This Christmas

His hand shook as he reached for the doorbell. Was it nerves? Was it the weed? Was it a mixture of both? No sooner had he pushed the button, the door opened.

“Were you expecting me?” he asked as the door flew open.

“I sort of suspected you might come to the door when I heard the bang from the living room,” said the home owner.

The caller wondered if this was a reference to the BMW he had just crashed through the man’s living room wall or some other bang. He decided to play it casual by leaning on a wheelie bin.

“Well,” said the home owner, who we’ll call Lance because if you read ahead you’ll see he introduces himself later, “have you got nothing to say about the BMW that just crashed into my living room with a very loud bang?”

Shit. He’d been rumbled. He’d hoped to avoid discussing the whole messy business. He was sure he could reverse out of the whole without causing any more structural damage. He continued to play it casual.

“Don’t you mean a very loud Wham?” he asked.

“What?”

“Don’t you mean a very loud Wham?” he asked.

“Oh my God, are you George Michaels?” asked Lance.

“Yes,” said George, for it was he, “I am George Michael.” It was always nice to be recognised by a fan as they usually let you off for a hundred quid and some tickets to your show, if it was very bad you had to perform your old stuff at the show, this might have been one of those times.

“Well? What do you have to say about the hole in my wall? You could have killed someone!”

“I forgot the first rule of driving….”

He paused. Lance paused. They both paused. George Michael imagined he asked “What’s the first rule of driving George Michael?” because that’s what he wanted him to say to make the joke seem spontaneous.

“Wake up before you go go.”

He paused.

Two minutes later, He’d explained the joke to him but he still hadn’t asked for an autograph. Must be a Spandau Ballet fan, dick.

“Look, I’ll pay for the wall, and the replacement of any broken furniture,” said George Michael.

“And the dead cat?”

“Why did you have a dead cat?”

“I didn’t. I had an alive cat sleeping by the radiator.”

“I’m friends with Damien Hurst, you’ll never even notice the difference. Anyway it’s not just you who’s had a hard time you know, I had to crawl to Freedom!” He paused. “I did a song called Freedom. It’s funny. Can I come in though, I have a rather delicate matter to discuss?”

Lance eventually relented and bought George Michael a cup of coffee to try and sober him up. “I asked for a kebab,” said George Michael, but smiled and thanked Lance remembering that he needed something from this Lance. “What’s your name?” asked George.

“Lance.”

“Lance, I need to ask you if you know a man called Michael?”

“Maybe, what’s it to you?”

“Michael George?” It didn’t get any funnier with the passing of a year.

“Yeah.”

“And I understand from Michael George that you spent boxing day together last year?” asked George Michael.

“We spent a lot of days together. He’s my boyfriend,” said Lance.

“Yeah, now this is awkward, but did he give you a gift?”

“He gave me his heart.”

“Weeeelll, the thing is, it wasn’t really his to give. You see, he works for the company that do my PR, that’s why no embarrassing stories about me ever get into the press, and about this time last year, I was in the gents, he was in the gents, I was drunk, shit happens. I know now that it wasn’t the real thing but I kinda…for Christmas…you’re going to laugh…” Lance’s face was anything but laughing. In the moments when his face was lit up by the orange glow of the hazard lights he looked quite angry. George hoped that the scowl was just a reaction to the scent of his dead cat’s innards rather than any malice towards the UKs favourite 80s pop star* (*second favourite according to an ITV poll, fuck Tony Hadley). “Well I gave him my heart, long story short.”

Lance punched George around his well-groomed beautiful features.

“Yes, I agree it was an inappropriate gift,” said George calmly, “but easy to get hold of at the last minute when you realise you haven’t given your Secret Santa anything.”

“You’re a piece of shit!” exclaimed Lance.

When George Michael had finished recounting the stories of his various appearances on Comic Relief, he came back to the question he had intended to ask originally. “My heart. I need it back.”

“Why? You shouldn’t have given it away.”

