At 11.59pm on Saturday 3 October 2009 I was standing outside a Masonic Temple on King Street, Newcastle, holding an extension cord. Inside, a raucous eighteen piece band played delirious 1920s themed funk to a packed crowd of dapper young gentlemen and extravagant flappers, the climactic finale to the National Young Writers Festival’s Great Gatsby Ball. As the music came to a stop, the crowd that began to spill out of the venue, came to a sudden stop on the pavement as they saw what confronted them.

A three tonne truck was backing into the narrow fifteen minute loading zone parking space outside the Mason’s. Surrounding the vehicle and swiftly guiding it into place was a squadron of immaculately dressed workers sporting fluorescent orange construction vests that had been tailored into slim-fitting waistcoats, salon-fresh hairdos and sunglasses. The crowd on the pavement stood transfixed as the truck came to a stop. Two council workers/rock-stars grasped the doors at the truck’s rear and, as an awed hush fell over the crowd, swung them open.

From the darkness of the truck’s interior, a pale ghostly shape lurched forward into the light. In the harsh glare of the floodlights, the shape resolved itself into a tall figure dressed in a loincloth and smeared white paint, a constellation of glowing LEDs bound to his skull with sticky-tape. Lifting a megaphone to its mouth, the figure barked: 'I’M SUSAN SARANDON! I WAS IN THELMA AND LOUISE…