Part 1
I DON’T FEAR NOTHING IN THE SAME WAY THAT I FEEL NOWT. That said, I fear here’s a contradiction coming along.
When that fateful day arrives that I shuffle off this horridly restrictive mortal coil and hopefully awake upon some cloud with a pen and pad thrust into my hand to write a 500 word essay entitled ‘Human nature – what I have observed during my stay’, I will either just before or soon after confront Wavis O’Shave .’But…but….I’m…,’ I will gasp. It might just be, though, that I will indeed be confronted perhaps greeted by Wavis first and foremost, upon discovery that I hadn’t after all, been him in his entirety…..
Hopefully the following thousands of words may explain exactly how this could be more than a fleeting hypothesis inspired by fear, as we investigate the Wavis O’Shave story ,a compelling piece of journalism that I knew at least six people would love to read, five of those being me. Now, I’m already facing problem, that problem being able to successfully differentiate between when I, your humble author, actually have been, was or is Wavis and when I haven’t been, is or was. You must also understand that sometimes in life I am an ‘undercover’ Wavis, achieved simply by not wearing the giveaway false nose. I have also learned that it is fatal to expect the public to contend when I announce an altogether different facet to my beyond dualistic nature other that of wacky Wavis. Human nature prefers an easy life and is comfortable fitting situations and people into one cardboard box. It struggles with a polymath. That I may fit into several boxes is not to their preference and they will show marked disinterest in anything other than my comedy facet. Spike Milligan had the same directed attitude when he would sit at a piano playing an audience a serious piece of music – they would be awaiting the ‘punch line’ like him falling off the seat or bursting into some absurd tirade when ALL he wanted to do was play them some serious music. So I know that well.
If I want to be serious with people then I have to adopt another diamond facet and plain name, and as some of you know, I do and have, and with books and movies to their chosen name. But, like mixing drinks, I have to treat Wavey with a degree of segregation. Please note, I am in complete control of this situation! It’s only when I am reminded at the absurdity of Life that the Wavester is summoned to the fore. O’Shave perhaps is an undiscovered, unchartered neurological possession like an infiltrating tic that comes and goes hopping from brain lobe to lobe, a universal archetype relating to the mischievous goat god Pan (whipping boy of the Gods), or a nose deep buried in the sand Arabesque type genie summoned from lamp when a generally good lampoon is required. Maybe there is a dormant Wavis laying await in all of us. The unfolding story you are about to witness will show you how an (extra) ordinary person can mix it with the rich and famous without ever wanting to be one of them himself. It will also reveal a profound Truth about our DNA, for I have discovered that these initials actually stand for Do Not Attempt, and that if an intention to succeed in a specific area is not meant to be, then it should not be attempted. Thing is, you don’t know that it’s not meant to be until you’ve tried succeeding in it, by which time it is too late. We will come across much of these harmless attempts at bringing about an outcome, barred, or perhaps ‘bah-ed’ by our DNA.
Here’s a great example from 2008 when I had decided it time a major celeb record one of my trax. The track had to be my ‘Mauve shoes are awful’ and I’d decided I would only entertain either Bowie or Bjork. (Both beginning with ‘b’ and containing 5 letters). Mind, I once sent Damon Albarn a copy of ‘The Pokeawillies’ via his favourite record shop that he frequented each Saturday, in the hope that he might have the sense of humour to have stab at it, but whether the shop owner ever passed it on as he agree to, I wouldn’t know. Bjork was concluding her world tour in July, the final date at Sheffield City Hall, so I thought I could approach her there with a copy of my track awaiting. A relative of mine had a friend who worked in the Hall and so it was arranged that I could avoid all the security nonsense and have access to her be there when he turned up. So far so good. So there I was ready and waiting when I heard a call come through by mobile to her entourage. Bjork had arrived in Sheffield and was making her way to the hall but had a severe throat problem and was considering calling the show off, this being a few hours before kick-off. And call it off she did, turning straight round and heading back out of the Steel City. A couple of month later and the date was rescheduled and I was rescheduled inside the hall awaiting again. Lightning struck twice, and the Icelandic chanteuse had misplaced her ‘Fishermen’s Friend’ again, the throat still wasn’t having it at the very last minute and much to the disdain of the retained ticket holders, she did another eleventh hour vanishing act. Clearly it was in my DNA not to meet with her.
So children, welcome aboard my Rollercoaster ride, with me as Superman let’s up, up and haway where we will, amidst loads of digressions and indiscretions, attempt to meet or have met with a myriad of celebs including Prince Charles, Ricky Gervais, the cowboy Butch Cassidy, and Frida from Abba, mixed with heavy mental music and daredevil Alice in Wonderland situations, with varied DNA success. Oh, and a brush with Interpol.
My O’Shave started for earnest as a character assimilated with life in the North east of England, the nerve centre being perhaps Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and all the surrounding peripheral areas and yet the essence of O’Shave, his very soul, managed somehow to resist the very culture and stereotypes he was surrounded by, a stranger in a strange land. And few were stranger than Wavis who once said ‘I affect many people in strange ways and strange people in many ways’ a soundbite he was dead chuffed with until his missus spoilt it by bringing up did he means the prison Strangeways in Manchester? As were on about etymology I suppose we should take a look at where his name came from as many suspect it must somehow be anagrammatic, which it isn’t. I’ve since played about with it and not really came up with anything substantial or impressive. The same was suspected with his evolution into the name Foffo Spearjig, again, not a deliberate anagram but at least I spotted a jolly good hidden and perhaps convincing one if we want to cite the workings of the unconscious mind, as ‘Jape, so frig off’. No, it all came from a hybrid really and we came blame a fellow called John Davies, who Wavis himself dubbed as ‘Fig Roll’ for no other reason than trying to relay in his own surreal way that he thought John ‘spoke like a fig roll’. The nickname stuck like fig paste to Egyptian pastry even though his wearer despised it. Still, he started it by invoking the wrath of O’Shave one day by sticking a fork into his ear, removing some ear wax and hiding it in the chow mien that was being served up to Wavey. It was only after the digestion process that Fig confessed.
Anyhow, I digress a little. Wavis was a dab hand, or should I say dub mouth, as coming up with alternative names for those around him. His mother was Miggla Migg and his father, Bone, for no particular reason, like. It was fun seeing your father across a wide road and shouting over ‘Bone!’ at the top of your voice. Seems I have digressed again. Ok, so one day the ear wax spiker was noted by a oddbod called Anders (ferk me- he DIDN’T have an nickname, other than Anders coming from his surname Anderson..) who glibly announced the arrival with ‘Here comes Wavis O’Shave’. I can see that the Wavis bit came from a lazy, bastardised ‘Davies’, but the O’Shave bit has me lost. However, the name Wavis O’Shave was set to become anything but lost –once heard, logged for destined immortality. If nothing else, I am a great Producer and will never allow a great moment of meaningless creativity go awry. Once, when Fig was in a heated dispute with a female he came out with the classic ‘You think you’re a woman cos you don’t eat fishcakes!’ I can’t account for the veracity of the statement or whether she did or didn’t, but I was bagging that one and of course It inspired a song of the same title.
Rolly again, in similar pique, came out with the song title ‘Don’t crush bees to death with the end of your walking stick’ during a doorstep argument with an old fellow I had dubbed Sly Eye. Another of Fig’s rebuke was when he told someone to go and wash their laces, and that too turned up on an early demo ‘David Eggie’; ‘David Eggie’s mother said Davie needs a haircut, go to Scotties and you’ll get a cake…David Eggie said ‘No, I’m effing not gonna go, go and jump in a very deep lake. Go and wash your laces I’m watching the horse races on the telly – I’m no short haired freak’. Incase you’re wondering how Mrs Eggie fared she quipped; I’m gonna tell your father would you like not rather to run along to Scotties for a skin?’ Apparently, upon second thoughts, he did. Cue snazzy acoustic guitar solo and the sound of snipping scissors.
Of course it didn’t have to be Fig alone who came up with this this stuff. Doug the Toe, brother to Teddy Anteater, made a hash of pronouncing the in-chocolate bar at that time, a ‘Texan’, calling it a ‘Texican’, and when that became a collaboration with his hapless attempt of trying to tell us he had some ravioli that night for tea, only he said it was ‘raveloni’, we had the future title of the O’Shave album ‘Texican Raveloni (Bedside songs for problem children)’ In fact, Anteater couldn’t pronounce most nouns, verbs or adjectives right, and his singing was even worse – the original talentless X-Factor contestant 20 years before the show was born. He once told someone he had smoked oheron. ( A lie of course, as we will learn in time the vivid imagination of Teddy. Well not so much imagination, he was a fookin pathological liar, would you believe he had been riding the leading horse at the Grand National fell off and hopped onto another horse and won? Or that it was really him in goals for Sunderland that weekend, wearing wig? And so a song title was never far away.
