Mon, 21 Apr 2008 ...

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:05:06 +0100



Just been mailing the Rich Bitch in Ireland...So Rich she has another house at the bottom of the Garden to Weave her Witchcraft in...Apparently the Powers tell me she has roped her Husband(ish) and Eldest daughter in on this..She's had more affairs than Anyone, then goes off to Church to get Pardoned (Husbandish and Daughter are just her Puppets). So Now we have the Four..but Unfortunately Black Betty from Malaysia may Take her own Life at the End of this Chapter...because she has already tried So many Religions and Pathways to Sooth her Weary and Lonely Soul..Now of Course Black Magic is her choice of Weapon...but Bob..We are.... Indestructable. If She takes her life it will not be on My conscience..for you can Only fight Inferno with Inferno.



Anyway..Energy rates going Up and Up for me now...been doing this since God knows when. That Charles Darwin bloke really Didn't know what he was On about...THIS is Evolution Babe...and Thanks for being my Sidekick...me Ribs hurt though, stop it Bunny. Sleep Well..See you in a Bit xxxx P



Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:48:59 +0100



So last Chances Bob..They have told me..now that I have dealt with All the WitchCraft..The Voodoo.. The Squinty -Eyed Pig and the Polish Crone (Yes that was the 4)..They have told me that I have to leave you Bob. Stop depending on what ever it is you give me, or I am left here just an Aimless Chav, like pretty much Everyone on that page of yours....Plenty of Mother Figures not MotherF.....



I can Only rely on myself now Bob..and I don't Think you are ready to join us in the Other Dimension..Sorry if I have ever Pushed you or Scared you. It really Is your Choice, and nothing Bad will happen if you choose to remain here...just that the Roundabout will keep on Turning, always back to Square one. Anyway I am Now looking at the Positive side of what you say, rather than the Negative..cos I don't Fall for that no more..do You?



Have Cried Deep Tears just now for us Both...cos what we have had is Special Beyond Belief..Soulmates, Friends, Lovers, Sex Toys, and Parents to a Beautiful Child. That must End now for Me...you may Continue but I won't be Responding, because I am now on a Much Higher Level..ready to go with Them. I hope you won't Respond with a Sarcastic Blog, Ripping the Truth to Shreds and calling me a Crazy...Nude Bride. I am Nobody's Bride Bob..but I Am Stripped down Bare... I have no Body underneath this Mask, Metallic I'm not sure but it's along those Lines.



I will look on your Page, as I am Permitted, just One last Time before I Committ myself to the Other Dimension, Start my Work Properly..but please, don't Ever think you were just an Experiment Bob, for Never have I met a Man like you before. You could have a Hundred legs for me and I wouldn't care. This has been a Meeting of the Minds and has Changed my Life..I hope that for the Good it has Changed Yours too....Purest and Deepest Love Bob...From a Higher Realm.X



Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:08:07 +0100



And you Have to let go Too...You have some Knowledge Now and we are Always Hovering around You..I am still walking around in Human Form, we are Everywhere, just Look a Little closer..Like in the Mirror Bob. Please stop Clinging on to me now..Rely on yourself, that is all Any of us can Do. By telling you I Loved you made you dependant on me, because you have not Experienced that before, from a 'Woman' especially. I am both Male and Female Bob, even Strongly Connected to the Animal kingdom...You have not read my messages and Blogs Properly in the Past, as I did not Read yours as I should have. Tap into the Side of your Brain that is Positive, think of Me if you Like, but don't Depend, for it will Destroy you. You will Not need this Space soon, and a Blessing in Disguise will Intervene.



Take Care.. Love and Kindness X



Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:25:22 +0100



This is the Final one Really this Time to say No Matter where You are I will Find You..And I don't mean I will jumpin on the Next Train to Lancashire Berkshire, Hampton or Wherever, I mean I will Find you. It may be a Struggle but we will Never let Each other go in our Mind Body and Soul, although we won't be muckin around on Computers anymore, just Gettin on with things. This Ditzy lil Alien Loves to be Cheeky, Laugh and Giggle like a Child, also have my Serious Side.. very Mature. Like I said you Never know where I may be Lurking, and it's all done in the Best Possible Taste..will rub Noses with you now Bunny...This chapter is Over..Sees ya XXXXX



Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:55:28 +0100



...Now you see I am no Threat to your Privacy and your Space..but I know One thing..the Story was Somehow Real, because my Physical Body Still has a Need for this, and as Long as I am still alive with the Female side Taking over, this will be. I have Never wanted a Child before with Any Man until I Encountered You. Don't let it Boost your Ego Bob, that is Not what I am Trying to do. They say that I don't Need a Child and that in order to Fulfill Spiritual Order I must Rid myself of this Need. But I won't..at This stage of my Development. I am Protected now from the Dark Forces and Overlook them...Even Out and About today I actually Reconized my Fellows. Don't confuse all this with Religion, as that is Man-made. I can Spot the Bad one's from Space too, just have to look Twice. You are not Bad no matter how much you try to Convince me...and you Will Understand all of this one day...Wish me Luck with the Brooding, have not pinched anyone's Baby yet...never will. The Dark one's tell me you were some 'Major General from 1900's' with 5 Children...Believe me, That made Me Jealous to begin with...but I accept that, C'est la Vie. And should we Ever meet...I will probably be around 55, maybe a Bit before that..We will be Friends..in Fact we Always where...Bye..Blue Eyes X Your Blitzy lil Alien.......



Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:36:46 +0100



Thanks Oisin Very Entertaining..Clever little Shit aint ya..Not any More...Cosmic Mixing



L.U.V. on y'all,



Bob



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The Stalker Files (part one)

It hasn't escaped my notice that, despite my best efforts to cleanse this blog of every single reader, at least 10 of you silly sods are still regularly turning up every day. Oh well, hopefully this next (final) push will persuade even those hardy lunatics to give up and go and do something more interesting and useful - such as hatemailing Footman on the Commentische Macht Frei chatrooms or whatever it is that you all do when you're not coming over here to see if I'm up to anything that will further your own careers...



So, the plan is to post up all the stalker emails that I've received over the last three or four months. I'll post them up as they came. I'm doing this for two reasons. One, it's the only way I'll ever be able to read them all - and in this, excitingly, I'll be placed in exactly the same position as anyone else who reads them; I won't have a clue what's in them as I've ignored them until now. Secondly, it just means cutting and pasting them on here, so will take even less time to do than the blogs I used to enjoy posting up so much.



Be warned, there are rather a lot of them. Still, that's me; generous to a fault...there's *nothing* I won't share with my reader(s). Just to clarify - these are all coming, if not from the same person, then the same address. I've thought long and hard about the wisdom/ethics of posting them up. I don't seek to make any personal gain from thia - how can I? All I've accrued from this is unwarranted attention and that horrible feeling you get when you're being watched but you don't know by whom. Also, there's a slim chance that someone out there might recognise the person behind this torrent and possibly be able to help them. If I don't, then this long, harrowing cry for help - that, I'm afraid, is what it amounts to - will all have been for nothing. But then, aren't all cries for help, ultimately...?



[Editor's note: interesting that they start on 20th April - Hitler's birthday. And in mid stream, as if continuing a prior conversation...]



Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:25:35 +0100



Rushing you again..one of my Biggest faults I know. Still, you Know where they Live now so you can still take the ride with me...Pick up a Few tips Here and There. But if it gets so out of hand with these Briggeetes please come in All Guns Blazing for me..because I will need your Expertize. Violence is a thing we try to avoid at All costs, but remember there are Powers so Dark there is only one Option - to Snuff them out Completely. There are Two female Negatives at work here, and as I have said, Two others endeavour to get in as well. They Fear Love so much their Jealousy and Rage become them...Overspilling onto others...But they can't beat the Powers of This Dimension.



I am tempted to use the word Love again Bunny, but I know how that suffocates you so I won't. I am just Glad to have you with me in Mind, if not Totally in Heart. So Sleep well, Dream well Comrade.... in Arms x P



Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:57:38 +0100



Bunny wot have I said about not making me Laugh..you do it All the time..and that's what I mean by Cute. I need All my Powers of Concentration here and can't get Sidetracked by Funnies. No No don't go sticking Pics of Hearses on now..it's Always one Extreme to the Other Bun. The Happy Medium is What's needed now..That's what I am..well not a Medium actually I'm a bit on the Large side These days like John Prescott...Anyway...Sleep well and I'll see you in my Dreams..and in the Mornin..And the Afternoon..the Evening and..well it just goes On...P XXXXX



L.U.V. on y'all,



Bob



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Isaac Hayes R.I.P...

Poor Isaac. Found dead near his treadmill, aged 65. I always knew exercise was bad for you, but this is ridiculous...

You don't think of such a huge and vital presence as being capable of death, do you? But there you go. Anyone who played on those astonishing Stax/Volt records could have died happy in the knowledge that they'd contributed something rather special to the collective good - usually if there's a piano and an organ on them, whichever isn't being played by Booker T. is being played by Ike (notice the tense there; music doesn't die, I suppose, if that's any consolation...)

But Isaac Hayes did so much more - let's hope he was aware before he went of the tremendous gift he's left behind him. I hope his talent was always visible or known to him. It's a fucking lonely slog otherwise - you're in the dark, completely; it really is thoroughly dispiriting. It was a bad day to begin with, but reading about Isaac's death just made it so much worse.

Treadmills...loss...death.


Bob

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Bobcast #48...

....

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Bobcast #47...

....







L.U.V. on y'all,



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Bobcast #47...

....

....

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Scott...

u

Scott Walker pops round with a rough mix of his new song for me to A&R - Cowell always gives him a hard time, I think, so I'm like the good cop to Simon's bad one I suppose. He starts the tape up and about 17 minutes in I'm thinking... so what if David Milliband *were* to become P.M. Is it conceivable, for instance, that he might one day seize authoritarian powers for himself, sack Fabio Capello as manager of the national team and insist that he and his brother Ed *both* be named in the starting line-up for England's next meaningless friendly. Why, they'd be the first English brothers since the Nevilles to be named in the same England side if that were the case. Handy left peg Milliband senior has, I'm reliably informed. Tackles like a fondant fancy, if truth be told, but you can't have everything I suppose...

