Bob Health Update...

Hello again everyone,

I'm Roberta, Bob's wife, just posting a quick update on the situation following Bob's collapse the other day. Well, the good news is he's out of hospital - in fact, he's sitting up in bed opposite me thumbing through an old Freeman's catalogue as I type! He's signing that he likes looking at the models wearing lingerie (at least, I *think* that's what that rapid shaking of his wrists signifies...) - so, you can tell he's on the mend!) We've also managed to get him back off the solids, which I'm sure you'll agree is a very positive sign.

There's still no real clue as to what triggered the episode in the first place, although it transpired that he had been watching the latest Kesha video on the laptop around the time and there were still traces of sequin-effect mascara on his lids when the paramedics finally managed to remove the Tesco's bag for life that he had over his head, attached with a belt around the neck, and taken the orange out of his mouth ...so your guess is as good as mine...



Obviously, it's still early days and he's prone to spending long parts of the day clawing helplessly at my rubber nurses' outfit - in fact, you can now barely see the painted on breast watch he's been playing with it so frantically. I'm also finding it very tiring playing nursemaid to him what with all the other work I've been having to do looking after his estate...erm, I mean, back catalogue. I did take the MacMillan nurses up on their very kind offer to come in and help with the caring duties, but that really didn't work out very well at all, I'm afraid, They'd just come in, change his bedpan, give him a quick once over with a flannel and then tell him he'd never had it so good...still, they're volunteers, so I suppose one shouldn't complain. Besides, at least it gave me a break. It's a small but vital respite to be able to remove one's 7 inch heeled slingbacks, put the old feet up with a nice hot mug of tea and watch someone else trying to rub Bob's semen off their skin-tight latex matron's outfit, I can tell you.

Oh, and Bob's been able to get a few words out. He's taken to yelling "turned out nice again!" at anyone who'll listen. Not that stimulating as conversations go, but it has at least stopped him from shouting out "OOOOHH MATRON!" at the top of his voice every time someone vaguely female wearing a uniform passes by. It's maybe a side-effect of having had his favourite George Formby CD playing on repeat. It seems to soothe him - when he's not trying to use his bedpan as a banjolele so he can pretend to be playing along, that is...

I'll be back over the next few days to keep you all posted. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for your well-wishes and support - it's made both of us very happy to know that so many of you are thinking of us at this difficult time.

xxx
'Berta

A Message From Roberta Swipe...

Hello everyone,

I'm Bob's wife Roberta - you probably kind of know me already from the picture of me Bob's been using as his avatar for the last few months. (And no - I *don't* get any royalties from him. How do you like *that*, eh??) Anyway, that's more than enough in the way of preliminaries.

Basically, I've borrowed Bob's password to come on here and pass onto you all the very sad news about my husband. Late last night, Bob was putting the finishing touches to the artwork for his next album, when I heard a strange thudding noise coming from his attic studio. At first, I thought nothing of it - I'm so used to the sound of his foundation mixer churning away at all hours that I kind of switch off when he's up there, to be honest. But then after about half an hour, I noticed that it seemed to have gone awfully quiet up there and, realising that he wasn't working with Brian Eno on this one, I thought I'd better keep an eye on him. I poked my head up only to find Bob slumped on the floor groaning pitifully. "You dirty old so-and-so!" I yelled, rounding on him, only to realise that he hadn't been masturbating after all, but had instead had, what turns out to have been, a minor stroke. (Which probably explains the velvet gloves he was wearing at the time...but I digress)

OK, cut a long story short, the bods in A&E say he'll be fine so long as he rests, which is a relief. But, obviously, this new regime will mean there'll be no blogging or musical activities for quite a while. Of course, it's not all good news - leastwise, not for little old me. I'll be playing nursemaid to Bob for quite some time into the forseeable - so it's handy I didn't bundle up that old rubber nurse's uniform with the rest of the jumble we sent to the Spastics Society a while back.

As to what triggered it all in the first place, it's hard to say. As far as I know, he hadn't been at the glue again - although there were a few half full airtex containers littering the studio which Bob claimed to use as some sort of percussion effect. Judging by the terrible racket coming out of the studio when he was playing, this is *entirely* plausible. Perhaps he'd fitted his corset too tightly again? You'll remember that time back in 1977 when he collapsed whilst putting the handclaps on at the end of 'The Secret Life of an Aran Jumper'? I know he'd had a lot on his mind of late, what with the new record and the bods from OffGenBend (the Transvestism regulator) were getting on at him about his falsies again - although, why on earth they wanted him to wear a pair when he already had a perfectly good set of breast implants is beyond me. Men, eh?

So, yes, it's all been a bit of a hoo-ha really. A shame for Bob as the new LP was sounding very interesting in places. It covered the usual themes - the ethics of stem cell research, identity loss, the tortured question of whether or not man has a soul - the usual crap, basically. Oh well, at least I'll get a little peace for a while...


xxx
'Berta

Johnny Vegas' Charity SpongeBowieBob...

