The Alternative Hero

SUGGESTED LISTENING: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Automatic (Blanco y Negro, 1989)

What an extraordinary
way to behave

And now I am alone.
The funny thing is, I really am going to do this. It’s an odd feeling when you reach an absolute decision within yourself to do something rather peculiar and ill-advised, knowing nothing can change your mind. Alan’s probably thinking, “Oh, it’s just another of Clive’s loser-esque schemes. He’ll have forgotten about it by the middle of the week.” And yes, on the surface this is remarkably similar to the others. But—unlike the episode years back when I announced to everyone my intention to seduce the actress who played Lauren Carpenter in Neighbours, giving rise to a weekly trail round all the pubs in Fulham, where I’d heard she was living (a plan that was also the product of an unusual dream, now I come to think of it)—the key factor this time is that Lance Webster really is here. On my street. I’ve narrowed down his whereabouts to the nearest twenty metres. No detective work is needed. All I need is a little patience, luck, some of the social skills and intelligence I must surely (surely?) have amassed over the last thirty years, and it really should be easy. Oh yes.
But how do you follow someone? I’m not the sort of slick individual who can lithely creep around unnoticed. I decide that I’d better do a little research. I pop into my local bookshop and glance at one of those absurd stocking-filler manuals called How to Do Difficult Stuff or something, but it only tells me how to escape from a straitjacket or how to have sex on a plane. The Internet is my next stop, and of course some knob has taken the trouble to write down his methods in some detail. “Prepare the proper attire,” he begins. “Black is a bad idea. At all hours, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Red attracts attention. Wear greys and greens. If the weather permits it, wear a hooded sweater or jacket.” All my clothes are grey and green anyway, but what does he mean, “If the weather permits it”? As in, if it’s not too hot and sunny? Clearly not written by anyone British.
“Spot your target,” he continues. “See which direction they’re headed in, and how fast they are moving.” Okay. I’ve already worked out I’m going to have to sit at the top of our basement steps until I see Webster emerge from his house (let’s hope he actually does, or I’m in for a boring weekend). The instructor then enters into a complex discussion regarding parked cars, outracing your target and making fake calls on a mobile, occasionally offering such use-free nuggets as: “If the weather isn’t cold enough to make a bent head plausible, keep looking down at your watch.” What the hell does that mean? My attention kind of wanders off after that bit.
I take a fleeting look at the “Things You’ll Need” section, which comprises little more than “the ability to lie convincingly” (I was once told my lying is so unconvincing that I’m actually convincing; I’ve managed to lap myself in believability terms), and finally a cautionary glance at the warning note:
Only ever follow a person to play a practical joke on them or engage in a similar harmless activity. You and you alone are responsible for your actions. Using these instructions to commit a crime does not void you of responsibility for your actions, nor does it annul the damage you have done to the lives of other people.
Well, this is just a harmless activity, isn’t it? I won’t be damaging anyone’s life. I just want to know what he gets up to. It’s not like I’m going to blackmail him or stalk him or anything, is it?
So, as Churchill once blethered, the era of procrastination is fast disappearing down the resolutional plughole. It’s Saturday morning. My clock radio says 8:04. Time to get on with it.
I don appropriate clothing (black jeans, grey T-shirt, green hooded top, black woolly hat), knock back a cup of tea and a piece of toast. Polly is still passed out on the kitchen sofa from last night (we have no lounge) but briefly raises her head to utter a few words of encouragement (“Don’t do anything stupid”). I climb the metal steps from our basement flat to street level. It’s a little chilly, but not raining. I look up and down the street. No sign of anyone. Hope I’m early enough. 8:15. Settle myself on the second step. Reasonably good view of the steps coming down to the pavement at number three. Wait.
Wait.
People walk past occasionally. No one seems to take much notice. Around nine, an old lady I’ve never seen before looks quizzically at me as she shuffles along, then stops to ask if I’m all right. I reply that I am. Her next question is surprising.
“Are you a terrorist?”
For some reason, maybe because I’m already bored, I say yes. She hurries off looking concerned. Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to do. It’ll give her something to talk about on the bus, though.
More waiting.
9:45-ish, Polly emerges blearily with a cup of tea—which I think is for me until she sips from it, informs me that my mother has just been on the phone (“You’ll be pleased to know I didn’t tell her what you were really doing”) and unsmilingly disappears back inside.
