TERRENCE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!

A Christmas Carol

It was that barmy Autumn October 1989, the leaves had turned a different colour and evenings had got darker. Myself and some fellow street urchins (to be known as GC, JW, DH, & Belstaff) had frittered away our summer earnings on cups of tea and scones, in Goodies Cafe above the covered market, and now had to find money to illegally buy booze from Davros's Off Licence.

One of my friends, GC or JW, hit upon the idea of Carol singing to raise the necessary capital. The business plan was worthy of beardy Branson. We saw no other bands of youth's extorting money from the old in this manner, and our competition (the Church and various paedophile groups) weren't expecting a blitz-krieg on this scale. We had to move fast to seize the opportunity.

In the ancient Chorley festive tradition we dressed up "like tits" topped off with head garments made of tea towels, and sun glasses. Then went round the "Posh" part of town in search of toff's to fleece.

We got greeted with "Ooooo you've started early this year" of course we had not started early just very late, this simple fact confused enough of the Cocaine addled bourgeois for them to hand over considerable quantities of small change.

All was going well until we stumbled across the house of funny bastards who brought their whole family out to see us. Being a band of natural thespians the audience did not faze us. Unfortunately we only knew the first few lines of a couple of carols, and even then we were not 100% on the lyrics. We bombed, after repeating Silent Night Holy Night a couple of times we cracked. The giggling stopped. We all knew we had shamed our proffession.

Our artistic integrity shattered things started to go wrong. Although making a couple of gold ones from the deal (our largest fee to date) tensions within the band caused us to split up. DH refused to work with Belstaff because he had curly hair, and the fact that none of us knew any words and had at best a slight ability to sing caused friction. DH flirted from band to band normally named Moist, GC started with the Trop, JW began to dabble with the dark side, Belstaff started stacking bread, and I started to look like Ben Elton.

Today the members are largely concentrating on solo projects, as the euphemism goes. All together we made in excess of £12 and spent it on cheap booze.

The T is Dead!

I've just been informed that my boy hood hero, and some time name sake, is broke and at deaths door with cancer. Let us not remember Mr. T as the pathetic, emaciated, drug addled bum which he is today but, as the Steroid fueled, violent, gold chain wearing, flying fearing deviant he was in his prime. 1