"What do you reckon?" asks Scott when the song finally comes to an end after what seems to have been wel over an hour. He's peering at me intently over the rims of his dark sunglasses whilst peeling a conference pear with the unwieldy Samurai sword he insists on carrying with him wherever he goes. "Well mate, the cheese grater running up and down a slice of veal sound effect - that *is* veal, I take it? - on the opening; I'd lose that mate. And I think you've got your echoplexed didgeridu a bit too prominent in the mix for my tastes. And that bit where you sing "Shirley Temple's Adam's apple consumated maelstrom of the prune within my soul..." - yeah, great line, by the way! Well, I think it'd sing about a bit more of you got a little bit closer in to the mic. And you might want to move the 17 foot ice sculpture out of your way, perhaps. And maybe take the mothballs out of your cheeks? Clarity, Scott, is everything when you're trying to be Avant Garde."

I've always been a big Scott fan, but he's taken such a decidely odd turn of late. Playing a turkey baster like a Jew's harp, slapping the sides of an antelope carcass he's had especially suspended from the ceiling for the session, long rambling songs about Mussolini's dog minder going for a very long walk with a bag full of whelks....at least you knew where you were with the old Scott. But this new one's gone *completely* over my head. "What's it called?" Scott shuffles a bit, nervously on the sofa. "It's just called, ' ' - he makes a bizarre chubb sucking plankton off the side of a fishtank sort of mouthing action for a few seconds. "Snappy", I tell him - I hate having to lie to a mate. "So, do you think it'll get me back into the Hit Parade Bob?" I can see he's close to tears - what can you do? "It'll be a smasher, Scott me old mucker! Now, quick cup of Horlicks and a game of draughts before you go round to Simon's??"

Christ, Cowell's going to *LOVE* this one...





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Bob

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Market Research...

Many of you won't need me to tell you this, but here at Swipe Towers, times are hard. I won't say we're quite in meltdown...*yet*. But let's just say that a couple or three mortgage payments down the line, we may well need to let the home help go; which means yours truly will have to go back to hoovering up those sequins myself (...with my knees....!) I don't want to lard it on here, but here's an indication of the depth of the pickle my auditors are currently attempting to extradite me from:

Outgoing expenses:

c.£28.75 (p.c.m.) - tights, plant rings, elasticated hairbands, sundries &c...

£60.00 (p.a.) - Songcast subscription.

£18.00 (per album, p.a) - Songcast hosting fee.

£875.67 (p.c.m.) - mortgage.

£150.00 (p.c.m.) - various pornographic materials (research...)

£250 (p.w.) - beer.


Monies Received:

March: £11.97

April: $2.98

May: zilch

So, as you can see, we may not yet be Mark Knopfler, but we're certainly pretty close to being in dire straits...

But it's no use bemoaning the credit crunch - oh no, we're made of sterner stuff here at S.T.! Less of the 'hello folks and what about the workers' and more of the 'roll yer sleeves up', 'get on your bike, Norman' and 'gizza job!' for us. So, here's the plan. Obviously, the current business strategy (cobbling together ill-conceived albums of poorly performed and recorded pap and noodling around on Myspace all day, pretending to be 'marketing' them whilst actually doing little more than ogling a wide assortment of scantily-clad goth girls who may or may not be splattered in fake blood/wearing judiciously ripped and laddered hosiery...) isn't working. So this is what I propose to do...

Looking at the figures, I can see that my audience is not just incredibly reluctant to loose its grip on those hard earned buckeroonies. As well as being a miserly bunch of tight wads, they're also incredibly canny. The songs that seem to be selling tend, on the whole, to be the ones I'd have expected to (....you know, in tune, vague attempts made at having a melody...that sort of thing...) From this, it's probably safe to conclude that the path to financial security is better served by my coming up with short, snappy, accessible pop songs based around excruciating puns derived from long dead Hollywood screen icons than 8 minute epics eulogising the joys of Duracell-powered robotic sex (although the Japanese market is, as so often, an honourable exception in this regard - thanks lads!)

So far so good. Obviously, I could always follow the received industry wisdom and follow the tried and tested approach taken when previously bankable artists such as U2 or Coldplay fall on hard times and can't shift their pitifully out of touch product to an indifferent audience. But I think my followers are astute enough to see through my hijacking a globally televised event purporting to raise awareness of climate change/famine in Africa/shoeless guttersnipes in Burton-on-Trent etc. in order to publicise my new single (...that said, I'm obviously not ruling out such a drastic measure completely if things get *really* desperate...although I refuse to share a stage with Al Gore or Bob 'Sir Bloody' Geldof under *any* circumstances.)

