My friend Iain...
... for that was indeed his name, used to, before purchasing a proper bike (a nice one, too, he'd like me to inform you I imagine) had a moped. Slightly chavvy but it got him from A to B without paying Ken Livingstone's ridiculous bus fares.

He was friends with three or four other lads of the same age - 17 - who also had hairdryers-on-wheels. And they'd go out for rides around long roads, which was absolutely not gay at all. Straight as an arrow, no homophobic undertones in a group of men driving on vibrating machines to remote locations in the slightest. But I digress...

One of them, Will, took it all a bit too far. He started calling them the "Biker Boyz" after the Lawrence Fishbourne film and even made a website. Regretfully I have forgotten the URL.

At this point myself, Iain and a couple of other friends were in a band and we had a forum. I had the fantastic idea of a caption competition on this forum, and the first picture was one of Iain, on his bright yellow moped, trying desperately to look quite hard.

Our mutual friend, Petley, for that was and is his name etc., went on the guestbook of the Biker Boyz site and left a message under the name of "Emma," saying "whos the sexy boy on the yellow ped? xxx" Iain promptly pasted this onto the forum in a defiant show of victory. And we laughed, since he was the only one who didn't know that Emma wasn't a buxom blonde but rather a black-haired Watford fan who lived next door to him.

I was talking about this with Petley when an idea hit me. "Do you have Windows Messenger as well as MSN Messenger?" I asked of him, and he replied in the affirmative. A plan was born, and I created the IM account of "[email protected]" and Petley signed into it AT THE SAME TIME AS HE WAS ONLINE WITH HIS NORMAL ACCOUNT. This was key, as it was a watertight alibi. Iain was talking to both of us on MSN at the same time as "Emma" began to talk to him.

I can't remember the exact conversation but two parts really stand out for me:

xXxEmmaxXx says:
k here is my pic
**sends**
Iain says:
lol, you are sexy
Iain says:
like in your email name

...

Actually I can't remember the other one but that's surely enough? I'll edit later if it comes back to me.

Anyway, that would have been enough for most people, but our group of friends was very much built on honour, in the way of the noble samurai. If Iain found out it was us then, as he had said to others before: "Three words- 'revenge wi-' ... FOUR words- 'revenge will be mine.'" So we needed a way to get off the hook. I was the one who provided the perfect way to do this via our guitar-playing, PES-loving friend.

Iain says:
so what are you into?
xXxEmmaxXx says:
well I like playing guitar, and also a bit of virtual football. It's Martin, HA!
*emma signs off*

The best bit of this was Iain talking to me and Petley on MSN at the same time and going "Matt... I've been totally done."

For the next couple of weeks he was convinced Martin had fucked him over and pretty much everyone knew the truth except for Iain and Martin. So one day on the way to band practice Iain suddenly turned to Martin and said "look I was going to get you back but fuck it, it was a brilliant joke and well done."

I caught eyes with my drummer and buried my head behind the newspaper I held, laughing my arse off.

Martin: "What?"

Martin apparently 'feigned innocence' and that was the end of the matter.

Except to this day Iain still thinks Martin really got one over on him, and we still bring it up from time to time. Usage of the phrase "lol you are sexy like in your email" riles him up quite a bit.

Length.
(MJPerry was crude but clickable at, Mon 17 Dec 2007, 14:19, Reply)