First thumbnail image returned to Earth from MSL/Curiosity after its landing on Mars. Courtesy of NASA.

I watched the rover’s launch in November from my bedroom and shed a private tear of pride and hope. Tonight I was at NASA Ames in California, sharing many tears of happiness and relief.  Nearly ten thousand people packed out the parade ground inside Ames, watching the two huge screens as mission control checked off each automated stage from NASA’s JPL in Pasadena.  Ripples of applause at the switching of antennae and data feeds turned to hearty cheers and then whoops and shouts of delight as entry began, the parachute was deployed, the retro-boosters set in, and finally, MSL touched down on Mars.  It’s hard to believe any image has caused such universal joy as that first 64×64 thumbnail of the Martian surface.

Mission control for MSL/Curiosity Landing at NASA JPL via the big screens at NASA Ames.

Over the last few weeks I had become increasingly tired of watching NASA’s cinematic ’7 minutes of terror’ trailer, and explaining the to best of my knowledge the intricacies of the upcoming landing.  But the event tonight, experienced not only by the scientists involved, and the thousands packed into NASA centres across America, but by the whole world through unrivalled live streaming, is something that can not be easily explained or forgotten.  Watching the landing, I had chills that had nothing to do with the coolness of the night, and seeing its success, there is a warmth and elation that is nothing to do with the celebratory swigs of fizz.

We have landed toys on Mars before, small rovers the size of remote control cars, and barely better equipped.  In comparison, the behemoth we have just lowered out of the sky from a freaking jet pack, is a fully equipped geochemical and geological laboratory.  It’s the size of a small car and weighs nearly a tonne, and we’ve just airlifted it from 500,000 miles away.  It’s going to tell us more about the geological and habitable history than we’ve ever known before, and I get to work with that data to look for traces of past life. It’s going to be an unbelievably exciting couple of years.

But first, I’m just going to bask in scientific glory and pride.  Today we touched Mars with curiosity, and Curiosity survives to tell the tale.  What a fucking awesome time to be here.

Beers to fit the Mars landing theme…

So, a fortnight ago I set off from rainy Wales, which became rainy London, and I soaked in the padded, rolling English countryside from the train window, only too conscious that it would be the last time I’d see anything like it for the next three months.  A warm sunset with puffy clouds and contrails, like one of Marie Robinson’s paintings, was my last sight of England.

Twenty-four hours of transit was, as could be expected, near hell.  As the hours ticked by beyond our scheduled departure from Heathrow, I was conscious of my dwindling transit time in Houston, and sure enough, I have never seen an airport at quite such speed.  My impression of Houston, Texas was green – a lot more green than I had been expecting.  But no time to explore and I was straight onto my flight across the mountains to ‘Frisco.

It was dark when I arrived, but I was welcomed like a lost friend into my cosy houseshare in the centre of the City.  This Californian attitude is easy and heartfelt, and something that many places could benefit from.  Never mind the acts of blatant generosity (dinner, wine, lifts to the train station), just a smile when you arrive is enough to dispel any gloomy thoughts.

New friends in San Francisco. Me and my new housie Julie on my birthday.

Well, I was well looked after by my housemates, and the first weekend was spent exploring the city, getting my bearings.  I think I had been in San Francisco less than 12 hours when I saw my first naked man.  Five in fact, in the gay centre Castro, just a 15 minute walk from the house.  Just sunning themselves in the square, they brought towels to sit on, although I’m not sure whether that was for their benefit or for the benefit of succeeding patrons.

The weather has been unseasonably warm for July, I am told.  It has been mid to high 20s and clear most days in the city, although the dense marine layer of cloud blanket and fog usually rolls in around sunset, and perseveres until mid morning.  The weather here is so dramatic and dynamic, it reminds me of this heartbreakingly beautiful time lapse of clouds over the Canary Islands.  It could just as easily be here.

So once settled in San Francisco, Monday was time to start my new job. NASA here I come.  The commute was ridiculously easy, buses and trains door to door – although so few people seem to use it.  The numbers of cars are frightening.  I’m carpooling now with a postdoc in our lab, and every morning we sail down the freeway that is packed bumper to bumper with one-commuter cars.  It seems madness when the pubic transport is so efficient, but then I guess Americans sure do like their cars.  Some of them even have six wheels. Why? Beats me.

