And on the seventh day...

Just when I thought my life couldn't get any more surreal, last night I went to The Bull's Head in Barnes with some family friends to see 'Memorable Moments of Opera and Song' performed by a collection of middle-aged individuals who call themselves Cameo Opera. Sadly this was not a mixture of classical music and Eighties pop act, Cameo, and no one was wearing a red vinyl jockstrap, but frankly, had such an event occurred, it wouldn't have seemed massively out of place.

The evening was reminiscent of a bad episode of Hi-de-Hi: quintessentially British and agonising from start to finish, with a rasping soprano whose plentiful back fat bulged over her diamante bra straps, a married/in the closet tenor and a pianist who looked like a cross between Maid Marion and a drag queen - I couldn't see the flammable warning label in her over-peroxided hair but I'm sure it must have been in there somewhere. The alto was married to the bass and clearly they were both either deaf and/or deluded as neither of them should have been allowed to sing in the shower or for their supper, let alone charge unsuspecting members of the public to hear them of a Sunday eve.

Over the next two hours, we witnessed a smattering of 'hits' from La Boheme, Don Giovanni, Fiddler on the Roof and Carmen plus an impromptu number from Phantom of the Opera that had been requested by some certifiable member of the audience during the precious interval. But, with an unrivalled four numbers in the concert programme, star piece of the evening was awarded to that most terrible of all modern musicals, Les Miserables. This segment of the concert culminated with the five singers standing in a line, belting out 'Do You Hear The People Sing?' while performing a box step move popularised by Jane Fonda workout videos. It was at this point that I started crying with laughter but I looked on incredulously as the rest of the onlookers, my own flesh and blood included, were swept along by the unbridled enthusiasm of the chorus. To my right, an enthusiastic audience member raised her fist in a gesture of revolution and punched the air in approximate time to the beating of the heart/drum. I was stunned into silence.

Another particularly special moment was when the peroxide pianist heaved herself out from behind her instrument and announced that she was going to play a number on her own. She was, she claimed, a classically trained pianist (if by classical she meant 'press the pedal on the first beat of every bar and play everything at top volume' then fair enough, but otherwise I might dispute her claim) but apparently what she "really loves doing" is taking pop songs and "classicalising them". At this point I was considering suicide but was reluctant to offend my lovely godparents who had paid for the tickets. Instead, I listened to the semi-skilled rotunda bludgeon her way through an appalling medley of schmaltz that would have been laughable if it hadn't been so excruciating. No unbearable stone was left unturned; we had the classical version of 'Everything I Do (I Do It For You)', 'My Heart Will Go On' and 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' and finished off with a boogie-woogie selection of Beatles' hits. You couldn't make it up.

As if that weren't enough excitement, an obese audience member almost died from a cough-induced aneurysm in the second row and my dad was invited up on stage to join in with the chorus of A Policeman's Lot from The Pirates of Penzance. Although the music would have been lucky to be described as eighth rate, there's no doubt that I found the evening entertaining - for all the wrong reasons. The Barnes audience, fuelled by Heineken and Merlot, were less cynical, giving a standing ovation and cheering for encores. It's not the first time that I've felt distanced from the majority and I'm sure it won't be the last, but as Sunday evening fodder goes, it's certainly up there with the strangest. 'Memorable Moments' is about right.