Yeah, but what if you have to massage your hair vigorously for the shampoo to work? My dream is not over! It's my idea. Don't steal it.
There was a big party of ten year old (maybe a little older, but prepubescent anyway) kids from Northern Ireland staying in my hotel last night. I was watching Comic Relief and the World Poker Championship (which opened my eyes to a new gambling avenue!) to wind down after the gig. At about 11.30pm the kids all arrived back to their rooms and for the next 45 minutes they were shouting each other in their shrill unbroken voices, running up and down the corridor and banging on each others doors. My heart sank, it was going to be a disturbed nights sleep. The grown-up in me got a bit huffy. Its not what you expect when you book into a nice hotel. You deserve some decorum for your £82. (Yes, £82. That's how nice a hotel it was!)
But I didnt want to complain. They were after all, only children, and who amongst us didnt behave like that when we were young? Its exciting being away from home. Of course youre going to shout and run and play rubbish practical jokes without a care in the world for the boring businessmen (and extremely interesting stand-up comedians who nonetheless are in bed at 11.30 on a Friday night). Every now and then an exasperated teachers voice would call for calm and issue mild and impotent threats and things would be quiet for approximately 30 seconds. But then the noise would start up again, rising from whispers to shouts in the time it takes you to make the same shift in volume on a TV remote control.
It was annoying, but my inner child instructed me to let the shenanigans be. It would be hypocritical to complain when I had been culpable of the exact same crimes as a youngster.
In fact the incident gave me rather fond memories of the camping holiday I had in Minehead with my school-mates (which later provided the inspiration for much of Punks Not Dead). One night we had stayed up until about 3am, drinking cider and making up tortuous and impossible puns for new versions of the My wife went on holiday last year joke. Wed done that for about two hours and amazingly the fun had started to dull, so Steve Cheeke started doing an impression of the son of Satan for some reason. Suddenly there was a heavy rapping on our tent roof and an angry, threatening, French male voice rasped, You can keep your blurdy, sheeety mouths closed!
We were immediately silenced by fear, but within a minute we were laughing and imitating his ridiculous accent and his poor (yet strangely more effective) command of English swearing.
Yes, it must have been annoying for him to have his holiday in Minehead ruined (if it's possible to make camping in Minehead any worse than it is already), but could he not remember a time from maybe twenty years before, when he had been young and exuberant and suddenly released from the rules and regulations of his parents? Hadnt he wanted to laugh and joke the night away as well, without even a thought for another human being?
In Oldham, I decided to break the cycle and so I didnt ring reception, though alas someone else did (Simon Streeting as it turns out, the party pooper) because the noise ceased around about 1am.
I felt proud of myself for letting it ride, but couldnt sleep anyway as it happens. So I was less inclined to nostalgic empathy when I was woken at 6.30am by the same happy, shrieking and swearing voices (they had a better command of serious curse words than my French adversary of twenty years ago, though an equally amusing accent). And I was even more annoyed when I was woken again at 9am by the maid who had entered my room because one of those rapscallions had found it amusing to turn my Do Not Disturb sign around, so that it read Please Service my Room.
If I could have got hold of them I would have wrung their blurdy, sheeety necks.
