I can see your point now, Mysha. To be honest, I have been to several album launches, and held 6 of them myself, without a formal "launch moment", other than at the interval, when the MC says "now you can go at last to the CD table and buy the CD for yourselves" - but that has been always in cases where the CDs were not avaibale prior to the "launch". This is not the case here, indeed I understand from Dick's statement in another thread that all UK CD sets have now been allocated. Some will be picking them up on the night, but others have them already. And (if I understand right) nobody will be able to buy a set on the night, who has not ordered one before. So thet meaning of the "launch" would be lost. But that is no reason not to do something to mark the occasion. I am open to ideas and will have a head-scratch myself.

Regarding singing other people's songs - I am easy on that, as I said. I think it is a bit late in the day to make it a formal "sing one of yours and then one of someone else's" rule, even if everyone agreed to do it. I certainly would not impose such a rule on anyone without their agreement. But happy if some want to do this. In the end I suspect we will be limited by the number of participants. I expect some 16+ singers already, and no doubt more will become apparent before the night. That means 16 x 5 = 80 minutes straightaway (5 minutes per song is pretty much the minimum with a bit of patter and people coming on and off, in fact for my sets I allocate 6 minutes to be safe, and I am rarely out by much in my estimate - OK, you could argue that I talk a lot!). So I'll wait to see how many we actually have there on the night, and we'll take it from there, with a little bit of schedule-setting in advance (some people requested that they come on early etc etc).

Regarding London contacts: You can PM Micca, Moses, LTS (Liz the Squeak) and Leadfingers for a start...