Robert Swipe: an appreciation...

by Mardin Antlers...

Regular readers will be familiar with my occasional stints deputising on these pages. I'm the go-to-guy around Swipe Towers when his nibs is too emotionally racked out to make it to the typewriter; a kind of bleeperised Boswell, perpetually left to dangle at the other end of the line, primed and loaded and ready to step up in the unlikely event that His Master's Voice croaks out. It was me, you'll recall, who filled his britches when Swipe's old man pegged out. I've stepped up to the plate on several other occasions when the jags got too much or if the guvnor had his head too far down the glue bag to achieve what passes for coherence around here; like the time the Gunners lost it big time in the European Cup or when Kaplinsky hitched it out of BBC Breakfast news.

Oh sure, we go *way* back, old Bob and me. I first became aware of the Swipe presence when we both had a sock each in the rough old bad old end of Queensway. We kept ourselves pretty much to our selves - you did back then in the 70s; you didn't know where people had been back then. Or rather, you had a *pretty* *good* idea where people had been back then - and it didn't wipe off quite as easily in those days, no matter what Elton John might tell you. Besides, I had my career to carve and Bob; well, you know all about Bob by now. It wasn't until a bit later that the suspicious nods and winks across a smoke-filled saloon bar gave way to a mutual liking and respect. Our first real connection came much, much later, in the 80s, around the time of the fatwah, when Bob and I were taking it in turns to hide Salman Rushdie. It was in those charged and feverish days that we first really got to know one another, at the hand over time when whichever of us had been concealing Salman in the specially enlarged, state-sponsored brown mackintosh we used for the purpose back in those early days of exile would carefully slip each arm out whilst the other simultaneously slid theirs in, all the while attempting to keep the large, balding, bearded man in glasses crouched between our legs out of public view; not easy to do in the middle of Notting Hill High Street, I can tell you...

Our friendship became formalised when Bob sang at my second wedding - at least, I *think* he was singing. This was about the time that Bob had sacrificed the patiently cultivated pop following he'd been building up since the late 1960s and was beginning to inhabit a far more provocative and outre space. Increasingly, the traditional certainties of the performer's identity were being dissolved; was that *singing*, or did he just have a poodle up his skirt? Was he even a man? And if he wasn't, how far would he let you go on a first date before you had to get the handcuffs out? Strange times.

But now we're both of an age where, no matter what we do, our work will always be overshadowed by that awesome initial promise we both showed. I believe that's what has sustained Bob and my friendship all these years. We both know how it feels to live in the shadow of our former greatness. And now, as we arrow towards that ever-dimishing singularity; that universe-consuming point, it behoves me to say one final thing; take care dear, gentle brother; take care...