Tuesday 30 January 2018

Mark is Dead



Unlike those who had their responses already stored on their Google drive, I didn’t immediately rush to publish my response to the death of Mark E Smith, a man who meant more to me than just about any other creative human being during the period 1979 to 1996, mainly because I knew I needed adequate time to process exactly how I felt about the passing of a man I had semi-worshipped. A week on from his death, I now have an understanding of my feelings and would like to articulate them, without apology for their length.

The first and primary emotion I have is a slow-burning, deep and abiding, impotent anger at how his addiction to alcohol blunted the effectiveness and neutralised the genius of his artistic powers, by making his acerbic and imaginative wordplay almost unintelligible, as his slurred delivery receded to a bit part in the dull, functional Killing Joke lite bluster that the final, enduring, proficient and resilient incarnation of The Fall specialised in, for large periods of his later career. The drink was responsible for everything bad about him; the degenerating health, his shambolic appearance, like a pugilistic Wilfred Bramble and the maddeningly self-destructive urge to distance himself from anyone he came close to. Musicians, partners, fans; you name them, he’s pissed them off.  

Secondly, and more importantly, there is a profound and unshakeable gratitude to his memory that borders on veneration for the times he bestrode the musical landscape like a colossus, while piloting a previous, glorious version of “my lads,” who were, without question, the finest band in the world, almost from their inception until the early 1990s. Literally no other band in the world could ever have come up with “Winter” or “The North Will Rise Again;” the symbiotic genius of Smith’s words and the band’s sparse, angular accompaniment was a rare folie a deux that defined a time, a place and a mood like no other English band I can think of.

The scornful contempt I feel for so much of The Fall’s post-millennium output is an obvious and highly personal reaction to the visceral sense of betrayal I felt at MES’s obstinate embrace of every possible wrong choice in life, both musical and personal, from the mid-1990s onwards. I’d believed in him. I’d trusted him. I’d venerated him and then, around 1996, he displayed more than just feet of clay; he showed his evil side and it was repulsive. I don’t think I have ever forgiven him for sacking Craig Scanlon, betraying Brix for the second time and leaving Steve Hanley in an untenable position; people who’d given the best years of their life to him and received nothing in return other than bile, scorn and condemnation. These acts didn’t just diminish the band, they diminished him as a person as his querulous ego and insatiable thirst trumped both his genius and hitherto charming contrarianism.

It took a while for the music to deteriorate to the same level his persona had, but once it did, there was no coming back, though I do admit that the flashes of breath-taking genius that all too rarely manifested themselves post 2000 shone like diamonds in the mouth of a corpse. Mark’s death has robbed us of the chance to experience any further contradictory peaks and troughs of emotion at his maddening, yet endearing, bombast. All we have is grief. All we have is anger. All we have is as loss as profound as that we felt after the deaths of David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed. He was worthy of being held in such storied company, such was the regard I once had for him.

I have written about The Fall many, many times before: for Paint It Red, Leeds Other Paper, The Biggest Library Yet and for PUSH. I’ve done a couple of interviews with the great man himself, reviewed gigs and albums, as well as providing overviews of what The Fall meant to me. Elsewhere on this blog you can find posts outlining my recollections of the first time I saw them live in June 1980, an analysis about why they meant so much to me, as well as a review of the last, and final so it turned out, time I saw them live in 2012. You can read my thoughts as follows -:




During the course of their career, the 70 plus line-ups of The Fall released 33 studio albums, of which I bought 32; the odd one out being last year’s New Facts Emerge.  In addition, before the quality control mechanism went out the window and seemingly dozens of random gigs of variably quality were churned out on CD with little fanfare and even less information on the sleeves, there were 6 live and part live / part studio albums that must be considered alongside the rest of their oeuvre, on account of the brilliance of performance, appearance of rare songs or radically reworked versions of tunes that would later be released. When considering those 38 albums, I can unequivocally state that the first 15 albums the band released were works of unarguable genius, containing barely a wasted second of material. They would be essential items in any respectable record collection. After a false step at the end of the 80s with the intriguing but flawed ballet soundtrack I am Kurious Oranj and the contractual obligation of Seminal Live, the band got back in the saddle with another set of releases well worthy of your time, as of the next 7 albums, 3 were brilliant, 2 excellent and 2 very good. However, 1996’s The Light User Syndrome was their first turkey, though sadly not their last. Its dire quality caused consternation as suddenly, The Fall had become mere mortals, in a year when the stories of Mark’s increasingly erratic behaviour became worryingly frequent as opposed to just tiresomely predictable in the years to come.  Other than 1999’s The Marshall Suite, which is a classic, the remaining albums rarely had more than 2 or 3 tracks that made you leap out the chair the way the first eleven had done. In fact, from 2000’s The Unutterable to 2010’s Your Future Our Clutter, the predominant response on hearing them was boredom, such was the repetitive dullness of the samey content. I honestly don’t think I listened to any of them more than twice.

Live, I attended 21 gigs by Das Gruppe, as MES called them, in either Newcastle, sunderland, Belfast (while a student in County Derry), Leeds (I was living there), Edinburgh (Ken, another Fall fanatic, drove), London (John Peel’s 50th birthday party in 1989) or South Shields (a no-show in that seminal year of 1996), meaning I saw 20 performances by them. Obviously, I could have seen them more often, but sometimes circumstances dictate the contrary.  While they did that great spot on The Tube in 1983, played the Riverside in October 1985, Newcastle Uni in 1987 Whitley Bay Dome in 2000 and the “new” Riverside in 2015, I couldn’t be at any of them as I wasn’t in town; hell, I wasn’t even in England. The first three I was over the water in the north of Ireland, the next one I was working in Slovakia and the last one, their antepenultimate Newcastle show, I was in Glasgow at a union conference. For a long time, the Guildhall gig of June 30th, 1984, on account of my mate Geoff getting married that day, and the Radio 6 Sound City festival of 2015, when all the tickets were ring-fenced for the great and the good, stood out as the only times they’d been in my city and I’d been forced to miss them. Then I abandoned The Fall.

In some ways, unlike the profound dislike I had for their recorded output in many instances, this was a rash decision as so often their live performances were still vital, essential entertainment. Sure, I’d seen a couple of boring shows, but only one dismal performance, at The Sage in 2005 when it became clear Mark’s drinking was more than a lifestyle choice; the last time I’d seen them, at a festival in Hoult’s Yard in July 2012, they were utterly splendid. However, the seemingly unbreakable bond of trust I’d placed in The Fall had shattered forever after the 1996 fiasco at South Shields Customs House, where Smith wouldn’t even take the stage and missing these late gigs didn’t particularly prick my conscience. The last twice they played Newcastle, in April 2016 at the Academy and October 2017 at the Boiler Shop, both venues where I’d never seen them before, I simply didn’t bother getting tickets. The gigs were on Monday evenings after work and I was in no doubt I’d probably see them again at some point. In the event, the Boiler Shop was the second last gig he ever played.


So, how on earth did I discover The Fall? Like so many other sounds of the late 70s, in common with a million others around the country, John Peel was the key. I’d known the name The Fall but missed out on their first 2 singles Bingo Master’s Breakout and It’s the New Thing as well as the debut album Live at the Witch Trials. It was the third single Rowche Rumble and second album Dragnet that set the heather blazing and hooked me, as both were played to death by Peel, who also had The Fall in session in October 1978, either on Monday 23rd or Wednesday 25th; I’m not sure which, but I’m certain it was the day before or after I’d seen The Buzzcocks on the Love Bites tour, for which gig I still have the ticket that dates it Tuesday 24th October.

