Los Angeles. 1975. Curtains drawn at midday, Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' plays quietly on the stereo as the room fills with the heady aroma of burning incense. The walls and floors of my luxurious apartment are bedecked with daubs of paint. Frantically scrawled symbols and arcane numerals designed to ward off evil spirits cover every available surface. They're not working. Tables shake, floorboards moan and impishly fitful light flits from candles that sigh and moan with the desolate grief of a million trapped souls. I'm so scared, so lonely; so frazzled I can barely face the few shorts steps out into the kitchen to put another vial of urine in the fridge.
Demons hate wee. Or so I'm told - that's why they're always trying to steal it, you see. It contains the essence of your soul, or so I'd read, so obviously you don't want that falling into the hands of some grubby little gremlin. Peppers don't agree with them either, - you know, red, green, yellow; those sort of peppers - so I've been stuffing myself with them too. Mind you, I'm not sure they agree with me either. They play havoc with your guts. In fact, last week I could barely keep my first bag of Aruldite down, my stomach was heaving so miserably from the pure cellulose diet. Sometimes I think it's almost worth being one of Lucifer's eternal concubines if it would mean a night off the can and no more fizzing and wheezing echoing around the bathroom as my poor, knotted intestines manfully attempt to break down the lethal stew of roughage-heavy vegetables and industrial strength adhesives on which I've been living for the past 6 months. Dark days.
But then a very good friend of mine took me to one side and said, Bob, take a look at yourself in the mirror. No, face on, you're like Flat Stanley from the sides. Come on man, pull yourself together.' And that's what I did. Out with the wee and in with the signed collection of Hermann Goering photos and the well known Berlin Transvestite with the big bazoombkas. And no more raw peppers. No, you'll find they're much more nutritious stuffed with a few button mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and some finely chopped garlic. Just drizzle that little lot with some extra virgin olive oil and roast in the oven for 25 minutes on a medium heat.
I've probably forgotten more than I could ever remember about my LA nadir. I get the odd flashback now and then, of course, but it's all behind me now, really. Next came my dramatic renaissance in Berlin and the rest, as they say, is history. But they were, for a while, very bad times indeed. Still, could have been worse, I suppose. At least I never made a record with Lulu...
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Showing posts with label Swipe:the memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swipe:the memoir. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Sunday, 24 January 2010
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
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
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
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
Thursday, 21 January 2010
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...
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...
Monday, 18 January 2010
...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
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
Sunday, 17 January 2010
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
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
Saturday, 16 January 2010
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
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
Friday, 15 January 2010
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
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
Thursday, 28 August 2008
There's a strange singing noise...
...coming from the bathroom "...ow don the whiney windy mo, sweet [gurgle...gurgle...spit...hawk...splash] A-TWO -A-FREE-FOUR...EEEFCLIFFF - IZ ME IZ KAFF-FEEE OH CUM OME OH-HO-HO-HO-HO LEAPIN' OUDDA YOUR WINDAH...HO-HO-HO..." I wish Penny Smith wouldn't just pop in like that and use my shower without so much as a by your leave. Oh, don't get me wrong, she's a canny enough neighbour, I suppose - couldn't be more obliging if ever I run out of sugar or need an Ordnance Survey map of the Peak District to borrow for one of my infamous pub crawls disguised as walking weekends. She has the whole collection, apart from the Solent/Isle of Wight map, of course, which I rather embarrassingly mislaid when I borrowed it from her a couple of months ago. Christ only knows why I took that with me to the Cairngorms, but there you go - mental note to self "buy Penny a replacement OS map of the Solent/Isle of Wight...and get in some more Imperial Leather"...
Yes, you couldn't wish for a better next door neighbour really. She even volunteered to give me hand relief the other day. Nice wrist action she has too - although I do wish she'd take the marigolds off in future. The chaffing has not been pleasant. Still, I've had worse from Garraway. She really wants to get those horny palms looked at instead of whipping her thrupennies out for any old stray livestock in need of a quick suckle. Still, I suppose it all works out in the end - I did proof read Penny's latest book for her after all. My goodness, you'd think that even for a job like being a presenter on GMTV there would be some need for basic literacy, wouldn't you? But no, there's scant evidence of any in Penny's - and I hesitate to use the word to describe a rambling bundle of unintelligable squiggles scribbled on the backs of envelopes and held in some semblance of order by three overstretched elastic bands - manuscript.
"wot you jus done was owt off this werld, Crispian", sied ower heroin as he messaged her pendyless brests wiv his hugh, comanding hans." "Urgh, urgh, urgh" replide Crispain as he workd away at the palzeed mass beneaf him liek a frenzeed babbon wiv a personige the siez of Llandudno"....
It's a history of women in Television, apparently. My goodness, I'd have expected a little better from Valerie Singleton, wouldn't you?
Right, I'm off to Fine Fare to stock up on soap-on-a-rope before she starts murdering "The Man With the Child in his Eyes"...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Yes, you couldn't wish for a better next door neighbour really. She even volunteered to give me hand relief the other day. Nice wrist action she has too - although I do wish she'd take the marigolds off in future. The chaffing has not been pleasant. Still, I've had worse from Garraway. She really wants to get those horny palms looked at instead of whipping her thrupennies out for any old stray livestock in need of a quick suckle. Still, I suppose it all works out in the end - I did proof read Penny's latest book for her after all. My goodness, you'd think that even for a job like being a presenter on GMTV there would be some need for basic literacy, wouldn't you? But no, there's scant evidence of any in Penny's - and I hesitate to use the word to describe a rambling bundle of unintelligable squiggles scribbled on the backs of envelopes and held in some semblance of order by three overstretched elastic bands - manuscript.
"wot you jus done was owt off this werld, Crispian", sied ower heroin as he messaged her pendyless brests wiv his hugh, comanding hans." "Urgh, urgh, urgh" replide Crispain as he workd away at the palzeed mass beneaf him liek a frenzeed babbon wiv a personige the siez of Llandudno"....
