Like the giant round orbs at the centre of the paintings in the film, I am all wide eyed and sentimental for Tim Burton's earlier films. I miss the fairytale beauty of Edward Scissorhands - untainted by the blight of CGI. I long for the imagination of Beetlejuice which was laced with just the right amount of gruesome gothic to add depth to the comic script.

This Burton directed biographical portrait of artist Margaret Keane, whose husband took credit for her artworks for ten years (if not his entire life) was a pleasant surprise. Not only did it tell a fascinating true story well it did it with the ingenuity and humour of Burton's earlier films. Go and watch Ed Wood. The same sympathetic but observant eye is applied here. Other Burton enthusiasts will pick up in a few other of the directors signature touches.

Maybe the very so slightly sounding 'small' budget of 10 million pounds has allowed the director to tone it down a bit and in doing so hone a more precise and attentive film. As the black and white palate used in Ed Wood reflected the films of the man himself, the blue skies and bright colours of Big Eyes mirror the shades seen in Keane's works.

Amy Adams herself looks like the big eyed waifs she is secretly painting. Her depiction of Margret is heartfelt and the balance between her role as mother and artist being intertwined explains the complicated nature of Keane's identity and passions. 

More than once she explains giving up her claim to paintings is like giving up a child. They are part of her. On the other hand in order to keep producing these pieces for her husband, who is successfully selling them to the masses, she jeopardises her close relationship with her daughter, shutting her out of her studio when once she was the sole focus of her works. Motherhood meant her daughter was all she knew but her artwork is a more expressive and satisfying form of creation. Past its pretty and pleasing exterior Big Eyes makes you bigger picture to this story.

The tale that begins in the fifties is punctuated with lines that spell out the type-cast view of women, in throw-away lines from Walter, the priest and the voice over. They settle down in the psyche and remind you whilst people like DeeAnn, Margaret's independent sculpture friend did exist, like she is seen in the film, this female voice was all too often sidelined, dismissed and in Margaret's case, underused.

The film has a certificate of 12A for the use of some strong language, actually one usage in the entire film. This happens when DeeAnn has a fight with Walter when she's getting to close to the truth about the paintings. She yells "Fuck you!" from her convertible car as speeds out the drive of the Keane's very expensive family home. 

Exactly the right kind of attitude to have with a man and a society that tries to claim that a women's achievements aren't equal to those of a man. Margaret proves Walter wrong in the end and no matter what you think of her paintings, the woman and this film are a success.

Squeamish Nicola

I hate people who don't turn their phones off at the cinema - the floodlight glare of other people's iPhones is abhorrent. The rage that flows through my veins is probably akin to the bloodlust of a vampire. My viewing experience is tainted by a large and ignorant cinema audience. You can imagine how pleased I was to turn up to a near empty midnight screening of What We Do in the Shadows the mockumetary about a den of vampires form one half of The Flight of the Concords Jermaine Clement, and who I can only imagine is his best bud, Taika Waititi. I now want to be his friend and I want you to watch this film they have written. All I knew about this film is stated above was from the poster. A bunch of vampires sitting in an old house below some taxidermy and a staircase. My mind jumped straight to Tim Burton's  Dark Shadows revival. I never managed to make it through that even though vampires were a staple of my teenage years. The angst of Buffy, the camp of Bram Stoker's Dracula and the MTV comedy-gore-Corey fest and that is The Lost Boys. Of all the people who want to know about the trials and tribulations of being on of the undead it is me.

 Team that up with the mockumentary genre that will forever be held up in comparison with the cult classic This is Spinal Tap and you are on to a very appealing combo indeed. I wanted to know about these four vampires living in a house in Wellington, New Zealand... but had my doubts about this film.

Due to the nature of the mockumentary and what I was expecting to be a budgety film, I envisaged a sedate affair, talking heads heavy doc style with improvised hits and misses which would create a mildly amusing film. Shame on me! My goblet of blood was obviously half empty when in fact this film over-floweth with blood type O-so good!

