ChangesOneBob...

I'm often asked what motivates my frequent changes of style and image. My career has been one long kaleidoscopic slideshow of altered personae and ever-more outrageously styled characters and poses. One minute, I'm the fresh-faced mod with the Gor Blimey trousers and button-down Italian shirt singing 'The Gospel According to the Laughing Bombardier 'til Tuesday', the next, Mongy Spatula and his Peripatetics from Neptune sashays past in a turqouise bin liner and bovver boots asking 'is there life in Balham??' The cocaine-addled hauteur and palour of The Thin Grey Elastoplast is replaced by the pink-suited dandified bouffant swagger of the Serious Moodswings Tour. It's a full time job remembering who I am sometimes!

So why do I do it?

Is this some deep-rooted psychosis, a bizarre manifestation of a displaced and fragmented personality? Or have I somehow been locked into the ever-changing cultural zeitgeist - mere flotsam to every whim and fancy of rock fad and fashion, doomed to roam the pop firmament perpetually; restless, driven and in a perpetual state of flux? Quite possibly - although I'd have to add that it comes in bloody handy for avoiding disgruntled punters and stalkers when they don't have a *clue* what you look like.

But this strategy is not without risks of its own. Obviously, looking the way I do, I attract a *lot* of attention when I'm out in public - not all of it welcome by any means. It's not nice, believe me, when you're minding your own business in Boots, preparing to pilfer a pair of 15 denier hold-ups from their three for two range to replace the ones you snagged on your plant grip paper clip maxi skirt, only to be surrounded by a curious mob of sexually indeterminate emo youths, demanding refunds and tugging on your hair to see whether or not it's real. What is it with some people, eh? They just can't seem to accept that there's a difference between fantasy and reality and that just because a man might choose to wear mercilessly gouged out pantyhose and a gauzy, floor-length, see-through tube dress professionally, off duty, he's just as likely to be a Featherstone Rovers season ticket holder and a dab hand at darts who enjoys a pint of mild and a packet of cheesey wotsits in the public bar of the Cow & Snuffers as much as the next man in laddered lingerie and lacy arm-length gloves.

It's just a good job I wasn't wearing the wig, I suppose...

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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