It's a history of women in Television, apparently. My goodness, I'd have expected a little better from Valerie Singleton, wouldn't you?
Right, I'm off to Fine Fare to stock up on soap-on-a-rope before she starts murdering "The Man With the Child in his Eyes"...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Thursday, 10 July 2008
Ian Curtis Tribute Album...
It's obviously a great honour to be invited to contribute a track to this wonderful project. Deep, disturbing lyrics, a voice that could chill your spine to permafrost and a highly indiosyncratic dance style akin to someone suffering an unexpected bout of severe cerebral palsy - but despite having seen my stage act, they're still quite keen on me doing a number. I'm ashamed to say that until they approached me to contribute a track to the tribute album I wasn't aware that Ian had actually died, so it was a sort of double whammy, shockwise. And what a tragic loss it is - the Vicar of Dibley will certainly never be the same again, will it? Still - onwards and upwards; and on the bright side, at least we'll be spared all that hand wringing and pompous tin rattling every year on Comic Relief day...
Still, mustn't speak ill of the dead - although you can say what you like about Thatcher while she's still alive, the rancorous, Alzheimered old cunt. All the human feeling of a Hellman's mayonaise jar filled with Bob Holness' dandruff that one. Well, I say alive; she's apparently so brain addled that she's telling anyone who'll listen that she's a Parker-Knoll reclining chair called Bernard. I've never forgiven her for stealing our school milk - fuck knows how much the relatives of the crew of the Belgrano must hate the decrepit old shitbag.
But I digress. Yes, it promises to be a star-studded line up. Personally, I can't wait to hear Jimmy Carr's version of 'She's Lost Control Again' - he's doing it without the steel drum solo, apparently; *very* bold Jim! Isla St Clair's done a terribly moving rendition of 'Love Will Tear us Apart' - Larry Grayson's tap dance solo is a real show stopper by all accounts; oooh! get her! I'll be doing the one he did for the World Cup obviously with Stray Photon contributing a beezer update on the John Barnes rap. Rufus Sewell will be playing the part of Keith Allen in the video - who better to stand around being stubbly and famous whilst wearing the three lions and miming along to the national anthem as if he knows the words?
I'll let you know when it's out...
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
The Kids Are Alright...
As I've probably mentioned in these pages before, there's more to being a Glam Icon than having a knack for a tune you can tap your toe to and mincing around looking utterly fabulous in a razored Ben Sherman shirt and a pair of 70 denier body shapers. Picture, if you will, a swan. At first glance, it glides effortless and serene over the water, a vision of poise and grace; the aloof and elegant prima donna of the riverbank (unless of course there's a Canada goose within a 1/4 mile radius of one of its cygnets in which case they can turn bloody nasty and would peck your goolies off as soon as look at you...) But take a closer look beneath the surface and you'll see those little legs paddling away like the clappers, as frantic and deranged as a dwarf on a 10 foot high unicycle being hunted down by a division of Panzer tanks. And so it is with glamness. It doesn't just magic there - it takes a whole lot of grit, detetrmination, hard work and a frig of a lot of foundation and Kohl pencils.
But despite the huge amount of dedication, effort and time involved in presenting this gorgeous vision of voluptuous loveliness to the world each morning, I pride myself on always making time wherever possible to help those less fortunate than myself - and I don't just mean my recent collaboration with Frank Ferdinand either! But seriously, I like to put a little back into the society that made me such a wonderful, scintilating, sumptuously delectable creature, so it was with huge pride and no little eagerness that I agreed to take part in a fantastic new initiative aimed at helping some of the country's most underprivileged kids.
Obviously, it's a pretty grim time to be growing up for many youngsters. Urban decay blights our inner cities and we've left a hideous legacy of rundown, often non-existent social services and ameneties in the worse off areas of the UK. This means that many kids have fewer and fewer opportunities to escape the confines of their bedrooms, leave their wi-fi enabled laptops and expensive PS2 video game consoles behind and escape into the great outdoors where they can spend a few precious hours vandalising the local handicapped kid and texting their mates stood three or four feet away on their all-singing-all dancing WAP mobile phone/MP3/video players. It really is grim out there, especially as they'll likely as not be moved on by the police for being binge drunk and off their mashes on bath crystals cut with Omo before they've had a chance to knife one another into intensive care.
So, when Sir Ian Blair asked me to front an extensive new advertising campaign to warn kids of the perils of attempting to cross the road without first looking left, then right, then left again, I hardly need to tell you that I jumped at the chance - at least I did once I'd established that there'd be a fairly hefty appearance fee and subsequent merchandise tie-in option, obviously.
It's a fairly light shooting schedule, thankfully - well, I've just come out of a gruelling period of rehab and solvent de-tox that's involved me having several litres of fresh blood transfused at high altitude and a punishing daily thinner and turpentine colonic regime, so the nerves are a little delicate to say the least. The costume leaves a lot to be desired - flourescent lime green does somewhat tend to emphasise my facial cellulite and really doesn't go with my eyes at all. But it's free publicity *and* I get to keep the silver-sprayed biker gloves and spangly cummerband! There are hardly any lines to learn, so if you'll excuse me I'll just be off to perfect the inflection of the campaign's catchy three word slogan:
"Ready, Steady, Cook...."
Erm, no that's not it...
"Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am...?"
Hang on, the script's here somewhere...
"Stand and deliver??"
"Knees up Mother Brown???"
....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Thursday, 5 June 2008
The 70s...
Younger readers will, I trust, indulge another mincing sashay down Memory Lane, but my thoughts are ineluctably tugged back to those halcyon days when life was young and everything and anything seemed possible. It was a simpler time back then: men were men, women were an amorphous, sexually ambivalent ball of gender confusion and you wouldn't have put *anything* past Jeremy Thorpe.
