» Greed

Curious George and the Mustard Eye Incident.
Entertaining some visitors from Indonesia, went out for a pub lunch on the company. Our guests seemed somewhat thrown by the plethora of sauces on offer, so we got to explaining the intricacies of British condiments. After mustard was simply described as "Something you wouldn't want to get in your eye, a bit like wasabi", I piped up that it wouldn't be that bad (dear science, why?). After some bargaining, we settled on the princely sum of 20 beer tokens for me to shove a dollop of Heinz's finest English Mustard into my ocular instrumentation.

Stung like a fucker, but twenty notes buys a lot of eye-drops. We never did get that Far-Eastern contract, can't think why.
(Sun 17th Apr 2011, 18:13, More)

» That's me on TV!

busting Busted
Apologies for length, long time reader, first time poster etc.

Let me take you on a journey back to January 2003...

[wavy lines]

Busted are just releasing their single "Year 3000", and have a packed week of publicising. This is the story of how I disrupted two of their major public appearances that week, with out really meaning to, and managed to get on the telly.

Wednesday:
Turns out Busted are doing a publicity signing in the WH Smiths near my college. A lot of my friends at the time were in bands, and trying really hard to make a go of it, but weren't getting anywhere despite lashings of talent. Understandably I wasn't the only one who was pissed that this group of posers who could barely play their own instruments were making it big, while my mates languished in mediocrity. A few of us from college decided to head to the signing after college to make our feelings known, by displaying a crudely made placard reading "Corporate Boyband: F**k Off". Subtle, I know.

Got to the signing, displayed our placard from the floor above the crowd in the shopping centre, but didn't get much notice, so Bannel (for that was his name) and I decided to get into the waiting crowd. Our placard was quickly ripped from Bannel's hands, despite the fact he was on my shoulders, and torn in half. By the time we had retrieved it 'twas in a sorry state, and we were cautioned by a police officer, told not to try and put it back up due to the offensive language. Our point made, we trotted home, content in the knowledge we'd at least spoken out, and perhaps been heard.

Thursday:
Called into the Headmaster's office the second I arrive at school. Turns out that the crowd of teenage lads from other schools I'd seen on the floor above the crowd the day before had decided to get their views across as well. They'd done this by throwing vast quantities of eggs, flour, water and abuse down on to the crowd below, after I'd left the scene. People below had paniced, there'd been a bit of a crush in the crowd to try and get away, several people were trampled, the glass doors to WH Smiths had been broken down. The signing had been cancelled as ambulances screamed onto the scene. The police reckoned this event was planned by elements within several schools, and had identified me and Bannel as the ringleaders, since we were the first to cause any commotion. There was no organisation, I think teenage boys minds all work the same way and saw the same possibility for havoc from the scenario. Took some serious talking to get the head to believe this and avoid suspension, landing a few detentions instead. Bannel wasn't so lucky, losing his place on the rugby team, and his deputy head boyhood (yep, it was one of those colleges). One busted event called off thanks to me (apparently).

Saturday:
Girlfriend somehow manages to land us a pair of tickets to CD:UK, you know: the one presented by Ant&Dec and Cat Deeley after SMTV Live. Guess who are performing their new single?

Queuing outside, meet some crazy Busted groupies, who've been up all night hand sewing the faces of their heroes into their jeans. For some reason they didn't seem too happy to hear of Wednesday's escapades.

Anyway to the heart of the matter: getting on TV. As the show goes out live, the audience are briefed before hand, and told that no matter what you think of a band, you've gotta jump around like Maiden and Metallica have just come out on stage together, and your nads have just been attached to the mains, or else be ejected by the crowd of surly security. I thought I'd take this to heart, would piss the GF off to get ejected.

During Busted's (mimed) song, there was a good length crowd pan, and for about 5 seconds I'm on full view, bouncing like a maniac, giving the band the good old one-fingered salute with both barrels. Watching it on the playback, it's fairly unmissable. Ohhh: same show, the delectable Ms. Deeley can be seen giving a link to camera standing on a box amidst the crowd, and she suddenly squeaks mid-sentence. That was me pinching her arse(and very nice it was too) before merging back into the crowd. Despite that, she carried on with the link, consumate professional that she is. She weren't happy when they went to commercial though.
Even though the GF got more tickets a couple weeks later, never did go back...

Length? About 5 seconds screen time.
(Thu 18th Jun 2009, 8:58, More)