| When Billy met John Peel at Glastonbury, he promised a new session. This was broadast live on John's Friday programme of 13.10.1995. Here are some details of the session: | ||||
| John Peel, BBC Radio 1 FM | ||||
| 13.10.1995, 22.00-01.00 | ||||
| Billy Bragg live in session | ||||
| 22.36 | - 23.11 (23.19) | |||
| 22.40 | Northern Industrial Town (Bragg/Bragg) | 2'50" | ||
| 22.46 | A Pict Song (R.Kipling/Bragg) | 4'56" | ||
| 22.57 | Brick Bat (Bragg/Bragg) | 2'57" | ||
| 23.05 | This Gulf Between Us (Bragg/Bragg) | 2'04" | ||
| Notes: | ||||
| The session started at 22.36 and ended at 23.19. It includes five 'conversation' sections and the four live-performed songs. Note that I'm not a native speaker, so I might not have got every word right. I tried to be as precise as possible, but I leave out most Aahs, Umhs, &c. and use orthographically correct spelling for some terms (like beforehand instead of before'and, &c.), although not for others. Grammatical and syntactical errors and inconsistencies have not been corrected. | ||||
| I use these four colours to differentiate the various passages: | ||||
| John Peel | ||||
| Billy Bragg | ||||
| unclear words | ||||
| [comments] | ||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
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| [22.36] | As I mentioned earlier in the programme, we got Billy Bragg sitting directly in front of me, gonna strum one or two tunes in a moment or so. First of all you wanna see if the level's right ... Yes, the level ... hmm ... oh, that's nice. Is that loud enough? You sound lovely. I, I sound, yeah, yeah, that sounds good, yeah, yeah. Is that better than it was before? Yeah, much much better than it was before. Live and direct. OK, so listen, this is your first sort of public appearance, is it, ... It is, yeah, it is. ... In a while. So, what have you been doing? Quite a while, quite-a been a while. Well I, I've become a dad, that's what I been doing. That's been taken up quite a lot of time, and I've sort of like been, been wallowing in it. Tell ya, really been enjoying it. I felt like I'll, you know, sort o' like spent ten years on the road and making records and things, and I thought—well it seems like a natural break, and ... You wanna talk about? Yeah, yeah. I mean ... talk about, because I will say I'm awful talking 'bout my children. Yeah, you already showed me the photos. That's right. It's great, it's great. So I'm, sort of like, you know, I've got a, a one and three-quarter year-old son, who's like a absolute tyrant at the moment with the video-machine. I can't watch anything at the telly 'til he goes to bed. And he doesn't go to bed 'til sort o' like 11. So it's just, you know, it's, it's ... you ? ... Do you let him make up his mind when he goes to bed? Hmm, I try not to, I try, we try and wear him out a bit, y'know, but he's ... you'll have to stay horrible, so y'like, y'know, if he stays up late he might sleep in the morning, it's that horrible kind-a like, y'know. That's right. Trying to get ye mornings ... Tit-for-tat. ... Wahh! It's just one or the other. But I found, I've suddenly found a propensity which I never, never had before. If anything ever went wrong—even the most basic thing ever went wrong—I always went to Wiggy next door and asked him: you have my cassette player, or anything, y'know, my portable went wrong. Now since I've become an ?, y'know, women say when they have a child they become sort o' like all mother-like and everything, and it's in'em. When I've all a sudden started tinkering with things that break down, and I found I can, I mastered the screwdriver! After years of inadequacy ... and I'm not talking about the little quash-shaped one, I'm talking about the real proper man ... slight ... just went on with it. Well, I tell you what I did today: a, a lightbulb in our bathroom broke, y'know, the outside bit fell off, leaving the inside bit. And I went to the fuse box, switched off all the lights, and with a pair of pliers tooked out what was left of ... That's incredible, that's incredible. That is incredible, isn't it. So ... Well, glad I ... that's what I hoped, y'know, be able to aspire to ... yeah, yeah. You'll come, you'll get to that, Billy. At the moment I'm just kind-a like, y'know, walking 'round the house with the chair changing the lightbulb, stuff like that. I do that sort of stuff now, which I never used to do before. T'is funny how you get into it—yes ... The other weird thing, I, when I bathe Jack I often take the guitar and sing the acoustic thing, and he sometimes sings along. So I don't know if my singing voice is so up to the old, sort o' like Barking, sort o' Bragg, sort o' like mellow ... Well, it does ... My singing voice improved as soon as the first one popped out of the womb—there he was—I could sing like a larch ... Yeah, there you go, mate, there's hope for me yet then. You wanna give us the tune first. Yeah, let me, let me ... I've ... this's ... this's ... I've got a number, I've got that four tunes I'd like to play—in various states of being written: One I wrote last Friday night; one I wrote last year for a TV programme; one the lyrics were written in the 1890's and I wrote the tune last year, for the lyrics; and the other one I was finishing on the way in. So I think I should try the one I finished on the way in, just to get out o' the way, 'cos I feel nervous enough about it, so ... let's see if we can start with that. | ||
| [22.40] | Northern Industrial Town (Bragg/Bragg) 1995 | ||
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It's just a northern industrial town, And the doors of the houses open into the street, There's no room for front gardens, Just a two up two down, In a northern industrial town.