Even Miggla contributed to ‘Zabba Zabba Gobba (The Gravy Balancer)’ when her best shot as pronouncing Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor failed miserably. The name Foffo Spearjig was the winner of a Eurovision Song Contest type voting system when Wavis, in search of a new name, could only shorten his prospective list down to 20 and fans on a very rough council estate voted for which one they wanted. It was a tie for first place, both ‘Foffo’ and ‘Spearjig’ drawing the same points and so, unable to split the vote, the originally two names became the one, and so Foffo Spearjig it was. Foffo Spearjig it nearly wasn’t tho’ for at that time Wavis had a short lived spell calling himself ‘Real Swill’ but it faded before we will ever know if it would have caught on with the lad as a candidate. At the time of my Wavis’ conception in 1978 I was unaware of any such word and mildly disappointed when finding out in 2004 that there is an engineering company who have had the name since 1938. Perhaps it is pronounced ‘Wavv-is’ tho’? Worse still is the fact my name has given birth to a potent ‘trip’ drug and urban terminology such as, ‘are you having Wavis’ and ‘I was proper Wavised last night’. Shame the users can’t settle for listening to one of my albums and leave it at that. Mind, it has never been bobswipped or fizzbooted. Two more words Wavey made up, the former meaning to nick or steal, the latter a spin away from bootleg. Three other faves are ‘Dezinite’ – beyond definite – ‘Ungow’ meaning ‘goodnight’, and a ‘bit-oh’ –a heavenly female delight. Might I take this opportunity to make plain that whereas most men’s interests are in the female attribute of bust, bum, and legs, mine happens to be in the shape of their nose. If I don’t care for their sneck, I’m not interested in a peck. Both ‘Foffo’ and ‘Spearjig’ have been nicked, usually amongst fans who have chose to call themselves it on the Internet, three of them politely tracked down by the original who slapped their wrists precipitating an abrupt halt in trading.
1975 saw the smash number one hit from my mate cockney rebel Steve Harley ( who one day I would impersonate on a national TV show) with his ‘Make me smile (Come up and see me)’ and also saw my own notion enacted on stage only with a slight variance – make me smile, come up and bore me. A young Wavis was looming, hovering around the stage wings, and as part of his onslaught he would unleash upon the music world would be anti-thesis to whatever was the accepted norm (And no, I don’t mean Norman Wisdom. Strangely enough, the producer of THE TUBE, Malcolm Gerrie once likened me to Norman Wisdom, along with Arthur Askey, Lee Evans and Charlie Chaplin. I suppose the Askey comparison was further confirmation of what some others' had seen in Wavis and which never struck me at the time, how I often came across like some of the comedy acts in the Old Music Hall tradition. The accepted norm was of course that the entertainment industry should be entertaining, and so like an appearance of anti-matter in this world, I would have to be anti-entertaining, albeit deliberately, the obvious synonym here being ‘boring’. Lots of people disagreed with me on this point, knowing that, aw, shucks, I did have the talent to entertain albeit on my own, usually surreal terms, and should do just that, but didn’t everybody else do that, and we would have to learn, accept or repudiate that Wavis would do just any opposite? And so, Anti-matter man thought what did matter was to be boring and with that gave birth to a, loosely termed, band ‘The Borestiffers’.
Now, there are probably a number of ways to present a geometric shape to boredom so I had to think of a novel enterprise. Ok, the ‘music’ we would threaten to play wouldn’t be musical and a good way to ensure that would be not to play musical instruments As far as I can remember, the Borestiffers played elastic bands, tennis rackets, untuned toy kiddies’ Sooty Guitars, bullworkers (those things that gave you muscles and should not stray from a gym, loads of them in second hand shop windows for £3) an empty suitcase for a nice hollow drum sound, biscuit tins, kitchen utensils, an ironing board and yes, we even did hoist a kitchen sinks up there to play also. Next, I had to consider entrance fees for the gigs. They would be a hard boiled egg, a stick of celery, or a slice of bread with cut out paper beans stapled on them. There would be no fake tickets either – the eggs were checked to see if they were soft boiled, usually cracked over the head, and brown bread meant no admission. The band comprised of an undeclared Wavis – for I was yet to attach the name – Tinwhistle (or Heedfuzz, I gave him two names) on drums (I also named his sister, who wasn’t in the band, Canvyoss Fyoss), Tedddy Anteater on ‘Flying Hats’ –a crap board game from the 1960’s which I instructed him play at the side of the stage, Fig Roll, Tube and Hatt on mixing desk and pyrotechnics. Oh yes, Hatt had always been good with a chemistry set at school and he actually did rig up some good and well timed magnesium flashes.
A prerequisite is that we all dress up rather bizarre. I remember telling Teddy to wear some tights and was rather dismayed when he came back wearing them under his trousers when it was obvious they should be over them. I wore a Subbuteo floodlight strapped onto my head. Prior to our initiatory gig, we had produced two albums that had circulated around the chosen estates in the town, titles ‘Black Shoes and Mongooses’ and ‘Oguel Ming’s cabbage patch’. (The albums, not the estates) They were recorded onto what was then standard possessions for your ghetto blaster and music centres- C-60 cassette tapes. It tooks hours to duplicate those foookers, laboriously taping fresh copies from the master at an hour a time, in Hatt’s bedroom. Hatt’s bedroom, by the way was the scene of many a crime. Not to mention the twenty or so milk bottles completely filled to the top with Hatt piss and stored under his bed – no lid or top on – as he was too lazy to get out of bed at night and nip to his loo. Hatt was the only person I have ever known who would smoke in his bed, and I mean IN his bed, under his covers like being in a wigwam. I think that feat may have only been surpassed by a lad who once let off his fireworks in his bedroom one November night after his mum had refused to let him go out. Our warm up band were ‘The Not-Theres’, who naturally weren’t there so I’m unsure how long their set was, and a few joke shop stink bombs we let off. How much of the albums were enacted out on stage I don’t recall, but I do recall Fig saying to me just before the curtain rose and whilst the last remaining moments of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ blared over the loudspeakers, ‘I can’t dee it, man, I can’t go on’. Spoken exactly in a voice that a fig roll would use if one could speak. I managed to kick him out physically just before the curtains parted to reveal not only the birth of The Borestiffers but also the baying crowd.
I must go into detail concerning this baying crowd. You might like to think that I had pulled off a minor miracle in attracting a huge crowd that actually had paid at the door with their celery, eggs and bread – ‘ticket’ touts were even reported outside with crusty ends of a loaf - all graciously accepted by our bouncer Bob who was at the time a member of a Hell’s Angels Chapter with cats heads nailed to their helmets. Bob, who in future years went onto become a black belt in karate and Master in Tai Chi, for some reason I’m still unsure of had all of his pockets crammed with various pieces of a machinists lathe. Bob many years later rivalled one of my earlier achievements – he made the front page of a national, only in his case for being exposed as not really having been in the SAS. The minor miracle wasn’t a pirate’s patch on the major miracle I had pulled off though. For inside Bolingbroke Hall that night, for which I had parted with the princely sum of £8 to the local Council to hire under the pretence that we were a musical band practicising cello, I had temporarily united at least four of the roughest rivals gangs in the town – Whiteleas, Biddick, the Nook and Ocean Road - under an unwritten and tenuously fractious ‘cease fire’, all gang members who would, under normal circumstances, have pretty much killed each other upon sight. The Catholic Church I’m afraid would only have declared this incident a true miracle had I repeated the incident three times, but for now, one was sufficient.
So yes, the atmosphere was more electric than any absent electric guitar. The caretaker of the hall, a Scots fellow unimaginably named Angus, who was duty bound to be there until it was over, was a nervous wreck. Having given up on the sight of anybody holding cello, he was expecting a riot. His female cleaners, who had done a runner leaving him on his tod, had misheard and were expecting some ‘boy strippers’. Anyway, the curtain had gone up and the real job at hand was to ensure the building wouldn’t get blown with it. The minute the crowd saw us from their vantage point in the dark – the four gangs huddled together at a clearly unmingled distance from their enemies with a few neutral punters filling the gaps - erupted as we burst into our first song, which I think was ‘Rubber Song’ from one of the albums. It was a simple ditty. I had dropped the diamond stylus onto the revolving rubber deck thus producing a horrendous noise and we all droned ‘rubber song’ over it in various pitches, key and tones…all boring ones of course, whilst we twanged our elastic bands, Sooty guitars with loose strings, bashed the suitcases, stretched the bullworkers and flew the hats. The totality of the audience temporarily forgot wanting to snap and kill their next door neighbour in the dark, and in one great unison the hall went mental, made all the more easier as they had already achieved that state by natural design years earlier. Like myself, most of them had been through a schooling system that was the male equivalent of St Trinian’s with teachers who weren’t really teachers at all – they were mostly taxi drivers with mental health problems - and who would throw desks at them. My first geography lesson informed me, ‘All cockneys, son, are bastards’. (I think the general perception was that outside of South Shields, the only other place in the UK was London). Anyway, the audience remained in stitches throughout the thirty or so minute set and portrayal of numbers, some with backing tracks dutifully provided by Hatt at, surprisingly, the right time, and for once these were stitches that weren’t from having to sew gaping holes in their heads.
