Buch lesen: «Confessions of a Pop Star»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Publisher’s Notes

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Also available in the CONFESSIONS series

About the Author

Also by Timothy Lea & Rosie Dixon

Copyright

About the Publisher

Publisher’s Note

The Confessions series of novels were written in the 1970s and some of the content may not be as politically correct as we might expect of material written today. We have, however, published these ebook editions without any changes to preserve the integrity of the original books. These are word for word how they first appeared.

Chapter One

In which a talent spotting trip to the East End with brother-in-law, Sid, involves Timmy in an unseemly fracas and two close brushes with the opposite sex.

‘Gordon Bennett!’ says Dad. ‘Most people can get out of the nick easier than the army. “Dishonourable Discharge.” Sounds like what we used to find on the front of your pyjamas.’

‘Dad, please!’ I mean, that kind of remark is so uncalled for. Anyhow, I never had a pair of pyjamas when I was going steady with the five-fingered widow.

‘This latest disgrace has dropped us right in it with the neighbours. I don’t know where to put my face.’

‘Why don’t you try some of the places Sid has been suggesting all these years?’ It is sad, but Dad always brings out the worst in me.

‘You leave your sponging brother-in-law out of this. Just consider what you’ve achieved in the last five years. You’ve broken your mother’s heart and now you’ve damn near done for mine. In the nick twice and God knows how many jobs you’ve had.’

‘The first time was only reform school, Dad.’

‘That’s shredded in the mists of antiquity, that is. Why can’t you be like your sister? A nice home, two lovely kiddies. She’s done all right for herself.’

‘I couldn’t find the right bloke to settle down with, Dad.’

‘I don’t expect it’s for want of trying, though. That’s the one thing we haven’t had from you, isn’t it? I’m waiting for you to turn into a nancy boy. That’ll be the final nail in my coffin.’

‘I’ve started a whip round for the hammer, Dad.’

As might be expected, Dad is not slow to take umbrage at this remark.

‘That’s nice, isn’t it? Bleeding nice. That really puts the kibosh on it, that does. You sacrifice your whole life to your kids and what do you get? Bleeding little basket wants to see you under the sod.’

‘One on top of the other, Dad.’

Dad steams out of sight and I consider what an ugly, weasel-faced old git he is. It is amazing to think that he could have produced something as overpoweringly lovely as myself. Sometimes I wonder if he actually did have a hand in it – or something more intimate. I have always found it disgusting to think of my Mum and Dad on the job but the thought of some invisible third-party – a prince or something like that – giving Mum one behind Battersea Town Hall seems much more favourite. The arse is always cleaner on the other side of the partition, if you know what I mean.

Of course, to be fair, you can understand Dad being a bit narked. When I was conned into signing on as a ‘Professional’ for nine years, he must have thought that he could fill every inch of my bedroom with nicked stuff from the lost-property office where he works. I use the word ‘work’ in its loosest sense. Dad had to be carried into the nearest boozer when someone in his bus queue mentioned overtime. When Dad thought he had got rid of me, he reckoned without Sid’s ability to put the mockers on anything he comes into contact with. I will never forget the sight of Sid’s nuclear warhead drooping towards submarine level while the colonel’s lady shouted for action and all those Yanks with gaiters halfway up their legs bristled in the doorway. It is the nearest we have ever come to causing World War III. She was a funny woman, that one. Very strange. There can’t be many birds who fancy a bit of in and out under the shadow of the ultimate deterrent – still, I expect you read all about it in Confessions of a Private Soldier so I won’t go on. (Of course, if you did not read about it, there is nothing to stop you nipping round the corner and having a word with your friendly local newsagent. If you ask him nicely he might be able to find you a copy – to say nothing much about the other titles in the series. For instance, there is – ‘Belt up and get on with it!’ Ed. All right, all right! I’ve got to live, haven’t I. Blimey, these blokes think you can nosh carbon paper. I am not surprised that Les Miserables packed it in after one book.)

Anyway, getting back to the present. There I am at 16, Scraggs Lane, ancestral home of the Leas since times immemorial after an unproductive brush with HM Forces. It might have done Mark Phillips a bit of good but I did not as much as catch sight of a corgi’s greeting card the whole time I was in the Loamshires. Ridiculous when you consider how many Walls sausages the family must have eaten over the years. And talking of food, here comes my Mum, that commodity’s greatest natural enemy. The only woman to have burned water.

‘Stop going on, Dad,’ she says. ‘Tea’s on the table. I’ve got some nice fester cream rice for sweet.’