You can see the green hills 'cross the roof-tops,
And there's only two teams in this town,
And the street-lights are pretty and bright,
And on pay-day they tear the place down,
And there's plenty of artists around,
But it's not Leeds, or Manchester,
Merry Christmas, war is over,
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Sting in the tail there, Billy. I was gonna ... I wrote, I wrote down while I was going on: Any town in particular?, I was gonna ask you. You, well there, it was, it was. Now, I saw, I've not been over to Belfast since, since the war ended, but I've seen some pictures of it on the telly, and whence you take the ... troops off the streets, it's just, it's looks like a normal industrial town, y'know. Beforehand, I suppose, because we all grown up with the war happening there, we always thought of it as a warzone. But when you just see it as a normal town, y'know, people just normally walking down the streets, you suddenly realize how unreal it was for there to be a war going on every day. Yeah, there was something on the radio this evening when I was driving in: some man had been served 13 years—you probably read about him in the papers a few months ago—served 13 years for a sectarian killing, and now is like working with kids from both sides, and ... realizing in himself anyway—hopefully other people are as well—how stupid it all was all along. Yeah. Say, he actually got more in common with them than we have with ... Surprise, surprise! Yeah, what a great surprise. Hey, the gravel still there in your voice, Billy. Yeah, thank you. I think it is. There was nervousness, not gravel, I think. Not sound quite the same as in the bathroom. Ahm, what yer gonna do for us next? Well, I gonna, I'm gonna play a song, that, y'now, I don't if you know it was National Poetry Day yesterday. As you probably know, poetry is the new Rock'n'Roll. That's right, yeah! Which just means that it sounds like an excuse for a lot of people to wear leather trousers to me, which is always a good idea, but they had a poll o' favourite poems, and ... And what was it that came atop? "If" by Rudyard Kipling, which ... Don't tell me you set that to music! No, no, no, no! I've already been described as the "Stairway To Heaven" of poetry, which is fair enough ... What did you vote for? Did you vote for? I, my, my, I didn't actually vote myself, but I was watching it last night, and mine's William Blake poem "Tiger, Tiger", which is a very well known poem, but say, nobody ever want it, says that. "Tiger, tiger, shining bright", with the best line in it is: "And when stars threw down their spears, and watered heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see, did he who made the lamb, make thee?" I mean it's great stuff, isn't it! I always say—rather very pretentiously indeed, and really one of those things to counterdeflect criticism, or to increase criticism—when everybody asks me what my favourite poem is, I always say some because it's only one I can remember. It's something in Latin by Cutullus ... and it's—won't do the whole thing—and it does sound terribly pretentious to say this, but it starts "Passa mortues ... ", but has got this great line in it, which would fit perfectly to music, 'cos it does, it really—Nick over in the corner: hardly contain himself with all of this—but there's this line in there that goes: "Ipsum tam beni quam ...", now that ... Didn't they have a session last week? They did, funnily enough. There you go. Right. And on that note, I shall ... How can you remember that stuff? I still, 'cos you had to do it at school, you see ... Yeah. But there weren't Romans here when you were at school, were you. Nono, no, no, no. Aah, just after they left actually I went to school. No, but you have to do Latin, you see, if you wanted to go to University ... Aah, I see, I see. ... In those days you had to do Latin and Greek. The one people said to me: If you don't work hard, if you don't do the Latin, you won't go to University. And I thought: You have given me the key to eternal happiness, hey excite! Didn't want to go at all. Anyway, I can sing you my school song later on, that's in Latin as well. But I'll go away and let you work now. Yeah, the origin I was saying this is because—I don't know: do you like Kipling? Aah, I don't know, I've never 'kippled'! Wroom! That's it! Little Radio One star [?]. That's very good, that's very good. Nobody usually says that. But I've found out recently: the people who do the road protest in here, in Britain, sometimes refer to the roadbuilders as 'Romans', because obviously, y'know, the Romans did build—your Latin mates—and that reminded me of a great song that Kipling wrote in the Wind Hats in a book called Puk of ?. So, you know, Kipling wrote great songs, he wrote all those songs in the Jungle Book, y'know, "Doop-Bi-Doo, I wanna be like you ..."—Kipling wrote all those ... [laughs] So, I, when I looked at this poem—and it's just, it's a great poem—and it fits exactly with the battles that the people who are protesting against road-building in this country are doing, because ... Although the Empire—British Empire—is gone, all they've got left is us, we British people, and they treat us now as if we, y'know, they're the Imperial Guard, and we're, y'know, we're their slaves. So I, I grabbed hold of this hundred year-old sort o' poem/song, and wrote. It's called A Pict Song. The Picts were the people who lived in Scotland outside the Roman Empire, and it was not a term of a particular group of people, but just a derogatory term, the 'Picts'. And I think it's a song now about everybody who's living out of society, so it's called A Pict Song. Here we go. Let's see if I, if I can play this ... | |||