It was into that world of three-day weeks, 7 pint tins of Watney's red barrel, burning bras and freshly minted decimal currency that I emerged onto the previously dank and denim-clad pop scene; a luminous lepidoptera, a bright beacon of glamour to light our way through the bleak, power-cut stalked evenings and inspiring the youth of the nation to 1001 new uses for a roll of baco foil, some copydex and a set of crocheted place mats.
Of course, the technology was so different in those days. We had none of your wi-fi enabled blue teethed solar powered wiki-waki-woo-woo nano-nanu-technology in those days! The closest we got to Googling something was watching Googie Withers in 'Within these Walls' - and even she was liable to shut down abruptly at 5.30 if it was a weekend. That and the mechanical bird on 'Going for a song'with Arthur Negro, was about as high tech as it got in those days. Nowadays you couldn't even *say* Arthur Negro on the telly, let alone watch him - so I suppose the changes haven't all been for the worse...although that mechanical bird must be getting on a bit. By crackee she was a goer...The height of technology back then was a pen with a digital watch built into it. Oh, we can laugh about it now, but don't forget that the Soviets got within an ace of landing just such a craft on the moon. They'd have done it too, those Ruskies, if only they'd been able to develop a cosmonaut two millimetres high with a massive tolerance to Quink navy blue ink...
Elsewhere we had OPEC, BOAC, BEA, Spacelab, Stagflation - you name it, we'd find an acronym for it or conflate two completely separate words into a new one. Britain's long awaited entry into the Common Market got us all excited. Enoch Powell stopped moaning about immigrants from the Commonwealth for long enough to start having a go at our continental neighbours across the English Channel. But sadly his warnings about 'Rivers of Ouzo' went unheeded, even though the portents were there for all to see. Take the commemorative football match at Wembley between England and a specially selected European All-Stars XI that was arranged to mark the occasion and which was marred by ill-feeling, mistrust and cynical gamesmanship; although, to be fair, team spirit wasn't much better in the European All-Stars XI changing room either... In a bad tempered and spiteful game, three players were sent off before a Norwegian trawlerman escasped his marker to nod home at the far post. Despite his having clearly been several miles inside British territorial waters, the goal was allowed to stand, sparking an unecessary bout of net-snipping that culminated in an ugly brawl in the centre circle over fishing quotas.
But it wasn't all Fray Bentos steak & kidney pies, Stork SB and 'Runaround' with Mike Reid, oh no... We had Steve Austen in The Six Million Dollar Man too - although with all that stagflation, you'd probably have had to shell out nearer £400,000 for him by the end of the first series, only to find his left arm only worked every other day and he could only do the bibbibibibibib noise whilst running in slow motion between the hours of daylight on Saturday and Sunday. John Arlott's voice booming out of the transistor radio could still reassure that God was an Englishman and all was well with the world, and there, just visible above the sun-dappled rooftops was the sleek silhouette of the prototype Concorde on a test flight, nosing through the blue into an impossibly exciting future where anything - soda streams, Breville's toasted sandwich makers, etch-a-sketch, you name it - seemed entirely possible.
Of course, it couldn't last. The signs were there, if only we'd been able to tear ourselves away from sticking in our Green Shield Stamps for long enough to see. Thatcher the Milk Snatcher was lurking in the shadows. Not content with depriving the nation's poor and needy young folk of their unhygienically sun-addled miniature bottles of state subsidised silver top milk, she'd soon be back to close down all the mines, sink the Belgrano and sell off the family siver. Then, in one final act of betrayal, she brought down the curtain on that glorious, sunny era once and for all. A man can stand for many things, but it was a dark and treacherous day when they changed the name of the Post Office Tower....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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It was into that world of three-day weeks, 7 pint tins of Watney's red barrel, burning bras and freshly minted decimal currency that I emerged onto the previously dank and denim-clad pop scene; a luminous lepidoptera, a bright beacon of glamour to light our way through the bleak, power-cut stalked evenings and inspiring the youth of the nation to 1001 new uses for a roll of baco foil, some copydex and a set of crocheted place mats.
Of course, the technology was so different in those days. We had none of your wi-fi enabled blue teethed solar powered wiki-waki-woo-woo nano-nanu-technology in those days! The closest we got to Googling something was watching Googie Withers in 'Within these Walls' - and even she was liable to shut down abruptly at 5.30 if it was a weekend. That and the mechanical bird on 'Going for a song'with Arthur Negro, was about as high tech as it got in those days. Nowadays you couldn't even *say* Arthur Negro on the telly, let alone watch him - so I suppose the changes haven't all been for the worse...although that mechanical bird must be getting on a bit. By crackee she was a goer...The height of technology back then was a pen with a digital watch built into it. Oh, we can laugh about it now, but don't forget that the Soviets got within an ace of landing just such a craft on the moon. They'd have done it too, those Ruskies, if only they'd been able to develop a cosmonaut two millimetres high with a massive tolerance to Quink navy blue ink...
Elsewhere we had OPEC, BOAC, BEA, Spacelab, Stagflation - you name it, we'd find an acronym for it or conflate two completely separate words into a new one. Britain's long awaited entry into the Common Market got us all excited. Enoch Powell stopped moaning about immigrants from the Commonwealth for long enough to start having a go at our continental neighbours across the English Channel. But sadly his warnings about 'Rivers of Ouzo' went unheeded, even though the portents were there for all to see. Take the commemorative football match at Wembley between England and a specially selected European All-Stars XI that was arranged to mark the occasion and which was marred by ill-feeling, mistrust and cynical gamesmanship; although, to be fair, team spirit wasn't much better in the European All-Stars XI changing room either... In a bad tempered and spiteful game, three players were sent off before a Norwegian trawlerman escasped his marker to nod home at the far post. Despite his having clearly been several miles inside British territorial waters, the goal was allowed to stand, sparking an unecessary bout of net-snipping that culminated in an ugly brawl in the centre circle over fishing quotas.
