favourite YouTube finds was this British Rail advert from the 80s. YouTube was also in the news itself, as a war of words broke out in its long-running legal battle with Viacom.

Elsewhere, cult comedy It’s Garry Shandling’s Show came to DVD.

Blogging had been rather light in the first quarter of the year, and April began with an apology of sorts. “The looming general election might provide some material for me,” I said, and I was right, as it turned out to be a fascinating race. It seemed I was the only person in Liverpool who actually was interested, as voter apathy remained an issue in my local constituency.

Before the election campaign got going in earnest, however, there was time to reminisce about my first computer and enjoy the latest entry in the Adrian Mole saga. Elsewhere, there was light-hearted fun involving a dead body, as a couple were accused of smuggling a corpse onto a plane using sophisticated puppetry techniques. I believe they were subsequently acquitted amidst a flurry of Weekend at Bernie’s references.

A shocking development was the renationalisation of Britain’s railways – albeit not by this nation – as the German, French and Dutch state rail companies took over various parts of the network.

Back to that election then. As the campaign heated up, the TV debates resulted in a surge in popularity for the Liberal Democrats and Cleggmania was born. The rightwing press moved quickly to stop this disruption to the preordained plan.

The moment of the campaign came late in the month, when THAT woman was called THAT name by THAT Prime Minister.

In early May, as the election campaign approached the finish line, I posted a response to the misinformation and smears about the LibDems. This was followed, on the eve of the vote itself, by a passionate appeal to support the third party (yes, I’m sorry). And just to show how influential my blog is, the LibDems increased their vote share by 1% and actually lost seats.

The election, of course, resulted in a Hung Parliament. At the time, I said: “I believe that a Con-Lib coalition is the best option for now.”

“For now” turned out to be about a week, as the Tories rapidly fucked things up with the LibDems happy to rubber stamp their awful decisions.

The brave new era of civil liberties and freedom, promised by the coalition, was slow to arrive, with the Twitter joke trial proving that freedom of speech doesn’t extend to frustrated airport travellers.

Down in that London, Boris Johnson’s answer to the capital’s public transport solutions was a hobby horse — the new Routemaster replacement, a solution looking for a problem.

Canary was a new play by Jonathan Harvey about the history of gay rights in the UK. I saw it during its initial run in Liverpool and enjoyed it immensely, although my blog post is curiously vague about why I found the subject matter so interesting. Hmm…

One of the highlights of the year has to be my week-long adventure in Scotland with my friend Nuno, taking in Glasgow, the West Highland Line and Inverie, Britain’s remotest village. Much walking and mountain-climbing was in order, returning south via steam train. I also had the chance to ride on Glasgow’s toy underground. In fact, re-reading those posts makes me desperately want to go again in 2011.

Sad news came in June with the death of Frank Sidebottom (or, to be accurate, the character’s creator, Chris Sievey).

I made another completely wrong prediction, when I speculated that the proposed North West railway electrification was doomed. In fairness, given that the ConDem government are happily slashing budgets all over the place, it wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion.

To be continued…

I was slightly concerned with the price of the package deal, which worked out at about 200 quid each. Booking train, hotel and show separately would have come to much more than that. Had we skimped on quality for the sake of price? As it turned out, we didn’t need to worry.

Our hotel was the Thistle Kensington Gardens located on Bayswater Road. I was slightly nonplussed on arrival to see that the front of the hotel on the ground floor was taken up by a Shell petrol station forecourt, with the hotel’s actual entrance relegated to a side street. Still, the hotel itself seemed pleasant enough and the helpful staff got us checked in quickly. Our rooms wouldn’t be ready until 2pm, so we headed out to explore.

The immediate area is the Daily Mail’s worst nightmare – very cosmopolitan with people of every possible background mixing together. There were plenty of restaurants serving food of various origin, nestling alongside the usual Tesco Express and Greggs. There are also two tube stations in walking distance of the hotel, Queensway (Central Line) and Bayswater (District and Circle Lines). They are a two-minute walk apart, although this is not immediately apparent from the Tube map which seems to suggest travelling between them via a change at Notting Hill Gate.

Next we headed off to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. The museum is a great place to visit for transport nerds and casual travellers alike, telling the story of transport in London from the 1800s to the present day, with a whole host of exhibits from the earliest horse buses to trinkets from the revamped East London Line.

The museum was so good in fact that we stayed there rather longer than intended and had to rush to get back to the hotel and then out to the theatre again. A quick trip on the Circle Line from Bayswater delivered us to Victoria station with less than an hour to go before the show started at the nearby Apollo Victoria. With no chance of being able to eat a proper meal, we settled for coffee and paninis from the Starbucks at Victoria station (glamorous!)

