By request: Sarah Cracknell's crack
You don't turn down a freebie to Reading Festival, especially if it involves a backstage pass, allowing you to ignore all sorts of self-important people.

Every now and then, the rich and famous would emerge from their champagne-flavoured cocoon to go and see their mates play on the main stage. This involved negotiating a rather small gate "manned", for the want of a better word, by a pair of extremely hairy bouncers, whose sole mission in life was to ensure that the great unwashed remain outside.

I forget which band was on stage, but a large number of celebrities felt the need to get round the front and frug away like dervishes to the latest big name before they are consigned to the scarpheap of musical history.

Suddenly, the heavens opened and there followed a rainstorm of biblical proportions. These may have been hip young sounds, but the massed celebs weren't going to get soaked if they could help it.

Cue massed scramble for the tiny gate, where the gorillas slowly checked each and every VIP pass to cries of "Don't you know who I am?"

It was at that point that much of the talent had had enough and started to scale the ten foot fence that separated the plebs from the world of celebrity. An unseemly scramble followed as the rain pelted down on muddy VIPs, presenting a scene that would not be out of place on Takeshi's Castle.

Someone pointed out to me what could only be the delightful singer of the popular beat combo Saint Etienne scaling the fence in an energetic fashion, wearing nothing but a mini dress which left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She could have caught her death.

With a final heave, she and her initimate particles disappeared from view to a large cheer from the spectating hundreds.

I saw Sarah Cracknell's crack, and shall go to hell for it.

Superbly, the entire episode appeared as a news item in the following week's NME. I WAS THERE when history was made.

12-inch remix version: HERE
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:15, 1 reply)

*click*
For the Takeshi's Castle reference. Awesome-o!
(RVD420 has his world coming down on, Wed 10 Jun 2009, 15:47, closed)