The unemployed doctor

by Twenty Major on July 7th, 2008

Stinking Pete’s cousin was a specialist doctor who worked with dwarves and midgets, helping them with the various small associated complaints they suffered.

However, he was not as calm as many of his colleagues. His lack of composure would see him lose his temper on a regular basis and ultimately his deficit of stoicism meant that the hospital had no choice but to sack him.

He said he was fired because he had little patience.

Let them eat it

by Twenty Major on May 21st, 2008

It is 1987. The world is a strange place. Kylie has just released her first single and Rudolf Hess has died. Are the two events connected? Nobody can say for sure but many of us just know.

Platoon won the Oscar for best picture, Hurricane Charlie has swept through Ireland and the UK causing damage and deaths and Senator Gary Hart has dropped out of the US Presidential race after his affair with Donna Rice, mother of Damien, is exposed.

There are massacres in Hungerford, England and in Melbourne when gunmen go rampaging through the streets, cutting down innocents. There is much talk of why. Were these men insane? Did they hear voices? Could medication and counselling have prevented these disasters? The answer is, no. For years the cover-up has ensured that the real reasons behind it were never known to the public. Now is the time for the exposé. 1987 was the year in which the global cake shortage made the world go crazy.

Such has been the extent of the hush-job that most people don’t even realise that it happened. But I do. As a man who loves a bit of cake it is etched into my brain. You might ask why I haven’t spoken out before but I saw those who tried to speak out and what they did to them. I’m no fool.

Ask the workers of the Gateax factory in Finglas who were required to come to work every day but instead of making delicious swiss rolls and the like they merely sat around doing crosswords, playing chess and discussing the issues of the day, such as ‘Would Ireland qualify for Euro 88′ and Johnny Logan’s success in the Eurovision Song Contest, a source of much pride for the country at that time.

If you went into the supermarkets you could find no apple pies, no battenburg, no tiramasu, no black forest gateaux, no chocolate cake, no pavlova, no Victoria sponges, not even a bit of gur cake. Weddings had no wedding cakes - brides and grooms were convinced by those seeking to continue the cover-up that their guests would prefer jelly and ice-cream instead.

I struggled through that year, I have to tell you. Artisan bakeries were strictly forbidden to produce any kind of cake at all and even eggs were rationed to prevent people from making them at home. Finally I could stand it no longer. I thought about who might be brave enough to make this scandal public. Politicians? No. Spineless cunts the lot of them. Priests? Too busy rimming young boys. TV personalities? What personalities?

The only answer was those who were willing to lend their name to any old thing. Pop stars. This was the era of the charity record. Whenever there was any kind of disaster someone assembled a load of singers and made a record about it. Who can forget Bono, Christy Moore and Dickie Rock’s outraged tune at the resignation of Garret Fitzgerald as leader of Fine Gael - The Return of the thin white Dukes?

So one by one I contacted them and begged them to help make the issue public but this was one they weren’t touching with a 10 foot barge pole. Limahl, Paul Weller, Bros, Jermaine Stewart, the lead singer from Living in a Box, Colonel Abrahams, Atlantic Starr, Johnny Hates Jazz, Climie Fisher, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and even Boy George, smacked out his head as he was, all point blank refused to help. Miserable fuckers. Here we were, the cake eating public who had made them famous, asking for a little help and they refused. All we wanted was some off-key singing to some terrible Midge Ure written song and they were saying no.

I kept at it and at it but every time the answer was negative. I was at my wits end. That was until I found one brave soul. One man who would stand up and be counted. Who would rise above. Who would overcome. A man whose insistence on bringing the world’s attention to the cake shortage would ultimately cost him his career. A man who had been riding high in the charts but who would never again enjoy that kind of success. A man who reworked one of his old hits to fit the cause at hand.

So while today you can enjoy all the sweet desserts you want you should spare a thought for him. Without him you’d be cake free and that is no kind of existence for anybody. It may not have been much but his small effort made those who had caused the shortage to think again and go back to withholding grain from African countries instead.

So today, Fergal Sharkey, I salute you - and how right you were,  ‘A good tart these days is hard to find’.

An American tale

by Twenty Major on February 20th, 2008

A group of old aged pensioners set off one day on a three week trip to the USA. There was Seamus Doyle and his wife Winnie from Ballymun, Jarleth Ryan from Drumcondra, Mary Agnes O’Toole who was born in Palmerstown but now lived in Kimmage, Pat and Deirdre Hanlon from Rathfarnham, Anto and Ethel O’Leary from Castleknock and the Coleman twins, Raymond and Hubert who hailed from Rialto.