“I know, it was,” ashamed he almost whispered the last word, “Careless.”

“Well why do you want it back, you’ll only lose it again, or clog it up with kebab fat,” shouted Lance.

“Oh ye of little…faith,” said George. No laugh. One more try. “Faith!” This really was easier when it was fans, who just wanted your sex.

“I want to give it to someone special.”

“Are you saying my boyfriend isn’t special? Who could be more special than Michael George?” He was bitter, sarcastic, “Who is this special person? Your father figure?”

George Michael’s face lit up, “now you’re getting it. Bygones be bygones, I’ll be on my way. Signed photo?”

Lance gave him a black eye.

George rubbed his eye and got up off the floor, “This was supposed to save me from tears!”

Lance bit George hard through his ear and drew blood. George backed off, and kept his distance and tried not to make eye contact with Lance.

“So,” said Lance, “this is your heart then.” He took the heart from a shelf, it still had a note on it which read I Love you, I meant it. He held it above the fire and George watched it start to burn and the malicious grin spreading across Lance’s face, as he held it above the flames.

“Wait?” said Lance, “I’ve got a better idea.”

Lance hooked George Michael to the back of the door and left him hanging there like a yo-yo. George Michael reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone. “Andrew,” he said, if you’ll take as read the procedures of unlocking and dialling, “I need help. I’ve been kidnapped again! No this isn’t like that time I couldn’t find my way out of David Hasselhoff’s house. But listen Andrew, he’s not a fan! I repeat he is not a fan of Wham!...I know right!...So you need to be a man undercover. Save me, Andrew Ridgely, you’re my only hope.”

Andrew Ridgley arrived, a man undercover and tore Lance apart. “Where did your heart go?” asked Andrew. They both nodded in recognition.

“He put it on ebay. It’s now part of some middle aged woman’s collage.”

It's A Kind of Magic, I suppose

We have Magic FM on at work at the moment. We need something that can fade into the background and everyone can agree on so Magic FM, like most of commercial radio to be fair, fits the bill. You can be certain what you hear wont be too controversial because it's the same songs that were on at that time yesterday only with slightly different topical DJs comments in between. Today he said "its' the wettest January since 1870, if you can believe that." *looks out the window, remembers all the news has been banging on about since the Queen's, Pope's and Archbishop's Christmas messages* yeah I actually can believe that.

It's good background stuff though, the most modern and controversial they get is the soundtrack to Despicable Me 2. Now that is a good song. Gotta love Pharrell. Was anyone else slightly disappointed that Peter Capaldi's costume didn't include that hat?

There are traffic and travel updates every 20 minutes as well, which is nice because you know the customers got home from the pub safe when you don't hear anything on the news.

The actual news is also a good in the pub because it gets an animated conversation started around the bar, usually one about paedophiles or flooding at the moment. Does anybody else wonder, if God sent the floods because of gay marriage what the heck's gonna happen when he finds out what Ken Barlow got up to? I'm building an ark from the blueprints they discovered, according to the news, just in case.

Yesterday they told us that: if you want to get a catchy song out of your head you should hum another song "like 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' or the national anthem" and that will get the first song out of your head.That was on the news. The actual news for the 31st January 2014 was that. The actual fucking news. I could have told them that. We were told "scientists have found that" as if that immediately makes it news! It wasn't some experiment, they just happened to notice it in the course of their day! They could equally have reported that "chef's have discovered that," of "antiques dealers have discovered" or "convicted housebreakers have discovered" we've all bloody discovered! Scientists are slow on this one. And even if we didn't know it already: STILL NOT NEWS! How greatly is the world being improved by that? The reason I've never had a great novel published isn't solely coz I've got an awful song stuck in my head and if it was replacing it with 'The Final Countdown' would not fix that!

