Bloody hell.
I'd gone along to 5 x 15 with the sole purpose of listening to, and looking at to a lesser degree philosopher Alain De Botton.
He arrived on stage, announced himself as Swiss (images of Orson Welles and Henry Cotton on a big wheel in Vienna flooded my brain) then promptly tried to sell us holiday lets. He tried to convince us that 'new build' was Modern and therefore good.he failed to convince me that he was anything other than another property developer on the make. reminding me somewhat of the 'Britart' movement in his desire to capitalise on gullible admirers.
5 X 15 in the first part this evening was hijacked by an overstretched property developer selling puppies.
Alain. New does not mean modern and modern does not mean new. Snake oil is snake oil however you label the bottle.
Interesting to see a good architect in the audience wincing philosophically as the philosopher tried to do convincing Architecture. And failing.
The rest of 5x 15 lived up to expectations; All of it was not every ones cup of tea but it was well brewed, well blended and well poured.
Hilary Spurling dispensed, along with Michela Wrong, enough to convince me that, forgive me; wrong was right. Suddenly 15 minutes was enough, not because it was badly presented but because it was, as a human animal, hard to bear.
Simon Singh hit the spot with his codes.
Valerie Grove convinced me that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It is not an oncoming train, it is Valerie coming back to 5 X 15.
At the end of a splendid evening I got to reminisce about Stig of the dump, followed by humming the guitar solo from Comfortably Numb on my way home.
And none of this happened in the West End where theatres were full of tourists being told by translators that the butler did it!.
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