No, I thought it would be more interesting to try a different tack. After all, why bother trying to second guess my audience as to what they'd be prepared to buy, when I can ask them directly and then tailor what I do to their needs? So, you could tell me what sort of songs you'd be prepared to hear me sing - themes, subjects, titles, styles - whatever. Or you could say, 'I like such and such a song by so & so - could you do one like that Bob?' and so on. Or we could mix and match - someone might, for instance, want a song with a lyric about child slavery in Indonesia, whilst someone else might want a song that sounds like a dance version of 'Where the Streets Have No Name'... the possibilities are pretty much endless. And it could be a lot of fun. This, it seems to me, is the logic of the digital download era; audiences are already shaping the form by their choices and clicking patterns. So why not take that process even further?

Ladies and gentlemen - I give you....the era of the bespoke song!

Sure, it's an experiment, and as with all experiments it's liable to fall flat on its arse - but heck, whether you get the result you expected or not, at least with experiments you usually learn something. So, let me know what you think and what you (and what you think other people) might be prepared to shell out your sponduliks for, and I'll get the 24 track powered up...


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

p.s. ...oh, yes, and how about a title for it too folks??

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I am Being Cyber-stalked...

Yep, it's true folks. I can't tell you when it all started because I haven't scrolled back that far, but with 35 or so messages a day, every day, after 5 or 6 screens of inbox, all filled with messages from the same address, I think it's safe to say that this is what's happening - unless this is a *particularly* obtuse 'please-put-all-your-life-savings-into-my-Nigerian bank account'-type scenario, of course. I mean, what is it with some people? Just because a chap chooses to strip down to his 70 deniers, pose lying prone and provocatively cradling his private parts like some game bit of sexually ambivalent strumpet, then posting such images of himself on every web page between here and Timbuktu in the hope of guaranteeing himself global fame and instant recognition in every corner of the planet, I suppose that somehow makes him public property, does it?

The messages range from the the obscure:

"Remember the candelabra? Thought not. The one I bought you with fake Italian green shield stamps from that one armed vendor with the pale blue espadrilles in the Garden of Gethsamene...Well, I smashed it on the altar of my eternally ripening plumage - *that*'ll teach you!! *RHINOCEROS*!!!??"

...to the downright sinister:

"I've bought you a new pair of lilac pyjamas - I hope they suit bunnikins..."

I'd like to say I'm upset or excited or even slightly fazed by all this unwarranted attention, but actually it just leaves me feeling slightly perplexed really. I mean, I know daytime telly's not for everyone, but really - surely Angela Rippon buying antiques in a Rimini flea market is slightly more appealing than sending unsolicited and unrequited love messages/TV reviews/recipes/unsuccessful lines of Lotto numbers/links to Transcendental Meditation websites etc? In fact, so detatched am I, that it even crossed my mind to attempt to turn them into a novel or some such - a sort of darker, even more mentally unstable Bridget Jones' Diary - with Sandra Bernhard as Bridge - although, having attempted some of the positions our imagined sex romp assumed (catalogued in Thursday 24th July's 9;47 a.m. missive), perhaps a Bridget Fonda exercise video would be more appropriate (don't try it wearing high heels folks - I laddered a perfectly good throw...)

Still, it's an ill wind that blows no good. This assualt on my inbox does at least seem to have silenced my Venezuelan ex- who some time ago had hacked into the same email account to send me the occasional riotously amusing hate email, posing as me - a bit confusing after you've had a few, I can tell you (Well, I normally send them to other people, not myself...) It seems even she has been outdone by this latest crazed 'admirer' and has - quite sensibly, I must say - decided that even if pissing me off was worth running the risk of being had up on charges of fraud and identity theft, it really doesn't justify the sheer horror of having to wade through page upon page of unsolicited and unrequited love messages/TV reviews/recipes/unsuccessful lines of Lotto numbers/links to Transcendental Meditation websites/Suduko cribs etc just to find a decent advert for a penis enlargement aid.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong and they've each found a kindred spirit? Who knows - perhaps they're already planning a get together, somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic to compare notes?

I'll keep you posted...


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Bobcast #46 - Bedroom Burlesque (part 1)...

....yes, that's right - *more* free stuff from Bob...

Bob talks candidly about his new album and tries to pass off half a dozen classic Beatles tracks as his own...


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Bob

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Out now...

Buy the new album from Robert Swipe on iTunes today:

.

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Bob

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Bobcast #44...

...beam it up here, Scotty...

...subscribe it up here....

Enjoy, humanoids!!!

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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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...

Experiment V...

Well, that's it - end of experiment. Phew, glad/sad *that*'s over....

It's always a bitter sweet thing, the creative impulse - bit like the whole male sex experience really, I suppose. Great in the build up, fan-bloody-tastic most of the way through then "whey-ey-ey-ey-fhnoarrrrrgorfluggin'norathawas-bloody-corkin-smashing-love" at the end and then.....slow, contemplative puff on a post-coital gasper as the vague feelings of inadequacy/nausea begin to make themselves known in the groin/gut/adenoids etc. Yep, that's about the size of the making of Bedroom Burlesque too, you could say. Nice while it lasted love, but - eh, do us a favour darling, don't slam the door on your way out, there's a good lass. Before it's even on the shelves, you're already eyeing up - if not actually groping - the firm but ample posterior of the next one....

But 'Glam' will just have to wait...

