I've done it. Sunday 16th August at 01:00hrs saw me take over the plinth for an hour.
I was exceedingly nervous all day but relaxed a bit once I'd booked in with the organisers and had a cup of tea. My nerves came back once I was up there and set my equipment up. I just couldn't remember what I was going to do - fortunately I had a script/running order taped to the back of my pa and that prompted me to get going.
First I had a short rant about bankers but I soon got bored with that so I then launched into a few poems. My main reason for the poetry was that I'd got a bit annoyed by several plinthers who had read some poetry but without sufficient volume for people in the Square to hear them - this is annoying when you're in the Square but of course, these plinthers would have been audible to the rest of the world via the internet. With the benefit of my pa I could bring poetry to the Square. I'm not exactly the worlds best reader of poetry but I only made a couple of small mistakes (allowing for the fact that it's about 40 years since I read any poems out in public), so I was generally quite pleased and started to relax. Next I threw some fake banknotes into the crowd and was impressed with how many people rushed to grab them - I reckon there could have been injuries if I'd tried that during the day! I'm sort of half-hoping to spot the fake notes being traded on EBay or elsewhere.
I was supposed to start my music running at 10 past but I was about 5 minutes late doing so. For the first couple of tunes I was feeling a bit awkward but took the opportunity to take some photographs. I did this primarily to upset those people who've been moaning about plinthers taking photographs!
"Dad Dancing" followed whereby I just did those steps that all dads do when they dance and embarrass their kids. By now I was really enjoying myself - it was a pleasant evening, nice and warm, I was enjoying the tunes I'd selected, the crowd were friendly and the spotlights meant I couldn't see anything other than my own little plinth-world. Soon I was stripping off down to my rusty brown "gimp suit". Hand made by my friend Denise, the idea was to look like one of Gormley's iron men in Event Horizon or Another Place. I danced around to Jumping Someone Else's Train by the Cure, Beautiful World by DEVO and Touched By the Hand of God by New Order before ripping off my appendage, donning a pair of wings and becoming The Angel of the North. At this point I slowly rotated to reveal the word Brandalism on the back of the wings (and tried unsuccessfully to keep my wings as horizontal as possible).
Six minutes later and the next person was due up so I had to quickly pack all my gear away in my suitcase. I didn't really want to get down as by now I was feeling very comfortable up there - I'm guessing a lot of others have felt the same, I suppose it's the realisation that we're highly unlikely to ever have the opportunity to do it again.