But it wasn't all Fray Bentos steak & kidney pies, Stork SB and 'Runaround' with Mike Reid, oh no... We had Steve Austen in The Six Million Dollar Man too - although with all that stagflation, you'd probably have had to shell out nearer £400,000 for him by the end of the first series, only to find his left arm only worked every other day and he could only do the bibbibibibibib noise whilst running in slow motion between the hours of daylight on Saturday and Sunday. John Arlott's voice booming out of the transistor radio could still reassure that God was an Englishman and all was well with the world, and there, just visible above the sun-dappled rooftops was the sleek silhouette of the prototype Concorde on a test flight, nosing through the blue into an impossibly exciting future where anything - soda streams, Breville's toasted sandwich makers, etch-a-sketch, you name it - seemed entirely possible.
Of course, it couldn't last. The signs were there, if only we'd been able to tear ourselves away from sticking in our Green Shield Stamps for long enough to see. Thatcher the Milk Snatcher was lurking in the shadows. Not content with depriving the nation's poor and needy young folk of their unhygienically sun-addled miniature bottles of state subsidised silver top milk, she'd soon be back to close down all the mines, sink the Belgrano and sell off the family siver. Then, in one final act of betrayal, she brought down the curtain on that glorious, sunny era once and for all. A man can stand for many things, but it was a dark and treacherous day when they changed the name of the Post Office Tower....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Friday, 30 May 2008
Porridge...
"...Robert Algernon Runciple Dayglo Wetherspoon Wilson Keppel and Betty Swipe....you are an habitual solvent and rodent abuser who treats arrest as an occupational hazard and imprisonment in the same, cazual manner. I therefore sentence you to the maximum term allowed for these crimes...."
And with that, they led me away to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure, a custodial sentence, an open door and 3 slumbering Group 4 security officers now standing bewteen me and my former gay libertine existence. So humiliating - and, ultimately, so avoidable! If the British National Formulary would only start adding entries for home improvement adhesives, I'd have known that possession of Evostick beyond that adjudged to be for reasonable personal usage was subject to suspicion of drug trafficing! Such a waste too - those three haulage trucks full would have seen me through until at least August Bank Holiday....
Still, things are never as black as they're painted. Prison's changed beyond recognition since I was last inside (...transporting a minor across a State line without a license while dressed in a Pierrot costume, sky high on grouting compound, 1976...) There's a PC in every cell, for one thing - which is how I'm able to post this - not to mention the masseuse (....oooh, such cold hands Brenda....can't you do something to warm them up. Oh, sorry *Brendan*, I thought you had big mitts for a lassie...I'll stick with the Ayurvedic throat rub, thanks all the same...) There's even a pro-celebrity greased wrestling tournament arranged for next month - *can't* *wait* to see Anthony Worral Thompson try to wriggle out of one of Brian Blessed's over arm head locks...
They're a good bunch in here too. I'm sharing a cell with a chap called Lennie Godber; a gentle, lively-minded, adenoidal Brummie lad who's in for breaking and entry with aggravated assault - I've no idea how he ended up in prison, though. Probably drugs. That's what most of us are here for. That probably explains why there are so many floating around here. I mean, I've actually been better suppied in here than I was on the outside. A good job too as I was unsuccessful in my attempts to smuggle in my own secret stash, secreted in my shoes. I don't know how these guys manage to get their deals past the stringent security checks. Mind you, most of them probably aren't wearing open-toed slingbacks like me...
And the other good news is that Lord Longford has taken up the case on my behalf - or was it Long Lordford? I always get those two confused. Anyway, he says that he'll fight all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights in the Hague, if need be. Besides, even if my appeal fails, he seems to think that, with good behaviour, I could be out by 2032 - who knows? With bad behaviour, it might be even sooner....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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And with that, they led me away to be detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure, a custodial sentence, an open door and 3 slumbering Group 4 security officers now standing bewteen me and my former gay libertine existence. So humiliating - and, ultimately, so avoidable! If the British National Formulary would only start adding entries for home improvement adhesives, I'd have known that possession of Evostick beyond that adjudged to be for reasonable personal usage was subject to suspicion of drug trafficing! Such a waste too - those three haulage trucks full would have seen me through until at least August Bank Holiday....
Still, things are never as black as they're painted. Prison's changed beyond recognition since I was last inside (...transporting a minor across a State line without a license while dressed in a Pierrot costume, sky high on grouting compound, 1976...) There's a PC in every cell, for one thing - which is how I'm able to post this - not to mention the masseuse (....oooh, such cold hands Brenda....can't you do something to warm them up. Oh, sorry *Brendan*, I thought you had big mitts for a lassie...I'll stick with the Ayurvedic throat rub, thanks all the same...) There's even a pro-celebrity greased wrestling tournament arranged for next month - *can't* *wait* to see Anthony Worral Thompson try to wriggle out of one of Brian Blessed's over arm head locks...
They're a good bunch in here too. I'm sharing a cell with a chap called Lennie Godber; a gentle, lively-minded, adenoidal Brummie lad who's in for breaking and entry with aggravated assault - I've no idea how he ended up in prison, though. Probably drugs. That's what most of us are here for. That probably explains why there are so many floating around here. I mean, I've actually been better suppied in here than I was on the outside. A good job too as I was unsuccessful in my attempts to smuggle in my own secret stash, secreted in my shoes. I don't know how these guys manage to get their deals past the stringent security checks. Mind you, most of them probably aren't wearing open-toed slingbacks like me...
And the other good news is that Lord Longford has taken up the case on my behalf - or was it Long Lordford? I always get those two confused. Anyway, he says that he'll fight all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights in the Hague, if need be. Besides, even if my appeal fails, he seems to think that, with good behaviour, I could be out by 2032 - who knows? With bad behaviour, it might be even sooner....
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Eurovision...