When we bid them all goodnight and we slowly retreated behind the curtains whom I think had also been trembling throughout, mind it may have been a gentle cross draught, and the lights went up, this was the crunch. Would the well sated fans tear the joint apart as their way of showing their appreciation? You must understand, the North East of England is one big Challenging Behaviour Unit. Actually, they didn’t, so maybe a double miracle upon reflection, leaving the hall an astounding amount of free ethereal electricity. You could almost have heard a crackling in the air. The only casualty I recall was a few chairs being thrown about and kicked over and poor Angus had his boogie nicked which genuinely was a big deal for him but one for which I think he would have happily swapped his life for. Yes, the bastards left chanting ‘Borestiffers, Borestiffers’, off and into the night, perhaps later, upon reflection pondering what they had actually witnesses, had it really happened, was it real, or were they all under some mass synchronised hallucination emanating from their regular drug taking? Didn’t need drugs that night, did you lads?
I got to know Angus quite well from that night on. He swore he wouldn’t report the actuality of the evening back to his superiors and would blame some chancer for half inching his boogie. I took the opportunity of the theft to coin a new terminology to henceforth be known as ‘Angus’s boogie’ and to mean any such incident whereby a decision would suddenly and unexpectedly be revoked or reversed, so that often you hear someone say’ Naw, they did an Angus’s Boogie.’ Snapshots of Angus had been taken that night by my instructed cameraman without any Angus suspicion – I think we had been trying to pinch a pic of the extreme terror and confusion on his Scottish face. How could he have explained in the morning that his hall had been smashed up by a band of celloists? At a later date I took the best of the pics and had them knocked up and into a badge, for in those the days the service had just made itself available in a specialist shop in Newcastle, take them a pic and they’d badge it for you. A big thing to have in those days, your own personalised badge, with a similar service available for transferring and enlarging prints onto a T-Shirt. With the first ever Angus the Caretaker badge in my hand I somehow found out where he lived and, knocking up a very convincing typed letter with a wonderfully appropriate faked letter head sent it to his home. He was being offered royalties on advance sales of his badge, all he had to do was consent to the production. I had the letter posted from London so that that the royal mail stamp would confirm that area address at the top of the faked company heading. Angus was to be the first in a new line of national Caretaker badges, and, of course, we sent him one of himself with the contract. Can only imagine he must have been in a state of shock when the correspondence arrived. I don’t think he accepted the contract, either.
One person who didn’t make it to the inaugural show was Sweeny my hairdresser. Sweeny wasn’t his real name of course, I’d dubbed him so. He was Vernon. Sweeny, who gave me the full rock star treatment throughout my association with him and cut my barnet for nowt, preferably after closing, could have perhaps attended but sagaciously, he thought, chose not to as, if I can remember his quote reasonably correctly, ‘I don’t want my fucking head kicked in’. Kind of ironic this, as it was, in some ways, Sweeny to blame for the Borestiffers in the first case. Let me explain. Now I am an honest person, although once, admittedly I did freak Mrs O’Shave out when I tried dodging the local Metro train fare as we all knew what stations we could chance riding from, to and between before the Train Officers would board to check if we actually had paid for a ticket. As I hopped on with her at the very start of the journey, the opening station of South Shields as it were, with the knowledge that we would arrive at our desired destination three stops away before any sign of the Officers who never put in an appearance before then, ( that was always further down the track), I knew it would be silly to have paid. However, just moments before the train pulled off, on hops an Officer with the customary ‘Tickets please.’ Worse, I was the first passenger approached. I looked at him blankly and ticketless and said, ‘I thought you paid when you got off.’ He was so stunned at the apparent innocence of this nonsense that he accepted it and so by paying for a ticket there and then I wasn’t further penalised.
The only other time I think I superceded that in the presence of Mrs O’Shave was years later when I took her along with me to an appointment I had at Tyne Tees Television. The reception greeted me with the usual ‘Hello Wavis’, me being a legendary figure there, but as I had made my mind up earlier and had told Mrs O’Shave this, I felt on this occasion I didn’t want to be taken for granted and so corrected the young lady sternly with a ‘Mr blah-blah,’ citing my real name, the first and only time I had done so in any situation concerning television. (I could always deny it at a later date, like, if I wanted to maintain my anonymity). I had also forewarned Mrs O’Shave, that this time, for a change I wasn’t going to be wacky in any shape or form, in fact I was on this visit, going to be serious. Leaving the receptionist to join Mrs O’Shave who was sitting on a chair in the waiting area and next to a very seriously dull looking fellow holding a briefcase, I strolled over the short distance on what was, I now know, obviously a slippery floor surface. Maybe I was wearing segs in my green shoes, I don’t recall, but what I do recall is somehow going one almighty slip, rolling on the floor and my entire body impossibly ending up compact under Mr Dullboy’s chair left staring at his briefcase as he sat there unflinchingly. A smooth operation all executed in less than half a second, and something that would have impressed the longest serving stunt man of the James Bond series. I had done it natural and without wanting to, a perfect combination of a Mr Bean meets Frank Spencer. ‘I thought you said you were going to be serious,’ said the better half. Oh well.
This ridiculous gymnastics I have, I must confess, done once before on a snowy day as I was walking past a parked car on the road. Somehow I must have slipped on the slight inclining ramp along the pavement designed for prams and wheelchairs and not for my absurd natural comedy antics, and the next thing I knew I was fitting right underneath the car –a perfect fit. Just as well the car was stationary without driver. Once upon a time there was a long standing derelict property next to my friend Tank’s house, and everybody but everybody had been exploring in it as all you had to do was gently push in the front door. Interesting the fatal attraction desolate buildings have for people. Anyway, upon their badgering I must have been the last person to have gone in at their behest to have a nosey about. Lots of visitors had experienced an enjoyable time in there, I guess fantasising it was their house for a while and all had returned to the outside world safe and sound. Me, I was only in there one minute, took a right turn into the living room and immediately went straight down and through the rotting floorboards, some depth. One of those occasions where I remind myself, this could only happen to O’Shave.
Tank, incidentally, was a seriously huge ginger galoot who once made the fatal mistake of informing me of his father’s late night ritual. He would spend all night in the pub and then at closing time run home holding in a crap and a wee to burst into his house, run though the living room and outside into the back yard and toilet to ablute just in meticulously timed time. Yes, some homes didn’t always have an indoor bog, and no, I haven’t any idea why he didn’t crap and slash in the pub’s facilities as one might expect. Anyway, a recipient of the necessary information, me and Dennis (he who smokes tabs) climbed over the back wall of the property as night fell and we didn’t, quietly so that the indoor son Tank wouldn’t be aware, and nailed up the toilet door with three six foot wooden planks that came with us, to thwart daddy Tank’s expectations. Another unsatisfied customer, leaving son Tank with some explaining. Had HE done it? Tank is infamously remembered by Dennis tab smoker for the time they went to see Newcastle play at what was then Highbury. Den briefed the galoot to keep his mouth zipped so not as to be detected by Arsenal thugs as the hapless duo were going into the established Arsenal supporters end. As soon as Tank followed Den through the turnstiles he shouted the considerable distance Den had walked in front, and in his loudest Geordie accent , ‘Ahm joost gan tae the bog, Den.’ To a captive London audience. It was like something you would have expected Jimmy Nail as Oz to have done in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, ‘cept this wasn’t fiction. The misdemeanor was heard by an assembly of Glasgow Rangers fans who also supported Arsenal and who hadn’t forgiven Newcastle for knocking the ‘gers out of the fairs cup semi final at St James’ in 1968, a pitch invasion having gone two down ensued, holding the match up in a reasonably hopeful attempt at procuring the game's abandonment. For his pains, Tank had the lads followed through the crowds throughout the ninety minutes in a hot pursuit, missing the entire game having being somewhat distracted. At the final whistle, and a Newcastle defeat, they were still being pursued by these determined and aggrieved Protestants with a long memory, chased around London and had to eventually take refuge in a nearby cinema and watch ‘The Sound of Music’ twice before daring to venture out.
My fondest member of harassing Dennis, by the way, was when I painted an eight foot plastic drainpipe, three quarters of it white, the remainder orange, so that it looked like a huge fag. My minions pulled up in a car and skipped across the lawn propping it up against the front door and rang the bell. Den’s mum was unaware that her darling cherub 19 year old son was a secret smoker, so in her best interests we kept ringing the home phone to grass on him with an abrupt ‘Your Dennis smokes tabs!’ -’ which then became the title of my EP - and then hanging up. When she answered the door the huge tab fell in on her, leaving Denis with a Spanish inquisition style interrogation. She did enact some degree of revenge, later bushwhacking me and hitting me with a pre-prepared bin liner full of heavy objects, whacking me near a bush, with meaningful threats directed at me for good measure like family members going to snap me in half etc. I have digressed.