Some brief action occurs at 10:25, when a male figure trots down Webster’s steps. The music to Mission: Impossible strikes up in my head as I scramble to my feet and sprint after him. Hearing the flat-footed clatter approaching from behind, my quarry, who is clearly not Lance Webster, whips around and frowns at me, startled. With very few other options I carry on running past, mutter a feeble “Sorry, mate” and streak round the corner of the adjacent street.
F*ck it. I’m going to have to get a whole lot better at this.
I hide in the newsagent’s until the faux-Webster has left the scene, then return to base, my dress rehearsal complete. This time nothing remotely relevant happens until around one, when Polly, in a rare fit of being-nice-about-my-bloody-silly-ideas, brings me a Marmite sandwich and yesterday’s Evening Standard.
Over the long, uneventful course of the afternoon I rattle through several stages of doubt about several different things, starting with this project and why on earth I am bothering, then my life in general—how I managed to reach this age with so few career prospects and pounds in the bank—then my ex-girlfriend and why it didn’t work out, then my trip to New York last year and why I decided it was tall but overrated, then my visit to Lisbon the year before and why I decided it was completely underrated, then back to what I’m doing right now (if I had an ounce of sense I’d have made myself a little survival pack with some fruit, water, at the very least a Thermos of coffee like they do on TV), then finally, as usual, my job.
God, I hate it. It was only meant to be for a week when I started, and that was three years ago. Now I’m like some f*cking senior there, without the benefit of really being in charge of anyone. It’s the most ridiculous setup. Ron and Michael, the two owners, are like a comedy double act minus the comedy. Ron’s a diminutive, bespectacled fifty-something divorcé with high blood pressure; a trained accountant from a relatively humble background, who in the eighties managed to make a lot of money, all of which he’s gambled on this funny little glorified telesales business. He mooches about at work, apparently channelling all his energy into the most menial of tasks-emptying the recycle bin, ripping up cardboard boxes, hoovering the meeting room—then suddenly pounces on one of your documents to pick a thousand holes in it, or yells at everyone for chatting too much, or sacks a secretary. He’s fairly unnerving. On first meeting him you think his sense of humour has been wiped out by some freak mental accident, then you realise it’s not so much absent as dry as a Mormon’s birthday party. Sometimes you find him alone in a far corner of the office, laughing at one of his own jokes. The only other human who gets them is Michael. Michael is the kind of man who I’m sure would be hysterically funny if he wasn’t your boss, or your friend, or in the slightest bit connected to you. He’s a painfully old-fashioned Chelsea-dwelling upper-class Hooray Henry; again, made a load of cash in the eighties, added it to his sizeable pot of “old” money, fulfilled his every geek-boy fantasy, dated a couple of models, married and divorced one of them within a year, then went rather publicly bankrupt after the ex got a big settlement out of him. He’s still only in his late thirties. He’s a blond giant, about six foot six, totally manic and overbearing, has absolutely no sense of personal space whatsoever and possesses a razor-sharp, ruthlessly logical business mind of the sort that would have come in very handy in 1987 (he refers to the Internet as “the connected computer”). He is occasionally capable of hilarious wit, but is generally pretty charmless. In fact, if you want a good description of Michael, have a listen to the Blur song “Charmless Man,” which I’ve always been convinced was written about Michael—the bloke in the song is identical in every way (Michael also hangs out at the Soho House members’ club, as Damon Albarn did around the time the song was written—they could easily have met). Michael and Ron understand each other in a puzzling way that somehow works, inasmuch as they haven’t murdered each other yet. You’ll sometimes walk over to their part of the office and find them working, ostensibly in complete silence, until Michael will suddenly exclaim, “Ron, I’ll tell you a fourth time if you wish,” continuing a debate that has probably been simmering for hours. Once an argument exploded over whether Markham Street in Chelsea was the ninth or the tenth street on the right as one travelled down King’s Road. Unable to quench their excitement by consulting the A-Z, they jumped straight into a taxi and raced over there to prove one or the other wrong.
“I must insist, Michael, that although Markham Square has two exits, it can still only be counted once,” Ron calmly stated upon their return.
Michael laughed incredulously.
“You still can’t accept that I’m right, can you, Ron? What an extraordinary way to behave.”
