Part 3
I had been prolific in the past for knocking out video shorts, in the days of VHS tapes, lots of surreal comedy characters in loosely scripted ‘movies’ such as ‘Mr Papa’ and ‘The Skip-toe-feenic’, this being where The Hard first surfaced in 1982, firstly in ‘The Hard’ and then the follow up ’Enter the Hard’ where with some nifty editing he scraps with Bruce Lee, all shot with the tireless and kind assistance of a long suffering local video Company and its inspiration, Tom Johnson. Well, I could be hard work. ‘The Non-Swearies Puppet show’ was one of these shorts with its soundtrack classic music, a puppet show with a difference. Perrault Marionettes on strings, dolls and puppets all handled and worked by a concealed me. What made the NSPS different was its contradiction. The puppets swore like troopers when it suited them, the opening line being ‘Fxxxxxgbxxxxxdcxxxingfxxg’.
The original demo was warmly received by ‘The Tube’, researcher Chris Cowey going on record as saying it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. So the show wanted it, and, like all my other shorts, it had to be re-shot for Tv quality. We did so within the confines of the South Shields Marine Park, me recreating the chaos best I could. By the time the crew returned back to the studios with it in the can Channel 4 had already received four complaints from members of the public who thought they were going to see a standard puppet show. Boy, they were in for a shock that they obviously had gotten. I was at the editing of it and of course, unlike the demo, all the swear words had to be bleeped, leaving almost one continual bleep. Bleeping the expletives out didn’t really work as this time you could see my face and didn’t have to have a degree in lip reading, you could clearly make everyone out. Naturally, it was impossible to show this on a teatime Tv show, so why had we gone to all the time, energy and expense in the first place? ( I still have the original demo in my safe keeping, by the way).
‘The Tube’ was once voted the 82nd best British Tv show ever. Had it showed more of my filmed but unused material maybe it might have ascended to about the 64th, but we’ll never know. It was my VHS Hard movies that had copies struck off in their hundreds for the reprobates on the Shields’ Council estates, that had first brought my attention to the programme that soon after its inception was the one show everybody wanted to get on, all the top established bands and all. For me, once in there it was too easy to appear too regularly, and so playing hard to get as I do, I only appeared when I felt like it and told them so, inventing new characters like Mr Starey-Oot and Mr Ordinary Powder along the way, although it was the Hard who by far stole the hards of the viewing public. After his first ever screening, the Tyne Tees crew had to travel to film in Manchester and there they spotted bouncers in the clubs already wearing T-shirts with my catch phrase ‘Felt Nowt’ on their chest!
I have actually done a hard crap once in my life and it was when the wife swears two personalities were blending. All I recall was being in the upstairs landing bog and struggling to do the business Next thing, I’ve regained consciousness six feet out of the bog in a position resembling an Islamic praying to Allah, with my bum in the air. Mrs O’Shave had discovered me unconscious. The doctor was called as she thought I must have suffered a black out, postulated that there must have been little oxygen in the small bog and I had been pushing that hard to crap I must have passed out, not before propelling myself the two horizontal yards. Rather like gas blast, maybe it had been. The NSPS wasn’t the only politically incorrect product I had associated myself with at the time. I had also been on BBC Radio Newcastle in a spoof interview that would never be allowed today. A local musician and Wavey fan Danny Deen had persuaded me to help him out at Guardian Studio in Durham and to assist in recording his three tracks which I had written for him upon invite, he having prepared the music. It was intended for a serious assault on the pop charts. My favourite track of the three was ‘It’s so charming when we’re out farming’ about a bloke who fell in love with a cow. We were terribly unprepared for the recording of them which cost £300 for the day, and that was in 1981.
Came the day we went, the car picking us up one by one must have been previously owned by a circus clown as it was falling to bits mile by mile. The inside was filling up with poisonous exhaust fumes and at one stop the left hand door fell off. Incredibly, as we were driving along, the steering wheel began to dislodge. The tin can was abandoned and we caught a taxi. Only was it when it became time to do the songs did we find we couldn’t do them justice and as we hadn’t rehearsed we didn’t discover that they were incompatible with our singers’ key, and I kid you not, it got so desperately ridiculous, time being money, that the engineer Terry Gavighan actually had a serious crack at singing one of them, this providing me with one of the most major moments of hilarity ever in my life! The session ran over and out of money and had to be continued another day.
Now, Danny hadn’t an idea what to call the band and I had. I got my own way and we were ‘The Nancy Boys’ even though neither Danny or myself are! We did the BBC interview with the three tracks being played with us , me as Gus and Danny as Gideon being interviewed in between with seriously effeminate voices. Gus, incidentally, was the spoiler in the band, and if he didn’t like something would headbutt it, a something quite contrary to the expectation of this housewives’ band. In fact, so he told it, they were booed off in Germany when the audience thought they were the ‘Nazi Boys’, Gus setting about the audience with his head before they left. No, that interview would never be allowed today. My second album, or more correctly my first, as Anna was just a long single, ‘Texican Raveloni (Bedside songs for problem children)’ had been scheduled for release in 1982 and Chris Donald had already done the artwork. Unfortunately, it never did make It out there on vinyl and only surfaced later on in 1983 on cassette and in 2004 more respectively on CD, courtesy of Essex cassette culture stalwarts Bazza and Pete, on their Falling ‘A’ label and who in 2005 also commandeered a sort of Greatest Hits of mine under the title ‘Potty Dotty, Ditties of the Deft and Daft’. The Raveloni album covered every aspect of taboo you could think of.
By this time Wavis had erroneously been associated with the occult which founded me opportunity of splendid piss takes of heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath. So much so that I invented my own systems of magic namely Blank Wagic and Whizzcraft. Now, whether either system could ever work and the joke would be unconsciously on me, I cannot be sure. It was immediately after Wavis had been practising his blank wagic (more of that stuff later) that Anna Ford’s much publicised and imminent media marriage to newscaster Jon Snow had unexpectedly and puzzlingly been called off with neither of them prepared to talk about it. Anna had certainly cast a spell on young Wavis herself. What a bird! The music press reported how he had camped in her garden for three nights in a bid to woo her after presenting her personally with a copy of his album tribute to her that night at ITN, proposing on one knee and wearing a 2’9” hooter. I also turned up at her first night as a Capitol Radio presenter, presenting herself with a red rose. Or was that a red nose. Actually, it was both, I recall. Anna took me home that night and held me captive in a crystal. We both married soon afterwards with Rick Wakeman playing us down the aisle on a Theremin whilst bride and groom wore 3’ noses. Well, no, not really, unless in a parallel universe that I am not aware of but therefore send them both my best wishes and feel a little envious, unless of course Mrs O’Shave ever reads this bit.
Anyway, she politely declined my charms in this dimension, but still has the album safely tucked away in a cupboard she told a friend of mine just a few years back. I very nearly got myself into some hot water over this occult business though. I thought it would be a hoot to poke fun at master psychologist and ex-circus ringmaster Anton Lavey’s pretentious Californian Church of Satan and with a bit of negotiation ended up with a smuggled tape recording from one of their publicised ‘rituals’ and stuck it in as background to the Raveloni track ‘Head butt a demon’…that actually is Anton and his chums unaware that they are on the track. Looking the posey part, I had also gone to the News of the World posing as an apostate black magician who wanted to blow the lid off an occult event that was allegedly going to take place in England on a specific date. I had made it all up of course and wasn’t expecting the reporter to ring Lavey then and there at Daly City, California. Luckily, allowing for the time zone maybe, the number just rang and rang so no dialogue took place. I was hoping for a front page on the Sunday national with me being kept as an anonymous source informing the public about this secretive magical knees up which was only referred to by the code name…. the event was given the code name …..Texican Raveloni! What a wonderful plug it would have been for the album, but owing to lack of concrete evidence other than my word, the newspaper lost interest.
Maybe just as well or a full blown magical war between magic and blank wagic may have become the resulting reality. I’m unsure if my blank wagic actually does work, and I have an intuitive feeling that to be effective it has to be enacted the night before a Newcastle away win at Old Trafford. The last time I tried it I was trying to lure Katie Derham to a local venue in my city but instead fellow news reporter Fiona Bruce turned up at Lincoln Cathedral on an ‘Antiques Roadshow’ visit. And once, when I was trying to win the national lottery all that happened was a pack of frozen Walls’ pork sausages hurled themselves through my open bedroom window. (I’ve made that last bit up). I’ve also tried to wangle a Turkish female belly dancer manifest at the foot of my bed but I ran off when a male ballet dancer appeared.
I am aware that the most dangerous Blank Wagic rite is that of ‘The Nikoris Nik’ attributed to Nostrildamus – it is only ever to be attempted if one’s life is endangered and there is no other means of escape. The Rite, allegedly, will bring an unexpected halt to anyone chasing you as they will be so stunned by what they see they will stop in their tracks, declare ‘Nutter, he could be dangerous’ and abandon chase. Try it yourself. Standing upright in a stock still position with your arms placed by your side, extend both arms horizontally from the elbows only. On both hands, extend the nearest two fingers to each thumb so that they represent a ‘V’ and look like pincers. Suddenly start to run on the spot whilst rapidly kicking out both legs as high as you can, over and over. Start speaking the words ‘Nikoris Nik’ repeatedly (you must not stop). Now run like hell in your preferred direction, almost hovering off the ground, still extending both legs as high as you can, pronouncing ‘Nikoris Nik’ without a break. It should work. What won’t tho’ is the ruse I once posted on the Internet guaranteeing that if you followed these psychological instructions you would, without fail, meet the female of your wet dreams in a lucid dream that you could enforce. All you had to do was, ignoring the pain, attach a tight gripping washing line clothes peg to the end of your willie and stick a picture of your desired totty to the middle of your head with glue, then hop into bed and await sleep. The theory was that the irritation provided by the peg in the key area would couple with the image of the desire and present her in a dream where you were aware you were dreaming. It was of course, bullshit, but boy did I laugh picturing those who would give it a go.
There have been other examples of my dalliance with the so called occult. The first was after having a big article published in the local South Shields Gazette. The feature was always meant to have had a sequel, and although the Editor had always agreed this, he chickened out when he saw how controversial it was and reneged, so that it never appeared, unofficially banning me from his rag. I wasn’t going to take this laying down, although you will see in a moment that I did. I worked out the best way I could make a reappearance in the Gazette, albeit it as an Egyptian artefact. Acquiring some scratchy chicken wire, I stripped off and got Mrs O’Shave to wrap it round my body. Squeezing out of this newly formed structure without disturbing the general shape, and much scratched, we wrapped bandages around it, and spilt tea here and there with a splash of tomato sauce. I have to say, it really did look a convincing mummy and I’m sure I could have taken orders for a dozen or so. Next, I got our mate Woody who had his own taxi to take it and drop it off in the town centre late at night and then ring the Gazette early morning to say he had seen it on his travels. The Gazette went for it and along with the rather expected headline ‘Have you lost your mummy?’ there I was back in the Gazette, and you really could see it was my face modelled on the plaster face mask...the final and most poignant touch.