We need to find something to replace the adverts too. In one ad break on Magic FM we went through adverts reminding you to write your will, an advert offering services to help you through a divorce (legal services, not a hooker) and an incredibly dodgey advert from the NSPCC called 'The Underwear Rule' which advises you on how to warn your kids about paedophiles. I'm sure when I was a kid, I was told "don't talk to strangers" and "don't accept sweets", although I ignored both rules, how do you make friends if you don't talk to strangers? And more importantly, sweets! If you say no to sweets, you're a fool! Worry about your weight when you're older. This new advert though has a mother asking her child what the underwear rule is and a kid tells his mother it's that "the parts of my body that are in my underwear are private" someone should have told prince Harry, "and if anyone tries to touch me there, I should tell you."
"Very good," says the mother.
"Can I have a prize for remembering? I want a giraffe," says the child.
If I got given a pet tiger whenever I got touched up, I'd be walking down the street shouting paedophile at everyone who passed. You can't offer a prize for having your junk handled by the bloke from Corrie in the park, kids will be asking people to fondle them.

There's also an RSPCA advert now advising parents not to give giraffes as a present in any circumstances.

Back to the music. They do these sections of '40 minutes of uninterrupted hits.' Apparently 'uninterrupted' by anything apart from adverts and DJs talking, but you never read the small print do you?

I say 'hits,' the other day they played another one of Rick Astley's songs. Yeah, you heard right, there's another Rick Astley song! It's called 'Givin' Up On Love,' does that mean in your famous song you were lying to us Rick? Suddenly the world seemed like a harsher, colder, less cheesy place.

One of my favourite often repeated songs on Magic FM is Bruno Mars's latest unnoticeable snore generator 'When I Was Your Man.' In which he whines that "I should have bought you flowers and held your hand." Yeah? Well you should have thought of that before you went and did a silly thing like catch a grenade just to impress her you twit! She just wanted to hold your hand but you went and blew it up to impress a girl. Who catches a grenade Bruno? Who does that? Bat it back in the direction of the thrower! And also, if you're going out with a woman someone is chucking grenades at you've got to ask if she's really ideal girlfriend material.
So I guess you can't simultaneously hold her hand and buy her flowers, but you can still do one at a time can't you? Oh no, coz some idiot went and threw his other hand on a blade for her. You ever consider using a blade to cook for her? You are such a show off Bruno. Get the knife, chop some onions, make her a nice meal, she's yours. Don't go "hey, look what I can do. Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Aren't I tough? Marry me."
Well at least you're still able to go on long romantic walks with her, well if you hadn't jumped in front of a train for her that time. It's not like in cartoons Bruno, you wont just fall off the front of the train at Kings Cross, you're gonna get fucked up and delay everyone's journey. It's one thing to do it out of depression, doing it to impress a girl who wants flowers and hand holding is frankly, selfish, stupid and not as effective as getting on a train and taking her for a day out.
Will you ever learn? Not now you've taken that bullet through the brain for her you wont. And again, who is shooting at your girlfriend Bruno? I think if assassins are after you that's really the kind of thing that you should bring up early on in a relationship. Given how callous she seems to be about using her dates as a human shield in these situations, I don't think you need to worry about whether holding her hand and buying her flowers would have saved the relationship, she sounds like a bitch.

"Coz my heart breaks a little when I hear your name, it all just sounds like uh, uh, uh."
"uh, uh, uh"? Have you forgotten her name Bruno? Not gonna lie, this is a terrible relationship you are both far better off out of it.

For balance, in case I've been too mean to Bruno Mars and coz we should end on a positive note, his video with Mr Spock is very very good. Goodbye internet.

 

 

If that's stuck in your head now, just think of 'The Final Countdown.' 

 



 

 

Fringe Benefits - Day 1

Last month I went on a four day mini-holiday to Edinburgh. I avoid the word mini-break because it was far from a break, there was lots of walking, a fair amount of drinking, early mornings, late nights and lots and lots of doing of things.

To set the scene, since 2007 I have been on five holidays, four of them have been to the beautiful city of Edinburgh during August and have been wonderful. The one time I broke the trend for a June or July trip to France with seven good friends, it ended so disastrously that by the end of it only five of those people were friends and worse still, I had horrific sunburn. I knew I was crazy to mess with the holiday gods, there was never any danger of that in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is like my second, perhaps even, third home.