They were a mixed bunch but they figured that as they were all from the same city they’d have enough in common to keep them going throughout the holiday ahead. It was New York first and after they landed at JFK airport the first little disaster happened. Winnie Doyle was taken aside by customs officials and given a full body cavity search which turned up nothing useful but it put her in a very glum mood. Poor Seamus tried to cheer her up but it wasn’t until they got to the hotel bar and Anto O’Leary gave them a rendition of ‘Come back Paddy Reilly’ that her spirits lifted.

That night in the bar they drank beer from pitchers for the very first time, wandered around Times Square, ate cheese steak and soon they felt right at home. The second night they got talking to an American in another bar who gathered his friends around to listen to the authentic Irish stories his new friends were able to tell non-stop. They got on famously with this man, whose name was Clint Mayweather, and Hubert Coleman opined that the last time he’d seen a fellow as dark as that it had been Micky Cassidy who had been tarred by the Hughes brothers down in the Church Street tenements. As their trip was to start and finish in New York they made arrangements to meet with him again and he promised to bring them to the casinos of Atlantic City before they left.

The rest of their trip went without too much incident. They enjoyed the many splendours of the United States. They gasped at the maginificence of the Grand Canyon, although Pat Hanlon was dinstinctly unimpressed saying it looked a lot grander on the TV and suggested they change its name to the Adequate Canyon. Nobody agreed and Pat was a generally disagreeable man anyway. Jarleth Ryan found San Franciso much to his liking and would leave the group for hours at a time to follow his own path. Of course they all speculated as to his whereabouts and not a one of them would ever guess that he was standing at the top of Nob Hill throwing tennis balls down when nobody was looking.

Seattle rained a lot and reminded them of home and most of them enjoyed a fine meal in the space needle restaurant. Mary Agnes O’Toole was apparently very susceptible to gravity and while none of the others even noticed the rotation it made her most nauseous indeed and she barely made it to the bathroom to vomit copiously. Deirdre Hanlon went to help her as the pair had become fast friends.

Raymond Coleman enjoyed Chicago a great deal. Partial to smoking maraijuana, a habit he formed while serving with the French foreign legion, he found a local dealer who sold him bags of hydro which he would smoke while wandering the streets. He knew that if a policeman had stopped him he’d be in trouble but he figured he was too old for anyone to take too much notice of and so it was. He spent the happiest three days of his life in the summer sunshine strolling, smoking, stopping for a beer and a slice of pizza. His brother, being the straightlaced one, did not approve but kept his counsel.

All of them had a wonderful time in Florida. From shooting alligators in the Everglades to riding Space Mountain in Disneyworld (which made Mary Agnes O’Toole vomit so much when she got off she didn’t notice she had puked her false teeth into the rubbish bin) to cocktails and a bit of old time dancing on the Sunset Strip to getting caught up in a hispanic drug cartel shoot out in Miami they enjoyed everything the state had to offer. But soon the holiday was coming to a close and they made their way back to New York.

The night they returned they went back to the bar where they met Clint Mayweather again and the native New Yorker entertained his Irish guests, telling them stories of his childhood. Jarleth Ryan and Hubert Coleman got into a bit of an argument over the merits of Bohemians and St Patrick’s Athletic but soon they realised arguing about league of Ireland football was like getting worked up over who was going to be the next leader of the Progessive Democrats. Nobody really cared. Clint told them of his plans to bring them to Atlantic City. A good friend of his was going to drive them in a specially hired minibus which would cater for their every need. There would be a toilet, some bottles of Jameson and as many packets of Reeses Pieces peanut butter cups as they could possibly consume. He was to meet them there as he business to take care of beforehand so they continued their good night, drank beer and all looked forward to a good day’s gambling the next day.

And, as promised, after they’d finished breakfast there, outside the hotel, was Clint’s friend D’Lorean, who was to drive them all the way to the casinos. They all piled all the onto bus like happy children going to the beach and at first the journey was fine. But after a less than 25 miles, unknown to anyone, D’Lorean had a small stroke. Not enough to make him all dribbly and limp but it did funny things to his brain. He thought the other vehicles on the road were out to get him and as such he figured he’d better get them first. So he upped his speed and began to blast his horn and drivers who thought, quite rightly, that he had gone mad.

