Tuesday 28 August 2007
darkneon writes...
If you’d seen the size of his bleedin’ house, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s in one of those leafy suburbs way out North, past Belisize Park. Not so much house as a mansion. Like the place that JR geezer lives in Dallas. Only in Belsize Park instead of Dallas.
How’d he manage to make so much bleedin’ dosh, that’s what I’d like to know? I mean, have you seen the stuff he does, on the telly?
The Frankie Fischer Show. Family Fun Time. Bloody rubbish. It’s what I call telly for grannies. Old women seem to love him. They think he’s having affair with that blonde girl on his show, Shirley something. They think he’s a nice, clean-living young man and they all want to mother him. Yeah, well, they wouldn’t think that if they knew what I know.
Anyway, I dropped off the stuff as per usual. Frankie himself wasn’t there. It was that bald geezer, Tom, who’s his ‘manager’ or something. Miserable git. Gives you one of those looks down his nose as though you smell like old socks. Anyway, what’s it to me? I’m only the delivery boy. I just drop off the stuff and I collect my wage. I have to say that I wonder though, sometimes, what it would be worth if I decided to sell my story - to The Sunday People or The New of the World. The stuff I could tell them would be worth a fortune, I bet! But then again, it wouldn’t be worth the hassle. I’m doing all right as I am and there are people in this business who you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. I don’t only mean the top guys like Mr King. I mean the local mob. Some of them are really hard bastards. They’d break your legs just for the fun of it. It’s not a risk I’d want to take. Like old Max says, ‘Discretion, my son, is the better part of valour,’ which means, apparently, that when you’re in this line of business it’s safest if you keep your mouth shut before someone takes it into their minds to shut it for you.
One thing people can rely on with me is that I don’t blab. That’s why I keep getting the work. I’m good at my job.
Tuesday 21 August 2007
darkneon writes...
I know something’s up as soon as I get in there. I see two blokes thumbing through some magazines and Mick’s behind the counter smoking a fag and doing a crossword. Just like usual. Except it isn’t like usual. Because the door to the backroom is locked which means trouble because if the door to the backroom is locked it means no one can get in to get the hardcore, which is what they come for, most of them, and where the money is. So I look at Mick and I say “Quiet, today?” and I glance towards the locked door so he knows what I’m getting at.
And Mick says, “So, so,” not giving anything away.
And I say, “Had any gentlemen in, today, Mick?” by which I mean, the plod.
And Mick says, “Not so far. Be in around tea time, probably. Three. Half-past.”
“Oh?” I say, “Shame. I’m busy this afternoon. Going fishing,” which is my code word for saying ‘going to see a man about a dog’, “You need any help? Cleaning up or anything?”
“It’s OK,” he says, “It’s all under control.”
By that he means that they’ve already cleared it, the hardcore, Irish Jim and Big Ivan probably. Stacked t up somewhere safe, out of the way, until the plod has been and gone. This happens about every two months usually. Only recently it’s been happening more often. Can’t be more than three weeks since the last time. It’s a racket, really. Mick always gets the tip-off and the plod never find anything. Usually what happens is that they send one or two of the plain clothes mob around, they have a quiet word with Mick, they have a flip through a few mags and they take a few of the choicest ones for themselves under the pretence that they’re seizing them or something, the dirty buggers - and then, off they go. All very friendly like. Mick knows most of them by their first names. Not sure what the financial arrangements are; all I know is that Mick is always in a piss-awful mood afterwards, which is why I decide to clear off out of it. Besides which, as I said, I had an appointment anyway. I only came in to drop off some merchandise to Mick but, as he was expecting visitors, I decided it’d be better to wait until some other time.
ON the way out I glance over at the magazines the two punters are thumbing through. Soft stuff. British, which is another way of saying boring as shit. You know what they say, anything at a jauntier angle than Cornwall is porn. So the boys in the British mags are droopy as hell. I’ve never been to Cornwall myself. If them mags are anything to go by, I probably won’t neither.
Sunday 12 August 2007
boop-a-doop-boy writes...
It’s been hectic this past couple of weeks. I did the interview with Annabella, then I met Martin Fry from ABC (in a cheap caff in Notting Hill Gate – and
I had to pay for the teas – bloody cheek!), then there was an interview with the Stranglers. They turned up two hours late and their press person warned me not to annoy Jean Jacques Burnel because he doesn’t like journalists, apparently, and Barry (the Flexipop! editor) said Jean Jacques would probably throw me out of the window and then he laughed and added, “...and I’d give him a helping hand myself!”
