Brian Nigel Taylor

All about club life in Switzerland and Austria.

(An interview - my comments and questions in Italics).

I loved my time in Austria but for me Switzerland was the best place to work. The nightclubs and venues had so much class, style and were so well run, it was exciting to DJ there. However, Vienna was a load of fun too, I think of the great times I had with Mike Norwood, Roger Tovell and Andy Sutherland and the crazy things we got up to. I was at the Wake Up, Roger was at Magic Club. We all used to get together in the day, have a few drinks, and here is a picture of a Toga Party we once went to at Mike’s resident gig, St Tropez. I don’t even remember being at that party at all that night. Oh, by the way, Brian continues, did you know that Wake Up burned down? They think it was arson.

There’s a common story about night clubs burning down. And, the question that was always asked was ‘Did the Architect have the new designs before the club burned down or after”?

In Denmark, that happened all the time - especially during the 70s.

Well, not in Vienna, that is the fascinating part. We had opened up and I was the first DJ in. Let me tell you from the first night onwards six days a week we were full. And, we emptied out practically every club in Vienna. We had a huge Saturday Night Fever styled dance floor that was steered by a Commodore computer, we could put different patterns in. New Years Eve we’d put in the Count Down Clock and so on. Clubs that used to have 300 or 400 people a night now had 6. And, this went on for about two years. Then one night I went to sleep and woke up and heard on the twelve o’clock news that Wake Up had burned down. As I went rushing down there I did a walk through with the boss got back to the third bar and found the gasoline canister smelling of gasoline down the back. It wasn’t investigated by the police and they investigated my boss first - obviously. All the furnishings and equipment was only two years old. You don’t deliberately burn a club down that is only two years old!

How about the competition burning it down?

Well, that was it. They did burn it down. We know that, we just don’t know who! But the competition definitely burned it down. And, the boss didn’t have insurance to cover the loss of income whilst it was closed. The one thing he did have going in his favour was he owned his own woodworking company. He used to build restaurants and night clubs so he built that one himself. So, very quickly he put his team together, stripped everything out and rebuilt it. Oh by the way, it was great for me and Mike, Andy and Roger because all the alcohol that was in the bars could not be used anymore, could not be resold or be claimed on the insurance - so me, Mike and Andy collected up all those bottles of booze and put them in a wheelbarrow. Whiskey, bourbon, vodka the lot and ran them down to my flat and put them down in the cellar and that’s how me and the gang were all wasted the next few months.

When did all this happen?

It must have been late 70s, perhaps 1979. And, when we reopened we emptied everyone else out again. It was hilarious.

Whilst Wake Up was closed I was contacted by a little club in Windischgarsten in Upper Austria in the middle of nowhere that wanted help - could I come and rescue him.

My boss at Wake Up said sure I could go and help out as long I was free to come back and work then they reopened.

So I went up there to find out what was going on. I discovered his club was sliding downhill being frequented by cokeheads and heroin addicts and overall was listening to hard rock music and clientele getting stoned in the bathrooms and the Police had raided him twice and told the owner they would take away his licence if it happened again. The owner asked me how do I get out of this? So, I spent a couple of days going round the other clubs listening to what was being played. It was Austro Pop, and what we like to call ‘Fox”. (German Foxtrot) and that’s what was being played locally. So, I said OK this is what we are going to do. I am going to empty out your club in about 15 minutes and then what you are going to do is close down and we are going to come up with a new opening and when we get people in we are going to appeal not just to the kids but the parents as well and you are going to show the parents that there is a change here.

So, on the Saturday night I put a baseball bat right underneath the turntables and put on a cassette to let the people come in and all the drug addicts would come in and these other disgusting people and the place filled up there must have been three or four hundred people there then I switched on the microphone and announced in my best german ‘Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen, ‘change has come to Windischgarsten’ then I hit the button and played “Hands Up” by Ottowan, remember that one? You should have seen the faces of all the Judas Priest fans in the audience. Shock, disbelief and the threatening glares. It was hilarious. I was walking dead! Literally within ten minutes the place was empty. So we closed the club for a short while and for the grand reopening I managed to persuade a very famous comedy duo “Muckenstrunz und Bamschabl” (friends of mine) to come and perform their TV cabaret show just for the cost of the gas. It was stacked to the rafters, parents came with their kids, I mean 14 - 20 year olds. I then played Austro Pop and Fox for a while, and the place was heaving. It was a great success. The owner of the club was voted in as deputy mayor and later mayor of the town. Job done,

I used to love shutting down clubs like that for the right reason! Of course, occasionally I landed in the wrong disco for my record collection and ‘involuntarily’ emptied a couple in my career as well. Can’t win ‘em all!

Another story comes to mind. I remember when Graham Bell (a.k.a Gray Harvey) came to visit us all, it was the day I nearly crippled Mike Norwood. Visits from International D.J.’s generally involved copious amounts of alcohol and after an evening of drinking we all piled into Andy Sutherland’s Rover to drop Graham off at the railway station, he was off to Denmark for his next gig. We put him on the train and went back to my place to continue drinking. The phone rang... it’s Graham whining about how he’d gotten off the train to get a drink and it left without him. Right, back in the car and off we all went to the train station with an inebriated Andy clutching the wheel as the heavy snowfall created whiteout conditions. We searched the train station for a half hour before realising that Graham had had the last laugh on us. We rushed back to the car and piled in before the Rover got snowed in... and in my haste, I slammed the door on Mike’s right hand... Good job he was somewhat anaesthetised from the Vodka Orange... Thankfully, the X-rays came back negative!

Later on, I worked at a great place in Geneva called CLUB VELVET, my first gig in Switzerland.. I think it was your club, Alan, because Ady Babe was in there.

You know, I will tell you what happened. Towards the end of the 80s, most of my International DJs, they kind of rebooked themselves, found their own work, were offered direct residencies by local night clubs…so by then they didn’t need an agent, they didn’t need me. Tschuss, Alan, - farvel og tak! Sure, I remember the Velvet but I think Ady arranged his own contract there.

Well, I didn’t know Ady at the time. I know I arrived a few days early, went down to Geneva and listened to the music that was being played, watching Ady Babe perform.

I sat in the club on the first night and he was the most gracious guy you could ever meet. When you go to a new club in a new country and you don’t know about the music they want it can be quite a challenge. There were assholes who put stickers over their records so you couldn’t see what they were playing. Then there were true gentlemen like Ady Babe who shared his playlist, so I could hit the ground running and play what the crowd loved to dance to. The guy was so gracious from top to bottom. He just wanted to make sure that when I walked into the venue on day one that I was completely prepared. And, that’s rare. He didn’t leave Geneva until he knew I was OK. I think his next gig was the famous CASINO in Montreux,

I was at Club VELVET for three months when the french DJ Frederique from Club GRIFFIN came in and said he was taking vacation for a month would I like to do it? I said, sure why not. I loved the music, here and I loved Geneva. A beautiful night club, with regulars like Charles Aznavour, Julio Iglesias and Davidoff (of cigar fame) with an amazing restaurant. (I put on 10 lbs in a month there!) From there, I was offered a 3 year residency (8 months, Spring and Summer) in Club 58, that was back in 1982. Was that still one of yours?

No, the more international DJs there that were floating around Europe, finding their roots and settling down, it’s quite logical they’d secure the best work around and take residencies. Those clubs would not have to risk taking agencies DJs anymore who might not be up to scratch (‘scuse the pun). But I did have Club 58 as a customer during the 70s. A lot of fascinating stories about it too. A lot of famous diplomats and politicians used to go there…

Yes, I met Kennedy there. Ted Kennedy that is. He walked over to me, I am not going to say who he was with obviously, but asked if I would play ‘I just called to say I love you’.

I also worked with artists like The Platters, Percy Sledge and other great acts who would appear nightly for a week at a time at the venue.

Anyone else famous you ask? Did you ever supply the Green Go at the Palace Hotel in Gstaad?

Yes, for a while, they particularly wanted female DJs. I seem to remember I sent two.

One of the James Bond films was filmed there.

I got the job via the owner of the Griffin who told me Gstaad was the place to be in the winter of 1983. (Too right, jet set, skiing for the rich and famous..) I had the most amazing winter there, talk about meeting famous people. Somewhere I have got some exclusive negatives of Elizabeth Taylor. She was in Gstaad for the winter, and one day I met her in the parking lot, she just got out of her Rolls Royce (the reception had just tipped me off she would be there and told me to get out and see her). So, I grabbed my huge Canon and flash and all the other gear that I had and running out to see if I could get a photo of her. (You weren’t allowed to take pictures of guests inside the Hotel, but you were permitted to solicit outside). So, I walked up to her introduced myself and she immediately said ‘I know who you are. You are the Disc Jockey at Green-Go’.. I said, ‘would you mind if I took a photograph’. She said sure and just stood there. My camera was a fully manual camera and I was trying to focus, and was shaking, getting nervous and was desperate to get the best shot. She saw how nervous I was and told me to just relax and said. I am here and puffed up her fur coat collar and put her fur hat on and told me to just take pictures. She was awesome.

Who else? One of my most exciting meetings was to meet Dame Shirley Bassey. I had no idea I was going to meet her. She was my mum’s favourite singer so I knew all her songs. So, of course, I was a big fan of Shirley Bassey too. Her adopted son would often come into Club 58, Geneva and then in the winter he would turn up in Gstaad which surprised me. Of course, you don’t ask too many questions and one day he said oh my mums coming I will introduce you. I had no idea who his mum was. And, that evening in the club, he said excitedly ‘She’s here, come over’. When I saw her I was almost speechless. I stammered.’You’re Shirley Bassey’ ! I freaked. She was so gracious, I told her all about my mum, such a big fan and so on, and asked if she would she sign an album for my mum. I told her she was a traffic warden so Shirley wrote “To Mary, that’s the ticket, girl”. Other regular guests at the Green Go was Roger Moore and John Travolta. I loved playing music for them as they were that little bit older. I’d play Glen Miller, Mills Brothers for the older guests and see the smile on their faces, it was great.

By the way, did you called yourself Brian or Nigel back in those days?

It was Brian. There was a problem with the name Nigel. It wasn’t very common out there in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, they would pronounce it as ‘Niggle”. I didn’t like that so I was known as Brian. It would drive me nuts so it wasn’t until 1992 when Nigel Mansell become World Champion of Formula One and therefore world famous that the german speaking population realised how to say Nigel properly.

Johnny Squires - Rookie DJ Initiation Ceremonies

There is one story back in the early 80s, where several of us DJs were working in Harstad, North Norway. There were at least four DJs living in town and I think three of us lived at this house that was owned by Jan Høiland, a famous Norwegian pop singer in the 60s, and his wife, I’ve forgotten her name but she was rather a large lady. She used to run the house - it was a boarding house - and she lived in the first floor flat. The house was on three floors plus the attic. A big house. And, we were shoved in the attic. There were some rooms up there and we were in it. I’d been there several times and I got on quite well with her actually. She liked me because I kept my room tidy. The other guys didn’t look after theirs. So, if there were any DJ parties we would always have them in one of the DJ’s rooms. Not my room, obviously. It was smoky in there and I didn’t want the stink of beer in my room.

We had this young lad who had just come over from the UK and I think it was his first booking in Norway. We quickly realised how unfamiliar he was with working in Norway when he asked us where the Police Station was. Well, we said it is the same place you took your passport and contract to. I haven’t been yet, he said. Why not, we countered, you are supposed to go there within two or three working days. I’ll go tomorrow he said. We sensed a little wind up coming especially as it was his first time in Norway. So we said ‘Have you done your fire escape drill yet?’ ‘No, why, what’s that?’ he said. ‘Well, all these houses are made of wood, you know and it’s law that you have to know what to do in case of fire’ And, I knew there was a rope and harness stacked in the cupboard because I had had that room before. I said it is probably one of these cupboards here. Oh here it is, I said, dragged it out. He said ‘What’s that then?’ ‘It’s a rope and harness. If there is a fire you’ve gotta get in here and lower yourself out of the window. People upstairs will then pull the harness back, get in it and lower themselves down and get out of the building.’

I said have you got your paperwork with you? He replied what paperwork? To give to the Police.

It was all in Norwegian so he wouldn’t understand a word that was written down. It’s got to be signed by two people who know how to do the drill. He said well can you just sign it? We all said no no no. After that we said if you don’t know how to do it and we get found out we will get into trouble.

He said OK, What do I have to do? We said you have to get into the harness and we have to lower you down. And, then you can come back in again upstairs and then we can sign the papers and say you have done the drill.

We are all pissed by the way. There were cases of beer everywhere it was shocking.

It was blowing a gale outside because it was winter. Snow and windy - Harstad is a very cold place in winter. We lowered him out the window and let him go halfway down.when we stopped the pulley so he didn’t go down anymore. H shouted up to us ‘It’s not going down, lads? What’s happening’

We said ‘Don’t make too much noise people are trying to go to sleep’ so we shut the window and left him hanging there. No surprise he started to get really angry like most people would so he starts banging on the nearest window which happens to be Mrs Høilands - in the middle of the night.

She shouts at him ‘What are you doing?’ He shouts back ‘I’m doing my fire escape drill!’ ‘WHAT??’

So we’ve all legged it out of the room and gone into my room and I’ve jumped into bed and pulled the covers over me and I think the other lads stood by the door. The landlady thumped up the stairs like a hippo swearing and cursing all the way. She throws the door open and came into my room and I jump up saying ‘What’s going on? WHAT’s going on?’ ‘I said I’ve been trying to get to sleep all night but there was bloody noise coming from that other room…’

‘I’m so sorry, Johnny’ she said ‘There’s something wrong with this guy’

I said in surprise’ What has he done now?”

‘He’s jumped out of the window and he’s hanging on a rope!’

I said ‘Is he alright?’

So she undid the rope to let him down.

There’s all hell to pay because he wouldn’t speak to me and he was really pissed off with everybody. He was well and truly set up for that one. That was a good one, that was. We’ve got loads of stories like that.

An Interview with Steve Redman

…and how Michael Schumacher saved the day!

So, Steve how did that come about?

Well, I was working in Elverum when the well known Norwegian racing driver, Harald Huysman, who was by then a Formula 1 commentator for Norwegian TV, contacted me and asked if I would like to do a party for Michael Schumacher and his family at their Norwegian cabin in Trysil which was fairly nearby. It was 2004 and Michael had just won his seventh world championship smashing Fangio’s record of a mere five.

So, with great excitement and anticipation, Guy Harris and myself prepared for the big event and wondered what such a superstar, surely with a massive ego, would be like.

It was New Year’s eve of that year we set our sound equipment up in the Cellar of Michael’s stunning Cabin. Admittedly, my preconceptions about Michael were that he would be arrogant and a bit full of himself. I was wrong, very wrong.

Michael and his wife Corrine came and introduced themselves. As the night went on, we sang with Michael, I danced with his mum, we laughed with his family and it soon became apparent Michael was the most down to earth person you could have wished to meet.

I got his kids doing a bit of DJ’ing, we did Karaoke with Michael, who incidentally loved country music.

Michael usually had a firework display on New Year’s Eve, but that wasn’t to be this year, he had just lost his bodyguard to the Tsunami in Thailand and out of respect, they all just held hands quietly for a moment at 12 o’clock around a fire in the memory of his bodyguard.

We finished the night at about 3 in the morning and we were loading up the trailer with the sound equipment, when the brake on my trailer failed and it started sliding towards the edge of the mountain. At first, Michael’s housekeeper, then Michael, came out and saw me struggling, he grabbed me as the trailer was dragging me closer to the edge of the steep valley. Next, Michael came out, grabbed me from behind and told me not to worry, after which Micheal put a stone in front of the trailers wheels. Looking back it was hilarious, and I’m not sure how many people can say they’ve had Michael Schumacher grab them from behind and say “Don’t worry, Don’t worry” in a German accent. A wonderful memory.

Back in the early 90s you took over the IDEA brand from Paul Brighton, who in turn bought it from me in 1988, What happened, and how come you eventually turned to contracting chefs?

The Norwegian market started to implode quite a few years back. It was something I saw coming a couple of years beforehand. The authorities were making if it more and more difficult for anyone to make a living from the nightclub market, which was a shame, as there were some fantastic clubs around years ago. Back in my early years Hawk Club, Tromsø, ‘New York’ in Stavanger, Cobra Stavanger, Svalbard, were all some great places to play.

Svalbard? Was there life and music up there? Really? Must have been boring, I thought.

Boring? No way, seriously, it was the most fantastic place I ever worked. Longyearbyen is the ‘town’ with an international community back then (1990’s) of around 1300 residents, predominantly Norwegian but French, English and of course, there was the Marine Biology University too. It had a Michelin Star restaurant and cruise ships dock there. Svalbard (formerly Spitzbergen named after its largest island) is a thriving tourist destination. I was resident DJ there several times between 1993 - 1996. You worked from 10 m until 3 am and the night club was incredible, people very friendly and was a party every night pretty much.

It was the ultimate adventure playground, we’d go out in the day on snow scooters and watch the polar bears on the plateau. We were often invited out on fishing trips with the Police and other times we’d go kayaking. The whole of Svalbard is teeming with wildlife, you can get to see the Arctic Fox, Reindeer, Bearded Seal, Little Auk, Humpback whales and Puffins all in their natural habitat.

The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Svalbard is the stunning scenery, mountains and sheer beauty of it all. Your residence (and night club incidentally) was in a building called HUSET (Literally ‘the House’) and the first thing they give you when you’ve checked in is a hunting rifle essentially for scaring off polar bears. In fact, it is illegal not to carry a gun!

How did you get there?

Well, DJs had to make their own way over but the route was a flight from Oslo to Tromsø and then on to Svalbard way up in the Barents Sea. Something else you had to adjust to was the 24 hours daylight or total, relentless darkness. In the summer months, there were no nights and I had to place tinfoil over the windows to try and get some sleep. During the winter, one polar night lasts for three months.

Andy Walton was a great asset to IDEA in the day and really nice to work with.

In the late 90’s things began to change for the nightclub industry in Norway, with the government introducing VAT and even trying to enforce it on DJs at one point. This caused a few clubs to go under. Some of the good jocks to work with were Tony Clarke, Liam Roche, Dave Malatesta, to name a few, but there were a lot more, all of which had great reviews from clubs and good rebooking rates.

So, clearly, I had to adapt and change as well. We managed to change the company from a DJ agency into an Entertainment agency for the Cruise industry, which was the right thing to do.

10 years ago, I had the opportunity to start the second company, a recruitment company. This was difficult to run from Norway, as it was so small. So, we moved back to the UK with the intent of giving it a year and seeing if it worked, luckily it did.

I was originally a chef so when my Norwegian customers lamented losing their own chefs I knew from my own experience I could help them and it seemed logical to book them over there on similar contracts as with the DJs but through my recruitment business. This worked very well and I found there was a continuous need for chefs also in the cruise industry.

The Cruise industry is massive, Steve and well done you. I can think of at least two former IDEA DJs who were chefs - became successful DJs in Norway - then reverted to running and owning their restaurants; Chris Rowlands in Kragero, and Stig Fiske, probably several others too.

Peter Brown - How I failed as a Male Hooker

…coming soon

Peter Brown - Be careful what you eat

(And, the rumour he had turned ‘religious’)

I will tell you the story behind that. I worked at club 58 in Geneva. There was a band called Standing Ovation working at the club for one of the months I was there. They were born again Christians and experimented with chemicals...one day at their hotel after a few hours of intense dabbling… they got vocally religious and asked me to look for the lighter and ( hard to still believe it) a great light appeared in front of my eyes... true. the power of auto suggestion I am sure but for a few weeks after that I was a nice person… all my perversions stopped. My Lebanese dancer girl friend at the time thought I must have a twin… once my system cleaned up and a new girl band arrived I reversed back into my old ways…

Tales of my past

Risør near Arendal Norway

Played one month at this club, basic set up, holiday area and one day a week we had a dance for young people with broad mental issues, in this time every one was viewed the same as far as a group of people so you had those who had injuries that gave them mental issue, those with serious learning disorders and Downs Syndrome.

We had a bucket of water and a sponge in case of any fits and the orderlies were constantly getting involved trying to prevent too much amorous activities as they had no concerns with being viewed.

The nightmare with this was you had to play Mississippi by Pussycat, Smokie ‘Living next door to Alice’ and Dr Hook ‘Sylvias Mother’ to fill the floor, if you played them one after the other you had a full dance floor all night. After 1 hour it was enough but after 4 hours you almost felt like part of the crowd. After this the accommodation there was not great, there was a tree that had been cut down going through the middle of the floor in the bedroom lounge area. The tree stump was quite wide and although cut was still alive. On warmer evenings insects would come through the trunk and the floor became alive.

Finally, here the food, what ever the staff had the day before the DJ got the next day as a lapsaus,was ok not great, on my last day, the owner offered a steak which I gratefully accepted, not a large steak but hammered flat and so thin it cooked fast, he put it on a plate and his dog jumped up in the Kitchen and started to eat it, he shouted at the dog who dropped it and washed the meat put it back in the frying pan a few minutes put it back on the plate added some fries and salad and gave it to me as a thank you for my month there,

Never wanted to go back there again.

Tromsø, Hawk Club. I did this in the month of February, cold to say the least.

On arriving here, I went straight to the club as the flight in was late and I needed to work straight away. Nice club, after my first night I was told where the DJ accommodation was and I walked there, on arriving the room was a mess empty bottles rubbish every where the door was open but the upside was there was a girl in the bed asleep. Things looked pretty good. Door would not lock there was no shower that I could find and to make it worse there was a number of window panes missing in the window it was freezing. Me being dumb I jumped into bed got close to the girl to keep warm who responded in kind.

About 2 hours later the door crashes in and 3 Italian guys are shouting in Italian and the girl wakes up and every one gets agitated, it would seem that the Italians were part of a group and she was one of their followers, she had had an argument with one of the men and as my room was open went to bed after having a few drinks and some smoke, the odd va fungoo was thrown at me and catzo the girl then started to throw up in the bed as we were discussing her. So the band members then left she stayed a little longer, apologising for her mess, but in fairness it did nothing to make the room worse, just added some colour.

That morning I went to the club for lunch where I was told that to have a shower I needed to use the washing spray heads in the kitchen in the morning before the kitchen staff came in later in the day, the room had a WC but no bathroom. I was told to go meet the DJ at the SAS as most DJs used the bathroom in the hotel.

So that evening I went over to the SAS and met my buddy to be Dick Shepherd who assisted me with utilising the hotels washing facilities, along with providing useful addresses for the clinic and some lovely ladies to assist with washing ironing and massage,

P.S.

Also I need to make sure others are ok me writing about some of the stories as they are married now and may not have discussed all their deeds, from sharing women and then one getting a dose only for me to laugh then realising we exchanged partners so mine was coming soon.

Moon City

This story was written in 2001, it is about to be rewritten bringing it up to date with all the modern technology, new world order and attitudes in 2025

…watch this space

A Play written by Alan Lawrie. 7th April 2001.

The Characters

• PETER HYDE
  English Engineer &Architect of Moon City
  Aristocratic, dry sense of humour, philanthropist

• ROY CRAWFORD
  Bio Technician, Hydroponics and Solar power expert
  Portly, does not suffer fools gladly, but sharp and witty.

• SANKA RUDIN
  American Journalist
  young, handsome good natured, ambitious

• GUY RAVEL
  Hippie
  musician, naïve but caring, loves life

• KRISSI
  Partner
  New Age Therapist

• GORDON McRAE
  Scottish Archaeologist
  stuffy, a little deaf

• ALISON McRAE
  His Wife
  long suffering, resourceful, Scottish

• POLICE OFFICER
  Local Police officer
  zero personality

• LOCAL OFFICIAL
  From the Revolutionary Council
  even less

• FRAIL OLD MAN
  New City Governor
  well spoken, dignified

Setting

Moon City – a tourist resort of population 15,ooo inhabitants on the Coast of Ligeria, 180 miles south east of the capital, Marlis.

ACT ONE Scene One

(Stone Walled Jail. Through the bars of the window they can see the moon crescent shaped with two stars to its left. The stream of moonlight is the only light they have).

Enter Peter, Roy and Sanka:

(Sanka presses the record button on his tape recorder)

PETER (in a soft voice and pointing)

Look! the city flag!

(All stare through the window)

PETER

“Welcome to MOON CITY” That was back in 2005 the week before the first tourist plane landed at Lunar Airport. I remember those posters. It was the first thing that caught your eye when you got off the plane.

SANKA (jotting notes)

OK, let’s start from the beginning. Tell me how you got the concept. The project. The realisation. Don’t miss anything out. Are you sure you’re up to this?

PETER (pensive – pacing the cell)

Is there ever a better time? Yes, we are ready.

I believed I could make it rain in the desert. And so they thought I could turn their scorching sands into a tropical paradise. At least, I achieved it here…to a point.

(stops and stares and the flickering moonlight on the flagstone floor)

I did a lot of projects involving water. It was when I built a desalination plant for the Saudis back in the 80’s that I began to realise how much water supply really was the key to everything out here. I had a good look at what the Israelis did in the Negev. They turned the wastelands - sand and rubble mainly into fruit farms; oranges, nectarines, avocadoes, etc. and have been selling us their surplus for years. Soil technology – or should I say the technology of growing plants without soil, electronically programmed irrigation…I learned a lot from those guys. They know the impossible can be done.

(leans back on the wall looks Sanka in the eye)

ROY

Can you imagine, Sanka, you keep turning on the tap and no water gushes out. You try another and another. And they are all dry. Then it doesn’t rain?

SANKA

Go on

PETER

Water IS life or death. Cities are built on rivers – desert tribes find the watering hole first. What did man hope to find on the Moon? Water.

SANKA

Sure we take it for granted. So what did you do?

PETER

I studied rain and drought patterns. You know, in lush mountainous areas, it rains, you’ve seen it. Invariably clouds hang around the peaks . Vegetation becomes even more verdant. In the desert? Nothing. The desert creeps forward stealing a little more each day. And deforestation have given us global warming. Yet we know the Sahara hasn’t always been a desert. So, I thought, why not construct a designer mountain in the desert and restore those trees and bushes?

SANKA (sitting down looking up at Peter)

That simple, eh? You sound just like one of those old alchemists. They simply believed it could be done based on the science of their day. But here I am freelancing for Time Magazine with that footage in the can. (glances at his watch)

I don’t know how much time we’ve got so let’s get your story before they come back. (Sanka shifts his weight uncomfortably)

PETER

You OK?

SANKA

You never really get used to it. Some assignments you get shot at. Then you might get taken hostage. Gets to you sometimes.

Because I can blend in anywhere Time often sends me out to these parts, but that’s no guarantee some fanatic won’t blast my head off. I’ll be OK. ***

(Taking a deep breath) How did you figure it out?

PETER

Figure it out? Oh, I see what you mean.

Well, I based my calculations on real mountain masses, air currents and harnessing solar energy I realised there had to be a way. My research team became obsessed with the idea like people who work on deadly viruses or germ warfare - got morbidly fascinated and had to know whether it would actually work nor not.

We needed a client. It had to be in the Sahara, didn’t it Roy?

ROY

Yes – the ultimate challenge. You could say the Everest of Deserts. We had satellite technology, backing of the World Meteorological Centre and consequently access to their research and development programmes. Finally the Foreign Office gave us a debriefing on the political situations in the region. We concluded there were only three qualifying zones – that is desert locations with existing mountains to meet our precise criteria modifications?

SANKA

Which brought you in touch with President Ibn Mohammad of Ligeria, Peter.

PETER

Yes, eventually. There was quite a bit of embassy shuffling at first. We were called upon to do a presentation at every level.

In the end we met the President. Charming fellow but said didn’t say much!