He swerved from lane to lane trying to ram cars off the road, he pulled in front of buses to make them brake suddenly, trucks and vans were in his sights too and all the while he cackled maniacally to himself. The poor old people in the back were terrified. Seamus Doyle staggered up to the top, grabbing the seats with all his strength to try and stay upright, but when he got to the top and bellowed at the driver to slow down D’Lorean merely turned his head, smiled like he was about to eat the heart of a small child, and sped up even more. Seamus made his way back to the seat beside his wife, held her hand and began to pray that they would make it out of this situation alive.

The other people on the bus did likewise, apart from Anto O’Leary who had long since given up on God. At this point the police had been alerted and soon they were following the minibus. There were squad cars and helicopters and TV crews following this crazy spectacle. All the while D’Lorean was driving like he was ridding the world of evil and, God bless him, he thought that’s what he was doing. He knew he had to get his passengers to Atlantic City and nothing was going to stop him. There were scrapes and smashes and at one stage the bus went on two wheels for a hundred yards, which made Mary Agnes vomit out of her arse, but eventually he got to his destination and stopped the bus, proudly beaming that he had accomplished his mission.

He couldn’t understand why the police dragged him off the bus at gunpoint. Clint Mayweather was there to greet them and clambered on board having been informed what had gone on. He found all the old people in hysterics. They were weeping and keening and making strange noises. No matter how much he tried to talk to them they just would not calm down. After an hour of this the police were most concerned and called in some pyschologists to see if they could help but they couldn’t make head nor tail of the bizarre shrieking and bawling that was going on. An hour later and they called in the FBI who couldn’t do a thing about it either.

All the while the pensioners lamented and whimpered and made odd grunts and snorts that nobody could understand. It did appear that some of them were trying to communicate but nobody could work out what it was they were trying to say. As they held an impromptu conference on the side of the road a passing gentleman who hailed from Clonsilla asked what was going on and if there were any way he could help. Figuring they had nothing to lose the officer in charge told them about the group of elderly people who had been on a trip from Ireland and were now in such a state of sorrow that they had been howling and making a worrying cacophony of sound. They were shocked when he told them he knew what it was.

“You have the answer?”, the CO asked.

“Yes”, said the man, “sure this is what it sounds like when Dubs cry.”

They just get worse

by Twenty Major on November 27th, 2007

Sitting in Ron’s last night and in walked Neil Finn and Nick Seymour.

“Two pints of Guinness, please”, said Finn.

“And a package a Tayto”, said Seymour.

“What are you cunts doing here?”, I asked.

“Just did a gig in the stadium”, said Finn. “We’ve skipped the backstage shite to come for a real pint. We heard the Guinness is good here.”

“Are you Twenty Major?”, asked Seymour.

“Yeah. Are you that bloke from New Order?”

“Haha”, he said. “Bet you can’t make one of those stomach churning puns out of one of our songs.”

“Yeah”, said Neil Finn, “our songs are pun-proof. The best anyone ever came up with was a story about a bloke who invented gloves for trees and called them ‘tree mitts’ and then got around to delivering a punchline like ‘Don’t, tree mitt’s over’ and then he got punched in the face by an owl.”

“And you’re expecting me, off the top of my head, to come up with something?”

“Yeah”, said Seymour. “Except I bet you €23 you can’t.”

“And you, Finn? Are you part of this bet.”

“I’m not a gambling man”, he said, “but if you manage it I’ll give you a guitar.”

“The fuck do I want with a guitar? I suppose I could sell it on eBay.”

“You can do what you like with it, it will be my pleasure to give it to you.”

“You realise these stories are long and winding and very often full of complete crap that is just there to work the joke in at the end and ultimately it’s rarely worth your time getting there?”

“We have all night.”

“Fair enough then”, I said and proceeded to tell them all about this time when space aliens came to earth and were determined to wipe out the best places in all of our major cities. Big Ben - crushed. The Sagrada Familia - obliterated. The Eiffel Tower - pulverised. That really cool bar in Berlin I once spent a night drinking in - annihilated. Windsor Park - demolished. And soon they turned to Dublin. All our best places were getting blown up all over the place.