The autumn of 1978 was possibly the most crucial period in my life, in terms of forming my musical tastes; in addition to The Fall, I also discovered Gang of Four, The Mekons, Subway Sect, ATV and a dozen other post punk outfits between September and Christmas. In the same way The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath had seemed tame and dated to the original punks, the English first wave of The Sex Pistols and their dull glam rock, The Damned and their musical reimagining of the Bash Street Kids, the pompous self-indulgence of The Stranglers and the dreadfully conformist commuter belt pop pap of The Jam, said absolutely nothing to me. Only the varied and experimental Buzzcocks offered a glimpse into what could be possible if imagination, innovation and a sense of daring were present. Then suddenly, via Rough Trade and Fast Product, here were a load of other bands prepared to sing loudly and out of tune in a regional accent, who made no bones about their lack of competence (the impossibly talented Gang of Four excepted) and who actually had something profound to say, which often came from a radical perspective and seemed to be jabbing a metaphorical index finger right in my chest. Rowche Rumble and its immediate successor, Fiery Jack, weren’t songs to spit and pogo to; these were songs that were there to convert you to the boundless possibilities enshrined in the creative word. Mark E Smith wasn’t just a quotable Mancunian poet, it seemed to me he was a visionary who used his voice as an instrument and he spoke directly to my heart and my soul. It is no wonder that Smith admired the work of William Blake; they were soulmates. Only Bob Dylan, who I similarly adore for his work between 1965 and 1978, had previously touched my heart and soul in the way The Fall did. The biting satire and surreal flights of fancy declaimed atonally by the Minnesotan and Mancunian sent my head in directions I’d never known before; it was if I’d discovered hallucinogens, opiates and amphetamines in my teenage bedroom, without ever seeing drugs never mind taking them. My life was changed forever. As the b-side of Rowche Rumble so eloquently put it, MES saw the madness in my area.

The first album I bought the day it came out was Totale’s Turns on May 14th, 1980; an auspicious Thursday, about 3 weeks before my O Levels. I remember it because it was a TUC Day of Action against the cuts and policies of the Tories under Thatcher, called after 1 year of her rule. Obviously, I didn’t go to school and spent the day mooching round record shops in the town, buying this album, ensconced in a plain, white cover defaced by dismal, spidery handwriting, from Listen Ear on Ridley Place. Absorbing it back home up in my bedroom was akin, not to a spiritual experience, but an initiation rite. On hearing Smith ask one bemused punter “Are you doing what you did 2 years ago? Yeah? Well don’t make a career out of it,” I understood what it meant to be a Fall fan and the dedication it required; contempt for hypocrisy, cant, conformism and just about everything that was safe and comfortable. That whole album dripped bile, including not just a live set, but the hitherto unreleased gem That Man and the frankly terrifying manifesto, New Puritan. It was as radical and provocative as anything the Vorticists, Dadaists or Futurists had said 50 or 60 years earlier, written with the same flair for the killer phrase and refusal to be cowed by the yoke of political uniformity. Mark E Smith called throughout his life for aesthetic rather than economic revolution. It was art, but not as we knew it.

The summer of 1980 saw The Fall settle on what I would always say was the classic line-up: Mark E Smith (vocals), Steve Hanley (bass), Craig Scanlon (guitar), Marc Riley (guitar), Paul Hanley (drums) and Karl Burns (drums). Other than the telepathic understanding of bands such as Teenage Fanclub, Yo La Tengo or Dirty 3, I struggle to think of a set of musicians who complemented each other as perfectly as they did. As alluded to in the links above, in the lee of the death of Ian Curtis and the shockwaves it sent through my generation, I experienced my first Fall gig on June 26th, 1980. It was a ramshackle, unyielding and deeply persuasive experience; they seemed to own the copyright on bare-knuckle creativity. You couldn’t argue with this band. In July they released How I Wrote Elastic Man and in September Totally Wired came out; a pair of powerful and pugilistic catchy pop songs that are among their best work. And then, just to show they could never allow the listener to settle, the wholly unsurpassable genius of Grotesque; After the Gramme was released in late October. Certainly, there was still the odd pop moment, the fabulous keyboard-driven New Face in Hell (the story of a radio ham murdered by the state, with his neighbour framed for the slaying) and the frenetic country and northern psychobilly of Container Drivers, including the incredible observation that “Communists are just part time workers,” but there was also incredible experimentation in the shape of WMC / Blob 59 as well as the first truly great MES narrative song, introducing us to the allegorical everymen father and son team Roman and Joe Totale,  whose title perhaps described The Fall’s raison d’etre in those days; The North Will Rise Again.

The endlessly repeated Peel sessions, as well as catch-up purchases to plug the earlier gaps in my collection kept me going until 1981 and the release of the didactic discourse that was Slates. A mini album with 6 absolute killers, it knocked me sideways, showing the band could get even better: the almost austere Middle Mass gives way to the menacing An Older Lover, before Prole Art Threat, the nearest thing I’ve ever heard to a two-chord train crash, other than Dead Joe by The Birthday Party, comes hurtling by. Those three words described the force and impact The Fall had on the world; prole, art, threat. And then side 2 got even better Fit and Working Again includes the incredible lyric “I feel like Alan Minter.” I’ve no idea what it means, but it is brilliant, as is the mammoth grind of Slags Slates Etc before that infamous northern chip on the shoulder hoofs the Kensington white rastas running for taxis right in the bollocks; Leave the Capital. So, so brilliant and this release made up about a quarter of the set the next time I saw them on October 27th, 1981, at the impossibly seedy, low-ceilinged strip joint, Hofbrauhaus Bierkeller, underneath Newcastle’s (then) only gay club, Rockshots. I managed to get sat right on the stage about a yard from MES as they played songs I’d never heard but spent 6 months repeatedly singing in my head until the imperious Hex Enduction Hour was released.

Recorded partly in a disused cinema in Hitchin and partly in Iceland, released as the war over Las Malvinas was about to break out, it boasted 60 minutes of punishing, brutal genius. Can any other album have made its intentions so clear as the opener The Classical, greeting the listener with a cheery “Hey There Fuck Face?” There was, in my opinion, The Fall’s greatest song, the bleak, narrative Winter, with its astonishing tale of the mad kid who’s just got back from the backwards school Christmas party and looked like a victim of a pogrom. Coleridge was reimagined in the delightfully damaged Jaw Bone and the Air Rifle. Steve Hanley ought to have had an Oscar for his bass on Who Makes the Nazis? Then he should have had another for the next 7” release, Look Know. Riding the zeitgeist of summer 1982, the band quickly released the follow up Room to Live; Marquis Cha Cha talked about the South Atlantic imperialist misadventures and Papal Visit, with MES scratching out unlistenable violin parts, was done to wind up the families of the “Wythenshawe Jesuits” Hanley, Scanlon and Riley. For me, it was the drunken lurch of Joker Hysterical Face and the bass driven bile of Solicitor in Studio that really hit the high notes.

I alluded earlier to some important live releases; after Totale’s Turns, a tape only bootleg of the band at the Acklam Hall in Ladbroke Grove in 1980, a venue where I’d see them almost a decade later for Peel’s 50th bash, imaginatively entitled Live in London came out in March 1982. Despite the lousy quality, it’s a brilliant document of the evolving genius of the band, but it is dwarfed in sound and musical quality by the magisterial A Part of America Therein 1981; go listen to the power of Deer Park, or the crazed MC who is upstaged by Smith’s kazoo on the opening NWRA to see what I mean. After that there’s the live album and a half from New Zealand, Fall in a Hole that captures exactly the feel of a live show, as it was recorded one night in Wellington. It’s also the very last Fall release with Marc Riley in the band, as Smith fired him on a whim, on the day Riley was to get married. Ironically, brilliant though Marc Riley is, the Kicker Conspiracy / Wings double A side single in 1983 is probably the best 7” the band did, now down to a five piece. The fact New Puritan and Container Drivers from the 1980 Peel session came as a bonus disc helped as well.