So, what of the experiment? Well, I set out to write from the position I felt I was in - namely, an artist trying to sell his wares for the first time; in layman's terms, then, a *prostitute* of some sort. I mean, what else can you call doing what you love doing...for money? Anyway, that's the voice I think I was subconsciously reaching for in all of the songs; that of the slightly shady character who sings 'What I do' - proud and shameful at the same time, bold enough to give you the bold facts of the transaction in a matter-of-fact, pulling on a Gauloise in a shady doorway of the Rue St. Denis kind of way, but deep down, still secretly hoping that the people s/he cares about never find out what exactly it is that s/he actually does. I eventually arrived there in that song, I suppose and - back to the old 'joy detumescing into ennui' mode we talked about earlier - once you arrive, you know it's time to move on...

But then, isn't there some canny quote (I can't put my finger on it right now) that says something along the lines of, well, it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey? If that's so, then I suppose we could call the experiment a qualified success. There were the unfathomable good uns - the ones that just worked, you knew that, but not *why* - for me those would include 'Cathy Moriarty' and 'Tramp Smash', they came unbidden and you just have to hold your nerve, thank your lucky stars and get the bloody things down before you forget them...a bit like the gentle art of seduction itself, I guess, when you put it like that and if I can dare to stretch that old art/whoring metaphor any further than I have already...

Then there are the ones you hope you're right in thinking have some substance to them, once the bubbles have subsided and they get listened to a bit further down the line, when the medals are being handed out - 'Veil & Jimmy Choos', 'Jailbirds', 'Boytron' and - and this is at a real push, you understand - 'The Circus is Leaving Town' would be the ones I'd enter into that little lottery myself. You *hope* they'll leave more than a monosodium glutinate bloatation to the stomach. But as with so many things in life, that's all you can do really, in the end - hope...

Otherwise, it's been a pretty tough one to gestate - I suppose in many ways because of the way I've chosen to go about it. I have an intractable inability to do things in the abstract - method man, me. I have to make my mistakes in actual fact, not in the abstract, learn my lessons by poking a dozy finger into the light socket rather than sating myself on the received wisdom that to do so will actually *hurt*. Unless I feel it, I'm not convinced. So, hence the dressing up and the rather strange response that that's encouraged - I mean, have you never seen an ugly, big-boned man dressing up like a cheap, common tart before? OK, so it's not everybody's cup of Darjeeling, but - heck - I *have* got a stonking pair of legs, haven't I? *Right*! So why hide them under a bushel? Huh??? But then there's the uncounted on sub-narrative for you: the serious artiste who just wants to know what happens when you poke A with B gets mistooken for a weirdo, child molesting 'prevert' [sic] and the words and the tunes get swallowed up by the fellow in the fishnets wearing a bin liner with a raffia work crown of thorns upon his/her head....There's always a cost, isn't there?

And that, I guess, is my theme here - on the album that is, not in this post - value(s). It's there from the first track, I suppose - a shadow of horrible, ill-defined intention, lurking like a grimy tank-topped paedo- in the shadows of the park where the kids should be playing without fear. That's where the songs lose their innocence - when you try to write *about* something, I suppose...But then, how many novelists avoid that reductive, lollipop sucking question - "wassitabart??" It's not about anything, but there are, unavoidably, themes. And the obvious one here is the unregarding harm that money wreaks upon us - and we get younger and younger in its clutches. It's there from note one, bar one, I guess. 'Joining the Cyber Circus' is a child in a bedroom cavorting lasciviously in front of a webcam, his or her little lap dance being instantaneously lapped up globally....poor parents, poor child, poor audience, poor walls. It's maybe a tad bland musically - but doesn't it have to be, in a way? Doesn't the blandness reinforce somehow the pathos of what is an every 'She's Leaving Home' type scenario; I mean, you don't even need to leave home anymore to leave home a long, long way behind you...so it needs to be rendered as being as out of the ordinary as 'Neighbours', doesn't it?

Then there's the calculating boss, greedy fingers abacusing the worth of his secretary/lover in 'She's Falling in Love With Me'. The bland - again, blandness....this is getting to be a disturbing trope... - emptiness of that 'Glam trash, tramp smash doll' - so seductive, but - really what *is* s/he saying? Not much - but hopefully enough... The Jailbirds who are happier with the 'fun' they can have on the inside than the freedom on offer 'outside'. The Boytron, who only charges a 'love token' before pumping away until the batteries run out. There's joy, for sure, but emptiness too. Awkward exchanges, unfair deals like the 'let's start all over again' trip to New York that ends with a tearful pop of the cork in 'Champagne Shag'. The fuzzy end, a better writer might say, of the lolly stick...

I think the last track is the strongest, in some ways...but I'm not sure that it works without the rest of the album - and no, I'm not just saying that so you download all the tracks.... It's a personal emotional lowpoint, bizarrely captured (very quickly) on a Sunday morning - the ink not yet dry on the tears occasioned by the night before. It's the sound of a sad, cross-dressing clown realising that he's been corrupted, stomping off across the stereo soundstage. But you know (and I hope this comes through just a tad in that final, album ending flounce) that even as s/he flips up her skirts and turns tail, just like the circus, s/he'll be back in town before too long. "joining the cyber circus" once more..."performing my tricks for the world...."