In terms of employees, the pair favour a ragbag of misfits and occasionals, often advertising vacancies in the Stage, they being of the shaky belief that underemployed actors are reliable and have a good telephone manner. Various other weirdos drift in and—often very swiftly—out: musicians, students, travellers, general under-achievers, attracted by the reasonable hourly rates, flexible shifts and relaxed attitude towards contracts of employment. An actor, for example, can bugger off for a month to appear in a Christmas pantomime, then slot straight back in come the New Year. The advantage of this arrangement for Ron and Michael is they have absolutely no responsibility towards their employees: no holiday, sickness or maternity pay, and they’re free to hire and fire with little or no red tape. But the downside, which in my three years they’ve never come close to grasping, is that no one who works for them gives the slightest f*ck about the fate or fortunes of the company, each person doing as little work as humanly possible (the weekend shifts, with Ron and Michael rarely there, are an absolute joke); the only motivation for anyone’s presence is the cheque they are grudgingly presented with at the end of each week—or, in my exceedingly unusual case, month. I alone managed to negotiate what passes for a full-time salary a year or so ago at the insistence of my then girlfriend, for I had progressed to what Ron and Michael laughingly describe as a managerial role. This consists of little more than showing new staff the ropes and then ploughing on with the same tedious old shit as everyone else: answering the phone, talking to corpses all over the country—Grantham, Horley, Bideford, Dumfries, Wantage, Bingley—jotting down the crap they witlessly spew on badly photocopied pieces of paper. I say and hear the same words every minute of every hour of every day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks per year. It’s hell. My fellow losers are inoffensive enough—we all get along, to a degree—but since everyone is timetabled to arrive, go to lunch and knock off at completely different times, no one really knows. I suppose things could be worse, but I frequently find myself going home angry, tired and despondent. If things don’t change soon … well, I may be forced to do something about it.
Sorry. Don’t mean to moan. But as it’s nearing four o’clock and Mr. Webster still hasn’t graced the outside world with his presence, there really isn’t much else to talk about.
Now, I know what you’re hoping. Thirty seconds before I decide to call it a day, maybe around six, Lance Webster finally emerges from his lair and mooches off down the street, bowls into the nearest pub, orders himself a cider and settles down in front of the football, whereupon I station myself locally and strike up idle banter. If only. What actually happens is hardly as straightforward, possibly more interesting.
Ten past five, I am visited by a traffic warden. A male one. Fifty-ish. I am still dressed in woolly hat and hooded top and seated unsteadily at the top of our metal steps, so I suppose I still look like an outside bet on a burglar, or a granny-basher, or at the very least someone who should soon be taking his evening medication. The warden asks me several questions, some of them stupid, most of them slightly bemusing, all of them tempting me to ask, “Why do you want to know? You’re a traffic warden.”
“Hello,” he begins.
“Hi.”
“Can we help you?”
I look around him a bit, and further down the street. He is alone. Perhaps he is royalty.
“Erm … no?”
“Just wondered what you were up to, y’know. Sat there. Second time I’ve seen you today.”
“Oh, yeah? First time I’ve seen you.”
He is not smiling. “What are you doing?”
“Erm … just chilling.”
“Bit nippy today, yes,” he laughs humourlessly “Seen anything interesting?”
“No. You?”
“Hmm,” he replies, biting his top lip and frowning down the street. “There’s been a couple of complaints.”
“About me?”
“Well, about people like you.”
God knows what he’s meant to be doing. Happily, however, at that moment he must start being a traffic warden again, for who should we see—I mean, really, who the arse should we see—but Lance Webster, frantically jingling a set of car keys, cantering up from the other end of the street towards a nondescript vehicle.
“I’ll move it,” he shouts.
All right. Again, I must apologise. You understand. Three words. Three everyday words. But that voice, that slightly harsh but impossibly articulate intonation, that hint of Berkshire accent (if Lennon had been from Reading, etc.)—I know, I know … take a cold shower, get a hotel room, whatever. But. When you’ve spent your life hearing that same voice spitting out those glorious lyrics: “I can’t recall if we really have sex, all I can feel are the after-effects;” outsmarting interviewers on late-night radio: “No, no, hang on, there seems to be some theory that being taken up the arse at boarding school disqualifies you from making valid rock music. Well, I dunno. Ask Kurt Cobain. I’m quite sure he’d have preferred being occasionally buggered by a prefect than the mountainload of shit he had to put up with as a youth;” berating the crowd for sluggishness: “Oh, what’s the matter, did [support band] Daisy Chainsaw tire you out, little children?”—you can’t ignore a little tingle down your spine when you hear that voice again, even if it is employed for something as mundane as telling a traffic warden not to ticket his car. Which, as it turns out, is too late.