Now then, I will have to speak a little about this Egyptian death mask. One night, obviously bored, the missus and I decided we would attempt such a work of art. With plaster of Paris drying rapidly on my face, it was some fifteen minutes when it had gone rock and affixed itself to my skull that we realised I couldn’t breathe much longer. In a muffled communication I somehow managed a muffly ‘Get me out of here, quick!’ The mask had to be prised after much effort and using a knife, and ripped off my eyebrows and a section of my beard. I actually had been suffocating. No wonder it is called a Death Mask. I swore never, ever would I entertain such an undertaking (pun intended) again, until another night about a year later, the wife broke the boredom and silence with, ‘Death Mask?’ I’d fell for it again, only this time we allowed a straw to be inserted into a slit above my mouth. Twenty minutes later, I was still breathing but my skull was being crushed, and out came another flat knife, hurried prising and further beard loss. Never again. Still, this last effort was the mask that accompanied the mummy, so it did come in handy in the long run. Ironic all this, as years earlier I had faked my death for a prank on the music press, it being reported that Wavis had died from eating mercury omelette, and a mighty fine forged death certificate declaring the same, courtesy of the VIZ. I was officially dead for nearly two weeks until a reporter saw me on the street and the game was up.
Do you know, in my time I have been recognised for being three different people all who look nowt like each other? Namely my mates Rod Stewart and Steve Harley and also Johnny Rotten! In 1985 I took off to Malta to have a rest from this being recognised as Wavis stuff and shouted at by cheery fans with their wound down car windows, and within ten minute of arriving in the Mediterranean I was being jeered and shouted over at by two separate mobs of Italians for their idea of my passing semblance to 1) The time travelling magician Catweazle from the Tv series, and 2) Kojak. The excursion deteriorated further when I spent too long in the scorching sun and it burnt off my top layer of already South Shields sun tanned skin. I must be the only person who has ever gone abroad with a tan and arrived back with white skin. Also, I should have sussed that the park I was spending a lot of time in soaking up too much sun wasn’t all it seemed.
At 8 oclock each night everyone had mysteriously drifted out leaving it empty, only for it to speedily start filling up again. I was sitting in there all alone when a Maltese geezer made bee line to announce, ‘I like you.’ Hospitable and friendly lot these Maltese, I initially thought. Not. Well, you wouldn’t expect the brochures to have told you that after eight this scenic location transformed into the local gay park for pick ups, I suppose. Foook that. Arriving back at Newcastle Airport I was recognised by a taxi driver who was a fan and therefore waived on the £15 fare. Home sweet home.
Not quite Maltese gods, but Grecian, twice I have assimilated the garb to become a god. Pan’s goat shaggy thighs were recreated by me having to wear tights and then have the flower heads off pampas grass glued on, with Copydex. Mrs O’Shave was quite happy to remove it by tearing the fully thighed body mass off, which was beyond painful as the Copydex had soaked through the tights and affixed to my skin. It was only after the removal she informed that all I had to do was soak in a hot bath for ten minutes and it would have simply peeled off. Thanks. A further glue story is when we were perusing in a hardwear shop (somewhat appropriate for The Hard) looking for a particular glue that we couldn’t recall the name of but knew it smelt of almonds, required for upholstering furniture. We went down all the aisles taking the tops off the products and whiffing the sticky stuff. The assistants asked us to leave alluding that we were glue sniffers. Once when we were going to re-upholster a huge and expensive three piece, we set our boy’s mate up who was staying at the time. We told him we were skint and would have to resort to the tried and tested look down the side of your sofa for stray 50p or £1 coins. We told him we were that skint we’d go one better and so turning all the suite on its side we began ripping off all the covers. No big deal as we were going to have them reupholstered, but he didn’t know that and was beyond shocked at the irreparable costly vandalism for the sake of a few quid.
I have once been, as Tina Turner would put it, a private dancer for money, dressing up in full regalia as the Greek god Mercury in an attempt to win ‘Spot the Ball’. At the dead of night in winged sandals and winged helmet with very little in between I went dancing and twirling along in the dead of night along what I thought would be an empty gravel pits and fishing lakes. If I was dismayed to see a solitary, illegal fisherman with his rod by a lake who perchance spotted me, I hasten to think what he must have thought, also being in the position of not wanting to be seen, the significant difference being that I doubt ANYBODY would have believed his story whereas mine is easy to. Didn’t win ‘Spot the ball ’either, not even a tenner, despite having put the cross exactly where the solution later in the week showed it to be. Once, when we lived above a newsagent, Mrs O’Shave and I were so pessimistic about winning ‘Spot the ball’ that when we took our weekly coupon submission downstairs to have it checked we filled in the names bit with gems like ‘Mrs Megganfegganweggan’ (actually used that one) and Lex the Mexx (I named him), then would insouciantly check it was all in order before popping it in the ‘till for the awaiting agent to collect.
Like the pork sausages (forget I confessed), a single ‘Tie Your laces tight’ did materialise from the album, on London label Eccentric record, and would be the last of my efforts on good old vinyl. My interests in further recordings was by now sated, I had done enough and had no aspirations to unleash my musical surrealism any longer. There is a funny story associated with this ultimate single. Most Sundays I would partake in playing footy with a regular bunch at a Technical College playing fields (I was never a great footballer, just great at playing football) and this time there was a fellow on the other team who had turned up having just returned from two weeks down Penzance way in the South West. Even I heard him with my own ears excitedly trying to tell his team mates about this record he had heard whilst on his holiday. It was about a crazy bus driver who wouldn’t give you your change back. One of his team mates calmly turned him around and pointed him over at me. ‘See him, he recorded it!’ Well, this lad couldn’t believe it and naturally didn’t believe his informant. What odds would you give that on happening? But it was true, and furthermore he told us, the song had been top of the on-site Butlins’ Holiday Camp top 20 charts for six weeks!
Before leaving the subject of footy, I would like to declare that I think I was the original inventor of shirt sponsorship as far back as 1981. To be different, I would staple things like ‘Tetley Tea bags’ boxes onto my shirt front, and once I tacked a tartan packet of crisps – ‘Tatties’ – onto some wool that was attached to the back of my shorts so that when I whizzed down the wing it took off in the air like a kite. Sponsorship took off big time the following year when the first Great North Run saw 50,000 Geordies race from Newcastle to South Shields, chased by bailiffs and TV Licensing officers who gave them all a 200 yards head start. Well…maybe that’s not completely true, but ‘You won’t catch me on the 503’ is a true story about a stingy bus driver and was the ‘b’ side of ‘Laces’. It has a lot of swearing on it at the start and was quickly embraced by the VIZ Comic fellows who miraculously had some of it included and played on their 1998 BBC Radio One Documentary ‘VIZ – The Rock n Roll years’, although it was quietened down and eventually faded out as the swearing kicked in, as part of the ‘Strange World of Wavis O’Shave’ section, in which I didn’t personally appear owing to the fact that I am very good at being unobtainable.
At about this time my friend and pop star actress Toyah Willcox had asked to record ‘Better get the washing in’ from Raveloni, with me, which some would have considered a great proposition, but true to my uncommercial nature I didn’t respond to, presumably some sort of offer of a duet with this occasional top twenty chartster. There was also talk of Dave Robinson’s promise that Stiff Records do a one-off single deal with me, he being the Head of the label. Seems as of Wavey, considered unmanageable and untrammelled, would be too much of a risk to try and entertain for any longer than that, but the half promise faded into oblivion which suited me fine although, with a few almost guaranteed strings pulled to ensure return on the venture, it was a given that any such eventuality would have afforded me joining the ranks of the ‘One hit wonder’. And I wonder if being a ‘None hit wonder’ isn’t a better achievement. Suits me fine! If I’d wanted to be into the – and I’m sure its exactly this simple - sex n drugs and rock n roll of the industry that ensures your longevity and rewards in the music world, I would have been, but snecks, no drugs and a fig roll is more akin to my predilection.
My only involvement with Stiff apart from crashing in at Dury’s Blockhead Michael Gallagher’s flat and being too tired to stay awake was whilst being present when Anti-Pop had tried to blackmail some free studio time from Jona Lewie, (he of the cavalry), after turning up unannounced one late night at his flat to share that his last private phone call with Phil Branston in which Jona had discussed being worried about his current premature ejaculation problem and that he was prematurely balding, had been recorded. Maybe not so stiff, Jona? Phil Branston’s brother Tim knew someone who knew John Barry, the composer for many James Bond soundtracks, and accordingly Barry had ended up with a copy of ‘Anna ford’s Bum’, thus surely making him the most unlikeliest of recipients. I’ve no idea what they thought he should do with it. A Bond movie ‘Goldbum?’
In the wake of Texican Raveloni I moved the focus of attention onto promoting my Dad live in concert. It wasn’t him really, it was just Teddy Anteater with his headphones plugged into a music deck playing songs he would then sing along with, and with an electric guitar he couldn’t play, draped around his neck. Teddy looked uncannily like the biblical Isaiah as painted by Michelangelo and when we showed her the evidence his girlfriend just thought we were showing a pic of her Ted. Teddy was the original naff ‘X- factor contestant’ and to inflict him upon an unsuspecting audience was hilarious at first watching their response to the phenomenon. When John Lydon moved to New York I sent him a tape of spurious Father Ted, as he made Public Image sound musical, but Rotten wasn’t going to bite. I didn’t realise until much later in life when all this was but vintage memory that Ted most probably was tone deaf into the bargain. One gig, he played support to Anti-Pop’s Arthur 2-Stroke and the Chart Commandoes, at Newcastle University. It was full of pseudo-toffs and after about five minutes they realised this wasn’t a serious act tuning his instruments up. Slowly and then faster the handclapping loudened with chants of ‘Off, off’ and a hail of objects heading towards the oblivious Teddy who was murdering Thin Lizzy’s ‘Whisky in the Jar’ by then, or, as Ted’s tone deafness heard it, ‘Whisky in the Jarwood’. (I had met Phil Lynott before and could believe him to be the skinniest man in the Universe). By the time he reached his version of the New Seekers’ ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing (In perfect harmony)’ – oh, yes, these songs were mercilessly thought out by yours truly – the hail of objects aimed at him were becoming more accurate than his vocal could ever be, and I had to act as a compassionate human shield. ‘They’re chucking things at me, ‘ he said in between a lyric. Not being one to hurt his feelings I told him, ‘I know. They like you’.
Strange thing, about 18 months later, I received a correspondence from the Uni wanting to book him again. The best of Teddy can be heard on a rare Youtube audio hiding somewhere out there in cyber space under ‘The Wavis O’Shave South Shields’ Travelling Circus’ which also features some local personalities who never made it to the natural end of their lives, including Billy Meths. Billy was the town tramp and I caused havoc when I produced Billy Meths T-Shirts with a fine posed sepia picture of him on it…almost every regular in the pubs wanted one. Wavis still had his own commitments and obligations, like regularly having to appear in the national music press for his own antics.