‘You mean, Vesta Cream Rice, Mum. “Fester” means to turn rotten.’

‘You want to taste it before you start telling your mother what she means,’ snorts Dad. ‘It doesn’t take a lot of prisoners, that stuff, I can tell you.’ Mum may be a diabolical cook but her heart is in the right place – and that saves an awful lot of trouble when you go for a medical checkup, I can tell you. It also means that she is always glad to see me home whatever I have done. She has even tried to spell out ‘WELCOME’ in the alphabet soup.

‘It’s funny,’ she says, gazing at me over the curling beef-burgers. ‘You look such a wholesome boy.’

Dad snorts. ‘I expect Jack the Ripper looked bleeding wholesome and all. Don’t start making excuses for him, mother. He’s never going to change. I’ve given up hope for him.’

‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do, now, dear?’ says Mum, absentmindedly straining the cabbage on to the beefburgers – at least it takes the curl out of them.

‘Sid’s got an idea about going into the entertainment business. I’m having a talk with him tonight.’

‘ “Entertainment?” But you don’t do anything.’

‘You can say that again,’ sneers Dad.

‘I know how you got that job at the lost property office,’ I say. ‘Someone handed you in, did they?’

‘Watch it, Smart Alec!’

‘Stop it, both of you. You know I can’t stand scenes. I still don’t see what Timmy is going to do. Sid doesn’t play anything, does he?’

‘Sidney Noggett has been on the fiddle for years,’ says Dad wittily. ‘That’s the only way you get anywhere, these days. A decent working-class man with a set of principles might as well stay at home.’

‘You do stay at home most of the time, Dad.’

‘It’s my back, isn’t it? There’s no cause to mock the afflicted. If me and a few more like me didn’t have our aches and pains you might be feeling the Nazi jackboot across the back of your neck.’

Dad does tend to over-dramatise a bit for a bloke who spent most of World War II fire watching. In fact I have known him turn off Dad’s Army because he found it too harrowing. Still, he is very sensitive on the subject and since my present standing in the family is one of grovelling I should be advised to lay off.

‘Sorry, Dad.’ The words are more difficult to form than the Bermondsey branch of the Ted Heath fan club.

‘I should bleeding think so. Young people today don’t know the meaning of the word patriotism. Look at us. Knocked out of the World Cup by a load of Polaks. The Krauts going mad in Munich. It’s a bleeding national disgrace.’

‘Come on, Dad. When your mate, Stanley Matthews, was playing we were beaten by the Yanks.’

Dad does not like this. ‘Sir Stanley Matthews if you don’t mind, Sonny Jim. That was the atmospheric conditions, wasn’t it? They made them play up the side of a mountain, didn’t they? Our lads weren’t used to it. I don’t call that football.’

‘Do give over, Dad,’ says Mum. ‘How do you like the beefburgers?’

‘I don’t reckon them boiled, I can tell you that.’ Dad did not see Mum straining the cabbage over them.

‘Just as you like, dear. I thought it might make a change.’

Mum does not bat an eyelid. ‘Eat up, Timmy. Your rice is all ready.’

Already ruined, I can see that. Once it starts making a bolt for it over the side of the saucepan you can reckon that it has given up the ghost.

‘I don’t know if I can manage it, Mum,’ I say, patting my stomach in a way that I hope suggests satisfaction with the excellent fare that has already been provided.

‘Go on. I know you can find room for it. I’ll put some golden syrup on it like I used to when you were a little boy. You remember how he used to love hot, sticky things when he was a kiddy, Dad?’

‘Yeah.’ Dad’s face adapts a thoughtful expression and I can sense his disgusting mind working on some tasteless descent into vulgarity.

‘Just a little bit, Mum,’ I say hurriedly, ‘I think I put on some weight in the army.’

‘I was thinking how thin you looked.’ Mum thumps down an enormous helping of what looks like petrified frog’s spawn. I do wish she would not use the spoon with which she dishes out the beefburgers. ‘There you are. Rice is the stable diet of the Chinese, you know.’

‘This lot looks as if it’s seen the inside of a stable and all,’ complains Dad. ‘Gordon Bennett! How do you manage to get it like that?’

‘I did what it said on the side of the tin,’ says Mum, patiently reading from the label. ‘ “Brown and crisp on the outside, moist and tender in the middle.” ’

Dad claps his hand to his head. ‘Gawd, give me strength! That’s the steak-pie tin, isn’t it? Can’t you even read from the right bleeding labels?’