The Ilac centre - there one minute, gone the next. That video arcade on O’Connell Street that sells the doughnuts outside it - not a trace, not even a bit of the really fake tasting sugar. Meeting House square - now it’s meeting house canyon. You get the picture. Now, an emergency thinktank was put together and it was found that the only possible way of saving Dublin’s great places was to miniaturise them and put them where nobody would ever look for them. Some said they should be locked in a vault, others said they should be buried deep underground, others still thought we should disguise them and leave them out in the open as that’d be the last place they’d look - but in the end it was decided that they should be placed in the rectal passages of Premier League football managers.

There wasn’t a moment to waste and soon all the most awesome buildings and places in Dublin were shrunken with a device invented by Steorn who had given up on the perpetual motion energy thing and finally built something that worked. The managers were flown to Dublin and soon the hiding began.

Burdocks was inserted into the anus of Arsene Wenger, Freebird records was kept safe in the brown passage of Alex Ferguson, Sam Allardyce was to care for the Gaiety theatre and Rafa Benitez, caring soul that he was, kept three tapas bars from the clutches of the evil aliens. Soon every single manager, bar one, had done their bit and time was running out. From the office in Dublin Castle where all this was going on word was received that the aliens were searching for stores of knowledge and without them they would simply leave and go elsewhere.

‘You know’, said Arsene Wenger, ‘there is no greater knowledge than that found in books’.

‘He’s right!’, cried then Minister for Health Bryan McFadden. And with that a delegation was sent to O’Connell Street to shrink the biggest bookstore in the country. Unfortunately the machine was running out of batteries and the shrinkage didn’t work 1oo% correctly. Previously the managers had inserted buildings little bigger than a plum which caused little or no damage as they were held in Papillon style ‘chargers’ but this was the size of about six matchboxes, one of top of the other, and there was no time to find anything to help smooth its passage into the …erm… passage.

They looked out the window and saw the aliens approaching and knew they had to act fast. The only man without anything up his arse was the new Tottenham Hotpurs manager. He looked distraught at what was about to happen, knowing it would hurt, but was still prepared to do his duty.

‘It’s our last chance’, said McFadden. “It’s unfortunate this building is big but we’ll just have to use all our strength to hide it up there.”

‘What are you going to do?’, asked a tearful Alan Curbishley.

McFadden paused before answering.

‘Force Easons in Juande.’

Bad behaviour

by Twenty Major on November 24th, 2007

In 1983 Dirty Dave and Stinking Pete went off the rails a bit, culminating in an episode in town when they went on the rampage in The Old Stand pub.

As they entered they ejaculated wildly, cut up furniture and threw horse chestnuts at the patrons. When they were later caught by police Dirty Dave would only say “We came, we sawed, we conkered.”

Abel the Mexican

by Twenty Major on October 16th, 2007

I used to work with a Mexican chap called Abel Gonzalez. He was one of the first ever Mexicans in Ireland and he taught me a lot of Spanish. I have 27 different words for ‘cunt’ and you don’t realise quite how handy it is to know them until you’ve become lost in South America (but that’s an entirely different story).

He came from a very poor background as you might imagine. His father sold burritos from a little cart outside the Azteca Stadium and his mother made strange costume jewellery which she sold to a man for a pittance who then went and sold it to drunken Americans who spent debauched weekends in Tijuana. He had 6 brothers (Carlos, Carlitos, Carlitilitos, Flaco, Rafael and Trevor) and 13 sisters (Maria, Maria-Paz, Maria Conchita, UgléBetté, and the rest whose names are not that important).

It became quite clear that Abel was intellectually superior to all them. He loved to read books and his family encouraged him as much as possible to continue his education. But times were hard and the family needed all the money they could get, so instead of being in school Abel had to go and work. They tried to help him by stealing books for him and he devoured them all. Thrillers, romantic novels, dictionaries and even ridiculous fiction like the bible went into his brain and stayed there. He loved to write his own stories and in the evenings, when his family had returned from work and were having their dinner of pebble soup, he would regale them with the tales he had written. His mother would weep pebbly tears at his blossoming talent.

One day when Abel was out working the family called a meeting and decided that they had to do whatever it took to get him out of Mexico and into a country where his skills could be improved. They wanted him to have a life that none of them could ever have. They wanted him to achieve something, to leave his mark on the world. Each of them sold a kidney to a man who, in return, said he would provide passage for Abel to Europe. His father had heard talk that Ireland was a country rich in literary tradition and he decided this would be the place for his wonderful son.

The immigration laws were against him as Ireland, at that time, prohibited the import of flora, fauna and wildlife from other countries lest they upset the delicate ecosystem. But the man managed to smuggle him into the country on a boat owned by Charlie Haughey which was filled with guns, large bombs and silk shirts. From the South West coast Abel made his way to Dublin and he got a job as an usher in the Green cinema.