I'm aware that readers will no doubt be losing their patience with appeals from do-gooder celebrities for yet more of their hard earned readies to help combat this or that and provide vital humanitarian relief to the other. I don't blame you - believe me, I get so many demands on my time from aid organisations and charities that I've had to employ a special secretary to deal with them. And, often, when you do decide you'd like to help out in some small way or lend your name to a particular cause that you feel has special importance to you, they just don't want to know. Take the other week. I sent a bundle of my old tights and leg-warmers to the Spastics Society, thinking that they might be interested in auctioning them off or what have you and being able to put the proceeds to good use in whatever way they saw fit. Anyroad up, a couple of weeks later, I get a bundle of said hosiery landing back on my doorstep with a sniffy letter saying:

Dear Mrs. Swipe. [sic]

Thank you for your interest in our work. Unfortunately we are not currently accepting jumble. Furthermore, the term 'spastic' is no longer considered appropriate. Kindly desist from sending us bundles of your used underwear or we will have no other recourse but formally to involve the police...

Charming! And especially galling as some of the aforementioned smalls were actually worn by the original members of the Vipers from Venus and therefore of particular historical interest. As anyone who's ever tried to persuade a bunch of burly stevedores from Kingston-upon-Hull to experiment with genderbending and to get in touch with their feminine side will know; it might be devilishly hard to get them into a pair of tights and ill-fitting knickerbockers, but it's a *ruddy* sight harder getting them out!

However, as you'll be aware, the situation in Haiti is so desperate that I felt I had no alternative but to offer to help in any way, no matter how small, that I could. So, when the NSPCC called and asked me if I'd let comedian Johnny Vegas make a SpongeBowie puppet based on me,




frankly, how could I refuse? Apparently SpongeBowie is the star of a children's animation called (predictably) SpongeBowie SquarePants, or similar. (No, I hadn't heard of it either.) As you'll see, the likeness is *really* uncanny! He's even got my dilated pupils spot on, hasn't he! And those teeth!

So, please, please, please visit the NSPCC site and bid as much as you can afford for this priceless one-off artefact and help the NSPCC help the children of the world. It really *is* the very least you can do...

Thank you for your time.


L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Letter to Hermione...

Around the time I first had my mind blown by the Velvets, I became besotted by a lovely red haired young lass called Hermione Featherstonehaugh Uckridge. Lovely lass; cracking dancer she was - and supple too. When not perfecting her contortionist act (blimey, I wouldn't have wanted to be that puff adder, I can tell you!) we'd spend hours canoodling in my little West End pad, Hermione occasionally feeding me from a tub of Luv ice cream. She spent hours trying to teach me how to hold the spoon between my toes in the same way she did, but I could never get the hang of it. I suppose, with hindsight, I probably should have taken my boots and tights off first. Anyway, we'd soon fallen head over heels in love and, it being the sixties, the obvious next step was for us to tie-dye our underwear, form a multi-media performance theatre company and take turns sating ourselves with one another's numerous sexual conquests.

Well, as you can probably imagine, all of this was a recipe for disaster. I became increasingly jealous of Hermione's prodigious sexual philandering whilst, to be fair, she probably had good cause to be as upset as I seemed to make her with my ongoing inability to be able to pronounce her name. Her-me-own? Her-my-owe-knee? I still have no idea. And I wouldn't even know where to *start* with her surname. It usually came out as an indistinct mumble - a bit like listening to side two of Never Let me Down, now I come to think of it - only a bit more coherent, obviously. By the bypass, around this time, I began my first brief flirtation with heavy industrial solvents. All the time, Hermione's infidelities were becoming almost metronomic and things eventually came to a head when we went to see a lunchtime King Crimson benefit for Muscular Dystrophy only to find out that we'd both got stuck on the same man - in my case, *quite* *literally*. So, with grinding inevitability, it was only a matter of time before we followed the late sixties relationship pattern: she packed up her tights (taking half of mine with her in the process - including a simply *divine* pair with little hearts running up the back of the leg where the seams would ordinarily be), taking me bass player with her to form a firm of specialist sign language global management consultants for the hard of hearing.

For a while, I was absolutely bereft - well, he was a *cracking* little bass player; put Herbie Flowers to shame. All the while, my solvent abuse was becoming more frequent. Pretty soon I'd reached rock bottom, spending much of 1969 glued to the bacofoil Major Tom cosmonaut costume Kenneth Pitt insisted I wear in the 'When I'm Five' promo. It was the beginning of the end for Pitt. The bacofoil wasn't doing too well either, as you can probably imagine.

Kenneth and I had been drifting apart for some time anyway; he was becoming increasingly alarmed by my absorption in the hippy counter-culture, whilst, for my part, I was beginning to wish he'd start spending a bit less time in the Weatherfield public library trying to halt the planning application made by his alcoholic son ahead of an ill-advised gastro-brewery business venture and start spending a *little* more time getting *me* bookings on obscure German television music programmes. So, salutory lessons all round: never mix Class 'A' adhesives with finely wrought aluminium. And birds? Well, steer clear of 'em - they'll only break your heart. And steal your pantyhose.

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Johnny Vegas' Charity SpongeBowieBob...