“You got a ticket anyway,” states the warden, ambling up to him.
“Aw, come on, mate—I live right there. I only parked outside so I could take my cat to the vet. I’ve only been there five minutes.”
“Fifteen.”
“Yeah, well, maybe, sorry, but … look, I had to dash to the shop to get some pet food, because otherwise I can’t get her into the box, but I didn’t know I’d run out, and … oh, it’s complicated.”
“Nothing I can do. Once I press the button, that’s it.”
Webster huffs and rips open the little plastic packet placed under his windscreen wipers.
“Eighty quid!”
“Forty if you pay within a fortnight. There’s an address on the back if you want to appeal.”
I’m hiding further down my stairwell while watching this riveting exchange. I can just see Webster’s lower half, his carrier bag (Kent’s—“Everything for Your Pet”) swinging as he hopelessly stamps his feet. I didn’t really have him down as a cat lover, but there you go. I cast the obvious thought aside (how the hell did I manage to miss him leaving his flat, retrieving his car, parking outside, going inside and coming out again, when I’ve been sitting here patiently since eight o’clock this bloody morning) because an idea has just struck me. Probably the first genuinely astute idea I’ve had all day. I pull my hat down, hurry back up the steps and stride purposefully past the warden and the still fulminating ex-pop star, continue up the street, do a left onto the main road, cut down the little alleyway which chops off the one-way system, then out onto the high street and stop by the pub next to the Morrisons. There, a comfortable distance from the homeless dude who sits next to the cash machines, I wait.
I don’t have to wait long. Five minutes, if that. I actually spot him in his car, driving past and turning right before the MFI, finding himself a spot, getting out with the cat box and hurrying back to the high street. He reaches the vet’s, just across the road from where I’m standing, presses the buzzer and enters.
As bright as my previous brainwave was, I’ve no idea what to do now. Okay, so he occasionally takes his cat to the vet. Great. There seems little to be gained from barging in there and trying to chat to him as he waits for his p-ssy to be dewormed, or whatever it is. Lacking any startling inspiration, I simply wait. This is not difficult. I’ve been doing it all day.
But just in case life was getting too easy it starts to rain. That strange, jerky rain you often get in the springtime; oversized raindrops. Initially this is not a problem. Ten minutes later it’s a little bit stupid. The unremarkable assortment of Saturday-afternoon traffic, buses, screaming police cars and thundering HGVs continues for a short while longer until, thank Christ, Webster emerges and sprints back to his car. But there’s something missing. It takes me a few moments to spot what’s missing: something which, in a fairly tenuous manner, gives me my opportunity.
He hasn’t got his cat with him.
I hang on for a moment to check he’s not simply running back to grab something, but no; he drives off. I cross the road and look at the opening times tacked to the door. “Closed Sundays. Monday-Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.” Without thinking too much, I whip off my hat and enter. The small waiting room is mercifully empty apart from the blondy-grey-haired lady who sits behind the counter, surrounded by cash register, phone, toys, packets of catnip, photos of various animals (“A few of our furry friends”) and other assorted pet paraphernalia. I give her my best, non-nutterest smile.
“Hello,” I start, wondering whether she’ll remember me.
“Oh, hi!” she exclaims, looking up from some paperwork. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I reply. “Long time …”
“That’s right,” she nods. “How’s—erm …”
“Cookson?”
“Cookson! That’s it.”
“Ah,” I shrug, mock-ruefully “I lost the custody battle, I’m afraid. He’s now in Camberwell with his mum.”
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I laugh. “He’s got a garden now. Cat flap and everything.”
“Aw, good,” she beams, glad it was a happy, cuddly ending for the feline in the relationship. “So what can we do for you today?”
“Well … a couple of years ago I remember you telling us it sometimes got pretty swamped in here, and you asked for people to help out?”
“Oh, yes. Still do actually. Not that we’re inundated with volunteers …”
“Well, I just thought … I’m free on Monday, and I wondered whether you could use any … you know …”
Suddenly her voice takes on a tone of desperation.
“Monday?”