The documentary style was spoofed to perfection, the back story of each character, including shots of photos, portraits over the hundreds of years they had been alive and their individual classic vampire styles, Vlad The Impaler/Dracula and Nosferatu being the most apparent to me, you bonded with these four vamps instantly. Calling the Nosferatu type vampire Petyr made him seem so ordinary but ancient at the same time. Whilst explaining that "He's 8000 years old, he's not coming to the house meeting" said it all. 

In the film folklore of vampires is explained and exposed in the presence of the documentary film crew and ourselves in the lead up to the annual event The Unholy Masquerade. We are witness to the impracticalities of sleeping all day and relying on a familiar (AKA your human slave who one day hopes to be turned into a vampire) on doing your (literally) bloody laundry and rounding up virgins to drink from. 

Why Virgin's Blood? As Vlad explains, "Well you'd enjoy a sandwich much more if you knew no one had had sex with it first." They are all typical vampires, we lay witness to them flying, turning into bats, hypnotising victims and drinking blood, all with different degrees of success. The aversion to sunshine, silver and need to be invited into a night club are all addressed as well as Nick the newbie's transition from human to vampire - a lot of his chat up lines include the word "Twilight".

That's the thing about What We Do in the Shadows, it knows its audience. The vampires in the film are staples of the vampire film genre. This is appealing as in your head you tick off references and laugh as the vampires make their own. They like The Lost Boys and play a prank the vampires in that movie play on the humans. 

The film surprised me again with the amount of action that takes place - fights which have them rolling around the ceiling, chase scenes that include bats and werewolves and humans alike! The beef between the Vampires and Werewolves is on a schoolboy level. The alpha male tried to keep order: "Hey! No swearing. We're werewolves not swearwolves!" 

There is a clear lack of female leads in this film which is a shame as they do meet a few lady vamps about Wellington. Deacon's familiar Jackie sums it up when she says if she had a dick she'd have been turned into a vampire years ago. She's right, it is one big sausage fest of a film but it's really funny too.

Squeamish Nicola

Many a Smart Girl, Parks & Recreation fan and Saturday Night Live enthusiast has been waiting in anticipation of Amy Poehler's autobiography Yes Please. I for one am a sucker for an autobiography, particularly of those who have a career I am envious of. Taking a leaf out of any of Stephen Fry's autobiographies (he is the Katie Price of the BBC) Amy starts off with a very long apology. In it she explains she has two young kids and other work commitments etc, etc. You might be surprised to read this because Hadley Freeman and Jessica Valenti have both written about Poehler's wish for women to push themselves forward rather than self deprecate or apologise. I'd have written about this before but I was sticking to the embargo I was made to adhere to via email with the publishers Picador. Being a stickler for the rules and all that. Expectations lowered by Amy we press on. 

Yes Please is the scrapbook of a grown woman. There is something of the Rookie yearbook about it with photos 'masking taped' to the pages, large brightly coloured 'motivational' pages in large font saying things like "FORGET the facts and remember the feelings". Taking her cue from Amy Sedaris - the master of fancy dress, Poehler has posed in various amusing photographs for the different sections of the book. Though it's hard to beat her author photo. 

It is refreshing to see a woman who is happy to give up her vanity in order to make others laugh. It's probably what attracts me most to the women of Saturday Night Live. Poe goes to great pains to discuss her personal opinion of her looks. Not in order for reviewers and critics to say 'no, Amy you are pretty, you're fine, you're blond'. But to show that it is a struggle for many people. Although Amy states at one point that this book is mostly for mothers of young children I get the sense from her bon mots and feminist statements that it actually works well as a guide for young women. 

But perhaps that is because I am one. Or I pass for one. I totally got ID'd yesterday buying whiskey. What I can tell you is that reading this book has somehow made me a lot less scared of life. 

Where Bossypants chronicles Tina's life in order of appearance and is all her own work Amy is not ashamed to both jump around the order of her life and say 'Yes please' to some assistance from Seth Meyers, her mother, her father or Parks & Rec creator Mike Schur. They have annotated and added entire chapters to the book, which gives you a good impression of her community spiritedness and also her opening apology about being very busy whilst writing this book. 