I'm aware that readers will no doubt be losing their patience with appeals from do-gooder celebrities for yet more of their hard earned readies to help combat this or that and provide vital humanitarian relief to the other. I don't blame you - believe me, I get so many demands on my time from aid organisations and charities that I've had to employ a special secretary to deal with them. And, often, when you do decide you'd like to help out in some small way or lend your name to a particular cause that you feel has special importance to you, they just don't want to know. Take the other week. I sent a bundle of my old tights and leg-warmers to the Spastics Society, thinking that they might be interested in auctioning them off or what have you and being able to put the proceeds to good use in whatever way they saw fit. Anyroad up, a couple of weeks later, I get a bundle of said hosiery landing back on my doorstep with a sniffy letter saying:

Dear Mrs. Swipe. [sic]

Thank you for your interest in our work. Unfortunately we are not currently accepting jumble. Furthermore, the term 'spastic' is no longer considered appropriate. Kindly desist from sending us bundles of your used underwear or we will have no other recourse but to instigate legal action...

Charming! And especially galling as some of the aforementioned smalls were actually worn by the original members of the Vipers from Venus and therefore of particular historical interest. As anyone who's ever tried to persuade a bunch of burly stevedores from Kingston-upon-Hull to experiment with genderbending and to get in touch with their feminine side will know; it might be devilishly hard to get them into a pair of tights and ill-fitting knickerbockers, but it's a *ruddy* sight harder getting them to take them off!

However, as you'll be aware, the situation in Haiti is so desperate that I felt I had no alternative but to offer to help in any way, no matter how small, that I could. So, when the NSPCC called and asked me if I'd let comedian Johnny Vegas make a SpongeBowie puppet based on me, frankly, how could I refuse? (Apparently SpongeBowie is the star of a children's animation called (predictably) SpongeBowie SquarePants, or similar. (No, I hadn't heard of it either.) As you'll see, the likeness is *really* uncanny! He's even got my dilated pupils spot on, hasn't he! And those teeth!

So, please, please, please visit the NSPCC site and bid as much as you can afford for this priceless one-off artefact and help the NSPCC help the children of the world. It really *is* the very least you can do...

Thank you for your time.


L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Time Will Crawl...

I'm just enjoying BBC4's excellent evening of Brian Eno documentaries when who should turn up on the doorstep at Swipe Towers but the very man himself. He's hotfooted it over from the Long Now Foundation where they've been having a spot of bother with their 10,000 year clock, apparently. Do I have any spare AAA batteries? Well, obviously, I know it's an emergency and the clock is a very sensitive piece of equipment - I mean, the last time Brian forgot to wind it over the weekend, he came back in on Monday to find it was running 300 years slow; could play havoc with your video recorder could that - but does it *have* to be done right now? I ask him. I mean, what's a few decades here and there in the grand scheme of things? Besides, it's just got to the good bit where you're pouring Paul Morley a beaker of tepid ribena and telling him how you got the sound of a badly damaged crow on "An Index of Metals".

Brian stroppily wafts his feather boa about a bit before sulkily saying he supposes not and then goes all withdrawn and begins to sketch a protoype for a new Humber bridge made out of milk bottle tops and half full sanatogen bottles in his notebook - I must say, it does look like an exciting project; especially if he can get it to make an ambient beeping noise every 30 minutes. That should go down well in Grimsby. Oh well, I suppose if it's that important to you I can always take a couple out of the large vibrating egg - although Olga will *kill* me if they're not back in by tomorrow evening. It's her turn to sit on it you see and they don't have them in the former Soviet Republics. Well, not ones that aren't radioactive that is.

Brian's face lights up as I hand it to him and he promises to work *extra* hard on the ambient link pieces he's been putting together for the new album. And with that, he's off into the night clutching a large vibrating egg before I've even had a chance to tell him how much I like his new palm leaf head-dress...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Letter to Hermione...

Bob & Hermione: that's Bob on the left. No, hang on....Bob's on the right....erm...

Around the time I first had my mind blown by the Velvets, I became besotted by a lovely red haired young lass called Hermione Featherstonehaugh Uckridge. Lovely lass; cracking dancer she was - and supple too. When not perfecting her contortionist act (blimey, I wouldn't have wanted to be that puff adder, I can tell you!) we'd spend hours canoodling in my little West End pad, Hermione occasionally feeding me from a tub of Luv ice cream. She spent hours trying to teach me how to hold the spoon between my toes in the same way she did, but I could never get the hang of it. I suppose, with hindsight, I probably should have taken my boots and tights off first. Anyway, we'd soon fallen head over heels in love and, it being the sixties, the obvious next step was for us to tie-dye our underwear, form a multi-media performance theatre company and take turns sating ourselves with one another's numerous sexual conquests.