| [22.46] | A Pict Song (R.Kipling/Bragg) 1994 | ||
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Rome never looks where she treads, And always her heavy hoofs fall On our stomachs, our hearts, and our heads, And Rome never peeds? when we ball. The centuries pass on, that is all, And we gather behind them in hordes, And flood to reconquer their wall, And only our tongues for our swords.
For we are the little folk, we,
Mistletoe killing an oak,
For we are the little folk, we,
Yes it is true, we are not strong,
For we are the little folk, we, [heist doesn't seem to exist, and furthermore doesn't rhime that good with states, but height doesn't really fit with little either...] | |||
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I gotta ask you this, because people are listening to the programme want to ask you this as well. I mean, you obviously live a nice, y'know, sort of domestic life now, and you obviously got a few bob there, otherwise you'd not-a been able to take a year or so off work. Exactly. So, d'you ... when you sing something like that, do you feel as though it's about you, or about somebody else now? Are you still a 'Pict', Billy? I am, I am a Pict. I mean, I think it's for people, that particular song is for people who feel that they're outside, outside of society; and I certainly feel excluded from society. Sure, I go to Sainsbury's, I have a nice time, y'know, I go down the Mexican restaurant in the corner of our road. But, y'know, ... with regard to the major struggles that are going on, I still walk the streets the same as everybody else, nothing, nothing, y'know, averts my eyes from people sleeping in shop doorways. I still travel on London Transport here in the city. I still, y'know, see great lumps of the countryside carved up, y'know. I'm still, I'm still engaged. I've not gone to the stage where I wanna emigrate, I wanna buy a nice big house in the country, where I don't have to deal with the sort o' day-to-day life. And in that sense, my life hasn't changed from how it was. You still have to deal with the day-to-day life if you live in the country as well as ... You do, but I should imagine, that I would imagine people who live in a nice big house, a beautiful big house in the country, that you have kind-a like retainers to, to deal with your, your stuff for you. I don't think there are so many out there as you think there are, y'know, I mean living in the country as I do ... I know, I know ... not yourself, Peel, I'm not suggesting for a moment! ... Not in a big house particularly. No, but I mean, I don't think, I don't think that there are those many, y'know, that many of those sort o' people ... Well, I mean people who think about that about rock stars. I mean you think you do the rock business you gonna take the, y'know, the Gary Dreadful route, and ... drive your Range Rover over your wide acres, and obviously sort o' droppin' out o' sight for a while. I suppose people thought I'd, y'know, copped out or gone out to buy a packet of cigarettes and joined some strange religious cult, or just taken too many of whatever substances it is I take. So ... I don't, I must real[ly]... I did wonder about that myself at one stage, but then ... Of course you very kindly—about a year ago I think it was—invited me to go to see ... Liverpool playing at Queen's Park Rangers ... That's right, that's right, I did. ... which was very nice, and I very much appreciated that. Worried about the fact that you not been in touch since though, Billy. Is that because Liverpool won ... was that ... Well, it was ... that was an element of that of that was involved. It was partly because I was just up to me eyeballs with Jack, but the first outing I did out—proper out—was of course Glastonbury Festival. And there in the millions and millions of other people, there I bumped into you again, Peel, there you were ... You can't, you can't escape really. It's not The BBC World Service: people go to the most obscure parts of the world, y'know, and they'll be sleeping in the [hedge] somewhere, play some place that we've even heard of ... You mean Kershaw you talking about. Well, alright, yes certainly, and, and other people who write in, and they say, y'know, they're listening to the radio and then they hear this Aah, here's a track from the new LP by The Fall—Ooh no! Not there! Worse is a result from the Premier League: Liverpool 4 - West Ham 0. You can hear that ... on a certain side of a Bolivian mountainside one night, feeling, y'know, freezing cold, and I heard from London the footy results, and it spoiled my evening ... But they are beautiful. Have you