Two that spring to mind were both challenges, and I really meant them. Consequently, and reported accurately, was my challenging of the then President of the USA, Jimmy Carter to a race from my house to the nearest taxi rank, the winner automatically becoming the President of America. I sent this challenge to Jim courtesy of The White House. No response. I also challenged the Pope to a boxing match, the winner to become Pope. This was sent to the Vatican. No response either. Still, I didn’t want to become either President or Pope really. I have had two involvements with champion boxers. The first was Frank Bruno shortly after his first defeat by Tyson. Mrs and I negotiated to have his massive cupped paws painted with poster paint and impressed onto a large sheet of paper, signed and framed to be auctioned off at a charity for a school for deaf and dumb children in Newcastle. His agent wasn’t going to let us anywhere near Franks mitts with paint as they were hugely insured, but he changed his mind when we told him Lady Di was the Patron of the School.
Next up, I thought it might be a good idea to have The Hard scrap reigning champ Chris Eubank for Children in Need. The challenge went through his Brighton letterbox but no response ever came through mine. Shame, coz I’d been in training. We had arranged some bouts and gotten Woody to take us to a boxing gym alongside Sunderland Docks –a well rough area, so rough that he refused to park his taxi outside and wait for us claiming if anybody spotted he was from South Shields they would have wrecked the cab and him if in it. He’d never make a bodyguard that one. I had had some shorts made by wifey that went down to near my ankles, and the gloves were exaggerated in size, about five times bigger than normal. Both shorts and gloves were made from plush crushed velvet curtains that had once belonged to the ABC cinema. The boots were pointy Indian moccassins. When I had to leave the dressing room to appear, I was met with a prolonged silence by everyone in the rings who suddenly stopped their sparring. I thought I might just be greeted by hoots of laughter, but they were all too impressed with my outfit to even laugh at the gloves. We needed some pix to show Eubank and when I asked a young lad to get down on his knee and me to arrange a glove on his jaw, he replied in all sincerity, ‘I don’t take a dive for anybody’. We took some pix and got out of there rather quickly. Snapped on, I mean spurred on, by the Bruno success at least, I next tried to see if I could get Maradonna’s footprints immortalised on a plaster base, for a charity sale. All he would have to do would be stand in a wet plaster mixture, and it would have got me a free trip out to Italy as he was in Napoli at the time. I guess his feet must have been insured too, as the club got wet feet over it and we didn’t get his.
In my time I have been responsible for two high profile security scares I’ll have you know. The first was in 1986 involving Prince Charles. A friend of mine, Michael Roll, was a bit of a Quantum physicist who was fed up with sending his work for Charles to study, and it never got past his Palace secretary. When I learned that Charlie was visiting nearby to open a business centre, I asked Rolly to send me his work and I’d present it to our future king personally. People rated me as having no chance of success in getting near enough to him but Mrs O’Shave suggested I only needed something to attract his attention that would draw him over to me, producing a very long waspish yellow and black stripey scarf. When the day came and Charlie was leaving the building, I shouted over at him from behind the barriers, ‘Prince Charles, Sir!’ He stopped in his royal tracks and looked over at me. Ignoring his revved up royal car, and his security, he came straight over. He made it apparent that he was ok to chat and accepted the wad of Rolly’s work that I pulled out of my inside pocket and handed him. The scarf HAD worked! He did a little walk about acknowledging the waving Union jack flags flapped by loving royalists who were amazed to see he had came over, and then left. The moment he did, I was well pounced on by security and police, who had shit themselves in that split second when I had gone inside my pocket to whip something out, and were responsible for a major security breach. They demanded to know what I had given him, and were in big trouble for allowing an unknown (not that unknown!) and random member of the public the opportunity. I guess it could have been a water pistol or something worse. One week later Rolly received a letter from Charles thanking him for his work. Good, eh?
The other scare was when I went up to Dumfries in Scotland in 1994 to join the crowds eager to welcome HH The Dalai Lama open a temple at Samye-Ling Tibetan centre, where, incidentally, I stayed during 1977. Oh yes, Wavey has lived with authentic Tibetan refugees and had an authentic lama teacher, and even today has a lama friend who sometimes stays with the O’Shave’s. Tibetan mysticism and Wavis surrealism – a splendid mix. Anyway, came the moment that the Dalai was being ushered past the thronging crowd and into the temple I may have being showing a little extra exuberance, with my freshly shaved head, thrusting forward to get close to him, after all why not, here was a figure I had been waiting to meet for twenty years – South Shields and India are some distance apart. Mrs O’Shave was some distance away, and afterwards she told me that Dumfries police had been walkie-talkie-ing each other distance apart for some time, singling me out of the crowd and following me around, and she actually heard them say ,’Keep your eye on that guy.’ Fer fook sakes! It reminded me of the time when Fatty Round and I went down to Lincoln on a train to add some synth to AFB and after checking everyone’s tickets in the long carriage the guard doubled back to me only, saying ‘Let me have look at yours again’.
Busy being Wavis being ignored by such VIP’s and a long term ride on ‘The Tube’ beckoning, to pop up on almost 4 million UK TV sets on Friday teatime. People ask me what Paula Yates was like, the ex-wife of Sir Bob Geldof and co-presenter of the show. Paula met with a tragic and early death recorded as suicide. Well, before those end days I guess I should confirm that Paula was a very photogenic young woman and a complete flirt. Not that she flirted with me, oh no. She called me a ‘prawn’ on live air and another time requested that I be booted out of my dressing room and she have it. After the sea mollusc remark my retort was to send her dozens of Prawn cocktail crisps, and yes, she got my dressing room as I accepted she was pregnant at the time and it would mean less walking distance for her. Apart from the time I went through a prolonged period of sending people actual toast with a cut out picture of beans stapled onto it, the only other time I’ve sent an inanimate object with a slight relevance was to BBC radio broadcaster Anne Nightingale. She had the hots for Sting, and as it was the world’s worst kept secret that he would return to his parents home every year for Christmas, I borrowed an empty milk bottle off their Wallsend doorstep and sent her it so she had a genuine treasure – Sting’s empty milk bottle with no message in it.
I was saddened when I learned of Paula’s death in 2000 so I guess I didn’t have a problem with Paula at all. Can’t say whether the feeling was mutual tho’! I knew even less about skinny Jools Holland who often would climb into a taxi straight after the show and claim expenses for £120 to take him to London. When I told people we got £8000 per show they thought I meant that's what I earned, but that was the total budget for each one, ridiculous when you think in current day terms of programme expenditure. I never really knew anybody on The Tube, I’d just turn up, do my thing and be off. No Green Room hospitality or ‘owt like that. I’m there to do a job – or amuse myself by letting off some surreal steam building up in my bonce and requiring release other than out of my ears – and then I’m off. So, y’see, I wasn’t out my head, just out of my ears.
Being resident on the show meant that I could turn up anytime and mingle freely, but ever the lovable unsociable bastard and recluse, I never really needed to do that to rub shoulders with rock and pop royalty, I’d already managed that on my own steam over the years having met the likes of The Faces, Bowie, Elton, The Who and Queen. In 1976 the Borestiffers went to Sunderland to see Sooty and Sweep, the latter being one of my all time heroes. I recall how the cast peeped through the curtain to check us out thinking that we were there to heckle. (We spotted Newcastle United right half Tommy Gibb there on his own. Dunno what his excuse was unless he was a closet Sweep fan). I only ever in all of five years took the Tube offer up once and that was to see Iggy Pop do a set. I spooked the production team big time and had them follow me about in person and camera when I flashed Chris Cowey a knife and said I would be throwing it at the Ig. It was only a rubber one but sufficiently realistic to flash. With my convoluted sense of humour and during a moment's silence in his three number set I shouted ‘Showuz yer willie, Jimmy!’ But he declined to flash, and I didn’t want to see it anyway. Iggy was, to my mind, and still is a rock legend and one of the more genuine wild children of the stage. Having said that mind, I don’t think much of the ‘wild men’ of rock like Ig, Keith Moon and Oliver Reed because anybody who are out of their heads on drugs or alcohol or both can happily unleash their ‘outrageous’ performance, it’s too common and uninventive. Give me a good, honest wayward child like Hatt or Anteater, high on fresh air. And Wavey, of course.
I’ve had some real fine rock n roll adventures. We drove through London turning heads in the Wavismobile. We sprayed a long, thin hooter the length of the car and considering it was a nose it was most eye catching. One time, we crashed a bit into the back of a car in front of us and immediately saw the driver angrily hop out of his seat and come round to us. We wound down the window and he took one look at the occupants of the car and he and his anger quickly returned back to his own. All four of us had been wearing two foot false noses all day long. I guess he was taking no chances. I had a mishap the day we first went to an appointment at Virgin Record Company. Just as I was alighting from the Wavismobile, the four foot nose that I had been carefully looking after and preventing from mishap all day got snapped in half when I slammed the door shut. A truncated trunk. Not the best appearance to meet the fans with.
We stopped off at Virgin’s record store in Oxford Street where I was surreptitiously hiding a prepared album under my jacket. I’d knocked up a convincingly smart cover, tailor made for the impending dialogue, asking the counter assistant if they had any ‘News At Ten’ bootlegs, intimating that in existence there were albums containing selected bulletins. I pulled out my mock copy to show him, ‘Here’s one’ I said. The chap had no option but to believe me, but not surprisingly they didn’t have any of their own in stock. In 1977 Bonny Tyler was lost in France, in 1980 I was impossibly lost in London. A squad of us had headed down the motorway at the dead of Newcastle night for an appointment I had as a representative of Danny Deen’s band ‘The Letters’, arriving in London at 5am for Virgin territory and an early morning appointment there to play a demo. Danny was the spitting image of Buddy Holly, and, spookily, was born the day Holly died. Even later in the day I decided why not nip off to see familiar faces at ‘The Sounds’ rock mag, believing their offices to be not far away, and so, taking Letters lead singer Batey with me, we promised we wouldn’t be long. Batey had a voice to rival Richard Burton’s and his party piece was to jump up on a table and accurately recite reams of Shakespeare. Although to be honest, he did it everywhere, anytime and didn’t know when to stop. Actually, the offices were some distance away and after stopping to ask directions a number of times (and being referred to by some American tourists as ‘Look, there’s some of those ‘skin-hairs’) it took us ages to arrive.
After surprising some of the staff with my visit and reminding Batey to get down and shut up, I thought it best we head back to the car and our sleeping driver. But where had we left it? What was the name of the street? Where was it? What colour was it even? What make? We had travelled down in the dark and not really paid any attention to detail. My excuse being that I am Wavis, and Batey’s that he was known to be off his flat cap. (Failing to grasp the gravity of our farcical and impending homeless predicament, he calmly continued playing his mouth organ like a hopeful busker). I can only surmise that there must be a kindly God that looks down and smiles at hapless individuals from time to time, and like homing pigeons inspired our feet to do some fortuitous, mazy and labyrinth like walking which eventually did lead us back to the parked mystery car, location and pissed off driver. I defy anyone to ever get in a situation more ludicrous than that just described. Sadly, Batey, his cap and mouthie is no longer with us, as he took a long swim off a pier, and he couldn’t swim, Danny left the earth plane too, years later, another self inflicted casualty.
