After the gig in Derby, Simon Streeting and me popped into a pub near the hotel for a wind down pint of Guinness. Not knowing the local pubs and not being able to see through the windows we took a chance, hoping we wouldn’t end up in the hardest bar in Derby. Because once you’ve made that commitment to go through the door, you can’t really go out again. Oh sure, you can exaggeratedly look around as if you’re pretending to look for a mate and then say to yourself in a stage whisper “Oh, he isn’t here,” but no-one will be fooled and they will come after you with crow bars anyway.
It was a bit of a rough looking pub on first impressions, but there weren’t that many people in there drinking. Probably because there was an extremely loud punk/heavy metal style gig going on in the back room. We chose not to join the throng of sweaty men who were attending and played pinball instead. Simon Streeting then spotted a “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” machine on the other side of the pub, so we thought we’d have a go (hoping that some other punter in the pub would cough at the appropriate moment to help us out – has anyone else pointed out that that is what happened in that old Morecambe and Wise “Harsenel” Mastermind sketch? Hilarious if it is true that someone has tried it for real)
On the way across to the machine, a wild eyed man caught my eye and said “Hey, I saw you coming out of somewhere earlier.” I said, “Oh right. Good.” And carried on my way, unsure if this was someone who had recognised me as a minor ex-TV star, or had just seen me exiting from an unspecified location at some unknown point in the past.
So Simon Streeting and me started to lose at Millionaire, but when Simon Streeting went up to get us another drink, the wild-eyed man caught my eye. He came across and offered to help out with the game. He was fairly drunk (there may have been more than alcohol in his system, but he was drinking Newcastle Brown which is the strongest hallucinogen known to man, so that might have been it). We played a few games, losing every time, but it filled some of the aching chasm between our births and our inevitable deaths.
Eventually the touch-screen of the computer went a bit haywire and we were forced to stop having added about ten pounds to the already bulging coffers of WWTBAM (I am annoyed by my knowledge that a tiny per cent of that money will go to Jasper Carrott. Maybe he will use it to buy a small present for his daughter who works for that David Brent character). Our new wild-eyed friend, although initially a bit scary, was quite a sweet fella and went and retrieved his Newcy Brown to come and sit with us.
He was obviously alone and a bit lonely and asked us what our plans were for the rest of the night. We answered honestly that we were very tired and were going to bed. It became apparent that he hadnÂ’t recognised me from the telly, but he repeated his earlier assertion that he had seen me coming out of somewhere earlier, but did nothing to clarify where or when this might have been. But I think his brain was struggling to keep up with the stimulants in his blood stream, so he probably didnÂ’t have much chance of remembering.
We sat and chatted and Simon Streeting produced a pack of strong Gaulouise cigarettes that he didnÂ’t want, but had surmised that our new friend might enjoy. Although I donÂ’t smoke and canÂ’t smoke and feel ill if I smoke, I decided to have one out of a sense of the camaraderie of lost souls.
He tried to persuade us to head into Derby in the search for excitement. But I was tired and now feeling sick from smoke inhalation, and the pub staff were kicking us out, so we headed back to the hotel and left him to down his full pint of Brown Ale and contemplate his demons.