“Yes … I know you’re probably not terribly busy on Mondays, but—”
“We are overwhelmed this Monday! There’s a full day of appointments, dozens of pets to be fetched from the surgery and I’ve got to go to pick my mother up from hospital.”
“Ah. Where’s she in hospital?”
“Bournemouth.”
“Right—so, er, Monday would be good, then?”
“Yes!” She stands up, reaches out and clasps my hand. “Oh, my goodness, we’re in such a spot! You couldn’t have come at a better time!”
I’m not making this up, honest. In fact, her reaction is so embarrassingly over the top that I start backtracking.
“But, surely … you need to be a current customer to volunteer?”
“Oh, no! Don’t worry about a little thing like that,” she chatters, brushing the very thought aside. “Hang on, let me go and tell the vet; she’ll be thrilled!”
She scampers off to the little consulting room. Shit. Of course, I’m assuming Webster actually needs to come and pick up his bloody cat on Monday. He’d damn well better do, as I seem to have inadvertently got myself a hard day’s voluntary toil. I’ll have to pull a sicky as well—from my real job. I must be insane.
The same female Australasian vet who occasionally jabbed a needle into my ex-cat emerges from the consulting room, her face lighting up with recognition.
“Ah, yes! Mr. Beresford!”
I hold up my hand in reluctant acknowledgement. “That’s me.”
“So good of you. What time can you start?”
“Er … well, whenever, really.”
“Do you drive?”
“Do I drive?”
“The animals need to be picked up from the weekend surgery at nine.”
“Ah. Yes. Where’s the weekend surgery?”
“Stevenage. The van will be in Stanmore, though, where the weekend driver lives. Is it possible for you to collect it tomorrow evening? So good of you!”
“Er, well, yeah, I guess so …”
“Jackie will give you the address, if you could bring the animals back here. They need to be fed, and then the other vet arrives around eleven. After that it’s just managing the till and waiting room until we close.”
“Ah.”
“Whatever you can manage, really. The whole day would be great.”
My dad has an expression that always used to irritate me as a child: “How do I get into these things?” But in recent years I’ve come to recognise its accuracy and its myriad uses. Hell’s bells. All this had bloody better be worth it.
Jackie, the blondy-grey-haired lady who suddenly has a name, gives me the address of the van place (“It’s just a little walk from Stanmore tube—about twenty minutes or so”), then the weekend surgery place (“It’s not really Stevenage—it’s out the other side of the town, village called Walkern, round the back of the trading estate near a water mill—you can’t miss it”) and briefly apprises me of the nature of my cargo (“Not too many this weekend: five cats, a guinea pig and a ferret—only three dogs, but then one of them is Nigel the boxer, and he can get a little frisky”). Just on my way out, my head spinning with the intricacies of a world hitherto as remote to me as that of tap dancing, I stop and ask what is almost certainly a rather peculiar question.
“You haven’t, um … the vet, she … erm … has she had to put any animals down today?”
Jackie frowns.
“Yes. She has, I’m afraid. Why?”
“Oh, no reason,” I smile unconvincingly, and stumble out.
I hurry home, trying my damnedest to recall how long Webster was in there. Fifteen, twenty minutes? Maximum. Is that long enough?
Polly is sitting at the kitchen table when I stumble through the door, her black mop of hair all over the place, still wearing her mangy dressing gown and those rank, oversized animal slippers from way back, splattered with a few years’ worth of toothpaste drips. She’s smoking, sipping red wine, calmly dipping cream crackers into a tub of margarine while reading the Saturday Telegraph. It’s a fairly typical scene.
“How long d’you reckon it takes to put a pet down?” I ask, without preamble.
“Put a pet down?”
“Yes. You know. Kill it. Put it to sleep. Out of its misery, via lethal injection.”
“How long?”
“Yes!” I repeat irritably, extracting a can of beer from the fridge and cracking it open.
“Why do you want to know?”
“What does that matter? D’you reckon ten minutes, fifteen?”
Polly sits back and thinks.
“We had an Alsatian that once suddenly became demented while Dad was on the toilet,” she begins. “It wouldn’t let him out of the bathroom. Each time he tried to escape it would hurl itself at the door and attack whatever part of him was protruding. Almost bit one of his fingers off. He had to stay there until Mum came home a few hours later. Then it tried to attack her. Eventually she managed to whack it over the head with a paving stone.”
“Did she kill it?”
