Born in 1971 in Preston to a heavy drinking father and a mother who was repeatedly arrested for shoplifting. She was a recent immigrant from Kazackstan who cannot understand English. Dave spent much of his early years in Germany where he developed an interest in jet-fighter aircraft and 20th century dictators. Returning to England his eccentric nature led him to be shunned in the playground, but Chicago found happiness in the classroom, the rigid rules and logic of mathematics appealing to his teutonic upbringing.

His obsession with all things numerical began to wane in his early teens, when he felt increasingly frustrated by having to work at the slower pace of his classmates. Fire became his new obsession. However in this intrest he found a peer group and he developed his first real friendships wandering around Astley Park, wantonly settting things alight. He also realised the more spectacular the crimes that he commited, the more popular he became.

This rebellious phase culminated in being arrested for breaking into school, after failing to take acount of the building's 'silent alarm' system. Also his friends thought he had gone too far when he broke into his neighbours house and stole a 'Queen's Greatest Hits' album.

After a brief period of wearing Def Leppard muscle vests and experimenting with budget lagers he embarked upon a career entirely suited to a person of his background; computer programming. In this field he proved a remarkable success, even though he bravely defied convention by refusing to wear a suit.

When Mantas started school your friends were whoever had the same computer as you; unfortunately John was the only one with an Amstrad. Only a fat boy called Marcus, with something called an Oric, had fewer friends. John spent much of this period writing unfortunate sci-fi stories, torturing insects and masturbating.

Eventually video gaming became unfashionable, and drinking Thunderbird wine in the park became  vogue. During this period Mantas began to sport a moustache; the first in his school year. It made him feel like a man. Looking slightly like Magnum, who is over 18, he bought popularity by supplying award winning Slalom lager to other teenagers. He also realised the more red-label Thunderbird he drank the more powerful he felt and on days which didn't involve drinking Thunderbird he began to feel an almost unbearable emptiness.

As a 16th birthday present his Dad took him to see Leyland's finest speed metal combo, Xentrix, and he was hooked. He bought his first 'metal' T-shirt on the way out and has never looked back since. He then took a job cleaning toilets at the recently opened Tesco store and supplimented his income by stealing batteries in order to save up for a drum kit. Though technically competent he was rejected by most up-and-coming metal bands for being too short or not being able to hit the drums hard enough. Also he had now started to drink sherry, after calculating it was the cheapest way to oblivion, and unsurprisingly it was starting to affect his performance.

Dejected and friendless he set off for the bright lights of Manchester and after a few nights on the streets, a bizarre sequence of events led to his enrolling on a Chemistry degree course at UMIST.  This was the final straw for his father, Hall Mantas, ironically a Judas Priest fan who regarded all students as homosexuals. He has never spoken to his son since.

After graduating Mantas was given a wide berth by employers, partly because of his ludicrous moustache, but fortunately for him there is one industry that can't afford to be so choosey; nuclear power. He is still working at the place where 'science never sleeps' and I understand one of his duties is climbing up the cooling towers to remove trapped seagulls.

Little is known of Deacon's past other than he is the son of a parson called Sydney and that he grew up in a idealic village called Wheaton-Aston somewhere near Alton Towers. Here John Mantas describes Deacon's introduction to Central Lancashire.

Mr. Deacon (left) first became acquainted with Chorley through association with my good self during our first year at university. We were both studying chemistry at UMIST, a tedious course at a university chock-a-block full of geeks. It was therefore a relief to meet someone with similar interests, i.e. getting drunk and listening to raucous heavy metal music, and our friendship soon blossomed.

I told my father about my new acquaintance, but he feigned disinterest until I told him Nigel had come fourth in the first year mid-sessional examinations, at which point my father became very impressed indeed and asked me why I had registered such a mediocre performance. Intent on winning back my father's support from the usurper Nigel, I told my father that Nigel regularly took the powerful mind-bending drug cannabis, and that only last week he had drunk until he passed out, subsequently vomiting in a variety of public places. This failed to alter my father's opinion however, who reposted with "Work hard, play hard son, work hard, play hard," singularly the stupidest thing I have ever heard him say.

Nigel remained the apple of my father's eye for some time after this, until the fateful day when he actually got to meet him. I had invited Nigel to come to Chorley, an opportunity which he jumped at. As Nigel has previously described, his school was full of thugs and his village inhabited by violent Neanderthals. My description of Chorley therefore, as an idyllic oasis of cosmopolitan attitudes and zany characters must have seemed like a long sought after nirvana. He positively jumped at the chance to come.

In true wacky student fashion, Nigel dressed up in outlandish attire, including flared tartan trousers, gold sequinned waistcoat and a hat stolen from Charnock Richard service station as worn by table-clearing scum, set off nicely with a large feather found in the street.

I welcomed Nigel into my parents house, but upon meeting him in person, my father dragged me into the kitchen and whispered the words "Hey, he looks a bit nice doesn't he?", to which I agreed "Yes, he is a nice person, he is my friend".

