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Alexa Chung: 'I might give up being a vegetarian... No, that's the just the hangover talking'

Girl About Town

Wednesday 10 December 2008 01:00 GMT
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Apparently, MGMT left Tokyo the day we arrived, The Kills played a gig here last night, and the other day I saw a group of scruffy men accompanied by a gaggle of over-pretty/under-dressed girlfriends looking professionally bored in the lobby – this must mean the boys are in a band. Japan, it would seem, is the place to be.

And I'm due to leave tomorrow, which is incredibly irritating because after four days of filming for T4 on boats, in crowds and over zebra crossings, I've only just become accustomed to the time difference. I was hoping that by tomorrow I wouldn't be falling into my miso soup at dinner. That was my goal.

The sun rising over the city's skyline wasn't the thing that woke me this morning, as it has done over the past few days; my head was too heavy for that. Instead a combination of hunger and overheating left me no other option but to roll out of bed, release myself from the tangled dress and tights I had failed to take off the night before and survey the food options available. I couldn't face yet another egg sandwich from the nearby shop for breakfast, so instead I decided to hit up room service.

Understandably, given that my voice today is even more of a hollow husk than usual, they got my order wrong. Talking louder to the person at the other end of the line isn't going to change the fact that I just swallowed some kind of meat, which was slyly hiding behind an oversized lettuce leaf.

I hate that freaking leaf, that's the first time I've eaten meat in years. By now, though, I'm SO HUNGRY, I'm considering abandoning my stoical commitment to vegetarianism altogether. No, that's just a hangover talking.

I wish I could talk, but my throat is useless today. I appear to have done it irreparable damage during a particularly rowdy karaoke session last night. We celebrated our last day of filming with an embarrassment of air guitar.

I think I'll forever regret my appalling Axl Rose impression even more than my disgusting attempt at rapping Dr Dre's role in "Guilty Conscience". My throat clearly hasn't forgiven me yet; I wonder whether the crew have? This was the last in a string of nights spent partying as hard as we worked during the day, and it has culminated in all my internal organs aching and apparently the death of my voice, which can only be a good thing, given the inane chat that would be coming out of it right now.

The only missing factor in last night's shenanigans was Craig David. We interviewed the infamous lady lover earlier in the week, and found him to be incredibly funny and charming. Rick Edwards (below left, with me and Craig David), my co-presenter, ended up singing "What's Your Flava?" with him in yet another karaoke situation set up for the purposes of the interview.

It was extremely entertaining, but seeing the lyrics spelled out on a screen really did highlight how silly they are. Craig David (if you are going to be greedy enough to have two first names I will use them both) invited all the team to go out with him that night. Our hearts sank later that evening when he failed to call our hotel. It turned out OK though. Rather than a night on the tiles with CD, we instead found ourselves in a basement bar listening to Metallica with some Japanese dudes.

Before long, one of them had pulled down his pants to reveal he was wearing an elephant-face thong, and rather than scurrying away, the whole team then spent the rest of that night there, chanting like hooligans to Japanese metal songs we didn't know and rubbing shoulders with semi-naked locals. The fact we would have to get up in the morning to work kept slipping our minds. This is my only regret.

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