The two most infamous encounters I have had are quite well documented elsewhere so I’ll keep it short. London’s Flying Squad, (they don’t actually fly) and ‘crazy’ (I think not) Kenny Everett. Oh, and don’t let me forget being ‘The Bread Thief of Iona’ (not guilty) and a twisted fire starter (it wasn’t me). Well, whenever I went to London I’d carry a chair leg wrapped in brown paper should the occasion arise I would need it as a natural defence. If ever confronted about it by rozzers I would say it was a Xmas gift for my mother. Anyway, in the Wavismobile we had some masks and spare nozzles and chauffeur Geldwink wore a bowler hat, leather jacket with Captain Scarlet badges and padded pants. He had brought along a baseball bat so that he could pose as my security guard in the style of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and we all wore 3’ polysterene hooters. We pulled up in a dead end having lost our way, close to a scrap yard in his multi-coloured Wavismobile and Gelders noticed a car pull up close behind. He tried to wave them on but the two male occupants jumped out identifying themselves as plain clothed Flying Squad officers concerned that a North-east registered sports car was heading for a well known but not to us dodgy area and scrapyard in London. It literally was like being in ‘The Sweeney’. There was a younger guy and an older guy with one playing ‘good cop’ and the other ‘bad cop’ like Reagan and Carter. The bad cop had taken himself and Captain Scarlet round to the boot while the other searched inside the car for drugs. When Gelders had opened the boot the copper’s eyes met with our masks, chair leg and baseball bat stash and said ,’What’s this, sticks and masks son, you could get 15 years for this.’ As the Big G was explaining at this stage that they were simply stage props, and explained that the chair leg in brown paper was my mum’s Xmas gift, I donned my biggest polysterene sneck to lean out of the rear window to enquire, ‘What appears to be the problem officer?’ The rozzers gave up on us and actually also gave us an escort back to the M1 to get us out of London as quickly as possible.
Years later, Mrs O’Shave and I found ourselves in another wrong place at the wrong time. We had parked our caravan almost on the no-go border of the French Pyrennes with Spain, unaware that the area was a stronghold of Basque terrorist group ETA, of which the local police suspected we were members. I can assure you here and now that I have never terrorised a single person wearing a basque. There is a more serious aspect involving this mix up. When Mrs O’Shave and I were being kept holed up in our French hotel facing these accusations, she rang her Dad Harry back in England for support. ’Dad, they’re saying we’re terrorists’ she trembled. Harry, in an attempt to make light of the nonsense, replied, ’Well you know you are, you little bombers.’ If only we’d thought to inform him that Interpol who had paid us a visit were listening in to all of our phone calls. Terrorists, no, but what Mrs O’Shave and I are is indeed creative creatures and to this end we almost entered into the world of confectionary. We had made our own choc offering, a ‘Nose Bar’, with white chocolate, cherries and cereals, the wrapper having a lift upable two inch elongated nose attached to a Wavis face. Anti-Pop’s Phil Branston thought it a sure fire fortune finder and had us make about 30 which we sold, shaking him off and then having the idea to send one to Nestle’s in Switzerland to see if they would be interested in our empire. We changed the name to a catchy ‘Hinnybinny’ for them. Although appreciating the product, they didn’t want to buy us out but sent us a cheque for £2.50 for our troubles. Similar products are now on the market as if confirming that Wavis is fifty years ahead of his time and ten behind it.
We were also the first to make ‘deggs’ as we called them, white chocolate with a spot of marzipan in the middle to mimic a fried egg, which have since appeared in shops, although we also did ones with a green dyed middle calling them ‘badeggs’, that haven’t. In 1989 Mrs O’Shave was the first to notice how drab ordinary wellington boots looked and set about spraying them muticoloured through white lace material and called them ’Sploots’ which she sold in a friend’s shop window. That all these products eventually came into being much later is good evidence to show that it was never encoded into our DNA to be entrepreneurs. I’d also tried my hand at making board games, the best being a great Loch Ness Monster bearing in mind the five million visitors the lake gets each year. The objective was to whizz down to London ahead of other competitors to sell your pic of Nessie to a tabloid without even knowing yourself until you got there and the pic revealed whether you had a genuine snap of Nessie or whether it was just a floating sofa or a piece of log or such.
In those days if you felt you had a good idea for a board game you had to submit it first to the only fella in the country who could take the idea with him and present it to the big game manufacturer, him being their trusted agent.. For the pleasure you had to bung him £25 a game. I’ll never forget his odd name, he was Mr Kidney from Bristol. Anyway, no matter what you punted him, you couldn’t get past the bugger, he’d just cash your cheques and say, ‘No, can’t do anything with that’. Nice work if you can get it.
Another time whilst down in the Smoke, Gelders spotted Kenny Everett driving a short distance in front of us so it seemed like the right thing to do to pursue him. He arrived at a garage and went for some petrol. We caught him up, and with our bestest and longest false noses already on, shouted to him. When he saw us his face was aghast and he left his car and legged it away a safe distance running into the forecourt shop. We set about a chase in true Benny Hill fashion shouting ‘Kenny, Kenny!’ after him. Whether he was out of breath or what, in the end we caught him up and he seemed a little better for it when, probably out of embarrassment, one of my troupe asked him to sign his A –Z which he did and then to beat an official hasty retreat in his vehicle. Maybe not so crazy Kenny, huh?
Now, being that bread thief of the spiritual inner Hebridean island of Iona was quite another event. I had made my way up there from South Shields on a return British Rail fare of £35 back then in 1985, that in itself being amazing. South Shields-Newcastle-Edinburgh-Glasgow-Oban-Mull-Fionniphort and across the mile long sound to this famous holy retreat. It was a fantastic voyage truly like traversing to the ends of the earth. It was a place I had wanted to visit for years as, amongst other interpretations, it was a faery isle...yes it had a long history of the faery folk being seen there particularly on their highest hill Dun-I. Well, maybe I could see some of them, so finally I arrived there in July 1985, dressed in a brown monk habit that I had specially made. Upon arrival amidst this 105 people population, I soon bumped into a wee Scots rascal and his wee dog from Glasgow, replete with a dirk down his sock. (The owner not the dog). Like myself, he had no place to stay on the isle and wandering about we came across another Scots rascal who had pitched his tent, illegally, upon the steepest slope on Dun-I. As we were all in the same boat, (well, they weren’t seeking fairies, it was a lightning strike dose of spirituality they hoped for, which had it happened would have been a greater act of magic than me seeing the Little People) it seemed sensible that we should all end up in the same tent that night.
Rather than sleep, all we did was slide down the slope and so, wide awake and hungry, we went walkabout the very small isle and ended up in the Abbey of which the door is always open. It was about 3am and as we wandered about in there I noticed that my two Caledonian comrades were nowhere to be seen. Chomping noises gave them away however. They were in the larder within the Abbey and helping themselves to slices of bread. I thought I should join in for team spirit and took my own out from a back pack that I had lugged about with me. So there we were, chomping, laughing and joking and making some noise which was confirmed when a half awake chap in night attire appeared out of nowhere and from his spiritual perspective saw three undesirable brigands robbing his precious larder of the island’s bread stock. I protested my innocence and even provided the wrapper off my own loaf to show that it didn’t match what the islanders order or what was firmly lodged in my two guilty chums’ gobs. Turns out this bloke was the head of the Community on the island, and he wasn’t having any of it. We woz foookin’ thieves and that was it. ‘Our type’ wasn’t welcome on this spiritual and well stocked bread island of his and he ordered us off on the first ferry of the morning at 4.35am under threat of summoning police from Glasgow. And so I didn’t have the chance to see any fairies, only a ferry, having only arrived on this holy turf at 7pm the night before to being chucked off it at 4.35 the next morning, branded the bread thief of Iona. I would think the posters have been taken down by now, but hey, only O’Shave could go on a spiritual pilgrimage to end up being denounced a thief.
Being a twisted firestarter wasn’t much better. Mrs O’Shave and I had a pet goose, a girl we called Chooga ‘cos she chewed everything. How to have a bald lawn in less than two hours. We raised her from egg and as I was the first thing she saw when see popped out she thought I was her Mother, as they do. She ate everything she did, but I was privy to a special relationship with her owing to being Mother Goose. We bathed her in our own bath, not an easy task, surpassed in difficulty only in trying to pick up a goose and take it from your allotment garden and put it in the back of your car when it has its entire wings span out, flapping furiously and shitting just as furious. I’d fly her like a kestrel and she would swoop from a hundred yards away to land on my awaiting outstretched fist.
Whilst mentioning pets, I’ll spend a few words on my current ‘hard dog’ punk cocker spaniel and hybrid Springer Poochiedoggerknackl, whom I’ve given more names than I have myself. ‘Pook’ for short, – although it changes every day – was taught his own vocabulary. A ‘bizwizzpoo’ is, of course, a crap. He is the Prince of Dogness and prefers to be a baddleladdel rather than a gooddleladdel. When he was a pup and it was time for his bed I’d stare at him whilst having him held perched up on my shoulder and a bit like a ventro’s dummy, asking ‘What time is it?’, followed by ‘It’s time for bed.’ Naturally, like a young kid, he wouldn’t want to go and so his nose would wrinkle up like a corrugated tin roof and he growl quite nastily. After I couldn’t keep my laff in any longer whilst staring him oot, I’d let it fly and with that he’d dive over and bite my nose He’s nearly nine now and the routine is still intact. I’d fight him on the landing upstairs and it would get quite rough with me calling it off when his bites sank right into my bones. I would hold him down and thrust him a ‘Jew’s claw’ in his face and when we scrapped I would shout at him ‘Bite the Jew!’ I have licence to do this as my ancestry is Jewish on my Miggla’s side so I’m really having a bit of a pop at myself (Mrs O’Shave swears that I must be Yiddish, thus justifying my humour). I told the missus NEVER to tell a soul about our biting of the Jew, and of course, she did one night when I was keeping everyone waiting at a social evening. ‘Oh, he’ll be upstairs with the dog playing ‘Bite the Jew’. The guests went silent, obviously and mistakenly thinking I was a secretive anti-semite. More like anti-dogbite.
Once whilst on a walk, and Pook does his bizwizzpoo in instalments, maybe five instead of one huge dump not to mention phantom wees every 100 yards, he got his head stuck in some railings. I thought the only way forward and out was to slide him up and down to try and find some more space to pop him out. Only later did I realise that, seen from their angle by passing motorists on the road, the motion would have looked like here was an owner giving his dog one from behind. We once had a Mogwai. Well, he looked like one but was a Peruvian Sheltie a type of long haired guinea pig who we kept in a dolls house. He did sing a bit like a mogwai, enough to fool next doors kids. Although he should have only lived a few years he made it to nine despite having regular heart attacks when aged for which the remedy and full recovery was an inspirational small sip of whisky from a spoon. The first time I let him adventure into our garden I saw my prize sunflower suddenly poleaxe courtesy of his chomping and sharp incisers.