Well, as you can probably imagine, all of this was a recipe for disaster. I became increasingly jealous of Hermione's prodigious sexual philandering whilst, to be fair, she probably had good cause to be as upset as I seemed to make her with my ongoing inability to be able to pronounce her name. Her-me-own? Her-my-owe-knee? I still have no idea. And I wouldn't even know where to *start* with her surname. It usually came out as an indistinct mumble - a bit like listening to side two of Never Let me Down, now I come to think of it - only a bit more coherent, obviously. By the bypass, around this time, I began my first brief flirtation with heavy industrial solvents. All the time, Hermione's infidelities were becoming almost metronomic and things eventually came to a head when we went to see a lunchtime King Crimson benefit for Muscular Dystrophy only to find out that we'd both got stuck on the same man - in my case, *quite* *literally*. So, with grinding inevitability, it was only a matter of time before we followed the late sixties relationship pattern: she packed up her tights (taking half of mine with her in the process - including a simply *divine* pair with little hearts running up the back of the leg where the seams would ordinarily be), taking me bass player with her to form a firm of specialist sign language global management consultants for the hard of hearing.



Her-my-oh-knee as she is today...

For a while, I was absolutely bereft - well, he was a *cracking* little bass player; put Herbie Flowers to shame. All the while, my solvent abuse was became more frequent. Pretty soon I'd reached rock bottom, spending much of 1969 glued to the bacofoil Major Tom cosmonaut costume Kenneth Pitt insisted I wear in the 'When I'm Five' promo. It was the beginning of the end for Pitt. The bacofoil wasn't doing too well either, as you can probably imagine.


Pitt: What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Kenneth and I had been drifting apart for some time anyway; he was becoming increasingly alarmed by my absorption in the hippy counter-culture, whilst, for my part, I was beginning to wish he'd start spending a bit less time in the Weatherfield public library trying to halt the planning application made by his alcoholic son ahead of an ill-advised gastro-brewery business venture and start spending a *little* more time getting *me* bookings on obscure German television music programmes. So, salutory lessons all round: never mix Class 'A' adhesives with finely wrought aluminium. And birds? Well, steer clear of 'em - they'll only break your heart. And steal your pantyhose.

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Velvet Goldmine...

1967: I'm happily vari-speeding my vocal on "The Laughing Gnome" - well, I was fine with the gnome voices, but the only way I could cope with the lower register was by deploying a little bit of studio trickery...own up, you'd never have guessed if I hadn't told you! - when Ken Pitt drops by with a piece of plastic that would change my life.

"Get your lugholes 'round this young Robert - it's a fabulous new disc by those up and coming hit paraders the Velvet Exploding Inevitable - featuring Zico. It's a sure fire smash, young fellow-me-lad, so get your best plagiarising hat on, throw the whimsical music hall routine and gor-blimey trousers on the scrap heap and get with it Daddio!!" (Don't worry, he wasn't really a mental - we all spoke like that in the Sixties.)

So, I slapped it straight on the dansette and was blown away by the dark realism of Lou's writing - not to mention his husky, teutonic vocals. "Just wait 'til he starts up on the harmonium!" added an enthusiastic Kenneth - and sure enough, I was soon propelled into an almost comatose state by a rambling, monotonal solo effort from the group's keyboardist - the former Brazilian model and actress, Zico:

Venus in Furs, shiny, shiny boots of leather - well, there were enough fashion tips in here to keep me going until 1976. And my exposure to the seedy side of New York Street life, white boys braving the journey up to Lexington to swap sexual favours for a whiff of burned banana skin (yep, they were that brazen about their drug references that they even stuck one on the cover - kept me high 'til Hunky Dory came out did that little beauty...) would have a lasting, if not always positive influence on my career. They say that only a hundred or so people bought the album when it came out, but most of those who did went on to form a band. So, really, it's a good job that most people did what I did and pinched a copy from a mate.

A year or so later, I finally got to meet my idols whilst on a brief solo tour to promote The Man Who Sold the World. I spent a good hour or so chatting to Lou after the show, only to discover that I'd actually been having a chinwag with the band's roadie. To compound matters further, I got the band's second guitarist Sterling Morrison confused with Primal Scream star Bobby Gilliespie, spending several hours berating him about the paucity of originality in his band's output - an error compounded somewhat by the fact that the Scream's first release was, in any case, still some three decades away. In a rare moment of clarity, I decided it best to give drummer Mo Tucker a *very* wide berth...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Who Can I be Now?...

A recurring theme in my work has been the mutability and transient nature of identity in the postmodern world. I took my lead in this from the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard - I came across him whilst trying to google a supplier for a natty little all-in-one number for the dance routines on the Dirigible Spider tour in 1987. Funny how fate works, isn't it? (Especially as the interweb hadn't even been invented then). Basically, the kernel of my approach to writing is based on the old R.D. Laing maxim: if you can't even remember who you are yourself, what chance has a jury got, my old son?

Consequently, even from the very early days I've found it as easy to swap personalities as I have changing underwear - in fact, given the rather complex nature of some of my smalls, it's actually been considerably simpler to completely transform my personality in some instances. The clown costume was no picnic either, I can tell you - especially those long flappy shoes. You try staying in tune during 'Up the Hill Backwards' in a pair of those whilst trying to pour a litre of water down your too-wide-at-the-waist-too-short-at-the-bottom comedy trousers and still keep a safe distance from the lion tamer. I had to take three years off before I could even *dream* of doing Let's Dance after that one.