We were introduced to an “interpreter” who was dressed in a shiny blue suit and had an embullient manner about him. But we liked him and he proved to be an invaluable contact. Roy does a wonderful impression of him.

ROY

(standing to attention, thrusting his chest out he mimicked the Ligerian in a military Sandhurst accent)

He was straight to the point. And said “My country is poor and has virtually no tourist industry. Bring us prosperity with your project and we will give you oil revenue to finance it. We need tourists. The President wants you to make an exclusive tourist resort on the coast. There is a minor industrial port on the coast of no particular significance to us.

Rebuild it and make your city there”, he said. “And you must construct a motorway linking the new resort to Marlis our capital then a proper road to the Ledra in the south. For your part you will share the land rents with the State for a period of twenty years.”

I can tell you we could hardly get a word in edgeways, and he went on to discuss arrangements with lawyers and a schedule of meetings. Wonderful fellow.

SANKA

Were there just you two or were you part of a delegation?

PETER

More like an armada. Too many political point scoring chances for our Overseas Trade and Development cats to get fat on. But we got down to business eventually.

All I wanted was a humble project in the desert far away from prying authorities and they offer me an assignment of a lifetime.

(walks over to a tiny sink in the corner)

Champagne anyone? (rinses a clay mug and offers it first to Sanka)

I knew just how my city would be.

SANKA

And you could do it any way you wanted?

PETER

No, we had to respect the laws of his land naturally and to religious protocol in particular. The only autonomy was the enclave of land around where the resort would be where laws could be relaxed to attract tourists.

SANKA

You mean alcohol?

PETER

Yes, bars, nightclubs, restaurants and some cabaret. We built a Police station in Moon City as a gesture. And this is IT!

SANKA

This jail is your design. In the cellar of the Police Station. Who’d did you have in mind as inmates?

PETE

Aggressive drunks and ambitious sunbathers?

SANKA

Ambitious?

PETER

You journalists deal with cover ups, the local mullahs lock up those who won’t.

Besides that nobody wants any trafficking here.

SANKA

So what did you do first? What were your priorities?

PETER

Roy, you handled the manpower how was it?

ROY

We went through the first leg of the project again and again.

And mobilised contractors and subcontractors. Do you know we had around 3000 workers in the first two years?

We started with water and power. We built a new desalination plant to the east of the city and a power station inland fuelled by solar photo voltaic power. The mountain, which we named Moon Mountain of course, was approximately forty miles inland and we planned a road link directly to the resort via an airport…

SANKA (nodding towards Peter)

Which you promptly named Lunar Airport!

PETER

That wasn’t me. Anyway, it was crucial to our daily drops and changes of personnel. The spec for the any mountain modification had to be precise. If we were one degree out we would not catch the updraught. Every angle and face had strategic geothermic importance.

SANKA

I think TIME readers will be fascinated to know how you constructed such a landmark?

PETER

We had to go fairly deep to get a foundation that would take it. We fused silicon – sand obviously – with industrial chemicals to create large toughened glass blocks supported by steel pins.

The voids we filled with sand. It was like building with LEGO!

We used real soil at different levels to support trees and plants and encased them in more glass slabs. There are two approaches to our mountain and you can actually drive up it. Inside it is like a massive spiralling cavern.

SANKA

How high is it? (looking inquisitively with the pencil in his mouth)

PETER

About 500 metres up above the existing height of roughly two thousand, and that range sprawls over an area of 5 square miles with our “peaks” reaching 200 meters or so. We had to cut away the gradients to the east and west to produce sheer drops. At ninety degree angles to the rock face, we constructed giant turbines that could produce force 9 high speed icy winds to blast the surface and be forced upward.

SANKA

Then what?

PETER

Well, at the same time mass areas of “clean” sand were prepared for the cycle of planting, growing, dying, and fresh planting that ultimately would produce topsoil to support trees. As you could see, we got quite a carpet of Olive, Tamarind, and Palms. More than anything else the climate changed through deforestation so our aim was to reverse part of that.

SANKA

Your achievements speak for themselves but you didn’t quite get the new rainforests did you?

PETER

No, to be honest we caught some cloud and yes, we have changed the landscape, but the fact is it’s hardly lush vegetation. We had to rely on modern means of irrigation and using solar energy to cool the ground to keep the area moist and humid for as long as possible. Anyway, Moon Mountain has become an excellent tourist attraction, even now the local tribesmen and mullahs are fascinated by it. Did you manage to see our virtual craters?

SANKA

patting the Dvcam cassettes in his travel case)

It’s all in here. And did you build the motorways?

PETER

I would term “motorway” rather euphemistically. We have provided a decent road from Ledra to Marlis and a coastal highway from the capital to Moon City. Even so motorists are still rarer than camels.

ROY

Actually the road to Moon City goes straight under a section of Moon Mountain. It was even suggested we build a cable car to take tourists from the foot of the mountain to the summit.

As Peter Hyde runs a trembling hand through his thinning hair, he leans against the wall. In the distance, they hear the street noise of agitated men arguing. Some shouting, others barking orders. A volley of what seems like rifle shots in the distance. Wailing, chanting a few blocks away.

ROY (to Sanka)

Why didn’t you get out on Sunday? You had most of the material by the weekend.

PETER

Most of the residents follow events on CNN which is precisely why reporters like you risk your lives in bringing the front line news to us all.

We have a system of sorts…We’ve news flashed every household and business community about the growing dangers of remaining here. Most of us here have chosen to stay for whatever reason. Now of course, we have lost the airport.

I guess you can still row. We have boats and fishermen..

SANKA

…and we have all been rounded up.

As you know, my editor wants this news item. Sure, TIME has been running features on the unrest and turbulence in the country and he suggested I get a profile from Hyde the man who built the city and made it famous AND a counter vision from the other side who now assume authority over it.

This is my biggest assignment to date. I am not going to screw it up now. Hey, I know how to get in front of the queue. I was bought up on the streets of New York, for goodness sake. I can handle it. I am going to get out of here WITH my story.

ACT ONE, Scene Two.

View of city from volcano. Flowers, bushes fragrance. Shrines, Religious artefacts abounding. Astrological signs aplenty.

Enter Gravel and Krissi. Lying in a grassy clearing.

GRAVEL

I could stay here forever. Do we have to go back?

KRISSI

We had this conversation last week and then watched our plane fly out remember? Who cares at this time of the year we can still sleep under the stars.

GRAVEL

And the perfumes of the flowers lull you to sleep…it’s like being on a permanent high.

Who needs to go back to the rat race?

Have you noticed our park keeper friends recently? Weird that, I always felt they were checking us out.

KRISSI

No I haven’t. You know I wonder if this place really was the centre of some ancient religion? Perhaps it’s aligned with the pyramids.

When I lie here and gaze into the night sky I feel tremendous forces around me. Can’t you feel it? So much activity, I wonder if this mountain was an ancient burial site. Judging from all these stone mounds and inscriptions, the Goddess Diana was a big hit round here.

Wonder what they drank?

GRAVEL

Wasn’t she the roman goddess of hunting?

KRISSI

And the Moon. And chastity! Obviously she had a large and diverse constituency to please. We’ve seen several shrines to Isis – who apparently protected sailors - and Osiris her hunky brother whom she married. You see their society was no better than ours today!

GRAVEL

What about the cat headed goddess they call Bastet? I think I fancy her. She must have been the local deity. From what I have read of her she was the Goddess of Fire, Moon and fertility, pleasure, joy, music and dance. I like the way Moon and Fertility are linked like that.

KRISSI

Yeah, better than Moon and Chastity. Forget it Diana, the Cat Woman gets my vote too.

Talking of which, don’t forget she protected all the animals, especially cats. And was handy to have around for healing and marriage. She’d know all about oils and fragrances (leans over and massages Gravel’s back) and touching and toning muscles.

That’s my sort of Goddess - wonder if she composed music?

GRAVEL

But she had a dark side and then they called her Pasht. Wonder what she did.

KRISSI

Well, Moon and Fertility kept her busy round here, maybe it was Pssst! Actually, she was enormously fat.

Gravel plucks a flower and thrusts it at his grinning Girlfriend who lowers her head to kiss him and help him to his feet.

Come on, let’s get something to eat.

You know, it’s amazing how the climate here is so perfect. Artificial, perhaps.

It should be unbearable on some days. The Sirocco can get up to 40 degrees and more and who would want to go traipsing around in that.

GRAVEL

Yeah this place is so cool. Probably the sea has something to do with it.

KRISSI

The ground doesn’t get hot. I thought it would.

Look there’s the Grand Royal. Maybe we can scrounge some work. We can do some tribute numbers can’t we?

Then we can go Deity hunting again, OK?

.

I N T E R M I S S I O N

ACT TWO, Scene One

Back in the prison, Peter, Roy and Sanka discuss…all sitting on the stone floor. Two hours later.

SANKA

Peter, you are the man behind the magic resort of Moon City, Now what about the city itself ? Did you run into any problems?

How many streets are named after you?

PETER (ignoring the jibe, fiddles with his mobile phone)

No signal! They got to that quickly.

SANKA

Got to where?

Loud noises, footsteps coming downstairs.)

PETER (Voice tapering off..)

The control room. Now what have we got…?

(Guards open their door. Two more prisoners are shoved in.)

GRAVEL

(To guards and anyone else within earshot)

Don’t touch me! Filthy scum. I’m a British Citizen and I demand an explanation. Look at me, you ignorant prat, I am speaking to you. (stares him straight in the eye)

ROY (approaches Gravel and cautions him)

Back off! You’ll get us all shot.

GRAVEL (clenching his fist at the guard)

I want to speak to the Embassy. Now! I want a telephone, you understand? My father will deal with you, you miserable..

Aaarhh (crumples to the floor as guard belts him in the stomach with the but of his rifle. Kicks him, turns around, slams the cell door)

KRISSI (leaning over Gravel, rubbing him)

Don’t worry, Grav, we’ll get out of this bloody place. On the very next plane, I promise you…

PETER

There are no more planes. We are all hostages. Our fate is in their hands, and even they probably don’t know what to do with us.

(Shots and shouting is heard down the street. Sporadic fire )

KRISSI

What’s going on here?

GRAVEL (moaning and groaning)

Ouch, ooh. Bastards. (eerie silence; Peter, Roy and Sanka find themselves staring at him)

Er..hmm. I’m Gravel and (turning to his girl friend)

this is Krissi. ‘Scuse my entrance.

KRISSI

Hi (Weak smile, acknowledges them)

Are we interrupting your revolution or is this some kinda weird film set? (looking at Sanka)

SANKA

Sanka. I’m a reporter for TIME MAGAZINE. And, to answer your question, that’s what I am here to find out.

ROY

Welcome to the Holiday Inn. I’m Roy – the Gardener. I water the flowers. Sorry about your bruises, young man.

PETER (crossing the room and helping Gravel onto a soft mattress) The name’s Peter Hyde; Engineer and resident of Moon City. Ignore my friend’s little joke, he’s the finest botanist and hydroponics expert …

GRAVEL (looking across at Roy)

Hydro p’what?

ROY

Water the flowers. No soil! With regulated supply of nutrients and flow of water you don’t actually need the earth.

PETER

Please excuse the rather basic accommodation. The City’s had a surprising amount of visitors recently. Didn’t book in advance, really sorry. What did you do to upset them?

GRAVEL

Well, we were just you know, minding our own business. Keeping out of the way.

How can you guys just sit here so calmly? (groans out loud)

We were….taking in the view, getting high on the flowers…

getting high on each other – you know - when we saw another site.

PETER

Site?

KRISSI

We could see something through the bushes higher up. The sun kept catching it. We followed this narrow path which led to a clearing looking out to sea. Found another carved stone monument.

Had letters and symbols engraved on it. It must have been very old. Crumbled away down one side.

GRAVEL

We’ve been here for weeks. I play in a band back home and we came here to chill out a while. Anyway, we hadn’t really checked out the inner side of the mountain before so we thought we might find a few more ancient burial sites or whatever…we picked up this overgrown trail and found a few more stone arrangements and inscriptions. We figured from the alignment that there must have been some astrological significance.

PETER

That’s Marvin our promoter all over. Large overdoses of mythology, relics and history for the souvenir shops and travel publications. (tries his mobile again; no signal. Notices the twin spools running)

Sanka – the tape.

SANKA

It’s OK. It’ s all part of the interview. Let it run.

KRISSI

What you taping?

SANKA

Well, actually, Peter here designed and built this little paradise for President Ibn Mohammad as a rider to an engineering project aimed at bringing rain and water to the region.

PETER

I also built this jailhouse. And for the record, if they know how to operate the monitors, we are all on local television. Just so that you know you are being observed.

SANKA

If it’s OK with you I’d like to press on with Peter’s story. We don’t know how much time we have left. We have no indication of what they are going to do with us?

GRAVEL

They’re surely not going to touch you. You are an American and represent the Free Press. They need to tell their story to someone.

SANKA

Yes, that’s the other reason my editor sent me.

Now tell me what happened after you discovered all those stones?

PETER (butting in…)

All imported, I’m afraid. Marvin had a field day with those. Ornamental value only and obviously kept a few of you amused.

GRAVEL

We reached the lowest point of the valley where the vegetation had all but disappeared and the terrain was sand and rock again. We could make out tyre tracks in a make shift road that meandered away from the city. Leading off from the path we made out some caves with an overhanging curtain of flowers. You tell it from here, Krissi……go on Kris.

KRISSI

Yeah, we were naturally curious and went to have a look round. I needed to pop into one of them if you know what I mean, and I chose the one on the right. It was dark in there. When I finished I caught my arm on something sharp behind some hanging vines. I looked behind and found a lever. I called Grav over and we decided to pull it down. A section of the whole wall turned 180 degrees and revealed a downward staircase. Grav lit his lighter and we found a switch that lit up the tunnel.

This led us to square room with a labyrinth of corridors out of it.

PETER

Should only have taken you ten seconds to get there.

GRAVEL

We chose the main one and came to a door on the right. And We found this giant cave with Vats, Tanks, and pipes everywhere.

PETER

The pump room and water supply.

KRISSI

It was really. The place was like a huge set without a film crew. Then we found a space age control room.

The Marie Celeste command centre. Where was everyone?

GRAVEL

Uh, it was weird.

I tried to get some information on a monitor. I mean, I got a pc at home. Nothing would function properly. Then we heard voices and footsteps.

PETER

Of course nothing worked, you didn’t have authentication. You didn’t use protocol. You need security codes for everything. (Peter tried his mobile to prove his point – No Signal)

See that? No Signal. The system closed itself down – to protect itself. So you did it!

GRAVEL

Yeah I guess. Then these madmen burst into the room shouting, waving guns at us. We were scared man. I mean, you know, we were just looking around. They were very excited and screamed hysterically at us. They blindfolded us, led us down a long tunnel to the open air, and forced us onto a truck which presumably took us here. Wait until I speak to my travel agent about this!

PETER

The control room. No signal. Now we know why. If it’s OK with you two, do you mind if I carry on with Sanka’s interview.

(Peter takes a long breath, appears to be deep in thought and raises both hands slowly as if lifting the world in his hands)

The nerve centre of telecommunications, indeed the operation of the whole city is located in a secret section of Moon Mountain. I told you there was a driveway through the mountain? On the second level up as the road veers to left there is an infra red activated wall that slides across giving access to a large ventilated underground car park. All the technicians and maintenance engineers use it. There is a door at the far end taking you to a myriad of rooms and corridors. There are caverns like air traffic control to cool rooms with banks and banks of computers. Sleeping quarters, canteen, recreation….

SANKA

But the heat? How could they stand it?

PETER

Surprisingly cool. The outer shell of the mountain is built of ceramic. The most powerful heat resistant stuff we know of.

About the signal. Or lack of. They would have to take out the maintenance crew or get to the aerial itself – which of course is built into one of the “peaks”. We made a similar nerve centre in the volcano more for city control than communications.

ROY

Don’t forget that solar panels power the air conditioning,

refridgeration and provide the right temperature and moisture for the growing plants and saplings in our shade houses. The sun is there and free. We adjust the climate to your need.

PETER

You know, I am intrigued. As an engineer, I am more interested in how they got to it than why!

GRAVEL

What volcano? Why did you want to build a volcano?

PETER (Mildly irritated at the interruption)

Ah well, building Moon City was sheer architectural purism. In line with rain making project, I got the Presidents permission to make a canal inland transforming it into an island. I then proceeded to construct a typical “volcano” at the heart in the same way the mountain was built. You see, the volcano would act as a reservoir cooled again by solar cells thus preserving as much fresh water as possible. The water systems collectively had a generally heat reducing effect on the environment. We succeeded in getting it tropically green and floral. The airport road crosses one of three bridges off the island and we managed to grow Bougainvillea along the southern walls. It always gives me a tremendous lift to see it.

ROY

Hydroponics again! A lot of work went into that. You’d be surprised at the engineering required to keep those cameras snapping away.

PETER

As you captured on your film, we designed an attractive marina alongside a village on stilts and bungalow homes with moorings. You can see the shot in travel agents’ brochures. It sells holidays here.

The city lay out is classically French (The President sent his own architect to “help us”.). I deliberately styled the seafront buildings in an old colonial style and tried to create a feeling that this little spot was in a time warp.

GRAVEL

Have you got anything else to drink? Apart from a few of those bastards out there, I could murder a Bud.

ROY

Sure, I’ll buzz reception. You won’t be thirsty much longer!

In the meantime, you’ll have to do with this, I’m afraid, but at least it’s fresh water. (passes him a glass)

PETER.

Originally there were two hotels Heritage and Grand Royal that were licensed for virtually everything to spoil the tourist. The former had the casino and all the sports facilities you could wish and the other had the city’s only night club and the highly recommended Ocean Restaurant.

Now there are five more along the coast – typical tourist hotels. One of them, the Club Med asked us to provide our green magic in landscaping a golf course for them. It’s not bad really but you can only really go on it early mornings or evenings.

I know the planners had Meridian, SAS Radisson, and Holiday Inn hoping to get in. To the back of the town were two large hostels originally rush built to cater for the contractors and their suppliers.

One is still going caters mainly for Ligerians and local travellers, the other has been converted to offices.

We designed an “old town”, fishing port, period bank, hospital and designer boutiques in the main shopping Street appropriately named “Avenue de la Republique.”

GRAVEL

Avenue de la Republique!!!” Oh, come on.

PETER

No, I didn’t approve either, but, let us say I was overruled again otherwise it might have been Moon Boulevard.

We built schools, markets and the four main residential quarters. The Authorities in Marlis allowed us to name the streets provided that all the names were in French. Mon Dieu!

I think up to last week we had a population of 15000 here, and around 500 between the Airport and Mountain.

SANKA

Apart from you what do the other 14999 do?

PETER

What do they do, Roy?

ROY

Many work for the resort in one way or the other. There is also a growing number of businessmen settling here running their affairs on the internet and trading out of their luxury villas. Fishing plays a minor role. Hardly any manufacture. A few carpets in the markets. Olive oil and date industry is growing nicely. Construction - still a major source of employment. And don’t forget the ubiquitous civil servants! Of course elsewhere in the country it’s oil.

PETER

Sanka, did you notice the magic of Moon City?

We have a secret ingredient.

SANKA

No graffiti? No poisonous insects? Great place for a vacation. No what is it?

PETER

You haven’t noticed. I am disappointed. A very subtle factor.

We have all types of holidaymakers here. They ALL return.

Why do you think that is?

SANKA

You’ve got something here they can’t get elsewhere?

PETER

Precisely. Euphoria! People don’t argue here. They are happy. Our secret ingredient physically makes them euphoric.

SANKA

You slip something into their bread and coffee?

PETER

Something quite fundamental. The Doctors and clinics here have very little to do. Apart from cuts and bruises and continued medication, people are less sick here.

SANKA

Peter, if you don’t get to the point soon we’re going to run out of tape.

PETER

Besides Roy here we originally had twenty botanists permanently employed here and ten times that number attending to tasks relating to plants and flowers. In every street, every space available and especially around the volcano we have planted specific plants with designer fragrance for different occasions. Even the air conditioning is perfumed.

GRAVEL

Oh we called them park attendants.

KRISSI

They were cute really…

PETER

Hmm those park attendants were skilful operators – they distributed the euphoria.

We had a pleasure “blueprint” based on the five senses. For a start, sewage and sanitation are electronically monitored and bad smells regulated automatically. Everything smells nice.

In the evening we worked on stocks and jasmines, linden trees and lime blossom and a range of exotic fragrant plants I was not familiar with to produce their perfumes in a concentrated area. We copied those smells and distributed wafts to every hotel room and restaurant in the city.

The same plants are strategically placed in walks and pathways. Then we cheated a little, in barren areas we supplied the fragrance through filters, conduits and ducts.

GRAVEL

You really DID that?

KRISSI

Certainly felt real. Grav – it was all a dream. An illusion.

Let’s get our money back and go home.

ROY

But just as real. What we delivered was real enough. You loved it.

PETER

The water is absolutely pure. We know. We built the darn plant. All food is 100% organic. The island is virtually allergy free.

ROY

…apart from plant allergies. Can’t help the pollen – but we are working on it.

PETER

There is no greater feel good factor than Moon city. Of course, we spiced up the effect of well being and attribute it to the local deities. You came across Bastet? There was no stopping Marvin. The region is endemic with gods and goddesses for sun, rain, crops, passion, war and so on. There is a God somewhere for every occurrence between the natural and supernatural. Hence the souvenir shops thrive on Moon cures, herbs, ancient writings and mystic remedies. Well done, Marvin.

KRISSI

You’re a fraud!

PETER

We’re all frauds, young lady. Let’s call it marketing. Let’s call it social therapy. People fall in love here. Did you not find astronomical reasons for Moon City’s precise location.

Everyone wants to come back. That’s the magic ingredient.

And, we engineers have made it work on commercial basis first.

SANKA

Did you have supply problems? I guess everything the average tourist would want would have to be imported.

PETER

We tried to make the community as self sufficient as possible.

We succeeded in the energy sector, building materials we had shipped over to us, as with know how and fashion, but there was one item you did not find on any Moon menu. You must have noticed since you’ve been here.

SANKA

Beef? Pork?

PETER

Yes, we don’t need it. We have a large variety of fresh fruit, mediterranean fish, fresh vegetables – all locally grown. We do provide poultry, after all, it would have been asking too much to expect all of the island’s visitors to be vegetarian.

And, we deliberately downgraded the tobacco purchases but, once again, our native officials reversed that campaign too.

We’re not starved of intellectual awareness either.

All homes and offices are automatically installed with broadband internet. Telephones are free locally.

SANKA

Is there a religious presence?

PETER

You asked me that the other day.

Ligeria being an Islamic state insisted on a lavish Mosque in the centre – but during the high season hard currency is what they’d rather believe in.

ROY

And they don’t normally build mosques in desert towns.

Peter, remember that incident at the GRAND last year when two officials decided they were sufficiently outraged with the resident Cabaret and clamoured their grievances during the evening entertainment. Some thought it was The Cabaret.

SANKA

How did Moon City compare as a resort?

PETER

Very well I would say. It had it all. We introduced wild life and apart from the perfume engineering we encouraged a rich and vibrant flora to establish itself. It had style, class and entertainment. I think we can say the region itself is a monument to science. We are sited in North Africa and pride ourselves in being the very antithesis of the greedy plastic SUN CITY in the south. Been there Sanka?

As I said living is totally organic.

SANKA

Well, I have to ask you if you have any regrets?

PETER

Regrets. Why yes, now the job will never be finished.

SANKA

You have a fortune in rental revenues to look forward to.

PETER

It’s the last thing on my mind. Do you think you can get this

Published?

Sanka nods his head slowly and in confidence.

SANKA

Peter, when did you first realise something was going wrong?

PETER

When officials started turning up with “orders” from Marlis to close the bars at sundown. Then there was an increasing meddling from the Palace, although it wasn’t the President’s style.

State Engineers demanded access to our computers and irrigation codes – but we fobbed them off. Tension was mounting in the streets of other towns.

Again we followed the News bulletins, CNN etc and a pattern formed.

Only last week when you arrived here the President gets overthrown and is placed under house arrest.

I know your next question. Guess you have to ask this for the interview because you know as well as I do what happened next.

Troops arrived and close the city. They tear down all references to MOON CITY and replace it with banners called Libreville. Fortunately, if you can call it that – we got most of the remaining tourists out and any one else who wanted to leave. Gung Ho militia take to the streets and impose their curfew.

All the charm and astronomical paraphernalia associated with

Moon City is banished overnight.

Lunar Stores and Stella Beers Posters get reduced to litter on streets that no one will clear.

GRAVEL

A bunch of religious cranks. Moon city is eternal. It makes money for them.

ROY

But they don’t see it that way. They see our city as a desecration of their land. The Western way of life decadent and blasphemous. Perhaps they blame us for the pace of change.

There are still more camels than 4x4’s.

SANKA (To Gravel)

Why do they call you Gravel?

GRAVEL(head droops shyly)

Don’t ask that. OK, from my college days yeah? My name is Guy Ravel. G.Ravel. My deep voice. Yeah?

SANKA

Thanks. I had to ask.

SANKA (straining almost in a croaky Whisper asks)

What happened to the your community of teachers, and Cooks, scientists, managers and Tour guides that were MOON CITY?

PETER

They rounded them up, took them to the school and were tried by the People’s Revolutionary Council. We heard some shots coming from that direction, didn’t we Roy? Maybe revolutionaries just firing in the air. It’s terrible we don’t know. The phones have been down the last few hours. (At the moment, the moonlight disappears – clouds obscure their vision). I am sure many would have slipped away but we simply don’t know.

SANKA

Why didn’t you leave? Why aren’t they going to shoot you too?

PETER

We are hoping even the most radical of them will realise that we hold the serial numbers of the safe. We run this place. Does it make sense to shoot the man who brings you the water? Moon City may have new masters but we hope it will keep its infrastructure. The botanists and gardeners, sorry “park attendants” – where did they go?

Many were contractors and went years ago, but key personnel have probably gone underground. Perhaps literally.

You will soon smell the change? No one is left to attend to the magic. The rot has set in and it will begin to pong.

A shadow of darkness has fallen upon the island, if I were a native, I’d almost fall on my knees for gods to save us.

(Sanka fumbles for the tape recorder to switch it off – and suddenly his face is lit by moonlight – and he begins to write a sombre letter)

ACT TWO Scene Three

(Dawn: The prison has natural daylight. All five look tired, haggard and red eyed. Footsteps are heard. A hollow fumbling in the lock and the door opens. Two armed guards stand outside and a fat man in a long white gown enters.

FAT MAN

Please – you will follow me. Please. This way.

VAL

Where are you taking us?

FAT MAN (to Val)

Please. This Way.

They all leave.

Enter: An elderly man of some importance. He gathers up the papers lying on the table as he promised he would. Removes the tape recorder with cassette inside. He hears noises and clamour outside. A din getting louder – followed by a volley of rifle shots.

He looks at his watch. 7.0 am. He runs a hand over his brow and sinks to the wooden bench in the cell either as an act of despair or exhaustion. Gets up and shouts into the corridor:

LOCAL OFFICIAL

Ahmed! Tell the others of the council we are reconvening in one hour to discuss the cleansing and purification of this wretched city.

You know what else you have to do? Good.

ACT TWO Scene Four

On the volcano with city in the distant background)

Enter Gordon – an Archaeologist and Alison McRae his wife)

Year: 2018 late spring.

GORDON

I hope we don’t have the same hassle getting out of here.

You never know with these immigration authorities. It’s like a lottery. One day you sail through and it’s all smiles, the next they rifle your belongings looking for little gifts they entitle themselves to.

ALISON

They’ve been holding local elections. Perhaps the new governor will do something about it. Maybe they’re all the same. I don’t know why you had to fill in all those forms, we don’t look that subversive do we? Well you wanted to come here..