In both of their books they write about being working mothers. And not working mothers with a 9-5 but working mothers with no free time. Working mothers who possibly have the option financially to say no to a couple of projects (of course the title, Yes Please, explains why this is not going to happen any time soon) but they love their jobs. They have dream jobs. They also love their children and both write about criticism they receive for being working mothers. However where Tina justifies and makes sharp observations Amy's attitude is to simply say "Good for you, not for me". In other words 'up with your bullshit, I will not put'. 

It's a good attitude that many people, male, female or other should adopt. This is a fun autobiography of someone who is not in the least bit shy, invested in other people's esteem and also willing to toot her own horn. No really, wait till you get to her sex advice. 

Squeamish Kate

Performance artist Selina Thompson is fat. Fat. F A T. FFFFFFAAAAAATTTTT TUH TUH TUH. Not curvy, not chubby, not jolly, not 'big and beautiful' not 'larger lady'. Fat. She is fat like she is brown eyed. She is fat like her hair is black. Fat like her skin is brown. Fat. Selina says fat and needs you to say fat because it is fact. A neutral fact. An adjective. Not a negative. Selina talks about this in her one woman show Chewing the Fat. It is the first of a two part body of work titledThe Edible Woman. This is not a feminist piece of art or polemic. It is not a journey of self acceptance. It is purely an exploration of Selina's body image and attitude to food. And it is very nourishing for those hungry for a new approach to body shape, diet and eating. 

Watching Selina perform Chewing the Fat, her version of a 'midnight feast' reminded me of an article on fatness that Squeamish Louise wrote in 2012. In it Louise said: "I'm fat. This is not an insult or a putdown; it is a statement of fact. I've never understood people who try to use it as an insult either against me... or against women who are demonstrably not fat at all. How do you insult someone with a physical trait they don't even possess? It makes no sense! Well of course it doesn't - it's not designed to uncover an awkward truth, it's designed to chip away at someone's self-esteem and make them feel bad. I'd like to put my name down for the campaign to restore 'fat' to its status as an adjective." I would like to propose Selina Thompson as the figurehead for such a campaign. 

To call this show a midnight feast is the perfect description of what takes place. We have all the ingredients for a successful sleepover in which the audience is invited to gorge on Selina's body biography. This is not a confessional though. Selina is not apologetic to us or to herself about her size. She is fat because she binges and she has binged all her life. Sometimes she has eaten differently. Sometimes she hasn't. There is no moment of clarity in which an epiphany is shared.  

It's quite alarming how impressive it is that a story of weight and food can be free of any kind of preaching air. Of course self acceptance and love is important but sometimes a spade is a spade. Selina talks of being 18 and admiring her strong thighs in the mirror. Of attempting a diet and succeeding but realising that this version of a 'healthy lifestyle' was not safe for her. Of not being seen as sexual by some people. 

There is a strong display of self value in this show. Selina might binge, but she binges on nice food, as she says herself she has expensive tastes. There is an incident in the show that she acknowledges might be upsetting. It is upsetting because we have possibly to some extent all be there and upsetting because the audience is being made to watch someone do something to themselves that looks and sounds painful. Afterwards however Selina, clearly a natural nurturer looks out for her audience. 

Chewing the Fat is a great show that helps us engage with both the joyful and the sad parts of being corporeal and reminds us that both are valid and valuable parts of inhabiting a body, fat or not. 

Squeamish Kate

Last night I went to see comedian Katherine Ryan perform her latest stand up show Glam Role Model at the Brighton Komedia. If you watch TV chances are you have seen Katherine Ryan. She's the female comic who is allowed to speak and doesn't get edited down to appear as 'silent blonde sidekick' on TV panel shows - a fate all too often meted out to other women who appear on comedy panel shows. Why is this? Perhaps it is because of her Canadianess that refuses to be quieted. Or her delivery that can border on brash and can't be ignored. Or maybe just because Katherine Ryan is plain funny. Too funny to edit down to give the men more air time for their bon mots. 

It is often the fate of comedians who appear on TV panel shows to meet with an audience expecting a repeat of their TV show safe performance. I'm not convinced Katherine suffered this last night but if you're a father and you have brought your teenage daughter with you (mad props - comedy is excellent for father-daughter bonding) I suggest not sitting in the front row, you know, for optimum comfort on the journey home. Also if you are on your third date. 