How the people loved him as he pointed the way with his torch.

“Follow thee light” and “Sit where the torch she shines”. Hilarious. I met him when he began to supplement his income doing some work for Ron in his cellar. Now, Ron is a big man and he can lug things (barrels, boxes, bodies) with no problem but the wiry little Mexican amazed him with his ability to shift kegs of beer like they were empty boxes of feathers. He’d work like a demon each day and Ron would pay him in cash. His weekly income from the cinema and Ron’s was more than his entire family earned in a year so he would send money back to them and the letters he received from them telling them how much better he had made their lives brought tears to his eyes.

But this was not enough for him. He just loved to help people. I can remember one time when myself and Jimmy had to dig a big hole up the mountains he couldn’t offer his assistance quickly enough and asked no questions when things such as legs, heads, torsos and arms were dumped in. As well as that he began to help out some of the poorer Dublin communities as they reminded him of home. The little urchins that roamed the streets soon came to know Abel as he would turn up and distribute little presents at regular times.

Each part of Dublin had its own name for the the gifts he brought. In Tallaght they called them ‘Mexi Pressies’, in Coolock they were known as ‘Aztec gifts’ and in the slums of Foxrock they called his sack full of little toys ‘Those things that the man who smells like tequila distributes’.

There was one part of Dublin though where the kids were so downtrodden that they couldn’t come up with anything. So poor were they, so trampled by life and its crushing poverty, that to think of a title would have been to waste precious energy as they never knew where their next meal was coming from. It sounds clichéd but it was Ballymun. He loved it there all the same because the children, though poor, were full of life and loved to sing songs and he sang with them, telling me one of one little tiny sickly boy who wore a funny hat but had a powerful voice.

One day I was having an early pint in Ron’s and Abel was there working. After a while he had finished and came to get his wages and have a small drink. We chatted for a bit, discussing the latest Harold Robbins novel, until it was time for him to go. From behind the bar he took an enormous hold-all packed with little presents and toys.

“Where are you off to today then, Abel?”, I asked him.

He looked at me for a moment then looked down at his bag.

“Where theeeese treats have no name”.

The tale of the actress

by Twenty Major on July 11th, 2007

The young actress had just begun to make it big. Years of scratching around in episodes of increasingly lame cop shows, no matter how much she put herself out there, had been a toil. But then came a lucky break.

The brother of a big star was the baddie and he told his super-hot, super-famous, super-influential sister this chick was smokin’ and could go places. A small part in sister’s next movie got her some good press and enough to get a part in a summer blockbuster as the aging star’s ditzy and completely accidental partner. She played it for laughs and despite the script being looser than a priest’s gown in a room full of orphans she had fun with it and the public liked her for it.

Now she had a real agent, and a PR person, and a stylist, and a hairdresser and real estate advisors and accountants and a manager, of course. It was all so much so quickly but she took it in her stride and in the next movie she fell in love with the leading man. And what a leading man. Only the hottest thing in Hollywood since the Scientology centre burned to the ground that fateful night. With all the Scientologists in it. Shame.

Combined income. Double the star power. Magazine covers. Talk shows. Press. Radio. Internet. Paparazzi. Dlisted. It just never stopped. House in the Hollywood Hills. Apartment in New York overlooking central park. More movies lined up. Starring roles. More money. More fame.

She was getting her hair done the first time she saw him. Thought it was odd the way he was staring but put it down to her FHM shoot that had just hit the news-stands. Didn’t think about it until she saw him again shopping in Chanel. Outside the window looking in. Nerves then. Something setting off alarm bells in the back of her head. Then nothing for weeks. She’d almost forgotten when doing a TV interview with the funny guy who makes political jokes he’s there. Somehow he’s backstage.

She freaks. Tells the producers. Her people. Nobody sees. At home she weeps alone. Boyfriend is shooting far away from home. The next day he’s at the gym. She completely flips. Rings her manager and orders security, bodyguards. Whatever it takes. She decides to get out of town. Do some mountain biking. The second day she climbs a hill and he’s there. Just staring. The bodyguard, out of shape and some way behind, sees nothing. She goes back home. Her head is melted like ice-cream on a haemorrhoid.

