Not Famous

Everything that follows is true.

The other day I was on the phone to a friend discussing Ashes To Ashes, the BBC's pointless sequal to Life On Mars. I was explaining that it was odd seeing The Blitz At Billy's being recreated as an historic artifact as I'd visited there some time around 80/81. I remember the music, a lot of Bowie, some Kraftwerk or Kraftwerk soundalikes, a smattering of punk and some Thin White Duke friendly soul. I also remember the slightly snotty cross dresser on the door and later found out that this was Philip Salon but have no memory of Boy George handling the coats. Maybe it was his night off.

My friend sniggered. "So you must be the only person to go to The Blitz at that time and not end up either with a hit single or on the cover of The Face. I see a pattern forming here." And up to a point he's right.

Consider the following two examples:

Exhibit a: It's 1977 and I'm in my first year at Hull University. As a compulsory part of my degree I have to do an ancillary subject in my first year and choose English. There are three of us in the room, two students and a tutor. The tutor, Andrew Motion later wins the Aarvon Foundation poetry prize and goes on to become Poet Laureate. My fellow student Ollie Reynolds also goes on to win the Aarvon poetry prize a few years later. Both of them later had slim volumes of poetry published by Faber & Faber.

Now I don't claim to be a poet. I can dabble in verse with the best but any later success I had was with song lyrics which are a different beast altogether (and don't let a shrill Dylan or Blake fan tell you otherwise). On the other hand someone at Faber & Faber could have at least investigated the mysterious "other student" and found out whether my bardic tap could be turned on.

Exhibit b: My non career as a poet is one thing - it would have helped if I'd actually written any - but this example is more uncanny. Back in that fertile age of live stand up comedy known as the late 1980s I was performing with a comedy music group called The Draylon Underground. We hadn't been going all that long when we were asked to be on a TV show set at the then up-and-coming venue called Jongleurs. In those far off days of 1987 Jongleurs would still be open to some experimentation in the kinds of acts it presented and was particularly fond of comedy music acts (as long as they were funny) and magicians, jugglers, mimes, anything that worked. At around the same time as the TV show went out the venue hosted a live recording for an album. If you really want to hear it you can download it, probably illegally, from here. Now notice how every act has a photo except ours (note: it's not the original playbill style cover). Also notice which act was never given their own TV show. OK, The Dialtones never got that far as a group but as individuals Ronnie Golden and Mac McDonald both popped up all over the place from Red Dwarf to The Young Ones. As for the rest? Arthur Smith, Mark Steel, Paul Merton...

There's no need to feel bitter and I've got my own very good reasons to mistrust the fickle finger of fame. I'm also aware of how just missing out is incredibly common. For instance, unless you're obsessive about this kind of thing you'd be hard pressed to name even a fraction of acts that didn't win the Eurovision song contest and yet they'd have been seen by more people in one TV appearance than probably saw Henry Irving in his entire lifetime.

So let's hear it for the Schmetterlingers, The Mouth & McNeils and even the Arzu Eces.!

Throw rose petals into the paths of the Buzz Aldrins and Pete Bests who just missed out on becoming legends and had to settle for being the answers to tie-breaker questions in pub quizzes!

And if anyone wants a copy of the Jongleurs album or even some unpublished post-modern poetry...