Let us return to Sweeny, the unconscious influence in formulating the Borestiffers. I think I might like to digress again first tho. (I can do what I like, it’s my story) I remember once, first thing in the morning, I bumped into Sweeny and we walked together to his little barbers shop. When he got inside and he did his usual opening up type things, his foot kicked a brick. ‘Funny, I don’t remember leaving that there last night,’ he said. What he hadn’t noticed was the massive hole in his shop’s big front window, kindly opened by some late night passer-by. Another time whilst I was sitting on the shop door step awaiting closing time to nip in for my private barnet attention, I saw three massive rats scurry along the shop face and into the shop. The quietude of the environment was interrupted in about four seconds when all of the people inside started piling out one by one, about seven of them in a state of tumult, Sweeny being last. It was like watching Snow White’s dwarves rush home after a hard days graft. Sweeny kind of surprised me once when I told him I was off to chance a lifestyle in France and that it would be the last time I’d see him. He produced from a draw in the shop (that neither of us knew existed) a box with a variety of about thirty or more rusty cut face razors advising, ‘You know what the French are like.’ Well, at the time all I knew about the bastards is that they kept Bonnie Prince Charlie waiting for a 30,000 fleet that never came, but I think I got the gist of his concerns and took ‘em.
Anyway, what I initially was going to tell you is that one day Sweeny somewhat disappointed me when he confided how he had stole a packet of Rollos from Woolworths. I dunno if he really did as he wasn’t cash strapped, maybe he just said he had to top up his street cred as he was a right lad. Musing on this, when I went home I came up with a song, music and lyrics entitling it ‘Put those Rollos down, Sween’, recorded it on my trusty tape recorder and played him it in the shop the next day. Maybe I was secretly trying to keep him on the straight and narrow. Or maybe I was thinking if he got nicked I would be without free haircuts. Either way, whilst I was in there and he was enjoying the tune, I looked about at all the usual barbery instruments on view and envisaged them as instruments in another way. ‘What’s your favourite song? ’I asked him suddenly to which he replied the Beatles’ ‘Obladee Oblada’. ‘How’s about we have a crack at it and you can play all these instruments – the clippers, scissors, hair drier, and combs?’ Always a sporty chap he did and I believe on that very spot in that very moment The Borestiffers were born. Needless to say I went back another day and we recorded the song on my trusty tape recorder, and it ended up on one of the ‘Stiffer albums as ‘Maurice Norris Paurice Forrest’s comb is the best fighter in town’. Magic.
From one sport to one not so sporty. I’d like to talk a little now about Fig. Fig had suffered the full brunt of the infamous Catalogue Crusade which had been as prolific as the Catholic Church’s crusade against the Albigensians and Cathars back in 1208 for alleged heresy. Because Fig so resisted the attachment of the famous biscuit to his personae I felt it necessary to reinforce the issue and so cut out an advertisement from that week’s issue of the ‘TV Times’ and filled in one of those requests to have a catalogue delivered for the product. They were even Freepost so no expenditure. Naturally, instead of putting his name as Mr J. Davies, it read Mr F. Roll. Well, even I never envisaged the free for all campaign that was never intended and would last for longer than the war of the Roses and the Sound of Music performed at the West End. Every conceivable permutation was employed and when six or seven other willing rascals found some scissors and magazines, the postal services heading the way of Fig’s cul-de-sac were deluged. For months. And months. Anything from ‘John Figroll’ to more fanciful imaginations like ‘Mr Rollypoley’ went through that letter box daily, not to mention the travelling salesmen’s follow up visits, some, having driven the length and breadth of the country to be disappointed within three seconds when Mrs Fig who knew nothing of the origin of all this nonsense would tirelessly answer the door before slamming it in their face and then asking ‘John, what’s all this fig roll business?’ to which he would deny all knowledge.
I had named his mum, who reminded me of Eucalypta the witch in kids puppet show Paulus the Wood Gnome, Vandella. Don’t try to spot the connection with the names, there isn’t one. The catalogue wheeze soon got well out of hand when all the lads thought it fun to reciprocate the prank on one and all, and soon everybody including your humble author were receiving catalogues with ridiculous names vaguely associated with them, much to the growing lack of patience and confusion amongst parents. Hatt and myself in particular were involved in an amazing and inexhaustible one on one vendetta, I’d estimate we traipsed off to the post box clutching on average about thirty freepost envelopes daily! For months! I really felt guilty and somewhat sorry for those travelling sales blokes seeking commission on sales and whom I had never intended to involve, chasing up their hopeful customers for hearing aids, new kitchen appliances, you name it, but my remorse soon faded when I considered that the financial greed of the Companies involved ,and it was down to their own fault if they were content to send a rep travelling 100miles seriously expecting to be answered at the door by Mr Geetlongsneck or Mr Whatahooter.
Mind, Fig was still the Chosen One amongst us all for the density of activity. The highlight of the Crusade was the night when I rounded up a 15 strong squad, some more interested and implicated parties than others. We had all willingly stumped up enough to purchase at least three packets of fig rolls each, all removed and contained in all pockets of our clothing. 15 x 3 x approx. 12 = 540. One of us rang the door bell and rushed back to join the assembled ranks. As it happened, Vandella answered and with an appearing figure a rain of fig rolls came arching their way over to the property bouncing off it at all angles, a downpour lasting about thirty seconds and accompanied by a monotone shouting of ‘Fig, Fig’. Look, John, all you had to do was accept the name and none of this would have had to happen. Vandella tried to stem the tide with a hopeless rebuke of ‘I’m getting the police’ which she did all too late, leaving the garden a corpse of fallen fig rolls. Surely it’s a funny thought to have imagined that call, ‘There’s a gang of lads pelting my house with fig rolls.’ Yes? Shortly after, Vandella tried to get rid of Fig any way she could. On one of these occasions it was his birthday and she presented him with his gift. Inside the wrapping was a watch and the watch was wrapped up in a circled advertisement taken from a tabloid newspaper and advertising for a job in a café in Northern Ireland. He never applied for it.
Travel signs help me recall the time it was high time - about ten foot in the air to be precise - to erect a slightly modified road sign that harmlessly pointed out the fact that here was a cul-de-sac. More correctly it was Fig’s cul-de-sac, and I thought that should be made clear. At about one in the morning I had Fatty Round, with accompanying prepared card, shin up the sign and affix the wee alteration to cover ‘cul-de-sac’ up and replace with ‘Fig’s House’, with me keeping look out on the nearest corner for any cruising police cars. Typically, one did appear and nicked me for standing on the corner appearing to look shifty. As they were questioning me and asking why I had wire cutters and a screwdriver – tools that Fatty told me to look after should he need them – I could see the fat bastard shinning down the sign post and legging it off into the darkness. With no incriminating evidence of any sort I was, quite luckily, simply cautioned. Still, mission accomplished. Ah, teamwork. One of the more malleable times I had with Fig was when I finally persuaded him to come with me to see Brian Eno, the avant garde early Roxy Music keyboards geezer, who was playing at Newcastle City hall at a date on a short tour after having had a minor top 50 with his debut solo single ‘The 7 deadly Finns’. Fig had never been to a concert before and so I ensured he dressed appropriately for the occasion, as a wild west cowboy topped off by wearing one of my favourite glue pots deftly and almost invisibly strapped to his bonce, and with a placard around his neck reading ‘Brian Ee-No’. Prior to the gig I had read in an interview that Eno was into porn mags so borrowing one from no end of lads offering them, I cut out thin strips of white paper, wrote ‘Naughty Eno’ on them and stuck them over all the obvious female bits. A nice gift for Fig to present dirty Bri with. The story has a naff ending however, as Eno didn’t show, the gig cancelled because the dirty bugger had suddenly came up with a collapsed lung. (Must have been one helluva book he’d been looking at the night before). Upon seeing the ‘cancelled sign’ as we approached the hall, Fig exclaimed, ‘Aww, it’s me forst conshort.’ (I’ve tried to spell it in fig roll speaking dialect) Oh well, as I know only too well in Wavis life, some you win, some you looosh.
Fig never went to the café in Ireland either, but travelling abroad reminds me of one other tale I must share, and it involves Head. His real name wasn’t ‘Head’ of course, he was just a bland ‘Nicky’, but his head was larger than it should have been for his body so hey presto. Nicky Head therefore, puzzled me by living in South Shields but supporting Arsenal. And he did, travelling the UK on his humble wages following them about. His kitty was bolstered by the good fortune to have been part of his Council gardeners football Pools’ syndicate which won the jackpot, each member receiving £16,000 each. Jammy git. Now, Arsenal had drawn a Russian team in Europe and Head was up for going to Moscow, the only problem being that he had made this brave decision late in the week and was dependant on being granted a visa at the last minute. He did get it, right at the last split second. Consequently, when his mum returned home from work to cook him his tea, this being a mum who never knew much of his activities, she was greeted by a short message at the table. ‘Gone to Russia’. Incidentally, so sparse was the support of fans going to that game he flew from London with the Arsenal team – and he told me later was followed everywhere he went by strange looking men in macs hiding around corners. Mrs O’Shave once freaked Head out when asking him about an incident in which he had beat this lad up for ripping his flat off. It was something he didn’t want to recall as he got six weeks in Durham clink. ‘When you were fighting,’ she wanted to know, ’Did you make Ooooof sounds?’ I remember Head’s angry response – ‘Are you for real?’ The last time I frequented his mum’s home I espied the odd Littlewoods catalogue laying about. Addressed to Mr N. Stareathisheed, naturally.