I had been prolific in the past for knocking out video shorts, in the days of VHS tapes, lots of surreal comedy characters in loosely scripted ‘movies’ such as ‘Mr Papa’ and ‘The Skip-toe-feenic’, this being where The Hard first surfaced in 1982, firstly in ‘The Hard’ and then the follow up ’Enter the Hard’ where with some nifty editing he scraps with Bruce Lee, all shot with the tireless and kind assistance of a long suffering local video Company and its inspiration, Tom Johnson. Well, I could be hard work. ‘The Non-Swearies Puppet show’ was one of these shorts with its soundtrack classic music, a puppet show with a difference. Perrault Marionettes on strings, dolls and puppets all handled and worked by a concealed me. What made the NSPS different was its contradiction. The puppets swore like troopers when it suited them, the opening line being ‘Fxxxxxgbxxxxxdcxxxingfxxg’.
The original demo was warmly received by ‘The Tube’, researcher Chris Cowey going on record as saying it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. So the show wanted it, and, like all my other shorts, it had to be re-shot for Tv quality. We did so within the confines of the South Shields Marine Park, me recreating the chaos best I could. By the time the crew returned back to the studios with it in the can Channel 4 had already received four complaints from members of the public who thought they were going to see a standard puppet show. Boy, they were in for a shock that they obviously had gotten. I was at the editing of it and of course, unlike the demo, all the swear words had to be bleeped, leaving almost one continual bleep. Bleeping the expletives out didn’t really work as this time you could see my face and didn’t have to have a degree in lip reading, you could clearly make everyone out. Naturally, it was impossible to show this on a teatime Tv show, so why had we gone to all the time, energy and expense in the first place? ( I still have the original demo in my safe keeping, by the way).
‘The Tube’ was once voted the 82nd best British Tv show ever. Had it showed more of my filmed but unused material maybe it might have ascended to about the 64th, but we’ll never know. It was my VHS Hard movies that had copies struck off in their hundreds for the reprobates on the Shields’ Council estates, that had first brought my attention to the programme that soon after its inception was the one show everybody wanted to get on, all the top established bands and all. For me, once in there it was too easy to appear too regularly, and so playing hard to get as I do, I only appeared when I felt like it and told them so, inventing new characters like Mr Starey-Oot and Mr Ordinary Powder along the way, although it was the Hard who by far stole the hards of the viewing public. After his first ever screening, the Tyne Tees crew had to travel to film in Manchester and there they spotted bouncers in the clubs already wearing T-shirts with my catch phrase ‘Felt Nowt’ on their chest!
I have actually done a hard crap once in my life and it was when the wife swears two personalities were blending. All I recall was being in the upstairs landing bog and struggling to do the business Next thing, I’ve regained consciousness six feet out of the bog in a position resembling an Islamic praying to Allah, with my bum in the air. Mrs O’Shave had discovered me unconscious. The doctor was called as she thought I must have suffered a black out, postulated that there must have been little oxygen in the small bog and I had been pushing that hard to crap I must have passed out, not before propelling myself the two horizontal yards. Rather like gas blast, maybe it had been. The NSPS wasn’t the only politically incorrect product I had associated myself with at the time. I had also been on BBC Radio Newcastle in a spoof interview that would never be allowed today. A local musician and Wavey fan Danny Deen had persuaded me to help him out at Guardian Studio in Durham and to assist in recording his three tracks which I had written for him upon invite, he having prepared the music. It was intended for a serious assault on the pop charts. My favourite track of the three was ‘It’s so charming when we’re out farming’ about a bloke who fell in love with a cow. We were terribly unprepared for the recording of them which cost £300 for the day, and that was in 1981.
Came the day we went, the car picking us up one by one must have been previously owned by a circus clown as it was falling to bits mile by mile. The inside was filling up with poisonous exhaust fumes and at one stop the left hand door fell off. Incredibly, as we were driving along, the steering wheel began to dislodge. The tin can was abandoned and we caught a taxi. Only was it when it became time to do the songs did we find we couldn’t do them justice and as we hadn’t rehearsed we didn’t discover that they were incompatible with our singers’ key, and I kid you not, it got so desperately ridiculous, time being money, that the engineer Terry Gavighan actually had a serious crack at singing one of them, this providing me with one of the most major moments of hilarity ever in my life! The session ran over and out of money and had to be continued another day.
Now, Danny hadn’t an idea what to call the band and I had. I got my own way and we were ‘The Nancy Boys’ even though neither Danny or myself are! We did the BBC interview with the three tracks being played with us , me as Gus and Danny as Gideon being interviewed in between with seriously effeminate voices. Gus, incidentally, was the spoiler in the band, and if he didn’t like something would headbutt it, a something quite contrary to the expectation of this housewives’ band. In fact, so he told it, they were booed off in Germany when the audience thought they were the ‘Nazi Boys’, Gus setting about the audience with his head before they left. No, that interview would never be allowed today. My second album, or more correctly my first, as Anna was just a long single, ‘Texican Raveloni (Bedside songs for problem children)’ had been scheduled for release in 1982 and Chris Donald had already done the artwork. Unfortunately, it never did make It out there on vinyl and only surfaced later on in 1983 on cassette and in 2004 more respectively on CD, courtesy of Essex cassette culture stalwarts Bazza and Pete, on their Falling ‘A’ label and who in 2005 also commandeered a sort of Greatest Hits of mine under the title ‘Potty Dotty, Ditties of the Deft and Daft’. The Raveloni album covered every aspect of taboo you could think of.
By this time Wavis had erroneously been associated with the occult which founded me opportunity of splendid piss takes of heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath. So much so that I invented my own systems of magic namely Blank Wagic and Whizzcraft. Now, whether either system could ever work and the joke would be unconsciously on me, I cannot be sure. It was immediately after Wavis had been practising his blank wagic (more of that stuff later) that Anna Ford’s much publicised and imminent media marriage to newscaster Jon Snow had unexpectedly and puzzlingly been called off with neither of them prepared to talk about it. Anna had certainly cast a spell on young Wavis herself. What a bird! The music press reported how he had camped in her garden for three nights in a bid to woo her after presenting her personally with a copy of his album tribute to her that night at ITN, proposing on one knee and wearing a 2’9” hooter. I also turned up at her first night as a Capitol Radio presenter, presenting herself with a red rose. Or was that a red nose. Actually, it was both, I recall. Anna took me home that night and held me captive in a crystal. We both married soon afterwards with Rick Wakeman playing us down the aisle on a Theremin whilst bride and groom wore 3’ noses. Well, no, not really, unless in a parallel universe that I am not aware of but therefore send them both my best wishes and feel a little envious, unless of course Mrs O’Shave ever reads this bit.
Anyway, she politely declined my charms in this dimension, but still has the album safely tucked away in a cupboard she told a friend of mine just a few years back. I very nearly got myself into some hot water over this occult business though. I thought it would be a hoot to poke fun at master psychologist and ex-circus ringmaster Anton Lavey’s pretentious Californian Church of Satan and with a bit of negotiation ended up with a smuggled tape recording from one of their publicised ‘rituals’ and stuck it in as background to the Raveloni track ‘Head butt a demon’…that actually is Anton and his chums unaware that they are on the track. Looking the posey part, I had also gone to the News of the World posing as an apostate black magician who wanted to blow the lid off an occult event that was allegedly going to take place in England on a specific date. I had made it all up of course and wasn’t expecting the reporter to ring Lavey then and there at Daly City, California. Luckily, allowing for the time zone maybe, the number just rang and rang so no dialogue took place. I was hoping for a front page on the Sunday national with me being kept as an anonymous source informing the public about this secretive magical knees up which was only referred to by the code name…. the event was given the code name …..Texican Raveloni! What a wonderful plug it would have been for the album, but owing to lack of concrete evidence other than my word, the newspaper lost interest.
Maybe just as well or a full blown magical war between magic and blank wagic may have become the resulting reality. I’m unsure if my blank wagic actually does work, and I have an intuitive feeling that to be effective it has to be enacted the night before a Newcastle away win at Old Trafford. The last time I tried it I was trying to lure Katie Derham to a local venue in my city but instead fellow news reporter Fiona Bruce turned up at Lincoln Cathedral on an ‘Antiques Roadshow’ visit. And once, when I was trying to win the national lottery all that happened was a pack of frozen Walls’ pork sausages hurled themselves through my open bedroom window. (I’ve made that last bit up). I’ve also tried to wangle a Turkish female belly dancer manifest at the foot of my bed but I ran off when a male ballet dancer appeared.
I am aware that the most dangerous Blank Wagic rite is that of ‘The Nikoris Nik’ attributed to Nostrildamus – it is only ever to be attempted if one’s life is endangered and there is no other means of escape. The Rite, allegedly, will bring an unexpected halt to anyone chasing you as they will be so stunned by what they see they will stop in their tracks, declare ‘Nutter, he could be dangerous’ and abandon chase. Try it yourself. Standing upright in a stock still position with your arms placed by your side, extend both arms horizontally from the elbows only. On both hands, extend the nearest two fingers to each thumb so that they represent a ‘V’ and look like pincers. Suddenly start to run on the spot whilst rapidly kicking out both legs as high as you can, over and over. Start speaking the words ‘Nikoris Nik’ repeatedly (you must not stop). Now run like hell in your preferred direction, almost hovering off the ground, still extending both legs as high as you can, pronouncing ‘Nikoris Nik’ without a break. It should work. What won’t tho’ is the ruse I once posted on the Internet guaranteeing that if you followed these psychological instructions you would, without fail, meet the female of your wet dreams in a lucid dream that you could enforce. All you had to do was, ignoring the pain, attach a tight gripping washing line clothes peg to the end of your willie and stick a picture of your desired totty to the middle of your head with glue, then hop into bed and await sleep. The theory was that the irritation provided by the peg in the key area would couple with the image of the desire and present her in a dream where you were aware you were dreaming. It was of course, bullshit, but boy did I laugh picturing those who would give it a go.
There have been other examples of my dalliance with the so called occult. The first was after having a big article published in the local South Shields Gazette. The feature was always meant to have had a sequel, and although the Editor had always agreed this, he chickened out when he saw how controversial it was and reneged, so that it never appeared, unofficially banning me from his rag. I wasn’t going to take this laying down, although you will see in a moment that I did. I worked out the best way I could make a reappearance in the Gazette, albeit it as an Egyptian artefact. Acquiring some scratchy chicken wire, I stripped off and got Mrs O’Shave to wrap it round my body. Squeezing out of this newly formed structure without disturbing the general shape, and much scratched, we wrapped bandages around it, and spilt tea here and there with a splash of tomato sauce. I have to say, it really did look a convincing mummy and I’m sure I could have taken orders for a dozen or so. Next, I got our mate Woody who had his own taxi to take it and drop it off in the town centre late at night and then ring the Gazette early morning to say he had seen it on his travels. The Gazette went for it and along with the rather expected headline ‘Have you lost your mummy?’ there I was back in the Gazette, and you really could see it was my face modelled on the plaster face mask...the final and most poignant touch.