NASA Ames is a lot more homely than you might expect.  Nestled right up next to the Moffatt Airfield, the aeronautics heritage is ever-present.  The science buildings are dwarfed by vast wind tunnels and hangars, used rarely now modelling technologies are so much more efficient. I was told that the largest wind tunnel there uses as much energy as the whole of San Francisco when in operation.  Although that fact was later floored by the laser at nearby Lawrence Livermore, which in the few picoseconds of its operation uses as much energy as the whole USA.  Anyway, big machines doing big science.

Just an airship hangar at Moffett Field

The second most amazing thing about NASA is how friendly everyone is.  Must be California again.  The lab is made up of a couple of PIs, a few postdocs, and a seemingly endless stream of short term researchers, interns, and summer students.  Even those who are here short term are welcomed, inducted, and given free reign in the labs, permitting the kind of self-driven, self-motivated blue sky research that sets NASA apart from other universities and research institutions.  All specialisations are mixed in together.  I’ve had meetings with algologists, shared beers with geobiologists, visited the golf club with molecular biologists, and my office is sandwiched between the eminent Mars geologists that I spent my academic career referencing and respecting.   I feel so different to the talent base there, and yet so welcomed for the skills I do have.  It is a nurturing environment that I could easily get used to.

My academic home for the summer

And so two weeks have passed already.  I’ve set up my experiments, caught up on sleep, finished all the books I brought with me, and finally unpacked my suitcase.  I’m on first name terms with the guy at the corner shop, and the guy who drives the NASA shuttle bus, and pretty much everyone in California, or so it seems.  I’m looking forward to a profitable and fun six weeks in Frisco, with a short visit to Pasadena for AbGradCon, and then an epic road trip to take in all the sights that differ so much from the English countryside I’ve left behind.  And then, who knows.  I’ve got 2 months to think about that….

Marie Robinson is a wife of a friend and fellow Morris Dancer, and she paints some astounding stuff, mostly in oils, always in intricate and perfect detail.  Myself, as someone with an aversion to paint and colour, I am astounded by what she can achieve with a few brushstrokes.  On her website, she has a variety of lovely collections, my personal OCD favourite is this pair of spoons.

Spoons – Jumble, Marie Robinson

Spoons parallel, Marie Robinson

I love the collections, and there are plenty more over at her website, check them out.

But what really, really, gets me going, is her landscapes.  Again, something I would never be able to attempt myself, they are breathtakingly beautiful in themselves, but what Marie has gone one step further and done something I have been hankering to see for a long time.  Modern landscapes.  Clouds and rolling hills are beautiful, but are not particularly representative of the skies we see every day.  Skies that are criss-crossed with contrails and modern views of rural landscapes are just as, if not more beautiful, in my humble opinion, than the flawless Constables and Turners.

The beauty of Turner’s work is owed partly to the global effects of the Indonesian volcanic eruptions between 1812 and 1815, and he captured a brief, beautiful period of time.  Marie is doing the same today with the effects of our extensive intercontinental air travel, and our gradual spread into rural England.

So, with her permission, I reproduce a few more of my favourites from her website.  I hope you too will be tempted to go and check them out, go to her exhibitions, and buy her beautiful paintings.

Cherwell Valley Rising Mist, Marie Robinson

February Evening Flight, Marie Robinson

October afternoon – Aynho Wharf, Marie Robinson

Marie can be found at www.marie-robinson.com

Radcliffe Camera, Pen and Ink on paper

The Radcliffe Camera, affectionately known as the ‘Rad Cam’, is one of the most iconic buildings of Oxford University.  It is a reading room of the Bodleian Library, being chiefly the home of antiquated law and sociological texts as far as I know.  As a result, I, as a scientist, was treated only to the subterranean delights of the Racliffe Science Library, and none so internally or externally picturesque as the Rad Cam.  Nevertheless, as an undergraduate I found several excuses to work in there whilst revising for finals.  The silence in there is oppressive, and personally not conducive to concentration, as I contemplated the changing pitch in readers’ footsteps as the perused the shelf.  At least I went there, and I spent many more hours working on it, than I ever spent working in it.

Since then it has been all change at Pen and Ink towers.  After a week long conference, supposedly exploring the origins of life, but mostly exploring the local wine lists courtesy of the Lyon Institute of Origins, I packed up and drove away from Oxford for the last time, ending an eight-year era that has been the majority of my adult life.  A tear was shed, but stepping out into the unknown can be exhilarating with a look to the future instead of the past.