Very dry sense of humour, that Barry. He wasn’t in a good mood though, really, as he’d bought 200 red carnations from the local florist. He wanted a picture of The Stranglers lying on the floor covered in flowers for some reason and he’d asked the florist if he could rent a few bunches and take them back when we’d finished, but she was having none of it. “The only flower that leaves this shop is a flower that’s bought,” she said, “We don’t do sale or return, you know.” In the end Barry negotiated a 20 per cent discount and she chucked in a free cactus.
Anyway, back to the big news, which I was about to tell you before all this work got in the way, about Emma and her new boyfriend. He is, it now transpires, not a Spanish contortionist at all but,
au contraire, a novelty act by the name of Elvis Aris (‘the amazing bottom impersonator’) who has made it big (according to Emma, who didn’t actually specify what
‘it’ might be but, given her well-known predilections, I think I can hazard a guess) on the club circuit up North.
The gist of his act, as far as I can gather, is that his talented buttocks do impressions of famous people. He exposes his bum to the awe-struck audience and, thanks to extraordinary muscle coordination, a bit of miming and a few well-placed props, he entertains them with hour after hour of life-like impersonations of celebrities past and present. Sir Winston Churchill is one of his specialities – he does the ‘This is our finest hour’ speech, complete with cigar! He also mimes to the hits of the late and great Elvis Presley –
Love Me Tender, Jail House Rock and (the climax of his show)
All Shook Up.
Emma really does have some very strange tastes in men. Norm is the only boyfriend she’s had who would merge into a crowd. Unfortunately for Norm, he is so mergeable that, once merged, you’d never be able to find him again. Personally, I reckon Elvis Aris is just one of her passing infatuations. I have no doubt that he could entertain her of an evening in ways that are unknown to Norm. All the same, if you want my view, her heart belongs to Norm when all is said and done...
Oh, I’ve just remembered. I haven’t brought you up to date with Kevin’s latest exploits, have I? He’s mixing in with a bad crowd, if you want my opinion. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude but, I mean to say, the baby oil was bad enough, but the snake is taking it all one step too far!
More on that later...
Wednesday 01 August 2007
boop-a-doop-boy writes...
“My earliest memories are of running about with no clothes on and drinking my own urine...”
I had a feeling Barry’d love that line. And, sure enough, he did. Gaffawed is what he did when he read it. Positively guffawed! Tim wasn’t so enthusiastic, though. I have a feeling he thinks this kind of thing brings down the tone of the magazine.
“I was about thirteen when I first began having sexual urges.”
I should, perhaps, point out at this juncture that this is not
me I’m talking about. I can honestly say that I don’t recall ever having even the teeniest desire to drink my own (or anyone else’s urine). Moreover, my sexual urges had certainly made themselves known at a somewhat earlier phase of my life...
“All of a sudden I started getting very interested in girls.”
...and in somewhat different directions. The quotes above are (as any regular reader of this journal will surely by now have deduced) taken from my recent interview with Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I went and interviewed him in his record company’s offices for a Flexipop! article all about his childhood memories. It’s a sort of ‘ghost writing’ I suppose because when it’s printed in the magazine, I won’t even get a mention. Readers are supposed to think that Mr Rowland felt a sudden urge to unburden his soul by divulging the sordid details of his urine-drinking youth to the favoured readers of Flexipop! whereas, in reality, it was I who had to draw out each squalid little morsel when all
he wanted to talk about was his blasted new album...
“It happened one day as I was lying in bed,” Kevin continues, “It was one of the many days on which I was pretending to be ill in order to get off school, and I’d got my sister’s comics out and I noticed these photographs of teenage girls. From then on I was determined to have sex.
“My first sexual experience was with the vicar’s daughter. She was about fifteen and one day we just went back to her house and she seduced me...”
But you don’t want to read any more about that - or of his strange desire to become a hairdresser and design women’s clothes. Anyhow, if you
do, you’ll just have to wait a couple of weeks until the next issue of Flexipop! comes out. As usual, it’ll be packed with fab stuff - most of it written by yours truly...
Tim (he’s one of the editors of Flexipop!) has booked me an interview with Annabella from BowWowWow! tomorrow. He says he thinks it would be interesting if I asked her for her views on the pressures which our patriarchal society exerts upon the post-feminist, post-modern, post-apocalyptic female psyche. Barry (the other editor) wants me to ask her if she farts in the bath. I think I may try to steer a course somewhere between those two extremes.
I can’t help wondering if my literary talents might not be wasted on Flexipop!
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