Now then, I will have to speak a little about this Egyptian death mask. One night, obviously bored, the missus and I decided we would attempt such a work of art. With plaster of Paris drying rapidly on my face, it was some fifteen minutes when it had gone rock and affixed itself to my skull that we realised I couldn’t breathe much longer. In a muffled communication I somehow managed a muffly ‘Get me out of here, quick!’ The mask had to be prised after much effort and using a knife, and ripped off my eyebrows and a section of my beard. I actually had been suffocating. No wonder it is called a Death Mask. I swore never, ever would I entertain such an undertaking (pun intended) again, until another night about a year later, the wife broke the boredom and silence with, ‘Death Mask?’ I’d fell for it again, only this time we allowed a straw to be inserted into a slit above my mouth. Twenty minutes later, I was still breathing but my skull was being crushed, and out came another flat knife, hurried prising and further beard loss. Never again. Still, this last effort was the mask that accompanied the mummy, so it did come in handy in the long run. Ironic all this, as years earlier I had faked my death for a prank on the music press, it being reported that Wavis had died from eating mercury omelette, and a mighty fine forged death certificate declaring the same, courtesy of the VIZ. I was officially dead for nearly two weeks until a reporter saw me on the street and the game was up.
Do you know, in my time I have been recognised for being three different people all who look nowt like each other? Namely my mates Rod Stewart and Steve Harley and also Johnny Rotten! In 1985 I took off to Malta to have a rest from this being recognised as Wavis stuff and shouted at by cheery fans with their wound down car windows, and within ten minute of arriving in the Mediterranean I was being jeered and shouted over at by two separate mobs of Italians for their idea of my passing semblance to 1) The time travelling magician Catweazle from the Tv series, and 2) Kojak. The excursion deteriorated further when I spent too long in the scorching sun and it burnt off my top layer of already South Shields sun tanned skin. I must be the only person who has ever gone abroad with a tan and arrived back with white skin. Also, I should have sussed that the park I was spending a lot of time in soaking up too much sun wasn’t all it seemed.
At 8 oclock each night everyone had mysteriously drifted out leaving it empty, only for it to speedily start filling up again. I was sitting in there all alone when a Maltese geezer made bee line to announce, ‘I like you.’ Hospitable and friendly lot these Maltese, I initially thought. Not. Well, you wouldn’t expect the brochures to have told you that after eight this scenic location transformed into the local gay park for pick ups, I suppose. Foook that. Arriving back at Newcastle Airport I was recognised by a taxi driver who was a fan and therefore waived on the £15 fare. Home sweet home.
Not quite Maltese gods, but Grecian, twice I have assimilated the garb to become a god. Pan’s goat shaggy thighs were recreated by me having to wear tights and then have the flower heads off pampas grass glued on, with Copydex. Mrs O’Shave was quite happy to remove it by tearing the fully thighed body mass off, which was beyond painful as the Copydex had soaked through the tights and affixed to my skin. It was only after the removal she informed that all I had to do was soak in a hot bath for ten minutes and it would have simply peeled off. Thanks. A further glue story is when we were perusing in a hardwear shop (somewhat appropriate for The Hard) looking for a particular glue that we couldn’t recall the name of but knew it smelt of almonds, required for upholstering furniture. We went down all the aisles taking the tops off the products and whiffing the sticky stuff. The assistants asked us to leave alluding that we were glue sniffers. Once when we were going to re-upholster a huge and expensive three piece, we set our boy’s mate up who was staying at the time. We told him we were skint and would have to resort to the tried and tested look down the side of your sofa for stray 50p or £1 coins. We told him we were that skint we’d go one better and so turning all the suite on its side we began ripping off all the covers. No big deal as we were going to have them reupholstered, but he didn’t know that and was beyond shocked at the irreparable costly vandalism for the sake of a few quid.
I have once been, as Tina Turner would put it, a private dancer for money, dressing up in full regalia as the Greek god Mercury in an attempt to win ‘Spot the Ball’. At the dead of night in winged sandals and winged helmet with very little in between I went dancing and twirling along in the dead of night along what I thought would be an empty gravel pits and fishing lakes. If I was dismayed to see a solitary, illegal fisherman with his rod by a lake who perchance spotted me, I hasten to think what he must have thought, also being in the position of not wanting to be seen, the significant difference being that I doubt ANYBODY would have believed his story whereas mine is easy to. Didn’t win ‘Spot the ball ’either, not even a tenner, despite having put the cross exactly where the solution later in the week showed it to be. Once, when we lived above a newsagent, Mrs O’Shave and I were so pessimistic about winning ‘Spot the ball’ that when we took our weekly coupon submission downstairs to have it checked we filled in the names bit with gems like ‘Mrs Megganfegganweggan’ (actually used that one) and Lex the Mexx (I named him), then would insouciantly check it was all in order before popping it in the ‘till for the awaiting agent to collect.
Like the pork sausages (forget I confessed), a single ‘Tie Your laces tight’ did materialise from the album, on London label Eccentric record, and would be the last of my efforts on good old vinyl. My interests in further recordings was by now sated, I had done enough and had no aspirations to unleash my musical surrealism any longer. There is a funny story associated with this ultimate single. Most Sundays I would partake in playing footy with a regular bunch at a Technical College playing fields (I was never a great footballer, just great at playing football) and this time there was a fellow on the other team who had turned up having just returned from two weeks down Penzance way in the South West. Even I heard him with my own ears excitedly trying to tell his team mates about this record he had heard whilst on his holiday. It was about a crazy bus driver who wouldn’t give you your change back. One of his team mates calmly turned him around and pointed him over at me. ‘See him, he recorded it!’ Well, this lad couldn’t believe it and naturally didn’t believe his informant. What odds would you give that on happening? But it was true, and furthermore he told us, the song had been top of the on-site Butlins’ Holiday Camp top 20 charts for six weeks!
Before leaving the subject of footy, I would like to declare that I think I was the original inventor of shirt sponsorship as far back as 1981. To be different, I would staple things like ‘Tetley Tea bags’ boxes onto my shirt front, and once I tacked a tartan packet of crisps – ‘Tatties’ – onto some wool that was attached to the back of my shorts so that when I whizzed down the wing it took off in the air like a kite. Sponsorship took off big time the following year when the first Great North Run saw 50,000 Geordies race from Newcastle to South Shields, chased by bailiffs and TV Licensing officers who gave them all a 200 yards head start. Well…maybe that’s not completely true, but ‘You won’t catch me on the 503’ is a true story about a stingy bus driver and was the ‘b’ side of ‘Laces’. It has a lot of swearing on it at the start and was quickly embraced by the VIZ Comic fellows who miraculously had some of it included and played on their 1998 BBC Radio One Documentary ‘VIZ – The Rock n Roll years’, although it was quietened down and eventually faded out as the swearing kicked in, as part of the ‘Strange World of Wavis O’Shave’ section, in which I didn’t personally appear owing to the fact that I am very good at being unobtainable.
At about this time my friend and pop star actress Toyah Willcox had asked to record ‘Better get the washing in’ from Raveloni, with me, which some would have considered a great proposition, but true to my uncommercial nature I didn’t respond to, presumably some sort of offer of a duet with this occasional top twenty chartster. There was also talk of Dave Robinson’s promise that Stiff Records do a one-off single deal with me, he being the Head of the label. Seems as of Wavey, considered unmanageable and untrammelled, would be too much of a risk to try and entertain for any longer than that, but the half promise faded into oblivion which suited me fine although, with a few almost guaranteed strings pulled to ensure return on the venture, it was a given that any such eventuality would have afforded me joining the ranks of the ‘One hit wonder’. And I wonder if being a ‘None hit wonder’ isn’t a better achievement. Suits me fine! If I’d wanted to be into the – and I’m sure its exactly this simple - sex n drugs and rock n roll of the industry that ensures your longevity and rewards in the music world, I would have been, but snecks, no drugs and a fig roll is more akin to my predilection.
My only involvement with Stiff apart from crashing in at Dury’s Blockhead Michael Gallagher’s flat and being too tired to stay awake was whilst being present when Anti-Pop had tried to blackmail some free studio time from Jona Lewie, (he of the cavalry), after turning up unannounced one late night at his flat to share that his last private phone call with Phil Branston in which Jona had discussed being worried about his current premature ejaculation problem and that he was prematurely balding, had been recorded. Maybe not so stiff, Jona? Phil Branston’s brother Tim knew someone who knew John Barry, the composer for many James Bond soundtracks, and accordingly Barry had ended up with a copy of ‘Anna ford’s Bum’, thus surely making him the most unlikeliest of recipients. I’ve no idea what they thought he should do with it. A Bond movie ‘Goldbum?’
In the wake of Texican Raveloni I moved the focus of attention onto promoting my Dad live in concert. It wasn’t him really, it was just Teddy Anteater with his headphones plugged into a music deck playing songs he would then sing along with, and with an electric guitar he couldn’t play, draped around his neck. Teddy looked uncannily like the biblical Isaiah as painted by Michelangelo and when we showed her the evidence his girlfriend just thought we were showing a pic of her Ted. Teddy was the original naff ‘X- factor contestant’ and to inflict him upon an unsuspecting audience was hilarious at first watching their response to the phenomenon. When John Lydon moved to New York I sent him a tape of spurious Father Ted, as he made Public Image sound musical, but Rotten wasn’t going to bite. I didn’t realise until much later in life when all this was but vintage memory that Ted most probably was tone deaf into the bargain. One gig, he played support to Anti-Pop’s Arthur 2-Stroke and the Chart Commandoes, at Newcastle University. It was full of pseudo-toffs and after about five minutes they realised this wasn’t a serious act tuning his instruments up. Slowly and then faster the handclapping loudened with chants of ‘Off, off’ and a hail of objects heading towards the oblivious Teddy who was murdering Thin Lizzy’s ‘Whisky in the Jar’ by then, or, as Ted’s tone deafness heard it, ‘Whisky in the Jarwood’. (I had met Phil Lynott before and could believe him to be the skinniest man in the Universe). By the time he reached his version of the New Seekers’ ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing (In perfect harmony)’ – oh, yes, these songs were mercilessly thought out by yours truly – the hail of objects aimed at him were becoming more accurate than his vocal could ever be, and I had to act as a compassionate human shield. ‘They’re chucking things at me, ‘ he said in between a lyric. Not being one to hurt his feelings I told him, ‘I know. They like you’.
Strange thing, about 18 months later, I received a correspondence from the Uni wanting to book him again. The best of Teddy can be heard on a rare Youtube audio hiding somewhere out there in cyber space under ‘The Wavis O’Shave South Shields’ Travelling Circus’ which also features some local personalities who never made it to the natural end of their lives, including Billy Meths. Billy was the town tramp and I caused havoc when I produced Billy Meths T-Shirts with a fine posed sepia picture of him on it…almost every regular in the pubs wanted one. Wavis still had his own commitments and obligations, like regularly having to appear in the national music press for his own antics.
