Celebrity Cricket
It was late summer 2001. England had just spanked zee Germans 5-1 in the footie and I'd spent the previous day moving my stuff into my first house in Reading.

A bunch of us decided to go to the annual "celebrity" cricket match hosted at Bray Cricket Club by Michael Parkinson. A chance to get pissed up in the sunshine whilst heckling Ralph Little and Rolph Harris and perving at Carol Vorderman in a summer dress.

It was getting to late afternoon, we were all pretty much the worse for wear when Parkie and his missus come over to our small group to sell us some raffle tickets. At this point, my mate Prior pipes up:

Prior: "Ere, Parkie I've had a fucking brilliant weekend!"

Parkie: "Why's that young man?"

Prior: "I've just moved house, I'm getting sloshed up in the sunshine with my mates and last night I got laid!"

Parkie: (completely deadpan) "Sounds great - shall I put you down for 10 tickets?"

bless him!
(mcgriffto, Fri 17 Apr 2009, 14:11, 2 replies)

Parkie
is a prize cunt. He thinks he can defy the laws of physics and stand in front of a fucking huge wall of speakers, with a microphone in his hand (held at waist height), and talk at normal conversational levels and be heard by everyone.
Never mind the poor sound engineer (that'd be me) telling him to take a couple of steps to the side and hold the mic up, so I can turn it up a bit without it feeding back like a motherfucker. Oh no, he knows best, he's been doing this for years, he knows what he's doing,as his brown-nosing little assistant kept telling me.

Well, fuck him then, says I, millimetres from snapping point. Let him come and show me where I'm going wrong doing my job if he's so fucking clever. He's not in a TV studio now, he's in a fucking marquee, in front of 20k of band PA (note, "in front of", not "standing on stage between two forward facing stacks".)

This offer was declined, and when he finally dribbled to an end of his stint, which had been marked by everyone in that bastard marquee looking over their shoulder and telling me they couldn't hear him, the compere strode over, took the "faulty mic" from Parkie, held it up to his mouth and blew everyone's hair back (a la that old Maxell tapes advert). Yeah, you heard that, didn't you, you shower of twats.

Thus vindicated, I told all and sundry who came near that night that Michael Parkinson was a cunt and that Cecil Parkinson was a nicer person. Which is quite possibly true.
(Rsoles, Fri 17 Apr 2009, 16:23, closed)

I feel your pain...
there is nothing so irritating in this world as poor mic technique and the resultant comments from the wannabe sound engineers in the audience!
(09824739yhsidfhshfgq8weeq3e1, Sat 18 Apr 2009, 21:10, closed)