GORDON

I know. I know. I still think it is worth a minor survey,

Even though it’s not a place you’d want to spend your holiday. Is it dear?

ALISON

No, too dry and dusty. I shouldn’t think LIBREVILLE gets many tourists. It’s rather dull - nothing for them to do here. Perhaps Ligerians like their resorts this way. Couldn’t we try further along the coast?

GORDON

Er what? Sorry dear, I didn’t hear. Look at this! Another shrine. There is no consistency with their placements. We came here to find evidence of an ancient civilisation and what do we get? Haphazard repro relics dumped any old how. Let’s go over there – yes, there into the volcano itself. What about that book you found?

ALISON

Oh that. Thought it might be interesting. A Modern Tale of Two Cities by S. K. Rudin. One of the cities being Libreville. Thought it might list all the night clubs and strip joints darling.

GORDON

Yes, but what did it say?

ALISON

Dunno – I picked it up in Marseille and haven’t felt like reading it yet. Alright, I will look at it tonight. Anyway, I left it on the boat. Oh no I didn’t, it’s in my bag all the time. Gordon?

GORDON

Yeeesss.

ALISON

There’s a cave here. Let’s have a look.

(Scene change: back to “prison look” but different lighting. Feels like a cave. )

GORDON (lights his lighter)

Alison, bring your bag over here. There are some papers here written in English. Chinaware (local?) Handwritten notes – hmm. This has clearly been a meeting place of some sort. Or someone has run away and deposited these items.

ALISON

Gordon – here. (hands him a handwritten letter)

GORDON

It reads “A Personal Interview with Peter Hyde – the founder of Moon City and creator of the solar powered irrigation system at Moon Mountain” Alison – what is the other name for Libreville in your book?

ALISON

Just a minute. Er – ah, here we are. MOON CITY. It looks really pretty. Must have been an artist impression.

GORDON

What is this. What IS this? A cassette player. I’ll take the tape in it. We can listen to this back on the boat. You never know, maybe it is a recording of local music. That could be quite entertaining.

(Gathers other papers including a large folded poster).

That’s enough here – I think we should have a look at that book of yours.

ALISON (sitting on the grass with Gordon)

Let me - have a look. It’s only just been published. The author is a journalist called S.K. Rudin. Oh I see, he was here thirteen years ago to interview its founder when Islamic revolutionaries took over.

He says in his preface that he and three others jailed with him were lucky to escape with their lives. He was obliged to write their story in Time Magazine. I remember that actually, now I come to think of it. Poor Peter was not so lucky they kept him in a solitary prison for years where apparently he died of cholera before the British Authorities could negotiate his release. And, there was a Roy Crawford. Oooh, he’s done rather well. He is now a leading hydraponics consultant involved in Naasa’s Mars Life project. There is a reference to him on page 78. Wait a sec. In an interview with the writer, he states that the central irrigation and cooling systems of whole region would have locked down within days of neglect. And with it life sustaining plant life programmes. Furthermore he says, satellite photographs have revealed details of desert reclaiming the outer areas of Moon Mountain and its fruit groves. Sand had covered up the wind turbines in huge dunes. The lack of rainfall turning a vital experiment into a desert eyesore.

GORDON

This volcano is a man made structure? So, the whole event was a film set.? Come on let’s get back to the boat. How long have we got a mooring licence for?

ALISON

If you remember, we have to report back to the Harbour authorities by sunset. And, it’s getting dark now, so let’s go.

ACT TWO Scene Five

(Prison scene)

Enter Gordon, Alison and local official

GORDON

For Goodness sake, I EXPLAINED all that very clearly this morning. You KNOW why I am here. WHY are my papers not in order? WHY are you doing this?

ALISON

Give him some money. (quietly, tersely maintaining a smile)

GORDON (sweating and getting worked up, rummages through his pockets and finds some French Francs)

I bet you understand this! (thrusting 200 FF under the official’s nose)

ALISON

Gordon. Gordon! (in a husky shriek)

LOCAL OFFICIAL glares at Gordon and shouts a command to the guards outside. (A swarthy bearded guard enters and pushes Gordon back to the wall with his bayonet.)

You. You! (prods him and mimmicks his throat getting cut by drawing his index finger across it. Leaves the room in anger). Voices are heard in the corridor. More footsteps. An elderly official enters.

ELDERLY OFFICIAL

Please excuse me for my English. (Smiles politely)

It is not always easy for us. HE wants to see you. HE – hmmm, here I think soon, very soon.

GORDON

(diplomatically) No. NO! You seem like a reasonable person. But we have had enough. We want to leave. NOW! We have done nothing wrong we just…

ELDERLY OFFICIAL

You MUST stay here. MUST!

(Enter frail man with walking stick, followed by another official).

FRAIL MAN

I am sorry to have kept you waiting and I apologise for the circumstances in which I have detained you. You are, of course, totally free to leave.

GORDON

Who are you and why are you doing this to us?

FRAIL MAN

Ah, who am I? I have often wondered that myself. I am now the newly elected governor of the city. The City (pauses for breath -) the city, what’s left of it. May I sit down? (sits on bench).

There is no money here, no investment and just a few skilled workers left. The Religious movement here as elsewhere ultimately yielded to pragmatism – it had to.

GORDON

But you’re European. Why are you here?

FRAIL MAN

I chose to in the end. I have been ill, you know. I was a prisoner for a long time. Eventually they let me go. We’ve been allowed free elections here for the first time in goodness knows how long. The local community persuaded me out of retirement. They remember how it was…could I see that for a minute?

GORDON

You mean this? Handing him the folded sheet of paper he found in the cave earlier.

FRAIL MAN

Yes, I recognise the bordering. Look – open it and lays it on the table. “Welcome to MOON CITY”. Looks inviting wouldn’t you say?

Before you leave, I would be honoured to have you as my guests for dinner. Of course, I know your names. My name is Hyde, Peter Hyde. Apart from teaching manners to this lot, I have a mandate to rebuild this city.

(The moon comes out from the clouds and a moonbeam streams into the cell onto the table. Crescent shaped and two bright stars to its east are clearly visible.)

The End

The IDEA Agency

Established 1970

I started an agency which eventually contracted nearly 1000 disc jockeys around the world with regular customers in 14 markets, including Europe, the Middle East and Far East. I.D.E.A as it came to be known world-wide (and still is…) was the second largest agency of its kind in the world, second only to JULIANA’s (later Bacchus) which specialised in leasing entire night clubs including the supply of DJ’s to top hotels around the world. We were never in competition as our formats were entirely different.

My IDEA supplied a first class DJ service to top Hotels and Night clubs throughout Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Finland, Benelux, France, Italy, Spain plus Thailand, and Oman. Never had any involvement with the UK.

I was partly responsible for the great British DJ invasion (of Europe) during the 1970’s and 1980’s. The flow ebbed during the latter part of the 1990’s and then the world changed, partly owing to the digital age and also due to local dj’s mastering the techniques, and partly owing to the rise of mixing music (Pioneered by Tony Prince and his DMC).

In the old days, a DJ was a star, he had to entertain, use the microphone and make guests feel at ease, make them laugh, make them dance (how many times have I seen a DJ change a disc at the very last second because he knew that track would crucially keep them dancing). More important of all change the music so the dancing crowd would go to the bar for more drinks, and different punters would fill the floor. Mixing music changed that format; since the 90’s DJ’ing became more and more technical, with mixing and remixes being the ‘star’. Microphones were out! My DJs were showmen, entertainers – for me, mixing DJs were technicians.

Inadvertently, I literally changed the lives of hundreds of young Brits. They swarmed across the North Sea (Harwich-Esjberg route on DFDS) and found their way to their respective first gigs via my office in Copenhagen. As the Agency grew, so did the corners of Europe where they eventually settled, and most of them still live not far from their last IDEA contract. They all remember the wild days of their youth, the fun, the mischief, the pain and the exhilaration of those times and very many of us are still in touch, either directly, or via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on.

It’s a strange but warm feeling to be called up out of the blue from a DJ that I used to book 30 – 40 years ago, whilst our looks desert us our voices nearly always remain true and we pick up where we left off all those years ago. About 50 old DJs have called me on the hoof, so to speak.

And, it didn’t stop at DJs either. I was Agent and Manager for many dancers (Go Go Dancers back then…), Radio Luxembourg DJ Tony Prince I brought over to Scandinavia on several occasions.

Remember that one hit wonder band, Middle of the Road? At the height of their fame (and only chart success) I brought them to Denmark and Sweden and arranged a string of bookings and concerts for them. Several of the DJs formed Road Shows and I was happy to assist Starboard Roadshow, and other acts to our more famous night clubs.

Helicopters and Submarines

by Alan Lawrie

November 9th, 1989 was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gradual breakup of the Soviet Union followed. By 1992, Russia was run by gangster capitalists (and still is.) and the former republics loosened their grip and became independent sovereign states. Russia was an enormous market and totally open to business with anyone. I went to Russia with the intention of selling music somehow.

---

What in the hell was I thinking of?

Suddenly reality hit me, and I smiled. A gallows smile knowing my turn was up and my fate was plunging fast into the vast unknown.

It was January 1993, the plane was preparing to land, descending and bouncing through the thick night clouds in the middle of a snowstorm. Peering out the window I could make out distant lights of the runway. This was sheer madness why was I doing this?

I was about to land in Moscow in the middle of the night, in winter, without a hotel to go to and not sure if my ‘friend’ and contact Sergei would be there to meet me off the plane. How would I handle immigration with my limited knowledge of Russian? The risk and recklessness made it all the more exciting though.

Touchdown, well I survived that. Then challenged by a labyrinth of endless empty corridors to walk down without a soul in sight. Made it through passport control and customs to the second world. Sergei, an ex-red army captain whom I had never met before, let alone seen a photo was there to meet me. Relief. Next thing I knew we were hurtling down icy roads with large ominous Soviet tower blocks on either side of this bobsleigh run and everything else was a white out with a thick layers of snow.

He took the corners without slowing down, I was scared out of my wits – not smiling now, he never touched the brakes only the handbrake with sharp flicks of the steering wheel. Eventually, we made it to the city centre where he pulled up outside the notorious Intourist Hotel just off Tverskaya.

My first experience of a Moscow Hotel was back in those Soviet days of 1978. I was on a charter flight (Good old Aeroflot) from Bangkok to Copenhagen, (Changing planes in Moscow), however that flight had technical problems, a minor fire on board, and hit by a tropical storm, it landed several hours delayed which consequently led to the missing of the connecting flight to Denmark. We passengers had to disembark in the dead of night -5 degrees outside the immigration building still wearing our shorts and sandals from the Thai heat. After what seemed an eternity, we cleared passport control and were herded into a rickety old bus which took us to the dreaded Intourist Hotel. In those days, on every landing there was a desk, and a very fat woman would sit there forbidding anyone to leave their room. Also, there were security guards with machine guns that patrolled the building. I was with my mate, Pete – a fellow adventurer –and we both decided to find a local bar to sample Russian life. We didn’t get further than the world’s strongest woman who screamed at us and ordered us back to our room.

Pete and I were distraught, we were genuinely thirsty, so we turned on the tap in the sink which emitted a brown watery trickle. That was it – Sleep!

The whole of the following day was spent back in in the transit lounge of Moscow airport. We were told we had to wait seven days for the next connecting flight to Copenhagen. We had no food or drink and as we were in transit were not allowed to change money to buy anything. Pete was luckier he made friends with a delightful, but dubious Filipino called Eddie who did have a bottle of whisky on him. Needless to say, they got hilariously drunk and loud. I was surprised they weren’t hauled off to Siberia.

The majority of us hapless Aeroflot hospitality victims were Danes and bless them. They organised a sit-down strike in the busiest area leading to the departure gates and refused to be moved until they were guaranteed a flight home (to Denmark). It worked. After being shepherded back to prison for a second night (we were allowed a meal but black potatoes and grey peas that wouldn’t have won MasterChef and didn’t help the hunger pains but hey what a great way to diet!). That beautiful morning, we were ordered harshly to line up along the corridor and Eddie added ‘- you vill all be shot’ mind you he was still grinning like a hungover Cheshire cat.

Now back in the grip of this infamous hotel I wondered if all the rooms were still bugged. Nothing much had changed except a bankrupt soviet system had been replaced by Gun Law Capitalism. Everybody wanted to be in business. After 70 years of repression everything was possible – at a price. And that was why I was there too.

I wanted to sell music. CD’s anything that Russia needed, and I would buy goods that I could sell in the UK like amber, and military night sights which was the actual link to Sergei in the first place. Night vision binoculars were available on the Russian market but hard to obtain in the West. A colleague of mine, Graham – who delighted in anything illegal and anti-authority - found Sergei on the internet somehow and they struck up a dialogue. Sergei – ex-military and still well connected could source and provide them. Communications in the early 90’s was still being conducted via the old clattering telex system and the new modern method of facsimile, or fax. Faxes ping ponged back and forth between Moscow and Norfolk (where I was living at the time) incessantly. As I was the only one who had funds, it was agreed that I would take up the dialogue with Sergei with a view to visiting Moscow and creating business opportunities.

The Business Opportunity

Sergei was now working in a newly established film company called VARUS Video (we called it VIRUS Video and they never cottoned on). His boss was a man called Tamaz Topadze – pronounced Thomas Topaz. I had to prepare myself properly for this venture so the first thing I did was to embark on a one-to-one intense Russian language course down in Bury St Edmunds. The dear old lady who taught me was an admirer of the old Soviet system and refused to teach me any slang or rude words. I stammered I needed to learn the language of the streets not proper society Russian, but she wouldn’t budge. I remember sleeping every night with a large book of Russian verbs by my bedside studying more and more with every passing day.  Well, my first wife (Vicky) was an alcoholic so there were no distractions there sad to say. I learned very quickly and got fairly fluent mainly because Russian is a phonetic language, and everything is written how it sounds. Cyrillic lettering is like a code of sounds. My tutor explained that the Soviets simplified the Russian language once in power and did away with nearly all irregularities and complicated grammar thus making the language so simple that every peasant, policeman and taxi driver could communicate. My greatest achievement was to walk into a typical workers canteen near the main station and order a piece of bread with a café latte. I also found that I could read all street names, public notices, train timetables and so on – an unexpected bonus.

Another part of the preparation was how to behave out there and how to conduct oneself in business. So, I studied Russian etiquette, manners, history and superstitions.

For instance, it is taboo to shake hands over a threshold, to be the odd one out at a dinner party and so on. To obtain a visa visiting Russian in 1993 one had to have a sponsor. That was easy enough as Sergei’s boss, Tamaz would be the one. But, as etiquette had it, what gift should one bring as a thank you for sponsoring me? What do you buy for someone you don’t know, who probably had access to everything. The omission of offering such a gift would be seen as outright rude, bad mannered and certainly be getting off on the wrong foot. So, I decided a 12-year-old Johnny Walker Black label whisky couldn’t be far off the mark.

The following day, Sergei collected me in his rattly old Muscovitch and took me to Tamaz’s office block. I assumed Sergei had an agenda worked out and I just followed his lead. It was about midday, and I was introduced to Tamaz. I guess he was about mid-fifties, rather portly and his command of English surprised me. I thanked him profusely for sponsoring my visa and said I had brought a little gift for him. He took wrapped box and acknowledged the 12-year-old Black Label. Alan – you shouldn’t’t have, this is very kind of you he said. He promptly walks to the back of his office and opened the door of a very large green metal cabinet and placed my bottle of whisky alongside 20 – 30 others.

 - Alan, he continued, you must join us for lunch. And so, we all took the elevator to the restaurant situated two floors below ground level (bomb proof I guess).

The meal was fairly nondescript, I ate whatever was put in front of me (which is amazing as I am a fussy eater). The thing of significance was Tamaz’s way of lunching and giving orders. It was straight out of the Godfather trilogy. He would sit at the end of the table, a minion would bow down and whisper something in his ear, Tamaz would nod or comment in a low voice, and the minion went about his errand. This kept happening throughout the meal. I wondered who he was having liquidated at the time.

Another thing, he never touches a telephone in all the time I knew him. Mobile phones were around in the early 90’s but only just having advanced from field phones with large batteries to holding a large black brick to one ear. No, Tamaz whispered his orders to a constant stream of lackeys and after each instruction he would apologise to us (well me really) for the interruption.

After the meal, we drove out to the Film Studios of VIRUS video…(it was a cover for other dark activities). Firstly, this large estate looked like a disused warehouse and might have been. Some rooms were converted into editing suites, and others used for storage. There was little evidence of film making but who was I to question them.

Tamaz proudly announced VARUS video had access to 200 outlets in the Russian Republic, and that he wanted to talk to me about a deal in provided CDs to them all.

We have all the hardware he said but have trouble in getting the CDs to play on them.

My mind went into overdrive- supply 200 shops with their cd’s. Inside one day, this sounded like my first major deal. We’ll discuss this in London Tamaz went on to say. and he did in April of the same year (but more of that later.)

Moscow

Not only did Tamaz sponsor my visa but by the very nature of sponsoring he was responsible for anything I got up to, crimes I committed or problems I caused. Consequently, he instructed Sergei not to let me out of his sight and be the perfect, ‘friendly’ and helpful guide which he was.

At the time of my Moscow visit, I had a contract with Scottish and Newcastle brewery as a music consultant to assist in any way they wished to increase their wet sales across the board through the profiling of the right music in their outlets. Moscow at that time had three daily English newspapers and in the city their readers consisting mainly of contract workers, thousands of foreign residents and of course tourists. And not one English styled pub in the city, so I asked Sergei to show me pubs, bars and restaurants…so I could learn from how music was being presented or played. We drank in several bars and ate in typically Russian restaurants during my four day stay and in most cases of the restaurants, they had a violinist doing the tables, or a live, traditionally styled band playing music in the background. No DJ’s, no juke boxes, one had to remember Russia had only just stepped out of 70 years of communism and a wholly different way of life.

A traditional English pub (or Irish for that matter) would have made a killing (literally!).

However, I was at least ten years ahead of my time. Then there were hard currency bars that only traded in US dollars, or ordinary outlets in roubles. Another problem was security. I asked Sergei about the idea of a large Western bar, but the security question came up as rival gangs had rival protection rackets and you had to be in with the right “security” company to survive commercially and probably literally. I would want my margin for the idea and the initiative of setting it up, but would I get my money out?

If S&N supplied the beer, they would have had a massive PR advantage let alone sales.

Everything at that time was new through the winds of change.

I went one day to Gorky Square where the first McDonalds was established. Amazingly, the price for the burger was exactly the same as you would pay in the west.

The meal was perfect and felt like home from  home.

I was very impressed, but not with the security guards that patrolled the premises guns ready. Apparently, the staff had to be taught how to smile at customers – so unusual was the concept.

One afternoon I asked Sergei to take me to a typical Russian bar – a local. He wanted to impress me with a new Western styled Hotel bar, NO! I said emphatically, I want to know how real Russians socialise and drink. He gave in, OK, he said, so we walked to the Arbat shopping complex where he took me through an alley to the back of a block resembling an industrial area. Up some metal steps to what seemed like a large storage unit. Inside, you could barely see the far end of the bar for smoke. It was crammed full.

We found a couple of seats where two ladies were sitting drinking. Both wore those classic furs hat and full winter coats. Both were very rotund and jolly in appearance and smiled at us. We sat down, Sergei got the beers in – local beers of course.

After a while one of the women asked Sergei if he had a knife. Well, what would you expect a military man to have? Out came this enormous flick knife which he opened and handed to the woman. She dug into her bag under the table and pulled out a long eel, that was salted and (presume) cured. She used Sergei’s knife to slice the eel and offered slices to all of us – each piece at the end of his knife.  On the table the ladies were drinking peppered vodka which they also offered us. Finally, I was happy, this was exactly what I wanted to see. I thanked Sergei who looked at me with a muttering look of ‘you English’.

I had the last laugh at him in April 94 when he and Tamaz came to London. I offered to show him round and he said he wanted to buy his wife and son a present. We were in Regent Street, so I took him to Hamley’s (something for his young son? No…)  Several stores later, his eyes finally lit up when he found something perfect for his wife. A brillo pad for a £1.

On my last evening, Sergei said he had to go to Moscow’s East station as he was accompanying his friend Youri to the station, as Youri was leaving for Riga in order to work for the Latvian Tourist Ministry. I said I would be happy to join them.

Moscow’s East Railway station is a building I will never forget. Stunning architecture, high arches and arcades in light blue, it was a fading elegance, it must have been a sensational place.

Outside the streets were all cobbled, and the snow came down and softly carpeted the area. At that moment, I half expected Dr Zhivago to come round the corner in a troika and complete the imagery.

The jigsaw of which Youri was the centerpiece eventually became the greatest and most thrilling adventure of my life.

Riga

I kept up the dialogue with Sergei once back in Norfolk. Night sights were not going to be easy to obtain, amber at the right price was going to be coastal but supplying CDs to the Russian republic through the 200 outlets of Varus Video was looking good. Sergei explained that Russian business opportunities were being held back by red tape and bureaucracy, so he suggested reconvening outside Russia to explore other business opportunities. Youri was in Riga, through his ministerial role he had access to markets and contacts. I had access to hundreds of virtually mint condition CD’s I wanted to sell to the Baltic States, and perhaps on to Russia. So, a meeting was set up.

I booked a flight to Riga, the Latvian capital where incidentally half the population was Russian and pro-Russian back then. The only reasonably priced hotel I found was – yes – Intourist Hotel. I arranged for Youri and Sergei to meet me in the bar at 2 pm on the day of my arrival, and we’d discuss music. I couldn’t wait.

Why I don’t know but I chose to wear a white suit, and if I had a hat and cane I could have doubled as Maurice Chevalier, the late French actor/singer.

I found a large round table which I commandeered and sat and waited for my business friends to arrive. Three came, Youri, Sergei and a large bear who introduced himself as Ivan.

All three focused their eyes on me – after all I called the meeting. This was it !

I leant over towards Youri and said.

 - Youri, you are the tourist minister, I want to supply Western music to as many people in Latvia as I can. He glanced at Ivan who nodded,

 - Actually, no Alan, not anymore. We have a new business. We are selling military hardware.

 - Oh, I replied, totally wrong footed and off balance, tell me what you do?

 - We have a consignment of MIL8 Russian Helicopters we want to sell. 13 of them, Ivan took over the explanation. They are based at a local airport here in Latvia.

Then a voice inside my body silenced my rational thinking and blurted out

 - Well, I might be able to help you there. I have good contacts in the UK.

(Good contacts sure I have. I had a Danish secretary who was my P.A, and her boyfriend Paul was a ground mechanic at RAF Honnington, Suffolk). The voice continued to hijack me and continued to bluff its way into deeper trouble.

 - Just leave me the specifications, and details of your hardware at reception and I will see what I can do.

 - We have more, Ivan mumbled in a very low voice. More? More what?

 - Submarines. We have 8 decommissioned submarines for sale.

I was so far out of my depth I was drowning but still a voice represented me whilst its owner was unable to utter a word.

I felt myself leaning over towards Ivan and asking the unaskable question

 - Have the nuclear warheads been removed?

 - Oh yes, of course, Ivan replied. what the hell was I playing at?

The voice impersonating me continued unable to prevent it from further embarrassment.

 - Please get me a breakdown on the metals and tonnage and leave the information at reception.

Well, metal is metal, Precious metal always has a value. If there is value and a market it can be sold, cant it?

And so that meeting concluded, having totally bullshitted my way into a whole area I knew nothing about. No music deal occurred, No one was interested to even discuss it.

So, back to England, and find buyers for the helicopters and submarines.

Mars Bars

 - Think of them as Mars Bars, I rambled on. Don’t be in awe of the product just because they are MIL8 Russian Helicopters. Whether we are dealing with a chocolate and toffee sweet or some awesome military aviation machines the principle is the same. We need to research and learn everything there is to know about the product. Pictures, technical data, capacity, maximum flying hours – everything right down to the last rivet.

I had summoned my entire sales and marketing team together for a debriefing. All eyes were upon me, and no one said a word.

Back then in the early 90s, information on the internet was still fairly basic, so with researching online, scouring glossy reference books in libraries, interviewing anyone in the know, we managed to piece together a portfolio of Russian MIL8 Helicopters.

So, who could we sell them to? For how much? Who actually owned them so who would we be representing? To even consider the project was ridiculous, to take on brokering a sale of military hardware on such a scale was perverse but the challenge against such odds had the adrenalin racing and heart pounding. The ultimate high.

Island republics all need helicopters, don’t they? So, we pondered over an enormous world map and encircled Malta, Cyprus, Singapore and so on in a big red marker pen. We made tentative enquiries to their various C.A.As either by direct telephone calls or by fax which had just superseded the old clattering telex system. In those days you needed special paper for telefax which had a tendency to fade quickly. Malta responded with interest as their pilots were used to Russian helicopters and were in the market to lease a MIL8 as it happened and were also considering buying one. The potential sale was pure exhilaration. So, we had to make a formal offer but who was the real seller?

This amazingly turned out to be our dear friend Tamaz Topadze of Varus video. We communicated mainly by fax and he detailed us which Swiss bank accounts the proceeds should be sent to and that each helicopter should sell for $ 1.2 million.

To cut a long story short, we discovered selling helicopters needed a different approach to flogging Mars bars. We needed to deal with the big boys in the game. Ultimately, we networked international brokers in this sector which ended up with a string of us - five in all - with ourselves representing the seller, and a buyer on behalf of the then Pakistani Military Junta that was interested in taking all thirteen of them. The dealing and the haggling went up and down the chain until finally the deal was rejected because the price was too low! What? Apparently, the sale had to be renegotiated at two million dollars each to allow for each general on the buying panel to be stashed with the appropriate bribe - sorry, I mean inducement. That said and done and we were already salivating at the thought of new cars bought in cash with our share of the half mill. dollar sales commission.

All this happened in 1993. Our biggest expense in this project was the astronomical cost of international telephone calls. If only we had WhatsApp or Email back then…

We commenced the campaign in April of that year and gave it until September to produce a sale otherwise we could not have funded it further.

Later in the year, Tamaz and Sergei came to London mainly it would seem to have firsthand news on how the sale was proceeding. We met in one of London’s most affluent hotels when Tamaz insisted our talks would be better held up in his room - quiet and discreet. Minutes later, I was sitting in his suite when he probed me about the big profits we were all going to make by selling his stranded MIL8’s still lounging away on a Latvian airport. It was uncomfortable, at that time with nothing new to say so he changed to the minor interest of importing thousands upon thousands of compact discs to his vast Russian empire of 200 outlets throughout the federation.

He even detailed me what price he would import them for, how much should be siphoned off to one of his Swiss accounts and when I raised the question of expenses, he shot an angry look at me and stated categorically all that came out of my tiny share. I froze. I could see exactly where this was going. Here was a very powerful Russian gangster used to getting his way just a few feet away. If I ever agreed to whatever intricate, crooked arrangement he would expect me to deliver for him, the thought occurred to me what if I held my end of the bargain but he misunderstood or concluded that I had cheated him and was on Russian soil at the time? In business you often need your poker face, not allowing your opponent to read you. I back-pedalled. The way out was to slow it down and forget about the glory of a lucrative income from selling music to Russia.

Well, what about the helicopters?

One month after the London visit, I received a fax from Sergei in Moscow. His boss, Tamaz had been gunned down, lying in a pool of blood by a section of the Georgian mafia. I didn’t ask questions but what goes around comes around. He didn’t even know the sale didn’t materialise.

The sale did not go through owing to a late decision by the Pakistani junta to buy a later model of the MIL8. Neither did the one-off sale to Air Malta owing to our naivety in not knowing about Non-Circumvention Agreements and the correct procedural paperwork. Of course, we could have put the seller in direct contact with the buyer. The rest of my team blocked that suggestion on the basis we would have been cheated out of our cut.