I DON’T FEAR NOTHING IN THE SAME WAY THAT I FEEL NOWT. That said, I fear here’s a contradiction coming along.
When that fateful day arrives that I shuffle off this horridly restrictive mortal coil and hopefully awake upon some cloud with a pen and pad thrust into my hand to write a 500 word essay entitled ‘Human nature – what I have observed during my stay’, I will either just before or soon after confront Wavis O’Shave .’But…but….I’m…,’ I will gasp. It might just be, though, that I will indeed be confronted perhaps greeted by Wavis first and foremost, upon discovery that I hadn’t after all, been him in his entirety…..
Hopefully the following thousands of words may explain exactly how this could be more than a fleeting hypothesis inspired by fear, as we investigate the Wavis O’Shave story ,a compelling piece of journalism that I knew at least six people would love to read, five of those being me. Now, I’m already facing problem, that problem being able to successfully differentiate between when I, your humble author, actually have been, was or is Wavis and when I haven’t been, is or was. You must also understand that sometimes in life I am an ‘undercover’ Wavis, achieved simply by not wearing the giveaway false nose. I have also learned that it is fatal to expect the public to contend when I announce an altogether different facet to my beyond dualistic nature other that of wacky Wavis. Human nature prefers an easy life and is comfortable fitting situations and people into one cardboard box. It struggles with a polymath. That I may fit into several boxes is not to their preference and they will show marked disinterest in anything other than my comedy facet. Spike Milligan had the same directed attitude when he would sit at a piano playing an audience a serious piece of music – they would be awaiting the ‘punch line’ like him falling off the seat or bursting into some absurd tirade when ALL he wanted to do was play them some serious music. So I know that well.
If I want to be serious with people then I have to adopt another diamond facet and plain name, and as some of you know, I do and have, and with books and movies to their chosen name. But, like mixing drinks, I have to treat Wavey with a degree of segregation. Please note, I am in complete control of this situation! It’s only when I am reminded at the absurdity of Life that the Wavester is summoned to the fore. O’Shave perhaps is an undiscovered, unchartered neurological possession like an infiltrating tic that comes and goes hopping from brain lobe to lobe, a universal archetype relating to the mischievous goat god Pan (whipping boy of the Gods), or a nose deep buried in the sand Arabesque type genie summoned from lamp when a generally good lampoon is required. Maybe there is a dormant Wavis laying await in all of us. The unfolding story you are about to witness will show you how an (extra) ordinary person can mix it with the rich and famous without ever wanting to be one of them himself. It will also reveal a profound Truth about our DNA, for I have discovered that these initials actually stand for Do Not Attempt, and that if an intention to succeed in a specific area is not meant to be, then it should not be attempted. Thing is, you don’t know that it’s not meant to be until you’ve tried succeeding in it, by which time it is too late. We will come across much of these harmless attempts at bringing about an outcome, barred, or perhaps ‘bah-ed’ by our DNA.
Here’s a great example from 2008 when I had decided it time a major celeb record one of my trax. The track had to be my ‘Mauve shoes are awful’ and I’d decided I would only entertain either Bowie or Bjork. (Both beginning with ‘b’ and containing 5 letters). Mind, I once sent Damon Albarn a copy of ‘The Pokeawillies’ via his favourite record shop that he frequented each Saturday, in the hope that he might have the sense of humour to have stab at it, but whether the shop owner ever passed it on as he agree to, I wouldn’t know. Bjork was concluding her world tour in July, the final date at Sheffield City Hall, so I thought I could approach her there with a copy of my track awaiting. A relative of mine had a friend who worked in the Hall and so it was arranged that I could avoid all the security nonsense and have access to her be there when he turned up. So far so good. So there I was ready and waiting when I heard a call come through by mobile to her entourage. Bjork had arrived in Sheffield and was making her way to the hall but had a severe throat problem and was considering calling the show off, this being a few hours before kick-off. And call it off she did, turning straight round and heading back out of the Steel City. A couple of month later and the date was rescheduled and I was rescheduled inside the hall awaiting again. Lightning struck twice, and the Icelandic chanteuse had misplaced her ‘Fishermen’s Friend’ again, the throat still wasn’t having it at the very last minute and much to the disdain of the retained ticket holders, she did another eleventh hour vanishing act. Clearly it was in my DNA not to meet with her.
So children, welcome aboard my Rollercoaster ride, with me as Superman let’s up, up and haway where we will, amidst loads of digressions and indiscretions, attempt to meet or have met with a myriad of celebs including Prince Charles, Ricky Gervais, the cowboy Butch Cassidy, and Frida from Abba, mixed with heavy mental music and daredevil Alice in Wonderland situations, with varied DNA success. Oh, and a brush with Interpol.
My O’Shave started for earnest as a character assimilated with life in the North east of England, the nerve centre being perhaps Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and all the surrounding peripheral areas and yet the essence of O’Shave, his very soul, managed somehow to resist the very culture and stereotypes he was surrounded by, a stranger in a strange land. And few were stranger than Wavis who once said ‘I affect many people in strange ways and strange people in many ways’ a soundbite he was dead chuffed with until his missus spoilt it by bringing up did he means the prison Strangeways in Manchester? As were on about etymology I suppose we should take a look at where his name came from as many suspect it must somehow be anagrammatic, which it isn’t. I’ve since played about with it and not really came up with anything substantial or impressive. The same was suspected with his evolution into the name Foffo Spearjig, again, not a deliberate anagram but at least I spotted a jolly good hidden and perhaps convincing one if we want to cite the workings of the unconscious mind, as ‘Jape, so frig off’. No, it all came from a hybrid really and we came blame a fellow called John Davies, who Wavis himself dubbed as ‘Fig Roll’ for no other reason than trying to relay in his own surreal way that he thought John ‘spoke like a fig roll’. The nickname stuck like fig paste to Egyptian pastry even though his wearer despised it. Still, he started it by invoking the wrath of O’Shave one day by sticking a fork into his ear, removing some ear wax and hiding it in the chow mien that was being served up to Wavey. It was only after the digestion process that Fig confessed.
Anyhow, I digress a little. Wavis was a dab hand, or should I say dub mouth, as coming up with alternative names for those around him. His mother was Miggla Migg and his father, Bone, for no particular reason, like. It was fun seeing your father across a wide road and shouting over ‘Bone!’ at the top of your voice. Seems I have digressed again. Ok, so one day the ear wax spiker was noted by a oddbod called Anders (ferk me- he DIDN’T have an nickname, other than Anders coming from his surname Anderson..) who glibly announced the arrival with ‘Here comes Wavis O’Shave’. I can see that the Wavis bit came from a lazy, bastardised ‘Davies’, but the O’Shave bit has me lost. However, the name Wavis O’Shave was set to become anything but lost –once heard, logged for destined immortality. If nothing else, I am a great Producer and will never allow a great moment of meaningless creativity go awry. Once, when Fig was in a heated dispute with a female he came out with the classic ‘You think you’re a woman cos you don’t eat fishcakes!’ I can’t account for the veracity of the statement or whether she did or didn’t, but I was bagging that one and of course It inspired a song of the same title.
Rolly again, in similar pique, came out with the song title ‘Don’t crush bees to death with the end of your walking stick’ during a doorstep argument with an old fellow I had dubbed Sly Eye. Another of Fig’s rebuke was when he told someone to go and wash their laces, and that too turned up on an early demo ‘David Eggie’; ‘David Eggie’s mother said Davie needs a haircut, go to Scotties and you’ll get a cake…David Eggie said ‘No, I’m effing not gonna go, go and jump in a very deep lake. Go and wash your laces I’m watching the horse races on the telly – I’m no short haired freak’. Incase you’re wondering how Mrs Eggie fared she quipped; I’m gonna tell your father would you like not rather to run along to Scotties for a skin?’ Apparently, upon second thoughts, he did. Cue snazzy acoustic guitar solo and the sound of snipping scissors.
Of course it didn’t have to be Fig alone who came up with this this stuff. Doug the Toe, brother to Teddy Anteater, made a hash of pronouncing the in-chocolate bar at that time, a ‘Texan’, calling it a ‘Texican’, and when that became a collaboration with his hapless attempt of trying to tell us he had some ravioli that night for tea, only he said it was ‘raveloni’, we had the future title of the O’Shave album ‘Texican Raveloni (Bedside songs for problem children)’ In fact, Anteater couldn’t pronounce most nouns, verbs or adjectives right, and his singing was even worse – the original talentless X-Factor contestant 20 years before the show was born. He once told someone he had smoked oheron. ( A lie of course, as we will learn in time the vivid imagination of Teddy. Well not so much imagination, he was a fookin pathological liar, would you believe he had been riding the leading horse at the Grand National fell off and hopped onto another horse and won? Or that it was really him in goals for Sunderland that weekend, wearing wig? And so a song title was never far away.