Having ended relationships messily with former Fall associates Una Baines and Kay Carroll, Smith then branched out into untried waters, marrying Brix Smith, a Bostonian who joined the band. Back as a six piece, I saw them do the declamatory, doom laden masterpiece Smile on the Tube one Friday evening in autumn 1983. Here was I in the kitchen of a student slum in County Derry while The Fall played my home town. No worries; I bought Perverted by Language as soon as I got home for Christmas. Simply stunning; as Brix couldn’t really play it was back to the bang crash thud of the early days on Eat Y’self Fitter, but the highlight was Steve Hanley powering through Tempo House with his finest bassline yet, while Smith tells us “the Dutch are weeping in four languages at least.”

Where could they go from here? The answer, unexpectedly, was to move further into the mainstream. Brix, as well as making MES smarten himself up with Armani jackets and Paul Smith shirts, brought a pop sensibility to 1984’s Oh! Brother and CREEP singles, as well as the decidedly tuneful Wonderful and Frightening World album. The opener, another Hanley bass winner, Lay of the Land saw The Fall on the Old Grey Whistle Test, accompanied by Michael Clark, his dance troupe and a pantomime horse. Wonderful and Frightening indeed.  That’s a phrase I could have used about Belfast at the time. A gang of us hired a university mini bus and drove down one Saturday to see them play Queen’s University. A great gig, though I was still shaking after being asked “are you a violent man?” by a somewhat menacing customer in The Hadfield Arms (then known as South Belfast’s most decorative IRA pub) when trying to see the football scores on Grandstand. We drew 1-1 away to Coventry incidentally.

Heading into 1985, the superb double A side 12” single of Cruiser’s Creek / LA (the only Fall song John Peel didn’t like) somehow ended up on the video jukebox in the pub where I worked; suffice to say, they were the most popular choice of the whole year. The album This Nation’s Saving Grace combined as many grimy, attritional traditional Fall numbers as pop ones and didn’t suffer from the departure of younger Hanley (Paul), to be replaced by ponytailed, Buggles specs wearing multi-instrumentalist Simon Rogers. Truly, he was the first of the million musicians who played with The Fall that I regarded as a hired hand.

In 1986 I graduated from university, came home to Newcastle for a month, then moved to London. During that month the doleful, insistent 12” Living Too Late was released. It appeared Karl Burns had left, and Paul Hanley returned for this release only. He’d vacated the drum by the time I saw them at The Riverside on June 12th. Simon Wolstonecroft was behind the kit and I got as good view of him when being slung off stage by the bouncers after invading it to hoof a few steps during City Hobgoblins. My time in the arid South East saw me working nights, so I hardly saw a gig in my time there or plays; consequently I missed Smith’s dramatic debut with Hey Luciani!  But I bought records avidly, including that one, though Bend Sinister was one of the best. Tracks like US 80s/90s and Realm of Dusk actually were sinister numbers on a bleak disc of monochrome angst. A tough listen, but a rewarding one. Around then The Fall started releasing cover version singles; Mr Pharmacist, There’s A Ghost in My House, Victoria. I didn’t particularly get this decision, other than seeing it as a rather cynical attempt to break the charts that the earlier incarnation of Mark would have regarded with abject contempt. Perversely, though logically by Fall standards, all of them featured far more compelling original tracks that I much preferred.

There wasn’t an album or a gig to be seen in 1987 but, having moved to Leeds as a postgrad, there was a superb gig at the Uni in March 1988 and The Frenz Experiment album the same month. It’s as beautiful and rewarding as any of their releases and the best since Perverted by Language. The title track is beguiling and beautiful, while Oswald Defence Lawyer and the autobiographical Carry Bag Man are worth the price of admission alone. After this Simon Rogers left to be replaced by Marcia Schofield on keyboards for the ballet soundtrack I Am Kurious Oranj; there’s some quality stuff on there, like Jerusalem and Cab it Up and I definitely enjoyed the live show with Michael Clark and pals but having bought this album on cassette to get 3 bonus tracks (crap instrumentals typically) I’ve never truly engaged with it. The same band ended the decade with 1989’s contractual obligation, Seminal Live. The live side I can take or leave, but the wacky studio side, including the insistent Dead Beat Descendent, melodramatic Pinball Machine and gloriously pretentious Mollusc in Tyrol is a great listen. It was also the last album Brix Smith played on during her first stint, as her and Mark’s marriage split saw her quit the band, to be replaced, scarcely believably, by Martin Bramah, back on board for the first time since 1978.

I saw this line-up for the first time at John Peel’s 50th birthday party on August 29th, 1989 at Subterrania in Ladbroke Grove. Two new songs, a clutch of old favourites and a Gene Vincent cover for the guest of honour showed me the band were in rude health. After their set, I saw “my lads” hanging around the upstairs bar, sans MES, so spoke to a Fall member for the first time ever, giving 10 seconds of gushing effusive praise to which both Steve Hanley and Craig Scanlon responded with thanks and raised glasses. It seemed to me, as we headed towards a new decade, the third of the band’s existence, The Fall were ready to show how vital they still were.



I wasn’t wrong, as 1990’s blistering Extricate album, made by the same line-up as had played Peel’s bash the year before, though augmented with at least 5 guest musicians, preceded by the genuinely innovative single Telephone Thing, in collaboration with DJ act Coldcut, was an album utterly without weakness. The song that stopped the world in its tracks was Smith’s paean to his recently divorced ex-wife and deceased father; Bill is Dead remains the most beautiful and chillingly fragile number in the band’s entire catalogue. For the first time ever, MES gave us honest, transparent, emotive lyrics and we loved him all the more for that, especially as I noticed at their March 10th gig at sunderland Poly, he’d taken to performing with his lyric book on a lectern.

One of John Peel’s most oft quoted remarks about The Fall was that they were “always the same; always different.” Smith proved this in late 1990 by sacking Bramah and Schofield and replacing them with violinist Kenny Brady for Shift-Work, another excellent, melodic album that could have been Extricate II. It was crammed with highlights; Idiot Joy Showland railed against Mancunian baggy E culture, Edinburgh Man reflected on his recent move to the Scotch capital (presumably to get away from the Hacienda lot) and Rose, a gorgeous love song of acceptance and farewell to Brix. Strangely they didn’t tour this album, though they played a few festivals and their August 1991 Riverside gig was a Reading rehearsal and the nearest to a greatest hits set I’d come across. Ironically, the next night Teenage Fanclub played the same venue and I knew from that night on I had found a democratic band, as opposed to a dictatorship, that I would love ever more. Musically and attitudinally so different to The Fall, Teenage Fanclub have sustained me ever since. They are now, and have been since Mark E Smith’s antics enforced The Fall to drop the baton, the greatest band in the world.

Smith had shown on Telephone Thing an interest in dance music and the potential of samplers and other technological innovations. Consequently, Kenny Brady got the heave-ho and Dave Bush, on keyboards and programming, joined the band for 1992’s skull-crushingly oppressive Code: Selfish.  An utter departure from anything they’d done before, it was a triumph with the disconcerting Birmingham School of Business School and the unlikely near hit single Free-Range nailing down an almost Ministry style aural assault. Their live performance at Newcastle Poly on March 21st was notable for a few reasons; firstly, they now played with intro and outro tapes, as well as an element of pre-recorded, pre-programmed percussion and keyboards. Secondly, I met Mark E Smith for the first time in my life.