One week later, I got a hand delivered envelope delivered to me by a courier. It was a sales contract all in Russian agreeing to the sale of 13 MIL8 helicopters with the dead man’s signature on it, and a request for me to counter sign it

My God that was one, exciting adventure, but next time I will not swim out so far.

Did I really think we’d get nothing out of the sale had it gone through? No,I don’t think so, the seller would surely have thrown us a few Mars Bars.

Carl Kingston - The Radio Caroline Years

Enjoy Alan’s Interview with Carl Kingston - The Radio Caroline Years.

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Hi Carl, what I’m doing is a follow up book to GREAT IDEA with a sequel called THAT’S HOW IT WAS, and following the stories of many International DJs like yourself and your passionate love of music taking you right through your whole career. Now with you, you have done the Swiss Clubs mainly and you’ve done an awful lot of radio but just I’m doing a feature article about Radio Caroline and wish to interview some of the DJs I worked with to hear your experience of working on it. Which ship were you on? I Understand there were five ships used?

No, there were only two ships originally, then later there was the ROSS REVENGE the ship that I was on so three in all.

When were you there?

I went to the relaunch of Caroline which was in the mid eighties onto the biggest Caroline Ship ever and anchored in the North Sea.

I was working at the Casino in Montreux if you remember, in Switzerland when I put an advert in Billboard magazine, as my second child was about to be born and I wanted to return back to England. And, I also thought about trying to get work in America so I put an advert in Billboard.

I didn't get any response from the advert whatsoever except a phone call from a guy called Peter Tait, who is sadly no longer with us and he called me, he was from Croydon, and, one of his friends, the late Dale Winton had been offered radio on Radio Caroline. So, Peter was chatting with me and he said “Looks like I’ll be going to Caroline, would you like to join me?” So, I said, yes, of course I would. To cut a long story short I had to fast track making a demo for Radio Caroline and I had to send it to a lady called Annie Challis, who was Rod Stewart’s manager and who was helping Ronan O’Rahilly run Radio Caroline station. I sent the tape recorded delivery to Peter who in turn gave it to Annie who contacted me and asked if I would like to go out to Caroline. So , I took that opportunity.

I cancelled all my gigs, and Dougal (Peter Allen), God rest his soul, came to live with us and he did all my gigs whilst I was on Caroline. Later, Dougal also, I got him on Caroline. It was probably the best experience of my life. It was just amazing. Earlier I did some work for the Dutch service of Caroline, Radio Mi Amigo, with pop music reports, but I didn’t get to work for Caroline itself. When Caroline sank, with Stevie Gordon on board, everyone thought well that was that, Caroline wouldn’t come back again. But, lo and behold it did, in the form of this incredible ship, the most powerful one of all with so many former famous Radio Caroline DJs from the 60’s and then new names as well.

Incredible because in those days, we didn’t have internet, we didn’t have telephones and things like that so,you would get mail from LosAngeles and it was unbelievable, mail from everywhere. I kept a small portion of the mail because I thought it’ll be interesting to retain all that adulation and feedback from all over the world. Just to feel the response from the audience about everything we were doing and it elevated my career. When I got back on shore leave to get back to doing some gigs and also did some voice overs, and commercial radio stations around the uk, they would recognise my name. So got better known that way too which increased my voice over work.

What I want to ask you, did you meet Ronan? And ,if so, how did you get on with him and what was he like to work with?

Yes, of course. I got on with him fine, he was quite a character. When he came to pay you, it was quite strange, he would put his hand into his left breast side of his suit jacket and he’d pull out Dutch Guilders, then he’d put his hand into his back trouser pocket and there were dollars!. Then, he’d put his hand into his right hand side breast pocket and he’d have Sterling. It was very funny how you got paid. I was very lucky because when I went I said to Annie Challis I am married, I have two kids, I can’t afford to be going and working somewhere for absolutely nothing and Annie Challis looked after me completely. I mean, I got paid!

You mean some of them didn’t get paid?

Possibly, well, everybody got paid but it was varying amounts. I still have the recorded delivery envelopes that Annie sent to my wife, Sue. There would be a letter inside saying there was more coming.

Was it always cash, Carl?

Always cash. And, always in multiple currencies. With Annie Challis it was always pounds to Sue.

As a DJ onboard were you free to play anything you wanted or did you have to comply with playlists?

I was free to play what I wanted. They had an enormous record library and I could listen to what I wanted. I could hear all the new albums. We had total freedom.

Just one more thing about Ronan, what was his style of management?

It was very much you were on the ship with the rest of the broadcast team. Yeah he was into the love and hippie thing, but you were allowed to do what you did within a guideline. I always observed to take care of the points each station wanted you to take care of.

How long were you on the ship for?

I did a number of stints but I don’t remember how many in total. You could be onboard six weeks and we always went out from the UK coast. It was a myth that we went out from Holland. We went out from Brightlingsea and places like that in little boats. That was the worse thing actually having to climb those ropes to get on board because I don’t swim at all.

Were you not allowed to be seen? Did it all have to be on the quiet..?

Yes, nothing was ever supposed to be delivered to the Radio Caroline ship. It was cloak and dagger.

Another thing is that Carl Kingston is my real name. When I started they said Carl Kingston is not your real name is it? I replied yes it is. I am not having my career known under another name. I am building a career I am not going to destroy it by becoming Fred Smith for a period of my career.

It was such an amazing experience, almost surreal I remember all those boats with listeners coming out from the UK being invited out to the ship under cover of darkness. You felt like you were a God but you are just an ordinary person doing the thing that you love.

It was quite incredible the adulation you got, the out pouring of love for Caroline, and the concept for free commercial radio. The only reason I left was that I was hoping to go to Viking Radio which was just about to start up. And, then when I was on shore leave from Caroline, I got a call from the BBC and asked if I was interested in a daily show, I said well I will lay my cards on the table I was waiting for another offer. But this was a proper contract and salary. I asked what was going to happen because Viking weren’t sure what their broadcast hours would be. They suggested if I had a concrete offer from the BBC I should take it because they couldn’t guaranteed anything at that time. In the meantime I went back to Caroline for another tour of duty, and then joined the BBC for about a year when I heard from the BBC they had a needle time cutback. So I left the BBC, Humberside on a Friday and started with Viking on the Saturday which was quite funny because they took me straightaway.

Where are you now by the way?

I’m in Basel. I have a flat here, retired now with a Swiss pension. With all the contracts you gave me I paid it into the Swiss system

Thanks Carl, some wonderful insight to life on board there, thank you.

Did you speak to Steve Gordon? He was on the Mi Amigo when it sank. His was the last voice on Radio Caroline!

Alan Lawrie with Gavin McCoy

Enjoy Alan’s interview with the one and only Gavin McCoy, this time on the other end of the microphone.

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Gavin: ‘It’s the Samaritans, how can I help you?’

Alan: ‘Not Battersea Dogs Home, I’ve got the wrong number…’

(Both fall about laughing not having been in touch for ten, fifteen years or more)

OK, Gavin, I am going to test you with this. It’s about the book, it’s not about Steve Cooper, it’s not about working in Denmark, nor working for IDEA. What it is, I am following the story “Great Idea”, about people who started out as a DJ, did international work, and then went on to other things. Some of these stories are absolutely amazing, really are good stuff. Now, I know you have some very readable stories. So, what happened with your career when you left the Scandinavian scene and went into radio.

I know you did all those voice impersonations and that’s very much what I want to hear about. So, tell me…

Well, it’s interesting because I had been working in Kristiansand (Norway) until the day I came back to England. I was loving every minute of my life there, but I secretly aspired to being a radio DJ, having cut my teeth on mobile and disco work. As it happened, a radio station in Wolverhampton advertised for DJs in Record Mirror or something. So, I sent off a tape which I had made in the disco; I had previously done some work for Radio Oxford, years before going on the road. Lo and behold they said come and see us, I did and after a brief interview they said you’ve got the job, this was 1976. You are going to be the mid-afternoon guy, which was fantastic. Interestingly, the money they gave me for professional radio working in the West Midlands, was less, far less than I was getting on the road in Scandinavia. So, there was a bit of a drop in income and with working on radio came far more responsibility, far more to do and it was far more demanding, so professional radio was quite a tradeoff to start with. So, between you and me (and all you readers...!) I absolutely hated the area, and I was a kind of an alien in that area as well. All the time I was just wishing I could be closer to my home in Oxford. Happily, after a short period of time, I got a job in Reading, at Radio 210. Such a lovely station, lovely people just down the road from where I lived and where actually, I met my wife to be, Ingrid, who was working in Reading as a teacher. So those bits fell into place quite quickly. I stayed in 210 for eight years. I was working alongside famous names like Bob Harris, Mike Read, Steve Wright and quite a few of the prominent names today who cut their teeth in this little radio station in Reading.

Steve Wright and I hit it off straight away, he had a comedic sense of humour, so did I, we all mucked around leaving each other ridiculous, hilarious messages, pretending to be somebody else on our answering machines and stuff. Just crazy stuff to see what we could get away with. Sometimes, when we did phone in shows on the air, if there were no calls coming in, Steve would say to me ‘call me up and pretend to be a caller’. We became quite adept at doing various voices, either crazy voices or serious voices, as phone contributors to each other’s shows, that’s where the voices developed and looking back it was like being at school and I was the class comedian. So, I was always imitating the teachers, imitating the politicians all that stuff. It was kind of second nature for me to do different voices. Well, Steve eventually got his lucky break and went from Radio 210 to Radio Luxembourg. There was a connection there because the commercial production manager at Radio 210, a guy called Dickie Swainson, had been the programme controller of one of the pirates, I think it was Radio London or Radio Caroline, back in the 60s. He became the programme controller at Radio Luxembourg so, very quickly what followed was, he recruited several people from 210 in Reading, to go and work at Hertford Street in London and thus to Luxembourg, to go on air and be presenters. There must have been five or six people who went from 210 to Radio Luxembourg. Then eventually, Steve was recruited by Radio One. Luxy in those days was a great launching ground for careers, and I am sure we know many of the guys on Luxy who ended up on Radio One. Steve was offered a weekend show, then was given his famous, ‘Steve Wright in the afternoon show’. At the same time in America, there was a famous guy Rick Dees, who was very popular, and who had a similar kind of a show, a zoo’s show. Characters on the phone coming in and out. To enhance the comedy, someone would pretend to be June the coach, or Larry the hairdresser or something like that. So, Steve said, ‘would you do some voices for me one day?’ and, I said, ‘yeah, sure, of course’. He said I can pay you for it, and shortly afterwards I got a contract from BBC Light Entertainment which was like seven pages long and I never, ever read it.

Every day I would be doing these voices, and believe it or not, I would get more for ten minutes worth of work on BBC National Radio than I did for my entire show on commercial radio which was four hours long. So, I didn’t say no to that, then just before 2 o’clock when Steve started each day, they’d say to me ‘What are you going to do?” So, I’d have a look at the day’s newspaper, find a little story about something that happened on the news and find someone that I was going to be. I said I am going to be a camp hairdresser. One of the characters I did for many years was Gervais the Hairdresser. If you listen to Alan Carr nowadays, how he laughs, basically, it was Alan Carr before Alan Carr had been born, very camp, very expressive, very OTT. So, I launched into that voice and people loved it; I experimented a with a few more different characters, some stuck and became kind of cult characters. I wrote and performed all the material for Gervais you know, for example his parting words every time he had been on, was the expression, ‘keep your tongue out’, he’d say it in a very camp voice. I was on a bus and overheard people say goodbye to each other and one of them would say ‘Keep Your Tongue Out’! I thought, bloody hell, I can’t believe that somebody’s using my expression. There were more like that.

Another character I did was, Sid the Manager, he was supposed to be Steve’s shambolic manager. A lot of these people are based on observations of real people by the way. So, I did that character who had a squeaky, irritating, protesting voice, who phoned in daily. I did another character called Fred Crosswell, a cinema manager and this was in the pre-internet days, when you had to phone the cinema to find out what film was on or look in your local newspapers. Imagine, all this was before the internet, back late 70s early 80s. This was probably around Radio One’s Hey Day, which went on for decades. Then I did a posh voice called Malcolm from the Arts Council, he was very pretentious. Every day I would sit in a studio or at home and would very quickly have to go from one character to the next. Quite frankly, it was like being schizophrenic. Even at the radio stations that I worked, they knew I did this, and very often I’d have an audience of people coming in to see me doing these changes of character and go from one thing to another. What would happen is, we would record these things about 5 or 10 to two, before Steve started on the air. No run throughs, no rehearsal. Steve didn’t know what I was going to do until I opened my mouth so, his response was absolutely genuine. Then the time would be ticking away until his show started, some days it would go really well, and we’d give it all out in ten minutes. Other days I’d trip over some words and have to start again so there was a degree of danger because it all had to be finished by 2 o’ clock. Quite often I’d be in a silly mood, and I’d put in some very rude bits, which the tech operators recording this would hear and they’d be falling around laughing, but Steve would get annoyed because I was wasting time leading up to going on air. Looking back, I would say they were fantastic fun times and some of the outtakes we made in those days, screwing it up, getting it wrong, saying rude and offensive stuff by today’s standards, are still on tape in the BBC’s secret archives. They get played at Christmas parties and by today’s standards are absolutely non-politically correct. We had a load of fun doing it.

So, anyone reading this book, will realise that YOU are behind it, I remember listening to the station.

Yes, it’s interesting because now and then I have to produce a CV of stuff I have done in the past and very often people would say “I had no idea that was YOU!”, we used to love those characters. Sid, the manager, and Gervais the Hairdresser were real people. Some people thought Steve did those impersonations. No, he didn’t, there were a nucleus of about four people who did the voices. Peter Dickson, who is a very famous voice over guy and I, probably did 99% of the characters. Such good fun and it paid well. It was exciting because I would do it and an hour or so later, I would hear it on air and would laugh at the silly stuff that I did. Some people must have a script written down, but I would just have a little guideline. If you look on You Tube for Sid the Manager, or Gervais the Hairdresser, or Steve Wright’s characters, you can hear how it went.

Let me tell you an exciting thing that happened once. One day Steve said to me, “I’ve got Paul McCartney coming in later” and he said, “would you come on the air live?”. I never ever did live stuff on the air, but I did this time. The telephone rings and he said, “Paul, it’s Sid, the Manager on the line”. (I actually have this on a cassette with McCartney’s name scrawled across it) I said to Paul, remember me? It’s Sid the Manager, I used to be a doorman at the Cavern Club, you owe me five quid.” McCartney played along with it all the way. He just said, “Oh Yes, Sid”, and carried on the banter. Paul was a great fan of the show, so even Paul McCartney knew the characters and he played along with this phone dialogue.

How long did the fun last with Steve Wright?

It was ongoing, the voices went on for about twenty years, even when he went on to the Breakfast Show on Radio One, I did the same stuff there. He’s on Radio Two now but no longer does those characters but interestingly, in addition to the character voices I have always been the announcer voice on his shows, and I still do them now.

(In September 2022 the BBC axed his show to the fury of his legions of fans and listeners. Baffling, why change a winning formula? His shows were immensely popular)

These days, semi-retired, I have a home studio, I record imaging voices for productions for radio stations all around the world, from the Caribbean, USA, Australia, Netherlands, and Norway. You know, the little things like branding for stations. Still do that work every single day of the week. Ever since I reached that so-called ‘retirement age’ I’ve never worked so much. I had this vision, like a lot of people do, of lazing around, drinking coffee, reading a book and assuming things would slow down but the truth is the opposite. I love the stimulus of creativity and doing something I am proud of every day. That’s what keeps you going, sitting down with a blank sheet of paper, and thinking I will capture those thoughts and write them down. I don’t think about myself as a pensioner. When I hear about pensioners on TV, they are talking about someone else. I am only 37 years old!

Do you still have a love of music?

Absolutely. Whenever I hear a song from a certain era I automatically think of where I was working at the time. I might hear “Love Train” by the OJAYS, now that was a Dance Floor filler at the Fregatten Hotel in Kristiansand. Having played millions of songs as a radio personality on the air and in discotheques, my emotional connection always goes back to Motown, the Philly Sound and Atlantic Soul so, if it’s Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual healing’, all that great music still resonates with me.

So, Gavin, any regrets?

You know, interestingly, during the toughest times of radio, like on breakfast shows on big stations up and down the country, Essex FM 210 Reading, quite stressful, I would very often think, bloody Hell, I wish I was back in Scandinavia again, because you start work at 8 pm, finish at midnight and have a great social life. The best part of it was when in Kristiansand, my friends Trevor White and Pip Hammond would be working in a hotel down the road and Richard White would be at the Phoenix Hotel in Arendal.

So, there would be English disc jockeys there along the coast from Mandal and one of them would have a car so, we would meet up and mess around all day long, talking about this that and the other; those days were fantastic. You know, at the toughest times on radio I would think to myself what the hell am I doing this for? I could have twice as much money, no pressure, all the freedom in the world and enjoying a foreign country…so that was often a regret. Then looking back, I was driven to getting a job on radio, but I could have waited another couple of years really and saved a bit more money and had a bit more fun.

(That idyllic, dream working lifestyle, didn’t last long Gavin. Licences in Norway extended, so DJs worked up to 3 am. Days per week were cut back, Quizzes, Live Sport on the big screen, Karaoke etc. changed the importance of entertainment through the DJ, not only in Norway but throughout Europe.) Back to the interview!

So, what was your absolute high? I would have thought it was your fun with Steve Wright.

Yes, he’s still my best mate now, I’m having lunch with him tomorrow. We’ve been best friends for forty odd years. From being on air as a presenter, I became Head of Music, the Deputy Programme Controller, then off on a management career where I became Head of Capital Gold in London. I was also Head of Smooth Radio in London and Head of presentation for Saga’s National Prime Time Radio. So, you see, the second half of my career was in Management. Then technology and everything changed around me. Very often they would say things like ‘We are not going to continue our radio station in London, we are moving to Manchester’ and I was thinking I don’t really want to go to Manchester, I want to be in the Southeast or whatever. The Radio industry changed very quickly because of the introduction of technology. Then along came the takeovers. The independence of small, radio station disappeared. Everything was run from Head Office and there was consolidation, back biting, pressure and all those things that came with it.

You know what would happen, on a Friday we would be told a new company was taking over the radio station and then on Monday we would get a memo saying “Dear Staff, just to reassure you we love everything you are doing; we are very happy to take over Radio “Whatever it was” …blah blah. Don’t worry, everybody’s job is secure”, which would be posted on the noticeboard on Friday, and then on Monday there would be another notice that said, “Dear Staff, we are going to talk to everyone today about redundancies”. You know, shrinking the numbers of the staff, and that happened so many times with the consolidation of the radio industry. You’d go home on a Friday night and wonder if you still had a job on the Monday. So, my big regret then would be, if you put all your faith in one employer you are making a big mistake. You’ve got to diversify and have some other income stream.

You’ve proved that you are still doing what you love to do from your home studio.

I don’t have to work, I don’t need the income, but I do need the stimulus, the challenge, and the excitement. I absolutely love sitting here in my home radio studio, making stuff and the challenge of someone saying could you make me this and two days later I would play it to them, and they say wow that’s fantastic. That’s better than I thought it would be.

Looking back, I will always be in your debt, Alan. There were great gigs and dream venues like Fregatten Hotel, then on the other side, shitty venues with shitty managers. That’s how it was!

I will always remember your stay at Liseleje Strand Hotel, (North Sjaelland, Denmark.) …and that awful manager.

That was my low spot. Not only now, but it was one of those places that was not busy, as they were doing renovations to the club and to get to my bedroom I had to climb over a big pile of rubble. In my bedroom, there was no running water. The toilet? If I wanted a wee in the middle of the night, I had to get up and get fully dressed again, climb back over that big pile of rubbish, open the door to this disco venue say at twelve o clock at night, I had to walk through this public area to get to the loos in this venue. The Discotheque was downstairs. The DJ booth had two layers of thick glass, so you had no contact with the guests and when you spoke into the microphone it sounded like speech in a swimming pool, as if you had a hand over your mouth and the music was like that as well.

From there the only was UP!

Thank you, Gavin - that’s a great interview, “Long May You Run”.

Keep Your Tongue Out, Alan!

The Bernard Doherty Story who started as Alan Day (with IDEA)

by Alan Lawrie

The headline news was brought to the press by Bernhard Doherty, Press Officer and Publicist for the Stones, Tina Turner and Paul McCartney. You don’t get bigger in the music industry than Bernhard. But did you know his career started with IDEA as Alan Day?

I remember Bernard as ALAN DAY, and this was the first picture he presented me with. He was one of the very first DJ’s I booked in the early days of my IDEA agency back in 1969. He was tall, always cheerful and bristled with confidence and humour. He was great fun to work with and I recall the legendary rock club CUE CLUB.in Gothenburg, Sweden where I had contracted him loved him and wanted more DJs like him. He worked Circle Club in Copenhagen and then toured for the best part of a year in Scandinavia and then disappeared to London where he took up new challenges.

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Bernard writes

I arrived in Copers for the first time (booked into Tivoli gardens by Neils Wenkens ) ... very soon after that you took me on. I remember your office in Nyhaven ... you had a Danish partner at that time can’t recall his name but he was very funny. Names of DJs around then: . Micky Lee mad person , Andy Rose ,who went on to be a big wig in Satelite TV in the UK ..we became good pals sadly died 6 years ago. Another long term pal local lad who worked at Bristol Music record shop Kent Munch who went on to be top record company man in London ..his son lived in my first flat in Greenwich around 1981

I lost touch with him until recently, but here is his story told by a journalist, Chris Scott. (I quote, with Bernhard’s permission)

Described by business partner Claire Singers as ‘6’4” of great fun’, there’s something of the entertainer about LD Publicity CEO Bernhard Doherty. A self-confessed music obsessive, he speaks with a dulcet southern tone reminiscent of a generation of rock legends, many of whom he has worked with, and many more of whom are competently impersonated in his repertoire of anecdotes.

Growing up in a musical environment (his parents taught ballroom dancing, his brother played guitar in a band), Doherty devoted hours of his youth to hanging around clubs and record shops, building up a huge and diverse musical knowledge. However, on leaving school with one O level, he found himself, ‘like everyone else in Chelmsford’, working at the Essex country town’s Marconi factory.

At the age of 18, an application for a job as a DJ in Copenhagen, advertised in Melody Maker, presented Doherty with the opportunity to foresake a life of making nuts and bolts.Working the club circuit in Scandinavia, he became associated with the overseas tours of a variety of progressive rock bands: ‘I was the guy who used to show them the best clubs and places to go.’

On his return to London, he brought with him a huge address book of managers and promoters, as well as an ‘obsession’ with working in the music industry. A spell of odd-jobbing and work as a roadie led to a job as a runner with Island Records. It was from there he graduated to working as a tour publicist, travelling the world trying to break bands in different territories.

After a stint at Hannibal Records, Doherty made the leap into agency work when a vacancy arose with Rogers and Cowan. Enlisted to set up the firm’s music department, the move from Indie label to transatlantic agency came as something of a culture shock: ‘they were like Rolls Royce. They had suits, they had expense accounts, they had an office! People in there actually had assistants, and cake on Fridays!’

Starting with David Bowie as a client, Paul McCartney and Tina Turner were soon added to the roster. ‘I went from doing obscure world music and little punk bands to - OMG - world dominating bands and selling out stadia. It was a huge learning curve.’

The romance ended in 1988, when Shandwick bought up the agency, and Doherty found the new owners not to his liking. ‘Rogers and Cowan had been lots of departments having a great time, but then we had to start form filling if we spent ten minutes working on Tina Turner and so on. I couldn’t deal with it. I was completely disillusioned.’

It was when he met Singers that the ‘idea in his head’ began to become something more tangible. The duo teamed up with Wendy Laister, using Doherty’s profile in the music industry to expand her five-year-old Laister-Dixon PR firm. In a period of six months following his arrival, the agency signed Guns ’n’ Roses and Aerosmith, before ‘Mick Jagger and Keith Richards phoned me up and said ‘We’re with you Bernard.’ (The impersonation of the frazzled rock stars is impeccable). Tina Turner soon Followed, before the firm got taken on to handle the BRIT AWARDS.

BRITs executive producer Lisa Anderson first encountered Doherty in her role as MD of RCA records in the 1980s. when she moved to handle the Brit Awards, LD was her first choice to handle the event: ‘Bernard has been a key player in reinventing the perception of the show. I trust his judgement on all PR on the show, whether in fair weather or foul! If something is going awry, Bernard is my first call!’

The rebranding of the ceremony from the ‘in joke’ of the slapstick early ceremonies into the slick event of today is cited as one of his proudest achievements, including nurturing Oasis versus Blur battle of the mid-1990s.

Perhaps one of the most ambitious projects undertaken by the agency occurred towards the end of last year (article written 2001) when LD undertook a mammoth promotional tour for the Back Street Boy’s Black and Blue album involving a private jet, a film crew, and four continents.

The agency’s roster is admirably diverse, ranging from Limp Bizkit to Elvia. Yet Doherty does not believe it necessary to to be a fan of an artist to publicise them. ‘If you love Italian food worked in an Italian restaurant and it was all you saw all day, you’d soon develop a taste for Chinese or Thai. It’s the same sort of thing with music.’

Career highlights include 1983 Joining Rogers and Cowan, 1985 Working on Live Aid, 1989 Joining LLaister-Dixon (now LD Publicity) and 1991 winning BRITs account.

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Alan Lawrie writes

After a fifty year break, I finally reconnected with Bernhard with a long, fascinating phone call just a few months ago (Dec 21). He had just returned from L.A. having done the publicity on the latest Rolling Stones tour of USA. When Charlie Watts died, the news , of course, was headline his picture in every newspaper and the Rolling Stones publicist - Bernhard Doherty announcing the sad news. I thought then I must get in touch. Today, Bernard has retired as CEO for LD Publicity and can be heard on Planet Rock Radio every Friday night.

Richard Blade Interview

An Interview with Richard Blade in Los Angeles

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I’m on my second book as a follow up to GREAT IDEA and its called That’s how it was and I am following the careers of International DJs with their love of music and what happened throughout their career and I’ve got some fascinating stories, I’ve got guys from Radio Caroline, one of them on the ship when it sank, some amazing stories, your story is amazing too so what I want to ask you first you were in Scandinavia because I remember that and I met you when you were Dick Sheppard you went to America fairly early.

I went to America in November 1976.

What were the reasons? Fame and Fortune? California sun, California girls?

All of the above - Fame, Fortune, Blue Skies and California girls!

Well, that is a good enough reason. Obviously the first thing you did was to try to make your name as a DJ and you were different you were English; you clearly got a lot of work and then you obviously became very well known on the circuit and started to compere gigs with bands and host shows. From the DJ bit what happened then?

When I first came to America it was to get into radio and that’s why I chose America because they had so many radio stations. It was also important the country be English-speaking as my gift for languages is very limited. That meant my list included America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. But my top choices were America or Australia. When I first arrived here I immediately tried to get a radio gig and I knocked on all the doors of stations in L.A. and was refused every single time. They said you will never work in this town with your accent, English DJs weren’t popular at the time, so I continued DJ’ing in clubs - disco was just starting in Southern California at the time. There were very few discos and no pub scene, no pubs at all over here. I found out about a restaurant chain that was putting a brand-new disco into one of their locations - and looking for a DJ. I went down and auditioned, and got the job. The club took off and everyone was happy. Then Hollywood intervened and Saturday Night Fever opened and that was the moment everything changed in America. It seemed everyone wanted to be a part of the disco scene and even have their own disco party at home. With that, mobile discos began over here, and I started doing a few on the side - people in the club would like the music and would say, hey, can you DJ a party for me?