The show we had chosen to see was Wicked. Again, our package delivered a really good bargain – the seats were right in the middle of the stalls with a perfect view of the stage. The show was excellent – really well-staged with great performances from all concerned. The only slight disappointment was that the show’s big name, Lee Mead, was missing and we got his understudy instead. I can’t let that detract from the experience as a whole though.

By the time we got back to Bayswater it was 10.45pm and we were quite hungry. Rather than take advantage of the (pricey) room service at the hotel, we went to Tesco Express and bought sandwiches to take back to our room (glamorous again!)

More tomorrow!

(minor spoilers follow below)

The play is an epic story, spanning multiple generations from the 1960s to the present day as the protagonists fight against discrimination and prejudice. In one scene, Margaret Thatcher appears, and I found it hard to resist the temptation to boo, panto-style, as she explained to one of her ministers why the AIDS education campaign wasn’t a priority for her (“it’s pronounced ‘vagina’”).

The whole play is very political and a stark reminder of the bruising battles that the gay community has had to fight to get closer to acceptance and equality.

More importantly, it crystallised for me the reasons why, despite all the huffing and puffing during the recent election campaign, the Tories can never be the party of gay rights. David Cameron can appear on the cover of Attitude, send messages of support to Pride events and give an awkward interview about gay issues: it doesn’t change the fact that the Tories only started favouring gay rights now that it is fashionable. When it really mattered, they were united in pushing an agenda of hate and discrimination to please their middle England base. When police were storming into gay bars and arresting the patrons, where were the Tories? When AIDS was ravaging the community, where were the Tories? When the Sun was running headline after headline screaming about Poofs and Queers and Perverts, where were the Tories? I’ll tell you where they were: holed up in the Cabinet, drafting section 28. It’s going to take a lot more than a few weasel words from Cameron to undo that.

The Labour party can be criticised in many areas, but surely one of its greatest achievements is the massive advancement in gay rights which has happened since 1997. For that, we should all be grateful.

In London, the Police proved once again what a wonderful organisation they are. In Rome, a swimmer suffered an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction.

Gents — ever wondered what it would be like to wake up with a vagina? YouTube was on hand to envisage that scenario.

My sister graduated from uni, proving that they’ll give degrees out to ANYONE these days (only kidding, sis!). I also wasted a whole day playing Atari 2600 games, and I still have the Pitfall II music stuck in my head.

August saw the first Adventures in Public Transport post for quite a while, as yours truly hunted for a lost Saveaway ticket in the rain. I had a much better transport experience a few days later, as I cruised to Salford on a Mersey Ferry. The peace was shattered – literally – on my evening commute when my train was bricked.

I celebrated the Internet’s ability to create new friendships as I met up with the Mersey Tart for the first time — a meeting surely up there with Livingstone and Stanley’s encounter on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

The Echo cemented its local credentials by relocating scores of jobs to Oldham. PowerPoint celebrated 25 years of making already tedious office meetings absolutely unbearable. Channel 4 axed Big Brother, meaning I can now watch television during the summer without feeling the urge to kill.

September saw me considering Macs again. I still haven’t decided whether to switch to a Mac or not — never let it be said that I’m impulsive. Then I decided to go on strict diet, a process which went quite well over the following months, until Christmas intervened and ruined it. The London tube map was redrawn to remove the River Thames; I thought this was a huge improvement, but TfL did not consider my views during their consultation process and swiftly moved to put it back. I also bemoaned that society seems reluctant to pay for anything these days, although I felt some sympathy for that view as my Railcard expired and I resigned myself to paying full fare on the trains.

October saw the Tories proving they’re crazy. BBC4 dramatised the rise and fall of Sinclair and Acorn in Micro Men. A-Ha split up, shocking people who didn’t realise they were still together. Royal Mail workers went on strike, thankfully AFTER I got all my parcels. That woman wrote that article in that paper about that singer, and that man from that party went on that programme.

I finally joined the iPod owners club with a purchase of a new 5th gen Nano. Sun and Cloud made a welcome (it says here) reappearance.

In November there were fireworks-a-plenty when the Government sacked its drugs adviser for… advising on drugs. Morrissey walked off stage at the Echo Arena after being hit by a bottle, Rupert Murdoch launched all-out wars against Gordon Brown and Google.

National Rail launched Stations Made Easy, allowing people to explore the nation’s railway stations without leaving their comfy seat. Anyone using that site to look at Liverpool Central could understand why it is one of the top ten worst stations in the UK. One station that definitely wasn’t on the worst list was Workington North, a temporary halt which opened to serve the flood-hit town after less than a week of planning.

December contained the story of the year for me. Never mind Jacko dying or bombers with explosives in their underpants, the toy mouse that sings “paedophile”, as featured on the Today Programme(!), was a highlight.

Christmas came and went, and I explained why people complaining about “political correctness” are missing the point. The BBC proved its worth by having 9 out of the top 10 programmes on Christmas Day.