I'm not saying if you sit in the front row of a Katherine Ryan gig you will be torn apart. I am saying be prepared to laugh along when she suggests you try out a Beyonce move that has the potential to unsex your male partner. Hey maybe even try it out when you get home! 

But harassing the audience is not really the aim of Katherine's show. Instead she talks about being a single mother, the father of her child who she is totally, definitely friends with - in front of her daughter, the cult of celebrity and how teens today grow up with social media. 

She treads the very thin line of being able to point out the faults of celebrities such as Tulisa whilst solidly remaining #TeamTulisa. Particularly when discussing our reaction to Tulisa's sex tape vs Jennifer Lawrence and the Fappening.

The blurb for Katherine's show goes: "The product of a strict Irish father and a glitzy Canadian 'stage mom', Katherine Ryan won neither friends nor pageant titles growing up. Try as she might to shed her questionable perspectives and super sparkly nature, she's not sure we can ever truly escape our childhood indoctrinations." We don't, perhaps, escape our childhood indoctrinations but Katherine definitely helped us notice them. 

In between celebrity chat Katherine talks about abortion, her divorce and infidelity. It's like flicking through Heat magazine and accidentally stumbling upon a feminist essay. And liking it. 

Squeamish Kate

Have you seen Pride yet? It's a British film set around the National Union of Mineworkers' 1984 strike and focuses on a group of gay men and lesbians who decide to back the strike and end up setting up LGSM – Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - and  supporting a particular mining town in north Wales, telling the story of how these very different groups end up coming to know one another and work together.

I saw it last week and can't stop telling people that they should go, too. It's based on a true story and I can't get over the fact that I had never heard it before.

Perhaps that's not surprising - even writer Stephen Beresford describes it as being a 'legend' in the gay community,"like Chinese whispers"

He made those quotes in a Guardian article that links to an existing documentary which was made during the 80s. All Out! Dancing in Dulais is available on YouTube here and gives an overview of the situation, including interviews with the lesbians and gay men pledging their support for striking miners alongside ones with the mining community. They seem happy at the support, and - a point repeated in the film - more perturbed by the fact that some of their supporters are vegetarian than by their sexual orientation.  

It's resonant because there are still people living the experience of being vilified and bullied by the press and government, and suggests a way of fighting against that.  The characters understand that we all have the power to change the world, and that change can start with something as small as taking the hand of the person offering it to you.

There are tensions in Neath over taking the support LGSM offer. But they are the group who raise the most money. And as people get to know one another all sorts of barriers fall down. And that common enemy is still there. Once the press get wind of what is happening they use it as yet another stick with which to beat the striking workers, shouting about 'pits and perverts'.

"There's a long standing tradition in the gay community, and it's served us well" the charismatic leader of LGSM says, "when someone uses a word like this against you, you take it and you claim it" And so Pits and Perverts was born. Not a dismissive headline any more but the title of a dedicated fundraising gig held in the Electric Ballroom in Camden which brought in over £5,000 (over £20,000 today).

It's a remarkable story, told in a wonderful film, and I’m going to carry on suggesting that you all go and see it.

Squeamish Louise

Think about this...Othello, but with the titular role played by a woman, meaning Othello and Desdemona's relationship is a lesbian one.  That's an eye-catching idea and I was keen to see this production by By Jove Theatre Company.

The programme explained the rationale further - within Shakespeare strong female characters are limited - "Your options generally are limited to becoming a mad mother, spending most of your time crying, being driven mad or turning to suicide." This production aims to not only recast Othello but also to expand other female roles, reframing the story. To do this, director and writer SJ Brady has created new text, weaving this into the original play and re-ordering some parts, setting the story in the modern-day British army.

When updating Shakespeare there's the potential for the new text to jar. But when it works, and it does here, a new spark is created, new ideas and themes teased out of a familiar story.

The expanded female parts give us new ways of looking at the tragedy. I've always found both Desdemona and Emilia difficult to empathise with. Too often portrayed as wet, weak pawns swept up in the events around them, here they shine much more. Still swept up in the events around them, but with actions that make sense.