‘Oh dear. It must be my glasses,’ says Mum.

‘Yeah, you want to stop filling them to the brim all the time,’ snaps Dad.

‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I did turn to drink, the way you go on at me,’ sniffs Mum. ‘If the food isn’t good enough for you, you’d better give me some more house-keeping money.’

‘I daren’t do that,’ says Dad. ‘All you’d do is buy bigger tins.’

‘At least the print on the labels would be larger, Dad,’ I say helpfully.

‘Don’t you turn against me, now,’ sobs Mum. ‘I try and do you something nice when you come home and this is all the thanks I get.’

‘See what you’ve done now?’ snarls Dad. ‘You’ve made your mother cry. As soon as you’re through the door you’re spreading misery and unhappiness. If what you get here isn’t good enough for you –’

His voice drones on but it is a track from an LP I have heard a million times and the words disappear like raindrops into snow. I am meeting Sid round at his Vauxhall pad and I am not sorry when the time comes to steal away with Dad’s voice melting in my ear and a fistful of Rennies belting down to put out the fire in my belly. I am also looking forward to seeing sister Rosie again. When Sid last talked about her she had started up a couple of boutiques and was doing all right for herself. Ever since her little brush with Ricci Volare on the Isla de Amor she has been a different woman from the one that used to hover in front of Sid like the pooch on the old HMV label. I feel sorry for Sid. It can’t be nice for a bloke to see his wife doing something on her own – especially when she starts doing better than he is. Ever since the Cromby Hotel, Sid has been marking time if not actually going backwards while Rosie has been coming up like super-charged yeast. How will I find the girl who was voted Clapham’s ‘Miss Available’ in the balmy days of 1966?

The short answer is – thinner. Rosie’s tits seem to have evaporated and the skin is stretched over her face like the paper on the framework of a model aeroplane. She has also done something with her eyebrows – like got rid of them – and her barnet is closer to her nut that I can ever remember it.

‘Got to go out, Timmy love,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek. ‘Sidney will give you a drink. Must fly. See you again.’

Her voice is different, too. Not exactly posh, but sharper. It carries more muscle, somehow.

Sid looks relieved when she has pushed off. ‘What’s your poison?’ he says.

I am a bit disappointed with the surroundings. I had been expecting signs of loot, but they don’t even have a cocktail cabinet. The booze is laid out on a tray and that rests on a table which is definitely on its last legs. Peppered with worm holes and dead old-fashioned looking. Most of the stuff they have got must have come from a junk shop though the carpet is nice. Probably took up all their cash.

‘I’ll have a light ale, since you’re asking,’ I say.

Sid looks uncomfortable. ‘We don’t have any light ale. There might be some lager in the fridge.’

I look at the tray and he is right. It is full of bottles of gin and vodka and something called Noilly Prat. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Just the kind of thing you would like to offer your mother-in-law.

‘Let’s go round the boozer,’ I say. ‘Where’s Rosie pushed off to?’

Sid is already helping himself to a large scotch. ‘She’s gone to look at one of her wine bars.’

‘Wine bars? She given up the boutiques, has she?’

Sid took a deep swig at his drink. ‘She’s got these as well as the boutiques.’

‘What is a wine bar, Sid?’

‘It’s like a boozer, but they only sell wine.’

How diabolical! My blood freezes over when I hear his words. I mean, I don’t mind a spot of plonk on the Costa Del Chips, that is the place for it, isn’t it? But in your own local – and pushing out the native product! It hardly bears thinking about. How could Rosie do such a thing? It must be a blooming disaster.

‘Making a bleeding fortune,’ says Sid.

‘Yerwhat?’ I say.

‘I thought she was round the twist but it’s amazing what people go for these days. Wine is dead smart, see? And a load of birds reckon it. You get a lot of posh bints in her places. They used to think it was all spit and sawdust down the boozer and you must be on the game if you went into one. A wine bar was different. That was refained, somehow.’

‘So it’s just a load of judies, is it?’ I say thoughtfully.

‘Used to be. Until there was this article in the paper that said just that. It went on about how a bird could drink in peace without being molested and that there were thousands of little darlings sipping their full bodied rioja–’

‘Blimey, they must have been desperate, Sid.’

‘That’s what everybody thought, Timmo. The day after the article appeared there were blokes fighting to get through the door. Now it’s just one great knocking shop.’

‘Poor Rosie. She must be heartbroken.’