In a slapdash effort of last minute organising over a pizza at Ben's house - well over my pizza that Ben and Thom also ate - we planned our trip to the greatest comedy and arts festival in the world. It was brilliant and the month or so that followed was filled with pure excitement. What could possibly go wrong? (In fact, nothing, and nothing did go wrong, I'm trying to hook you into this story now before it just turns into reviews of comedy shows...shouldn't have said that. Fuck. It's got a shocking ending, I promise.)

Nothing, in fact, went wrong, but that's not how it seemed at 4am on Tuesday when I had to wake up for our journey to the airport. Our flights were early and cheap and, remarkably painless. For precisely this reason I'm in two minds about this Scottish independence thing, on the one hand, I love how easy and relatively comfortable all the airport shenanigans involved with an internal flight are, but I also wish there was one of those pretty stamps in my passport to commemorate this trip, rather than simply a print out with my name, flight time, a bar code and a list of hand-luggage restrictions. Conversely, I also believe on a metaphorical third hand that you should stop being silly Scottish nationalists. God if the SNP are successful, it'll make my holidaying as stressful as everyone else's, plus they wont pay any child support to us to help bring up Wales.

So we arrived in Scotland and took a bus to the city centre for £1.40....I repeat a £1.40 bus ride...a figure as low as that has not been paid on the privatised buses of Welwyn Garden City since 1924, when Barry caught a bus to visit his next door neighbours. We arrive in the city centre and take a little walk up the Royal Mile.

Day 1 - The Royal Mile. 12noon

The best way to describe the Royal Mile during the Edinburgh festival is: recycling waiting to happen. When you first step onto the royal mile, look up. Then look back down again, your hand is now full of flyers. As you proceed down the mile, past street theatre and makeshift stages, you will be handed more and more flyers. To count them is like counting grains of sand or stars in the night sky: pointless, hard work and probably really really amazing to Professor Brian Cox (Please note: but not to actor Brian Cox who couldn't give a fuck). The Royal Mile is a great street that branches off into roads that connect to all the bigger Edinburgh venues, but my god it's worth avoiding if you're in a hurry to get to one of those. Amongst the throng of people, as a flyer for a comedy show is handed to me by a man in his underpants (I make a note to file it somewhere safe and see that show as underpants are clearly funny, but alas a sharp wind and my wrist action sends it floating into a bin in a screwed up heap), I hear a sound. A sound that would haunt me for the remainder of my stay in Edinburgh. If it was an image I would still see it everytime I closed my eyes, but you cant close your ears so the metaphor is useless! I heard it a bit when my ears popped on the plane though. I speak of the horror of acapella. It's everywhere in Edinburgh. Someone, once decided that music would be better without music, they were wrong and everyone to have performed it since then has been wrong too. Just as people who juggle or pretend to be statues are wrong to call it street-theatre. I cant deny there is a lot of street involved, but it is hardly on a par with Hamlet or even Mama Mia. "My bikes only got one wheel," yeah, it was fucking clever the first time I saw that, but word of advice...it's been done.

Sean Hughes: Life Becomes Noise - Pleasance Forth - 5:30PM

Ah, Sean Hughes, proof of the old saying "Never let yourself be replaced by Bill Bailey. You will only be forgotten." The underrated (my opinion, but coincidentally factually correct) former Buzzcocks team captain and Coronation Street star whose dad has recently died.