I started doing a few of those and I got asked by a caterer if I would DJ a party for a client of hers, but she couldn’t tell me the name of the client but would meet her in Malibu? So I caravanned over and followed her car and went to this house outside of Malibu, a place called Paradise Cove and the person turned out to be Barbra Streisand. It was to be her son’s Bar Mitzvah, Jason Gould, who she had when she was together with Elliot Gould. It was a star-studded event and it seemed everyone who was hot was there, you know, Larry Hagman, Donna Summer, Neil Diamond, James Caan – almost half of Hollywood showed up so I got a lot of referrals for ‘the guy who DJ’d Barbra Streisand’s party. Larry Hagman booked me to DJ the wrap party for DALLAS - now I know who shot JR! I did a bunch of parties and premieres for Paramount Pictures, and did a lot of other Bar Mitzvahs for wealthy people’s kids, and a number of parties for Michael Jackson.

It got to the point where I had so many bookings that I left DJ’ing clubs and bought myself a mobile system; my dad ordered me a Roger Squires mobile DJ console and shipped over to me along with a little Citronic outfit, so I was DJ’ing with that, and things were booming but it wasn’t why I had come to the States, I still wanted to get into radio. I was constantly making audition tapes and sending them out and getting nowhere. Then there was contest held in the Spring of 1980 by K-WEST, a rock station, to find the best unsigned DJ. I put together a new tape and sent it in and I was one of the two winners they picked and was given an hour to do a show on the radio and while I was on air they taped it for me. I made copies of the tape and mailed it out and suddenly, three days later, I got a call with the offer of a job in Bakersfield. This is what I had been after, so I quit everything and moved to Bakersfield and did a year there on a hard-rock station – KMGN, Magic 98 FM, as their music director and initially, their evening jock. I went from being Disco Dick Sheppard to going into this rock station. I needed to be sure what they were looking for if I was to be music director, and asked what the criteria was for adding music and they dropped the needle on on Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo album, - and played me the track ‘Wang Dang Sweet Poontang!’ and said, this is as mellow as we get!

That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?

It was crazy. We literally could not play “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin during the night because it was too mellow. We only could play it during the day. It was called dayparting. At night times it was just balls to the wall, Van Halen, AC/DC, Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath, Ozzie Osbourne, Motorhead – the kind of music to keep your neighbours awake all night!

Did you know the repertoire or just picked it up quickly?

Didn't know it at all, I just had to listen to it and learn. But that was OK as it was part of my education into American radio. I spent 12 - 14 hours a day at the station learning everything I could, how to produce commercials, how go on sales calls with sales people so I could see how that works and basically find out how all the equipment functioned. I wanted to know how the tape cartridges loaded, the instant start decks worked, rather that the Technics or Garrard turntables I was used to. I gave myself a deadline, I’ll be there for a year and pay my dues then go back and try to make it in L.A. I told the owners this, that in twelve months I’d be leaving, because Bakersfield is a place you don’t want to be in. It really is a shithole. After the year was up, our ratings were great. And by then I had been promoted to morning guy and program director. When I gave them my notice they didn’t believe me. I said I told you I would only be here one year. That’s it, I want to go back to L.A. and make it there. And they said, we have other stations including one on the coast, San Luis Obispo, that’s going for its very first ratings period and we would like you to go there as program director and morning DJ and get us through that rating period. Would you do it? I said, no, not interested. That was because Bakersfield is the 70th market in America and San Luis Obispo was the 150th and it would mean I was stepping down in rank, which is a big no-no.

**I did a little research here as to how radio stations are rated, this is what I found:

Nielsen rates 210 radio DMAs or designated market areas in the United States. New York City is number one. Glendive, Montana in number 210. These market designations change from year to year and are typically available for free online. So it’s fairly easy then to determine if a radio station is in a rated market.

AQH stands for average quarter hour persons. That’s the number of different people listening to a radio station for at least five minutes during a 15 minute period. AQH is the best number to use when trying to determine how many people will actually hear your commercial.

So it’s easy to figure out whether a radio station is in a rated market

I told them I had to move up. It’s the only way I could go. They said what you don’t understand is we will give you a raise and you will be PD and morning drive there, but I repeated it was a step down. They countered with, let’s fly you to San Luis Obispo and you can take a look at the station. Now that sounded fun, I’d never been on a private plane before. Okay, I told them, I’ll take a look. The flight was only 40 minutes and it was a Piper Cub not a jet, but cruising over the mountains to the Pacific was pretty cool. After we landed they drove me to the station. It was a cool little station, better than Bakersfield. It had all the latest gear, everything you needed to do a good radio show. I met with everyone and they had a consultant, Mark Driscoll, a big DJ formerly from New York, to help me and he had been there already for a few weeks. He invited me out to lunch and we walked through this little town, and it’s a California Beach town – I was no longer in the desert - and when I was walking, all I could see were lovely cute girls packing the street. I sat down with Mark and asked him what the deal was with all the hot blondes? Well, he said they go to CAL POLY which is the big university on the central coast. He continued, “And you know the KZOZ is the only rock station on the entire coast. Our only rival is the big country station (KSLY) and they are a monster! They are the one we are going up against.

(Incidentally, there are over one thousand listed licensed radio stations in California alone).

**You might also wonder why American Licensed Radio Stations have a K or W prefix?

Why? Because the government said so.

In the days of the telegraph, operators started the practice of using short letter sequences as identifiers, referring to them as call letters or call signs. Early radio operators continued the practice, but without a central authority assigning call letters, radio operators often chose letters already in use, leading to confusion.

To alleviate the problem, the Bureau of Navigation (part of the Department of Commerce) began assigning three-letter call signs to American ships in the early 1910s. Ships in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico got a K prefix; in the Pacific and the Great Lakes, a W. The precise reasons for choosing these two letters, if there were any, are unknown (bureaucracy works in mysterious ways). At the 1912 London International Radiotelegraphic Convention, ranges of letters were assigned to each of the participating nations and the U.S. was told to keep using the W and most of the K range. (Military stations used N.

When the federal government began licensing commercial radio stations soon after, it had planned to assign call letters to the land-based stations in the same way. Somehow, things got flipped during implementation, though, and Eastern stations got W call signs and the Western ones got Ks. Where exactly does the Bureau of Navigation draw the line between East and West? For a while it ran north along state borders from the Texas-New Mexico border, but shifted in 1923 to follow the Mississippi River.

Some areas, however, might have both a K and W station in the same vicinity. Why? When the dividing line switched, some stations were made to change their call signs, while others weren't. For about a year in the 1920s, the Bureau of Navigation decided that all new stations were going to get a K call sign no matter where they were located. Still other exceptions were made by special request, station relocations, ownership changes, and even human error.

Now you know, anyway back to the interview with Richard.

I thought about Mark’s words, that I was being asked to be the morning guy on the only rock station in a beach town where all the girls between the ages of 18 to 24 are going to be listening to my station. It was a no-brainer. OK, I’ll do it. I’ll stay here for six months to get KZOZ through the first ratings period. We had 90 days to gear up and then 90 days of ratings. The ratings would come out in February and the goal was to get a 5 rating and come in number two to KSLY, the big country monster that had been around forever. There was no doubt they would dominate the ratings book, but if we could just get a good showing, all would be good. I wanted to get our station’s name out there – Z93 – so I put together a big promotion with DATSUN, now NISSAN. I went to the local Datsun dealership and basically sold our souls and promised them they’d be on the air every hour for six months if they would give us a Datsun Z – their sports car, to give away. And, they said OK, we’ll do it. I had two hundred thousand bumper stickers printed and started an on-air campaign, ‘Win a Z from Z93’ which caught on quickly, and so all over California’s central coast, people were sticking on our bumper stickers and they would listen at certain set times and we would announce the license plate numbers for them to call in within 15 minutes, and if they did, they would be put into the draw. It seemed that winter every car had a Z93 sticker on it. We had a winner and gave away the car, the New Year rolled around and we nervously waited for the ratings to come out. I remember the day really well; I was just getting off the air and the call from Rogers Brandon - that was his name - Rogers Brandon, who owned the station, came. I asked ‘Did we come in number two to KSLY?’ ‘No, no you didn’t,’ he replied. Shit I thought, but before I could say anything and apologise, he cut in with, ‘You came in Number One. We are Number One in the market. We wanted a 5, but that’s what KSLY got. We got a 27!” I was speechless as Rogers continued, ‘This is going to be so great for us. We are the Number One station on the entire Central Coast going into this sales period. Everyone’s going to get a bonus, it’s going to be a fantastic time for all of us.’

I didn’t want to kill his excitement but I had to say, ‘Well, I wish you luck with it.’

He said, ‘What do you mean you wish me luck?’

I explained, ‘I told you I’d take you through the ratings period, I’m going back to L.A. now.’

He couldn’t believe what I was saying, “You’re leaving the Number One radio station along the entire central coast of California?”

“I know. It’s great, you’ve been great, everyone at the station has. God bless you man, it’s fantastic, I’ll be watching how you do”.

He still was in disbelief, “Dick, you can’t just quit. No one leaves a number one station”

I sighed and said “I just did” and two weeks later I left Z93 behind and took the ratings book and went down to L.A. to start knocking on the doors again. This time, with the impressive numbers from Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo, I was received differently and got hired doing an overnight shift on what we call an alternative station playing B-52s, Elvis Costello and Duran Duran.

Richard, one question, when did you change your name to Richard Blade?

I’m coming to that (roars with laughter)

You’re still Dick Sheppard at the moment?

I’m still Dick Sheppard!

OK, Ok, carry on…

I started working at KNAC in Long Beach, in late February 1982. And they were paying me hardly anything. I made $1000 per month before taxes, which was a big step down from KZOZ where I had made twice that, but it was L.A and people could hear me, and if I could get noticed I could keep moving up. To make extra money, I still had my mobile disco stored there, so I started doing some gigs because living in L.A. was expensive. And, while I was out doing these gigs I heard the buzz in town there were two stations that really were in line with what I did. I wasn’t a Top 40 DJ and I didn’t want to try that format as I wanted to be myself on air and not put on some faked, hyped voice. But the two stations making all the noise were KMET, a rock station and KROQ, which was a small underground station. KROQ had a bad reputation for not paying its DJs but it did have the buzz, all the kids were listening to it. And, one of the clubs I was working at, the Hot Club in Encino, were buying commercials on KROQ and asked if I would voice an ad for them rather than pay to have their DJs do it and save $400. I said sure. KROQ told me come out to the radio studio to record the commercials, so I drove out to Pasadena but couldn’t find this little hole in the wall radio station and I’d almost given up, and was about to so a U-turn and go home when I finally spotted it, right above a medical clothing shop called Uniform Circus. It was hardly glamorous. I walked into their cramped production room because I was expected, and the Production Manager, John Logic, looked at me and said “Do you know how to work the gear?” I answered, “Ah yeah, I think I do”

He replied “Good. I’m going to lunch, see you”. And he walked out leaving me alone there. It was wild, he had no clue who I was. I was looking at this reel-to-reel machine, checking out the decks and thinking I could walk out with this shit. They didn’t know who I am from Adam, this is crazy. But instead of grand theft, I voiced a commercial, put in on a cart, then typed a label for it based on the style the other commercial carts around me had. The one thing I couldn’t work out was what the dots on the label meant. Red, Blue, Green and Yellow dots. I labelled and got it ready and John came back, he said “Oh my gosh, you’ve put it on a cart already. I was going to dub it for you but you’ve even typed the label right”. I said yeah, but admitted I didn’t know what the dots were for.

He said “Well, the red dot shows it’s an exciting spot – like a movie or concert ad - so it runs first in a commercial set, and blue dot runs second, the green dot runs third and the yellow is the worst commercial of all, just some guy yapping, like an insurance spot, that’s when people tune out so we run it last right before we go back to music.”

“So, what dot do I get?” John grinned, “You get a red dot, your ad is about clubs and music, which the listeners like, so yours goes first.”

That meant people would hear my voice on this hot radio station and sure enough they did. And it wasn’t only the listeners, the DJs said “We like your English accent. Would you come in and do jingles for us?” I said sure, so I drove back out five days later and Ramondo and Evans were the morning show team and they came up with this thing to tied them in with the late-night show hosted by April Whitney. The jingle had me saying in my best Oxford accent, “Go to bed with April and wake up with Ramondo and the Evans.” It sounded fun on the air and the audience loved the double entendre. Then all the DJs wanted me to do one for them. Suddenly my voice was all over the radio station. And, as I was working on a different radio station, it was really weird.

Then other advertisers heard my drops and I got asked to do other spots like car dealerships and clothing stores and they would pay me 25 dollars for each one, which was hardly anything but better than nothing, so now my voice was basically on KROQ twenty-four hours a day. Then I got this momentous phone call. ‘I need you to meet Rick Carroll’.

Rick Carroll was the program director who had created KROQ’s format, but he was rarely at the station because Rick had, what we call ‘personal problems.’ I met with Rick and was expecting him to say we can’t use you anymore because you work at another radio station. Instead he said ‘all my DJs are going on vacation, and because KROQ couldn’t pay for them to have a paid vacation we have this thing where they work with a travel agency and do a KROQ trip to Hawaii. and if the DJs sell 20 trips and mention the agencies’ name, they get to go as well. And this year they are all going because we’ve sold it out.” Then Rick said, “I’ve got these celebrities who will be filling in for the DJs, one of them is Elvira, another is Danny Elfman from Oingo Boingo, who’s going on as Moscow Eddie.”

“Elvira and Danny are doing afternoons, the lead singer from the Cramps is going to handle nights, but in the middle of the day from 10 until 1 we don’t have anyone, would you want to do it for two weeks?” I said sure, but then Rick dropped the hammer blow and told me he couldn’t pay me, I’d be working for free. That didn’t bother me, so I said I’d do it. But Rick hadn’t finished, he now followed up with a kick to the balls. “You have to quit your job at KNAC because they compete with us, playing some of the same music.” I took a deep breath and said OK, because KROQ was much bigger than KNAC and the visibility would be great. Rick still wasn’t done, he added, “when the DJs come back, we won’t have a job for you. This is just going to be for two weeks then you’re gone.”. I said ‘You want me to quit my job, do this for free and then leave?” Rick nodded. I had one more question for him, “Will you be going to Hawaii?” ‘He replied ‘No I’m staying here” “So you’ll be in town to hear my show. He said, “Yeah but it has taken me about 18 months to put this team together and they are like the Saturday Night Live of radio, there is no shitty talent on KROQ. And, when they come back, they are all going to have their jobs, and you won’t.”

“I’ll take that risk if you’ll hear my show because I know you’ll find something for me.”

Rick shook his head and waved me out of his office.

The next day at KNAC I told them I was leaving for KROQ and giving them two weeks’ notice, and they said “Well, we’ve gotta hire someone else, so you’re out of a gig but best of luck to you”. I liked everyone there, the program director Jimmy Christopher, the morning guy and the afternoon girl, I got along with them great. Because of that I didn’t want to steal listeners from this little radio station by going to a big radio station like KROQ.

That’s why I decided to change my name. Dick Sheppard was going to fade into the past and all I knew was that I wanted to go back to Richard which was my real name. Dick Sheppard was given to me when I was DJ’ing at college by someone much bigger than me. I went with the nickname as the guy who decided I would be ‘Dick’ was captain of the field hockey team and had a bad temper and lived in the same house as us. I would use this opportunity to go back to Richard but I didn’t know what the last name would be. I was getting ready to go on the air and still hadn’t decided and was looking at a newspaper, the Los Angeles Times desperate to try and find the inspiration for a name. I looked at all these names, like a writer called Robert Hilburn, no Richard Hilburn doesn’t sound right, worse than Richard Sheppard. Then I saw an ad for a movie opening soon, Blade Runner. I thought that’s great, I am going to call myself Richard Runner. I could even steal the Rolls Royce logo and use that as my logo. R.R. Richard Runner, perfect!

It was a big newspaper, back in the day, not like today when they’re down to magazine size. Anyway, the newspaper was massive, the studio was small and the song was finishing. I dropped the paper on the floor so I could see it and I opened the microphone and said “That was a Flock of Seagulls with a song called ‘Telecommunication’ but their fans just called it ‘telecom’ Jed the Fish is in Hawaii and I’m filling in for him for two weeks and my name is…” and I looked down because I was so nervous knowing there’d be a lot of people listening that I’d forgotten the one I had chosen. I looked at the paper, but it had folded over when it fell and now I could only see ‘Blade’. The movie hadn’t opened and no one had heard of Blade Runner and I couldn’t remember the title, so I panicked and the next words out of my mouth were, “I’m Richard Blade! And, I’m going to be with you for the next couple of weeks on KROQ.” Then I announced the next band, which was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and hit the play button, it started and I thought oh my God – I’m Richard Blade?

I DJ’d my 3-hour shift, said goodbye and waited for Moscow Eddie a.k.a Danny Eltman to come in and take over. Nothing. So I kept going for about 10 - 15 minutes and the red hot line lit up. I punched it on so I could talk to whoever it was, without it going over the air . I said ‘Hi, who’s this?” “This is Danny Eltman and I’m stuck in the studio and I can’t get away. Can you fill in for me, whoever you are?“ I said, sure I’ll keep going, and he said ‘See you tomorrow, gotta go’. I did another three hours and I was wrapping up my now six hour show and signing off again, my second sign off in six hours with ‘Talk to you all tomorrow, it’s been great’. I waited in the studio for a few minutes, but again nothing! Elvira didn’t show up, so I walked outside to the office and asked “does anyone know when Elvira was coming in?” It was about 4.20 p.m. They said ‘we don’t know”. I bumped into Pat Welsh who was the general manager of the radio station and he said, “Oh, we got a call from Elvira, she’s not coming in, can you fill in for her?” I went “OK …..I’ll do it’ (disguising a long sigh), ‘I’ve just come off doing the overnight shift with six hours, so no problem!” I did another three hours on the air and whilst doing it I was reading a live commercial in my final hour about for the Parrot Place in Van Nuys, and saying that they’ve got a special this month Green parrots are on sale for only $49.99 and if you go down to there and say KROQ, they’ll give you another 10% off that so you can buy yourself a parrot for just $45.99”

As I’m talking, a white-haired guy walks in during the middle of the live commercial and barks at me, ‘Where’s Snakeskin?” Freddie Snakeskin was the afternoon drive DJ, but he was in Hawaii and was the person who Elvira was meant to be covering. I said, hitting the mic off, “I’m on the air!” I flicked the switch back on and said “Go on down and say KROQ and get a great price on one of these parrots” and the guy again says “Where’s Snakeskin?” I turned it off again. “He’s…in …H A W A I I”. I turned the mic back on again and said, ‘That’s just one of the great specials!” If you want a parrot with…’

And the guy interrupted the commercial again ‘I need to speak to Snakeskin; I turned the mic off once more in irritation and yelled “You are not going to speak to fucking Snakeskin unless you can talk loud enough to be heard in Hawaii but right now everyone in L.A can hear you so shut the fuck up and get the hell out of here or I will throw you out!’ I turned the mic back on again because I was not going to be interrupted during my show by some random stranger. I finished the ad, put the recorded commercials on, wrapped my show and finally the next DJ comes in, the lead singer of the Cramps, and I thought oh good, finally I can relax. I walk outside and Pat Welsh is there, the general manager, who said ‘That’s great man, I didn’t realise you were on for nine hours, I am so sorry but you sounded good, I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” I said ‘OK’ and walked with Pat to his office and sitting behind Pat’s desk, in Pat’s chair, that no one is allowed to sit in because he is the general manager, is the white haired guy. Pat turned at me, ‘I want you to meet Ken Roberts, he owns the radio station.” I looked at Ken but he looked at Pat because he doesn’t want to look at me because I am way too insignificant for him to pay attention to and says to Pat “Ask him why he told me to fuck off.” So, Pat repeats “Why did you tell Ken to fuck off?”

I knew I had zero to lose at this point and my fate had already been decided, so I stepped up to the desk put my hands on it and leaned forward, “I might be new to KROQ but I’ve worked at three other radio stations and as far as I know the only way a radio station is legally allowed to make money is by selling commercials. And some strange guy walks in on my show when I am reading a live commercial and interrupts me three times when I told him twice very nicely that I’m on the air. If the client had heard that, they wouldn’t pay the station for an interrupted commercial. And, when I’m on the air no one is ever going to take money away from the radio station I am working for. For the next two weeks I’ve been asked to do a show for KROQ and sell commercials for them on the air, and I promise, KROQ is going to make money during my show. I didn’t know who you were, but even now, if you did it again tomorrow and cut me off during a paid-for spot, I’d tell you to fuck off again. For me, the station always comes first.” Ken Roberts was silent for a moment then looked at Pat and goes “I like the kid, hire him” And I got the job that day at KROQ. They found a job for me which was weekends and production director.

After the DJs got back I did Saturdays, Sundays and produced all the commercials and filled in if anyone got sick. Four weeks later, Mike Evans got into an argument with the program director and left the morning show to go over to KMET to do sport. That night I got a phone call asking if I could be at the station at 5.30 the next morning to be the new morning drive guy with Ramondo, it went from Ramondo and Evans to Ramondo and Blade. The rest is as they say is history.

Then a few weeks later I had a phone call about a TV show that was starting called MV3 which was a broadcast version of MTV to be on in fifty cities and they asked if I had my own hair and my own teeth. I said yeah, so the producer said come down and audition. I did and got the TV show and everything really started taking off.

And, over the next twenty, thirty years you met all the stars and hosted shows. Tell me about some of that, who were the people you met that you really liked

I really like Duran Duran and I’m very close with them, especially John Taylor who came over to my house to record the first chapter for the audio version of my autobiography, World In My Eyes, because I wasn’t in that chapter. I’m friends with the guys from Depeche Mode, Danny Eltman, OMD, Spandau Ballet, I went on tour with the Spands in Australia in 1986 when they had the Parade album out. Martin Fry of ABC, Boy George from Culture Club, Midge Ure, English Beat, Terri Nunn from Berlin who I dated for quite a while, The Motels, The Go-Go’s, The Bangles, all of them I became friends with.

Your first book was ‘World In My Eyes”.

Yes, and it got its name from the title of a Depeche Mode song. I called Martin Gore and asked if I could use the title and he said ‘yes’ right away. His only requirement was that he could write a blurb on the cover about our friendship, which he did. Great guy.

I’ve been following you and your book writing. After your autobiography, World In My Eyes, you morphed into real fiction - an historical action piece with a twist, your Roman novel SPQR. I mean that was quite a leap, that’s terrific, tell me about that.

I’ve always liked writing. I wrote for a magazine called Disco International based in London (whose editor was Ben Cree). I was their American editor for several years. I always wanted to write, so after World In My Eyes took off – it was a crazy best seller, two years at number one in the music categories on Amazon, it was nuts, I actually ended up buying the rights back, it was so successful. I wanted to do other stuff with it, including perhaps a film or a streaming series. But the writing process excited me and I wanted to try writing fiction. I had written things for TV, and some screenplays, one of which got made as a movie, Long, Lost Son, which starred Chace Crawford in his debut role, and Chace went on to do Gossip Girl and a big hit show on Amazon called The Boys. Chace plays one of the superheroes in that. And, Gabrielle Anwar who did Scent of a woman.

I also wrote for a Sci Fi series called Seven Days which was on a network called UPN now called CW over here, so I had written a number of screen plays which all got great response but in typical Hollywood fashion “We love this, we will get right back to you on it ….” and you wait for the phone to ring and ….nothing! Then your agent tells you, they loved you, loved the story but it was too big a budget for a first time writer (without a big hit I was still considered a first time writer). So, I had these screenplays lying around which had gotten great reviews and one of them was SPQR and I thought I’m going to use this as a backbone for a book and so I did just that. When it came out in 2019, it shot to number one in multiple categories, Alternative History, Action Adventure and all that.

I really enjoyed doing it so I started on my next book immediately, which is called Birthright. It’s a mystery case/thriller along the lines of a Dan Brown Novel, whose book Da Vinci Code was a massive seller and became a blockbuster film.

And, it’s kind of Indiana Jones versus James Bond because it’s has a British Royal theme in which MI6 are hunting an American kid for reasons that unravel during the chapters. After that I wrote another book ‘Imposters’ based on a true story which ironically is about the guy I replaced at KROQ - Mike Evans – and it’s something he did in the late 60’s when he’d been drafted for Vietnam and needed to disappear and he did it by getting together with his best friend and taking on the identity of a real life singing duo from the 50s. It’s an amazing tale, he was this eighteen-year-old boy saying he had a hit ten years before which would have made him eight years old at the time. But he managed to pull it off and he toured America for three years pretending to be one half of this chart-topping duo. Next I released The Lockdown Interviews which was based on a series of long Zoom interviews I had done with twenty bands during Covid. In the book you’ll find The Go-Go’s, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Midge Ure, The Alarm, OMD, Sparks and so many others. It’s like a Who’s Who of 80’s stars and it’s done done incredibly well, and I’ll be putting out a sequel to it called The Unlocked Interviews – post Covid, and that will feature conversations with Roxy Music, Blondie, Simple Minds, Soft Cell and many others. Right now, I was just doing some edits on my next book when you called and it’s also based on one of my screenplays, ‘Ghosts of the Congo.’ It’s about a massive kidnapping that happens when an oil refinery opens in the Congo, financed with American money, and on hand for the ceremony are the richest man in the world, along with the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary for Energy and the First lady, and they are all kidnapped and disappear into the jungles of the Congo. The American government can’t find them and desperately put together a special team to try to locate them before the deadline is reached and they are killed.

Any of these books being made into film?

Hopefully that might happen. All the reviews say things like – ‘this was made for the big screen.’. If you go to reviews on Good Reads or Amazon, you’ll see the reviewers saying, hey this book reads like a film. I could see it as a film. And, the reason is it was written first as a film, so when I get back from Mexico next summer, I plan to try to set up some meetings to take them back out but this time when I’m pitching the screenplay I’m going to plop the book down on the desk and say read this, it was a best seller, so, we will see. Nothing is ever real until it is made so you won’t get me saying it’s gonna be a movie. I’d love them to become movies but who knows.

Is the Richard Blade of today in his Californian home more of a writer or a DJ? What do you spend your time doing most?

Both! Because I am on the radio every day on SiriusXM, which is the biggest radio company on the planet right now. It’s got thirty-six million subscribers. That’s just in the US, there’s another seven million in Canada. And, who knows how many from SiriusXM app around the globe. It’s in every car in North America, and I do the same kind of show I’ve always done, you know, playing Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths, those kind of superstar acts every day.

What time is your show?

My show is on East Coast 3p until 9p. West Coast Time from noon until six. And, it’s heard all across the country, all over Canada, it’s also on Dish Network and on the SiriusXM app so. If you are in the Caribbean, they listen to SiriusXM there because that’s how they get their music. The App is only $4.99 whereas if you do it through your car it is $14.99. The App has around 12 - 14 million listers I believe.

You are not doing six-hour shows, six hours a day surely?

No, I voice track it. If anything important happens I have the ability to jump on it and go live at any time, so, God forbid if a celebrity dies or there’s a tour cancelled like Erasure recently cancelled their shows, I jump on and go live. Duran Duran recently announced they are doing a special performance at a hotel in Los Angeles that will be filmed a week on Thursday, so I went live and broke the news, and also when Super Bowl or World Series results come out I go live and put that on, but the show is on every day on SiriusXM. I also do a lot of live gigs, not only in California, but because of SiriusXM’s reach, all over North America. In the last couple of months I’ve DJ’d events and corporate shows in Vegas, Toronto, Cancun and New York.

And now, I hear, you have quite an honour that’s been given you.