Early in 92 I’d done a phone interview with MES for Paint It Red magazine, in which he’d extolled the virtues of cigarettes and called for the imprisonment of all vegetarians. He also mentioned he was about to marry for the second time (a brief, disastrous relationship with the ethereal Saffron) and indeed so was I, for the first and only time. On the spur of the moment I asked him if The Fall would play our wedding reception and he said he’d think about it. He mentioned we could have a chat after the Newcastle gig. With barely sustained excitement, Sara and I were led backstage about 30 minutes after show time. The band were sat round one table, drinking and eating, while Mark sat by himself chain-smoking at another. He was politeness personified, apologising when a stray swear word slipped out, giving out endless bottles of Holsten Pils and inquiring about our up coming nuptials. The wedding gig never happened because they were doing a round of European festivals, but on the morning of our wedding, a telegramme arrived at Sara’s parents stating; “Apologies for our non-appearance. Keep your nerve. Your pals Mark E Smith and The Fall.”

Indeed, the next time we saw them, on May 6th, 1993 at Newcastle University, MES presented us with a bottle of wine as an apology. He needn’t have bothered as the gig and that year’s album, The Infotainment Scan, were riches beyond belief. The cutting, sardonic assault on supposed suburban dandies on Glam-Racket and incredible reworking of Lost in Music were truly magnificent songs. The Fall continued to set the bar at a height other bands simply could not reach, a standard that was maintained on 1994’s Middle Class Revolt; now even louder with Karl Burns back as second drummer. Angry classics filled the album; particularly 15 Ways, You’re Not up to Much and Hey Student! Unfortunately, the only Fall gig I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for was their Riverside show on 3rd June, as we were on the 6.00 train to London for a wedding next morning and I couldn’t settle on concentrate. My malaise must have rubbed off on Smith, as it was after this he famously described the iconic Newcastle venue as “a Youth Club run by Communists.”

If you wanted to pin down the start of Smith’s decline, the failure of his second marriage and asking Brix to rejoin the band would be as good a place as any to heap blame. Of course, that isn’t to say the album as a 7-piece, Cerebral Caustic, wasn’t up there with the very best; The Joke, Don’t Call Me Darling, Bonkers in Phoenix are 3 sure-fire classics that bear the stamp of Brix’s pop sensibilities. As the band didn’t play Newcastle for over 2 years, it was impossible to assess group dynamics though. The live and curios album Twenty-Seven Points that came out late 1995 and includes one of my favourite Fall songs, Noel’s Chemical Effluent, bore no hint of the stormy waters that lay ahead. 

The news in early 1996 that the unsurpassable guitar great Craig Scanlon had been summarily sacked was a shock. Even more so the album that followed, The Light User Syndrome, bar Cheetham Hill, was dross. Dave Bush had been replaced by Smith’s latest flame, Julia Nagle. Too many changes, the loss of a key member and a growing problem with drink and drugs for the dissolute singer was a recipe for failure. It got even worse in October that year, when a drunk and belligerent Smith refused to take the stage at South Shields Customs House, resulting in the law being called and the whole gig descending into the realms of farce. I talked to a frazzled Steve Hanley that night who seemed stressed to buggery by the whole thing. By the end of the next week, after the apparently worst gig they ever played at the Assembly Rooms in Worthing, Brix had left for good, sickened by Smith’s conduct towards her and the rest of the band. Before too long many others would leave as well.

1997 saw the release of the uninspired and uninspiring Levitate album that continued the sad and eventually more regular trend of only one decent track per album; in this instance, the brilliant Ol’ Gang.  There was a tour in November. They pitched up at Riverside as part of it and it was a passable evening, though it’s the first time I’d noticed people leaving a Fall gig early or drifting off to the bar. Unfortunately, the old gang had soon had enough; after one debacle too many during a New York show in April 1998, Steve Hanley and Karl Burns left the band for good. Two years on from the low watermark of 1996, the shit finally hit the fan and The Fall ceased to be a functioning band; from then on, they became Mark E Smith’s hired hands, spending two decades going through the motions. Sadly, I have to concede that some of those motions were more than enjoyable, as that tiny flame of creative genius had not been utterly snuffed out.

Out of absolutely nowhere 1999’s The Marshall Suite was a solid gold classic and probably their last essential album, with Touch Sensitive the most joyous, uproariously good time number Smith had been involved in since That Man back in 1980. In late summer 1999, my mate Ken and I took a hike up to Edinburgh to see the band play a converted church as part of the festival. I didn’t know who the musicians were, but they made a glamorous racket and sustained an almost inaudible Mark (it could have been the mix) throughout.



A month after the Edinburgh, I moved to Bratislava for 2 years, teaching English as a foreign language. I got hold of 2000’s The Unutterable, but other than the ersatz spoof rockabilly of Pumpkin Soup and Mashed Potatoes, I know nothing about it, other than Smith and Julia Nagle had split up as she didn’t appear. Indeed, he’d already hooked up with Elena Polou, though she wasn’t in the band as yet. On October 9th, 2001 Sara and I received our decree absolute; the same night I saw The Fall play a brilliant gig at The Cluny, beginning with 1985’s I Am Damo Suzuki. It made me relatively optimistic for the release of Are You Are Missing Winner, but other than Bourgeois Town and the charmingly ramshackle My Ex Classmate’s Kids, it was disappointingly thin fare. Even worse was 2003’s Country on the Click which, bar the Theme from Sparta FC, which is not only a superb track, but also made MES a few bob, in the same way as Touch Sensitive did from being used on a car advert, after the BBC picked it up for Final Score, resulting in the infamous afternoon when Smith read the football results out and accused Ray Stubbs of “looking like one of the murderers in Strangeways.” While you had to laugh at that, the news that Mark had broken his hip falling on some ice after a damn fine gig at the Tyne Theatre, where it all began for me in 1980, in February 2004, was no laughing matter. Neither was his curt and mean-spirited interview on Newsnight the night John Peel died in October 2004. MES had evolved into a nasty drunk.

12 months later and Fall Heads Roll came out, by now featuring the latest Mrs Smith, Elena Polou. Many Fall fans claim Blindness to be Mark’s finest song from after 2000, but I just don’t get it myself. In fact, it’s another album I doubt I could recognise a song from, probably because only a week after getting the album, he disgraced himself with a shit show and petulant storm off stage at the Sage in October 2005. This time you could hear booing directed at the man we’d all fallen under the spell of so many years before. He was looking old, haggard and seemed to be either oblivious to his unacceptable behaviour, or wilfully, obstinately seeking to piss off the very loyal devotees who’d long defended him. It was the drink, the drugs and his deteriorating health of course, but such explanations cut no ice when you’ve wasted £20 on a ticket and the same amount on a night out, only to have it thrown back in your face. The CD went back in its box and hasn’t been taken down from the shelf these past dozen years or more.

However, a dog always returns to its puke and when Reformation Post TLC came out in early 2007 I dutifully bought it, listened to it twice and then filed it away. Another one I don’t know any of the songs from. A year later and The Fall were on at Newcastle Uni on Smith’s 51st birthday; March 5th, 2008. They were supported by the delightfully eccentric I Ludicrous and put in a good shift, though I only recognised Theme from Sparta FC and White Lightning, which were the encores. The majority of the set was the Imperial Wax Solvent album, from which only 50-Year-Old Man rose above the mediocre, which is more than can be said for 2010’s Your Future Our Clutter. Again, I’m in a minority here; I find it to be anonymous, wearisome and derivative, but it’s hailed as one of the best of the later albums. Personally, I prefer the unexpected mini-revival of the next two releases.