Probably the most famous example of this chameleon-like tendency was the year I spent being Anthony Newley. I had a great time, I must say and I was quite disappointed when I was rumbled by Equity and had to give back all the royalty cheques I'd got for his appearance in the The Strange World of Gurney Slade. After that I tried being Marty Feldman for about six months but that was a bit of a wet weekend - couldn't get the eyes right.

Three months as Marianne Faithful was equally dispiriting. Started off okay - I was an immediate hit with the other girls in the convent and I was *swimming* in Capston non-filters for most of 1968 - plus I had all the floral print smocks a boy could wish for. But then I had a spot of bother with Mick Jagger; how on earth anyone could even *think* of storing their confectionary like that - nevermind *eating* it, I do not know. Put me off chocolate drops for life, it has. And then I hit upon the idea of a Jewish tailor from outer space coming down from the skies to save a doomed planet earth and Mongy Spatula and his Vapours from Jupiter were born. The rest, as they say, is history.

It's nice to have settled down and allowed my mercurial persona to stabilise a little as I've got older. I pretty much left all the characters behind during the Thin White Duke period when I found I'd overidentified with my first big acting role, Thomas Jerome K. Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth - well, it was either that or I'd been overdoing it on the old U-HU. Either way, I tend to just be plain old me nowadays - although, between you and me, I have been moonlighting as Ricky Gervais on and off for the last 5 years. I just wish someone would tell him that...

L.U.V. on ya,

er.....oh yes - Bob...

The Wedding...

I told you all about Olga, didn't I? Olga was the Russian bride I inadvertently bought over the internet for 30,000 roubles (with a transferable Sibneft share option buy-out clause redeemable up to and including the 4th quarter 2014/15 - yes, it was a most romantic courtship!) Well, she scrubbed up quite well after a fairly expensive detox/lousing treatment and, removing her carefully from the potato sack she'd arrived in (it was stamped DKNY from a delible ink potato print, mind - no tat for this girl!) and draping a few more becoming fragments about her sinewy frame, she looked - in a word - *adorable*! So,

Boys Keep Swinging...

Ah, memories eh?

This is an old clip of me performing on Saturday Night Live. Bit of a scratch band, as you can see - Klaus Nomi on b.v.s and a couple of other pooves he'd been trying to have his wicked way with in the gay club where we met the night before the show who turned up on spec wuth their instruments on the day of the show at the Chelsea hotel for a *very* speedy run through. Thank the Lord Carlos Alomar was there to hold the thing together is all I can say. Nomi couldn't even get the words right - "...when you're a girl..." I ask you...

Bobcast #60...

...Download/listen to it here...




L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

...I'll Drink All The Time...

As a rule, I try to avoid getting sucked into the prevailing media news agenda. An outsider artist if nothing else, I've always felt it important to come at things from a slightly different angle from my competitors - which would probably explain the Romi Haag business, I suppose... "The received wisdom is the enemy of the mime artiste", as my old friend and mentor Lindsay Kemp was always saying at the Beckenham Arts Lab where, as his apprentice, he had me crocheting op-art willy-warmers to sell outside the U.S Airforce bases he'd forlornly frequent in the hopes of meeting an amenable serviceman with "a highly developed flair for the visual and a strong interest in Kabuki Theatre". That's when he wasn't appearing as Nanky-Poo in the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund's all-year-long Panto at the Rotunda Club, Faversham.

It was Lindsay who introduced me to Grail mythology too - now, that's one path I should never have pursued. Liberating the mind from the constraints of Judaeo-Christian/bourgeoise morality is one thing - prancing about your Los Angeles apartment bashing a pair of coconut shells together and endlessly prattling on about the Knights Who Go "Ni!" with a refrigerator stacked with vials of your own wee is quite another. Thank God for Bing! It was Crosby who sorted me out - gave me a crucifix and shipped me back over to Europe to make weird synthesizer noises in his backing band. Stills, Nash and Young weren't too impressed, of course, but the important thing was that it got me back into seeing myself as an experimental artist who had more strings to his/her bow than a well-turned ankle and a delightfully androgynous set of cheekbones. If it hadn't been for Bing, I don't know where I'd be now - probably in Epping Forest, most likely, yelling "COME BACK! IT'S ONLY A SCRATCH!" and "I fart in your general direction" at passersby in a pathetic French accent wearing a set of chainmail. Either that or in Tin Machine...

But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes - the mainstream media. As a rule, it's to be avoided but, speaking as someone who's made his livelihood exploiting the miseries of teenage angst, I'm ever so concerned about the youth of today - especially the awful blight that is the phenomenon known in the UK as 'Binge Drink Britain'.

The sight of scantily-clad youngsters going over on their outrageously high heels, toppling drunk and sputum-flecked into the nation's gutters is enough to send shivers down the spine of even the most liberal-minded of parents - especially if your offspring's name is Nigel and you'd just been wondering what on earth had happened to the pile of Boots vouchers you'd earmarked to use on a new set of curling irons only to turn on the 9 o'clock news and see him mangling his ankles, his diamante slingbacks toppling under the weight of his booze-bloated body.