"No, no," my father said, an anguished look on his face, "he looks a bit nice," emphasising the word nice. Yet again I agreed, saying that he was a very nice person, knowing full well what my father was insinuating but revelling in the chance to see him squirm.

"No, you're not listening. He looks a bit nice, you know," my father said, putting as much inflection into the word "nice" as was possible. I continued to feign total innocence of his meaning, adding a look a confusion to my features before agreeing for a final time that I thought Nigel was nice and that we got on very well together. This was all too much for my father, and he retired to the other room thoroughly exhausted by the conversation.

I told Nigel about this after my father had left the room, but he did not find the situation as amusing as I, threatening to "chin him." He didn't however, which was a wise decision, because although my father was old and out of shape, Nigel resembled a malnourished skeleton at the time, and could not have chinned a small girl wearing pig-tails. (His feeble musculature earned him the nickname "Skull Deacon" at university)

We then went out in Chorley and got very pissed, and Nigel was probably sick, since he had a tendency to overdo things. My father's attitude was never the same. He could put up with Nigel's excessive drinking and drug taking tomfoolery, but the thought that he was involved in a homosexual relationship with his son was too much to bear, no doubt worried what the neighbours might say.

Terrence sold out on his roots and moved to London. Rather than settle down with the girl on bread in Tesco, he became a trainee accountant for an oppressive multinational corporation. He has recently started playing golf with work colleagues and many feel he is lost.

He began to experience the turning when opening the door to Bettaware salesman Justin Bentley. T was fascinated by the idea of plastic plates, particularly Bentley's claim that hot pies wouldn't melt through Tupperware. But Bentley was a Young Conservative whose futuristic plate selling job was merely a vehicle for him to espouse his vile politics on Chorley's doorsteps.

He told the young T that it was forbidden for him to discuss the science of plastics, but that such fantastic achievements were due to the policies of someone called Thatcher and something called free enterprise. Bentley told him that given his qualifications T's earning potential was far from being realised.

T became confused, but at the same time mesmerised by Bentley's ideas. In summary, T was persuaded that being repressed by a soulless organisation, hundreds of miles from home, for a 50% increase in salary was a good idea and so became an accountant. Bentley also sold him an unusual plastic vessel for £10 used to microwave eggs; which he claimed were used by astronauts.

T's mum was extremely upset. She dreamt that one day T would be driving unrollable trucks, such as the T-45, at high speeds round the bends of British Leyland's test track. From her point of view, even diving through unsuspecting people's windows dressed as a stormtrooper like T's lawman brother was preferable to a career in accountancy.

Click here to read John Mantas' acclaimed essay on Terrence's life.

Little is known about Lee's childhood and he seems reluctant to talk about it; possibly because he grew up in Coppull, best described as a shoe factory and a small housing estate on an otherwise pleasnt hill. His origins were humble, his father was that man who toured the areas public houses selling processed fish products to drunkards, while proudly wearing his "Super Cockle" uniform.

This fish selling costume coupled with the fact that his father left the house unexpainedly every day after tea, only to return long after Lee had gone to sleep, led the naive young boy to believe his father was in fact a superhero working for CI5; who had perhaps been bitten by a radioactive spider.

Once when he was 15 he decided to stay awake until his father came home. The door crashed open and he heard his mother shouting something about a "disgrace". Lee tiptoed down the stairs. His father saw him and ran towards him saying, "You're the best son in the world. Come and give your Dad a fuckin' kiss". His breath stank of crabsticks and bitter and he had sick down the front of his uniform. This was no superhero; Lee was horrified and ran to his room realising he had the genes of a bum.

Without a role model Lee was listless. He didn't know which music to listen to, what to wear or where to go. This was all to change when Lee's older sister brought home her first boyfriend, S. Michaels High School's be-mulleted Technician Andy Tech. Andy Tech was considered cool by younger pupils, because he was in a band and had hair like Kajagoogoo's Limahl. Older pupils realised he was a loser and both his and Limahl's showbusiness careers were going nowhere.

Andy Tech, having no friends his own age, started taking Lee to soft rock cocerts, to see acts such as Saxon and Def Leppard. Lee then spent all his savings on a denim jacket with a hand painted Marillion album cover on the back. It looked ludicrous and many people, including his mother, told him so, but he didn't care because "I'm going to see the Michael Schenker Group with Andy Tech at the weekend!". For the first time in his life he was happy.

Eventually his school grades began to suffer and the only University that would accept him was Keele; a little known instution in the middle of a forest, where the only nightlife was a motorway service station. There was so little to do he set about taking a crayon rubbing of evey tree in the wood. Away from civilisation he became extremeley confused and started to believe he was something called a shaman; which in his case involved eating poisonous plants, defacating in public and losing his hair.

Five years later he returned to the North West and now earns a living programming IBM's AS-400 operating system. He has recently moved to Wythenshawe, but his house has a disturbing history, read all about it in "The Gimp".