Yes. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce called to say I had been awarded a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’ll be getting it the summer of 2023 and it’ll be placed by the Capitol Records building near stars of The Beatles, Sinatra, The Beach Boys and my friends, Duran Duran. It was a total surprise to me because there are very few DJs who have been given that honor. My only regret is my Mum & Dad are no longer around to see me get it.

Thank you, Richard, that’s a terrific story. It’s going in the book with many top DJ’s like you, and when I get the book finished, I will send you a complimentary copy.

I would love that, Alan. I fondly remember all those great gigs you got me. Those stories of my days with you and IDEA are in World In My Eyes.

..and hopefully if you think this book has value maybe you can show it to one of your publishers if it could be of interest elsewhere in your market.

Absolutely

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Richard Blade Fact File

Richard Blade (born Richard Thomas Sheppard; May 23, 1952 in Bristol, England) is a British-American Los Ángeles-based radio, television, and film personality from Torquay, England. He is best known for his radio programs that feature new wave and popular music from the 1980s. He was a disk jockey at KROQ in Los Angeles from 1982 to 2000 and has been a host for SiriusXM's 1st Wave classic alternative station since 2005.

Blade appeared in such television series as Square Pegs and Hunter and appeared as a real contestant (as "Dick Sheppard") on such game shows as Win, Lose or Draw and Card Sharks.

He also appeared in several films, including Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Depeche Mode 101, (1989), Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever (1990), and Spellcaster (1991). In August 2007, Blade made an appearance on the reality show Rock of Love. He made regular cameo appearances on Glory Daze, set at a college frat house in 1986.

Personal life: Blade lives in Southern California with his wife Krista, whom he wed in 2000. He became a United States citizen in 1988.

Middle of the Road

Once you achieved chart status, you could command a much higher fee and people took notice of you. This practice was rampant in the 60’s. The Danes had a much simpler system, they had a panel of judges from within Radio and TV and simply voted which song they liked the most. It had nothing to do with sales.

In 1971, one of our first English dj's to come over to Europe was Tony London, and I remember contracting him to a venue in Italy. One day, whilst he was there he called me up to ask if I would take a popular English band to Denmark who happen to be playing at his venue. I said I wasnt interested. Then the lead guitarist grabbed the phone and talked to me directly begging me, I said I had never heard of them. But he stammered we are number four in the Danish Charts! So what, I said, it meant nothing to me. Finally, they kept on until I succombed to booking them for my standard 15 % commission.

I took their material to Tivoli who agreed to book them for Dkr 2000 (around £200 at the time), and 3 other places for a similar fee. I was on good terms with Ema Telstar the large entertainment agency in Stockholm who agreed to tour them in Sweden, All on a similar fee as none of us had ever heard of this band.

And, that was how MIDDLE OF THE ROAD came to Denmark.

Between April of 71, and July they charted to number one in virtually all european countries, and the danish panel voted the same. This was the new Beatles and Alan Lawrie had nailed them for a Scandinavian tour. I had Danmark’s Radio calling me for an interview, national television plus all the national newspapers. I never felt so embarrassed.

They played at Tivoli gardens which made an absolute killing on the deal. I was there backstage long after the standing ovation subsided when the lead guitarist came searching for me, his face black as thunder. He pinned me to the wall, grabbed by the throat and demanded to know where the rest of the money was.

They had gone from £200 per night booking to over £20000 in less than three months. The band refused to play another gig until the whole tour had been renegotiated without me - Ema Telstar rescued the Swedish end. I had no experience in dealing with high end concert bookings and massive egos and their riders.

Either Way, they were signed up on an Idea Contract- all correct and legal with a commission to the agency for arranging it all. How quickly people turn.

Snivelling little one hit wonders!

Chris Trowell - From Alcatraz to Hollywood

An interview with Chris Day.

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Chris how come that you went to Neuquén province which lies in the Northern end of Patagonia in the West of Argentina? And then went on to build one of the biggest night clubs they ever had, and you spoke poor Spanish? How did that happen and why did you do it?

It was worse than that, my partner was Irish and he hardly spoke English! (laughter)

How it all happened? We had a restaurant in Chile called Lanson’s and he was a client working for an Irish company called Keenan’s that made massive machines for feeding cows. He was a regular client and one weekend - (I used to change and sit at the tables once I’d finished cooking) - he came up and said to me ‘I’ve just been to Argentina to a town called Neuquén, there are three of four discotheques that are absolutely rubbish but they are all full. You need to come across as you’ve worked so many clubs. I agreed and went over for a weekend, he was absolutely right, all the discotheques were packed out, all rubbish. So, to cut a long story short, I sold the restaurant at a great loss, but prior to selling the restaurant we went back to Argentina where I found buildings that used to be a DIY builder’s merchants which consisted of two - in Spanish ‘Galpons’ - warehouses connected together also a great big parking space surrounded by walls. We could park forty, fifty cars inside. So, we looked at it and I drew it up, saying we can do this, knock the two warehouses into one, build different dance floor levels, metal arms high up with glass floor cages for the club dancing team to use and because it was walled in, we decided to call it ALCATRAZ and put towers on it and, of course, searchlights.,

It just looked like Alcatraz. A massive neon Sign over it, in purple.

Pat, the Irishman, rented the site. There was no contract between us, he spat on his hand, shook my hand and said ‘I am an Irishman this is better than any contract’ I lived to regret that, I shall come to that in a second. Off we went. Gabby stayed in Chile because she was pregnant. We drove across, rented a place and we managed to get hold of about forty Argentinians to do the building work. I did all the drawings and managed the builders. We were very lucky because Pat’s new wife - a Chilean - had a cousin who was a welder. We took him in from Chile with us and created all the cells and everything in metal. There was a lot of metalwork. It ended up a fabulous discotheque. We spent so much that we couldn’t afford to buy a laser system. So, I flew to Buenos Aires to make a contract with a Company who used to come down and operate the laser show for us every weekend but keeping the equipment there. It all went remarkably well except for my partner, Pat Connor’s wife, she was a real bitch who hated Gabriella, my wife. Always arguing and constantly trying to push me out. The club held 1500 – 1600. We only traded weekends, Friday and Saturday nights from Midnight until 8 or 9 in the morning, that’s how they partied.

I ended up with five days free of doing nothing from Sunday until Friday so I sat down and actually wrote a film - and, that’s a long, long story, - the club did remarkably well on the two nights but my partner was grabbing all of the money. At the end of the trading each morning we’d sit in the office over a great big table with all of the money piled up, a massive pile. He would pass me the equivalent of $50 and expect us to last for a week!

This was way before credit cards then? Which year was this, Chris?

Oh yeah, before credit cards. We started in the summer of ’97 and it took us eleven weeks to build it as we rushed to get it open for Christmas. in ’97. Which was fine, but by the time it reached June of ’98 we were living on virtually nothing as he was grabbing all the money to pay for all the post dated cheques he had written. I was very worried because he had used the system in South America where you pay everything with cheques. But you can post date the cheques. Everybody works that way. God knows how many cheques he had written and for how much!

May I stop you there, why did you let that happen? Why couldn’t you force the issue?

Because he had the bank account in his name. He was very cute; I didn’t understand it at the time. When we started off, I was so busy building because I can build you know, I was running the forty lads, and everything seemed right, but behind the scenes without me realising it, his wife was pushing him to get me out.

That’s terrible.

During this time, I was bored out of my brains, so I used that time, I wrote a film which was a true story about a friend of mine whom I had worked with at one point, who took the Hang Seng Bank for over a million pounds and got away with it. So, on the back of that I included all the scams I had seen throughout the world. I came up with a title, ‘The Juggler.’ 5 or 6 people read it in Argentina and all thought it was brilliant. The club was going well but he was grabbing all the money, Gabby and I were struggling.

We had put a lot of money and time into it. Gabby had the baby and she went back to Chile to stay with her mother. I’m stuck there not very happy, but I’ve got a film script which is wonderful. I phoned Gabby up to explain what I was about to do and contact her brother who was living in Los Angeles. Phoned my parents up and asked them to lend me some money. Why? they asked, I said ‘Well, I am going to Hollywood to sell a film’. My father, a retired tax inspector who was so used to this kind of fantasy, said ‘Oh no, what are you up to now? Oh, not again”. Anyway, I am diversifying …

No, we can come back to this, how was Alcatraz funded?

I put so much of it in and likewise Pat put in the remainder, a lot of money. A big club, absolutely fabulous. He put in more than I did, but I didn’t realise he was investing with post-dated cheques….

Oh no, oh dear.

Yes, which you can do this, because that is the system over there in South America. I flew out to Hollywood, telling him I was going for a few weeks and I would be back. I’m in Los Angeles for about three weeks, when Gabby phoned me and explained emphatically to get on a flight. She said ‘I have just had a phone call from friends in Neuquén who said that Alcatraz is closed, and he has disappeared. So, because of the investment I flew straight back, arrived in Chile and drove to Argentina. I went to see our friends and sure enough what he had done was very cute. He had managed to get 180.000 which was a lot of money still out on postdated cheques (the equivalent in pounds Sterling) also because Alcatraz was behind walls, he sold everything in the club and he stripped all of the cells of metal, all of the sound and lighting - Everything! All the furniture too - the lot. And he vanished. The only plus part for me was that the bank account was in his name so they couldn’t touch me. They put Interpol onto him, although I don’t think they ever caught him. He ended up, I believe in Australia. I lost absolutely everything. Plus, we had a Ford Bronco that I had shipped over there, which caught fire. So, I’m stuck in Argentina with no money, no car, my wife back in Chile with a new baby and that was it. Alcatraz gone. I left with a small suitcase and a plane ticket bought by her mother, penniless and back to Chile. But it was the birth of the film.

I had a meeting in Hollywood but to get to it from where I was staying would mean busses and trains taking over two hours and I was fast running out of money. I arranged this meeting through a contact in Chile who introduced me to their friend in Hollywood who worked as an actor, apparently with massive connections. He arranged a meeting at an infamous place called ‘Jerry’s Famous Delhi’. I arrived early and sat outside with a cigarette and a coke. The guy turned up and I introduced myself and we had a brief chat. He talked about everything under the sun for twenty minutes or so and I felt like…but I sent you the script!? This is why you are meeting me, what do you think?

Eventually, I challenged him ‘What do you think of The Juggler’? He opened his briefcase, slid a book over to me and said what you need to do is watch “The Grifters” twice, watch “The Sting” twice when you’ve done that read this book back to front, ‘Linda Seager, how to make a good script. Great’ then you will know what to do with your re-write.

I looked at him puzzled ‘Rewrite?’

He said ‘Well yeah”

I said again ‘Rewrite? - You’ve lost me, this is the first thing I’ve written’

He replied, ‘God, you are going to have to rewrite, rewrite until you get it absolutely perfect.

He said, I will tell you a story. “Back to the Future” took around eleven years to sell it. It was turned down by everybody. But it was rewritten about sixty odd times. That’s what you’ve got to do. And was he SO right… Thank God he paid for the drinks and sandwich. Funds were really tight!

We came back eventually back to England and ended up on the Isle of Man, me working as a Head Chef (I did Catering when I left college) We ended up with a pub ‘The Anchor’ on a beautiful private beach. One day at lunchtime, I could overhear a group of women talking about a working with Julie Andrews on a film. At that point a lot of films were being made on the Isle of Man for tax reasons. This was around 2000. I said, ‘Excuse me but I couldn’t help but overhear you’re working on a film with Julie Andrews? I said I have got a film script would you read it?’ She agreed and I gave her a copy. She came back to me two weeks later ‘We love it, also Julie Andrews has read it’. I couldn’t believe it. She continued, ‘what we want to do is put it on to our Producers for Midsummer Films and see if they like it’. Again, cutting a long story short, it became an option with Midsummer films. I still have the two framed letters: The Option and The Offer. That was in year 2000. So, it was scheduled to be filmed in 2001 and they were offering me three-million-pound filming budget and twelve-million-pound deferred payments. Deferred payments you use to get key actors.

It’s happening - what a high. An absolute high. The only thing I wanted in life was to see it in a cinema and also have the money. And, then three weeks later we had 9/11. The whole of the film industry stopped and, then the British Government withdrew the tax allowances.

So, all of the money they were using at Midsummer Films was investments. It was coming from Footballers, who rather than pay their massive tax bills were investing into films. For a percentage. So that was it - collapsed! That’s when the film sat on the shelf for twenty years.

I remember I came to see you up in Southport around 2009 and you showed me your Juggler script then and I thought it was pretty amazing. And later told me you had to change the script twenty times already.

Rewrites Alan…forever rewriting! Now probably 100+

And, you’ve had a lot of help with this through your Danish connection, haven’t you?

My son kept saying you need to rewrite it. I said I haven’t got time.

I was at a Disc Jockey Reunion in Bournemouth when I overheard one of the jocks talking ‘I’ve stopped my sound studio, I’m now working a lot in film doing the sound’ his name was Rod Wilkins. I grabbed Rod afterwards for a quick word. Explaining that I have a script, ‘Will you read it?’ Such a quick response, ‘send it to me, probably won’t read it, but I have a guy who is a brilliant script writer in Denmark who will read it’. That was sent. He read it. He loved it.

The next phone call I had off Rod was asking if I minded sending it on to a very famous Danish actor called Magnus Bruun. I said no, not at all, send it to him. He sent it, sure enough two weeks later Magnus phoned out of the blue, I couldn’t believe it such a fabulous guy. He said, ‘I’ve read it, loved it BUT….it needs to be brought up to date’. The Juggler originally was about the old credit card scandal using the old credit card slide machine which wouldn’t work in this day and age. So, the re-writes began. I was sending it back and forward to Magnus in scenes and we re-wrote and tightened the film. We’ve worked together on it for the last fifteen months, going back and forwards. Now at the final stage called the polish. It’s absolutely there and reads like a dream.

Earlier this year I looked to see if Midsummer was still operating, found the phone number, phoned them up in London and asked for the owner Chris Milburn. They explained that Chris was still the owner but they are also trading under ‘Illustrious Media’ What’s it concerning?’ I told them the story; he said ‘I love it, send me the script’. The hardest thing being a script writer is getting the script in front of the right person to read it. They sent it out to (which I didn’t know) to professional readers. Weeks later I had an email thanking me for the script and explaining the brilliant report which was they attached. With a professional reader they do everything. Eight pages of notes, then they summarise everything and a final rating.

With script writing only 20% of films are ever completed. So, to actually complete a film script is a massive plus. Of the ones that are finished only 2% will ever get a ‘recommend’. A recommend is when a professional reader looks at it, reads it and thinks, “God, If I had the money, I’d do this myself”. Real head on the block stuff. I got the recommend. It’s like - impossible.

When did this happen?

Just a few months ago.

Incidentally, doing the rewrites I had been over to Denmark several times to visit Magnus in Copenhagen at great expense going through the script.

I went down to London for a meeting with ‘Illustrious’ who said we will take it straightaway as it is, but it will sit on a shelf for 12 - 18 months because we are so busy. We’ve got so many projects lined up. He explained ‘Don’t worry”. It’s very good. I asked, ‘What’s the best route?’ He answered ‘you need a director, once you’ve a director he will bring the Producers onboard. We have got great studio connections in Romania and the UK.’

The next point, he said, was ‘Do your final polish’ (which we’re doing now). When that’s finished, it’s called the Production Polish. If you can’t get a director, we will help and get one for you. I’ve spoken to them since, they’ve just finished last summer a film call ‘Protégé’ This is with Samuel Jackson, Max Keaton, and the Director is a man called Martin Campbell who is 78 but a great history. He did two James Bond films. Massive! I’ve gone back to Illustrious pushing my luck and said ‘Right, I want Martin Campbell’. He said ‘Remember our conversation in London? Regarding what?’ He went on to say’ I told you the budget would be about 25 million. If you get Martin Campbell, that’s what it will be. Because obviously he will go for key actors.’

Now, as a script writer, I could have approached NETFLIX, Scandinavia, because we have a connection through Magnus Bruun. The problem is that if you sell to NETFLIX they buy the concept, they buy the film and I’d get 80 thousand pounds or ninety. Maybe a hundred, but that’s it. They take it, lock, stock and barrel and that’s it, you get no more money. If you go the other route on normal production, which is shown in cinemas. I’d get close on 100.000, but the big plus is that I’d get a percentage. Probably 4%. Let’s say they make the film for 25 million pounds, and it does 35 million in the box office, then I’d get 4% of ten million which is really nice…Plus the purchase fee

A nice boost for your pension!

I just want to walk in that cinema, and see my name on the credits. This is surely the ultimate buzz and achievement to end my days when it comes!! Into the oven faster than a Kentucky fried chicken !! but with a BIG smile.

Chris I can’t wait to see your name in credits. Will you be Chris Day or Christopher Trowell?

Chris Trowell

Interview With John West

And, how he founded the greatest Karaoke company in the world.

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Hi John, where do you come from, where you born?

I come from the industrial north of England, Born in Blackburn.

You just told me that when it snowed up there, the snow turned black!

Yes, back in the day Blackburn was the world capital of the cotton industry because the environment is pretty harsh and very damp, and cotton needed to be kept in a damp state which made it good for spinning.

The spinning and all the industrialisation and mechanisation was built around the cotton industry. All the cotton factories and mills, had great big chimney stacks hence the pollution.

Interesting, I didn’t know about that.

We can get to the Karaoke bit later, but you told that you and Doug Styles bought BLUE HEAVEN in Esbjerg, Denmark? What is the story behind that?

Well Doug was working as a DJ obviously for Gerry Coard, your competitor, he managed to work his way into managing a night club called TARANTELLA in Skien, Norway, he then ended up buying one of the old IDEA gigs, Chinatown in Skien. When he took it over he asked me to be the DJ there. That led us to start a small entertainment agency where we brought lookalikes/soundalike artists and dance troupes from the U.K. Pans People type dancers and sold these shows to clubs in Norway.

I never even heard about this…

Yes, I think it was Bim Bollen who replaced me some years later, or whenever I left.

When was this?

It must have been about 84 or 85. It was quite successful and a lot of fun. So, then Doug, who was together with a Danish girl - don’t know quite what happened in Skien - decided to relocate to Esbjerg. BLUE HEAVEN was quite a legendary club back in the 70s and 80s. Doug called me one day and asked me if I would be interested in coming in with me taking over BLUE HEAVEN in Esbjerg? I thought it was a nice challenge and so off I went, we took over the place and renamed it BOGARTS. It didn’t quite work out, but we made a good fist of it for a while.

So to bridge the gap between BLUE HEAVEN and…. this is so noisy here!

(Deafening roar of a lorry thundering past) whilst we are recording this in The Lanes, Brighton, hence the noise on a hot summer Friday Night……So to bridge the gap to Karaoke, where did you first see it and how did it all start? When did you first see Karaoke and recognise it would be the next big thing and that you wanted to be part of it?

Right so, BLUE HEAVEN or BOGARTS as it was named, failed, and I left there with about 15 kroner (under £2). I was with my new Danish model girlfriend at that time, not the best start to the relationship! The only thing I could do was to DJ again. I knew John Gee from NorBooking so I called him, I was desperate and broke in Denmark, I said, can you get me a gig anywhere, I need to work. Yes, he said, I can send you to Horten in Norway, a new club called LACE which turned out to be amazing. My girlfriend was working internationally at that time so she was in and out of Scandinavia and working mostly in London. We thought it might be a good idea to bring some of the clothing back that she was modelling from London to Oslo where I had moved on to a residency at the SAS Hotel nightclub “Galaxy”, so as a sideline, each time she came back from London she brought new clothes that we started selling quite successfully for good money.

That got me back on my feet financially and the guy she was working regularly for in London ultimately became my partner in the karaoke business, which I will explain more of later! My Oslo residency was through a Norwegian Agent, namely Eivind Solberg. One day I went into his office, and he had a laser disc karaoke system there, the first I had ever seen. I had used laser disc player in clubs to play music videos, but apparently this player sings to you! I thought it maybe a language difficulty the way he explained it?

We have one in a bar in Oslo, go and see it if you want, he said, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s made by PIONEER, I am a PIONEER agent, and they want me to sell it but don’t know if I can. I went to the bar and saw how it worked and thought it was amazing! People were singing with it and in all places - Norway! You don’t normally associate Norwegians with outgoing personalities! I thought if you put this in flight-cases, based on mobile discos, and went round the places I worked in Norway I am pretty sure I could sell it. The morning after, I went back to Eivind Solberg and said I think I can do something with this equipment. And, he said, ‘Brilliant, do you want to buy it?’ ‘No’ I replied ‘I’ll rent it off you, I think I can bring you in some business’. So, I rented it off him, put it in flight cases, called up a lot of venues around Norway that I had played in and charged them quite a lot of money, similar to what a band would cost them, and it worked, within three months I had three different karaoke shows touring Norway.

The tracks that were sent, did they have the text underneath?

Yes, Pioneer were great, they brought that concept to Europe but with a very Japanese spin.

My first concept of Karaoke was a news item I saw, about the latest trend from Tokyo featuring stressed out executives in some back street bar singing “MY WAY” into a microphone, as a form of therapy, certainly not entertainment. Dreadful sound, and this was how Japanese businessmen de-stressed.

That’s not far removed with Japan being such a conservative society, this is why they had these private rooms, with volume levels quite low and not to bring attention to themselves. In the west, it’s the opposite! Over there it was quite twee, you had no lights on you, pretty low-key, a kind of anonymous experience really. You had a wireless microphone which is handed round the table with no focus on the person singing at all!

So, this was the start of it, how did SUNFLY get started?

Well I was doing shows with the PIONEER equipment and the Pioneer songs which were made in Japan - they had ‘Michelle, my belle’, Carpenters “Every Sha la la la”, nice, pleasant non offensive kind of melodies, and whilst I was doing shows in Scandinavia, I thought what if we had Guns & Roses, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Phil Collins etc, who were massive stars at the time, to use on the shows, that’s what was being played in all the bars and night clubs? Unfortunately, those songs were not available, so I started making enquiries on how I could do this with the music publishers. This proved to be very difficult, also I would have to use the laserdisc format if I was going to produce, and laserdiscs were only made in Japan - apart from one other place - Blackburn, Lancashire where I came from! Amazingly Blackburn had a Philips factory who had just created a laserdisc manufacturing plant there, which was kind of bizarre and fortuitous too!

I had a breakthrough on getting licenses with the songs I thought would work. All I needed was to make the music videos and record the soundtracks! I discussed my ideas with the guy in London who my girlfriend modelled for, as I remember him telling me his brother was a video cameraman and I needed a cameraman! We had a mutual friend whom I had met a couple of times, who was a genius musician for Phil Collins and Mike and the Mechanics and I needed a music producer! So, we got together and formed a partnership in what became SUNFLY, and we made a lot of amazing soundtracks and videos. The music producer who was doing all our production knew a lot of major league rock stars and he got them in playing guitars, drums, etc and doing all kinds of backing vocals and he then did the mastering.

All the backing tracks had to be original! And did you own all the recordings?

Yes. And because of our very good and prominent connection with Genesis and Phil Collins we ended up doing all the mastering in Genesis’s studio which was absolutely state of the art! One of of the things the producer said when comparing the mastering on Pioneer laserdisc productions, was that they were audio mastered at a very low level (8-bit ) but we could redline our productions and go (16-bit) take the volume all the way up, so when they played a Sunfly produced song compared with a Pioneer song the Sunfly quality and value of the new songs would be significantly better. That became the power of SUNFLY and what helped build the brand and reputation.

So, this was the 90s? You were the King of Karaoke and had the world market?

Yes, beginning 91, 92. Not only did we have the market, but we also had the licences which most of our competitors didn’t have. Many competitors were cowboys from the off, but Sunfly paid significant royalties to do it right and stay onside with the publishers, which is why we are still alive today!

I do remember you telling me once, that apart from your fabulous success in the 90s. along came the piracy

Yes, the format changed. It was called CD +G (cd plus graphic) no video. Not many people could make video because it was very, very expensive to produce. CD + G arrived, it was just a black background on a CD with lyrics. That made it easy for pirates to produce and that compromised Sunfly significantly. Having said that, we just increased our production output during those times and whilst it hit us in one way, we took advantage in another way, we knew how to produce, we had the brand; we had the reputation, and by upping the production it actually increased our presence worldwide and increased the number of songs in our catalogue as we didn’t have to wait for our songs to be made on laserdisc, which took up to 3 months to make 15 songs! With the CDG format we could make two to three hundred tracks per month on that format and get it out to market very quickly.

How many new songs are you doing a month now?

At the moment now as we’ve got a joint venture with another company in Holland, called SUNVIG and between the two companies we are producing 200/300 songs each month. We are particularly focusing on making them in several languages including Arabic, Japanese, Korean and several as well as our mainstream U.S/U.K. productions.

You are an ideas person, where did you get the idea of making Karaoke cabins to Karaoke rooms?

And so successfully.

I saw some rooms in Japan back in the day and got approached by a company called LUCKY VOICE.

(Incidentally, John and I met for this interview in Lucky Voice, Brighton) who were owned by Martha Lane Fox who sold out her business lastminute.com for close to a billion dollars. That business meant she was often in Japan where she had seen how private karaoke rooms worked over there and brought that idea back to the U.K. in 2006 and started Lucky Voice. Now most cities have these rooms, not only in the U.K. but all over Europe and U.S.A.

By 2010 I was thinking I wanted to open private rooms using the Sunfly brand. I was working on doing this in Copenhagen, unfortunately that fell through at the last minute, however an opportunity came up in Oslo with an old colleague so I committed to invest in a bar in Oslo with the sole intention of creating private karaoke rooms and we established the Brighton Pub. I lost my nerve with the rooms concept though, what if I built the rooms and nobody came, with the costs and the rents at Oslo prices, I kind of bottled it. Yes, we did build a bar it but instead of it becoming an out and out private room karaoke venue it became a daytime bar (karaoke bar at nighttime) with a night club & DJ downstairs. After running that for 7 years, our landlords wanted to take back the property and compensated us for our investment. That was in 2017.

Just before COVID broke out in late 2019, I got a visit from a company from Holland called VIGO ENTERTAINMENT. They were quite a small company, but the guy who owned it was pretty innovative and sharp. We were discussing all things karaoke, I mentioned that I had seen these Karaoke cabins in China that were unique, and that I was considering creating a Sunfly version of them. They look very similar to telephone boxes, except with two seats in them and a built in karaoke system. I thought there could be good business to be had for them in Europe if we could place them in family entertainment centres, shopping malls airports, etc. Just as he was leaving I showed him a picture of these cabins from China, he started laughing and I said, what’s funny? He got out his phone and he said I am also interested in this concept and showed me a picture of a similar cabin already in his warehouse in Holland! However, he continued, the quality, the build and everything about it would never meet the safety or insurance requirements of the EU. I said if you are as interested as I am, we could maybe design and manufacture our own cabins. A couple of weeks later he called me and said he knew of a metal factory that produce all kinds of things out of metal, juke boxes, slot machines and so on, they think they can make this type of cabin. We came up with a design and eventually created a safe and unique product, and formed a joint venture company between Sunfly Karaoke and Vigo Entertainment and SUNVIG was born in 2019!

Are these cabins operating anywhere?

Yes, in Holland they are, however the COVID pandemic prevented us going to other markets.

In Amsterdam, there is even a customised Karaoke private coach service. Sing your heart out and see the sights!

During COVID lockdown, SUNVIG, decided not only manufacture cabins but to use the resources and innovations we had created to create a turnkey solution to create bespoke private karaoke rooms. This we developed very successfully and we are now probably world leaders with this concept.

As you said every pub has some storeroom they don’t use…and every hotel room has to earn a certain amount of money. With your approach, you show them that your Karaoke room concept can make them great profits, how do you convince management they can make better money?