More on that later. But first news of the queue. Don't worry, my obsession with Edinburgh does not yet stretch to reviewing the queues (for anyone interested, comfortably short, plenty of breathing space in front and behind and a pleasing amount of sunshine (4/5)). It was while queuing for this particular show that another show was ending around the corner in the Pleasance Grand. The Pleasance is my favourite Edinburgh venue. A collection of rooms that are part of the university the rest of the year. Some rooms clearly designed to be theatre space, others are bars or gyms or small rooms of no significance 11 months of the year, but all are venues for top entertainment during August. It's also got a beautiful courtyard where everyone mills around between shows at open air bars and eateries (by which I mean sheds selling burgers). If you're a celebrity spotter, this is the place to be. And coming out of his show at that exact moment while we waited for Sean's show was my comedy hero,  Paul Merton. We'd warmed up earlier on the Royal Mile by meeting Simon Amstell, but my social awkwardness and his made conversation brief at best. A polite "I quite like you on the telly" was all I could muster. Mutual social awkwardness tends not to lead to "Oh wow! How cool! Me too!" type of conversation. But this was Merton. Comedy royalty. The man I aspired to be like. I would have to get a photo, tell him I was coming to his show and embarrassingly attempt a joke in his vicinity. I don't recall the joke or his response, but it was probably a polite "nice try" sort of laugh and we achieved photography, courtesy of Andre Vincent who pushed the button after which point I worked in a mention of The Early Edition just to prove I knew he had a show and wasn't a randomer we'd accosted to get a photo with a much more famous comedian.

Sean's show itself dealt with the death of his father and had something more of a one-man-play style than it did of the stand-up comedy style. Which is not to suggest for a moment that it wasn't funny. It was very funny. Darkly comic throughout but with some great puns too ("My dad's dying of the big C...He's drowning.") with a set and acting performances and puppets, but he drew the audience in with some audience participation too.


Rhys Darby: This Way To Spaceship - Pleasance Grand - 8PM

A surreal stand-up performance. Rhys Darby wakes up on a spaceship and recalls the events of his life to work out how he could have ended up there. A lot of it is observational comedy about dancing in clubs, Dyson hand-dryers and a childhood rebellion on a golf course, but Rhys has a seriously good surreal style and a great turn of phrase (helped by the New Zealand accent) that elevates it to being something brilliant. One of the best stand-up shows I saw at this years fringe. Clever surreal. Better, and slightly more grounded than the Mighty Boosh/Noel Feilding style of surrealness (surrealality?) where nothing makes sense at all. Plus the space ship is voiced by Jermaine which is pleasing.

This one may seem a bit short, but in fact it was one of the best stand-up shows of the 2012 fringe, it's just nothing much happened around it. We found a pub that sold Iduns cider (remember that name, hopefully that stuff is going to be massive) and a delicious steak sandwich, see I knew you wouldn't care.

The Horne Section - Pleasance Grand - 11:15PM

Earlier in the day, we were given a book of flyers for shows at the Bongo Club that included Simon Amstell's. We decided therefore to see Simon Amstell. Sadly he was sold out. Miserable, dejected, we could have left Edinburgh at that moment having failed, or gone to see some acapella. But instead we soldiered on towards the Pleasance - ok it wasn't that hard, it was right next door, but there was a hill! The Pleasance is home to many great acts and so in "the great ticket splurge of 2012" we spent close to £200 (not each) on tickets, and while Ben was entering his card details, I spotted a sign on the wall that announced Simon Amstell would be the special guest joining The Horne Section on stage that night at 11:15pm. Given the title of this section you can probably already guess that we spent some more money and went to see The Horne Section, who were becoming slightly legendary around the festival as a fun way to end the night and had lots of five star reviews.

Firstly, I should mention The Horne Section themselves. They're a band led by Alex Horne who, according to them, are the first to bring music and comedy together. A lot of their songs and routines remain stuck in my head to this day. Especially "This is not the show. This is just the intro" during which they attempted to assess who in the audience was in their demographic and we weren't. Their demographic is only men over thirty with beards. A lot of their routines were very simple musical gimmicks, but they were all very fun and clever at the same time. It was a very nuanced performance (apologies for sounding all wanky like a real critic) with loads of little touches, tiny gestures, quietly brilliant looks and lines that made them stand-out above the rest. As did the fact that they're brilliant musicians - the band clearly excel in their own right outside of this comedy, largely improvised silliness.