She needs peace and quiet. Tells them to patrol the perimeter. Leave her in the house. She’ll call if she needs them. Has a bath. Soaks herself, dries off, goes to the kitchen to make a sandwich. Sees something from the corner of her eye. Knows it must be him. He’s there. At the window. She pulls down the blind. Moves to the next one. He’s already there. Looking. She knows there’s no point calling the guards, just knows.

She checks the locks, grabs the phone and runs to the bedroom. Locks that door. Pulls down the blinds. Has dialled 911 on the way up and now speaks to the dispatcher.

“Yes, I need police right away. I’m at 3235 La Bamba Heights. There’s someone out there trying to get in.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“All I know is that he’s been following me for weeks.”

“Calm down, ma’am. There’s a car on the way.”

“Thank you.”

“What does he look like ma’am? I have to tell the unit.”

“Well, he’s white, about four feet tall and he stands on one leg.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“He also has a powerful beak.”

“Ma’am?”

“And his wingspan is very, very large.”

“Erm…”

“Didn’t I just tell you? I have a storker.”

Roadie on the road

by Twenty Major on June 7th, 2007

Some years ago I decided I’d leave Ireland and travel around Europe in order to educate my mind and to back up my extreme prejudices. At least I could say I’d visited the countries and peoples that I despised with all my heart.

Setting off at the North Wall and taking the ferry to Liverpool I made my way over land and sea, scratching a living as I went. In fact, I was so broke that I spent three months filling in as the DJ on the disco deck of the B&I ferry between Dublin and Liverpool as the previous bloke had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his neck. I took his collection of 7″ singles and made that place rock every night. You could barely move for the throngs of people singing, dancing and vomiting into handily placed buckets because of sea-sickness.

Eventually I made it to mainland Europe. I picked grapes in France and got involved in something that shames me to this day: dog fighting. Every night, under the cover of darkness, people would come from miles around to see me fight dogs. On all fours I punched Dobermans in the face, ripped the tails off pitbulls and bit the ears of Alsatians. I gave it up when they wanted me, the undisputed champion, to take on a three month old French bulldog puppy. They truly are monsters, the French.

After that I travelled through Portugal and Spain, stopping for a time in Barcelona where I entertained crowds on Las Ramblas with my awesome football skills. I did tricks and keepy-uppys and all kinds of funky things. That didn’t last too long though as a group of people respresenting some bloke in a Maradona shirt warned me off and burst my balls. My footballs. After that I travelled back through France into Italy and there I gorged myself on pizza, pasta and met a man called Mario who I described, with comedy accent, to this little Japanese tourist I met at a bar one night. I’ll get you one of these days, John Nintendo.

I smoked joints in Amsterdam, ate beer and drank sausages in beer gardens across Germany, went to sleep in Belgium because there was nothing else to do and, having been paid a large amount of money by a faceless corporation I kidnapped and ransomed Heidi when I got to Switzerland. Her fucking cheapskate Grandfather wouldn’t pay though so I pushed her down a mountain. She was all right though. She had hooves like a mountain goat and bounded to safety.

After that I decided Scandinavia was my next port of call. After sampling the delights of Danish bacon first hand I crossed into Sweden where I found work hard to come by. Purely by chance I met another Irish bloke, Dan Ryan his name was, and he managed to get me some work with Abba who were just about to head off on a tour of the Eastern bloc. They needed a new roadie after one of them had been raped and killed by a moose as he snuck off one night for a crafty wee.

I threw myself into this work with great gusto as it was a way of seeing the countries I hadn’t really planned on visiting, making a few bob and having somewhere half-decent to kip every night. I soon came to understand that Abba’s success was not only due to them writing killer pop tunes, it was down to them being absolute perfectionists in every single way. Their rehearsals were backbreaking, not finishing until everything was 100% right. I remember one time Benny castigating the other three because they were satisfied with the opening piano roll from Dancing Queen when he knew it wasn’t as good as it might have been. He made them spend another three hours sorting it out.

It wasn’t just Benny though. Bjorn would practice his guitar licks constantly and Anni-Frid and Agnetha worked on those harmonies like slaves worked on the pyramids, just with less limestone. I grew particularly close to Agnetha because not only was she a dynamite singer she had a magnetic personality. If you can imagine a magnet in the shape of a person and imagine yourself life-sized but made from iron filings then you’ll understand what I mean. I soon became her favourite roadie and as such I was responsible for her microphone.