seen'em? Have you been watching them on ... You talking about the Bolivian mountains, or Liverpool? No, no, no! Forget the Bolivian mountains. They are. I think, I think they're very good. I think they have a great young team and I think them or Newcastle Utd. I think are gonna ... They play, they look like a Liverpool team again. Yeah, they do, they do. Even if they lose or don't win, they still look beautiful, I think. Jamie Redknapp's a West Ham supporter, you know, didn't you? Yeah, well ... yeah ... s'is ... well ... suppose he would be. So d'you wanna talk about gigs and things, or d'you wanna play another song? Gigs, yeah, yeah. Can I do 'quick plug? Yeah, plug your gigs, yes ... I'm plugging, I'd have a quick plug ... Just imagine that it's Radio Four ... and .. we're set up for these purposes. ... and I'm doing a gig next Saturday—Saturday week, the 21st—there's UNISON, the trade union, organizing a march from, from Central London—not sure exactly where, probably Trafalgar Square or the Embankment—to Burgess Park, which is in Southwark, south of the River. And the theme of the march—as you fancy come along and march to this theme—is: "Public Service—Not Private Sleaze". As you probably may or may not know, UNISON are the ... what used to be the National Union of Public Employees, and ... they've got a couple of—after there'll be a few brief speeches—and they got two tents: they got a dance/rave tent, for those of you who wanna dance/rave, and then they've got a ... a sort o' like a live tent, and I'll be playing in there, sometime 'bout half past three to four o'clock for about 40 minutes. They got the Bhundu Boys on there as well, the Wangfords are playing. It's really gonna be great. Even if the weather's bad, it's in a tent, so it'll be worth coming down. So ... if you fancy havin' a march and seeing some more of these new songs, and some of the old ones as well, that's what I'll be doing. Is this ... is this your first sort of proper performance in ... Yeah ... yeah I did ... sort of go and do a couple ... I don't been do a couple. It's my first gig in London since I did the ... Anti-Nazi League march. I played on the back of a wagon with S*M*A*S*H which was really great fun. I really enjoyed it. We got stuck in Brixton High Street ... under the railway bridge, and the acoustics under there were just brilliant. We were playing ... we were playing ... A bit of the next LP there ... You could do it, you could do it. It was brilliant. People hanging out. We were doing a Redskin song, and I think we're doing "Kick Over The Statues", we were doing "Big Gay Heart" by the Lemonheads, and "All Or Nothing" by the .. by The Small Faces. And then S*M*A*S*H would play a song, and then I'd play one of my songs, and then we go back to one of these three song, which we just—'cos they moved along—you keep playing these three songs over and again. It was brilliant. But it was there that I realized that some of, some o' the songs I used to sing in my former bachelor life didn't quite fit to the way ... I kept singing these lyrics and thinking: I can't sing that! I'm someone's dad now! Yeah! And you come over with this terrible feeling, y'know, that will domestic life be as inspirational? Aah, well I, I would imagine that it will be. So, I find it inspirational, me own small way. But when 'till you go on your first march with your son, 'cos I went on one of the Miners' marches with our William, in the pouring rain through London, and it was one of the ... I think I went with ya! It's the Miners' one, wasn't it? I was there, yeah. That's right, it was. We were walking behind Dennis Skinner. We're trying to pluck up the courage to speak to him, William said: Go on, dad. Just go up and speak to him—Oh, I can't, I can't! And I said: You can speak.—No, no, no. I can't! We never did get to speak to him. We followed him all the way there ... right behind him, step behind him. It was chuckin' it down that day, wasn't it? 'Was, really ... ... really bad, really bad. Got another tune for us? Yes. Last Friday night I was ... sittin' up, trying to finish that Northern Industrial Town song, trying to get the images the way I wanted them, as I was the way in here tonight; still needs a bit of adjusting. And I was getting nowhere. Also I got stuck by this song which I'm gonna play for you now, which came out all of much of a' once. And it's, it's, it's that song that proves that domestic, y'know, domestice, you can write song about. I'm quite pleased, releaved, and ... happy to play this for ya. It doesn't really got a proper title at the moment, it's ... sort o' goes under the title Brickbat at the moment. But I think I've .. now I've looked up in the dictionary, see what it means, I might have to change. Anyway ... | |||
| [22.57] | Brick Bat (Bragg/Bragg) 1995 | ||
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I ought to leave enough hot water for your morning bath, But I'd not thought I hate to hear you talk that way, But I can't bring myself to say, I'm sorry. The past is always knocking incessant, Trying to break through into the present, We have to work to keep it out, But I won't be the first to shout, It's over.