Kate Hunter's Desdemona is young, virginal, naive - but head over heels in love with Othello. Scared of what her family will think of the relationship, but committed and sure enough to pursue it and follow Othello to her new posting after they marry.

Later, there was the sense that theirs was a once-passionate relationship gone sour; Iago too consumed with his own jealousies and schemes to pay sufficient attention to his wife, she bored and restless in the heat and willing to play along with his requests in order to try and reignite their spark.

And I can't mention Iago without talking about the way in which Richard de Lisle commanded the stage during every scene he was in. His Iago is a magnificent bastard, consumed by jealousy that Othello has chosen Cassio as her lieutenant rather than him, and seeing his chance to make trouble for her using her new relationship.

But it did also make me think...I'd love to see an all-female version of Othello now, or one where Iago was also female. De Lisle was so good that  it seems churlish to complain that this role wasn't played by a woman - but I would love to see a version that explored tensions within a lesbian community. Perhaps with Desdemona portrayed as bisexual, and Othello's worries about what that means - surely this means she's going to leave her for a man?

Making me think of other versions of the play I'd like to see wasn't down to a failing in this one. Quite the opposite. My experience has often been that learning Shakespeare at school sucks out the power and beauty - large themes are reduced to set questions and the drama evaporates under the dodgy school lights. 

Sometimes we might never get that back. I love a lot of Shakespeare, but Othello has always been a play that I've slightly struggled with, not liking any of the characters. By Jove gave me the opportunity to experience a version I could reconnect with, with characters I could understand, sympathise with, hate and root for.

Squeamish Louise

Mondays can be a bit meh. It's the start of the week and for some reason you feel like your bed has some kind of human capturing magnet attached to its underside. Why. Can't. You. Get. Up? After drudging through the day there's not much more to look forward to than laptop catch up TV in that very same-pillowed prison. Well not this Monday night! I was off to see Alice Through the Looking Glass at St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. And it was a sunny summer's night too. The Iris Theatre production was back at this holy house and its green gardens for their 6th year. I had never been before and having the chance to wander into this grand old building was a treat in itself.

I felt like I was walking into a secret but I didn't expect to be led by a singing vicar and a man with very high waisted trouser and a guitar. They sang their vaguely biblical song and beckoned those waiting into the church. This would not be the first time we were guided, summoned or enticed by the characters we met that night. People sitting in a doorway was just the tame beginning.

Interactive theatre. Are you still not quite convinced by it? I am the kind of person who cowers at even the thought of making eye contact with an 'in character' actor. My mind shrieks: "I only came to waaaatch!" As far as the immersive interactiveness of a play goes Alice Through the Looking Glass was a warm bath with a fizzing pink bath bomb bubbling away in it, bobbing a collection or colourful foam bath toys around you and half a dozen of your childhood friends who are splashing away. In other words, just like Alice, I was a 7 and a half-year-old on an adventure like no other.

Before you know it she's out the bed and running towards a mirror with a girl behind its glass - it breaks and the people in her room including me and the audience are sucked right in.

We found ourselves in the garden lines up along a giant chess board, the pieces already singing at the top of their lungs - very useful when you have the restaurant kitchens and Covent Garden's street entertainers to compete with. We watched as Alice introduced herself and explained how she must find her old self who had been sucked through the looking glass. After this we followed Alice to a garden of tall parasol flowers - some of which could talk - they spoke of a scary "You Know What" (Jabberwock!) and the Red Queen told us that was all the way up in square 8. So we had a long way to go and many songs to sing!

The garden was used amazingly well, as we moved from one patch of grass to benches to rugs on the ground, you were actually in Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb's house, in a wet a squirting sea and perched in front of Humpty Dumpty's infamous wall. Having to walk from one place to the next, as the evening grew darker so did ours and Alice's journey. 

The impending fight with the Jabberwock was just through the black doors...back into the damned bed! This time it was dark and smoky. The black shadow of a horned creature towered over a woman lit red, demonic in her wailing. In the bed a figure lay but as Alice approached this monster awoke. Its bat like wings were the breadth of the church, its presence was frightening. Can the fearless Alice vanquish this beast and save herself? I will say only this. The ending brought a tear to my eye.