Two that spring to mind were both challenges, and I really meant them. Consequently, and reported accurately, was my challenging of the then President of the USA, Jimmy Carter to a race from my house to the nearest taxi rank, the winner automatically becoming the President of America. I sent this challenge to Jim courtesy of The White House. No response. I also challenged the Pope to a boxing match, the winner to become Pope. This was sent to the Vatican. No response either. Still, I didn’t want to become either President or Pope really. I have had two involvements with champion boxers. The first was Frank Bruno shortly after his first defeat by Tyson. Mrs and I negotiated to have his massive cupped paws painted with poster paint and impressed onto a large sheet of paper, signed and framed to be auctioned off at a charity for a school for deaf and dumb children in Newcastle. His agent wasn’t going to let us anywhere near Franks mitts with paint as they were hugely insured, but he changed his mind when we told him Lady Di was the Patron of the School.
Next up, I thought it might be a good idea to have The Hard scrap reigning champ Chris Eubank for Children in Need. The challenge went through his Brighton letterbox but no response ever came through mine. Shame, coz I’d been in training. We had arranged some bouts and gotten Woody to take us to a boxing gym alongside Sunderland Docks –a well rough area, so rough that he refused to park his taxi outside and wait for us claiming if anybody spotted he was from South Shields they would have wrecked the cab and him if in it. He’d never make a bodyguard that one. I had had some shorts made by wifey that went down to near my ankles, and the gloves were exaggerated in size, about five times bigger than normal. Both shorts and gloves were made from plush crushed velvet curtains that had once belonged to the ABC cinema. The boots were pointy Indian moccassins. When I had to leave the dressing room to appear, I was met with a prolonged silence by everyone in the rings who suddenly stopped their sparring. I thought I might just be greeted by hoots of laughter, but they were all too impressed with my outfit to even laugh at the gloves. We needed some pix to show Eubank and when I asked a young lad to get down on his knee and me to arrange a glove on his jaw, he replied in all sincerity, ‘I don’t take a dive for anybody’. We took some pix and got out of there rather quickly. Snapped on, I mean spurred on, by the Bruno success at least, I next tried to see if I could get Maradonna’s footprints immortalised on a plaster base, for a charity sale. All he would have to do would be stand in a wet plaster mixture, and it would have got me a free trip out to Italy as he was in Napoli at the time. I guess his feet must have been insured too, as the club got wet feet over it and we didn’t get his.
In my time I have been responsible for two high profile security scares I’ll have you know. The first was in 1986 involving Prince Charles. A friend of mine, Michael Roll, was a bit of a Quantum physicist who was fed up with sending his work for Charles to study, and it never got past his Palace secretary. When I learned that Charlie was visiting nearby to open a business centre, I asked Rolly to send me his work and I’d present it to our future king personally. People rated me as having no chance of success in getting near enough to him but Mrs O’Shave suggested I only needed something to attract his attention that would draw him over to me, producing a very long waspish yellow and black stripey scarf. When the day came and Charlie was leaving the building, I shouted over at him from behind the barriers, ‘Prince Charles, Sir!’ He stopped in his royal tracks and looked over at me. Ignoring his revved up royal car, and his security, he came straight over. He made it apparent that he was ok to chat and accepted the wad of Rolly’s work that I pulled out of my inside pocket and handed him. The scarf HAD worked! He did a little walk about acknowledging the waving Union jack flags flapped by loving royalists who were amazed to see he had came over, and then left. The moment he did, I was well pounced on by security and police, who had shit themselves in that split second when I had gone inside my pocket to whip something out, and were responsible for a major security breach. They demanded to know what I had given him, and were in big trouble for allowing an unknown (not that unknown!) and random member of the public the opportunity. I guess it could have been a water pistol or something worse. One week later Rolly received a letter from Charles thanking him for his work. Good, eh?
The other scare was when I went up to Dumfries in Scotland in 1994 to join the crowds eager to welcome HH The Dalai Lama open a temple at Samye-Ling Tibetan centre, where, incidentally, I stayed during 1977. Oh yes, Wavey has lived with authentic Tibetan refugees and had an authentic lama teacher, and even today has a lama friend who sometimes stays with the O’Shave’s. Tibetan mysticism and Wavis surrealism – a splendid mix. Anyway, came the moment that the Dalai was being ushered past the thronging crowd and into the temple I may have being showing a little extra exuberance, with my freshly shaved head, thrusting forward to get close to him, after all why not, here was a figure I had been waiting to meet for twenty years – South Shields and India are some distance apart. Mrs O’Shave was some distance away, and afterwards she told me that Dumfries police had been walkie-talkie-ing each other distance apart for some time, singling me out of the crowd and following me around, and she actually heard them say ,’Keep your eye on that guy.’ Fer fook sakes! It reminded me of the time when Fatty Round and I went down to Lincoln on a train to add some synth to AFB and after checking everyone’s tickets in the long carriage the guard doubled back to me only, saying ‘Let me have look at yours again’.
Busy being Wavis being ignored by such VIP’s and a long term ride on ‘The Tube’ beckoning, to pop up on almost 4 million UK TV sets on Friday teatime. People ask me what Paula Yates was like, the ex-wife of Sir Bob Geldof and co-presenter of the show. Paula met with a tragic and early death recorded as suicide. Well, before those end days I guess I should confirm that Paula was a very photogenic young woman and a complete flirt. Not that she flirted with me, oh no. She called me a ‘prawn’ on live air and another time requested that I be booted out of my dressing room and she have it. After the sea mollusc remark my retort was to send her dozens of Prawn cocktail crisps, and yes, she got my dressing room as I accepted she was pregnant at the time and it would mean less walking distance for her. Apart from the time I went through a prolonged period of sending people actual toast with a cut out picture of beans stapled onto it, the only other time I’ve sent an inanimate object with a slight relevance was to BBC radio broadcaster Anne Nightingale. She had the hots for Sting, and as it was the world’s worst kept secret that he would return to his parents home every year for Christmas, I borrowed an empty milk bottle off their Wallsend doorstep and sent her it so she had a genuine treasure – Sting’s empty milk bottle with no message in it.
I was saddened when I learned of Paula’s death in 2000 so I guess I didn’t have a problem with Paula at all. Can’t say whether the feeling was mutual tho’! I knew even less about skinny Jools Holland who often would climb into a taxi straight after the show and claim expenses for £120 to take him to London. When I told people we got £8000 per show they thought I meant that's what I earned, but that was the total budget for each one, ridiculous when you think in current day terms of programme expenditure. I never really knew anybody on The Tube, I’d just turn up, do my thing and be off. No Green Room hospitality or ‘owt like that. I’m there to do a job – or amuse myself by letting off some surreal steam building up in my bonce and requiring release other than out of my ears – and then I’m off. So, y’see, I wasn’t out my head, just out of my ears.
Being resident on the show meant that I could turn up anytime and mingle freely, but ever the lovable unsociable bastard and recluse, I never really needed to do that to rub shoulders with rock and pop royalty, I’d already managed that on my own steam over the years having met the likes of The Faces, Bowie, Elton, The Who and Queen. In 1976 the Borestiffers went to Sunderland to see Sooty and Sweep, the latter being one of my all time heroes. I recall how the cast peeped through the curtain to check us out thinking that we were there to heckle. (We spotted Newcastle United right half Tommy Gibb there on his own. Dunno what his excuse was unless he was a closet Sweep fan). I only ever in all of five years took the Tube offer up once and that was to see Iggy Pop do a set. I spooked the production team big time and had them follow me about in person and camera when I flashed Chris Cowey a knife and said I would be throwing it at the Ig. It was only a rubber one but sufficiently realistic to flash. With my convoluted sense of humour and during a moment's silence in his three number set I shouted ‘Showuz yer willie, Jimmy!’ But he declined to flash, and I didn’t want to see it anyway. Iggy was, to my mind, and still is a rock legend and one of the more genuine wild children of the stage. Having said that mind, I don’t think much of the ‘wild men’ of rock like Ig, Keith Moon and Oliver Reed because anybody who are out of their heads on drugs or alcohol or both can happily unleash their ‘outrageous’ performance, it’s too common and uninventive. Give me a good, honest wayward child like Hatt or Anteater, high on fresh air. And Wavey, of course.
I’ve had some real fine rock n roll adventures. We drove through London turning heads in the Wavismobile. We sprayed a long, thin hooter the length of the car and considering it was a nose it was most eye catching. One time, we crashed a bit into the back of a car in front of us and immediately saw the driver angrily hop out of his seat and come round to us. We wound down the window and he took one look at the occupants of the car and he and his anger quickly returned back to his own. All four of us had been wearing two foot false noses all day long. I guess he was taking no chances. I had a mishap the day we first went to an appointment at Virgin Record Company. Just as I was alighting from the Wavismobile, the four foot nose that I had been carefully looking after and preventing from mishap all day got snapped in half when I slammed the door shut. A truncated trunk. Not the best appearance to meet the fans with.
We stopped off at Virgin’s record store in Oxford Street where I was surreptitiously hiding a prepared album under my jacket. I’d knocked up a convincingly smart cover, tailor made for the impending dialogue, asking the counter assistant if they had any ‘News At Ten’ bootlegs, intimating that in existence there were albums containing selected bulletins. I pulled out my mock copy to show him, ‘Here’s one’ I said. The chap had no option but to believe me, but not surprisingly they didn’t have any of their own in stock. In 1977 Bonny Tyler was lost in France, in 1980 I was impossibly lost in London. A squad of us had headed down the motorway at the dead of Newcastle night for an appointment I had as a representative of Danny Deen’s band ‘The Letters’, arriving in London at 5am for Virgin territory and an early morning appointment there to play a demo. Danny was the spitting image of Buddy Holly, and, spookily, was born the day Holly died. Even later in the day I decided why not nip off to see familiar faces at ‘The Sounds’ rock mag, believing their offices to be not far away, and so, taking Letters lead singer Batey with me, we promised we wouldn’t be long. Batey had a voice to rival Richard Burton’s and his party piece was to jump up on a table and accurately recite reams of Shakespeare. Although to be honest, he did it everywhere, anytime and didn’t know when to stop. Actually, the offices were some distance away and after stopping to ask directions a number of times (and being referred to by some American tourists as ‘Look, there’s some of those ‘skin-hairs’) it took us ages to arrive.
After surprising some of the staff with my visit and reminding Batey to get down and shut up, I thought it best we head back to the car and our sleeping driver. But where had we left it? What was the name of the street? Where was it? What colour was it even? What make? We had travelled down in the dark and not really paid any attention to detail. My excuse being that I am Wavis, and Batey’s that he was known to be off his flat cap. (Failing to grasp the gravity of our farcical and impending homeless predicament, he calmly continued playing his mouth organ like a hopeful busker). I can only surmise that there must be a kindly God that looks down and smiles at hapless individuals from time to time, and like homing pigeons inspired our feet to do some fortuitous, mazy and labyrinth like walking which eventually did lead us back to the parked mystery car, location and pissed off driver. I defy anyone to ever get in a situation more ludicrous than that just described. Sadly, Batey, his cap and mouthie is no longer with us, as he took a long swim off a pier, and he couldn’t swim, Danny left the earth plane too, years later, another self inflicted casualty.
