Life is a cabaret.

After my late night on Saturday I didn't actually make it up in time for breakfast at the hotel on Sunday.  I'd been told at registration that I needed to get to start queueing early to make sure I got a seat for the closing event, Bears At The Birdcage (cabaret and the final of Mr Bear Bash).  At about one, after I had just about gotten my shit together, I decided to head into town for a bite to eat and aim to start queueing at about half-two.  It was a good thing I was out early - after a wander around the Arndale Centre and a restorative trip to Subway I decided to check my bearings and find the entrance to the club.  It was quickly obvious where the club was, due to the large queue of big, hairy, bearded men.  I joined the queue and after about 45 minutes of standing around in the cold (getting some rather odd looks from passers by) the doors opened and in we flooded.  I'd arranged to meet the guys I'd been hanging out with most of the weekend at the club (I'd texted them to let them know the  queue was huge - when they turned up they were a fair bit behind me) so had a scout around to see if I could find them.  By the time I did manage to find them the tables closest to the stage were all taken, so we settled for something a bit further back - a good view, but not really close enough for pictures (though I did manage to get a decent-ish one of the crowd to give you an idea of the ambience).

At about half-three or so the show started.  The compere was Jonathan Mayor, someone I hadn't heard of before and from what little I could find on Google I wasn't expecting much.  He turned out to be hysterically funny.  He didn't feel the need to drag up for the Bear audience and he came over like the bastard love child of Victoria Wood, Graham Norton and Eddie Izzard (now there's a mental threesome image you didn't need).  His routine before the first of the acts was very good (I think he likes the gay audiences as he can be filthier, more explicit and the gags don't go over their heads on top of the fact that there is a lot of shared experience as he talks about his life a lot) and he was very much the charming arsehole when it came to the actual comparing.   As for the acts - The Dream Bears were deeply silly, but lots of fun.  The Manbears guys video parodies were well produced, but weren't as funny as they thought they were.  There were two singers, one of which was cute but terribly croonery and the other was a bit of a knob who responded to the shouts of 'get it off' (shirt) with 'I will if you will' - mistake!  Bears *so* don't need an excuse to take their shirts off - and it was very amusing when a shirtless bear got up on stage and forcibly removed his shirt!  The Mr Bear Bash finals were fun (shirts were not allowed and there was a certain amount of gratuitous nudity in a mainly sucessfull attempt to influence the crowd) and kudos to all the guys who entered for getting up there!  There was also Mr & Mr - which was rather sweet (especially the older couple where one of them had just turned 69).

The grand finale was a 'tribute' to Disney - which literally had me in tears it was so funny and silly.  Rather than try and describe it I'll just link to the video on YouTube...