In 1981 I owned some music shops and ran the one in Cambridge myself as it was my home town.
It was called Cambridge Musician's Centre and I was sitting in the shop one day with a mate from the same band I was playing in at the time. (see previous reply to this qotw) His name was Murapa and he was a very large muscular black guy from Zimbabwe. He was about 6' 3" and was built like a brick shithouse. His large afro hairdo made him look even bigger. I had planned that Murapa would look after the shop while I went over to one of the other branches to sort out some shit and such. I had told him to lock up and meet me at a pub called the Free Press nearby to hand over the keys and maybe a swift one.

At that time I had more black mates than white ones and I completely forgot about prejudice for a second, which was much worse back then. You only need look at old episodes of 'Love Thy Neighbour' and 'Till Death Us Do Part" to see it was even acceptable on prime time TV back then. The pub was also the the local for the local police station and regularly have half a dozen filth from the Gene Hunt school of etiquette in there drinking halves. I got a bit held up and was late getting back to the pub and by the time I got there, he was nowhere to be seen. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to get into my shop if he had fucked off home so I popped back and I was relieved to see him inside. I went in and started to make my apollogies but before I could speak he stood up and began calling me all the names under the sun. When angry he sometimes reverted to his natural tongue so I'm not sure exactly what he was calling me but part of it went something like this, "....bastard, don't ever ask me to meet you in a place like that, you f..", etc etc.
I found out after he had calmed down that several of the filth had started talking loudly, laughing loudly and generally being racist cunts. I was so sorry and told him so. I just didn't think and I got it a bit wrong. A day or so later he was relating the incident to someone which gave me an idea. We planned that I would go inside the pub first then Murapa would follow. I would act like we were complete strangers and get involved with any racist banter only take it far too far. This is what happened.

As soon as he walked in, I was sat at the bar close to the three old bill who were in there as usual. As he walked through the door I said in a loud voice, "Oh fucking hell. Look what's walked in a facking sooty, there goes the pub down the shitter lads". The three policemen all laughed but then began to look a bit uneasy when Murapa did one of his angry faces which believe me could frighten a fucking police horse let alone let alone a couple of cuntsables. He looked directly at me. "What did you say!", he assertively bellowed. "You heard sooty! Why don't you fack orf back to the jungle?". By now there were only two filth as one had got to the bog. Murapa pointed out to me the worst offender from the previous time with a preplanned gesture. I made sure I got as close to the cunt as possible then Murapa ripped off his shirt and flexed his huge powerful muscles and positioned himself so we could have a slagging match with the racist cop in the middle.
I called him every degrogatory racist term I could muster and this cop was bricking it by now. He looked very uneasy and tried, usuccessfully to calm things down and had now entered the "best shut the fuck up and duck if necessary" state. Oh by the way the landlord was in on it too. I have to make that point as the rozzer who went for a slash had asked the landlord to phone the police station for back up. They were off duty, no radios and this is a good 12 years before the mobile phone. He just pretended to make the call. Meanwhile the argument had reached a point where a. Murapa was running out of threats and b. I was running out of racist insults. Then, as planned, Murapa looked at me and shouted, "What do you want from me?". I simply said in a normal polite voice, "Pint of bitter would be nice." Murapa then faced the landlord who by now was requiring a change of boxers and ordered in a very posh accent, "Two pints of IPA my good man and one for your good self." The copper litterally breathed a huge sigh of relief. He was then told by the landlord that it was a set up and that would teach him a lesson for being racist in his pub. He never came in again, well at least I never saw him again.

Murapa and I walked back to the shop pissing ourselves laughing. We got back to the shop and our singer was there looking after things. He was a Jamaican and was sitting reading the paper unaware of what we had just done. I went over to him and casually said, "Murapa called be a racist cunt bastard and threatened to punch my head off just now". Nev looked a bit puzzled, then Murapa piped up, "Because you called me a shit skin, a coon, a wog, a coon and told me to fuck off back to the jungle". Nev just dropped his paper and looked round and with a frowing puzzled look and asked what the fuck we were on about. We told him about the stunt and as we reminisced were all in so much pain from laughing about it I had to close up early.
_{Dedicated to my very good mate Jon Murapa who often dined out on this story and left this earth two years later.}

( Captn Hood-Butter is not dead yet., Sun 4 Apr 2010, 15:59, Reply)