“No, just stunned it. They called the vet but the vet was busy, so they got the farmer from over the way to come with his shotgun. The dog woke up before the farmer got there, so Mum tried to hit it again. Problem was she missed and hit Dad’s foot. Broke his ankle.”
“So what happened in the end?”
“It chased Mum into the garden, so she jumped in the swimming pool. It was normally the only place the dog wouldn’t go. But the f*cking dog just leaped in and swam after her. Finally the farmer appeared and shot the dog.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah.” Polly sighs and takes a large swig of wine. “Loads of blood, though. We had to drain the pool.”
Polly’s examples are always as entertaining as they are thoroughly useless.
“So, you’ve no idea, then.”
“About what?”
“Oh, never mind.”
I take the beer to my bedroom, stick on a CD (The Sundays’ Reading, Writing and Arithmetic—always good for a rainy evening when you’ve just come back from the vet), pull off my soaking jeans, then collapse onto the bed. So. Day one of my fantastically well-thought-out campaign, and what have I achieved? Well, aside from a lot of waiting, scaring a granny, confusing a traffic warden, prancing about in the rain and offering my voluntary services for the day—not an awful lot. But unless he really was taking his cat to unwittingly meet its maker (which I’ve decided probably wasn’t the case—I mean, fifteen minutes would be pretty tight for a spot of pet euthanasia, even in today’s money; plus he looked wet but hardly heartbroken on the way back to his car), the odds are that I’m actually going to have some sort of exchange with the man on Monday.
And how do we feel about that?
I jump up and turf Harriet Wheeler’s pretty meanderings off the CD player, sift through the jewel cases that litter my so-called desk, and locate a particularly bashed-up one with that familiar cover: a schoolboy, in dirty blazer, shorts and cap, standing on a hill and holding a helium balloon, on which the legend “Lovely Youth” is scrawled.
Of course, this isn’t the first copy of the Thieving Magpies’ flawless second album I’ve owned. I think I’ve owned three in total: the first, a cassette, as a lot of my albums were back then, long since lost. Then I bought it on vinyl in about 1993, partly so my DJ friend Archie Landless could play tracks from it at the indie disco over which he presided at our university. The bastard ran off with it in the end, along with several other gems: my vinyl copies of Complete Madness, The Wonder Stuff’s Never Loved Elvis, The Police’s Regatta de Blanc, Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk (an absolute classic—which also holds my personal accolade of having the best Side One ever), my limited-edition picture disc of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (God damn it! Why did I lend him that?) and finally—this one hurts—my never-to-be-found-again copy of the very first Now That’s What I Call Music compilation album (original pig cartoon, “Victims” by Culture Club, “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, two Kajagoogoo songs and Phil Collins wearing a flat cap on the front). But losing Lovely Youth is the real killer. I had to make do with a taped copy of Alan’s pristine vinyl version until 1996, when just about every bargain bin in the country contained a few Thieving Magpies albums. After meticulously comparing prices I eventually purchased my current copy for three quid, but it’s simply not as good on CD. Aside from the usual bollocks about the warmth of the vinyl sound, the booklet, inexplicably, doesn’t contain half the photos the inner record sleeve or cassette inlay did, and Lance’s individual song notes have been cruelly omitted. This feature of the Magpies’ records became as much a part of the acquiring experience as hearing the music itself, and gave the listener a pretty good insight into what went on in the singer’s head. Whenever I glance at Alan’s copy of Lovely Youth I go straight to the passage that accompanies “Pit Pony”: “Someone once asked me what I thought of the fashion industry. This is my response—although I still think this is too polite.” And I love the annotation for Shoot the Fish’s “Have You Stopped Talking Yet?”: “Written in the loo during an argument’s cooling-off period. The answer is no, by the way.” While this tradition was clearly deemed too silly for the mainstream-busting earnestness of Bruise Unit, it was reinstated for the final album, The Social Trap, which bristled with such back-on-form attacks as: “This one’s dedicated to a clutch of ex-friends for whom cocaine has replaced personality. I’d rather gouge my eyes out with this pen than be at a party with you again. Good night and f*ck off” (“A Good Time Was Had by None”) and “Ooh, look at me, I’m so dark and damaged” (“Keep It Out of My Face”).