Then there were the guests. First up: Lloyd Langford. He's one of those Welsh. He hangs around a lot with Rhod Gilbert on various projects (not the suggest for one moment that all Welsh comedians live in a big house together, but they probably do.) and did a couple of stories from his stand-up show while the band improvised some musical accompanyment. It was clearly a lot of fun for both sides and he interacted a lot with the band, made suggestions, mocked and encouraged them. His stand-up was good too, though having seen a couple of stories from it here, I didn't go and see his actual show. It probably just wouldn't be the same acapella.

The next guests were a very weird pair. I have no recollection of what they were called, as they were slightly drowned out in my mind by the weight and excitement of the other guests, but essentially they were a musical duo that were dressed and made-up as though they had barely survived an apocalypse who played music on a table. That is they slapped a table repeatedly to make a rhythm and music. It may have been some sort of a special magic table, I don't know, but it was very good whatever voodoo they used to create that sound. They slapped each other as well for added amusement and did some Irish dancing.

Then it was the turn of Simon Amstell, originally our main reason for being here and still a very exciting one, but now The Horne Section had proven itself brilliant in it's own right. The only way this could get better is if Simon Amstell did a hilarious medly of I Can Be Your Hero Baby, The Circle Of Life and Kiss From A Rose so it's quite lucky that's what he did, as it was brilliant.

So that's all good then. All the advertised guests have been on and been good and now all that remains is for the Horne Section to do some material about the Olympics and we can all go home to bed - I'm not going to lie, I've been up since four in the morning and it's coming up to one in the morning tomorrow now, I've laughed a lot, I've eaten a lot (when your day is that long, standard mealtimes no longer make sense. When breakfast is at 5am, things get complicated), I've walked about a bit and I've met some famous people. I'm ready for my bed...well someone else's sofa where I will be kipping. "Did everyone enjoy the closing ceremony?" Alex Horne asks. We cheer. "And what was the best bit of the closing ceremony?" he asks. We shout some suggestions "That is was over," being a particular heckle I didn't think I would disagree with prior to the Olympics. "That Paul McCartney didn't sing," heckled another man, this time that I agreed with. "Madness," thought I.
"That's right, Madness," said Alex Horne, either through psychic power or pre-arranged script. In light of the picture that appeared on the projector at that moment probably the latter. The picture was of Madness with a circle drawn around one member of the famous ska band so that we'd spot that he was also part of a certain comedy band. A round of applause ensued. I was in the presence of one of The Madness. I was happy with that. But then, the curtains started twitching and whose this walking out?! It's only fucking Suggs!!! From Madness!!! I cannot stress how awake I was at this point! I joined in with "It Must Be Love" as though it were the national anthem and I were a member of the EDL, probably massively annoying the people around me who wanted to enjoy the music, but guess how much I cared.

All the men with beards got up on the stage and were led out of the room by the wonderful beard of Alex Horne and we virtually skipped - skanked more like - into the bar where we met Paul Merton. It was late now and the bar was empty, aside from the back of a man stood at the bar. A back I had a feeling I recognised. We instantly ran over to the back and told it how awesome we think Madness are, and that we'd just seen him in the Horne Section and it made our night and that we've downloaded Death Of A Rudeboy already and that we'd love to have a photo and that wow! And then we touched Suggs. Actually shook hands with the lead singer of my favourite band ever! No longer so sleepy, adrenaline or something (I'm no biologist, what is it you get when you're excited?), excitaline or something, forced us to go on a little walk and sing Madness songs, before getting a taxi to the wrong place and wandering the cold Scottish streets some more in search of our beds.

Next time: We see a terrible show, more encounters with a comedy legend and some dancing.

Wind Up Toy

Ok, here’s the thing Blogger. I’m reasonably happy with my choices in life. On the whole. I make decisions, pick favourites and stick by them. Most of my decisions in this area have made me happier and certainly I now surround myself with more cheery things. But recently, I’ve started to doubt it, just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my former love Alice. It’s Madness, of course it is, Madness, total divine Madness all the way, but still….Alice.