The last week has been a complete change to the pure academic life I’ve been leading of late, as I organised and led the Diamond Jubilee tour of The Ancient Men Morris Dancers on their 107th tour in 60 years.  This past week we have danced from Llandeilo to Llanelli, Camarthen to Cardiff, in some of the most inclement weather the UK has seen for years.  An unremittingly wet, but unremittingly fun week was spent with some of the finest people I know, and while the bruises and blisters may take some time to heal, the memories will stick around for a good while yet.  Here’s a photo of us after our last dance on the beach at Port Talbot.

The Ancient Men at Port Talbot

So, onwards and upwards to this future, and I am now counting down the days before I leave for my summer of adventure.  On Saturday, I fly out to San Francisco, to join the exalted ranks of NASA scientists as we strive for a truer understanding of our place in the universe.  Or, more simply, I’m going to poke some algae for a couple of months.  The plan is to try and approach some of the enigmas of early Earth microbial systems from a biological point of view, with a view to understanding what they may be doing, or may have done, if life arose elsewhere.  I expect the work to involve collecting, culturing, and sequencing algal mats, as well as investigating nutrient flows and responses to extreme external stimuli.  I have high hopes and am super excited for a new direction and a new location.

Also super exciting is the prospect of living and working in San Francisco.  Renowned for its microbrewery and chilled out folk culture, somehow I feel I’m going to get on pretty well there.  I’ll be living just off Alamo Square, and while its about an hour commute, I think its going to be well worth it, for living in the middle of everything.  Recommendations for places to hang out, or things not to be missed are greatly welcomed!

As seems to be the thing these days, I’m going to try and keep some semblance of a travel blog/diary right here for those of you who will be missing me desperately, or want to find out how I’m treating San Francisco.  So watch this space for considerably more updates on life as a Brit in the States, life as a Morris dancer in San Francisco, or life as a palaeontologist at NASA.

Why, for example, is it so prevalent?  Why would you go to the effort of finding a mate and performing some intricate act with them, if you can more efficiently clone yourself instead?  Cloning takes just one to make one more, rather than sex, which needs a matching pair to reproduce.  There must be a good reason to keep such an inefficient process going.

And indeed there is.  When it comes down to it, sex is not about the bump and grind, or the fancy feathers and elaborate mating rituals.  It’s all about what goes on in the cells.  Meiosis is the first stage, with a ‘normal’ cell dividing twice to make gametes with half the right amount of DNA – in our case sperm and eggs.  Two gametes, usually from different individuals, come together at fertilisation, making up the full complement of DNA, and then the fertilised egg, or zygote, starts dividing and keeps on dividing until it has the right number of cells to make an organism.  The whole thing is a lengthy and complicated process that is seemingly designed to confuse biology students.

But there is meaning behind the madness.  Sex is what allows organisms to mix up their genes – first during the random allocation of gene variants to gametes, and secondly during the random choice of fertilising pairs – and is the reason that no two sexually reproducing organisms look identical.  One of the greatest misconceptions in evolution is that random mutation in DNA drives the variation exploited by natural selection, when in actual fact it is sex.   Sex effectively shuffles the genetic material of a whole species every time an organism reproduces – a much more effective way of experimenting with variation than waiting a few generations for just one, potentially damaging mutation to one gene.

So, that’s why sex is a more attractive prospect than cloning yourself. But it doesn’t explain how, when, or where it got started.  When was the first time the earth moved? Do we owe the discovery of sex to animals, or were they latecomers to the sexual arena, following in the footsteps of earlier, smaller, and simpler organisms in the deep past?  Scientists have no firm answers yet, but there are a few clues.

When trying to work out when something evolved, scientists have two choices.  They can look at living organisms and use the information contained in their DNA to work out when it first appeared.  Or they can use the fossil record to trace a creature back in time to when it first appeared.  Both methods are useful, but both are beset with problems.  The creature in question may survived until today, or its fossil record may be incomplete and misleading. This is just the case with sex.

Sex is easy to spot and study in living organisms today.  In addition to bizarre sexual practices, like the mid-act cannibalism practiced by many praying mantids, or the colour coded treasuries of Australian bowerbirds, there are some more clear morphological adaptations that can be spotted in living or dead creatures.  First and most obvious, is sexual organs.  Chances are, if you are a sexually reproducing animal, you are going to have some specialised organs to do so whether you’re a barnacle with the largest penis in the world or boast a four-headed member like the modest echidna.