Otherwise it was a quiet month. I checked out the Take That musical, Never Forget, lamented the fact that The X Factor had a stranglehold on the Christmas number one spot (except when it didn’t) and mocked an LFC player’s sincerely held religious beliefs.

Thanks to my regular readers (all four of you!) and Happy New Year.

Should I talk about Never Forget: The Musical, which I went to see with my wonderful sister last week? I’m sure some will hold up their hands in horror at the thought of a musical based on Take That songs, but actually I enjoyed it. It’s relentlessly silly, but it knows it and never tries to be anything more than a bit of shamelessly cheesy fluff. An entertaining enough treat, especially if you want to see the show’s resident sexpot Philip Olivier attempt to do a Manchester accent.

Erm, that’s it. I think I’m getting a bit bored of blogging. I need something to inspire me beyond the finely-honed torso of a former Brookside actor and an amusing singing toy. I’m sure something will come along eventually. In the meantime, here’s some music…

Before even reaching the glamour of Theatreland, I had the excitement of getting caught up in my very first Underground signal failure, while heading out to my friend’s house at Boston Manor. I and a large group of annoyed Heathrow-bound people ended up standing around on a freezing cold Acton Town station for 15 minutes, watching lots of trains go past, none of which were going in the same direction we wanted.

You can tell I’m a tourist because I like the Tube. I can try and pretend that it’s just Merseyrail on steroids, but that would be wholly inaccurate. There are oddities aplenty which you don’t find on any other railway system: those Piccadilly Line stations where the train doors are below platform level; electronic platform signs which don’t announce any information until the train is almost in the platform and you could have just read the destination on the front of it anyway; passageways marked “No Entry” which lead to exactly the same place as another one five feet away marked “Way Out”. And of course, it has a language all of its own — “Mind the gap”, “Always touch out”, “Don’t sit there, someone’s pissed on the seat”.

The whole reason I was there was to see Avenue Q, which has been running for over three years, so must be doing something right. It’s been billed as “A musical for people who don’t like musicals”. I love musicals, so it would be even better for me, right? Yes!

Sesame Street is obviously a heavy influence, with the characters being a mixture of puppets and human actors. There are thinly disguised pastiches of Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie among the supporting cast. And yes, the latter two characters receive their fair share of gay references — but done in a really clever and heartwarming way, avoiding all the lazy and obvious jokes.

No attempt is made to hide the actors handling the puppets (a few of which need two people to operate), but after a few minutes you hardly notice they’re there, thanks to the effort and attention devoted to the puppets’ movements and facial expressions. Indeed, after a few more minutes, I almost forgot they’re puppets (and judging by the genuine “aww” that arose from the audience at one sad moment, so did many others).

Once you get past the idea of puppets that swear, have sex and download porn, most of the humour comes from well-observed material about modern life (and plenty of jokes at the expense of Gary Coleman, who really should sue). It’s laugh out loud funny throughout: comedy songs are notoriously difficult to get right, but the ones here are never less than great. Random sample of titles: Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist, You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love) and The Internet is for Porn.

The London show closes at the end of March — get there while you can!

• One of the main roads into Liverpool City Centre has been closed after a sewer collapsed underneath it — normally this would be of no interest to me whatsover, but the same sewer passes directly under the railway line I use to travel to work on a daily basis. Despite the heroic efforts of United Utilities, St Michaels station floods every time there’s a light drizzle and yours truly has ended up on an Arriva bus in a traffic jam on two separate occasions.

• John Barrowman apologises for exposing himself on a Radio 1 show, following a complaint by a person who clearly doesn’t understand the concept of radio.

• Remember RISC OS, the computer operating system which was great when first released in 1988, but struggled to keep up with Windows and was eventually left in the dust? It’s now available to download for a fiver. Sadly in today’s market it’s still overpriced by about £4.50, but the nostalgic may relish the opportunity to have a legal copy to plug into an emulator.

• Steve Coogan says his Liverpool show got bad reviews, not because it was a half-arsed performance, but (of COURSE!) because the Scouse audience hated Mancunians. The reaction locally was… predictable (although to be fair, for once Paddy Shennan has a point).

• Many people have suspected as much for some time, but now it’s official: The Simpsons is over as an icon of subversive pop culture. How do I know? The Daily Mail has run an article praising the show.

• Staying on the same subject, the Mail on Sunday has decided to launch its own music label, or as Paul McInnes puts it on the Guardian music blog: “As if belonging to one industry with a death wish wasn’t enough, now the Mail wants to get into another!”

  The new label will be called Mail On Sunday Sounds (MOSS) and launched with a free giveaway of a CD by a Gospel choir. Contrary to rumours, they won’t have any recordings featuring Mick Jagger or Keith Richards, because MOSS gathers no Rolling Stones.

At the end some daft woman actually got up and walked out while the cast were taking their bows. It’s not the Odeon, you don’t get up and walk out while the credits are rolling. Daft cow.