I should make clear at this point, rather than later on, that I am talking about music here and not revealing some sordid secrets of my love life - I just wanted an opening that misled you into wanting to read what I have to say. The Alice in question is not beautiful, smiley, funny with lovely smelling hair and boobs. In fact he’s ragged and old and wrinkly with messy hair and a giant albino boa constrictor called Katrina, he is Alice Cooper. Yes, you do know him, he did “Schools Out for summer!!”

Anyway, my point is this. Just recently, I have been listening to a lot of Alice Cooper, as you probably all ready know because Spotify now tells Facebook everything - I can never listen to a cheeky bit of S Club again without it grassing me up to all my friends, wanker.

(Er…I don’t do that)

This is all kinda interesting to me and literally no one else, because the other day, I was wondering into town listening to my iPod and in between all the ska, Weird Al, clips from Radio 4 comedy and classic rock that make me feel varied, random and interesting when I shuffle all my tastes, this insignificant Alice Cooper album track tucked away at the end of his 1991, Top 47 bothering album Hey Stoopid came on.

For no adequately answerable reason, I hadn’t heard that song in fucking years. It’s one of my few very favourite songs, I don’t listen to on a weekly or, at least, monthly basis. So I’m having a little walk, thinking about this song, what it means and all the clever little tricks and bits of post-production he uses to make it creepy. All stuff that I think makes me appear deep, analytical and clever. It actually makes me look like a fool who isn’t paying attention to where he’s going and keeps tripping over loose paving slabs or walking into lamp-posts and shoppers. But as I tripped and stumbled into town, it occurred to me that this was the first rock song I can ever remember hearing.

It certainly wasn’t the first rock song I heard. At the moment of my birth, I’m informed that Bohemian Rhapsody was playing - I have a lot of love and respect for my mother for bringing me into this world and more for my dad for not saying “keep it down, I like this one” and letting go of her hand to air guitar to the loud bit. Also, it’s the last track on the album, so there isn’t a chance in hell that it’s the first rock song I heard! But what can I say? Memory can be a fucker.

Bear in mind, I was aged somewhere between 8 and 10 I’d guess, and my music taste up until this point had been largely the fare of school discos and the nightclubs at Haven Holiday Camps(or “singing and dancing” as my young very literal child’s brain called them. I probably called pubs “drinking and puking” too). Now it goes without say that after some Blue slushpuppy (coz it’s obviously the best) and an overdose of Panda Pops, I’ll jump around to any old shite. I think BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! I WANT YOU IN MY ROOM. LETS SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVER was my favourite song for a while. Back in the days when you were too young to know if a song was about sex - I guess it’s the “until forever” bit that’s confusing but then “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, I want you in my room for about 5 minutes then I just want to not fall asleep in the damp patch” was never gonna chart.

Any rock I had listened to from my parents collection was more of the “safe” (that’s a terrible word to describe it, I apologise for my lackadaisical attitude to finding pertinent synonyms) more pop-py stuff. So when I got bored of my pop mix CD and went looking in my dad’s CD collection I found Hey Stoopid and listened to Wind Up Toy for the first time. It elicited a reaction I didn’t know music could. It scared me. At that stage I was pretty much scared of everything by the way: the noise the pipes made in our house at night, the big cupboard in the corner of my room I rarely looked in but once saw a spider when I did, being told off by Mrs. Witchell, the millennium bug. But this song kinda got to me, it was weird and creepy. But it was also kinda exciting and loud and had lots of good words (this is me trying to express the thoughts I had when I was 9, not just being a shite writer). Instead of ignoring it, I decided to listen to it over and over again a hundred times, which was how I responded to anything exciting as a child. I watched new Postman Pat videos until I could quote it. I would slide the CD off the shelf and try not to look at the cover, I couldn’t articulate really how it made me feel, partly coz fear is a really primal, deep and affecting emotion, but also coz at that age nobody had yet taught me the phrase “That is some fucked up shit.”

Then I grabbed some big 90s headphones, plugged them into the big 90s stereo, slid the CD into the drawer between the tape-deck and turntable…look what I’m trying to say is this happened in the past! Before I could do this kinda thing on my computer in the comfort of my own bedroom. Back in primary school I thought I was pretty clever coz Mr Hutton the computer teacher let me help him fix machines coz I knew them, it now occurs to me that computers were just stupid. So in those days where Windows 98 ruled, I would sit in the corner of the living room listening to this album. Sometimes skipping straight to track 12 or stopping at track 8 which is also fantastic.

As the 00s raged and computers grew up - remember the days when the internet was so small Askjeeves was an effective search engine? - I started looking up this Alice Cooper bloke. I’d probably listened to a few of his albums that my dad had by then. His 2003 albumThe Eyes Of Alice Cooper is the first album I ever bought…I say bought, but I pestered my dad for the money. I ended up reading about this stone-cold-sober reformed alcoholic Christian golf-playing old man. Ok, a golf-player who goes on stage every night with a sword and a snake and has his head cut off, but a golf-player nonetheless. Not very rock and roll is it? I think I prefer him for that though, the fact it’s all an act it’s so much more impressive. In terms of his big over-the-top live shows I guess Lady Gaga is the current equivalent (she’s even cited Alice as an influence), and I think I would have a lot more time for her if she could confine her weirdness to a stage between the hours of 7 and 10, and didn’t turn up on Jonathan Ross with a phone on her head. To be fair, back in his youth Alice basically lived the life of his on-stage persona (with less murder and more drinking) until it all but killed him (his From The Inside album partly written while he was in an asylum recovering is phenomenal and blows away every image you might have of his music from his reputation).

This wasn’t my thinking at the time, but what with now wanting to be a writer it seems that I probably like it more that it’s all a story. I don’t particularly like horror in rock, I also love Pink Floyd and went through a Lordi phase after the 2006 Eurovision song contest, but mostly I don’t listen to horror rock. I like lots of it, but nowhere near as much as I like Alice. As I said at the start, I’m more a lighthearted happy ska man. But with Alice, every album tells a story, but better than that, every song tells a story in it’s own right as well. That’s incredibly clever. If you asked me to compile a list of the most underrated writers of all time (and even if you don’t I’ll definitely write a blog about it soon) he’d be up there. His narratives and ideas are so good that in 2011 he released an amazing sequel to his 1975 masterpiece Welcome To My Nightmare. All through his discography are subtle ballads and slow songs and works of beauty too.

These days he’s not seen as the hardest, edgiest rocker, just in the same way The Beatles don’t seem quite so ground breaking because rock has evolved and moved on since, but they started it. I guess these days screemo is the new hardest rock, most of those bands were influenced by Alice, but it’s not the same for me. Screemo is like car horns, the Daily Mail letters page, and the comments on tripadvisor.com: an angry, inarticulate noise. It’s like “Ok, I get that you’re angry. Just calm down. Chill out. Stop shouting and write me a song that tells me why.” Alice’s songs also have a fantastic sense of humour to them, and a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek which I massively love. There is nothing worse than music that takes itself too seriously.

So there you go, I recommend you check out some Alice Cooper for sophisticated, good rock and story telling. I also recommend you check out my friend Lee’s blog for more proper music reviews that aren’t secretly all about me and my adolescence: http://unacclaimedmusicfan.blogspot.com/2012/02/44-and-angels-airwaves.html

And finally to reward you for sticking through my chat about me and Alice Cooper, here is a more mainstream Alice hit and a video with boobies in it. Enjoy

“The world needed bad guys and music. We needed the ultimate rock’n’roll villain…Enter the Coop…the original punk…and the original goth, glam, shock rocker”-Rob Zombie

“When Alice comes on the stage, it’s like a mythical character. He’s still my favourite rock star.”-Vincent Furnier