They make their money by us refitting a room or rooms and installing our karaoke systems. We create a cool intimate place, a totally private room where, depending on size you can seat six, eight, ten or twelve people or more in them. The rooms are sold as an experience, which they certainly are complete with a self service karaoke system, nice furnishings, great audio visuals, even a call button that will call the waiter to come and serve drinks. The business model comes from each person paying on average £10, £12 or £15 per hour with a minimum room hire of two hours, for their own private karaoke party, (Typically, 8 guests for those two hours at £12 per hour returns £196 per room to the Hotel/Venue/Bar plus drinks - and those room(s) are likely to be booked for several hours a day. The clientele are usually groups of friends, families, work colleagues, and create a very intimate experience, and now with public awareness of things like COVID these rooms provide a safe and fun environment in the company of people that you know.

All the rooms are cleaned after each session, even the microphone have hygienic disposable covers on them.

You are going to leisure centres, resorts, cruise ships and with your performance data and corporate videos you say you can turn rooms into a highly profitable money-making business and it is growing in popularity. I believe you have just got into Richard Branson’s cruise ships.

Yes, we have the SCARLET LADY, and VALIANT LADY the new Virgin Cruise Ships, as well as other major cruise lines including Disney!

You must have felt, well, that’s it. I’ve made it now.

It wasn’t that easy, I had to go to Florida to learn the security protocols that have to be followed very strictly. Everything has to be supervised and done in accordance with the cruise companies security. We have other major cruise lines wanting our systems, we are the first in the world to install our systems onto a private jet, in doing so we had to create a whole new system for private jets to comply with aviation regulations! We’ve even done a bus that tours around where you can sing, drink and see the sights at the same time. Like a hop on hop off attraction. A sightseeing bar with karaoke (see picture)!

When I started with karaoke more than thirty years ago it was kind of embarrassing to be involved in it, there was no kudos in karaoke at all. Going from being an international DJ to fronting embryonic karaoke was the uncoolest thing ever.

When people did ask what I did back then, and I told them I own a Karaoke company, they generally tended to be dismissive and of the opinion was that it would never take off in the west, but gradually with the advent of show like POP IDOL, X-FACTOR, BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT etc, it suddenly started to gain credibility as a lot of the contestants came from karaoke bars.

It was still deemed little bit naff until perhaps the last five years, but it has now finally gained credibility as mainstream entertainment. You’ve got the movies, you’ve got the restaurants, you’ve got the Night Clubs and now you’ve got karaoke!

So here is the big question we all want to know, John, have you yourself been behind the microphone?

Oh yes, it’s not great. Some producers can’t sing so I class myself with them, but I have got good ears in terms of production values, in terms of singing, not the best!

I think this is a wonderful story and it is going to go in the book, THAT’S HOW IT WAS, but there is just one last question I think people would like to know. When we had a recent DJ Reunion back in March 22 you were down on the list to attend but suddenly you reported ‘Sorry guys, I can’t be with you, I have to be at the GRAMMY AWARDS in Los Angeles. So why did you have to go there?

Well, through the network of musicians I had met working with karaoke I got an unexpected invitation from Cristian Larrosa, of Larrosa Music Group to go to the Grammy’s and through his connections I got to know some very important musicians and producers over there including a 19 times Grammy winner, who has produced so many rock stars as well as many major Latin artists and actually attending both the Latin Grammy’s and the American Grammy’s and meeting some of the singers, musicians and producers over there that were heroes of mine was pretty amazing, some who have now become friends.

You also have quite an extensive publishing company too?

It was something I started as an offshoot of my karaoke business. I own Gung Ho Music Group Ltd, which is a music library that produces music for TV shows, movies, commercials etc.

Looking back, is there anything you regret?

Not really, no, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. If I hadn’t taken that step from growing up in the north of England, where I was working in local government at the time, training as an accountant by day and deejaying by night. I got connected with IDEA and given the chance to be an international deejay which seemed very glamorous, and I jumped at the opportunity. My boss and chief accountant was horrified when I announced my career change and that I was going to work in a nightclub in Copenhagen. “What about your pension” he questioned (I was 20 years old) that was the clincher and removed any doubts about leaving, working 40 years to get a good pension or join IDEA!

Life is a journey not a destination!

Exactly, I found that out very quickly after I turning up up at my first venue working for you!

What is the most exciting thing you’ve ever done? What’s given you the biggest high?

There have been some pretty big highs on my journey, too many to mention in this interview, but having 3 beautiful daughters has been difficult to beat!

Barry Perrins - From Turntables to Ocean Adventurer

Some of you may remember Barry Perrins from his time in Norway in the mid 80s where he worked mainly in the North, however it is his iconic sailing adventures around the world ‘Adventures of an Old Seadog’ that this story is about. The switch and defining moment came when “in my 40s I didn’t really connect to playing music to 20 year olds anymore and whilst many of my peers were still behind a microphone I felt I needed new challenges.”

If you are like me you might enjoy thrilling, gripping television series on Netflix etc like ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Vikings’ and BBC’s ‘ The Capture’. Binge-watchable. Brilliant productions, great scripts and acting, cutting edge technology producing it - but, of course, you know it is not real.

Barry’s ‘Adventures of an Old Seadog’ has made it into You Tube’s top 100 Adventure series of all time quoting ‘This is as exciting as it gets. A cruising adventure web series that is gritty, down to earth with videos, sailing singlehanded across the globe. Showing the bad as well as the good, the heartaches and triumphs of one man’s quest to living is dream’

All this is real time, filming as it happened, no green screening, no clever photoshopping, - raw, brutal and at times frightening footage. Through his filming and witty commentary, he will take you through the fascinating procedure of a small boat going through the Panama canal. You will see the actual island where the ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ took place and why it happened. The history of the ports that Drake and Columbus made famous. The perils and survival at sea and much more.

He talks to you about the problems and dangers on board in total honesty as if you are also there sharing the suspense, and tension wondering how he will resolve this one. With over 200 videos, you will frequently hear “I’m genuinely shit scared’ and ‘What can possibly go wrong ‘(when everything is idyllic).

So, here is an Interview with Barry Perrins with extracts from his published blogs on Facebook.

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One of the things I wanted to ask you, obviously you have had a passion for the sea a very long time, when did you switch from being a broadcaster to an adventurer?

Yes, well I always wanted to do sailing in my life. When I started out I wanted to do what nowadays are called media, write songs, make films and play music, then I discovered DJ’ing. I started doing gigs in England in the 70’s and a lot of international work from the North of Norway, Italy and down to Israel (Voice of Peace - see photo top left) But in my 40s I didn’t really connect to playing music to 20 year olds and whilst many of my peers were still behind a microphone I felt I needed new challenges so I took up Scuba Diving and was a diving instructor for four years in the Red Sea around the mid 90s. Then my parents passed away and I inherited their house which I sold and realised I could now do anything that I really wanted to do. I could buy a very expensive car or buy a modest boat and sail around the world. That was in 2014. I’ve always travelled and I’ve always loved to travel. My grandfather was a sailor and built his own boats.

So, Barry, tell me about your boat, what type is it?

It’s 11 metre - 36’, Van Der Stadt a steel boat, halfway between a diver’s boat and a Seatramp.

Built in 2004, I bought it from one previous owner, an Englishman, in Portimao, Portugal in 2014.

The Hull is brought up to a height that gives standing room below deck without a long coach-roof. The compact form and large area both on and below deck appeals to many sailors. The high freeboard ensures that less water comes on deck. The roomy interior offers a completely separate aft cabin which is safely reached below deck.

How have you managed to fund yourself?

I have always had an interest in IT and publishing which has changed so much over the last 15 years. From my uploading videos and blogs on You Tube I now have more than 100,000 subscribers. This platform has allowed more interaction with the community which in turn created its own business opportunity, and so it helps a lot with expenses and that sort of thing.

And You Tube changed from community put-up-a-video sharing to a business model.

Also from my Patreon account, whose vital donations have allowed me to fund the very high recurring expense of maintaining and repairing the boat, replacing faulty navigation equipment, outrageous marina charges in some ports (one mooring bill in Portimao was very frightening ) and obtaining spare parts to keep White Shadow afloat on some remote islands which can be up to 300% of mainland prices.

I’ve just read your terrible experience a week or two ago (December 2022) when you were stranded outside Australia and you had to be rescued and you were worried about having to get a new engine or very expensive repairs. Was that your most scary moment on the high seas? Pretty hairy, wasn’t it?

It was, but out of that frightening experience which I uploaded I raised a lot of donations from the community so that made me feel very good. Its was not the best moment in my life calling for help. It’s all about having a way out, a plan b or c, having options. My options had all run out and I needed that help. After a long hard battle in the worst weather that I’d ever experienced and with engine failure and with only 5 miles to go, I was spent.

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Here is the full account Barry uploaded to his Facebook page

RESCUED AT SEA

This is the story…

All of us have things we regret or would rather forget. Mistakes bad choices or just bad luck.

Last week I was ending my long 3 week passage to Australia. I knew it would be slow as the weather had been patchy with 3 sets of doldrums and unsettled conditions. I didn’t mind and had good spirts as I neared Bundaberg. It wasn’t until I got close to land a huge storm front got picked up by my satellite system. It was blowing hard from the south and would push me off course if I didn’t get into port quickly. Nothing happens on my boat quickly so I had to have a plan. The front was huge and spread over hundreds of miles. My first plan was to escape by turning back the way I’d come to escape its path. Having done that and having re done my sums, it became obvious that I couldn’t avoid what was coming. I turned back on course to land. My weather prediction showed that there would be a lull enough for me to get into port. This turned out not to be true . . and thats when it went wrong.

Heading Southwest beating into the wind conditions got worse and became a full gale. At least 47 knots and swell off 4 metre plus,( I think it was more 5 metre plus where I was). I got in touch via radio (Pan pan) to the emergency services just to let them know that I was there and could they watch me. I fought my way close to land and prepared to start the engine to cover the final 5 miles as it would be dead into wind.

The engine wouldn’t start, the wind came up again, the seas got humongous. I got thrown across the cabin and hurt my arm. I struggled to keep control of the boat. I had 3 reefs in the mainsail but now I had to get it down as even that was too much. A frightening 20 mins later it was done but I still could not control the boat as she kept wanting to head for the reefs close to land. Had I been far out to sea I could have hung on, but that wasn’t the case. A passing fishing boat diverted to rescue me. We had a merry dance in wild weather trying in vain to get a tow rope across. The Skipper broke his arm and had to give up. Wishing me well he departed and was soon out of sight in the maelstrom. I had not slept for two days and after fighting the situation for a further . . I don’t know how long . . I was physically and mentally spent . . decided to call for help.

The Volunteer Marine Rescue service is similar to the British Offshore lifeboat service that I worked for. (RNLI in Plymouth for ten years prior to my dream of sailing around the world) They are both crewed by volunteers who in this case left the safety of dry land one a long passage though hell to reach me. I felt for them as they came 20 miles to get me. I’d drifted that far down range and there was nothing I could do.

After several hours I saw their lights approach. It was like the hand of an angel about to pull me from the jaws of hell, I then knew for the first time that I wasn’t going to die that night.

After breaking two tow ropes we managed to secure a third made from an anchor rope. I think this was now about 9 or 10 at night. Water was being forced into the boat under pressure, from waves made more powerful by being towed into them, everything was wet. Cold and tired I managed to rest a little wedged under the cockpit cover.

9 o’clock in the morning we docked. The nightmare was over.

I swore that I’d do something for those brave people who came out in the worst weather that I have ever seen to safe my life. I never ask but I’m asking you now. As ‘Volunteer rescue Bundaberg’ are not funded by the government, it relies on donations to do the lifesaving work it does. I want to say thank you to them by raising a little money.

I'd like to thank the skipper and his wife of the fishing boat that came to assist and the risks that they took to do so. I will catch up with them after the weekend to thank them face to face. But most of all a HUGE thank you to the crew and personnel at Bundaburg volunteer rescue for their outstanding work in saving my pommy arse. Went to see them today but just missed them. Hope to see them later. Meantime dropped off some refreshments at the boathouse.

I’m still a bit banged up with a sore arm after being thrown across the cabin. A few cuts and stiff joints but mostly exhausted.

Met some viewers of the channel who have helped me out today and finally got my internet connections sorted.

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(Diary account back then…)

Monday I'll start thinking of my next plan and how or ‘if’ to fix the engine.

Thank you to all for your concern.

Big thank you to Dave Milford (Plymouth RNLI) for being my Eyes on shore and watching my back. Thanks to Cuz Malcolm for also being on the team with his sailing knowledge put into the mix. Sorry to Tina (sister) for putting her though a worrying and stressful time.

Wed 8th dec.22
The river I’m on is fast flowing and brown. It also has Bull Sharks in it. I had a lot of rope trapped under the boat in the form of broken tow lines. Sent camera on a stick down to see the situation but the viz was nil. Eventually I had to dive it. By touch alone I freed the rope.

But the big thing is . . . I FIXED THE ENGINE. Turned out to be a broken fuel line. What a relief, instead of a new engine and or a cost of thousands of Pounds, that I’d been expecting, the price was about £60!

Ha ha Bull Sharks 0

Gods of Mayhem and Destruction 0

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That is some of the flavour, raw emotion, impossible challenges Barry faced as a lone sailor on hostile seas in appalling conditions. Now, more on the perils and thrills of the yachting life, here is an interview with a fellow sailor adventurer, Magnus, (whose boat is ‘Life on a Nutshell’)

We are on White Shadow in Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas (a string of atolls in Polynesia), having coffee with Barry, the old salty SeaDog himself.

I am a bit salty and a bit old, that’s true.

Drinking coffee, incidentally, not even laced with any rum! Having a bit of a chat about his lone voyage which was truly epic.

We went out last night for a pizza I said to Barry, I'd love to chat to you about crossing because those of you out there that don't know Barry would not be aware he had a bit of an eventful trip from Panama over to Marquesas. We knew he had left Panama and no one had heard from him. So tell us about your trip.

What happened? Actually, I set off with good intentions from Panama, and, we were at the Pearl Islands, Easy Mike (Fellow sailor and Olympic Champion Snowboarder in the 90s - his Yacht called ‘Easy’) and I, him on his boat, me on mine. He shot up to Colombia I think it was with some friends and set off across the Pacific. The wind went down, weather forecast was OK, and, as you know, you can only really tell for about six days. I estimated the crossing should take around 57 days. Then the weather just turned bad on me, the winds would not let me go towards Galapagos.

The plan was never to go to the Galapagos.

So you were heading north or south?

North because the lack of wind, I looked at the currents and that said - and a lot of people agreed with me - if you sort of snake around and follow the current they’ll whip you around the top of Galapagos and down to the Trades.That was the plan and it didn’t happen. It took me 19 days just to get to Galapagos. I crossed the equator Christmas Day as it were and that was a biggie for me. First time I’ve crossed the equator. Then things started to go wrong. The weather was up the wind was down. The sea had prominence over the wind, and the boat was at the behest of the waves. The weather was coming from behind. I have hydravane which is brilliant but no wind vane system will work with wind from behind the boat. So, I had to manually steer at night. And, of course, I had the boat and had to eat too. That was pretty much the whole trip.

Nothing went wrong with the rigging? You weren’t actually in danger?

No, nothing terrible happened, the worst thing that did happen was I noticed the pin that holds the foresail up which holds the mast up. That was coming loose, it was within half an inch of coming out of its fittings., so I was that close to losing the mast. That would have changed the situation from being hunker-down-bear it to a question of survival. Food and water wise, I stocked up for weeks in advance to continue on past where we are now in the Marquesas. So I was safe and sound, and this boat is a great boat, solid and heavy. Great in rough weather but she sails like a bus with wobbly wheels. No wind! There was also growth on the bottom of the boat, four inches of it.

Must have been like a botanical garden down there. You had a whole micro system down there that you carried across from the northern hemisphere to the south. that really must have slowed you down a lot. Halved your speed, I reckon.

Whatever I did, I couldn’t get the boat to move. I tried everything. Sails been up and down more often that a bad girl’s underwear. You can only sail when the wind is in the right direction. When they did come they were in the wrong direction. There was huge swell for about four or five weeks. Just constant rolling swell. Three to five metres I reckon from directly behind me, and a two knot current coming past me. I averaged 2.5 knots in 71 days. I did 4800 miles. I could have swum it faster. I will next time.

Wow, an epic journey. Now I have forgotten what I was going to say.

Magnus is an old friend. It’s not that I have known him a long time. He is a friend and he is old.

Now I know, what’s this about an aeroplane that came out and spotted you?

Back home, in Plymouth, I have friend of mine who is coxswain, skipper of a lifeboat back in England who is my eyes on shore and tracks my progress. I told him 50 days and, of course, by sixty something days, he and my family were worried, and contacted the emergency services in England, Falmouth - which is like an International Rescue Centre - and they contacted the French Authorities here which then sent out a LEAR jet. So, I’m sitting below feeling sorrow for myself and I heard the massive roar overhead. I heard this voice over the radio basically asking if I was OK.

And that was your first contact?

No, I talked to two helicopters that flew over Galapagos and also one fishing boat captain.

But the Lear jet pilot was the first contact in over 50 days. It was tremendously emotional.

But it was comforting to know that everyone was thinking about you.

And I didn’t feel alone anymore. You may have a schedule but the weather is the weather. You can’t do anything about it. You sail to the weather and not as scheduled. If I am running several days late and I am in the middle of an ocean with no communication or internet I get very stressed and worried not for myself but for the people monitoring me being lost at sea.

The main thing was that ‘rescue mission’ relieved every one back home. I used to work for the RNLI emergency services for many years, so I knew what I had to tell the crew of the Lear Jet whose task was to locate me. I told the guys I was fine but I was embarrassed that I caused all this kerfuffle, but glad of it. I was concerned about the expense. It costs a fortune to fly someone out.

I am thinking are they going to send me the fuel bill? Flying two hundred miles out and two hundred miles back.

It probably only took them about three minutes! Maybe just a little Sunday exercise.

That’s a wonderful story. Of course, what we heard was that you were lost at sea and that came from our own viewers and they were concerned. You hadn’t shown up. But all that changed when you made contact on radio and via the Cruiser Network which is like the grapevine of the world. If someone farts in the Falklands you hear about it in New Guinea within seconds.

Is that the title of your book when you retire - Fart in the Falklands? (All fall about laughing.)

Back to the interview: Barry, on those long voyages when you don’t see anyone for weeks, do you get lonely? What keeps you going?

‘I count myself as a fairly well balanced person anyway.

I have to be very disciplined, keep my mind on track. I have always spent my life by myself, I never got married, so I am used to being by myself. The music that I write and the videos that I do, it’s about keeping busy. On the boat there is an endless list of tasks to do, maintenance, repair work and cleaning.’

Then there is this eerie feeling of being totally cut off with dead slow internet if any at all, no undersea cable, no radio contact, no communications whatsoever in the middle of the oceans. - but not totally isolated. His eyes on the shore, David Milford back in Plymouth, tracks his course and when there was a panic - Lost at Sea - he sent out that Lear jet to check up on him. At that point he has sailed 4000 nautical miles in 71 days at sea - a good 20 days more than plotted. His concern then was for everyone else who getting stressed out and worried for him just because he was running three weeks late.

His fellow yachties who share the same risks, thrills and life at sea, look out for him, and mention their concerns on their own You tube channel ‘White Shadow lost at sea?’ so thousands of armchair sailors back home also get worried for his safety. Out at sea, the internet is sketchy at best and uploading new videos can only be done with a good connection. At sea, Barry maintains his social life with daily updates on social media with two way messaging with his family, friends and patreons without whom financing the adventures could barely continue.

On Shaddy, Barry talks about inanimate objects and personifies them. He sees a squall looming up on the horizon and refers to it as that nasty fellow over there. Trying to undo something that won’t budge he’ll say ‘this fella is giving me a hard time’. Or, ‘that little guy over there needs attention’. And, for good company there is Wilson (see picture) who listens attentively and never answers back (distant relative from Tom Hank’s Castaway film).

If Sailing and Music are Barry’s two greatest loves, then Beer and Pizza are the runners up. He’s not alone with that preference. In most of the videos onshore or in anchorage. It’s down to crates of beer, pizzas, impromptu playing and singing with fellow musicians, and somehow most of these older mariners eventually manage to look the same.

The sailing community the world over is very close. With so many common challenges and adventures it is bound to be, sharing beers in local bars, catching up with new friends and old is the lifestyle but Barry warns, with a twinkle in his eye, the less said about boat parties the better.

There is one amusing instance of that fellowship when in late 22 Barry was struck down with COVID. Worse than the illness was the enforced isolation of NO BEER. Ingeniously, faster than sending a message in a bottle, he attached an urgent pleading message onto his drone which he guided towards his fellow yachties in the bar who sorted him out in no time.

He says ‘Yes, that’s important, vital to socialise, I need the company. When I get to shore I crave people’s company. You won’t find me on these lonely, lovely beaches. It’s all about interacting with different people, different countries, experiencing all that - that’s what I like.’

It’s not all plain sailing…

You find an attractive anchorage by a tropical island. Lush greenery, white sands and what looks like a ramshackle bar that would have that soothing, ice-cold beer you are craving. You drag your dinghy up the shore and stroll across to the bar which is open and you are in paradise. You do a recce and eventually wander back to your dinghy - which isn’t there!. That almost happened to Barry but he caught the would be thieves just in time. Reality check - this happens.

A You Tube viewer posted the following warning about Martinique. As with many islands, there is a double whammy with dinghy theft. If it is stolen you need a Police report in order to claim on the insurance. When the Police ask for the valuation many people inflate it for insurance sake. After which the Police/Customs will charge you ‘import tax’ of around 40% based on that valuation because you brought it into the country and left without it. Nasty.

When sailing from one country to another, you must hoist the yellow Q Flag (Q for Quarantine) until you have fully registered with the harbour authorities. And pay attention to ports of entry, passport & visa requirements, boat ownership, cruising permits, and custom and quarantine regulations. In some cases, if you don’t report within 48 hours you could land in prison.

Look up Flag Etiquette on Sailing boats today. It’s a fascinating subject.

Reefs. Boats and reefs don’t go together. Many of the sea lanes, smaller atolls and islands are unchartered, or inaccurate. This is terrifying and stressful because you don’t know where they are.

And, if you run aground you have a strong risk of losing your boat. Many reefs are littered with broken hulls, and wrecks of once beautiful sailing vessels. Another hidden danger are lobster pots.

If your vessel gets too close to them, their lines can wrap round your propeller causing no end of damage and delay. As Barry goes on to say ‘This is my home. Everything I have is on this boat. Without a crew I can’t take risks in shallow water with reefs in unchartered maps.’

One anchorage you don’t want to sail to is the island of Toboga just two miles out of Panama City. It is known for its pineapples, mangoes and, in particular one of the oldest churches in the Western Hemisphere but also known for its riotous day trippers.

You will find it the loudest bay in the world with a bunch of party hard boaters. Barry explains it was a nightmare. He couldn’t sail out of the harbour because there was no wind. So he had to wait.

‘Yesterday’, he said, ‘was just a cacophony of music. Everyone was playing their own music so, so so loud. As if to out compete each other with ear splitting sounds. It just destroys the atmosphere of being in such a beautiful bay. For us out in the anchorage it was just this awful, mixed up nasty sound. Now, I’m sounding like a whinging old bastard because this is such a pretty place’. You have been warned!

Something else you won’t know about on your cruise ship is a little island off Panama that Barry called ‘Bird Poo Island’. It’s a naturally beautiful place, buzzing with nature, ideal for me, he says, no sound, no music, no engines just the birds circling (and pelicans) as long as they don’t shit on my boat!. Your noisy motorboat boys or day trippers out of Panama City would not come to see it because it’s covered in white shit. (guano). However, guano - the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats used to be a valuable resource. Barry films the derelict buildings and rusty, disused cranes that used to mine it. Why? Because as a manure it is a lightly effective fertiliser due to high content of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium. All the key elements of plant growth.

At all times you have to watch your health. For example, sailing into New Zealand and Australia - the end of the world - there is a big hole in the ozone layer. Lots of people have bandages over their ears and nose from getting skin cancer. Very dangerous. And, don’t even think about sailing into New Zealand with that dirty bottom (on the boat that is).

Be careful what delicious looking fruit you eat on some islands that entice you. There is a death tree in Spanish called ‘manzanilla de la muerte’, "little apple of death". This refers to the fact that manchineel is one of the most toxic trees in the world: the tree has milky-white sap which contains numerous toxins and can cause blistering. Eating it can kill you. Whatever you do, don’t walk under it when it’s raining.

Also be careful what you pick up on the seashore. You may find a pretty looking cone shell but if the resident is at home, the extremely venomous snail can kill you within nine minutes. Found lurking in shallow waters near coral reefs. On the other hand, in the tropics islanders eat cockle shells for many are rich in protein, low in fat, and contain minerals such as zinc, copper, and magnesium. They are also said to contain Omega-3 fatty acids. However, seashells can cause allergic reactions in certain people. Every nook, cranny and ridge of the shell can hold bacteria, algae and more. After collecting shells it is most important to clean them straightaway before they begin to smell.

Finally, swimming under a waterfall sounds fun but don’t do it. Reason you sink under a waterfall is not because of the weight of the water on your head but because of the increased air bubbles which make the water less supportive and you sink more easily. Beware of weirs and waterfalls - you can’t swim in air.

Paradise

Cruise ships can never compete with small island adventures like this.

Nearly all the islanders are very friendly and you couldn’t wish to meet nicer people. Many islanders can’t get anything else except fish so they recycle everything like some old rope that Barry gave them. And, he also donated a state of the Art fishing tackle which he told them he was never going to use anyway. (I don’t get that at all. If you are broken down and drifting in the doldrums, rations having run out why wouldn’t you use it?)

Why no Fishing? He explains " I’m often asked why I don’t fish off the back of my boat while I’m at sea. In the open sea and in deep water the wild life tends to be BIG! They use the word 'Pelagic' this is in fact another word for big, as in big fish, big whales, big sharks. In my opinion slimy big things with teeth need to stay in the sea and not on my boat. On a serious note, I don’t have a freezer. I think its irresponsible to catch a large  animal, kill it, chop a little bit off to eat and then throw most of it away.  Also fighting an animal the size of a dog and killing it in my small cockpit with all that blood and guts does not appeal to me. Opening a can of tuna does.”

Sadly, not every idyllic setting in Paradise is a place you never want to leave. Many beaches and coves on the pacific side of Panama are littered with plastic waste, and mountains of rubbish which no one seems to care enough about. On another island beach further across the Pacific ocean, Barry sighs ‘Over the last few years living on a boat I have become aware of the environmental disaster of plastic floating around in our seas and I thought I’d have to do something in a very small way - just to make a point’. So, with a friend, whose own sailing channel focusses on environmental issues, they cleaned up a large section of a tourist trashed beach filling two enormous black garbage sacks and then relaxed in the traditional mariner’s way sitting on a large rock with cans of beer gazing at the sunset.

However, there was a lovely touch moored in Tahiti, (being French) fresh croissants and patisserie would be brought out to the Yachts each morning. A wonderful treat, indeed.

And, what can be more satisfying than sailing on course to your next destination, on a beautiful day, freshly brewed coffee in hand watching dolphins racing ahead and alongside of you.?

Life on board the White Shadow of Poole (official name), or Shaddy (Affection) or Shadmeister (Respect).

Barry’s daily commentary on social media is not only informative, but also very witty, amusing and brutally graphic. He talks about the arse end of the ship. He’ll be the first to admit always being focussed on the job at hand, the yacht is never tidy as ideally it should be.