I finally had the chance to take my son Ben to see The Fall on November 4th, 2011. He was 16. He got pissed. Smith was 54. He got pissed. One of them was very late and had to be carried through the door. It wasn’t the bairn. Smith never got to grow old, but he certainly learned how to do things disgracefully. It was a superb night (my mate Raga’s first Fall gig since June 1980 in fact), with a random version of Psykick Dancehall thrown in for good measure. Again, I left feeling optimistic and subsequently felt vindicated by the encouraging Ersatz G.B. album that followed. Despite his voice now being accompanied by a bizarre whistle on account of his lack of teeth, Smith does a brilliant job on Nate will Not Return and the chunky, stolid I’ve Seen Them Come. Elena gets in on the act with the vaguely pastoral Happi Song, which justifies her time in the band for that alone.

In July 2012, I saw The Fall for the last time, headlining a festival at Hoult’s Yard off Walker Road, where I now go to the gym ironically. I hadn’t planned on this, but my mate Knaggsy, whose band supported The Fall on June 12th, 1986 at the Riverside though he’d not seen them since, got a couple of freebies from work. It was a triumph. They played Container Drivers, I got to shake Mark’s hand and he almost chinned a bouncer. Even better, 2013’s Re-Mit was a gem of a release. Sir William Wray, Hittite Man and Jetplane could easily punch their weight in a Fall top 50, I kid you not. The year ended on a further optimistic note with The Remainderer EP.

Were The Fall back for good? Sadly not; 2015’s Sub-Lingual Tablet starts off so promisingly with Venice with the Girls but deteriorates into another anonymous set of unintelligible lyrics over thudding, repetitive techno rock. It allowed me to go to Glasgow in May that year for a union conference and miss their gig with a clear conscience. 2016’s Wise Ol Man EP was another phoned-in thudathon by numbers and I accordingly absolved myself of the need to attend the 2016 Academy gig. Now the seal was broken, I didn’t even buy what turned out to be the final Fall album, 2017’s New Facts Emerge, though I suppose I will now, but I’ll never make up for missing that final appearance in October 2017.


Now Mark is Dead. What happens next? There can no longer be a band called The Fall; even with granny on bongos, without Mark the show is over. The inevitability of death, in whatever manner, is the tragedy of the human condition. As we grow older, our heroes for our youth, who were 10 or 20 years older, will all eventually die. We have their music, their books or their achievements on the pitch or cricket field to remember them by. With Mark E Smith, his decline was so marked and so expected, it can never be thought of as a shock. Rather, it is a jolt; a sharp reminder of our mortality and all he achieved, especially with “my lads” at his back. For 40 years nigh-on, The Fall have been my constant musical companions. I do not expect this to change as all those years I loved, adored and worshipped the band were the best times of my life. Goodnight Mark; you were The Fall.



Monday 22 January 2018

Down by the Valley Gardens

I got asked the other day how many games I’d seen so far this season. The answer was 55, though it should have been 56 as the ref called off Seaham Red Star v Benfield because of a frozen pitch at 2.47pm on Saturday 9th December, meaning it was too late to get anywhere else and so I had to endure my sole blank Saturday since last July. In those games I’ve seen 216 goals; or 215 if you discount Goole’s opener in the FA Cup against Benfield back in August that I missed as I was powdering my nose; thankfully I made it back in time to see the two goals we roared back with to win the game. So far I’ve spent £91 in entry fees, with only the £42 I handed to Newcastle United for the dismal loss to Forest in the League Cup and draw with Brighton in the League, being begrudged. I’ve seen these 55 games at 34 different grounds, 22 of which are in the Northern League and 6 of which I’d never been to before. My trip to Morton v St Mirren on January 2nd was a little New Year treat to myself, as will be my Easter present of a day trip to Stenhousemuir against Elgin City on March 24th. Of course I realise that compared to your actual die-hard groundhopper, I’m a rank amateur teetering on the brink of dilettante charlatanism, but then again, I don’t claim to be an obsessive; I just really like football, especially the non-league, grassroots game.


During the short summer recess, my whole life is built around trying to see as many NEPL cricket games, mainly involving Tynemouth, as I can. For the rest of the year, it’s my beloved Newcastle Benfield who receive my undying adulation and are the focus of my whole week. We’ve had 36 games so far this season and the only one I missed was Penrith away on a Tuesday night, as the bus left before I’d finished work. That disappointed me, as have our postponed fixtures that leave us still with half a season’s fixtures still to fit in. Probably the one time I get close to being a football obsessive is when lousy weather looks likely to play havoc with the weekend’s games. 

If frost or rain looks likely to put paid to our game and my two other Northern League grounds of choice at Team Northumbria or Whitley Bay, I start investigating my options on 4G in the Northern Alliance and Tyneside Amateur League. As I’m chair of the Tyneside Amateur League, it is beholden on me to see the odd game at that level, such as on December 16th when Benfield v West Auckland was frozen off, I cycled up to the Walker Activity Dome (aka The Lightfoot) and saw Forest Hall deservedly get the better of hosts Jesmond 4-2.  Cold, cold day that one…

Last weekend, the heavy snowfall that landed Wednesday and froze Thursday put paid to our home tie with Penrith, meaning I needed to find another fix. I’m no meteorologist; indeed I dropped Geography at the end of third year, so didn’t even do an O Level in it, but I do have a vague understanding of the Maritime Effect, which was illustrated perfectly in North Tyneside last Friday by the stubborn inch of still frozen snow that adhered to paths, pavements and open ground right up to the A19. Once you were across the Silverlink earthworks and heading east, there wasn’t a flake to be seen. It was cold, miserable and windy, but clear for football on those artificial surfaces whose companion pitches going westward were all unplayable. In the Tyneside Amateur, the only choice I had was Ellington v Wideopen at the devilishly difficult to access by public transport Hirst Welfare in Ashington. It was an option, but I chose to look closer to home.

I’ve long, nay always, had a strong affection for the Northern Alliance; an excellent, no-nonsense, proper Geordie football league. Despite having moved on from the club to Benfield back in 2013, I still regard Percy Main Amateurs with the greatest of affection. Sadly I couldn’t display that affection last weekend, as their trip to Shankhouse’s Action Park (the only non-league ground I know of that is named after a Shellac album) was called off. Indeed, the only game that was on in the Alliance was a league cup tie between Division 2 Willington Quay Saints and Premier Division Birtley Town. It was being played not at the Barking Dog, the normal venue for Saints home games, but on the 4G at Valley Gardens Middle School in Whitley Bay, with a 1.30 kick off. 


This was a no brainer; it was clearly my go-to game of choice, partly because of ease of access, but mainly because I’ve got quite a soft spot for WQS. My affection for them developed for several reasons, namely their wonderfully sarcastic and amusing Twitter comments (@WQSaints), being lucky enough to see a tumultuous encounter with Red House Farm at The Barking Dog about 5 years back, on another occasion when theirs was the only game on, which ended with one of the best post red card tantrums I’ve ever seen when the dismissed Saints keeper went into full James Brown Please Please Please mode when afforded first use of the showers. Also, back in their Tyneside Amateur days, I taught their then centre forward, the imposing Jonny Ellis; at his bidding, we took in the NFA Minor Cup final at Blue Flames in 2007, when the Saints never got going and lost 1-0 to one or other of those ephemeral Amble sides that supernova every few years. Sadly big Jonny retired from football to concentrate on lechery the season after, presumably as he found it easier to score in the bedroom than on the pitch…

Anyway, having watched the opening half hour of Aberdeen dismantling St Mirren in the Scottish Cup, I headed out on the bike from Tynemouth to far Monkseaton Drive and, allowing for the usual problem of finding the only unlocked entrance to the school, I found myself in position with about 5 minutes until kick off. The crowd I’d estimate to have been about a dozen, with both sides boasting an array of subs, coaches and other helpers, to swell the numbers of those watching to something approaching the 30 mark. It was bright. It was still. It was freezing. There was no cover. There were no refreshments or toilet facilities, but it was a brilliant afternoon out.