Anyway, I digress. Although Bruise Unit unarguably marked the point at which the diverse compound of the band boiled down nicely, enabling them to make a unified, uncomplicated but accomplished album that would prove their career zenith, it’s Lovely Youth that I need to hear right now. If all successful bands experience Neil Tennant’s much-referenced “imperial phase,” where everything they touch turns to platinum, this must be reached via a “territorial phase,” during which the group’s best work is normally produced and they are in possession of a factor that can be (sadly) best described as “cool”: referenced by all the right journalists, played by all the right DJs, name-checked by all the right colleagues, remixed by all the right producers. This period’s length varies enormously from act to act: usually it lasts for just one album, often their debut (Oasis, The Killers, The Strokes, The Stone Roses), sometimes their second or third effort (Blur, Manic Street Preachers); occasionally a band manages to stretch it slightly longer (Radiohead, The White Stripes). In a few isolated cases this era actually never finishes (The Smiths), or is sometimes so fleeting in length it’s as though it hasn’t actually occurred at all (Coldplay, Snow Patrol). For the Thieving Magpies, Lovely Youth encapsulates this period. As snotty as their debut, containing some of their loudest, punkiest efforts (“Tube Screamer,” “Everyone Behaves Like a Cunt So Why Can’t I”), it also finds them stretching their sonic palette, experimenting with samples and sequencers (“War on the Floor,” “Camp David”), and is home to one of the most robust pop compositions of their career (“Look Who’s Laughing”). But more important, it’s the freshness of the record that strikes you; the excitement of writing and recording such an article seeps unstoppably through the speakers until there’s no doubt that you’re listening to something genuinely rare and thrilling. Fifteen months after hearing their debut, during which time I had changed more than I can possibly describe, hearing the adrenaline rush of opening track “Rancid/Putrid” escape from my cassette deck was … well, certainly more exciting than losing my virginity, which I’d been permanently parted from the previous month.
And what sort of man was Lance Webster back then? Well, the geezer Alan and myself nervously chatted to in Harlow would have been basking in the knowledge that, two months after its release, Lovely Youth had sold its one-hundred-thousandth British copy, prompting the incongruous appearance of a gold disc in his Kentish Town flat. In the post-Britpop music business this statistic would be simply described as “a good start,” but back in 1990 their label BFM were more than happy with the Magpies’ progress. Previously average sales—it had charted high but quickly fallen, as most alternative albums tended to do—had been inflated by the release of the aforementioned “Look Who’s Laughing” as a single, which by early March had leapfrogged The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets and even Bros to insert itself at a confident number nine, sharing the top ten with the likes of Michael Bolton, New Kids on the Block and Jive Bunny (the only alternative act who charted higher was Depeche Mode). A sellout European tour was about to commence—the band retaining their integrity by eschewing an economically sensible offer to play Wembley Arena in favour of an equivalent three nights at Brixton Academy, and even America was pricking up its ears, as the album floated around the high sixties of the Billboard chart thanks to heavy rotation on college and alternative radio.
Lance Webster, it could therefore be safely assumed, was feeling pretty pleased with himself. At an age when most of his school contemporaries were just finishing university and embarking on exciting careers in law and accountancy, Webster was Out There, playing to packed clubs and theatres in Britain, Europe and America, straddling the covers of Sounds and Melody Maker on an almost monthly basis; his waistcoat and shorts, long brown hair and—when slightly more pretentious occasion called for it—round glasses becoming as much an outfit du jour for the fans as the baggy flares, flowery shirt and fishing hat of the Madchester set. He could walk into any indie club in the country with a test pressing of a new song; the DJ would greet him like an old friend and spin the disc instantly, always resulting in frenzied grooving and bouncing from the kids. But although he was the champion of the T-shirted masses, who felt relatively comfortable (as we did) wandering up to him at a gig and saying hello, Webster’s slightly more intellectual slant, way with words and lyrical references to books, films and art undeniably put him far apart from the melee, and well removed from the aesthetic concerns of, say, a member of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Simply put, he was not one of us—nor did we want him to be. Admired and in many cases counted as a friend by a wide cross section of alternative luminaries—Robert Smith, Clint Mansell, Wayne Hussey, Jim and William Reid, Bill Drummond, Steve Mack, Billy Bragg, Jim Bob, Mark Arm, Bobby Gillespie, Tanya Donnelly, Tim Smith, Billy Duffy, even Nick Cave and Michael Stipe—Lance, with his ready wit and low tolerance of bullshit, was one of the