Dear Diary – From Russia With…

I was offered an opportunity to earn $5million. For a one-hour performance. That’s $25,000 a minute, right! I mean, fuck! So called my band and asked them if they wanted to come to Russia for an evening. They said sure. When they heard it was New Year’s Eve, they weren’t too thrilled – and truth being told, neither was I. I also realised, soon enough, that it would cost $2million to pull the whole thing off. That’s $3million for me. Or rather, in figures I actually understand, £1.5million. Still not bad for 60 minutes of work.

I sent my band to Heathrow to get on a flight, and as I was on my way to Luton to my private jet I got to thinkin’. Who are these people that can afford to hire me just like that? I mean… what could I expect? “Greetings, Putin!”? Would I be able to get in and out without getting poisoned, radioactive or shot? So I decided to not talk. People outside of England and America don’t understand English anyway, so I decided to let the music do the talking. Then I thought, What songs am I going to do to prevent the above? No sexually explicit lyrics, surely. No swearing. No gay songs, just in case… Once it occurred to me that I was practically left with “Careless Whisper” and “Last Christmas” by doing this elimination, I had to do some re-thinking. If they don’t understand English in Russia, they won’t be upset by some gay/sex references. If I just shut my mouth, they’ll just enjoy the beat and my voice. Maybe leave out “My Mother Had A Brother” though – just in case. Possibly also “Shoot The Dog”. Though I really wanted to use the Bush doll – after all, Russia doesn’t like the Bush man either, but they may not get the joke and decide to stone me.

When I arrived at the hotel I was still undecided. My band wouldn’t arrive until the next day, so I had enough time to think. But I wasn’t happy about the hotel at all. It didn’t have the right vibe. So I changed hotels, they shouted something in Russian – really loudly – so I covered my mouth and ran out of there as soon as humanly possible to prevent any fumes they may have thrown after me to fuck with my voice. After all, once I was there, it would be a shame to have to cancel, ifyouknowwhatImean! I finally settled into a high-class hotel (I didn’t even know they had those there), had a wank, a spliff in the bathroom and fell asleep. Not in the bathroom, obviously.

The morning after I got a call from someone down in reception with a very heavy Russian accent. I understood what he said, but barely. I called my bodyguard and asked him to come with me to meet this fella. You never know. Down in reception was a male in his 50s, rather hot if I may say so myself, holding a briefcase. I walked over to shake his hand, then changed my mind in case he had Anthrax on him or something. He wasn’t interested in any close contact either, it seemed, and we all went over to a free table in the hotel bar. I didn’t order anything. In fact, I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink that was Russian-made since I got there. You can never be too careful. The guy said his name, asked if I was “the zinger” and I confirmed that I was. He threw the briefcase on the table, mumbled something about “all there”, said it was from “Mr Potanin” (just HOW close is that to PUTIN!?), got up, turned on his heel and was gone.

I didn’t know what the fuck to do. What would be in there? Poison? A bomb? The whole thing was a really bad idea. So we decided to get the guy at reception to open it. We quickly ran across the room to the entrance as the receptionist opened it. For a moment he just stared at it, stared at us, back at the content of the briefcase. Then he waved us over. We looked at each other, feeling a bit like being in a James Bond movie, and the feeling got even stronger when he turned the case around and we were met with… cash. Five million fucking dollars in CASH! I quickly closed it, hoped nobody had seen it, basically knew I’d get robbed if anyone had, and ran upstairs, clutching the black case against my chest. Now what?

Up in the room I looked around for a safe, but there wasn’t one. I couldn’t throw it in the hotel safe either, cause everybody knew what it was by now. So I decided to change hotels again. Ironically we went back to the first hotel, as that’s where my band was, so I felt safer, knowing they couldn’t possibly wipe out the whole lot of us. That hotel didn’t have a safe in the room either, so I assigned my bodyguard to guard it with his life. I decided against paying everyone in cash for their efforts. All this money flying around made me highly uncomfortable. So much so that I arrived at the assigned venue an hour late, still keeping an eye on my bodyguard that had his eye (and his wrist handcuffed to) the briefcase.

They had other types of entertainment as well, so I wasn’t missed. For instance, a talking parrot(!) had the slot before me, which seemed to be a big hit. I was actually a bit nervous about following it. What if they didn’t like me as much? I peaked out from behind the curtain and saw about 300 people sitting there, all dressed up, excessively drunk already – expecting me to, I suppose, put on a $5million show. So I did. I replaced some of the more hardcord words with, say, softer versions of them. They refused to sing along, but it’s in my blood to say “EVERYONE!”, “COME ON!”, “SING TO ME” and so forth. I couldn’t help it. Nobody sang a fucking note. It was like being back in fucking Oslo again. What a group of deadwoods. Both in Norway and Russia. The colder it gets, the colder the people get, I suppose. I didn’t see Putin anywhere – but then again, I wouldn’t know what the fuck he looked like if he threw a bomb at me. I used playback for a couple of the songs (I’d even hired a stand-in just in case I got too nervous) but did at least half the set live. In the end I smiled broadly, took the applause and got the hell outta there.

I was getting really hungry, so we went to a restaurant afterwards. I didn’t dare eating anything and insisted on opening the bottle of red wine myself (I’ve done good this year, so I deserve some red!) at the table – and just when I was about to settle in a bunch of, I guess, fans came over and started taking pictures. I SO wasn’t in the mood for that, so I asked the staff to kindly remove them. Then I felt kinda bad, but by the time I’d made up my mind to let them take their fucking pictures anyway, they were long gone. Probably executed somewhere in the basement for all I know.

After much consideration, we decided to fly home that same evening. It made me excessively nervous to be in Russia, so I left the staff behind to take their flight the morning after. Up in the air – after the most extensive security check known to man (you could say a briefcase with $5million caused a bit of a stir) – I started relaxing. However, somewhere above the Finnish mountains I received a phone call. As it turns out, all my goddamn fucking £15million worth of equipment and stage setup had burned! BURNED! How it happened I do not fucking know, but what I’m going to do about the American leg of the tour now is uncertain. It was a good thing I got the hell outta there when I did, otherwise I could have found myself in the middle of a fire drama. A fire that was probably designed for me.

I’m SO never going back there. Fucking hell.

George – with love.