I used to wanna plant bombs,
I steal a kiss from you in the supermarkets,
I used to wanna plant bombs,
I stayed in bed, alone, uncertain,
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Well, I can identify with every second of that one, I have to say, I certainly can. Do I take from that you're not a fan of the Last Night Of The Proms, Billy? No, no, no, I'm not, I'm not a particular fan. One of those things which makes you irrationally cross. For some reason, I don't know why, I don't know why. It's one of those things it just makes you, sort o' like, gritt your teeth ... It does me too, yeah. What this doesn't represent anything that I, I believe, y'know ... Right. Any o' these things coming out on vinyl? Vinyl, well, well ... I mean ... the One of the questions we ... CDs ... whatever CDs are made of ... As you, as you will know, John, we've always, in my business we've always used your sessions to demo our songs, because the studio time in'e BBC is much cheaper, and ... It certainly is. ... lying on the floor in the studio, when it's £12,000 an hour, it's really, really embarassing when you haven't written the lyrics. But of course when I'm coming on the air to sing for you, I have to finish these song, else people at home are gonna laugh, I mean. So ... so, I, now I've come and done a few of these songs, I, I feel that ... in December I should be hopefully go in the studio to record an album. I've got about a dozen or so songs, and .. I'm gonna go and record it, and mix it in the new year, and hopefully have it out in ... sort of March sometime—fingers crossed, y'know. Sort of ... the urge to ... I mean I do wanna make ?; I haven't wanted to retire or anything, but once you look at the little fellow, y'know, you tryin' to work out which 18 months that you're gonna be on the road you're gonna miss: you're gonna miss the first 18 months; you wanna miss the, y'know, the bit around three when he starts to talk; you wanna miss the bit where reason dawns. You know, I missed none of it, so ... And what I'm trying to do is just sort o' get hold of my career, which before kind-a ran me around, because I didn't have anything better to do, frankly. Now I've got something to do, as well as do this job. So I'm just tryin' to sort o' get, get a bit more control of it, y'know. It's gonna take a while, but ... Well, I had, I had to make a similar decision myself, although a few yars ago. One of these things that nobody ever believes, 'cos obviously, if you work for Radio One and you change dramatically you kind-a whole patterns, anybody assumes they've said: You, look, we let you go to the press and say it was your idea, y'know. But I used to do four nights a week and I was spending 20 hours a week in the car and stuff. And I was leaving home just as the children came in from school, and then I'd see them very briefly in the morning, say to make a special effort to get up before they went. But I just thought, this is ludicrous, really. Never see them ... Yeah. I mean it's great to do this, to be able to be on the radio, be able and play and travel around the world. But there are things more important than it. It took me a while to suss that out ... but ... Of course you had to get used to the kind of—which you haven't done yet—but the idea, of course, it's not Disneyland at all, because ... So when you do get home and ... it's not they all rush up: Oh, Oh, daddy's home!, and all come to the door: Hi Daddy, we've made you some toffee!, or whatever it is, y'know, 'cos it's not. You go in and say: Hi kids, I'm home!, they say: Shut up dad, Pulp are on TV!, or something like this, y'know, and you just have to ... Hi, I'm home everybody — He needs changing, that sort o' thing. That's an element of that, but I'm getting used to that, so ... And if my able assistant Nick there might hand me another guitar ... I'll, I'll go up to a slightly different tuning, and ... finish off with song I wrote for a ... The other thing of course that you do get to do ... when you've ... when you've made a few records these people do very kindly ask you to do tunes for their films and stuff, which is great, because you can just ... record a song, give it to them, and then a year later, hopefully y'know, it comes out, and you ... You've not done the theme for the next Bond film! No, no, no! I just did a film for ... I did, I wrote actually some songs—can't do themes 'cos I'm not a musician, I can't do that top-line stuff, y'know—I just wrote some songs that were used in a, a, a BBC2 play called Safe—about ... young, two young homeless people—which is actually now gonna be made into a film, is made by Antonio Bird, who made the wonderful