Even Miggla contributed to ‘Zabba Zabba Gobba (The Gravy Balancer)’ when her best shot as pronouncing Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor failed miserably. The name Foffo Spearjig was the winner of a Eurovision Song Contest type voting system when Wavis, in search of a new name, could only shorten his prospective list down to 20 and fans on a very rough council estate voted for which one they wanted. It was a tie for first place, both ‘Foffo’ and ‘Spearjig’ drawing the same points and so, unable to split the vote, the originally two names became the one, and so Foffo Spearjig it was. Foffo Spearjig it nearly wasn’t tho’ for at that time Wavis had a short lived spell calling himself ‘Real Swill’ but it faded before we will ever know if it would have caught on with the lad as a candidate. At the time of my Wavis’ conception in 1978 I was unaware of any such word and mildly disappointed when finding out in 2004 that there is an engineering company who have had the name since 1938. Perhaps it is pronounced ‘Wavv-is’ tho’? Worse still is the fact my name has given birth to a potent ‘trip’ drug and urban terminology such as, ‘are you having Wavis’ and ‘I was proper Wavised last night’. Shame the users can’t settle for listening to one of my albums and leave it at that. Mind, it has never been bobswipped or fizzbooted. Two more words Wavey made up, the former meaning to nick or steal, the latter a spin away from bootleg. Three other faves are ‘Dezinite’ – beyond definite – ‘Ungow’ meaning ‘goodnight’, and a ‘bit-oh’ –a heavenly female delight. Might I take this opportunity to make plain that whereas most men’s interests are in the female attribute of bust, bum, and legs, mine happens to be in the shape of their nose. If I don’t care for their sneck, I’m not interested in a peck. Both ‘Foffo’ and ‘Spearjig’ have been nicked, usually amongst fans who have chose to call themselves it on the Internet, three of them politely tracked down by the original who slapped their wrists precipitating an abrupt halt in trading.
1975 saw the smash number one hit from my mate cockney rebel Steve Harley ( who one day I would impersonate on a national TV show) with his ‘Make me smile (Come up and see me)’ and also saw my own notion enacted on stage only with a slight variance – make me smile, come up and bore me. A young Wavis was looming, hovering around the stage wings, and as part of his onslaught he would unleash upon the music world would be anti-thesis to whatever was the accepted norm (And no, I don’t mean Norman Wisdom. Strangely enough, the producer of THE TUBE, Malcolm Gerrie once likened me to Norman Wisdom, along with Arthur Askey, Lee Evans and Charlie Chaplin. I suppose the Askey comparison was further confirmation of what some others' had seen in Wavis and which never struck me at the time, how I often came across like some of the comedy acts in the Old Music Hall tradition. The accepted norm was of course that the entertainment industry should be entertaining, and so like an appearance of anti-matter in this world, I would have to be anti-entertaining, albeit deliberately, the obvious synonym here being ‘boring’. Lots of people disagreed with me on this point, knowing that, aw, shucks, I did have the talent to entertain albeit on my own, usually surreal terms, and should do just that, but didn’t everybody else do that, and we would have to learn, accept or repudiate that Wavis would do just any opposite? And so, Anti-matter man thought what did matter was to be boring and with that gave birth to a, loosely termed, band ‘The Borestiffers’.
Now, there are probably a number of ways to present a geometric shape to boredom so I had to think of a novel enterprise. Ok, the ‘music’ we would threaten to play wouldn’t be musical and a good way to ensure that would be not to play musical instruments As far as I can remember, the Borestiffers played elastic bands, tennis rackets, untuned toy kiddies’ Sooty Guitars, bullworkers (those things that gave you muscles and should not stray from a gym, loads of them in second hand shop windows for £3) an empty suitcase for a nice hollow drum sound, biscuit tins, kitchen utensils, an ironing board and yes, we even did hoist a kitchen sinks up there to play also. Next, I had to consider entrance fees for the gigs. They would be a hard boiled egg, a stick of celery, or a slice of bread with cut out paper beans stapled on them. There would be no fake tickets either – the eggs were checked to see if they were soft boiled, usually cracked over the head, and brown bread meant no admission. The band comprised of an undeclared Wavis – for I was yet to attach the name – Tinwhistle (or Heedfuzz, I gave him two names) on drums (I also named his sister, who wasn’t in the band, Canvyoss Fyoss), Tedddy Anteater on ‘Flying Hats’ –a crap board game from the 1960’s which I instructed him play at the side of the stage, Fig Roll, Tube and Hatt on mixing desk and pyrotechnics. Oh yes, Hatt had always been good with a chemistry set at school and he actually did rig up some good and well timed magnesium flashes.
A prerequisite is that we all dress up rather bizarre. I remember telling Teddy to wear some tights and was rather dismayed when he came back wearing them under his trousers when it was obvious they should be over them. I wore a Subbuteo floodlight strapped onto my head. Prior to our initiatory gig, we had produced two albums that had circulated around the chosen estates in the town, titles ‘Black Shoes and Mongooses’ and ‘Oguel Ming’s cabbage patch’. (The albums, not the estates) They were recorded onto what was then standard possessions for your ghetto blaster and music centres- C-60 cassette tapes. It tooks hours to duplicate those foookers, laboriously taping fresh copies from the master at an hour a time, in Hatt’s bedroom. Hatt’s bedroom, by the way was the scene of many a crime. Not to mention the twenty or so milk bottles completely filled to the top with Hatt piss and stored under his bed – no lid or top on – as he was too lazy to get out of bed at night and nip to his loo. Hatt was the only person I have ever known who would smoke in his bed, and I mean IN his bed, under his covers like being in a wigwam. I think that feat may have only been surpassed by a lad who once let off his fireworks in his bedroom one November night after his mum had refused to let him go out. Our warm up band were ‘The Not-Theres’, who naturally weren’t there so I’m unsure how long their set was, and a few joke shop stink bombs we let off. How much of the albums were enacted out on stage I don’t recall, but I do recall Fig saying to me just before the curtain rose and whilst the last remaining moments of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ blared over the loudspeakers, ‘I can’t dee it, man, I can’t go on’. Spoken exactly in a voice that a fig roll would use if one could speak. I managed to kick him out physically just before the curtains parted to reveal not only the birth of The Borestiffers but also the baying crowd.
I must go into detail concerning this baying crowd. You might like to think that I had pulled off a minor miracle in attracting a huge crowd that actually had paid at the door with their celery, eggs and bread – ‘ticket’ touts were even reported outside with crusty ends of a loaf - all graciously accepted by our bouncer Bob who was at the time a member of a Hell’s Angels Chapter with cats heads nailed to their helmets. Bob, who in future years went onto become a black belt in karate and Master in Tai Chi, for some reason I’m still unsure of had all of his pockets crammed with various pieces of a machinists lathe. Bob many years later rivalled one of my earlier achievements – he made the front page of a national, only in his case for being exposed as not really having been in the SAS. The minor miracle wasn’t a pirate’s patch on the major miracle I had pulled off though. For inside Bolingbroke Hall that night, for which I had parted with the princely sum of £8 to the local Council to hire under the pretence that we were a musical band practicising cello, I had temporarily united at least four of the roughest rivals gangs in the town – Whiteleas, Biddick, the Nook and Ocean Road - under an unwritten and tenuously fractious ‘cease fire’, all gang members who would, under normal circumstances, have pretty much killed each other upon sight. The Catholic Church I’m afraid would only have declared this incident a true miracle had I repeated the incident three times, but for now, one was sufficient.
So yes, the atmosphere was more electric than any absent electric guitar. The caretaker of the hall, a Scots fellow unimaginably named Angus, who was duty bound to be there until it was over, was a nervous wreck. Having given up on the sight of anybody holding cello, he was expecting a riot. His female cleaners, who had done a runner leaving him on his tod, had misheard and were expecting some ‘boy strippers’. Anyway, the curtain had gone up and the real job at hand was to ensure the building wouldn’t get blown with it. The minute the crowd saw us from their vantage point in the dark – the four gangs huddled together at a clearly unmingled distance from their enemies with a few neutral punters filling the gaps - erupted as we burst into our first song, which I think was ‘Rubber Song’ from one of the albums. It was a simple ditty. I had dropped the diamond stylus onto the revolving rubber deck thus producing a horrendous noise and we all droned ‘rubber song’ over it in various pitches, key and tones…all boring ones of course, whilst we twanged our elastic bands, Sooty guitars with loose strings, bashed the suitcases, stretched the bullworkers and flew the hats. The totality of the audience temporarily forgot wanting to snap and kill their next door neighbour in the dark, and in one great unison the hall went mental, made all the more easier as they had already achieved that state by natural design years earlier. Like myself, most of them had been through a schooling system that was the male equivalent of St Trinian’s with teachers who weren’t really teachers at all – they were mostly taxi drivers with mental health problems - and who would throw desks at them. My first geography lesson informed me, ‘All cockneys, son, are bastards’. (I think the general perception was that outside of South Shields, the only other place in the UK was London). Anyway, the audience remained in stitches throughout the thirty or so minute set and portrayal of numbers, some with backing tracks dutifully provided by Hatt at, surprisingly, the right time, and for once these were stitches that weren’t from having to sew gaping holes in their heads.