Going into this game Birtley were overwhelming favourites; sitting fourth top of the Premier Division, with the clear, stated ambition of returning to the Northern League. From the first whistle it was abundantly clear they would be too good for a Saints side that sit in the lower reaches of Division 2. And so it proved, with Birtley racing into a 4-0 half time lead, courtesy of two tap-in breakaways, a penalty and one sublimely steered sidefoot that demonstrated a level of class and anticipation that deserved a wider audience than gathered here at Valley Gardens. Additionally Birtley hit the angle of bar and post with an absolute screamer, as well as being foiled by last ditch defending and smart keeping on several occasions. It wasn’t all one-way traffic; the young lad leading the line for the Saints was very unlucky with a deft chip that dropped just wide and passed up a couple of other presentable opportunities when crowded out by Birtley defenders.

At half time I grabbed a quick chat with a couple of lads in the Saints team who I’ve known for a decade or more; keeper Shaun (Shanny) Backhouse, most notably of Heaton Stannington and midfield general Ian (Magoo) Graham, who served Percy Main so well; a couple of cracking lads who I’m delighted to see turning out and enjoying the game still. Shanny collected every cross cleanly, encouraged his defence, sorted out positions and looked every inch what he has been for a dozen years or more; a class keeper at this level and higher. Magoo still passes the ball like a dream, loves a tackle and never got off the referee’s back all game; marvellous to see and hear. Great also to see a second half where the goals were shared equally, with one apiece. Saints grabbed a lifeline, courtesy of a bullet header from a corner to spark thoughts of a comeback (not really), while Birtley continued to create and contrived to miss chances by the bucketload. A couple of generous refereeing decisions to chalk out goals for pushes and late flags kept the score almost respectable and it ended 5-1 to a Birtley side who look quick, fluent and agile. They’ll need to work on a killer instinct in front of goal mind. Saints just need to keep going and be organised. The local game is lucky to have a club as admirable as them, plying their trade uncomplaining in the bottom tier of the Alliance. More power to them!



So, just gone 3.20 and the game is done. I bid my farewells, promise to return soon and head back homewards, stopping off for the second half at Hillheads, as the Bay’s game had beaten the weather, where a goalless first period was transformed into a 2-2 draw between Whitley and Guisborough. Plenty of friends watching, plenty of craic, but a lousy game; still, you can’t complain when you get to see 10 goals in a game and a half, while not having to pay a penny. You never know, if this cold snap keeps up, I’ll be touring more hidden halting sites on the road to football’s Kingdom come.

Thursday 18 January 2018

The Fat Men & The Straw Lady

I was going to make this week’s blog about Peter Beardsley and the accusations of bullying and racism he faces, discussing also the toxic culture of racist abuse prevalent in the Chelsea academy when under the stewardship of the vile Graham Rix and Gwynn Williams, not to mention the unfolding horrors from the Barry Bennell trial.  However, I think it important to allow that whole sordid situation to come to a conclusion, so I’ve decided to concentrate on a far more pressing matter.



Why is Rafa Benitez so fat? Could it be he’s eating the wrong things, or that he doesn’t get enough exercise, even an undiagnosed medical issue or an unfortunate combination of all three? It might just be carrying his enormous wages in a money belt round his waist that gives him the Hitchcockian profile. Whatever the case, he’s desperately overweight and doesn’t look well at all. His florid crimson cheeks are journeying towards a dangerous puce hue at an alarming rate. Perhaps he’s following Steve Bruce’s example and indulging in a bit of comfort eating to make up for professional frustrations and disappointments; though I’d hope it’s chorizo and rioja for Rafa rather than the Melton Mowbray pork pies and cans of John Smith that Brewse plumps (geddit?) for. You would wonder, in all seriousness, how a bloke in such bad physical shape could effectively manage and train a top flight football team, battling for their very survival among the elite. Well, as we saw again last weekend with the dire second half showing in the underwhelming 1-1 draw with bottom of the table Swansea that did precisely nothing to alleviate relegation fears, the truth of the matter is that Benitez isn’t doing much of a job at all.

When I see Benitez and his large pot belly that seems to impede him from walking normally, meaning he proceeds at a brisk and slightly pompous waddle, like Donald Duck’s rich cousin Gladstone, it makes me wonder exactly why it is that Newcastle United fans call Mike Ashley a fat bastard, but never mention the manager’s obesity. Presumably because they hate one and love the other, preferring to see him as endearingly chubby rather than paunchy; it is a bit hypocritical though, isn’t it?  I suppose Benitez’s heft is concentrated in one particular area, while Ashley is generally big all over, though he has lost quite a bit of timber since the publication of those garish topless snaps with some of his servile Sports Direct drones, while out on a staff jolly, about 3 years back.  I believe those photos, allegedly taken while the roundly despised, moneyed contrarian was essaying a karaoke version of Leave Your Hat On, were in a Chinese restaurant. With all the fats, sugar and additives in Cantonese cookery, a middle-aged bloke with Ashley’s build ought to be giving ersatz Oriental food a swerve and look for a healthier option as eating out can play havoc with your weight.



Just look at that night Ashley nearly gained 250 million pounds, having a curry in the Paradise Indian Restaurant in Hampstead, with the discredited straw woman Amanda Staveley and the loathsome, lubricious Richard Desmond.  That night last November is presumably the closest Newcastle United came to changing ownership. However, the intervening period of paralysis that began with Staveley’s rejected offer and ended with Sky Sports News, seemingly Ashley’s tame media poodles and on-screen version of the Volkischer Beobachter, announcing the deal was dead more than 7 weeks later, means we’ve got nowhere slowly.  And of course now the meanies are all out of the bottle, with the contemptible Dennis Wise popping his head out of the sewer to fawningly defend Ashley and pour further scorn, not that it’s needed, on the PCP bid that Staveley unconvincingly fronted.

Ever since I first criticised Benitez’s performance as manager, I’ve been the target for boos, jeers and catcalls on social media; not only by the KrissChrisChris NE32 NE33 & NE34 superfan conglomerate, but by seemingly rational people, whose faith in Benitez has blinded them to the possibility that he may well be coasting downhill towards the end of his career. It could be overstating things to say he’s either the Emperor’s New Clothes or a busted flush, but the sands of time and law of diminishing returns are both against him. I think many people view Benitez not so much as a football club manager, but as an icon; a figure of hope in a struggle for justice and freedom from the tyranny of the Sports Direct dictatorship. In that sense I agree with them. The one problem I can see with that scenario is that Amanda Staveley and PCP are not, and never will be, the Bolshevik stormy petrels of revolution awaiting Vladimir Illych Benitez’s arrival at the Finland Station. And here’s why. 

From the very outset of this whole catastrophic charade, Staveley has been as reluctant to proffer information as Ashley has ever since his disastrous stewardship commenced in 2007. In her own way, she has been as elusive and shady as the current owner. We’ve never been told who is behind the bid and where the money was coming from. It seems incredible that such crucial information was kept out of the public domain. Did she and her backers ever consider the fact they may need to build bridges with the support? Being transparent and communicative would be a great start on that road to recovery.