I'll be posting up as many of the songs as I can in the next two or three weeks, so I hope all this will make a bit more sense once the songs have had a chance to have their say...




L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Bob's Back...

...is a bit less sore now, thanks for asking. I still can't touch my toes yet - at least not with my tongue (although I can get as far as my willy, which is something I suppose...) but there's definitely been a distinct improvement over the last few days. The physiotherapy exercises are finally starting to make a difference, but unfortunately it seems that the operation was a total disaster. I'm actually thinking of sueing BUPA. You'd think they'd be able to do Hair Replacement Surgery in their sleep nowadays, wouldn't you? Especially after all the years they've spent experimenting on Elton. I said to the surgeon, would *you* be happy to mince around singing 'Nikita' dressed in a Donald Duck outfit and nappy with a bonce like this? What will David think? I asked, before remembering who and where I was and beating a hasty retreat from Dolland & Aitchison. I'm going private next time, that's for sure...

Anyroad, you'll be pleased to know that normal (ho ho) service will be resumed quite shortly, once I can get used to strumming through the pain, obviously, and have found a way to make my surgical support look glamorous and sexy....

And *no*, before you ask, I *won't* be wearing it to cover up the botched hair graft.....



....although....


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Bedroom Burlesque...

Well, that's it - another one in the can. That's right, the long-awaited (trust me, five months is a *long* time in pop!) follow up to 'Madcap in the Attic' should be hitting the shelves in around 6-8 weeks time, so I thought I'd give you all a sneak preview of the album artwork and the track listing and so on. Obviously, this won't be the last you'll hear of it, but I wanted to let those very kind people who've expressed an interest in my new material know that the wait to hear the new stuff won't be *too* long. For the rest of you who aren't *remotely* interested, don't worry; it just means I'll have *even* more time to post up pictures of myself looking scantily clad and cutely vulnerable, so you'll have plenty to gawp at over the next few weeks as the Swipe promo machine grinds into overdrive ahead of the album's release!

So, what's it like? Well, obviously, I'm quite chuffed with it. I think the sound is a lot fuller than the last one and I think the overall effect is of a writer and performer getting into his (or even her) stride, but I'll let you be the judges of all that. Obviously, it was great being reunited with my old wrecking crew - that wonderful rhythm section of George Murray on bass, Dennis Davis thumping the drums and the inimitable Carlos Alomar on guitars. They really are the best band in the whole of glam, aren't they? And over their taut and sinewy grooves I had none other than ex-Utopia star Roger Powell on Keyboards and Powell Probe (I L.U.V. the sound he gets out of that thing! You'd never believe it was just an old hoover powered by a stylophone when you hear it, would you?) On lead guitar was the ever wonderful Robert Fripp, who kept Eno, Visconti and myself in tucks with his outrageous Brian Blessed impersonations (it really is uncanny, believe me) and comedy balloon farmyard implements act (the combine harvester is a modern masterpiece - I don't know where he gets the air from! Or the blade shaped balloons, for that matter...)

I L.U.V. working with old Fripp, but I might have to scale down for the next album and get my trusty old plank spanker Stray Photon on board again. Much as I L.U.V. Bob's playing, he does go on bit and I wonder if there's maybe a bit too much virtuosity and not enough ....I dunno....grit....in his playing for the slightly raunchier sound I envisage for the next project. Of course, he doesn't make matters any easier by charging by the note... So, if you're listening Stray, the amp's turned up to eleven and there's a nice mug of cocoa on the hob if you fancy it....just keep it nice and simple, eh?? Don't use 15 notes when one will do, that's the ticket...

OK, so here's a quick whistle stop tour of the LP:

First up is Joining the Cyber Circus which is, I guess a re-write of She's leaving home for the Myspace generation. Lovely Beatles for Sale style semi-acoustic work from Carlos on that one. Next up is Granny Vision Vamp, sort of PJ Harvey on a zimmer frame trying to sound like Buddy Holly. Tramp Smash is next - probably my personal fave; the best recording I've done to date, lovely rich, profound bass on it. She's Falling in Love With Me has just been posted up on the Myspace page, so you can have a listen yourselves to that one right now, as is the case with the next track, Veil & Jimmy Choos. Champagne Shag takes the tempo down a bit; John Cale and Nico having a barney over a bottle of cheap champers in the Chelsea Hotel.

What would be side two if it was a proper record kicks off with What I do - Lee Hazlewood coming out of the closet after listening to The Queen is Dead. Cathy Moriarty is Paul Simon backstage at the wrap party for 'Raging Bull'. Jailbirds is Jailhouse Rock on a ukulele. Calendar Girl was a late bonus that just popped out - Jake Thackeray sings Leonard Cohen. Boytron is *very*, *very* long! The Circus is Leaving Town is Divine singing Noboby Loves you When You're Down and Out as if it was Rock n Roll Suicide...

So, that's that! Hope you all like it. Finally, just a quick thank you to Chas Ferry for his invaluable advise and support. If, as I think it does, this album sounds like a quantum leap from the first one, that's almost entirely down to him...

xxx
Bob






L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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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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Bob's Indespensible Guide to Euro '96...