I don't want to sound old fashioned, but what's wrong with them?? I mean, no one's got anything against them having a good time. But what's with the heels?? Even a smidgeon of common sense would tell them that combining perdendicularly cantilevered footwear with a virtually intravenous rate of alcohol consumption is just asking for trouble. But no, over they go, like pole-axed flamingoes - one more notch on the five bar gate of an adminsitrative assisitant in a Tyneside Accident & Emergency Unit. Why can't they just be content with a quiet night in, flashing no colour in front of the Tattva box with a container of industrial strength adhesive and several grammes of Columbia's finest? It was good enough for my generation.

Of course, it doesn't really affect me - after all, I live in a fully deductable tax haven in Switzerland. But I do keep an eye on the old mother country via the miracle that is the BBC i-player - when I'm not watching Gavin & Stacey obviously. Or porn. So it was gratifying to see the viewers of Britain giving short shrift to emblematically spoilt, overgrown-teenage-pseudo-chav Lady Sovereign, who was voted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house last night. I've never had much time for the 'I'm Alright, Jack' attitude, but 'Sov' took the biscuit with her refusal to help with communal tasks around the house - cleaning up Vinnie Jones' splatter farts, putting rotting fruit in the bin and suchlike - and her stropping about the place in a perpetual sulk in an assortment of unflattering sweat shirts. Nice make up though - which reminds me, I have to get ready for a photo shoot and if I go out before my red and blue zig-zag has dried, I'll have more streaks than Ray Stevens...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Pretty Pink Rose...

Ziggy has arranged for pop singer Pink to pop over to help me out with some backing vocals on a new track I'm working on. It needs someone to cover the low notes I can't quite reach these days - plus, being rather on the strapping side, The Pinkster's a pretty useful young lad to have hanging around if you need a Marshall stack or two lugging about the studio - it's as much as I can do to pick up a pack of joss sticks with my lumbago. So I'm a bit confused when a well-put together blonde lady shows up at the door in a halter neck top and side-tied lacy knickerbockers and not much else. "Sorry love, the meter's already been read - last Tuesday. Now hop it before I give the managing director of Eon a stiff talking to. I know Sir Alan Sugar you know - and I was Hilton John's fag at Oxford - or was it Watford? Anyway, that's beside the point, just don't think that because I haven't had a hit since 1976 that I'm not in with the movers and the shakers. One step further and you'll be back on the Jobseekers' Allowance before you can say twenty per cent carbon emmissions reductions from your combi-boiler..."

I'm just about to ring Neighbourhood Watch when she hurriedly fishes a CD out of her tote bag featuring on its cover a scantily clad, pink-haired stevedore who bears an uncanny resemblance to the chappy stood in front of me and I can see that I've just teetered on the brink of making a ghastly mistake. Fortunately, I've just ordered in a box of assorted biscuits which, washed down with a couple of cups of my industrial strength Rosie Lee and a couple of snorts of Bostik - not to mention a strenuous apology from yours truly - help bring her round to seeing that it's all been an awful misunderstanding and pretty soon we're all in the party mood.

"I do like your knickerbockers, young sir," I tell Pink as she's polishing off the last of the pink wafers. "I don't suppose I could try them on could I? I've been looking for a new gimmick in the underwear department ever since the all-in-one-see-through-tube-dress got shrunk in the wash and those babies look like just the ticket..." Pink makes his apologies, would love to help and everything but ....not to put too fine a point on it, he's ...shall we see...*going* *commando*...

Fair play to the lad for being so candid - last thing I need with a headful of adhesives and Peek Freans biscuits is an eyeful of the old pink pepperami. I still have cold sweats in the night from the time I spent a year shacked up with Romi Haag in Berlin. Going to bed every night with a luscious-legged siren only to wake up with an unshaven brute with legs like emery boards can do terrible things to a man's psyche, I can tell you. Played havoc with me 20 deniers too...

I'll post the track up when Eno's finished beggaring about with it. Right-ho - must dash; these post-ironic gothic-mash-up trance anthems don't write themselves you know!

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Changesonebob...

Well, what else can you do when you're bereft of ideas, your career's stalled and you've been reduced to making up the numbers on Britain's most popular celebrities-learning-to-dance-at-peak-time-on-a-Saturday-night vehicle but....*cash* *in*!!!

Yep, it's greatest hits time again folks - but fear not, oh intrepid punter...this is no simple rehash/reheat/reissue/repackage/repackage slip them into different sleeves/please the press in Belgium Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, oh no - I should cocoa...ho ho ho ho ho ho (...see what I did there? I was pretending to laugh all the way to the bank....)

But seriously, with the extra exposure I'm going to be getting from being on Strictly, Ziggy and I felt it was the appropriate time to overhaul the old Swipe back catalogue, give the old ouevre a sonic makeover and generally make sure that the old songs we knew and loved are ship shape and Bristol fashion for the century ahead. We've got in the best engineers we could afford (...it's amazing what people will do for a set of out of date, forged Luncheon Vouchers in the current economic climate, isn't it?) and they've set about remastering every album so that it will sound even more fabulous in your i-Pod. As an added bonus for all my loyal fans who already have all the original albums, we've put together a splendid compilation of the best bits called Changesonebob, which will feature not only the best-loved songs from my career but a few rare and previously unreleased tracks from the 'lost' albums - Polskie Delicatesy and DaDa DiVa, as well as some weird and wonderful out-takes and a couple of brand new songs!