Priest; and if you saw it—'bout the, the Catholic priest— 'caused, y'know, outrage all around the world, banned all over the place, so ... more power to you, Antonio, if you're listening. And this is, this was the song that ... I played over the in-credits, it's called ... This Gulf Between Us. [starts to play] Oh dear, I need to tune this up, John. Even I noticed that, and I got ... [tunes guitar] Yeah, yeah, hang on a second. Just talk among yourself ... I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I'll do, because I'm supposed ... One of the things we have to do these days on Radio One is play these trailers that are, on a regular basis. So I'll fade us both down while you do that, and I'll play this ... [trailer for Danny Rampling's Love Grove Dance Party (Sats. 7-9pm), mentioning 'funky vibes'] Much better ... that helped you with the tuning ... I had forgotten those funky vibes, now he's mentioned it ... I totally forgotten. [laughs] Thank god you played that. Sorry everyone! Where would you been without that. Even I noticed, we both, y'know, non-musical chaps that we are ... [laughs] My eyebrow twitched. Are you ready to go? Yeah, yeah, yeah! you're, I just think ... won't tell you what twichted with me, John. Yeah, I'll have a go ... let's see ? play it now. | |||
| [23.05] | This Gulf Between Us (Bragg/Bragg) 1994 | ||
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Who will come to carry me home, Carry me over the river? Must I face this all on my own, Face the lies and the gulf between us, Face the lies and gulf between us.
Dawn breaks over the squares and the parks,
Please don't hand me your sympathy, [This song first appeared on the Soundtrack SAFE in 1994.]
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Very nice. You're listening to Radio One. This is Billy Bragg, of course ... well, that was Billy Bragg, I'm John Peel. How long ago was it ... that, the famous occasion with the Mushroom Berriani, and you got your first radio plays ... [laughs] The famous occasion with the Mushroom Berriani, must-a been 1983, 'cos you were on Kid Jensen's show at that time. You were talking to him in his show, and you were saying that you really fancied Mushroom Berriani. And I think two days before, I'd, I'd rammed my first album under your door, in the hope that you'd play it. And I was playing football in Hyde Park with some mates o' mine, and we heard on the radio you kind-a liked this Mushroom Berriani. I suddenly thought ... Payola! [laughs] Yes, this man is totally corrupt. So, off I went in me boots and studs, and we got an Indian together for you, brought it down, and you, you very kindly ... And your career is ... Ever since, John. ... ever since then. Ever since. Now, I have to say, John, I know it's, y'know, we often ... sort o' joke about it and since, but without your support, it's not just someone like myself but there's thousands and thousands of bands out there, would never got heard, would never got off their dayjobs, would still working at 40, but weren't for your support, so ... Thank you very much for—Mushroom Berriani notwithstanding—thank you very much for your support. Well, I tell you ... this ... In this past week, as you're ... The first thing you said when you came in yourself, was ... I mean, there. I've been doing this radio programme since Queen Anne was on the throne, and yet, nobody ever says a thing, Eh there, I really like that session you have from so-and-so, y'know, But everybody, everybody I've seen this week has said: How does you get into his pram on Vic & Bob's programme. Now, I didn't mention that. You obviously, see, you did mention it earlier. I did, I didn't, I didn't mention it on the air, though, did I? No, no, no, no. You didn't mention it on the air. I won't drop in on the air, but how did you get into it? Well, I was astonished, I have to admit. This is—what's the programme called, Shooting Star—last week it was, and ... because I, I went along there, and you know that you're just there to kind-a make up the numbers, and to be made to look ridiculous, y'know, ... and I was kind-a used to that. So, I mean, it's not problem. So I sat there and tried to participate as little as possible, y'know, because I do get into a bit of a panic on these occasions, but I thought it would just be great to be able to say that I done it. So I'm actually stayed, keep my head right down below the parapet, right until the end. And then they said, Well, we got to chose somebody who goes for whatever it's called, y'know—the Big Challenge, or something like that—and they said to Mark Lamarr, Who you're gonna nominate?, and I thought, He's gonna nominate me, he's going ..., and