As soon as I asked the question about where the money came from, well before Christmas, I was again subject to a torrent of social media obloquy; now I was happy to ignore the less cerebral of those losing their shit, but I was truly disappointed in the lack of precision in the thinking of those adopting a position diametrically opposed to my own who really should know better. Yet again, it seemed as if their passionate hatred of anything and everything to do with Mike Ashley meant they were prepared to lend their unquestioning support to anyone else who showed even a vague interest in taking the club on. That’s a crazy, dangerous attitude to have; even Ashley said he was only prepared to sell to someone he believed could take the club forward. Yes I know Ashley is a liar and his words are less than worthless, but the point remains; Newcastle United is too big, too historic and too important a sporting and cultural institution to be flogged to a collection of faceless plutocrats, simply because they’ve coughed up the necessary readies. I wanted clarity and we all deserved it, whether people knew they did or not.

It is only since the breakdown of the bid that we have learned who were some, though not all, of the silent partners stumping up cash for Staveley’s bid. The elusive Reuben family, who make the Barclay Twins seem like the Chuckle Brothers, a fabulously wealthy, property owning dynasty with interests in the north east, including a planned retail and leisure development of the old Pilgrim Street nick, were in there from the start. A youthful scion Jamie is supposedly a “big football fan” and persuaded his publicity shy father and uncles to stump up a load of chump change in the hope of buying into the club. I leave it you to decide whether this was a potentially philanthropic investment or not. Now the bid is dead in the water, they’ve withdrawn to their preferred place in the long grass, meaning Staveley has lost a key backer and is now, apparently, having to decide whether to fling a third of her estimated personal wealth at the club or leave the stage a discredited charlatan.

We shall, of course, see how this plays out over the next few months. Regardless of the outcome of this bid, talk of a takeover or buy out simply won’t go away. It will be an unhelpful distraction to the on-field battles to come as the reality of the enormous shadow cast over the club by this whole arrhythmic danse macabre is that Newcastle United, with an away game against Man City to endure this weekend, are three points above the drop zone. During the current transfer window there has unsurprisingly been zero activity at the club, despite the protracted and unconvincing alleged pursuit of Chelsea’s fringe winger Kenedy on loan, meaning we have a poor squad, further undermined by the spiteful sniping and lack of support to them by their manager, who has skilfully absolved himself of any responsibility for the team’s current plight. Avoiding the drop is, and was always going to be, a tough ask, but if Benitez is half the manager he thinks he is and the majority of the support believe he is, then it is time he showed that by preparing the team properly, to enable them to win games because, at the end of the day, it’s the results and fate of the team, not who owns the club, manages the club or even plays for the club, that really matters.


Ashley OUT!

P.S. I lost 8 lb last week; only another 62 lb to go

Wednesday 10 January 2018

The Weight


For almost my entire conscious life, I’ve hated myself. In many ways I saw myself as a photographic negative of the Nietzschean Ubermensch. I wasn’t beyond good and evil, I was beneath both of them. I worthless and I didn’t deserve to be here. To clarify, I specifically hated the person I was; my personality, character, behaviour, conduct, whatever you want to call it, absolutely disgusted me. Because I hated such a low self-image, I took little or no care with my physical appearance, except in those rare times when I was actually happy in life. Of course, I knew this attitude of self-loathing wasn’t healthy, but it was all I’d known when growing up.

Then, while enduring my second major instance of severe depressive illness, a few years ago, I worked out that the emotional, physical and sexual childhood abuse I’d endured at the hands of my parents and sister was the root cause of why I’d always felt this way about myself. Not only that, I realised that this abuse hadn’t been my fault, but the fault of my abusers. As my father had died in 2009, there wasn’t a great deal I could do about his involvement, though at least in mitigation, he was a wonderful grandfather to my son and had belatedly come to recognise he’d been a vicious, weak bully towards me. My mother, though we enjoyed a brief period of rapprochement after my father’s death before she succumbed to dementia, had no sense of responsibility or guilt for the emotional and sexual abuse she inflicted on me; hence why her death in September 2017 didn’t bother me. The torchbearer for her legacy of emotional abuse towards me is my evil sister, with the assistance of the truly appalling Hird family, who I’m unsure whether they are mentally defective or mentally ill. One thing I’ve come to realise is that no matter how good a person I am, there are certain people who will always hate me; my sister is one of those who is seemingly cognitively hardwired against me.

Being positive though, the truly great thing about my realisation I wasn’t a bad person was the sense of relief engendered by finally being able to unburden myself. All along I’d been the victim and not the perpetrator, which was the essential knowledge I had always needed to grant and accept not only forgiveness to myself, but the right to judge other people for their conduct towards me. As alluded to before, I do have a fair number of enemies in this world who, regardless of the person I am now or who I become in the future, will hate me for the rest of my life. I won’t lose any sleep over my status as the number 1 folk devil among message board simpletons from the Wear and the Tyne whose hypocrisy I may once have called out and who regard me as the cyber bogeyman still, or the fake bullshit prospectors from down in the bunker that stretches from Ouston to Marsden, the bona drag popinjays from the Internet Threads Kommittee, together with their hard and soft self-centred pals from the unfriendly club and the hot heads, bald heads and air heads from the special school. If they want to waste their time and energy thinking about me, then that’s their lookout.  

I must admit that it is disappointing when you try and show forgiveness by reaching out to these unfortunates with a degree of compassion, only to encounter an imbarrathin tantrum in return. Then I remember; not everyone is as wise as me. Some of these violent heterosexual men who’ve tried, and failed, to lay a glove on me seem lack any insight into their conduct. However, it’s all words not deeds on their part and the fear and deep confusion I’ve seen in the eyes of a pair of them, tells me that perhaps mental illness is more prevalent thank we imagine. For the avoidance of doubt; I forgive you all.

However, there’s still one thing I can’t forgive myself for and that’s neglecting my physical health. This goes back a long while. I’ve always been a bevvy merchant; ever since my late teens I’ve loved a good session. Until I reached 30, I was slightly bigger than the average, wearing 34” strides, but I did enough football to stop becoming Mr. Creosote. What wrecked me, for years, was my first nervous breakdown in late 1994. Back then, with Prozac not being widely available, metabolism-stopping horse tranquilisers like Dotheipin were used to treat the symptoms of mental illness, rather than the causes or the patient holistically. Thankfully that has changed so much. However, it snookered me as I piled weight on and became more and more sedentary. It wasn’t until I headed out to Slovakia in 1999 that I could get back into 36” jeans.

Back in England after 2 years away, I felt cast adrift and lonely, which is when I discovered comfort eating. Although binging on crisps was the least of my problems once I’d embarked upon the worst relationship of my life in late 2002. At the end of 2004, I emerged from the wreckage of a particularly destructive and unhealthy period in my life, where in search of companionship I’d endured the most dispiriting time of my life with an OCD control freak Social Worker who’d used me as a walking wallet and surrogate paterfamilias, to shout at her two daughters; one of whom was a nightmare and I’m glad to say I’ve not seen her since and the other was a wonderful young lady who went on to make a good life for herself at university and then with work in the Home Counties West.

We’re still in touch on Social Media and I’m glad to have the occasional catch up on-line to see how she’s doing. That, indeed, is the only possible redeeming feature of the 2 years of hell with her mother that emptied my wallet, destroyed my self esteem and caused me to sink to just about the lowest physical state I could ever imagine. The mother lived almost entirely on coffee and cigarettes, while I ate nothing but pizza, or so it seemed. The penny finally dropped when, doing my first solo shop after the split, I went straight through the fruit and veg section of Sainsbury’s without buying anything, heading for ready meals and other junk instead. It was almost as if a lightbulb went off in my head.

