Emma Hits Rock Bottom

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...

Debauchery with Dexy’s

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!