We'll be posting them up in twos and threes as we complete the remastering process for each album so keep an eye out for the posts here or make a regular visit to the SwipeCore site from whence you'll be able to download all the songs as well as the original albums - all for *absolutely* *free*!!

Right, must dash - they want me to give the once over to the newly restored 'Memory of a Free Subscription to Harper's Bizarre' and the meter's running....

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

The Elephant Man...

Obviously, with the kind of profile I have in my professional life - slutty, immoral, polymorphous sexual libertine and valueless psychopathic anti-social pervert etc (and believe me - I'm one of the *nice* guys in show business!) - it's easy to confuse the man/love object you see on your screen with the person underneath. I can't complain, really, I suppose. After all, it goes with the territory in this game - the light entertainment business being as it is fairly liberally sprinkled with the kind of people described above, as anyone who's ever had to sit through twenty minutes of Celebrity Squares will I'm sure agree. So I'll make no bones about the fact that, having cultivated the persona of a ruthless, physically improbable sex god/dess with the morals of a depraved waffen SS officer on shore leave in the Gambia, I have to live with the consequences.

But that doesn't mean it isn't hurtful when people assume from the outrageous opinions and controversial stances one is often obliged to put out into the public realm, that one necessarily holds those views or wants the world to be the way one reflects it as being in one's work. Oftentimes, the offence can be put down to a straightforward misunderstanding. For example, I was genuinely convinced, at the time, when I admitted to pederasty that I was confessing to no more than being a stickler for good grammar and somewhat picky about matters of acuracy and decorum in general; not some ruddy kiddy fiddler. I trust that since that dismal episode, I have more than made up for it with my abundant charitable efforts on behalf of abused children in South East Asia. The valuable work we do, helping them off the streets and into dimly lit factories where they can work 24 hour shifts sewing sequins onto leotards is not something I want to bring too much attention to, obviously. But to my mind, it seems simple - if the poor wretches *have* to be abused, then at least let it happen in a safe environment with a 5 minute water break every 11 hours and help keep the price of a glamorous all-in-one dance outfit within the reach of the humble Essex house wife into the bargain.

But for all those discreet and unhearlded efforts to do my bit for the greater good, I'm still seen in most quarters as some awful amalgam of Rasputin and Unity Mitford (with a bit of Larry Grayson on the side, most probably...) So it's no surprise that one can, on occasion feel like a terrible perversion of humanity; a horribly distorted version of a human being, the worried and haunted outsider condemned by public opinion to lurk around the darkest and seediest corners of society in ill fitting assortment of hosiery (and a bipperty-bopperty hat); a hideous freak; a terrible monster. But then, one thinks; "well, it could be worse, I suppose - I could be David Cameron..."

Given this, it was no surprise that when I was offered the opportunity to play the lead role in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man in 1980, I jumped at it. Anyone familiar with the tragic story of 19th century circus freak Joseph (John) Merrick who is not moved by his story has a cold and sterile heart if you ask me. There's a full account of Merrick's story here, for those who aren't familiar with him. I must say that, researching the role, I began to feel a quite shocking empathy with the guy. It was a very special moment, each night in the claustrophobic arena of the theatre, fending off genuine tears as I re-enacted the part where Merrick bit his mother's ink pen broke it in two and then turned blue. So, as a special treat, here's a youtube clip of me in action in what, I suppose, was probably my most successful acting role...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Let's Dance!!...

A quiet start to the day and then, in the midst of browsing through the new Squinty Fuckers catalogue while Olga ladles me out a bowl of her delicious cold, grey flannel soup (*hold* the parmesan....), a bombshell. A hurried telegram arrives from Ziggy Woodblum - you'll recall that he's my agent, solicitor and all round greaser of palms/scrubber of backs etc. Never one to compromise clarity when there's a charge attached, Zig's message is brief and to the point:

cll m - z

(I do wish Western Union would reverse their decision to charge double for vowels - Ziggy can be almost incephirable at the best of times, let alone without recourse to one fifth of the alphabet. Mind you, to be fair, with his vast array of speech impediments - it can take him several hours, not to mention emergency medics, to order a bowl of soup - a truncated text message can be the safer bet.)

I finally get through to him on his landline. "Bob? No, there's no one here of that name - why don't you leave us in peace? Why, why why? Nazis!" "Hang on, It's *me* Zig. *I'm* Bob..." "Oh, my lovely Boy! Glad tidings, my life! The goyim wants you for Strictly! Brucie....Brucie..."[sound of a pretend pound coin being rammed into a call box repeatedly accompanied by a high pitched moan followed by a dead telephone line...]

So, it's all very exciting - I check the Ceefax and, no word of a lie, I've been confirmed by the BBC as one of the contestants on this year's Strictly Come Dancing! Fantabulous news, isn't it! So this means not only do I get to lock horns (amongst other parts of the anatomy) with the delightful Camilla Giddyup...

