On tour with Cockney Rebel

We are in Portugal, 1979, co-headlining a tour with the hopeless Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel . Essence Rare has almost done well in this newly post-fascist state. Steve had had a big hit with the execrable " Judy Teen" , with his ersatz take on the Thin Man's Bromley slur, the creepy petit bourgeois who wrote, with other reactionaries, an open letter to EMI demanding the Sex Pistols get chucked off the label. Which EMI did , to Mclaren's oily delight.

We're back of the bullring we're due to play in, in our half of a corrugated iron shack that masquerades as dressing rooms. One half : me, Gill, Dave & hugo. In the other , The Gimp & his hapless sidemen. A lonely jenny grumbles away to share a dribble of juice for the feeble lights. We're shooting the breeze, tuning up, when the lights go dead. Complete darkness. Steve's half of the shed is now brilliantly lit! The runt's cut our power so he can see better!
So Dave bashes his chair BANG! BANG! BANG!over and over and over against the thin metal divider on the other side of which Harley sits in blazing brightness. His head must have bounced off the wall like a tennis ball. Our light's restored & in lurches Steve's coke-addled TM , a big fat sweaty fuck of a man, white legs and gut ringfencing his touristische shorts, who screams " THIS NEVER HAPPENS ON MY TOURS! " Dave turns, gently puts down the chair and swallow dives, a perfect 10, into the long table laden with cold cuts & junkfood; the table collapses, shit's sprayed everywhere. Dave gets up, sticky with sliced salami and mayo , to stab his finger in the TM chest & say "THIS is what happens if you turn off our lights!"

Brilliant & mysterious.

It is Dave's finest hour.