Sexual dimorphism is an indirect consequence of a sexual lifestyle. Most notable amongst elaborately plumed birds, like peacocks or birds of paradise, sexual dimorphism is also extremely realised in terms of body size in certain species of fish.  The male angler fish, arguably the smallest vertebrate in the world, is forty times smaller than the female.

But all these products of sex appeared at a late stage in the history of cellular sexual reproduction.  If we want to find the origin, we need to look at modern examples of much more primitive creatures.  Many eukaryotic organisms (those with a nucleus, as opposed to bacteria) consist of just a single cell, and still manage to reproduce sexually without all the adaptive trappings.  And these single-celled creatures, called protists, evolved much earlier than animals.  So does sex predate the animals? Possibly.  Assuming that those sexually reproducing protists that are living today have been doing it ever since they evolved, then yes.  But what evidence do we have to prove this is the case?  Like the ancestors of humans haven’t always walked on two feet, perhaps today’s protists haven’t always been reproducing sexually.  We need to turn to the fossil record.

Tracking sex though the fossil record is a tricky business, mostly because of the extreme bias in what can be preserved.  The bulk of the fossil record is a record of hard parts and sex is generally concerned with the softer parts of anatomy (no jokes).  Whether occurring in animals or in tiny protists, the adaptations and cellular products of the sexual process are not made of hard mineralised substances and so are easily decayed away after death.  Sexual dimorphism too is difficult to recognise unequivocally, with different sized skeletons often interpreted as different species, or as younger forms, rather than different genders.  So the fossil record of sex must be built on the rare examples where soft parts are preserved, or the indirect effects that sexual reproduction may have on a species.

Two big clues both come from around a time of major revolution in the biological world, the so-called Cambrian explosion of animal life, around 540 million years ago, when all the animal groups appeared in the fossil record for the very first time.  This was not only a time of extraordinary fossil diversity, but also of exceptional fossil preservation.  Microscopic algae and intricate macroscopic animals are preserved in the finest possible detail. Amongst these, just before the appearance of animals, scientists found tiny remains which looked like balls of cells, with different number of cells in each – one, two, four, eight, sixteen, and so on.  In fact, these fossils looked just like embryos.  The now infamous Doushantuo embryos, named after the formation in China from which they were first described, have been the subject of intense scientific debate for the last 15 years, with many scientists arguing that they are just giant bacteria.  If they are embryos though, then they provide evidence that the sexual processes that must have formed them were well established before the majority of animals emerged.

A second piece of evidence, and one which supports the similar idea that sex got started before animals, is more indirect.  Given that today, sex is responsible for much of the variation we see amongst eukaryotic organisms, it is reasonable to assume that when sex first got started, it would have been marked by a sharp increase in the variation of the creatures alive at the time, which would be recognised as a peak in species diversity.  Looking for peaks in diversity is quite easy in the fossil record, and once compared with information from other time periods, there remains one gigantic spike – the Cambrian explosion itself.  Could the invention of sex by eukaryotic protists have sparked the beginning of the animal kingdom as we know it?  Quite possibly.

The evidence from the fossil record seems to point to an origin of sex just before the evolution of the animals, and as far as we can interpret it, the patterns of diversity of living creatures seems to point in that direction too.   It may be that we will never be able to place an exact date on the origin.  But it is clear that without sex, without that mucky, clumsy, long-winded process that is the bane and the joy of so many, we wouldn’t be here – not just those who are able to read this text, but every animal alive today.

This article was written for, and originally published in, Aberdeen University Science Magazine Issue 3 

The event melded the seemingly non-sequitur fields of volcanology and evolution with public policy, with speakers Professor David Pyle and Dr Matt Friedman sharing with us some of the new and most relevant findings of their work in the elegant and homely environs of the O&C Club.

Following a jolly hour of wine and high-class nibbles, newly reunited with leavers from my graduation year and my fourth year seminar group from that morning, we crowded into the teensy lecture room and gradually settled down to learn.

Professor Pyle, who taught me volcanology as an undergraduate, started us off with an endearing familiarity.  He spoke of Oxford’s involvement with the recent ash disruption from the April 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland, demonstrating with some strong images, just how light the ash fall was.  He spoke of his primary research interest – the interaction between volcanoes and the glaciers that commonly form in their craters, in places like the Chilean Andes.