‘Yes, she’s crying all the way to the bank. Do you want to see one?’

‘Not really, Sid. I’ve thought about opening an account but–’

‘I didn’t mean a bank, you berk! I was referring to one of Rosie’s wine bars. We could look in later.’

‘Very nice, Sid. But we’ve got some business to discuss, haven’t we?’

‘Too true, we have. All this chat about Rosie’s business.’

Success has whetted my appetite. If she can do it why not her attractive brother?

‘Right,’ says Sid knocking back his scotch. ‘Let me reiterate. I think there are some fantastic opportunities in the entertainment field. I don’t mean performing ourselves but finding talent and, and–’

‘Exploiting it?’ I say helpfully.

‘The word I was looking for was managing,’ says Sid, sternly. ‘But you’ve got the general idea. If we take the risk then it’s only right that we should take some of the profit.’

‘ “Some”?’ I say.

‘Nearly all,’ says Sid. ‘And we don’t want to let ourselves in for too much risk either.’

‘What exactly did you have in mind?’ I ask.

‘Park your arse.’ Sid waves me towards this scruffy old leather settee that looks like fifteen feet of Hush Puppies. It’s a shame really. A nice chintz cover would brighten the thing up a treat. I don’t suppose Rosie has the time.

‘The public are very fickle these days. You don’t know which way they’re going to turn. You’ve got to appeal to all age groups, as well. What I mean is, we can’t afford to have all our eggs in one basket. I learned my lesson when I got stuck with all those bleeding hula hoops and pogo sticks.’

‘What happened to them in the end, Sid?’ I am always interested in news of Sidney’s business ventures. It makes a change to have first hand suffering instead of all the stuff you read about in the papers.

‘I sold most of them off as a Christmas game. You hang up the hula hoop and chuck the pogo stick through the middle of it.’

‘Sophisticated stuff, Sid.’

‘Don’t take the piss, Timmo. Kid’s toys are far too bleeding complicated these days. All they want to do is smash things up. I got the idea for HULAPOG from Jason.’

Just in case you do not know or have forgotten, Jason is Sidney’s firstborn and as nasty a piece of work as ever smeared its jammy fingers down the inside of your trouser leg. Seven years old and dead lucky that he still has the wind left to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. There is also the infant Jerome who is the spitting image of his brother – all he does is spit.

‘He’s an aggressive little chap,’ I say.

‘Spirited is the word I would use,’ says Sid. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Jason. That kiddy has got charisma.’

My face falls. ‘Oh, Sid. I’m sorry to hear that. Still, they can do wonders these days if they get onto things in the early stages.’

‘What are you bleeding rabbiting about?’ snarls Sid. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s got star quality, that’s what I was saying. He figures large in my plans.’

My heart sinks until it is practically resting on my action man kit. ‘Not another David Cassidy,’ I groan. ‘You can’t walk down the street without tripping over some spotty kid belting out golden mouldies before his balls drop.’

‘Shut your face and listen,’ says Sid unsympathetically. ‘I want to give you the broad picture before we start going into details.’

‘We’re going to have broads, are we?’ I say, perking up a bit.

Ever since some half-witted bird told Sid he looked like Paul Newman he has been inclined to pepper his rabbit with Americanisms.

‘Are you trying to take the piss? I’m talking about the range of our activities, aren’t I? We want to appeal to all sections of the public so we got to get together a variety of acts. We want a kid for the teeny boppers, a group – and one of those Hermasetas would be a good idea.’

‘I don’t get you, Sid. They’re those little things you put in your coffee, aren’t they?’

‘I mean one of those blokes who looks like a bird. They’re very popular, they are.’

‘You mean a hermaphrodite, Sid.’ Sidney tries hard with the Sunday newspapers but when you have had most of your education off the labels on sauce bottles it is difficult not to get confused.

‘All right, all right. Have it your own way, Master Mind. As long as he can hold a guitar so the thin end is pointing towards the ceiling, that’s all I’m interested in.’

‘Where are you going to find all this talent, Sid?’

Sid produces a large cigar and shoves it into his cakehole. Somewhere in Central London, Lew Grade must be feeling icy fingers running up his spine.

‘Quantity is no problem, Timmo. It’s finding kids with the right qualifications. Dedicated, talented–’

‘And prepared to work for nothing.’

Sidney shakes his head slowly. ‘Somewhere along the line you’ve become cynical, Timmo. That’s very sad.’

‘Somewhere along the line I met you, Sid. Let’s face it, sentiment has never blurred your business vision.’