When we bid them all goodnight and we slowly retreated behind the curtains whom I think had also been trembling throughout, mind it may have been a gentle cross draught, and the lights went up, this was the crunch. Would the well sated fans tear the joint apart as their way of showing their appreciation? You must understand, the North East of England is one big Challenging Behaviour Unit. Actually, they didn’t, so maybe a double miracle upon reflection, leaving the hall an astounding amount of free ethereal electricity. You could almost have heard a crackling in the air. The only casualty I recall was a few chairs being thrown about and kicked over and poor Angus had his boogie nicked which genuinely was a big deal for him but one for which I think he would have happily swapped his life for. Yes, the bastards left chanting ‘Borestiffers, Borestiffers’, off and into the night, perhaps later, upon reflection pondering what they had actually witnesses, had it really happened, was it real, or were they all under some mass synchronised hallucination emanating from their regular drug taking? Didn’t need drugs that night, did you lads?
I got to know Angus quite well from that night on. He swore he wouldn’t report the actuality of the evening back to his superiors and would blame some chancer for half inching his boogie. I took the opportunity of the theft to coin a new terminology to henceforth be known as ‘Angus’s boogie’ and to mean any such incident whereby a decision would suddenly and unexpectedly be revoked or reversed, so that often you hear someone say’ Naw, they did an Angus’s Boogie.’ Snapshots of Angus had been taken that night by my instructed cameraman without any Angus suspicion – I think we had been trying to pinch a pic of the extreme terror and confusion on his Scottish face. How could he have explained in the morning that his hall had been smashed up by a band of celloists? At a later date I took the best of the pics and had them knocked up and into a badge, for in those the days the service had just made itself available in a specialist shop in Newcastle, take them a pic and they’d badge it for you. A big thing to have in those days, your own personalised badge, with a similar service available for transferring and enlarging prints onto a T-Shirt. With the first ever Angus the Caretaker badge in my hand I somehow found out where he lived and, knocking up a very convincing typed letter with a wonderfully appropriate faked letter head sent it to his home. He was being offered royalties on advance sales of his badge, all he had to do was consent to the production. I had the letter posted from London so that that the royal mail stamp would confirm that area address at the top of the faked company heading. Angus was to be the first in a new line of national Caretaker badges, and, of course, we sent him one of himself with the contract. Can only imagine he must have been in a state of shock when the correspondence arrived. I don’t think he accepted the contract, either.
One person who didn’t make it to the inaugural show was Sweeny my hairdresser. Sweeny wasn’t his real name of course, I’d dubbed him so. He was Vernon. Sweeny, who gave me the full rock star treatment throughout my association with him and cut my barnet for nowt, preferably after closing, could have perhaps attended but sagaciously, he thought, chose not to as, if I can remember his quote reasonably correctly, ‘I don’t want my fucking head kicked in’. Kind of ironic this, as it was, in some ways, Sweeny to blame for the Borestiffers in the first case. Let me explain. Now I am an honest person, although once, admittedly I did freak Mrs O’Shave out when I tried dodging the local Metro train fare as we all knew what stations we could chance riding from, to and between before the Train Officers would board to check if we actually had paid for a ticket. As I hopped on with her at the very start of the journey, the opening station of South Shields as it were, with the knowledge that we would arrive at our desired destination three stops away before any sign of the Officers who never put in an appearance before then, ( that was always further down the track), I knew it would be silly to have paid. However, just moments before the train pulled off, on hops an Officer with the customary ‘Tickets please.’ Worse, I was the first passenger approached. I looked at him blankly and ticketless and said, ‘I thought you paid when you got off.’ He was so stunned at the apparent innocence of this nonsense that he accepted it and so by paying for a ticket there and then I wasn’t further penalised.
The only other time I think I superceded that in the presence of Mrs O’Shave was years later when I took her along with me to an appointment I had at Tyne Tees Television. The reception greeted me with the usual ‘Hello Wavis’, me being a legendary figure there, but as I had made my mind up earlier and had told Mrs O’Shave this, I felt on this occasion I didn’t want to be taken for granted and so corrected the young lady sternly with a ‘Mr blah-blah,’ citing my real name, the first and only time I had done so in any situation concerning television. (I could always deny it at a later date, like, if I wanted to maintain my anonymity). I had also forewarned Mrs O’Shave, that this time, for a change I wasn’t going to be wacky in any shape or form, in fact I was on this visit, going to be serious. Leaving the receptionist to join Mrs O’Shave who was sitting on a chair in the waiting area and next to a very seriously dull looking fellow holding a briefcase, I strolled over the short distance on what was, I now know, obviously a slippery floor surface. Maybe I was wearing segs in my green shoes, I don’t recall, but what I do recall is somehow going one almighty slip, rolling on the floor and my entire body impossibly ending up compact under Mr Dullboy’s chair left staring at his briefcase as he sat there unflinchingly. A smooth operation all executed in less than half a second, and something that would have impressed the longest serving stunt man of the James Bond series. I had done it natural and without wanting to, a perfect combination of a Mr Bean meets Frank Spencer. ‘I thought you said you were going to be serious,’ said the better half. Oh well.
This ridiculous gymnastics I have, I must confess, done once before on a snowy day as I was walking past a parked car on the road. Somehow I must have slipped on the slight inclining ramp along the pavement designed for prams and wheelchairs and not for my absurd natural comedy antics, and the next thing I knew I was fitting right underneath the car –a perfect fit. Just as well the car was stationary without driver. Once upon a time there was a long standing derelict property next to my friend Tank’s house, and everybody but everybody had been exploring in it as all you had to do was gently push in the front door. Interesting the fatal attraction desolate buildings have for people. Anyway, upon their badgering I must have been the last person to have gone in at their behest to have a nosey about. Lots of visitors had experienced an enjoyable time in there, I guess fantasising it was their house for a while and all had returned to the outside world safe and sound. Me, I was only in there one minute, took a right turn into the living room and immediately went straight down and through the rotting floorboards, some depth. One of those occasions where I remind myself, this could only happen to O’Shave.
Tank, incidentally, was a seriously huge ginger galoot who once made the fatal mistake of informing me of his father’s late night ritual. He would spend all night in the pub and then at closing time run home holding in a crap and a wee to burst into his house, run though the living room and outside into the back yard and toilet to ablute just in meticulously timed time. Yes, some homes didn’t always have an indoor bog, and no, I haven’t any idea why he didn’t crap and slash in the pub’s facilities as one might expect. Anyway, a recipient of the necessary information, me and Dennis (he who smokes tabs) climbed over the back wall of the property as night fell and we didn’t, quietly so that the indoor son Tank wouldn’t be aware, and nailed up the toilet door with three six foot wooden planks that came with us, to thwart daddy Tank’s expectations. Another unsatisfied customer, leaving son Tank with some explaining. Had HE done it? Tank is infamously remembered by Dennis tab smoker for the time they went to see Newcastle play at what was then Highbury. Den briefed the galoot to keep his mouth zipped so not as to be detected by Arsenal thugs as the hapless duo were going into the established Arsenal supporters end. As soon as Tank followed Den through the turnstiles he shouted the considerable distance Den had walked in front, and in his loudest Geordie accent , ‘Ahm joost gan tae the bog, Den.’ To a captive London audience. It was like something you would have expected Jimmy Nail as Oz to have done in Auf Wiedersehen Pet, ‘cept this wasn’t fiction. The misdemeanor was heard by an assembly of Glasgow Rangers fans who also supported Arsenal and who hadn’t forgiven Newcastle for knocking the ‘gers out of the fairs cup semi final at St James’ in 1968, a pitch invasion having gone two down ensued, holding the match up in a reasonably hopeful attempt at procuring the game's abandonment. For his pains, Tank had the lads followed through the crowds throughout the ninety minutes in a hot pursuit, missing the entire game having being somewhat distracted. At the final whistle, and a Newcastle defeat, they were still being pursued by these determined and aggrieved Protestants with a long memory, chased around London and had to eventually take refuge in a nearby cinema and watch ‘The Sound of Music’ twice before daring to venture out.
My fondest member of harassing Dennis, by the way, was when I painted an eight foot plastic drainpipe, three quarters of it white, the remainder orange, so that it looked like a huge fag. My minions pulled up in a car and skipped across the lawn propping it up against the front door and rang the bell. Den’s mum was unaware that her darling cherub 19 year old son was a secret smoker, so in her best interests we kept ringing the home phone to grass on him with an abrupt ‘Your Dennis smokes tabs!’ -’ which then became the title of my EP - and then hanging up. When she answered the door the huge tab fell in on her, leaving Denis with a Spanish inquisition style interrogation. She did enact some degree of revenge, later bushwhacking me and hitting me with a pre-prepared bin liner full of heavy objects, whacking me near a bush, with meaningful threats directed at me for good measure like family members going to snap me in half etc. I have digressed.