Particularly close to my heart was his work on the Greek island of Santorini, where I spent an extremely pleasant field trip in my final year of undergraduate, and which seemingly involved riding around in boats and admiring the view.  Prof. Pyle and his geophysical colleagues at Oxford have been monitoring the dormant crater at the centre of the island since 2004, with a hope of detecting changes in the shape and seismic activity of the volcano that may signal an upcoming eruption.

Aerial view of Santorini, with the newest volcanic cone, Kameni, in the centre.

And they may have spotted just that.  Measurements of the tiny movements of the rocks since January 2010 have hinted at a bulging in the centre of the island complex, which is likely to be cause by a pulse of magma surging upwards to fill a magma chamber.  Exciting stuff, and I am by no means enough of a volcanologist to know what this might mean in the future, but it is fascinating to be able to document the real-time activity of a classic Mediterranean volcano, and to potentially compare it with those historical eruptions responsible for the decimation of the Minoan civilisation, and the levelling of Pompeii.  Happy happy memories of those halcyon undergraduate days when beer was cheap and the sun always shone…

Dr Matt Friedman, molester of fishes and general vertebrate whizz, followed and, coping well with the inevitable technological stall, treated us to some excellent pictures, movies and reconstructions of fossil fish.  I never knew they could be so interesting!

As a paleaontologist, I have always turned my research attentions to the squishier, smaller and weirder parts of the early fossil record.  But I learnt more from Matt in half an hour than I did for my entire undergraduate course.  I learnt that of all the vertebrates, over half of them live in water.  I learnt that you can douse your precious fish fossil in acid to make its bones stick out more to study them, and I learnt that some now extinct fish looked really, really stupid.

Matt has the rather dubious honour of being the flatfish fossil king, and has used the skeletons of some primitive groups to show how fish evolved from having one eye on each side of their face, to having both on the same side.  It apparently involved an evolutionary stage where they looked sillier than usual:

Fossil skulls of the ancestors of flatfish, showing how one eye (right side) migrated up and over the skull. (Modified from Friedman 2008)

Some of the really cool work that Matt is doing at the moment makes use of probably the biggest piece of scientific kit in the UK – the diamond light source synchrotron.  The synchrotron accelerates particles around the huge doughnut-shaped building, generating x-rays that can be used like a super high-powered hospital CT-scanner to peer inside some exceptionally preserved fossils.  Despite having only just started this, Matt and his coworkers have already got some exciting results, being able to reconstruct the delicate gill supports, and the nerves inside the skull of some early fishes.

Both speakers got plenty of incisive questions from the diverse audience, and as we hurried back to the wine and nibbles, I heard nothing but enthusiasm, for the lawyers and linguists, as well as the easily-pleased geologists.

Having been in the same department in Oxford for the last eight years, it is easy to feel staid, and tied down by the expectations and traditions of some of the older members of the faculty.  It was truly refreshing to be a part of the younger, outward-looking and truly outreaching new generation of Oxford scientists.  I came away glowing with pride and wine, and hoping that researchers and teachers like Prof. Pyle and Dr Friedman can help Oxford to keep up with the curve.

]]> http://leilabattison.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/hobbing-and-nobbing-with-volcanoes-and-fish/feed/ 0 leilabattison University of Oxford derpfish http://leilabattison.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/london-cabaret-awards-a-personal-fiasco-but-an-entertainment-triumph/ http://leilabattison.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/london-cabaret-awards-a-personal-fiasco-but-an-entertainment-triumph/#comments Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:27:42 +0000 leilabattison http://leilabattison.wordpress.com/?p=472 Continue reading →]]>

“Ooh you all look like you’ve been dipped in glue and rolled around a vintage clothing store!”

Never was a truer word spoken than by compere Jamie Anderson, opening the inaugural London Cabaret Awards on The Battersea Barge last week. The boat was crammed to the ceiling with glitter, wigs, false nails, false lashes, false boobs and genuine smiles, and all were clearly determined to make merry with friends old and new. As new London Editor for Broadway Baby, it was my pleasure to be a part of it, even given the personal nightmare I had in getting there.

I had a business meeting during the day, so had come to London in normal enough clothes, but with a bag full of corsetry, stockings and feathered epaulettes. After a struggle into the steel-boned creation in the loo of an extremely overcrowded Costa on Shaftesbury Avenue, I set off on the ill fated journey across London. Wisely, I had decided to put on the heels and the epaulettes once I was there, but the corset did little for my mobility, at speed, through the subway at rush-hour. Following an extensive detour owing to severe delays on the Picadilly line, I eventually arrived at Vauxhall with twenty minutes to spare before the beginning of the champagne reception. I walked.

