My Quest For Raspberry Nipples
Auditions start today!I managed to get a corner of Bert Sneed’s lockup for the day. Bert runs a sort of wholesale business north of Camden - washing machines, microwave ovens, hundredweight sacks of dried mango; you name it, Bert can get it. There was a huge roll of rubbery grey stuff lying in one corner, I noticed. “Industrial-strength bra elastic,” Bert says. He reckons it would stretch ten miles once it’s unravelled. I said, “Who’s going to buy ten miles of industrial-strength bra elastic?” He said, “You never heard of trampolines?” I’m not sure about Bert’s sanity, to tell you the honest truth.
I first got to know Bert while doing a photo-story with Tight Fit and bullwhips (the whips being supplied by Bert). It seems he has a keen interest in pop music, especially when it involves semi-clad young women, and even more so if the odd bullwhip can be fitted into the picture. When I told him about the auditions for the Raspberry Nipples, he was immediately enthused.
Anyway, I set up a table in one corner of the lockup, all nice and private, just behind a rack of Australian sheep and kangaroo dip (“Kills scab mite, blow-fly, ticks, keds and lice - dead!!!”), and waited for the applicants to arrive. Emma (or ‘Dolly Pop’ as I suppose I must now call her) was supposed to be there too but she didn’t turn up, which, I have to confess, did not surprise me. The A&R man, Geoffrey, did turn up - two hours late which, for an A&R man is probably as near as makes no difference to being on time.
We had six auditions to get through - the first was booked for 10.30, the last for 4 o’clock. The 10.30 one arrived at 11.30, and the 11.30 one arrived at 12.00. I took Geoffrey down the pub for lunch (he had two pints of Best and a Beef Stroganoff for which I paid as he’d forgotten to bring the company cheque book). After lunch, he scooted off for an urgent appointment with Mick Jagger (so he claims). When I got back to the lockup, there were two semi-naked girls wresting on a moth-eaten chaise longue nestling between a pile of rat traps and toilet plungers.
“Perfect, darling, perfect! Now, if you could just loosen that bra strap a little more...” - these and other, even less savoury, words of encouragement were being sputtered from between Bert’s wetly drooling lips.
“What the bloody hell!” says I, dragging Bert into a discreet alcove just behind a pile of ‘Big Boy’ gentlemen’s athletic supporters (“For the man who wants to stand out in a crowd”), “What the hell’s going on here then, Bert?” says I.
“They turned up while you was away,” says he, “So I auditioned them.”
“We’re supposed to be auditioning for a pop group,” I tell him, “Not for a Roman Orgy.”
“These girls,” he says, wiping a line of drool from his chin, “They’s got what it takes. You mark my words.”
I had a quick peep at them through a crack in the serried ranks of jockstraps. The girls were still at it on the chaise longue. It looked to me as though they’d given up auditioning and had started enjoying themselves.
“They’re too young,” I said.
“You’re never too young,” said Bert, “To be in a pop group, I mean.”
“And the blonde one’s too fat.”
“Well-built,” Bert insisted.
“But can they sing?” I said.
“I never thought to ask,” says Bert.
Anyway, the upshot is that they couldn’t sing a single solitary note between the two of them. So I sent them away, telling them I’d call them if we needed them - which is, however, extremely unlikely bearing in mind the fact that I forgot to ask for their phone numbers.
The 3 o’clock appointment didn’t turn up, which only left the 4 o’clock appointment…
She turned up bang on the dot and sang ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Kids In America’ and the Queen Of Night’s aria from The Magic Flute. She was a real professional with a wonderful voice. In fact, she would have been absolutely ideal if she’d turned up about thirty years earlier. As it is, though, fat middle-aged women who look like my Aunty Beryl on a bad day are not quite the style we are after for The Raspberry Nipples. To be honest, the five ‘girls’ I’ve seen today have all been uniformly dreadful.
I returned home depressed to find a message on my answer machine. It was Emma saying she couldn’t make it to the auditions because she had a cold (which is her way of saying ‘hangover’).
I am starting to wonder if entrepreneurialship is the life for me after all. Maybe I’d be happier just writing articles for Jackie, My Guy and Blue Jeans until I finally kick the bucket. I just don’t know how many more times I can ask pop stars about their first kiss or whether they used to have lumpy custard at school. Is this an entrée into serious journalism, I ask myself? Would Bernard Levin ask Harold Pinter for his thoughts on the lumpy custard of his younger days? Who knows - maybe the Jackie journalist of today is the Marcel Proust of tomorrow...?
I can but hope.
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