Sid shakes his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about. Look, if you’re interested in seeing how I spot talent you can come with me tonight. There’s a folk singer I want to have a decco at. Rambling Jack Snorter. He’s on at a boozer in the East End.’

My ears prick up when I hear the word boozer. I don’t fancy drinking at home except at Christmas.

‘What about the kids? Is Rosie coming back?’

Sid looks sheepish. ‘Gretchen can look after them.’

‘Gretchen?’

‘The au pair.’

Au pair? The words trip off the tongue like ‘knocking shop’, don’t they? I can just see her. Blonde, blue-eyed and with a couple of knockers like Swedish cannon balls. No wonder Sid is looking embarrassed. With his record he has probably been through her more times than the Dartford tunnel.

‘Don’t let your imagination run riot,’ sighs Sid. ‘Rosie chose her. She hasn’t won a lot of beauty contests.’

As if to prove his point a bird comes in with a complexion like a pebble dash chicken house. For a moment I think she is wearing a mask – when I take a good look at her I wish she was. I have seen birds with warts before – but not on their warts. I don’t go a bundle on her hair either. It is like mousy candy floss, or the stuff that comes out of your Bex Bissell. One feature you can’t fault her on is her knockers. They are right out of the top drawer – in fact they are so big they would fill the whole blooming chest. They certainly fill hers.

‘Ah, Gretchen,’ says Sid, putting on his ‘Another glass of port, Lady Prendergast?’ voice. ‘I don’t think you’ve met my brother-in-law?’

When I was a kiddy, I shut my digits in a car door. When Gretchen folds her mit around mine and applies ‘pleased to meet you’ pressure, the sensation is about the same. Strong? This girl could play centre back for Moscow Dynamo and only your shin bones would know the difference.

‘Pleased to do you,’ she grunts. ‘How do you meet?’

‘Gretchen is learning English at Clapham Junction College of Commerce,’ says Sid, chattily.

I nod agreeably while I try and rub the circulation back into my pinkies and Sid explains about us nipping out for a few jars.

Funny how first impressions can be misleading sometimes.

‘Must be a strain to control yourself, when you’ve got that about,’ I say as we scamper down the steps.

‘Yeah. I nearly swung for her a couple of times,’ says Sid. ‘She cooked us a stew once. I think she made it from old shaving brushes. Talk about diabolical. The cat took one look at it and ran up the chimney. We had a fire in the grate at the time, too.’

Sid still has his Rover 2000 and I feel like Lord Muck as I settle back against the leather and watch the Thames twinkling away like the froth on a pool of piss.

‘We should have time to catch Rambling Jack and have a decko at one of Rosie’s places,’ says Sid. ‘You know the East End at all, do you?’

I don’t really and it doesn’t look as if I am going to get the chance because they seem to be pulling it down even faster than the part of London I am living in.

‘Some right villains hang out around here,’ says Sid. ‘Mind how you go when you get the first round in.’

I reckon if Sid made a million you would still think he had fish hooks sewn to the insides of his pockets.

The Prospect of Ruin is packed out with everyone from candidates for ‘The Upper Class Twit Of The Year’ award to blokes who look as if they taught Bill Sykes how to scowl. You would think that two different dubs had booked on the same night.

‘The toffs come here because they fancy a bit of slumming,’ says Sid. ‘It’s the nearest most of them ever get to villainy until they join the stock exchange.’

‘Creme de menthe frappé and a packet of crisps?’ I say as I push my way into the crowd round the bar. Sid’s reply is not the kind of thing I would like to quote in a book that might find its way into the hands of minors – or even miners for that matter, and does not stay in my mind long. The reason? I find myself face to face with a really knock-out bint. She is dead class. You can tell that by the string of pearls round her neck and the little pink flushes that light up her alabaster shoulder blades.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say as I go out of my way to brush past her. ‘There’s a bit of a crush in here.’

‘That’s quite all right.’ Her voice goes up like the cost of living and she turns a few shades pinker.

‘Are you on your tod?’ I say. I mean, it’s favourable to ask, isn’t it? You don’t want to lash out on a babycham and find that there is some geezer with her.

‘I’m with friends,’ she says, very dainty like. I take a gander and see another filly and a couple of blokes who look as if their stiff white collars do up on their adam’s apples.

‘Be presumptuous of me to offer you a drink then, wouldn’t it?’ I often chuck in a long word like that because it shows an upper class bird that there is more to me than meets the thigh. I may not speak very proper but I have a way with me – I have it away with me too, sometimes, but that is another story.