This was quite an honour as the microphone had been especially made for her and calibrated to her voice. She told me in no uncertain terms that this had to be protected at at times and Thor help me if anything happened to it. Naturally, being a dedicated and conscientious worker, I strove to make sure she had her mic in tip-top shape every night. However, I wouldn’t be telling you this story if all went well. We had been part of a great gig in Poland before we headed elsewhere and backstage the other lads were in great form and we got to knocking back some of the local vodka, which tasted like petrol mixed with rhino skin. At the end of the gig I went on stage, as usual, and took the microphone and put it safely away.

At least that’s what I thought. The next day I went to look for it and couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched high and low, up and down, round and about and a little bit hither and thither but it was nowhere to be found. Gadzooks. Worst of all the band were playing that night in Kiev and I didn’t have Agnetha’s microphone. What the fuck was I going to do? Being the resourceful type that I am I found another mic and being so familar with hers I gunthered it up to look like the original. I knew it was only skin deep though and that she’d realise what was going on.

That night my heart sank as I watched them from the side of the stage and I could see Agnetha looking puzzled as to why her voice didn’t have the same timbre as normal. At one point she turned to look at me. Those big brown eyes were so sad - like Bambi being given a prostate exam by a man with truncheons for fingers - and I knew she knew. I felt so small and guilty. After all the trust she had placed in me I had gone and fucked it up good and proper. I tried to speak to her after the show but she waved me away without a word and I could see the tears in her eyes.

The next morning we ran into each other at breakfast. It was awkward I have to say. I tried to apologise but she spoke first.

“Twenty”, she said, “I have always been honest with you. I wish you had just been honest with me and told me what had happened. Then I could have modified my singing style to the inferior microphone and all would have been well. Why couldn’t you just be honest with me?”

“I’m so sorry, Agnetha”, I said.

“How did you lose it?”, she asked.

“I wish I knew. I had too much to drink and I just forgot what I did with it. I swear from this day on I’ll never drink too much again.”

She simply smiled at me like I was an old lady trying to cross a busy road.

“Tell me this and tell me no more”, she said, “when did it happen?”

I looked down at my feet, my face burning with shame.

“The day before Ukraine.”

A Scandinavian tale

by Twenty Major on May 1st, 2007

As I’m sure you all know I’m a very well travelled and learned kind of person. I’ve lived here and there but not everywhere because that would be fucking impossible. And there are places I wouldn’t live such as Sierra Leone, Albuquerque, any small town in central America and Balbriggan. However, I’m pretty much open to the rest of the world.

Not so long ago I had a great idea for a book which I was convinced publishers would go for. Without even attempting to run it past anyone, so convinced was I of the worthiness of this project, I took myself off to Sweden where the book would be based. I won’t go too much into the story in case I run out of ideas for my current book and I have to revert to this dusty old manuscript (Sssssh, don’t tell Hodder) but it was basically a buddy story involving novellist Henning Mankell, former Arsenal player Anders Limpar, Ingmar Bergman and Agnetha Fältskog from Abba.

The idea was that each of them received a fancy invitation to a party but when they arrived at the party location each person was called into a dark room where a mysterious voice reminded them of a dark and possibly disgusting secret from their lives. They were told they had 14 days in which to get the northern mining town of Malmberget at which point they would receive further instructions.

They could only travel in an unreliable VW camper van which, because it was quite unreliable, broke down a lot. Each person knew every other person had a secret and as the journey progressed relationships grew and they tried to discover what was what. The differences in characters made for some comic moments. For example, Bergman was really quite shy but he took a real shine to Agnetha but Anders Limpar being a practical joker dressed up in her clothes and it was only when the film director felt the unusually stubbly chin that he realised he was French kissing the footballer. Then there was Henning Mankell arguing with Limpar about whether or not Bjorn Borg could have beaten Ivan Lendl in a game of Trivial Pursuits with the novellist going so far as to say Borg could have beaten Jesus at arm-wrestling.

As these things do it was to end in tragedy but I can’t tell you how or why or when. You’ll just have to wait until the book comes out and you can learn their secrets and the lengths each one of them would go to protect it.

Anyway, I felt Sweden would be the natural place to write the book. It’s people, landscapes and cold weather would inspire me, I thought. I stayed in Stockholm for a while then went down to Malmo before settling in a small town called Osby back up the way a bit. I figured the slightly warmer climes there would be better for me as I took some time to recover from frostbite of the mickey when I took a piss outside at 3am on my way home from a bar. My piss was frozen in mid-air and my helmet went blue. Not much fun, let me tell you.