Innovative cooking skills. On one clip he decided he wanted a Welsh Rarebit - OK, a cheesy toastie. You can’t load the toaster with the grated cheese on top of the bread vertically, so he lays it on its side until it pings out when ready. Job done - no mess. When in port there is the supermarket run. Life on board means tins of everything. Once back on the boat, he marks the contents of each can with indelible ink, washes the cans and peals off the paper. Why? Because cockroaches love the glue live in the packaging and you don’t want them crawling around.

Oh and how does an old sea dog eat his food? Well, out of a dog’s bowl of course. It doesn’t flip over.

One thing that does puzzle me. Barry doesn’t appear to catch fish to eat. I mean, he can be almost out of rations, nothing fresh to live on but he doesn’t throw a line. Flying fish on the other hand, often have leapt on the boat like a broad hint. Yet, he loves fish and chips (particularly in port with a beer or at his favourite fish restaurant back in Plymouth)

When things go wrong and they do, and no one within miles to help you, you turn to innovation. Like a leaky tap needed a washer, so he used a condom over the connection (‘What in the hell would I have use of one of those out here’, he quips). Another good tip: A book gets wet and waterlogged. So, zip the book and a diaper into a plastic, food storage bag and the diaper will end up absorbing the moisture. Likewise diapers can stop leaks in the bilge. So, next time, you are invited over to Shaddy, don’t comment on the condoms and diapers you see lying around.

Another tip: Always have a back up compass when you sail. Barry was sailing back to Plymouth from Portugal when fluid got into his compass. He couldn’t repair it on the spot but amusingly enough he had a toy compass (like something out of a Christmas cracker) that actually worked and held his course.

Sailing alone, you can counter many terrifying experiences like off the coast of Africa with the known danger of Somali pirates - then the stark horror of a boat that actually approached him fast refusing to identify itself causing Barry to hide his ship’s data, and most valuable items. Or, engine failure and helplessly drifting towards the reefs with no wind for the sails. Or a violent storm that sinks the boat and no signal on his phone from his dinghy that he managed to scramble onto. Such is the sailor’s life. And, Barry says fear makes him hungry! - but in those situations it’s not safe or calm enough to make a meal. When negotiating dangerous reefs or attempting to follow a course through a storm with adverse winds hijacking your route, there is no opportunity for sleep and little chance of cooking. There have been days and nights in atrocious conditions with very little sleep. Sleep deprivation is actually a form of torture, but for sailors an everyday things. You’ve got to know when to quit but then you don’t actually want to.

One thing Barry shows you in one of his first videos is a grab bag. A waterproof zipped bag, that contains your passport, insurance papers, boat ownership documents, cruising licences and so on. Don’t forget your medical kit, radio, telephone and everything to sustain life in order to survive as a castaway. As you are sinking and about to abandon ship, you will need all these documents once they rescue you.

The Dream

‘For me, it was important to achieve something before I die and I am over 60 now. The fact that I’ve sailed by myself halfway round the world was that goal. That’s written in stone. No one can take that away from me’.

‘About the videos, you can only film when it’s safe to do so. One hand on the camera, the other trying to save the boat from running aground isn’t a good idea. So, usually, you see me calm, relaxed, very laid back, with a coffee or a beer in hand. What you don’t see is the sheer terror, dilemmas, frightening prospects of what could go wrong, or what did and the consequences.’

‘I can’t film the rolling of the boat in terrifying waves or the idiot boat that’s coming far too close to me.

Producing one video update can take days of editing, researching and talking over. then I have to find sufficient internet signal to upload, sometimes this takes ages. I can’t always play the music you want, or that fits the images because of copyright. And then there is the lag between the footage you see and the time passed since its original shooting’.

Now that you’ve done all these blogs on Facebook, You Tube etc, is that all from voyages? Are you going to write the book?

‘Perhaps later on, based on the last eight years - The Adventures of an Old Seadog! I love real life adventure and everything in real time. I love history, the beauty of natural surroundings, unspoiled coastlines, at one with the elements whatever they throw at me. I hate noisy crowds and those that ruin our environment, the rat race and commercialism. Just give me an idyllic anchorage and funds to maintain Shaddy and just maybe I will rework the footage one day ……but not for a long time yet, I am still only halfway round the world’.

‘Yes, I’d like to do a book one day, but I think it’s very hard work. I’ve already started writing a lot of stuff , however, maybe one day I’ll sift through all the material and memories and make sense of it all. I never seem to stop working anyway’.

Barry recent announced on Facebook

Wow we've gone viral on this one, 'Alone and broken on the reefs' has now over 100k views in less than a week! It seems you don’t need breasts and bikinis but just an old man getting in the shit to get the views!!’

Barry, that’s a great story. I don’t think you will ever retire and fade away. Pipe and slippers doesn’t suit you. And, don’t forget to complete that album you started 30 years ago.

Some viewers comments on his videos

• ‘yours is the most entertaining, frightening and honest Youtube channel I watch’

• ‘You are the best! authentic and honest, you wear your heart on your sleeve. And hilarious! A true original. We love you!

• ‘You are open, real and genuine - we appreciate your honesty. Not everyone has the guts to be vulnerable on camera.’

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Latest update March 25

If you follow Barry on You Tube then you will know he has rounded the Cape of Good hope, South Africa and recently uploaded a video from St Helena. He is eventually heading home to Plymouth, and after being feted and interviewed for the hero he is, I would imagine he will start on his book - or series of books from his hundreds of hours of footage and commentary.

Tony Prince - Radio Luxembourg

Radio Luxembourg was the ultimate Radio Station. It was entertaining, the DJ’s were fun to listen to and the music was great.

You felt the camraderie, the banter and loved the witty introductions between the records. Before the pirate radio stations came along, this was how Disc Jockeys should be. All the DJ’s were household names - Tony Prince, Ed Stuart, Mark Wesley, Kid Jensen, Paul Burnett…

And so it happened, in the early 70’s I had a call from a Swedish club owner called Roland who asked me for a famous show DJ?

He was opening his brand new club - a converted warehouse in Malmoe that held 500 screaming youngsters that was painted black and had an enormous stage. It was called ‘Sir William Pitt’. Strange name for a venue in Sweden? (Ah, well ‘Pitt” is the swedish word for a certain male body part; very typical of Swedish humour). I need SHOW Disc Jockeys Roland implored!

My heroes were in Radio Luxembourg, but could they do a show and would they want to come to Scandinavia? I phoned Radio Luxembourg which led to negotiations on who might be available and an offer that would attract one of them. Tony Prince volunteered, he said The Royal Ruler would love to come and do a show for his many fans in Denmark and Sweden. On the first tour, we arranged the Malmoe gig and a couple of Danish ones. I watched him do his show he was incredible. Tony had amazing stage presence, tremendous rapport and had them screaming all night long.

This led to several Scandinavian visits, here below is a picture of Tony in the Danish town of Viborg clowning around with our DJ Hammadi Star.

The Cat and the Mouse …and a shaggy dog story

A single Act Play involving, uh?  You got it. One Black Cat and One Tiny Mouse.

CAT

(spotting it scurrying away across the yard – pounces after it, corners it)

Hey Mouse! Take it EASY. I don’t wanna hurt you. I don’t even wanna eat you.

MOUSE

(frozen to the spot, eyes darting left, right looking for escape route)           Expect me to believe that?

CAT

Sure – I wanna play. We cats like to play, y’know.

 MOUSE

OK OK Let’s play Hide and Seek.  You count to ten and I’ll …………(zooms across the yard. Only to be pawed back)

CAT

Hey, not so fast. Let me see you dance

MOUSE  

I can dance on your monitor. Shut your eyes and ……(scuttles backwards reverse direction smooz!)

CAT

Nope.  Tell you what, let’s have a race.

MOUSE

But you will win

CAT

Hmmm. OK, I will tie both my hind legs together.

MOUSE

I want fair play. I want a referee because you will cheat.

(Enter Murdoch the Bulldog – still only two players, Murdoch is no real character)

MURDOCH

Zzzzzzzzzz’zzzzz’  zzzz’  zzzzzzz  what? WHAT?

Alright then, where?  (ties up the Cat’s hind legs and whiskers for good measure)  Where was I?  Oh zzzz’ zzzz

MOUSE

What possible motivation do I have to compete against a bully like you?

CAT

Er? Right. Hey Murdoch

MURDOCH

What. WHAT?  Alright then, where? (waddles off and forages around the kitchen for cheeses. Finds loads of ‘em and piles them high in the far distant corner of the courtyard ~ a mere speck in the distance). Where was I? Oh yeah. Zzz’ zzzzz

CAT

There – See!  Motivation.

MOUSE

You will still win even with three legs.

CAT

Oh I’m getting fed up with you. Right. Murdoch!

MURDOCH

What. WHAT?  Alright then, where?  (Wanders off and comes back with an eye patch, places it on Cat’s Head).

CAT

Stupid dog!  I want to be blindfolded.  Can’t you see? I’m reducing the odds in the race. And, I can still see you, dollop!

MURDOCH

Alright then, here (whacks the Cat in the other eye. Swells up and closes)  There you are, now where was I? Oh yeah,

Zzzzz’ zzzzz, zzzz

MOUSE

You will still win. You’ re much bigger than me.

CAT

Right, I see your point. Well you can start halfway through the race. Am I being fair?

MOUSE

And you still want to race me, uh?

CAT

Murdoch!  Wake up, you’re the referee and you must put us under starters orders.

MURDOCH

What WHAT? Alright then, where? (The fat, lazy dog slouches over to the starting line where Cat and Mouse are playing cat and mouse itching and raring to go. Dog takes a deep breath. Cat still itching. Tension mounts. Ready, steady .. Murdoch lets out a mighty fart – and they’re OFF! ) Now, where was I? Oh yeah, zzz ‘ zzzzzz, zzzzz.

CAT

Alright Mouse, I can see you (nudging off the eye patch) now who’s in a hurry here?  (licks his paws).

MOUSE (shitting itself and scampering for dear life cheese or no cheese). Puff Puff Puff  can’t catch me..

CAT (Arches the back and stiffens)

Run, little mouse, Run!

MOUSE (panting, muttering)

Faster, faster

CAT

Ha ha, pathetic little rodent (Perceives his prey just a few yards shy off the finishing post. Uh?  You think you’ve sussed this one? Hare and Tortoise scenario? Snigger Snigger). Right, here we go….

MOUSE

And, here I go….

MURDOCH

Zzzzz ‘ zzzzzz’ zzzzzzzz’  uh?  Zzzzz

MOUSE

Puff Puff ..Cat thinks I’m stupid (sharply veers to the right. Cat screeches in his tracks, leaps to the right lashing out with its paw and lands in a stinking puddle)

CAT

Decoy, huh?  Oh I lurve these games.  Gimme Gimme Gimme…

Mouse is lured on lemming fashion seduced by cheesy wafts, and was just about to cross the finishing line when

CAT

Oh no you don’t (An outstretched feline paw lands on him hauling him backwards) I lurve to play (sinks his sharp claws into the squealing rodent, bites its neck, tosses it about and kills it).  I just hate losing!

Anyone contest the result? (looks around and purrs)

(And there was not a word from the mouse or the dog)

The End.

Moral:  Beware of bad losers.

Unashamedly written by Allan Wolfe

19th April  2001.

Didn’t you like it?  Then try another ending.

Ending # Two

CAT

Oh no you don’t (An outstretched feline paw lands on him hauling him backwards toying with him) I just lurve to play.

(Mouse freezes petrified, eyes darting hither and thither. Cat licks its whiskers and lunges at him but the mouse gets away and scuttles under the mound of cheeses.

You lost little mouse. You’re the loser! And I’ll have you for dinner.

(Mouse retreats further into the pile of cheeses. Back, back, back and falls down a hole. Cat frantically paws the various cheeses aside until he sees the broken drain. The mouse looks up at the skylight and blinks. And the more frustrated the cat becomes the more pieces of cheese fall down the hole until a little mountain  piles up in the drain. This drain was like a city highway for the our mouse and by now two of his colony had joined him eager for the feast.

MOUSE (with shall we say a certain bravado) Of course, I was always in control. I won and this is my prize, for the loser it simply was a

Cat-astrophe.

(and as he spoke a lunging black paw swept the hole narrowly missing him)

The End.

Moral:  Major Tom to Mouse Control.

Ending # Three

CAT

Oh no you don’t, (An outstretched feline paw lands upon him hauling it backwards) I lurve to play..(sinks his sharp claws into the squealing rodent, bites his neck, tosses it about mercilessly). I just hate losing!

Anyone contesting the result?  (looks around and sees grumpy Murdoch charging towards him like an angry rhino)

MURDOCH

What. What? I hate that noise. (Cat flees panic stricken dragging the mouse by its tail. Murdoch barks and roars and the Cat clatters up a nearby tree. Up and up and up to safety. As the cat squats and peers down at the barking mad animal below the mouse slips out of its clenched teeth and falls to the ground killing itself outright on a stone. Nearby a rifle shot goes off missing a pheasant but hitting the cat in the tree causing it to slump  and come crashing down. Murdoch wanders over and sniffs it)

Stupid race, but as race referee I have to declare it a dead heat! Now, where was I? Oh yes, peace at last (yawns and stretches itself in the sun)  zzzzz.zzzzz zzzz

….zzzzzzzz

The End.

Moral:  No RACE is safe with Murdoch around.

Golly - A Rock and Roll Lifestyle

And featuring how he made “Bat out of Hell” by Meatloaf a worldwide smash hit

An Interview with Golly - by Alan Lawrie

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I ended up in Luxembourg working at the BLOW UP, massive club, really fantastic, had bands on - all the British bands you could think of like Thin Lizzy, the whole lot.

The Luxembourg DJs came into the club every night and then Kid Jensen came up to me one night and said, “What are you playing?’ I said the B side of the Move record. It’s called “Do Ya”. He said, “That’s a fucking amazing track!” He said I really like that one I will play that on my show. And, then it clicked - That was Kid Jensen! I wasn’t really in tune with what was going on.

In those days could Radio Luxembourg DJs choose the tracks they wanted to play as opposed to being scheduled?”

Put it this way, all the DJs had to play what was scripted except for Kid Jensen.

Really? Why did he have special status?

Because he was on the outskirts of Rock. Well, if you listen to Jensen’s show right back then, and I’ve got tapes of them, and you listen to his voice which is incredibly brilliant. Slow drawn-out American drawl. You see he is Canadian from Vancouver, British Columbia.

That’s why when Queen turned up, and I’m in a club working and Freddy Mercury walks in and I became quite friendly with Roger, their drummer. Then you get Phil Lynott coming in and then Phil stayed at the flat one night and I was getting breakfast ready in the morning because I used to share a flat with Kid and…

How long did you share a flat with Kid for?

About four years.

You got on really well with him…?

Oh yeah, he was a true good friend. We just clicked. Music wise and everything else. And Phil stayed the night and I said where’s Phil. Kid said he’s upstairs on the roof. I shouted to Phil “Breakfast!”

He replied, “I’ve got breakfast” and there he was with a spliff about a foot long - with his feet up, shirt off just lying there in the sun. And, I thought, well this is just rock, and roll isn’t it.

And he’s another person who became a really good friend. And it all tunes in with all the stars, the promotion men that were coming over and they bring over sausages and bacon because you couldn’t buy it locally. So that was the Payola side of things.

So, what are we talking about late 60s, early 70’s?

Early 70’s, it was incredible with things like that just happening. There were so many things to talk about that Luxembourg was about. The guys that were there when I was there just clicked.

Paul Burnett - fantastic guy, great DJ, one of the funniest guys you could meet at a party. He’d tell you stories, you’d cry laughing. Jensen great. Mark Wesley- fabulous guy. there are other DJs that I’ve met, Barry Alldis, lovely guy, Stuart Henry amazing.

I used to phone Stuart Henry up and he had multiple sclerosis, he was lying in his bed. He couldn’t even move and the only thing he could move was his mouth with a tube that turned over the pages of his book, that was it. And I would phone him up (They’d put the phone next to his head) and say, “Hey man how are you” and he would say “ Hi my friend Golly, I feel fantastic.” There was never a dull moment with Stuart Henry. I’ve never met anybody like him. He was incredible. People like that.

Then there was Chris Carey who got into trouble making SKY VIEWING cards to watch TV and all the films. He made millions…

A lot of English DJs had Sky Viewing cards, you just needed an English address and…

Yes, that’s right. And, Chris, he made millions, millions until they collared him and stuck him in prison. And, then he came out and started to do a radio station. He was always Radio minded he was putting up aerials in his house and then one day he phoned me up and said I’m going to Spain, and I said what are you going to do there? He said I’m going to start a radio station and I want you to come with me. I said what for? He said you can be the breakfast DJ. I said I can’t take a chance with you Chris. You are hot and cold. I said one day you are with me the next you fucking fire me. I’ve now got a disability and I will lose everything if I leave the country. So, he went out there and within 4 or 5 weeks he was dead. Heart Attack. It’s quite stressful when you are doing things like that, but he had a brilliant, brilliant mind.

Talking about radio you’ve got some kit here. Are you going to do radio from home?

Because Tony Prince had United DJs and Tony Prince is a great believer in people. And if you listen radio at the moment, you can hear a guy who was on United DJ’s and now on Sunshine Radio at the moment, and his name is Tilly Rutherford. And Tilly’s a great guy worked for Magna Records and for Stock, Aitkin and Waterman, and he took over from me when I was working there. Tony said you could make a good DJ and stuck him on UNITED DJs and recorded the shows and did them. Tony had the same thing with me

I’ve got one chapter in the new book called This is where you can hear them today and quite a few of the lads who worked with me in the past are still doing radio wherever they are in the world, and you can listen to them…so if you are doing radio I’d like to know where people can hear you.

Oh, I’ll let you know if it comes off. At the moment, it is a project .It’s fading slightly because as you know I’ve gone into a new business where I am out of plugging because the music industry has changed so much and it’s more difficult now to get your records played on the radio. It’s not like the days of Radio One when I was there in the 70’s and you took the DJs out to lunch wining and dining them...

Let’s go back to the plugging. From Luxembourg you were…

I was DJ’ing in the BLOW UP and the guys were coming over from England, also the promotion guys from different record companies and there was one guy who came over and knew the DJs really well and is name was Alan James. He worked for ABC Anchor and came over to say he was looking for somebody to do the north of England promotion wise plugging the local radio stations because at the time it was all commercial radio stations like in Clyde, in Scotland, and in the north BRMB - all these radio stations were opening up so he needed somebody to go to all these radio stations to wine and dine those radio directors and DJs and get your product played on all the shows they play listed. Then you look after these guys, you know, you give them tour jackets, you give them T shirts, take them to lunch, you go out boozing with them, hanging out with them, you know. Was a great life! Fun, I loved it. But the guy who got me the job was Frank Rogers who was the head of DECCA. He signed Thin Lizzy, Savoy Brown

Are you the man behind any hit? Has your work led to one of two or more?

MEATLOAF Bat out of hell.

Really? How did you do that?

Nobody would play the record. It was on a 7” because it was too ROCKY! You are talking about the 70’s and Radio One at that time was sort of very cheesy. Very poppy, it was that sort of music on there and they had around 7 people who sat and chose the playlist and they were not young people either. that was the situation, and they didn’t groove to it.

How did you manage to break it…

I took it up to Radio and put it in their boxes and saw one or two producers and they put it on, and they cried “Oh GOD, I can’t put that on during the day. Bat out of Hell! You’re joking.

I went home and I was watching tomorrow’s world when I saw that guy I can’t remember his name - he was a big, tall guy and he was talking about a suitcase that you could actually put a Super 8 camera in. Or projector. You could close it up and walk down the road and you could go into any bar, and you could open it up, plug it in, put up a white sheet and you could play, whatever you wanted to play on Super 8 so I thought what a fantastic idea I wonder if CBS would let me do something. Next day I went in there - Head of Promotions -and said “listen, I asked if I could do it and transfer the video onto Super 8. They said it would be expensive and I said do you want it played on the radio or not? They said yes, do it. So I transferred it over and I marched up to Radio One and I had meetings with certain producers of daytime and afternoon. And what was on that Super 8 track? Bat out of Hell. The single it was like a six-minute track. So, I went into their office and they said where is the record? I said give us a second would you . I put up this white cloth I get this projector out and put it plug it in, push the button and they all went “Fucking Hell this is incredible, what a great video”. And, of course, watching the video and hearing the music it sort of locks in...

This is before promotional videos were around?

Yes, CBS were upfront in most things in the 70’s. They had a brilliant team in that place. And, within a week I got it on the A list. And so Meatloaf was coming in. Now I had already been to the convention in America in New Orleans, and I met Meatloaf over there with all the other superstars that were around. The gig was huge, we took over New Orleans, so I said when you come over, we will do something special. So, when he came over, I knew the date and knew the time of the flights coming in, so I went down to the local motorbike place, Hell’s Angels Cafe in London on the north Circular. And I walked in there, and I am about “seventeen years old” and quite “Modified” (Mod as opposed to Rocker) and they were looking at me like that little squirt that was coming in here, really like very nervous... so I just sat down, and this guy came up to me with long hair and he sneered “What are you doing in here?” I said actually I work for a record company and I told them the story about Meatloaf and the story about Bat out of Hell and all that and I need six of you to escort the limo from the airport and I will give you £40 each and they all yelled “Yeah, we’ll have it”, So I arranged a time and a place and everything, and I had cardboard cutouts of a bat, or bats with bat out of hell which went on the front of their motorbikes escorting Meatloaf from the airport, four in front four behind and they came along the road from the airport all the way into London the Westway and Meatloaf was hanging out the window with his cine camera - how I would love to have seen that footage and then we got back to Chelsea and that was fantastic.

CBS paid you for that?

Oh yes, I was working for them. I was employed 100% by CBS. It was such good fun and that was the start. And it brought attention to the people and the music and then the Old Grey Whistle Test, Mike Appleton heard it and soon after he got Meatloaf on there.

Tell me a story about another band you broke.

There was a couple actually. I did Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” Bonnie is an amazing lady, love her to bits, she is one of those people who will still say hello to you. A lot of the Industry just ignores you. Another band called the Vibrators a punk band they were as good as the CLASH because we had the CLASH as well and we all dressed up as punks and you want to see the picture, it’s unreal.

But when you try and break a new band you don’t succeed every time?

Getting music onto Radio Stations, it disheartens you sometimes, there’s music I’ve got on my shelves here, a band called the VIPS fantastic band from the north real punky sort of New Wave every track you hear you think wow that’s really good, but they never made it.

5 singles and never made it. CBS’s turnover was quite big though.

I know the story you told me last time. About Laurence Jones? You were going places.

Well, that was about ten year ago when I managed Laurence Jones and it turned sour in the end.

You played me his single. You said to me what do I think, I said that’s a number one. I said why isn’t it number one? You said you can’t get it played on radio. Now why couldn’t you break that band?

It’s the mentality of people on radio, he was known as a blues act, so when it goes to the playlist meeting and they hear it, and if they actually get around to hearing it. And remember there are a lot of big names with singles out and albums out and that’s all they are interested in. Big names before they listen to the small names. It’s really, really difficult. So, it’s a closed circle.

Radio was changing, Radio Two was emerging. And would stand more of a chance on that. Radio One for me then was for kids around 13 years old , now 12 - 13-year-old listen to Radio One. We don’t at our age. We possibly listen to Radio two, radio 6, maybe a hit station, but it just didn’t break through.

Going back to Bonnie Tyler “Total Eclipse of the Heart “How did you get involved with that?

Well Jim Steinman wrote and produced it who also produced Meatloaf’s album.

He wrote the Meatloaf tracks, didn’t he?

Yes, he produced and wrote all of Meatloaf’s tracks...

You got to know Jim Steinman pretty well?

Yeah, and CBS did a deal to do the Bonnie Tyler album. That track was originally intended for Meatloaf, but Jim and Meat didn’t always get on, so Bonnie did it. Yeah, always friction between Jim and Meat because Jim wanted equal status with Meat. Strong… strong personality Meatloaf. He was likeable.

But I read that Jim felt equal to Meatloaf and record albums on his own, good voice, good looking but simply didn’t have the charisma.

The gay boy never made it

I did Paul Young with “No Parlez”. You know, Paul Young was at my wedding. I just spoke to Paul Young last week. These people they stick with you because you’ve done them good, number one single or “Wherever I lay my hat” was sung at my wedding.

Were you involved with plugging that one?

Yes, it was mine. Number one when I was in America.

So, what were the rounds you had to do, - you didn’t take everyone out to dinner?

Well you do over a period of time because you build it up and then when you have a new single you package it all up and you go for Radio One, where the DJs have their own boxes, Producer/DJ two copies, then when you phone them up and you say “Any meetings going?” you say “11.30” and you get there at 11.30 ish…and they listen and say “Oh yeah, quite like that one and put it to one side”

I had people the hardest of all was Ron Millshaw to get on well with at Radio One, but he took my records from me once and threw them in the bin and said, “OK off you go out the door”. And, I went back to my office and said to my boss I don’t want to do this job anymore.

He asked why I said Ron Millshaw he took my records and threw them in the bin and told me to get out of his office. Oh, that’s Ron Millshaw he’s just an arrogant little fucker.

You have to live with it and learn by it.

Promotion work - it’s all about credibility and not wasting people time?

The DJs - you gave them value so they would listen to you in the future...

…yes and you’ve got to be likeable, and you have to get on with these people...

Rosko once said to me I’ve got a gig, do you want to come with me to this gig. I want you to grab some vinyl and some CDs to give away at the gigs. Because they do a show and all that. So, I said yeah, no problem at all so I got a box of albums and 45’s to throw out to the crowds and all that, and I said where is it? He said Bridgend, I said where’s that? Towards Wales. So, I said I will get a limo and take you down there. CBS paid for it, and I had a chauffeur driven limousine taking me and Rosko to the gig waiting all that time and driving all the way back, and CBS said that must cost a fortune and all he did was play 3 tracks from a new album, on a Saturday morning…and they said ‘OK’

What would you say was the pinnacle, or your greatest achievement?

The greatest buzz?

A number One single that got onto the playlist of Radio One, by Julio Iglesias “Beguine the Beguine” that was the biggest buzz I ever got because nobody believed that Radio One would ever play such a horrible record.

It wasn’t a horrible record! It was a great song - a classic track. by a famous singer.

But he wasn’t a famous singer at that time. He was known but not hugely known…you know what I mean…?

Was there anything you regret or wish you had done, or could have done better?

I don’t like regretting anything, I… because in the end I got around it I got on with it, it was fun.

Going back to the plugging and promotional side, you said there’s no future for you in it.?

It’s like the DJs in the clubs, there are no personality DJs. There is no entertainment in clubs, you’ve got one guy. ..

It’s very sad, isn’t it?

You’ve got one guy out there, who’s pretending to….well, sometimes they are not even mixing, just playing a tape (or playing back a record file) because they can’t do that sort of mixing in clubs.

Some of them do mix, I’ve seen them on Tony Prince’s DMC, well I’ve heard stories about people don’t mix.

Tell us more about your career, Golly

I was involved with so many things, I worked on ‘War of the Worlds’ with Jeff Wayne.

Golly with Greg Edwards, Obie (Maurice Oberstein Head of CBS Records, London), Jeff Gilbert.

Doing what?

The promotion with Louis Rodgers who is Clodagh Rodgers brother who worked at CBS and was head of promotions. We went to the Planetarium and as we walked in we realised that that machine in the middle looked like one of the monsters in War of the Worlds. Even looked exactly like one of them so we thought shit we could put dry ice under that! We could play War of the Worlds all night and open up the ceiling and have the lasers going. So, that’s where we shot it and everybody in the music industry turned up. Incredible, and that broke War of the Worlds.

Wow that sounds like a great one.

Well, I think we’ve got some great material so we will stop there.

Les Hemstock