Being a barge, I knew it was on the river, and my rough mental map told me in which direction to walk. It didn’t, however, tell me how far to walk, and just how much of that would be along a dual carriageway. In a corset. Finally spotting a sign advising me to turn right for the Battersea Barge, I did so, and was heartened to see a number of taxis dropping off revellers. Good, I thought, I’m going in the right direction. Carrying on, more taxis and even a tour bus with blacked-out windows passed me. Gosh, I thought, this is a fancy affair. All this time I am walking through what seems to an industrial estate, with cement lorries, and refuse trucks. Very ironic, I thought. But the road took me right up to Battersea Power Station, where there was a huge queue and a great many photographers. I even think I was snapped a couple of times in my ridiculously overstated outfit, before I realised that this was, in fact, a completely different event and I was, in fact, nowhere near where I wanted to be. By this time it is fifteen minutes into the champagne reception and I am lost on an industrial estate in Battersea. In a corset. I walked.

I spent the next 45 minutes walking, investigating every alleyway and signpost until I eventually found a teeny tiny sign that directed me down a labyrinthine set of walkways which, eventually, led me to the Battersea Barge. Already exhausted, but determined to go through with my extravagant outfit, I slip on my heels and prepare to put on my feather epaulettes – only to find them gone. Somewhere, somehow, in London I have lost a pair of black feathered shoulderpads. Kind readers, if you find them, pity me and my bare shoulders in an industrial estate in Battersea, in a corset.

By the time I made it onto the barge, the champagne was finished, the guests were already pleasingly drunk, and the awards were about to start. No one noticed my shockingly bare shoulders, for which I am glad.

Compere Jamie Anderson

That was enough of a fiasco for one night, and the Cabaret Awards did not disappoint with extravagance, fake eyelashes or inebriation. Hosted by the quite delicious Jamie Anderson through choppy waters, the show and ceremony was underway with much whooping and heckling, as could be expected from a cabaret audience made of cabaret performers.

Awarded first were the glass stars for the best drag act, to Jonny Woo, the best burlesque performer, to Kiki Kaboom, and the best cabaret venue, to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

There followed a wonderful set by the Four Femmes on the Thames, a 40’s inspired music act reminiscent of the Puppini Sisters. With tight satin frocks and tighter harmonies, the four girls oozed charisma and thinly veiled drunkenness, and their performance was a real treat.

The Four Femmes on the Thames

The next set of awards went to Dicky Beau, for best alternative performer, and to Mat Ricardo, for best speciality act. Zoe Charles, teacher at ‘The Cheek of It’ burlesque school, was awarded the unsung hero award.

Following a brief interval, Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer treated the audience to his special brand of ‘Chap Hop’, accompanied by a miniature banjo and a spiffing moustache. Mr B was a hug hit on the Edinburgh cabaret scene in 2011, and both he and yours truly hope he will be recognised for an award next year.

Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer

More awards, to the Double R club, for best ongoing production; to Dusty Limits for best compere; and to Bourjeois and Maurice for the catchily titled best music-based act, were heralded with renewed vigour by the thoroughly inebriated audience.

Josephine Shaker provided the final break in the proceedings, tapping her heart out on a thoroughly sick-making stage, performing a fascinatingly androgynous strip, and being generally ignored by the increasingly rowdy contents of an increasingly crowded barge.

The final awards, almost drowned out by good natured heckling were, for best one-off production, to La Soiree, for the Time Out Audience award voted for, unsurprisingly, by the audience of Time Out, to Alp Haydar, and finally the Outstanding Achievement Award, to a seemingly very deserving Duckie. The crowd simultaneously climaxed, and Jamie Anderson’s closing comments went unheard and unheeded. A song to end the night affirmed an excellent time had by all.

Winners Dusty Limits and Kiki Kaboom

Yours truly had to rush off to catch to the last train home, much to my chagrin, for there is nothing I love better than an alcohol and burlesque-fuelled afterparty. But despite the dramatic failure of the first part of the evening, the awards themselves were a gin-soaked romp, and as one particularly drunk burlesque nominee announced, “We are all winners”. I look forward to many more cabaret awards, with the continued blossoming of the London cabaret scene. I even know where the bloody barge is now.