Not only was every moment of this family friendly and frightening play good, each actor was superb. Their costumes, collective movements, songs and voices brought props to life, insect's sympathy and excitement at every turn. They whizzed through the rose garden, up trees and through stone doorways and no one was ever left behind. 

We were met with accents from around the country and extreme speech impediments. A lion who must have been a distant cousin of Zed from the Police Academy movies had us roaring with laughter and carrying on like the timid audience pre-intermission has never existed. This August I highly recommend that you join Alice in Wonderland, you deserve to jump out of bed excited.

Squeamish Nicola

People love Vampires right? I was blessed with the coming of the Vampire Slayer; Buffy ran the full length of my teenage years. My 12 year old cousin, not so lucky, received the offering of sappy sparkliness that was the Twilight Saga but for those adults who still have a taste for the undead without the poster boys, the 2008 film Let the Right One In resurrected the classic love and death tale with a oddly mature and retro retelling. Its transformation from Swedish book to Swedish film to American remake (with the more manageable title of Let Me In - yes, five words was too much and we like our film titles to be plaintive!) but our thirst for the little girl vampire centuries old did not stop at this medium.

In its most recent (re)incarnation we go out of my comfort zone, replacing the projection of moving images with 3D real life people wandering about a raised platform - welcome to the theatre! We're back to the old name - Let the Right One In - but a new location. 

The words out of the cast's mouths are soft and friendly, welcome to a snowy and tree filled Scottish wood. The set is beautiful, silver birch trees stretch up a beyond the ceiling and a single playground climbing frame sits grey and still under the warm light of a solitary lamp post. The snow swirls of the group and the people in fur collared seventies looking coats briskly weave in and out of the spindly tree trunks. It is safe to say 
the setting works well. 

Once you've cosied into the accents, seventies garb and snowy setting, you suddenly witness a bloody murder executed by an old man betwixt the trees. The fake blood is a-flowing and in another scene the bullies are a-bullying. We've got a couple of interesting narratives to sink our teeth into. 

The two stories of Eli our vampire and Oskar the wee boy meander through the forest together until they finally our protagonists meet at the climbing frame, curious about each other where they speak to each other for the first time.

She sounds wistful and saucy all at once. It feels strange that she would not be able to talk to adults and children in a different tone after having to hide as a child in normal society for hundreds of years. Instead of giving her the melancholy you would attach to such a character it just irritates like one of those 70's woolly jumpers the actors are wearing. 

I found it hard to feel for the old man, Eli's partner. Yes it sucked that he had to kill to feed her and that she had lost affection for him and was moving into a new relationship with Oskar but I didn't care. Even when he stays true to her until the very end, melting off his face with acid to avoid connecting her with his murder spree. 

After the arrest of Eli's old lover, she is vulnerable. As the policeman enters her flat he edges closer to the trunk where Eli sleeps, Oskar warns her and watches on as it all kicks off. 

This jump out of your skin moment was certainly the highlight of the play. I think the live aspect of theatre really gets you at this point as you are actually there in the moment watching it happen but also you feel like a part of it. The audience literally jumped out their seats.  

The pleasure I gain for the theatre is not that of the immersivness and creation of an alternate reality that I find in film. It is the inventiveness and artistic rawness that was created through its staging and physicality that I enjoyed rather than the telling of the story. 

I feel the play lacked the intensity and knife edge nervousness that Eli's sorrowful, on the break of tears voice may have been trying to portray. The last scene did not hold the gruesome climax that the Vampire tale so often reaches. My blood lust was not quenched. After the bloody earlier tricks and fright of the policeman scene the red lit snow and soggy Oskar paled in comparison.

Squeamish Nicola

One of the best compliments I ever got was when someone told me I looked like Courtney Love. 

It wasn't true then and it's not true now and I open with it not (just) to put the subliminal idea in your head that I might, in case we should ever meet, but because it wasn't just the way she looks that made it such a great compliment. I was 16, and Love was one of a group of female musicians I was discovering who were opening my eyes to what women in music and outside of it, could be like.