‘Are you a waterman?’ says the bird, with a trace of interest.

‘Only when all the beer has run out,’ I say, wondering what she is on about.

‘Eewh.’ I don’t know if that is how you spell it but it sounds something like that. It is the kind of noise the Queen Mother would make if she found you wiping the front of your jeans with one of the corgis.

‘Daffers!’

The voice belongs to a herbert with a mug built round his hooter. Daffers makes another uncomfortable noise and pads off.

I get the beers in and join Sid.

‘You’ll never get anywhere with her, mate,’ he says gloomily. ‘Apart from the fact that she probably finds you repulsive, she’s not going to blot her meal ticket.’

‘I don’t know so much.’ Daffers keeps shooting glances at me and experience has taught me that where there is life there is poke. ‘When are we going to see old Rumbling Tum?’ I ask.

Sid does not have to answer because a bloke with a red velvet jacket appears on a small stage and grabs a microphone.

‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Doom. Tonight we’re very fortunate to have a return visit from that popular son of the sod–’

His voice drones on but I find myself concentrating on a geezer with a big black beard who is clearly pissed out of his mind. He is barging into tables and cursing and muttering fit to kit out a TV comedy series. I don’t know why they haven’t chucked him out.

‘Do us a favour, Timmo. I don’t want to miss any of this.’ Sid shoves his empty glass into my hand and I am fighting my way back to the bar again. Blooming marvellous, isn’t it? Working with Sid is always the same. The outlay is more guaranteed than the return.

Daffers has not pressed forward with the rest of her mates and I can see her trying to think of something to say. That makes two of us.

‘You look like an ’ore,’ she says.

For a moment I cannot believe my ears. She looks such a nice girl too. What a thing to say. No bird has ever spoken to me like that before.

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ I say. Maybe it is the diamante on the lapels of my shirt. Mum thought it was a bit much.

‘I thought Thames Tradesmen were awfully unlucky at Henley,’

Now she has really lost me. What is she on about?

‘I’m in the entertainment business,’ I say. ‘Do you fancy something?’

‘I think I’ve had enough already.’

‘Force yourself.’

‘Well, a glass of white wine, please.’

Sidney must be right. They are all at it. And it costs as much as a pint of bitter, too. Diabolical!

‘ “And the brave young sons of Eireann came pouring through the door. And the snivelling British Tommies fell grovelling on the floor.” ’ I turn round and – blooming heck! The bearded git must be Rambling Jack Snorter. His accent is as thick as an upright shillelah and the first three rows are reeling under a hail of spittle.

I tear myself from Daffers’ side and return to Sid.

‘What do you think?’ he says.

‘He’s all right if you’ve got an umbrella,’ I say. ‘Does he always go in for this anti-British stuff?’

‘He’s very committed,’ says Sid.

‘And frequently, too, I should reckon,’ I venture. ‘I think he comes on a bit strong, myself.’

‘He’s controversial, I’ll grant you,’ says Sid. ‘But that’s a good thing these days. He can create a dialogue between himself and the audience.’

‘You mean, like that bloke who just threw a bottle at him and told him to piss off back to Ireland?’

‘That kind of thing, Timmo.’ Sid grabs me by the arm and steers me away from the stage. ‘I think we might see if his voice carries.’

‘Good thinking, Sid.’

‘ “So here’s to all brave Irishmen, God bless their sparkling eyes. And hatred to the English filth whom all true men despise.” ’

‘I like the idea of the fiddle,’ I say.

‘Yeah. But they break easily, don’t they?’

‘They do if that one is anything to go by. Does he always finish his act by being thrown out of one of the windows?’

‘Not usually,’ says Sid, ducking. ‘It’s just that some of these dockers are a bit touchy. They’re big men but very sensitive. Do you fancy another beer?’

‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to get one, Sid. That’s the governor draped over the partition, isn’t it?’

‘You’re right. It’s a lively little place, no doubt about it. I must come again some time.’

‘Give them a couple of years to rebuild.’ I duck as another bottle shatters against the wall above my head. If we keep under the table and push it towards the door we may be all right.’

Sid nods and turns up the collar of his jacket. ‘Yeah, I don’t like leaving the car for too long around here. Last time I was in the neighbourhood the kids were playing tiddly winks with hub-caps. Some little bleeder whipped my aerial. It wouldn’t have been so bad but I was doing forty miles an hour at the time.