Mundane Moments

Having worked on the radio and met many celebrities I have a pretty extensive list too. The so called nice celebrities were generally horrible and the difficult ones were lovely. Technically I didn't work with them, but spent hours interviewing people and hanging out. The nicest ones were Howard Stern (he is actually quite shy) and Brett Michaels of Poison (not shy at all), who seemed completely unphased when I told him that Poison wasn't really my bag. He also visited the radio station numerous times, always remembered my name and we even went bowling together as a group. Him and radio staff. Absolutely lovely fellow. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith is possibly the funniest man I have ever met because his story in the interview ended up in a 30 minute argument with Joe Perry about whether the story was true or not. It was also the easiest interview ever as I only asked one question and the rest was those two riffing and arguing. Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes was lovely to me which is odd as he had a punch up with his brother Rich just minutes earlier. (At the time they hated each other. AC/DC and Judas priest absolute gentleman. Rob halford very soft spoken... Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites was a great hang. Might not be very well known but super friendly bloke and we went for beers after the gig as he has lots of funny Tom Petty stories... Also Frank Bruno. Don't ask how I ended up chatting to him but generally a very very lovely bloke....

I have also had a few horror shows. No-one would be surprised that Dave Mustaine of Megadeth was a sour puss but a positive sweetheart compare with Roger Waters who was promoting his Radio K.A.O.S. album at the time. He was still obsessed with Dave Gilmour at the time. Pete Townsend yelled at me when I was in his rehearsal studio space with Roger Daltrey and Eddie Vedder. Roger came outside and apologised to me. Mr. Townsend I have never seen friendly ever. Ironically I know a radio engineer who thinks he is the Bee's knees. Biggest disappointment was Scott Ian of Anthrax who was very serious which was weird because the rest of Anthrax were super fun bunch. Maybe Scott was having an off day. He didn't seem too keen to talk to me. Sebastian Bach was incredibly brattish and mardy when I was interviewing Skid Row but the rest of the band made fun of him so it was actually quite fun..

The three worst people I have ever met were Richard Marx the singer. (major knob), Lita Ford (major bitch. Seemed obsessed with Joan Jett).. and of course Yngwie Malmsteen who was such a twat to me his wife gave him shit and went out of her way to be nice to me. I think just to piss him off but she was lovely.

Actually I have a million stories... I miss my radio days..

Chicago: Former Star Fucker.

How did you end up chatting to Frank Bruno?

He was doing some theatre and some acting. I originally met him in a lift at the royal Concert hall. Not sure what I was doing there but we ended up chatting. Really gentle soft spoken bloke. He was happy to do some promotional stuff.

Chicago: Man of opportunity.

This has reminded me that we went bowling on hard watch Edward Albee play The Lady From Dubuque.
Catherine McCormack is a lot of fun on a night out. Or she was back then, anyway.

Is it just me who doesn't give much of a fuck about this moon mission stuff?

There have been some amazing photos that capture the whole “miles from home” and “precious and fragile earth” thing, but it’s not meant much more than that to me. Maybe it’s because I can remember the first landing almost 60 years ago though, and it doesn’t seem like we’ve advanced in any way since then.

It might've interested me had there been some sort of Jean-Michel Jarre laser light show to accompany it, which would've been appropriate since 5 days ago was the 40th anniversary of Rendezvous Houston.

Hugely interested in it. A stepping stone to the species next great adventure.
The tech is the same but a lot different. People on the end of a huge firework. But this time making it less likely to blow up. Though blowing up is still possible. Space 1999 is next.

I mean…. we’ve built space stations and send rockets up with satellites and the like every ten minutes… and vast amounts of what we call civilisation bounce off of them etc. So that seems like quite a lot of advance.

I meant in terms of landing on the moon.

One of the mousetraps in my garage has had an overnight success.

Getting to the moon?

Mousetraps and The Moon both involve cheese.

And Clangers.

I'm tempted to make that Morato's nickname on account of how many he drops.