Ballsy; rocking: all of these adjectives you hear applied to men that I had never heard attached to women. The ladies were there to look pretty, or sing, or both, but not to tear it up and take the place apart while rocking your socks off. Of course that was an impression I'd picked up from pop, and there were plenty of women and genres to challenge it and have been for years. But Love was one of my first loves and I adored Hole with the kind of passion that only seems to exist when you're a teenager and every song is about you.

I was never a Nirvana fan particularly, certainly not at the time. A combination of being too young, too uncool, into the wrong things... So the fact of her marriage to Kurt Cobain was an aside to me, a curiosity, and never really affected how I consumed her music. We all know she'll wear that relationship like a millstone no matter what else she does, forever, and that shouldn't be what defines her.  

Which is how I found myself watching her play in London on Sunday night. I also found myself alone, which I was nervous about. I'm over 30 and can't think of another gig I've been to alone before. Would it be ok?

Yes.

Here's the thing. I realised that often, once I'm at a gig, I am alone for large parts of it anyway – pushing my way to the front when friends want to hang back, or staying at the edge out of the way of the mosh pit when they want to get in there. Any awkwardness I worried about evaporated: no-one cares anyway, they're all there for the same thing, and that's to see the band, so why are they counting how many people you have with you? They're not, and if they are it's very definitely their problem.

Love's reputation precedes her, and when I was buying tickets with the choice of Sunday or Monday I did joke to people about getting them for the first night "in case she gets arrested or something between gigs". Which is a bit unfair from someone who has no idea what Love has been up to for the past few years. And I have always firmly believed that if she were male, all of the behaviours for which she is derided would be held up as evidence of her Rock God status.

But on Sunday night, a Rock God is exactly what she was.

From the moment she walked on she commanded the stage. Stunning and vocally exceptional, she sang, chatted, gave out flowers to the crowd. Half the men of her generation who spent as much time as she did doing drugs and smoking would be lucky if their voices sounded half as good.  Whether she’s crooning Malibu heartbreakingly, snarling, "was she asking for it?!" her voice is astoundingly good.

My decision to go on Sunday was vindicated only in her saying, "You guys are lucky, this is my first night. Tomorrow I'm going to be all croaky and grumpy". She insisted on taking several big drags on her e-cigarette - "this is an electronic cigarette everyone. Apparently I have to tell you that. It's a drag" - before launching into the first number.

She didn't play a lot of guitar, as she explains in thisinterview, thanks to her time addicted to crack "I can still write a song, but [the guitar playing] sounds like shit, so I have to give it to Micko [Larkin, her currrent guitarist]".

But she did insist on being given one when she decided to play Olympia... "hey, do you guys know that song.. 'And I went to school..?'" she asked the crowd. "Yeah? Shall I play it? I wrote it in like 3 minutes but everyone seems to like it, they always ask for it..." And then, remembering her band, "oh shit yeah it's not on the set list. Oh just give me a fucking guitar. I wrote the fucking song"

And that enthusiasm and fun summed up the whole gig. When someone shouted that she should get her tits out she laughed them off with, "listen honey I'm 49. If you missed seeing them at the time then too bad for you, they're staying where they are tonight." When people shouted song requests she listened thoughtfully: "hmm, maybe later. I'll see how I feel. And how you feel."

Sticking to the set list, her and the band tore through old and new songs. There was a lot of classic Hole, songs from Celebrity Skin making up a lot of the list, a fair few songs from Live Through This, but mixed in with newer material too. The atmosphere was amazing, the whole place dancing along to Reasons To be Beautiful, Miss World, Skinny Little Bitch and Asking For It - there wasn't a duff moment and it looked like she was enjoying the energy, getting people cheering and moving, dancing hard to new song You Know My Name and then falling into a hushed silence during Northern Star - Love singing, spot-lit in blue, arms outstretched.

The encore finished with Doll Parts and people shouting for more. I made friends in the queue for the loos after it finished as we chatted excitedly about how good it had been, and as I headed out into the night I heard someone shout excitedly, "it's the 90s!"

My inner fangirl would agree - I felt like I'd jumped back a decade and a half, my inner teenager responsible for the massive grin on my face. But it all felt so fresh as well - I can't wait to hear more new material. Courtney Love is back and you should all sit up and pay attention, because damn, she's good.

Squeamish Louise