Like many of you, I tuned in on Saturday night to cheer on Andy Somthing-or-other singing Britain's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest (or, Le Contest Eurovisionelle de Song, as it's more widely known on the continent). Like you, I was flabberghasted - not to mention dumbfounded - as the results came in and Arnie's toe-tapping ode to the harmless pleasures of stoat doctoring was voted joint last by the hairbrained listeners of Europe - although, in fairness, I have to admit that the singing clothespegs from Lithuania who went on to finish first were quite extraordinary. They looked almost inhuman, didn't they? OK, so Ally Whatsisface isn't Sandie Shaw - although after a dozen or so Pernod amd Lemsips, he did start to bear an un-nerving resemblance to a bald Petula Clark as photographed by Man Ray - but, Europe: *come* on*!!
Mind you, I wasn't in favour of us going in in the first place, if truth be told. "You mark my words", I told Marc Bolan in 1974, "there'll be rivers of brie before this is all over. It's one thing having a nice holiday in Toulouse Lautrec once or twice a year, washed down by a cheeky claret from Bouganvillea and jetting back from the Costa del Bravo with a straw donkey stuffed with duty free mescalin, but you wait til they all start pouring over here and opening Ciabatta stalls and having a family of twenty on the rates. Now, can I borrow some of your glitter, mine fell down the sofa...?"
And so it has proved. But it's one thing having the shape of your avocados decided for you by an unelected (and probably unhygienic) committee of so-called experts in Ghent and quite another to have your nation's minor pop non entities subjected to pan-continental ridicule in a rigged pageant of ill-conceived Eurocock. When the successor to our great European musical tradition (and Brotherhood of Man) finishes joint last behind a 9-armed inflatable tent with a sythesizer whistling old yiddish folk songs backwards (...and Azerbaijan's was one of the *better* entries...) that surely means the start of the slippery slope. I mean, what next? Jackbooted stormtroopers gunning down innocent Brazilian electricians on the streets, in cold blood?? It'll happen, just see if it doesn't...
But then, the whole ruddy country's going to the dogs if you ask me. Time was when a chap could sashay over the post-industrial wasteland as happy as Larry in a stunning, floor length, brocaded 'man's dress' and calf skin knee highs and, whilst they wouldn't be exactly waving flags at you, the worst you could expect by way of abuse was a few 'ooooh - you are awful'-s and a 'give us a twirl, Anthea'. Nowadays, assuming you can summon up the courage to take the short cut through the sink estate to the Asian corner shop with the extensive collection of Iranian porno betamaxes (I can't recommend Imamuelle III highly enough, by the way...) it's a ruddy nightmare.
First you run the gauntlet of the kids - bonced out of their trees on High Strength Lighter Fluid and badly cut talcum - and they immediately lay into you in their curious new-fangled urban patois - "Yo! Bitch 'ho' mother fucker" this and "Lardy batty raas minger muff lady" that. Then the bloody parents start up - "Oi, you! Nonce features - fuck off back to your barrister boyfriend, you paediatric arse burgler and don't you dare lay a hand on my shitting kids, or I'll have your knob whittled down to a pinprick with a cheese grinder, alright??!!"
Honestly, you've never heard such language from a twelve year old...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Mind you, I wasn't in favour of us going in in the first place, if truth be told. "You mark my words", I told Marc Bolan in 1974, "there'll be rivers of brie before this is all over. It's one thing having a nice holiday in Toulouse Lautrec once or twice a year, washed down by a cheeky claret from Bouganvillea and jetting back from the Costa del Bravo with a straw donkey stuffed with duty free mescalin, but you wait til they all start pouring over here and opening Ciabatta stalls and having a family of twenty on the rates. Now, can I borrow some of your glitter, mine fell down the sofa...?"
And so it has proved. But it's one thing having the shape of your avocados decided for you by an unelected (and probably unhygienic) committee of so-called experts in Ghent and quite another to have your nation's minor pop non entities subjected to pan-continental ridicule in a rigged pageant of ill-conceived Eurocock. When the successor to our great European musical tradition (and Brotherhood of Man) finishes joint last behind a 9-armed inflatable tent with a sythesizer whistling old yiddish folk songs backwards (...and Azerbaijan's was one of the *better* entries...) that surely means the start of the slippery slope. I mean, what next? Jackbooted stormtroopers gunning down innocent Brazilian electricians on the streets, in cold blood?? It'll happen, just see if it doesn't...
But then, the whole ruddy country's going to the dogs if you ask me. Time was when a chap could sashay over the post-industrial wasteland as happy as Larry in a stunning, floor length, brocaded 'man's dress' and calf skin knee highs and, whilst they wouldn't be exactly waving flags at you, the worst you could expect by way of abuse was a few 'ooooh - you are awful'-s and a 'give us a twirl, Anthea'. Nowadays, assuming you can summon up the courage to take the short cut through the sink estate to the Asian corner shop with the extensive collection of Iranian porno betamaxes (I can't recommend Imamuelle III highly enough, by the way...) it's a ruddy nightmare.
First you run the gauntlet of the kids - bonced out of their trees on High Strength Lighter Fluid and badly cut talcum - and they immediately lay into you in their curious new-fangled urban patois - "Yo! Bitch 'ho' mother fucker" this and "Lardy batty raas minger muff lady" that. Then the bloody parents start up - "Oi, you! Nonce features - fuck off back to your barrister boyfriend, you paediatric arse burgler and don't you dare lay a hand on my shitting kids, or I'll have your knob whittled down to a pinprick with a cheese grinder, alright??!!"
Honestly, you've never heard such language from a twelve year old...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Saturday, 24 May 2008
Eno...