...but I'll also get to meet Brucie! ("Shut that doo-er!!")

So, ready the super trouper, loose the dry ice, skip the light fandango! Now, where did I leave me red shoes....??

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Be My Wife...

I get a text from Ronnie Wood - he's had a new lease of life since Rod Stewart loaned him his Freedom Pass. It reads thusly:

oi oi swipey! Go 2 www.russianbride.com - u'll l.u.v. it!cheers - r

I can't make out a word of the text - it's all in Russian, obviously - but the visuals.....blimey! Remember Stalingrad? Believe me, you won't after a couple of hours browsing these Babooshkas!!

Anyway - long story short - I must have clicked the wrong button or something because, as well as a voucher for a free online subscription to Arsenal's home fixtures until the 2013/14 season, the other morning I found *this* on my doorstep:

Oh sure - she's *fun* alright! Cleaned me out of Stolichnaya and cheesey wotsits, mind - so another online shop is looming. They'll bankrupt me one day, Ocado. On the plus side, Olga won't let me lift a finger around the house; always cooking, cleaning and mopping the floor...when she's not "otherwise engaged", obviously. So, on the whole, I'm feeling rather like Michael Caine in Alfie; "...it makes a lovely bit of apple crumble...carm on gel - get in that kitchen and give me dumplings a prod...they're like bladdy tennis balls...nar, where's me crumpets gorn.." and all that.

So it was not a complete disappointment to discover from my legal advisor that the small print of the terms and conditions I must inadvertently have clicked in order to view more images like this... or something similar in Russian... means I won't be able to get an annulment until 2057/unless I'm prepared to appear in person before a nominated Belarussian magistrate to hand over 40,000 roubles in cash. And prepared to hand our first-born over to the authorities of the former-Soviet Republic. So it looks like I'm stuck with her. Fair play to the lass though - she is hung like a *stallion*...

Oh well, easy come...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Time...

"...he's waiting in the wings..."

Well, it's taken me a while, but I finally made it onto the cover of Time Magazine - about time they put someone else on too; I was getting sick to the back teeth of that stupid wazzock with the toothy grin! (Sorry Iggy, but you've had your turn!!)

The shoot was a breeze - always is with Annie Liebovitz - although she could lighten up a bit with the banter. Things took a decided turn for the worse when I asked her how she and Anne Bancroft were getting on flat hunting. Just trying to make conversation darling - what you get up to in the privacy of your own home is none of my concern. Just don't come running to me with your carpet burns. I'm going back to David Bailey for Vanity Fair, no word of a lie.

Right, I'll keep you posted when we hit the news stands. Should be out to coincide with my 60th birthday celebrations - middle of April...


Oi Oi!!

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Bobcast #59...

"...it's been a long time....oh mah boy!!"

Bob's back with a podcast to warm the cockles of your heart....or vice versa...

Listen/download here, as per...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Let it Snow...

Blimey - what peculiar weather we've been having!! Barmy, isn't it? I can't remember being surrounded by snow like this since I was the Thin White Duke - I had half of Columbia down my cod piece for most of 1975, you'll recall. Terrible times - although I don't think I've ever had so much luck with the ladies as I did during that period. Probably the cod-piece. It certainly couldn't have been the vials of urine I used to keep in the fridge to ward off evil spirits. Worked too - Jim Rosenthal has long stopped stalking me in any case. Too busy doing the half times on ITV4, no doubt. I still wear a clove of garlic round my neck to this day, just to be on the safe side. Bloody reeks from Gether to Malkuth, it does. But I digress...

Where was I? Oh yes - the snow. Flaming parky, ain't it? And getting from A-B has been an absolute ruddy nightmare, hasn't it? I can't remember the last time I wore flats - probably those little character shoes I used during the Philly Dogs Tour, also back in the mid-seventies (well, what would you wear if you had a cod-piece with Half of Columbia sagging from your crotch? Wear stack heels with that little lot and you're asking for a one-way ticket to a hernia, Gungadin.) Oh and there were those smart little brogues I used to wear with a lime green Thierry Mughler and an alpine hat on the Serious Misgivings tour. Poor old Stevie Ray - if his agent hadn't been such a greedy boots he'd never have been able to afford that helicopter and still be a live today. Cracking soloist he was - and a dab hand at three card brag, if memory serves. Lost several small Caribbean islands to him on the tour bus so I had to kick him out and get Earl Slick back in; great guitarist Earl, but shit for brains in a card school.

So, what with having been snowed in and everything, it's been pretty quiet here at Swipe Towers; but hopefully that'll soon change once my lumbago clears up and I can get back in the attic to fetch the trusty ukulele down. First things first though; got to catch up on Nurse Jackie on the i-Player. Terrific production values, don't you agree? And that new barnet of Edie Falco's is to die for, ain't it? Which reminds me; I must give Keith a call; see if he can defrost me marcel wave - it's been like walking around with a ruddy cormorant on me bonce since Christmas.

Oh well, onwards and upwards...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob