‘I, having watched one of the old movies which included Jane, Boy and Cheetah or the Ron Ely TV series on a Sunday morning, would run around the house or garden pretending to be Tarzan. This would not involve a loin cloth, but would involve a wooden spoon (which was my knife) tucked into my trousers and me calling to my imaginary jungle friends to help me fight off the baddies.
‘Given the two near misses with Gill (Scott Heron) and Davy (Jones – The Monkees) we had two bands that we’d not ticked off our list in our sights; The B52s, my girlfriends favourite band ever and Status Quo which it was clear that I would be doing without her.
‘Then there was the time, at the Tate Modern when we walked through to a room which we thought was empty, as it only had a single light bulb hanging down in it, only to discover that the light bulb was in fact the art installation.
How, in that other underwater based boyhood TV programme Stingray, given that it was made in the 60s and included so many marine based and alliterative names; The main characters (from W.A.S.P) were based in Marineville, there was a character called Atlanta, the mermaid was Marina, there was a Sam Shore and the hero was Troy Tempest, had they not thought to include the singer Sandie Shaw (Sandy Shore) especially as she sang Puppet on a String?’
“Final question, with all of the great stories in the book, have you left anything out?”
“It’s funny you should ask that Frank. I did realise the other day that there’s no mention of when I lived in Margate, where we had pole dancers practice in our lounge, that Ronnie Biggs’ Father-in-law was the headmaster at my first school, or that my girlfriend photographed a dominatrix as part of her photography degree”.