coolest new kids on the indie block. For a while this meant he could get away with virtually anything and still come out looking like a hero. I don’t mean in the traditional zones of “sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll”—in fact, he mostly seemed to frown on all this as “old hat,” although there never seemed to be any shortage of stunning girls around him—but more in the way he addressed his constituents. Mostly this behaviour revealed a graduate of the Johnny Rotten school of insults, but at times Webster seemed to address them as a PE teacher would some recalcitrant kids, or like they were particularly dumb sheep in a field. Stranger still, no one complained. “We’re gonna play a cover of ‘Centrefold’ by the J. Geils Band,” he announced at one show. “Anyone got a problem with that?” Of course, some old-skool-punk dissenters down the front roared their disapproval, to which Webster barked, “Right, you can f*ck off, the exits are clearly marked;” and then actually waited for the culprits to leave the pit before the band launched into the song. In June of 1990, the Magpies were given an evening slot on the second (now “Other”) stage at Glastonbury A minute or two before their published stage time, Webster wandered onstage wearing dark glasses and a bowler hat, and began to speak in a fake posh accent. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to watch the Reading-based rock band commonly known as Thieving Magpies. Before you do, you are legally required to repeat the Glastonbury Second Stage Oath.” General looks of amused confusion from the audience, some of whom hadn’t yet realised who this figure was. “Repeat after me: I do solemnly declare [the crowd repeated] … that the second stage at Glastonbury … has the shittiest sound in the world … most of it disappearing … across the plain … and into the valley behind … or drowned out by the rain … which will almost certainly begin … halfway through the set … but I promise … to enjoy myself anyway … and not shout out for any songs … because the band choose the f*cking set [a particular bugbear of Webster’s] … and we are merely … lowly audience members … who aren’t fit to lick … the grease off Craig Spalding’s kick-drum pedal.” And with that, he introduced his own band. The assembled masses, having obediently chanted every word, rewarded him with a louder ovation than ever.
And oh, we lapped it up. We would have done anything the man asked us to. For if Webster was satisfied with his own success, it meant even more to the likes of Alan and me, treading water as we were in a drab pond filled with A-levels, applications for universities we had little interest in going to and girls who had little interest in going anywhere near us; all this to a sound track (unless we were controlling the tape deck) of mindless Stock/Aitken/Waterman pop and punchable Euro-dance acts such as Black Box and Snap. But the Thieving Magpies, and a batch of similarly heroic groups, represented our triumph, our foothold, our flag on the world’s musical map. We were as evangelical as a bunch of canvassing Scientologists, proudly sporting our various bits of merchandise, quickly indoctrinating anyone who showed even the vaguest interest by carting them off to a pub, feeding them a few pints of cider and black, playing them a compilation tape and giving them a copy of the fanzine (yeah, I’m going to have to fill you in on that one shortly). Whenever the Magpies ascended the charts or appeared on television or mainstream radio, we genuinely saw it as our achievement.
But on a personal level, we knew next to nothing of Webster. He’d seemed pleasant enough when we spoke to him, but privately, who had any idea? He’d once memorably described himself as an “arrogant, overbearing and selfish tosser”—which at the very least seemed likely to be an exaggeration—but any reports reaching us suggested a rounded character whose only crime was an occasional inability to hold his drink. He was certainly an expert in self-promotion, developing Morrissey-like notoriety for giving incredibly good interviews, often for publications that had little interest in his music but that were simply after a few choice bon mots and a spark of controversy. I often forget, when rereading these, how insanely young he was at the time; that he was so unapologetically self-assured still strikes me as bloody impressive, especially remembering what a clueless little fart I myself was at the age of twenty-three.
But was he really happy? An odd thought, perhaps, but one I feel the need to address on the eve of meeting him again, some seventeen years later, his life so profoundly different. And yes, I know I’m only going to be serving him in a vet’s surgery, but still. Imagine I’m not. Imagine I’m actually going to be sitting down, tape recorder and all, for a proper interview. What would I ask him? Where would I start? Having scaled such heights, he’s now living in a small flat in a boring north-London suburb, and no one knows who the f*ck he is. Having sold a good seven or eight million records over the course of his career, he’s now arguing with traffic wardens about eighty quid. Am I being hopelessly na?ve, or is he likely to be really, seriously pissed off about this state of affairs? And, as Noel Gallagher once charmlessly scribbled, where—why—how—did it all go so f*cking wrong?