I'm just finishing a monitor mix of one of the tracks from the next album when there's a knock at the door. It's Eno. My God, it's hard to believe he's sixty, isn't it? I mean, he looked about 50 in 1975, so Christ knows how ancient he'll look if he ever reaches seventy! I offer silent thanks to the Gods of Glam for allowing time to be as kind as it has with me. Why only the other day, a young Emo lass stopped me in the street and asked me how old I was. Amazing what a bit of Revitalise and a face covering, Sigue Sigue Sputnik style face mask can do, isn't it? They take years off a person. She might have tried to cover it up by saying "well, that's far too old to be mincing around in a pair of badly laddered panthyose and a sequined bodysuit you addled old poof bucket", but I know by now when I've made the old lady sex wee start to course around - putty in my hand she was - or would have been if I hadn't run slap bang into a lamppost as I was chasing after her. Bloody face masks...
'Come on in then, you wily old reprobate!' I tell Brian, only there's a bit of a comedy of errors as we negotiate the rather tight hallway, and I get one of my curtain hoop loon pants entangled with one of the cables spewing out the back of his Moog synthesizer and we end up spending half an hour trying to pick out a particularly intractable knot so as to free me so I can put the kettle on and make a cup of tea for my old genius of Progressive Art-Rock buddy. It gets worse as we ascend the little ladder that leads up into my attic-cum-studio-cum-boudoir. One of Brian's Ostrich feathers gets caught in my fishnets and there's a sharp shriek of pain as his elaborate headgear rips out two or three of the remaining follicles he has left. Such language - *far* from ambient, I can tell you!
'So, what can I do for you, oh rigorously scholarly enfant terrible of the challenging sonic soundscape?', I ask as we sip Darjeeling and munch our way through half a plate of custard creams and a p-p-packet of penguins. Do I know anything about economics? he asks. I tell him that I might just be able to cough up a vaguely coherent two sides of A4 along the lines of a 'Classical and Keynsian models: compare and contrast'-type essay, but I wouldn't have high hopes of doing more than muddling through the exam. He looks slightly crestfallen - although, of course, that might just have been the after effects of the incident with the ostrich feathers, which are by now looking decidedly dejected and in need of some readjustment - although the elastoplast has definitely helped staunch the flow a little. My fishnets aren't too clever either for that matter, but that's by the by. I'll have to see if Boots are still doing their three-for-two offer...
Anyway, seems Brian's been asked by David Cameron to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequor. They did ask Carole Vorderman, but she's too busy with the Benecol ads - and John Redwood can only do long division, which is going to slow matters down a bit if there's another run on the pound; so Eno seemed the obvious choice. You'll be fine! I tell him - just *improvise*!! But he seems to be quite care worn by all of this - must be the thought of being weighed down by all that responsibility in Number 11, I guess, having to live with the thought that the slightest error of judgement or sign of indecision could lead to a field day for the stock market traders as, sensing the blood of a weak Chancellor, they engage in a high stakes game of brinksmanship with the custodian of the public purse. The pound takes a hammering on the international exchanges as the embattled Treasury raises interest rates, paniced into a last gasp attempt to save the pound by raising interest rates to terrifying levels and, before you know it, millions of homes being repossessed, consumer confidence is at an all time low and the heart is slowly being ripped out of the British economy by Corporate jackals intent on asset stripping a once proud nation's manufacturing base. Still, if they will vote Tory...
'Come on Brian', I tell him, 'this isn't like you! Just imagine you're in the studio grappling with a particularly difficult U2 vocal track....what would you do then...?' And it's almost as if someone's flicked a switch...."That's it! That's it! Of *course!!*', he screams as he leaps around the studio in triumphant delight "Oblique strategies!!" he bellows, punching the air with a fist. I suppose there are worse ways of running an economy than basing your every action on the esoteric and inpeneterable commands of a randomly selected, i-Ching-like instruction card.
George Osbourne, for one...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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'Come on in then, you wily old reprobate!' I tell Brian, only there's a bit of a comedy of errors as we negotiate the rather tight hallway, and I get one of my curtain hoop loon pants entangled with one of the cables spewing out the back of his Moog synthesizer and we end up spending half an hour trying to pick out a particularly intractable knot so as to free me so I can put the kettle on and make a cup of tea for my old genius of Progressive Art-Rock buddy. It gets worse as we ascend the little ladder that leads up into my attic-cum-studio-cum-boudoir. One of Brian's Ostrich feathers gets caught in my fishnets and there's a sharp shriek of pain as his elaborate headgear rips out two or three of the remaining follicles he has left. Such language - *far* from ambient, I can tell you!
'So, what can I do for you, oh rigorously scholarly enfant terrible of the challenging sonic soundscape?', I ask as we sip Darjeeling and munch our way through half a plate of custard creams and a p-p-packet of penguins. Do I know anything about economics? he asks. I tell him that I might just be able to cough up a vaguely coherent two sides of A4 along the lines of a 'Classical and Keynsian models: compare and contrast'-type essay, but I wouldn't have high hopes of doing more than muddling through the exam. He looks slightly crestfallen - although, of course, that might just have been the after effects of the incident with the ostrich feathers, which are by now looking decidedly dejected and in need of some readjustment - although the elastoplast has definitely helped staunch the flow a little. My fishnets aren't too clever either for that matter, but that's by the by. I'll have to see if Boots are still doing their three-for-two offer...
Anyway, seems Brian's been asked by David Cameron to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequor. They did ask Carole Vorderman, but she's too busy with the Benecol ads - and John Redwood can only do long division, which is going to slow matters down a bit if there's another run on the pound; so Eno seemed the obvious choice. You'll be fine! I tell him - just *improvise*!! But he seems to be quite care worn by all of this - must be the thought of being weighed down by all that responsibility in Number 11, I guess, having to live with the thought that the slightest error of judgement or sign of indecision could lead to a field day for the stock market traders as, sensing the blood of a weak Chancellor, they engage in a high stakes game of brinksmanship with the custodian of the public purse. The pound takes a hammering on the international exchanges as the embattled Treasury raises interest rates, paniced into a last gasp attempt to save the pound by raising interest rates to terrifying levels and, before you know it, millions of homes being repossessed, consumer confidence is at an all time low and the heart is slowly being ripped out of the British economy by Corporate jackals intent on asset stripping a once proud nation's manufacturing base. Still, if they will vote Tory...
