Reggie Burger and The Crusty Buns
Furious doesn’t even begin to describe the way I feel! All this time I have been surrounded by a nest of vipers, clasping the asp to my bosom and well and truly led up the garden path by a snake in the bloody grass!
“Fish and chips!” I yelled, “Fish and bloody chips! Thirty pieces of bloody silver, it should be!”
I was sitting in the lockup at the time, having had one filthy rotten day of it. So when Kevin turned up with cod and chips for me and hake and chips for Bert Snide whose lockup it is, I was in no bloody mood for polite bloody banter, I can tell you.
The day started bad enough when Zanya and the gorilla turned up at half past eleven. She’d seen my advert in the Melody Maker and so she phoned up yesterday to make an appointment.
“I feel I have all the talents for which you seek,” she burbled.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I wittily riposted, “All you have to do is wear a see-through bra and go ‘Shoo-bop-be-do’ every once in a while.”
She paused. I got the impression that a thought was struggling into life. Then she said, “Yeah, I can do that. Maybe not straight away. But once I’ve had a chance to rehearse...”
However, when she turned up for the interview, I knew right away that she was not my idea of a Raspberry Nipple. The girls I had in mind were young, creamy of complexion, rosy of cheek, innocent as the day is long... and if they also happened to have a pair of bazoomers that could poke your eyes out, that would be a distinct advantage.
Zanya, to her credit, had the bazoomers but in all other respects she was lacking. How can I put this gallantly? She looked like a trollop. The sort of girl you expect to see leaning in doorways in certain parts of Soho (which, I should hastily add, I do not myself frequent). She must have been thirty-five if she was a day and she had thighs that went up to her waist. Of this I was certain due to the fact that the mini-skirt she was wearing came to an abrupt end about two inches below her hips.
Nevertheless, being a gentleman, I might have been prepared to overlook her age and her gynaecological mode of dress. What I could not overlook was her minder, a man whose nose had been broken so many times it no longer seemed attached to any one part of his face but moved around it, slug-like, whenever he growled in my general direction - which, I have to say, was something he did with alarming frequency.
“Hi,” trilled Zanya, “I’ve come for the job.”
“The lady,” grunted the minder, “Has come for the job.”
“Well, I said, it’s not exactly a job, you know, not a hard and fast guaranteed job, I mean. It’s more by way of an audition.”
The complexity of the sentence seemed to defeat the minder. He glowered at me, wobbled his nose menacingly and repeated, “The lady has come for the job.”
Behind me, I heard something move and, turning, was just in time to see a monumental heap of elasticated corsets tumbling gently to the floor as Bert made an adroit exit.
But let me not depress you with the remaining dismal events of my miserable morning. Suffice to say that, somewhat against my natural inclination but with the firm encouragement of her large and hairy friend, I finally agreed to employ Zanya as the leading Raspberry Nipple (‘Posh Nipple’ we’ve decided to call her) at a fixed income of £200 a week with extras due to personal appearances and recording royalties to be negotiated at a later date. It barely needs to be said that I haven’t got £200 a week to spare and, even if I did, Zanya would not be my preferred way of spending it. Fortunately, I was careful to avoid giving her my name. The only phone number and address they have at their disposal is Bert Sneed’s lockup, so that’ll be something for Bert to deal with. He’s got a natural talent with gorillas and women of low morals so it should be a pushover for him.
Not that there is going to be anything to deal with, it now turns out - not in terms of Dolly Pop and The Raspberry Nipples, at any rate. That whole glorious vision of my future career in the glittering world of pop impresarioship has come crumbling down about my knees like an underbaked lemon meringue pie! And all thanks to Kevin!
“Take your bloody fish and chips and shove them where the sun don’t shine!” I hissed magisterially.
“I’ll ‘ave ‘em,” said Bert who, having already devoured a large portion of hake and chips, promptly snatched away the cod and chips intended for me which (I now discovered) came complete with a pot of curry sauce on the side. This, I couldn’t help but feeling, considerably spoilt the dramatic effect for which I was striving.
Now you may be wondering why it was that I was venting my spleen in this manner upon the despicable Kevin. I’ll tell you. It turns out that all this time while I’ve been labouring night and day to recruit an all-girl pop group, Dolly Pop and The Raspberry Nipples, Kevin has been going behind my back and whipping the rug from under my feet. Or to put it another way, he’s been smooth talking (and not just ‘talking’, if you want my opinion!) Geoffrey - who you may recall is the A&R man whose record company is, or was, so damn’ keen on Dolly P and the Raspberry Ns - and this same slippery Kevin has now persuaded the slimy Geoffrey that it’s not an all-girl group but an all-boy group that the record buying public craves. And need I tell you which boy Kevin has in mind as the lead singer?
So the upshot is that Geoffrey has now decided that Dolly Pop and the Raspberry Nipples is a non-starter, dead in the mud and last year’s thing; and what the screaming hordes of spotty teenagers really want is Reggie Burger and The Crusty Buns. That, incidentally, is to be the name of the group. Pure plagiarism. I mean, just because I came up with the ice-cream angle - the Raspberry Nipples - they have to come up with a hamburger theme - The Crusty Buns. Well, I tell you this: if Geoffrey knew as much about Kevin as I do, he’d know just how crusty those buns really are! And I don’t mean that in a nice way...
Ah well, let’s look on the bright side. I’m, well off out of it, I reckon. Show business, I mean. Pshaw! I shall return now, refreshed, to my true calling - investigative journalism.
So, let’s see what I’ve got lined up for the coming week. Oh yes, an interview with Jay from Bucks Fizz about her first childhood romance. And one with Limahl about his favourite school meals. All kissing, cuddling and spotty dicks then.
It’s at moments like these that I feel privileged to have been called to the great and noble art of Journalism. By Heaven, if journalism was good enough for Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, it shall be good enough for me!
one comment:
Never fear, sir. Crusty Buns are a poor substitute for Raspberry Nipples.
Lord Likely () (URL) - 26 10 07 - 20:12
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