Let us return to Sweeny, the unconscious influence in formulating the Borestiffers. I think I might like to digress again first tho. (I can do what I like, it’s my story) I remember once, first thing in the morning, I bumped into Sweeny and we walked together to his little barbers shop. When he got inside and he did his usual opening up type things, his foot kicked a brick. ‘Funny, I don’t remember leaving that there last night,’ he said. What he hadn’t noticed was the massive hole in his shop’s big front window, kindly opened by some late night passer-by. Another time whilst I was sitting on the shop door step awaiting closing time to nip in for my private barnet attention, I saw three massive rats scurry along the shop face and into the shop. The quietude of the environment was interrupted in about four seconds when all of the people inside started piling out one by one, about seven of them in a state of tumult, Sweeny being last. It was like watching Snow White’s dwarves rush home after a hard days graft. Sweeny kind of surprised me once when I told him I was off to chance a lifestyle in France and that it would be the last time I’d see him. He produced from a draw in the shop (that neither of us knew existed) a box with a variety of about thirty or more rusty cut face razors advising, ‘You know what the French are like.’ Well, at the time all I knew about the bastards is that they kept Bonnie Prince Charlie waiting for a 30,000 fleet that never came, but I think I got the gist of his concerns and took ‘em.
Anyway, what I initially was going to tell you is that one day Sweeny somewhat disappointed me when he confided how he had stole a packet of Rollos from Woolworths. I dunno if he really did as he wasn’t cash strapped, maybe he just said he had to top up his street cred as he was a right lad. Musing on this, when I went home I came up with a song, music and lyrics entitling it ‘Put those Rollos down, Sween’, recorded it on my trusty tape recorder and played him it in the shop the next day. Maybe I was secretly trying to keep him on the straight and narrow. Or maybe I was thinking if he got nicked I would be without free haircuts. Either way, whilst I was in there and he was enjoying the tune, I looked about at all the usual barbery instruments on view and envisaged them as instruments in another way. ‘What’s your favourite song? ’I asked him suddenly to which he replied the Beatles’ ‘Obladee Oblada’. ‘How’s about we have a crack at it and you can play all these instruments – the clippers, scissors, hair drier, and combs?’ Always a sporty chap he did and I believe on that very spot in that very moment The Borestiffers were born. Needless to say I went back another day and we recorded the song on my trusty tape recorder, and it ended up on one of the ‘Stiffer albums as ‘Maurice Norris Paurice Forrest’s comb is the best fighter in town’. Magic.
From one sport to one not so sporty. I’d like to talk a little now about Fig. Fig had suffered the full brunt of the infamous Catalogue Crusade which had been as prolific as the Catholic Church’s crusade against the Albigensians and Cathars back in 1208 for alleged heresy. Because Fig so resisted the attachment of the famous biscuit to his personae I felt it necessary to reinforce the issue and so cut out an advertisement from that week’s issue of the ‘TV Times’ and filled in one of those requests to have a catalogue delivered for the product. They were even Freepost so no expenditure. Naturally, instead of putting his name as Mr J. Davies, it read Mr F. Roll. Well, even I never envisaged the free for all campaign that was never intended and would last for longer than the war of the Roses and the Sound of Music performed at the West End. Every conceivable permutation was employed and when six or seven other willing rascals found some scissors and magazines, the postal services heading the way of Fig’s cul-de-sac were deluged. For months. And months. Anything from ‘John Figroll’ to more fanciful imaginations like ‘Mr Rollypoley’ went through that letter box daily, not to mention the travelling salesmen’s follow up visits, some, having driven the length and breadth of the country to be disappointed within three seconds when Mrs Fig who knew nothing of the origin of all this nonsense would tirelessly answer the door before slamming it in their face and then asking ‘John, what’s all this fig roll business?’ to which he would deny all knowledge.
I had named his mum, who reminded me of Eucalypta the witch in kids puppet show Paulus the Wood Gnome, Vandella. Don’t try to spot the connection with the names, there isn’t one. The catalogue wheeze soon got well out of hand when all the lads thought it fun to reciprocate the prank on one and all, and soon everybody including your humble author were receiving catalogues with ridiculous names vaguely associated with them, much to the growing lack of patience and confusion amongst parents. Hatt and myself in particular were involved in an amazing and inexhaustible one on one vendetta, I’d estimate we traipsed off to the post box clutching on average about thirty freepost envelopes daily! For months! I really felt guilty and somewhat sorry for those travelling sales blokes seeking commission on sales and whom I had never intended to involve, chasing up their hopeful customers for hearing aids, new kitchen appliances, you name it, but my remorse soon faded when I considered that the financial greed of the Companies involved ,and it was down to their own fault if they were content to send a rep travelling 100miles seriously expecting to be answered at the door by Mr Geetlongsneck or Mr Whatahooter.
Mind, Fig was still the Chosen One amongst us all for the density of activity. The highlight of the Crusade was the night when I rounded up a 15 strong squad, some more interested and implicated parties than others. We had all willingly stumped up enough to purchase at least three packets of fig rolls each, all removed and contained in all pockets of our clothing. 15 x 3 x approx. 12 = 540. One of us rang the door bell and rushed back to join the assembled ranks. As it happened, Vandella answered and with an appearing figure a rain of fig rolls came arching their way over to the property bouncing off it at all angles, a downpour lasting about thirty seconds and accompanied by a monotone shouting of ‘Fig, Fig’. Look, John, all you had to do was accept the name and none of this would have had to happen. Vandella tried to stem the tide with a hopeless rebuke of ‘I’m getting the police’ which she did all too late, leaving the garden a corpse of fallen fig rolls. Surely it’s a funny thought to have imagined that call, ‘There’s a gang of lads pelting my house with fig rolls.’ Yes? Shortly after, Vandella tried to get rid of Fig any way she could. On one of these occasions it was his birthday and she presented him with his gift. Inside the wrapping was a watch and the watch was wrapped up in a circled advertisement taken from a tabloid newspaper and advertising for a job in a café in Northern Ireland. He never applied for it.
Travel signs help me recall the time it was high time - about ten foot in the air to be precise - to erect a slightly modified road sign that harmlessly pointed out the fact that here was a cul-de-sac. More correctly it was Fig’s cul-de-sac, and I thought that should be made clear. At about one in the morning I had Fatty Round, with accompanying prepared card, shin up the sign and affix the wee alteration to cover ‘cul-de-sac’ up and replace with ‘Fig’s House’, with me keeping look out on the nearest corner for any cruising police cars. Typically, one did appear and nicked me for standing on the corner appearing to look shifty. As they were questioning me and asking why I had wire cutters and a screwdriver – tools that Fatty told me to look after should he need them – I could see the fat bastard shinning down the sign post and legging it off into the darkness. With no incriminating evidence of any sort I was, quite luckily, simply cautioned. Still, mission accomplished. Ah, teamwork. One of the more malleable times I had with Fig was when I finally persuaded him to come with me to see Brian Eno, the avant garde early Roxy Music keyboards geezer, who was playing at Newcastle City hall at a date on a short tour after having had a minor top 50 with his debut solo single ‘The 7 deadly Finns’. Fig had never been to a concert before and so I ensured he dressed appropriately for the occasion, as a wild west cowboy topped off by wearing one of my favourite glue pots deftly and almost invisibly strapped to his bonce, and with a placard around his neck reading ‘Brian Ee-No’. Prior to the gig I had read in an interview that Eno was into porn mags so borrowing one from no end of lads offering them, I cut out thin strips of white paper, wrote ‘Naughty Eno’ on them and stuck them over all the obvious female bits. A nice gift for Fig to present dirty Bri with. The story has a naff ending however, as Eno didn’t show, the gig cancelled because the dirty bugger had suddenly came up with a collapsed lung. (Must have been one helluva book he’d been looking at the night before). Upon seeing the ‘cancelled sign’ as we approached the hall, Fig exclaimed, ‘Aww, it’s me forst conshort.’ (I’ve tried to spell it in fig roll speaking dialect) Oh well, as I know only too well in Wavis life, some you win, some you looosh.
Fig never went to the café in Ireland either, but travelling abroad reminds me of one other tale I must share, and it involves Head. His real name wasn’t ‘Head’ of course, he was just a bland ‘Nicky’, but his head was larger than it should have been for his body so hey presto. Nicky Head therefore, puzzled me by living in South Shields but supporting Arsenal. And he did, travelling the UK on his humble wages following them about. His kitty was bolstered by the good fortune to have been part of his Council gardeners football Pools’ syndicate which won the jackpot, each member receiving £16,000 each. Jammy git. Now, Arsenal had drawn a Russian team in Europe and Head was up for going to Moscow, the only problem being that he had made this brave decision late in the week and was dependant on being granted a visa at the last minute. He did get it, right at the last split second. Consequently, when his mum returned home from work to cook him his tea, this being a mum who never knew much of his activities, she was greeted by a short message at the table. ‘Gone to Russia’. Incidentally, so sparse was the support of fans going to that game he flew from London with the Arsenal team – and he told me later was followed everywhere he went by strange looking men in macs hiding around corners. Mrs O’Shave once freaked Head out when asking him about an incident in which he had beat this lad up for ripping his flat off. It was something he didn’t want to recall as he got six weeks in Durham clink. ‘When you were fighting,’ she wanted to know, ’Did you make Ooooof sounds?’ I remember Head’s angry response – ‘Are you for real?’ The last time I frequented his mum’s home I espied the odd Littlewoods catalogue laying about. Addressed to Mr N. Stareathisheed, naturally.