That's right, as well as being a red letter day in the domestic sport's calendar (the regional heats for 'I'm a Cerebrally Challenged Z-list Dwarf - GET ME OUT OF HERE!!" *and* 'Strictly Come Celebrity Ballroom Blitz Good Game Good Game, Nice to see you, to see you nice' both kick off today), on the continent it's that time again. The long wait for a high quality festival of silky flowing football is almost over - only another *two* years, and it'll be The World Cup again! But until then, you could do worse than watch a few Johnny Foreigner, Carlos Kickaballs falling over and writhing around in feigned agony in an outrageous attempt to cheat a penalty out of the dubious looking Polish referee, I suppose.

Sadly, the Home Nations all failed to qualitfy this time 'round - as did England, so we're in the unenviable position of having to cheer on those plucky part-timers from the Isle of Man. Do the minnows from the Irish Sea have a hope in hell of Euro glory? Hard to say, Brian - on the one hand, that extra leg may come in handy in the event of extra time, but at the end of the day Gary, it's more likely that it'll just give those cynical Italian defenders one more extremity to aim at when they hack you down on the edge of their box as part of their safety first cattenaccio gameplan.

But regardless of the lack of home interest, it promises to be a mouth-watering tournament awash with quality and filled with world class superstars from our domestic league. Brilliant players such as Ronaldo, Peter Cech, Fernando Torres and Michael Ballack *will* be there and any of them might be injured and forced out of the game to give some of the other teams a chance. So, you see, there's plenty of reason to get involved, even if David Beckham's latest hairstyle won't be playing.

A lot of people are surprised, given my appearance, that I take such a hearty interest in 'the beautiful' game, but I've been standing on the terraces since the early seventies. OK, so Skelmersdale aren't the footballing force they once were, but that's the nature of the game, Brian - once it gets it's claws into you're hooked. I may have traded my rattle and scarf and half time pie for an all in one catsuit in the club colours and a Marco Pierre White inspired-prawn cocktail, but underneath the spangly tops and high quality lingerie, I'm still the same wayward terrace tyke of yesteryear once the referee blows the whistle and the punch-ups start

I may be a purist, I suppose, but for me Gary, the game's lost a little of it's romance now that the corporate bigwigs have moved in and want to get the DAF Freightrovers Autowindshield semi-final playoffs moved to Beijing for the television revenues. It used to be an honour to wear those Three Lions on your blouse - now being in the England squad is just a cheap and easy way of getting your face onto one of those collectible silver coins they sell at garages in the unlikely event that England qualify for anything. Besides, long gone are the days when you could stand on a cold, damp piece of rotting concrete and chew on a mug of Bovril then become embroiled in a massive bundle with a gang of testosterone charged skinheads chasing you through the shopping precinct shouting "Ooh, 'ark at her" and "flamin' pooves, they want to chop it off , that'd slow you down you nonce-breathed prevert!" all the way home.

So, I'll be filing regular match reports on all the big matches over the next fourteen and a half weeks in my own inimitable style. "Come on you Manxmen! Let's be 'avin' yer!! Get in there my son, on me 'ead Brian!! Oooh - nice shorts!!

"GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!"

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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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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Sexuality...

Hard though this will be for my legion of adoring worshippers to believe, it's a lonely old life being a Glam Icon. Oh sure, there's an almost endless stream of private parties, premieres, weekend retreats to discuss global climate warming with the great and the good. And George W. Bush. An yes, there are the legions of groupies and the hordes of playgirls and the endless lines of well-wishers and under-age teeny boppers offering hand relief on a casual, no strings attached basis now, or guilt-free intercourse the next time in Guildford....but away from the crack of the flash bulb, once the last adoring minion has been patted on the head and despatched to the guest room for a menage a quatorze with the other thirteen stunningly accomodating concubines, the bed feels rather big and empty when you're on your own...

That's how it is though, at the top. You can't have it both ways - and believe me, I've tried. Marriage just didn't suit though - as I'm sure Tony Bastable would concur. We tried, but in the end, neither of us was really cut out for a monogamous relationship based on loyalty and trust in which we only shagged one another and nobody else. Shame, he was *spectacularly* well hung...and very good with filo pastry, it might surprise you to learn. And sadly, the same has proved true of even medium to long-term relationships. Oh, I've given it my best shot with some wonderful ladies who would have made someone a terrific husband (or even a wife), but there's always been that sharp tug at the loins to distract me from my chosen one. How does the song go? "I've had relations with girls from many nations...sexuality, tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-ti tee..." Or something like that...

Yes, the old Swipe little red book could tell a tale or two. Obviously, there's such tremendous interest in my privates that I'd be foolish to give too many of the juicy details here for gratis ahead of the publication of *SHAGGED*!: The lives and loves of a Glam Icon, my salacious kiss and tell autobiography (available from all good bookshops from September. And WH Smiths...) So for now, I'm afraid you'll just have to make do with this little taster; a heavily edited, potted history of my sexual conquests. For the sake of conciseness, I've limited this exctract to those of my former lovers who might reasonably be described as being 'in the public eye'. Oh, and Lily Allen...