he did, of course. And so I had to get out and stand. I had to do it twice, actually, to be honest ... Yeah. I ... and I got in both: The first time I did it rather better, which is the one you weren't shown, 'cos s'thing went wrong with the cameras, but I had to stand by the pram, and I thought Stand By That Pram ..., and I thought there's no way, at all, ha ha. There you call him Mr. Music ... They won't gonna get in there, and yet ... I, I know, I'd looking at home, thought there's no way that you ... And yet, in a ?, there I was. It was a very big pram, wasn't it? Wasn't that big, Billy. T'was lik a ten-gallon pram. Wasn't that big, it wasn't that big, no! When you stood by it ... You don't see many of them down the daycentre—I tell you, John—that size, unless they're being pushed by, by some Royal nanny, or something. It was the De Luxe Mega Pram, but I'm, I was proud of you when you got any. I thought, I thought you were gonna, you were gonna be in trouble there, and terrible things were gonna happen. But it, it was steadied for you, the break as on, was it? Yes it was, yes, yes, yeah. They did, they did hold it still ... I think you ... ... otherwise I could have shot across the studio and be going still, actually. So ... they saw me in Edgeware ... [laughs] When they all came to wave, and you're still in the pram at the end, I think that, that was very touchy. A classy show. Yeah. OK. I'd better get on with this one, but ... thanks, I mean ... thanks very much for coming in. Not at all. Thank you for asking me. And if you—I always say this to people and they always think you just doin' it, y'know, 'cos it's on the air and stuff—but if yo wanna come in and do it again at any time ... Good. What I'm, as you heard, I am-a still a bit rusty from ...from playing in the bathroom, but I'm sure after ... when I've got a couple o' shows under me belt, John—so to speak—I'm sure I'll be ?, I might even bring me electric guitar in next time and skeeze?. Blimey, right! The last person who did that was P.J. Harvey, and she scared herself with it, actually. It was ... 'cos all the sound ... 'cos we weren't really prepared for it, and the sound was really all over the place. I t was devastating, the effects of it. Was really quite exciting. Even she was slightly startled by it all.. Anyway, thanks very much, and ... see you again soon. Thanks. | |||
| [23.11] | [Track by Microglove] | ||
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I have no idea at all what that record is that I've just played. Oh, it's Microglove, that's what it is, on MFS Records; and I just had a phonecall from the Pig, chidin' me for not having thanked Billy for the nice things that he said about these programmes earlier on, and ... 'cos I was embarrassed, wasn't it, Billy? You saw me looking embarrassed ... You were, you looked very sheepish, John, you did, very, very sheepish towards me, and all sort o' like blushed and everything. Couldn't bring himself to speak, think he was overcome. I was, that's what it was. Earlier on I mentioned the fact that we'd all been—well, some of us—have been to see Pulp in Cambridge, and ...this was myself and the Pig and Flossy and a couple of Flossy's mates, me and Chloe. And afterwards we went up, and ... and Jarvis was actually the only one who came out, and we got autographs from him yet again, and ... while he was signing autographs for loadsa people, he got this kind of carrier bag full of his evening ... y'know, whatever it was he needed for the night ... and I held out for him, and he went 'round and did all of these autographs and stuff, and we went away, well satisfied. We got back to the car and I realized I was still carrying his, his bag of stuff, and ... I was too embarrassed to take it back, to be honest with you, but the Pig took it back, along with the young people. And they were rather cross that I'd surrendered it 'cos they wanted me to keep it, to see what it was, what does Jarvis carry around in his bag ... What was in it? What was in it? Which, we didn't look! Oh, come on! You didn't look! I'd love to say, that was like ... I mean ... we didn't look at all. You didn't have a good rummage for his bag. Nah, no he didn't. That's ... sort of honest country people. That was a lucky escape for Jarvis, I think! It was, indeed. Hey, listen: as regular listeners will know, we've had three exclusive tracks from the Pulp LP Different Class, and the Evening Session had a bunch as well. And because we got fed up with waiting for the record to come out, we've kind-a swopped exclusives with them, so here's one of their exclusives: this is Pencil Skirt. | |||
| [23.19] | [Pulp: Pencil Skirt] | ||