The two most infamous encounters I have had are quite well documented elsewhere so I’ll keep it short. London’s Flying Squad, (they don’t actually fly) and ‘crazy’ (I think not) Kenny Everett. Oh, and don’t let me forget being ‘The Bread Thief of Iona’ (not guilty) and a twisted fire starter (it wasn’t me). Well, whenever I went to London I’d carry a chair leg wrapped in brown paper should the occasion arise I would need it as a natural defence. If ever confronted about it by rozzers I would say it was a Xmas gift for my mother. Anyway, in the Wavismobile we had some masks and spare nozzles and chauffeur Geldwink wore a bowler hat, leather jacket with Captain Scarlet badges and padded pants. He had brought along a baseball bat so that he could pose as my security guard in the style of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and we all wore 3’ polysterene hooters. We pulled up in a dead end having lost our way, close to a scrap yard in his multi-coloured Wavismobile and Gelders noticed a car pull up close behind. He tried to wave them on but the two male occupants jumped out identifying themselves as plain clothed Flying Squad officers concerned that a North-east registered sports car was heading for a well known but not to us dodgy area and scrapyard in London. It literally was like being in ‘The Sweeney’. There was a younger guy and an older guy with one playing ‘good cop’ and the other ‘bad cop’ like Reagan and Carter. The bad cop had taken himself and Captain Scarlet round to the boot while the other searched inside the car for drugs. When Gelders had opened the boot the copper’s eyes met with our masks, chair leg and baseball bat stash and said ,’What’s this, sticks and masks son, you could get 15 years for this.’ As the Big G was explaining at this stage that they were simply stage props, and explained that the chair leg in brown paper was my mum’s Xmas gift, I donned my biggest polysterene sneck to lean out of the rear window to enquire, ‘What appears to be the problem officer?’ The rozzers gave up on us and actually also gave us an escort back to the M1 to get us out of London as quickly as possible.
Years later, Mrs O’Shave and I found ourselves in another wrong place at the wrong time. We had parked our caravan almost on the no-go border of the French Pyrennes with Spain, unaware that the area was a stronghold of Basque terrorist group ETA, of which the local police suspected we were members. I can assure you here and now that I have never terrorised a single person wearing a basque. There is a more serious aspect involving this mix up. When Mrs O’Shave and I were being kept holed up in our French hotel facing these accusations, she rang her Dad Harry back in England for support. ’Dad, they’re saying we’re terrorists’ she trembled. Harry, in an attempt to make light of the nonsense, replied, ’Well you know you are, you little bombers.’ If only we’d thought to inform him that Interpol who had paid us a visit were listening in to all of our phone calls. Terrorists, no, but what Mrs O’Shave and I are is indeed creative creatures and to this end we almost entered into the world of confectionary. We had made our own choc offering, a ‘Nose Bar’, with white chocolate, cherries and cereals, the wrapper having a lift upable two inch elongated nose attached to a Wavis face. Anti-Pop’s Phil Branston thought it a sure fire fortune finder and had us make about 30 which we sold, shaking him off and then having the idea to send one to Nestle’s in Switzerland to see if they would be interested in our empire. We changed the name to a catchy ‘Hinnybinny’ for them. Although appreciating the product, they didn’t want to buy us out but sent us a cheque for £2.50 for our troubles. Similar products are now on the market as if confirming that Wavis is fifty years ahead of his time and ten behind it.
We were also the first to make ‘deggs’ as we called them, white chocolate with a spot of marzipan in the middle to mimic a fried egg, which have since appeared in shops, although we also did ones with a green dyed middle calling them ‘badeggs’, that haven’t. In 1989 Mrs O’Shave was the first to notice how drab ordinary wellington boots looked and set about spraying them muticoloured through white lace material and called them ’Sploots’ which she sold in a friend’s shop window. That all these products eventually came into being much later is good evidence to show that it was never encoded into our DNA to be entrepreneurs. I’d also tried my hand at making board games, the best being a great Loch Ness Monster bearing in mind the five million visitors the lake gets each year. The objective was to whizz down to London ahead of other competitors to sell your pic of Nessie to a tabloid without even knowing yourself until you got there and the pic revealed whether you had a genuine snap of Nessie or whether it was just a floating sofa or a piece of log or such.
In those days if you felt you had a good idea for a board game you had to submit it first to the only fella in the country who could take the idea with him and present it to the big game manufacturer, him being their trusted agent.. For the pleasure you had to bung him £25 a game. I’ll never forget his odd name, he was Mr Kidney from Bristol. Anyway, no matter what you punted him, you couldn’t get past the bugger, he’d just cash your cheques and say, ‘No, can’t do anything with that’. Nice work if you can get it.
Another time whilst down in the Smoke, Gelders spotted Kenny Everett driving a short distance in front of us so it seemed like the right thing to do to pursue him. He arrived at a garage and went for some petrol. We caught him up, and with our bestest and longest false noses already on, shouted to him. When he saw us his face was aghast and he left his car and legged it away a safe distance running into the forecourt shop. We set about a chase in true Benny Hill fashion shouting ‘Kenny, Kenny!’ after him. Whether he was out of breath or what, in the end we caught him up and he seemed a little better for it when, probably out of embarrassment, one of my troupe asked him to sign his A –Z which he did and then to beat an official hasty retreat in his vehicle. Maybe not so crazy Kenny, huh?
Now, being that bread thief of the spiritual inner Hebridean island of Iona was quite another event. I had made my way up there from South Shields on a return British Rail fare of £35 back then in 1985, that in itself being amazing. South Shields-Newcastle-Edinburgh-Glasgow-Oban-Mull-Fionniphort and across the mile long sound to this famous holy retreat. It was a fantastic voyage truly like traversing to the ends of the earth. It was a place I had wanted to visit for years as, amongst other interpretations, it was a faery isle...yes it had a long history of the faery folk being seen there particularly on their highest hill Dun-I. Well, maybe I could see some of them, so finally I arrived there in July 1985, dressed in a brown monk habit that I had specially made. Upon arrival amidst this 105 people population, I soon bumped into a wee Scots rascal and his wee dog from Glasgow, replete with a dirk down his sock. (The owner not the dog). Like myself, he had no place to stay on the isle and wandering about we came across another Scots rascal who had pitched his tent, illegally, upon the steepest slope on Dun-I. As we were all in the same boat, (well, they weren’t seeking fairies, it was a lightning strike dose of spirituality they hoped for, which had it happened would have been a greater act of magic than me seeing the Little People) it seemed sensible that we should all end up in the same tent that night.
Rather than sleep, all we did was slide down the slope and so, wide awake and hungry, we went walkabout the very small isle and ended up in the Abbey of which the door is always open. It was about 3am and as we wandered about in there I noticed that my two Caledonian comrades were nowhere to be seen. Chomping noises gave them away however. They were in the larder within the Abbey and helping themselves to slices of bread. I thought I should join in for team spirit and took my own out from a back pack that I had lugged about with me. So there we were, chomping, laughing and joking and making some noise which was confirmed when a half awake chap in night attire appeared out of nowhere and from his spiritual perspective saw three undesirable brigands robbing his precious larder of the island’s bread stock. I protested my innocence and even provided the wrapper off my own loaf to show that it didn’t match what the islanders order or what was firmly lodged in my two guilty chums’ gobs. Turns out this bloke was the head of the Community on the island, and he wasn’t having any of it. We woz foookin’ thieves and that was it. ‘Our type’ wasn’t welcome on this spiritual and well stocked bread island of his and he ordered us off on the first ferry of the morning at 4.35am under threat of summoning police from Glasgow. And so I didn’t have the chance to see any fairies, only a ferry, having only arrived on this holy turf at 7pm the night before to being chucked off it at 4.35 the next morning, branded the bread thief of Iona. I would think the posters have been taken down by now, but hey, only O’Shave could go on a spiritual pilgrimage to end up being denounced a thief.
Being a twisted firestarter wasn’t much better. Mrs O’Shave and I had a pet goose, a girl we called Chooga ‘cos she chewed everything. How to have a bald lawn in less than two hours. We raised her from egg and as I was the first thing she saw when see popped out she thought I was her Mother, as they do. She ate everything she did, but I was privy to a special relationship with her owing to being Mother Goose. We bathed her in our own bath, not an easy task, surpassed in difficulty only in trying to pick up a goose and take it from your allotment garden and put it in the back of your car when it has its entire wings span out, flapping furiously and shitting just as furious. I’d fly her like a kestrel and she would swoop from a hundred yards away to land on my awaiting outstretched fist.
Whilst mentioning pets, I’ll spend a few words on my current ‘hard dog’ punk cocker spaniel and hybrid Springer Poochiedoggerknackl, whom I’ve given more names than I have myself. ‘Pook’ for short, – although it changes every day – was taught his own vocabulary. A ‘bizwizzpoo’ is, of course, a crap. He is the Prince of Dogness and prefers to be a baddleladdel rather than a gooddleladdel. When he was a pup and it was time for his bed I’d stare at him whilst having him held perched up on my shoulder and a bit like a ventro’s dummy, asking ‘What time is it?’, followed by ‘It’s time for bed.’ Naturally, like a young kid, he wouldn’t want to go and so his nose would wrinkle up like a corrugated tin roof and he growl quite nastily. After I couldn’t keep my laff in any longer whilst staring him oot, I’d let it fly and with that he’d dive over and bite my nose He’s nearly nine now and the routine is still intact. I’d fight him on the landing upstairs and it would get quite rough with me calling it off when his bites sank right into my bones. I would hold him down and thrust him a ‘Jew’s claw’ in his face and when we scrapped I would shout at him ‘Bite the Jew!’ I have licence to do this as my ancestry is Jewish on my Miggla’s side so I’m really having a bit of a pop at myself (Mrs O’Shave swears that I must be Yiddish, thus justifying my humour). I told the missus NEVER to tell a soul about our biting of the Jew, and of course, she did one night when I was keeping everyone waiting at a social evening. ‘Oh, he’ll be upstairs with the dog playing ‘Bite the Jew’. The guests went silent, obviously and mistakenly thinking I was a secretive anti-semite. More like anti-dogbite.
Once whilst on a walk, and Pook does his bizwizzpoo in instalments, maybe five instead of one huge dump not to mention phantom wees every 100 yards, he got his head stuck in some railings. I thought the only way forward and out was to slide him up and down to try and find some more space to pop him out. Only later did I realise that, seen from their angle by passing motorists on the road, the motion would have looked like here was an owner giving his dog one from behind. We once had a Mogwai. Well, he looked like one but was a Peruvian Sheltie a type of long haired guinea pig who we kept in a dolls house. He did sing a bit like a mogwai, enough to fool next doors kids. Although he should have only lived a few years he made it to nine despite having regular heart attacks when aged for which the remedy and full recovery was an inspirational small sip of whisky from a spoon. The first time I let him adventure into our garden I saw my prize sunflower suddenly poleaxe courtesy of his chomping and sharp incisers.