One Night Stands:


Twiggy: neurotic toenail clipper. Hates Onions. And Arabs.

Miranda Richardson: bellicose after alcohol. Bi-weekly menstrual cycle (?!)

Caroline Quentin: Flexible. Plymouth Argyle season ticket holder.

Farah Fawcett Majors: feint smell of plywood. Otherwise engaging.

Demis Roussos: Pre - Flippant, post - crying jags.

Angela Rippon: fidgety.

Glenn Close: Hung like a pit pony!

Claire Danes: deceptively vulgar; can burp the word Torremelinos unaided...

Daley Thompson: surprisingly vulnerable. Vegan.

Gloria Hunniford: A dab hand with a ratchet screwdriver. No idea in the sack.

Belinda Carlisle: obsessed with walnuts...

Imelda Marcos: squidgy...

Michael Crawford: haunted.

Kate Winslett: borderline diabetic. Lives on salt & shake....

Gary Rhodes: A connoisseur of the garter belt.

Sherilyn Fenn: card carrying Republican. Disturbing views on eugenics...

Isla St. Clair: vicious and indiscreet purveyor of love bites.

Maddhur Jaffrey: waspish. Has own clamps.

Tanya Beckett: Miss Bossyboots (but not in a good way...)

Paul Nicholas: kleptomaniac.

Paula Abdul: Paula Ab*DULL*

Martha Kearney: pert and wise.

Edna O'Brian: Motormouth. Also talks too much.

Nicholas Soames: Surprisingly naiive for a former rent boy.

Amanda Donohoe: alarming stubble. Legs could do with a shave too...

Sian Williams: only puts out in public libraries...


Disputed paternity suits:


Peaches Geldof

Fearne Cotton ( I would have had to have been 12...)

Mika (has my chin, according to his legal team...)

Jules Wilson (also has my chin, but her mothers thighs and bazoombas...)

Objectum sexual:

The A25
Hole punches
Hilligdon Hospital
Tote bags
Magpie Annual, 1975
Secateurs
Coffee & walnut cakes.
Daniel Corbett
A 2 week old Toblerone

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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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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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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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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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..."

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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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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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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Tramp Smash...

I'm delighted with the way my latest video has turned out. As you'll already know, I really think that the new crop of songs I'm working on with Eno, Visconti, Fripp and the Brotherhood of Man are my most potent since Gestapo Gizzard - and *that's* praise indeed! So you can imagine my even greater delight when we managed to secure the services of none other than Ms. Alison Goldfarpp to play the lead role in the little promo piece we've done for it...



(We were hoping to get Helena Bonham Carter, but sadly she was unavaliable as she's currently being used to frighten off crows in a field in Derbyshire. She says the hours are long and the work's a bit dull, but other than that at least she's out in the open air and, besides, what more could a girl want than to have a ruddy great pole up her arse from dusk 'til dawn....least, I *think* he's from Poland....)

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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The Victoria Station Incident...

I'm pleased to report that RCA have unearthed yet another lost gem from the vaults. "Tramp Smash" is an out-take from the Freikorps Clambake sessions that took place at Hansa-by-the-Wall studios sometime in the late 1970s. The song was written with Iggy Pop in Berlin on a banjolele - shame that, it was brand new one too....just couldn't stand the combined weight of his six pack and my stack heels... My, my, it's great to hear Eno's sublime two note synth riff again. 3 weeks he spent working on that. Then, in an inspired Eureka moment, he decided to turn the synthesizer on. The rest, as they say, is history. Can't believe we got away with all that top on the tambourine either. Still, that Visconti's a genius with percussion...and has a rarely acknowledged flair for embroidery too, as it goes...

Sadly, the release of FreiKorps Clambake was somewhat overshadowed by my return to Britain from Bavaria. Of course the press made a meal of it as per, and blew the whole thing *completely* out of proportion. I was just on my way to lend a hand at the Unity Mitford Shelter for Underprivileged Blond(e) Haired, Blue-eyed Orphans, and just happened to be wearing fancy dress for a little party we were throwing for the kids in celebration of the anniversary of the Anschluss with Austria and the re-militarization of the Ruhr. Happy days. Poor old Unity though - *so* misunderstood. Born in a small town in Canada called Swastika, and christened Unity Valkyrie Mitford by her demented, extreme right-wing, Jew-hating parents, she became a member of the British Union of Fascists, holidayed with Adolf Hitler and tried to blow her brains out when war was declared in 1939, her long cherished dream of unifying Hitler's Germany and Britain to form an Aryan super power left entirely in ruins. And from that, people have somehow made her out to be some sort of... I dunno, Nazi Sympathiser or something. That's journalists for you.

And so it was with me - a harmless attempt at recreating John Cleese's Ministry for Silly Walks skit whilst dressed in fullblown Waffen SS uniform, interspersed with the odd Seig Heil and cries of "He had *TWO* actually* was somehow massaged by a spiteful media into an embarrassing display of neo-Nazi fascist posturing.

Last time I buy the Daily Mail.

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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