'Come on Brian', I tell him, 'this isn't like you! Just imagine you're in the studio grappling with a particularly difficult U2 vocal track....what would you do then...?' And it's almost as if someone's flicked a switch...."That's it! That's it! Of *course!!*', he screams as he leaps around the studio in triumphant delight "Oblique strategies!!" he bellows, punching the air with a fist. I suppose there are worse ways of running an economy than basing your every action on the esoteric and inpeneterable commands of a randomly selected, i-Ching-like instruction card.
George Osbourne, for one...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Friday, 23 May 2008
Tokyo Joe's...
There's a strange wheezing sound outside the apartment. I pull the curtains aside to find that a rickshaw has pulled up outside and a small, furtive figure wearing a coolie hat is scurrying up the path to my front door. Funny, I think, I don't remember ordering a take away. The door bell chimes and I open up to find an enthusiastic looking oriental looking up at me. "Meestah Felly out in lickshaw", he gestures. "Solly?? Prease lepeat!" I say - I'm ever so quick at picking up new languages... The diminutive from the Far East perseveres. "Is Meestah Felly! *Blyan* Felly - flom Loxy Music - in *LICKSHAW*!!" The penny drops and, sure enough, there he is, Bryan Ferry, emerging from a sumptuous pile of sonic blue satin - which I later discover to be none other than Jerry Hall - in the back of the Rickshaw. Well, I never, I think to myself - that must have set him back a yen or two.
"Why-aye wor Bob - has tha doon? Comin' oop wor toon wi' me and me bird like, fer wor crack, though but? Ah've jess get me life membership at wor Tokyo Joe's. Eee it's reet good, like. Ther've oner them Muriel jobbies, on wor wall like - wi' portraits of all wor top stars - Jimmy Durante, Marjorie Proops, Nina & Frederick, Danny La Rue, Margaret Rutherford, Christopher Martin Jenkins, Una Stubbs, John Noakes, Christopher Timothy, Rod Laver, three quarters of wor Black & White Minstrel Show and that bloke what does Police 5 - aye but that's a canny programme, though but. I love it, me: 'and remember; keep 'em peeled, though but!' Get in wor front seat wi' Ho Chi Min and let's be 'avin yers..."
Well, how could I refuse? Of course, Ferry's already half cut having stopped off at the Fat Ox for a crate or two of Newcastle Brown Ale, so I'm playing catch-up all night until I decide to go for broke and mainline some Jeyes cleaning fluid. Fuck me, that stuff *can't* still be legal, can it? He's a lovely lad Bryan, but he just doesn't know when to give it a rest with the sauce. I have to make my excuses when the introduction to the new song he's written in honour of the club starts up, and he's straight on to the midnight blue casino floor, starting to make his eyes go slitty by pulling them to the side with his index fingers and dancing around with a chopstick dangling from each nostril. I'm just about to pat him on the back and say my cheerios when he assumes his customary position on the dance floor, back arched, legs akimbo, his hand flailing around in the vicinity of his posterior, the thumb poised to spark up a gold Cartier lighter as the Ferry arse lets rip. My God, you know it's time to leave a party when Bryan starts setting light to his own farts. I give a disconsolate, embarrassed looking Jerry Hall a peck on the cheek as I make my way to the cloakroom. "Tell him to watch himself, pet," I tell her. "With those chopsticks and that lighter, he'll have both ends burning if he's not careful..."
Thursday, 22 May 2008
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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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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Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Mime and Lindsay Kemp...
One of the happiest times in my career was that spent working with internationally renowned mime artiste and cat throttler Lindsay Kemp. Oh what fun we'd have, whiling away the hours pretending to be trapped behind a plate of glass or attempting to stave off being crushed between two sliding doors with only the palms of our hands and a doorstop. I was only dipping my toe in the water though, in a dilletante Chameleon-changing-to-suit-the-needs-of-his-environment type dilly dallying, flibbertygibbety sort of way - Linds was the real Master (or should that be Mistress?? I was never too sure...) I mean, he could do stuff I couldn't even dream of - like that one where you pretend you've cut your thumb off and wiggle it about between two of your fingers. Such deft sleight of hand for a man of eighty!
It was Lindsay who choreographed all the shows on the Mongy Spondulick and the Milliners from Jupiter tour and, if I'm honest, he's the one who deserves most of the credit for the stunning visuals we achieved on stage, taking rock theatre to new heights - and Arbroath, if memory serves. They still talk about it at the Ruislip Community Centre, I'm told. Such fun I'd have, dressing up as Mongy, getting into character by groping a few of the soundcrew, mincing around in a tutu *completely* wrecked on Brass-o before bounding on stage in my trademark lyotard and stack heeled boots. I'd get so nervous before shows, you see, that I'd even forget to put my ruddy trousers on!
Lindsay may be the least well known of the Kemp brothers - most likely because Gary insisted on shunting him off to the side of the stage to play percussion wearing a daft kilt or miming to a session saxophonist's solo on 'True' - but no one could have been more pleased for the lad than I was when he finally reached the audience he deserved in that film about the Krays. He's brilliant as Phil in Eastenders too, isn't he? Face only a mother could love...
Ah the New Romantics! That takes me back. You see, it wasn't all mass unemployment, Thatcherism and Rick Astley in the 1980s. There *was* actually something even worse. Spendo Ballenedo and Utra-Volox were probably my favourites, but even they couldn't match the epic grandeur and austere majesty of Blancminge singing "I'm up the Cocking Tree". Oh for the day when someone will launch a full scale revival of that fabulous, innocent time. Hurry up lads, while I can still squeeze into me leg warmers!!