When I joined Weight Watchers a few days later in January 2005, I was 19 and a half stone, with a 46-inch waist and an appointment with coronary care in the post. I must admit the meetings did nothing for me; I just used the pep talks when I went to get weighed and the meal record sheet as a way of spurring myself on. The great thing was the speed of results; 2 stones in the first 5 weeks for instance. Through a strict no carbs, no fat, high protein diet, I lost 4 and a half stone by early December. The lowest I got was 15st exactly, which wasn’t bad considering I only sacked the booze off for 6 weeks of that year. Losing that amount of weight allowed me to wear normal clothes, have energy I didn’t know existed and massively increase the amount of sport I did. Not only did I start to play 5 a side 4 times a week, I took up 11 a side again with an Over 40s team and reignited my passionate love of cycling. My hope was to get to 14st and then enjoy life. Typically enough, fate intervened.

On 18 December 2005, I was driving back from my parents when a Tesco 18-wheeler wagon rear-ended us on the A1 going North, just past the Metro Centre. Thankfully, my son and my ex-wife were safe. That said, instead of the small cut to the back of his head Ben suffered, it could have been so much worse. As we were about to leave my parents, he climbed in the car and I said, for whatever reason, “sit behind your Mam please.” Why I said this, I do not know, but it saved both of our lives as the rear driver’s side crumpled to nothing in the crash. The first copper on the scene told me bluntly, after looking at the wreckage, that I should be dead. In comparison to what could have been, the dozen stitches to my lacerated scalp and damage to my left leg was a great result. Unfortunately, the fact the button for moving the seat back had gone through my calf prevented me from walking for the next 6 weeks. Consequently, I was stuck in the house, unable to move and so the diet had to go on hold. Sadly, I didn’t get down to 14st; instead my weight crept very slowly back up to 16st by the middle of 2007. Whenever I sensed I was putting weight on, I’d go on a strict diet and cut out the booze; January and September were my dry months, after the Christmas and Summer excesses.  I knew my body and how to regulate it.

I managed to keep things like that until the autumn of 2014, which is when things in my life started to spiral got of control. Coming off a 6-week sobriety episode in early October, my return to booze and bad food coincided with my mother’s final deterioration into Alzheimer’s hell. The year before, 2013, I’d done everything to help her move to a new house and so spent the summer filling and emptying boxes, climbing into the attic and roof void in the garage; it kept me busy, fit and I was looking alright. Once she’d moved, her decline was slow at first, then rapid and I couldn’t cope with my role as her main carer, despite Laura’s wonderful help.

Early 2015 was when everything completely fell to bits; she was sectioned under a Deprivation of Liberty Order after being found wandering once too often on Whitley Bay prom in the middle of the night, my sister made up spurious accusations to the cops about Laura, Ben, Sara and me that caused no end of grief, and I simply couldn’t cope at work, partly because of the behaviour of certain weasels I’ll not name here. Hence, I had almost 8 months on the sick; I mean it could have been worse as I tried, on a couple of occasions, to end it all, by wandering down to Tynemouth pier, bladdered at 3 in the morning and slugging from a bottle of Brandy, ready to throw myself off. Thankfully, the first time I passed out and the second I changed my mind.

Eventually, things got appreciably better. I put my recovery down to the 3Cs of cats, cricket and coffee; if we’d not had Tromszo arrive as a kitten, if I’d not had friends to idle time away over a latte with and if I’d not fallen head over heels with NEPL cricket, I wouldn’t have rediscovered normality. My head was sorted, but the body was struggling; eating all the wrong things in huge portions and keeping up with plenty of booze meant I was starting to expand. Rapidly. Late November 2015, I get back to work.  Supposedly, in my best interests, work have downgraded my job from co-ordinating Access to teaching Functional Skills to bored 16-year olds; King Lear with adults to basic punctuation with unmotivated rabble. Sure, it’s easy work, but I felt like I had been comprehensively deskilled as a sentient human being. The people I worked with (in the main) were brilliant, but it didn’t stop me from daily comfort eating: bacon sandwiches, paninis, millionaire shortbread and a dozen other gorgeous treats that I selected from on a daily basis. It’s how I got through the academic year. Despite the removal of temptation over the summer, I wasn’t losing any weight and so, sadly, I realised I’d not be able to play 11-a-side football again. After 11 years, I retired from my role as sub keeper with Wallsend Boys Club (formerly Winstons) Over 40s, as I didn’t have the stamina or strength to play at a decent level. It was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever had to do. No injury; just gluttony. All my own fault.

Admittedly I was still cycling and playing 6 a side twice a week as a way to keep sane and so I turned my thoughts to work. The academic year 2016/2017 was the busiest I’ve ever known; I had over 200 students to be responsible for. There was no support, but no time to think either. Somehow, I made it through, even though my energy levels were severely depleted. In June when they all left, I realised that Ben’s graduation was barely 2 months away and I was now grotesquely overweight. I felt guilty, fretted and did nothing. I had hoped to take up cricket again last summer; indeed, I registered with Monkseaton 3rd XI and bought some whites. I didn’t get to play though. The nearest came one Saturday in July, away to Stobswood 2nd XI. I was in the team and almost fainting with nerves. Then it rained, so the game was off. The weather wasn’t so bad round here, so I went to see my mate Gary turning out for Monkseaton 2nd XI versus Whitley Bay 2nd XI instead.

We did a few laps of the boundary and chewed the fat about various things. I’ve no doubt he was telling me what he did for my own good, but he basically tried to let me down gently and suggested that I probably couldn’t play cricket in the state I was in.  Slow right-arm bowling wouldn’t be a problem, but running between the wickets and fielding in the deep simply weren’t possible for someone my size. It was almost as soul destroying as retiring from 11-a-side. Consequently, I didn’t make any further effort to be available for the rest of the season. My cricket gear is in the wardrobe and I would desperately love to play, but sadly it seems as if that ship has sailed. Gluttony again and, yes, all my own fault.

In early September last year, my mother died, and I medicated myself with junk food and beer. It was getting ridiculous. Once the clocks went back and I had to wear long trousers again, I struggled to fit into my 40” waist jeans. That was a sign I had to do something. Another was my increasing levels of exhaustion and the wheezing from a long-standing chest infection that lasted for almost 3 months. Best, and most importantly, of all, was seeing Ben come home at Christmas. He’d lost 4 stones since graduation, by eating sensibly and looked wonderful. Basically, I knew the score; do something about my size or die. Consequently, I’ve signed up to Elite Fitness Transform programme; it costs the thick end of £250 for 6 weeks of gym sessions and a meal plan; chicken, broccoli, porridge, fish, brown rice, salad and not much else. It will be tough, especially as I’ve signed up to 6 weeks off the gargle, and at my advanced age, it won’t be possible to lose weight as rapidly as 13 years ago, but I must try.



The gym session was the element that scared me, as I’d never been in one in my life. I was even terrified to attend the induction, but I did. I was equally terrified before my first class, but I went along. I know I was hopeless at the exercises, but I will get better, if I stick at it. You see, I want, and I need, to lose 5 stones; I don’t want to lose it to play football or cricket again (although I’d love to, given the chance), I want to lose weight to feel better about my physical self. If I can feel good about the person I am, personality wise, then I should be able to feel good about my physical self.

Finally, I also want to be able to wear the North Korea t-shirt I got for Christmas from Dave and Heather without it looking like it has been sprayed on.  You need to be fit if you’re going to be a warrior against imperialism…