Why Am I Legless?
For Gleeballs.

Thought I'd post an explanation of my nickname and where it comes from.

In 1985 I was going out with a wonderful, beautiful girl called Liz and we both worked at Manchester Uni Student Union for the events crew. Liz did sound and I did lights, security and was in charge of all of the humpers (the guys who did the load-ins and load-outs). On Valentines Day 1985 we had a massive event all encompassing the entire student union - all bars, all stages and theatres. We had a load of bands on, films, a disco, comedians and loads of other stuff. A brilliant night. At one stage in the proceedings I was up in the roof of the main hall and I could see a black shape flitting about down below. Wondering what the hell it was, I dropped a rope to the floor and slid down to investigate. It turned out to be a dog. A very drunk dog. He had managed to sneak into the Union and students had been giving it the dregs of their beer and the poor sod was pissed as a rat. Every time he tried to walk forward, his back end would swing round and he would end up facing the opposite way to where he was trying to go. Funny as fuck. Poor sod.

So I picked this dog up and carried him into the crew room and got some food down him. He was bloody starving. He was a lovely looking dog - at the time he was about a year old and still a little puppyish. There were marks in his fur where he'd been wearing a collar but that was missing now. Later on we found out a little bit more about him. He'd appeared outside the Student Union three days earlier and had been surviving by following students to and from the chip shop and begging food. On the night of the Valentines Ball he'd managed to get inside and was eventually found by me.

While we were discussing what to do about the dog and what we were going to call him a comedian called Jeremy Hardy walked in. He'd been doing his act upstairs and had come down to the crew room for a break. He listened to us talk about the dog and said:
"Look. I've just been doing a gig upstairs with a band called Hopeless and they've got a roadie called Useless and if you look at that poor sod there's only one possible name for him - Legless!"

And that was it. Legless had been christened and I took his name as my handle on the Internet. I've been known as Legless on the Net since 1989 - the year I started North West Net, my own ISP and the start of my business empire (well, not really an Empire more like very small farm ) but more on that later - much later.

BTW - Legless remained with me and Liz for the rest of our time together and when we split, Liz got the dog. He lived a long and happy life and died in 2001 at a ripe old age. I'm still friends with Liz and we see each other every few years or so.


Cheers all.

Legless
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 9:36, Reply)