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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It was Lindsay who choreographed all the shows on the Mongy Spondulick and the Milliners from Jupiter tour and, if I'm honest, he's the one who deserves most of the credit for the stunning visuals we achieved on stage, taking rock theatre to new heights - and Arbroath, if memory serves. They still talk about it at the Ruislip Community Centre, I'm told. Such fun I'd have, dressing up as Mongy, getting into character by groping a few of the soundcrew, mincing around in a tutu *completely* wrecked on Brass-o before bounding on stage in my trademark lyotard and stack heeled boots. I'd get so nervous before shows, you see, that I'd even forget to put my ruddy trousers on!
Lindsay may be the least well known of the Kemp brothers - most likely because Gary insisted on shunting him off to the side of the stage to play percussion wearing a daft kilt or miming to a session saxophonist's solo on 'True' - but no one could have been more pleased for the lad than I was when he finally reached the audience he deserved in that film about the Krays. He's brilliant as Phil in Eastenders too, isn't he? Face only a mother could love...
Ah the New Romantics! That takes me back. You see, it wasn't all mass unemployment, Thatcherism and Rick Astley in the 1980s. There *was* actually something even worse. Spendo Ballenedo and Utra-Volox were probably my favourites, but even they couldn't match the epic grandeur and austere majesty of Blancminge singing "I'm up the Cocking Tree". Oh for the day when someone will launch a full scale revival of that fabulous, innocent time. Hurry up lads, while I can still squeeze into me leg warmers!!
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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Saturday, 17 May 2008
The New Look...
Thanks to all of you who've mailed in to comment on my new hairdo. The reaction's been mixed, I have to say - ranging from the unconvinced ("Get yer 'air cut, yer great lolloping poofter!") to the downright rude ("Get yer 'air cut and die, die, die, you great big pansy!") A few of you though were kind enough to ask how the overall effect was achieved, so I thought I'd fill you in on the day I spent with top London stylist, Keith, and how we managed to get that 'ruptured Saluki in a force nine gale look' that *everyone* will be asking for this summer...
The first thing to say about Keith is that he's an *absolute* perfectionist. Everything has to be just so - even down to the tongs in the sugar bowl....though why he doesn't just use scissors like everyone else is a bit of a mystery. He's *so* dedicated to the maintenance of his own impossibly high standards that he won't even *consider* cutting your hair unless it's virtually flawless to begin with. So it's often best to turn up at his bo-ho with a soupcon of Regency-style salon having already had a trim or, better still, wearing a wig that looks pretty much as you'd like the end result to be - as I did. But, assuming you've passed his stringent once over and he agrees to soiling his clippers on your mangy, flea ridden locks, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have let loose on my collection of hideously unrealistic made man fibres attached to a mesh backing and masquerading as human hair.
"So, what can we do for madam today?" Asks Keith. It's OK, he can see perfectly well once he takes the comedy eyes-on-a-pair-of-spring-style spectacles off. (Although there's no excuse for pinching a chaps buttocks, it has to be said. Is it just my ever-so-sensitive skin, or do curling tong burns take a bugger of a long time to scab up?) The initial skirmishes complete - "Something for the weekend sir? And would you like me to throw in some contraceptives and a vat of vaginal lubricant? It's on special offer and comes with free hosepipe applicator for an unmatchably sensual, snag-free shafting action....??") I put my fate in the hands of the maestro. He opts for a Byronesque twist on the Dandy style, with a little Urban Masseev, ironed out Afro - a twist of modernity thrown in to spice up the whole arrangement. That's the CD multichanger sorted - now for the *haircut*!
All told, I'm in there for seven and a half hours, but it's worth every penny (.....I do wish he'd get rid of that bloody meter....) as Keith painstakingly glues each strand of hair together. This must be costing me a *fortune* in u-hu, I think, but after a few minutes, I'm so off my bonce from the contact high of the adhesives that I'd willingly give him my house and half its contents in exchange for a short back and sides and a quickie behind the passport booth at Kings Cross St. Pancras. I do wish he'd trim his nostril hairs though...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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The first thing to say about Keith is that he's an *absolute* perfectionist. Everything has to be just so - even down to the tongs in the sugar bowl....though why he doesn't just use scissors like everyone else is a bit of a mystery. He's *so* dedicated to the maintenance of his own impossibly high standards that he won't even *consider* cutting your hair unless it's virtually flawless to begin with. So it's often best to turn up at his bo-ho with a soupcon of Regency-style salon having already had a trim or, better still, wearing a wig that looks pretty much as you'd like the end result to be - as I did. But, assuming you've passed his stringent once over and he agrees to soiling his clippers on your mangy, flea ridden locks, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have let loose on my collection of hideously unrealistic made man fibres attached to a mesh backing and masquerading as human hair.
"So, what can we do for madam today?" Asks Keith. It's OK, he can see perfectly well once he takes the comedy eyes-on-a-pair-of-spring-style spectacles off. (Although there's no excuse for pinching a chaps buttocks, it has to be said. Is it just my ever-so-sensitive skin, or do curling tong burns take a bugger of a long time to scab up?) The initial skirmishes complete - "Something for the weekend sir? And would you like me to throw in some contraceptives and a vat of vaginal lubricant? It's on special offer and comes with free hosepipe applicator for an unmatchably sensual, snag-free shafting action....??") I put my fate in the hands of the maestro. He opts for a Byronesque twist on the Dandy style, with a little Urban Masseev, ironed out Afro - a twist of modernity thrown in to spice up the whole arrangement. That's the CD multichanger sorted - now for the *haircut*!
All told, I'm in there for seven and a half hours, but it's worth every penny (.....I do wish he'd get rid of that bloody meter....) as Keith painstakingly glues each strand of hair together. This must be costing me a *fortune* in u-hu, I think, but after a few minutes, I'm so off my bonce from the contact high of the adhesives that I'd willingly give him my house and half its contents in exchange for a short back and sides and a quickie behind the passport booth at Kings Cross St. Pancras. I do wish he'd trim his nostril hairs though...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
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