Anyway, in Osby I found myself working brilliantly. With nothing much to distract me I made the initial notes for my book and then spent the next three months writing it out long hand with pencils. I was very aware of keeping back ups so I used carbon paper. I didn’t want it to be a case that there was only one copy in case something went wrong. After proof reading and correcting it was time to type it out on my trusty old typewriter.

I went into the town to buy some typing paper and bought two packets at the local stationary shop. When I took it home though there was something a bit funny about it. The paper had a really, really odd smell and the ink from the typewriter didn’t seem to stick. I went to another shop and bought some more paper but it was the same. Another shop - the same. At this point I was at my wits end. Even though lots of people in Sweden have good English I seemed to be in the only town where they spoke English like the chef from muppets. I didn’t know what to do.

I decided to take a walk to try and clear my head when who should I run into but Annie Lennox. I nearly jumped for joy. Everyone knows a drunk Scottish person speaking English sounds exactly the same as fluent Swedish so she could help me. I ran over to her and explained what was going on, about my book and the problems I was having with the strange, almost sticky, smelly paper.

“Ach, don’t worry about that. Everyone knows”, she said, “that Swede reams are made of cheese.”

The best covers band in Dublin

by Twenty Major on March 12th, 2007

Many years ago myself, Jimmy, Dave and Stinking Pete decided we’d fulfill all our musical ambitions by setting up our own band. We soon realised that we were no good when it came to writing songs of our own so we figured doing cover versions was the way to go.

Jimmy played the drums, Stinking Pete was the guitarist, I had one of those keyboards that looked like a keyboard-guitar (naturally I had a very thin leather tie on too) while Dirty Dave, despite his filth and unspeakable stench, has the voice of an angel so he was the singer.

We rehearsed in Jimmy’s garage and soon we had all the hits sounding as cool as the original artists. From ‘Hold me now’ by The Thomson Twins to ‘Wishful thinking’ by China Crisis to ‘Solid’ by Ashford and Simpson we were smooooooth, let me tell you. We asked Ron if we could do a night in his bar but he told us to fuck off and hit Stinking Pete in the head with one of those old soda water dispensers.

So we asked around and eventually we got a landlord so desperate for anything to bring extra custom in he gave us a shot. We got some flyers printed up in Prontaprint and plastered them around the area and soon there was a great buzz about our first gig. The band was called The Separated Bags on account of how difficult it was, back in those days, to separate supermarket plastic bags.

Now, we were all confident performers but Stinking Pete suffered a bit from stage fright. He was a very accomplished guitarist though and had been taught many years previously by Jose Feliciano, the famous blind guitarist. He told Pete he’d never seen a talent like his but not even such supportive words from such a great strummer could help him overcome his nerves.

At one jazz club performance Pete was so nervous he fingers kept slipping off the strings and he inadvertently invented acoustic death metal. Jose Feliciano was most upset to see his protegé suffer so badly, knowing that unless he could overcome his stage fright he’d never reach his true potential. One day he handed Pete a small bottle and told him that he should use the precious liquid inside to coat his fingertips before each live performance and they’d never slip again. When Pete asked what it was he was reluctant to tell him what it was but when pressed he revealed he’d stuck a needle into his own eyeball and drained all the liquid out of it.

“What do I care? I’m blind already!”, he said. So, whenever Pete had to play live he used some and it always helped him calm down.

So, our first gig went reasonably well. There were a good few people there including BP Fallon and Niall Stokes from Hot Press (who got bottled in the back of the head because some woman said his ’stupid curly fucking hair’ was blocking her view) and the reaction we got was great. Our version of Wordy Rappinghood by Tom Tom Club had everybody talking. Soon we were pulling in the crowds and while that was great we had some problems as the more people that came the more nervous Pete got.

One night he felt the effects of the magic liquid wearing off and in the middle of Golden Brown he ran off to apply some more. Afterwards I was furious.

“You couldn’t have waited until the end of the song?”, I shouted.

“No. I’m sorry. I was going to poo in my pants. I was touching cloth, Twenty.”

The very next gig the same thing happened. We hadn’t even got to the chorus of Bette Davis Eyes when he chucked down his guitar and ran off stage again. We carried on as best we could but his funky wah-wah pedal made the song. This was crazy. Again I had a big row with him and he promised he wouldn’t do it again.

But wouldn’t you know the next gig, with even more people despite his madcap antics, the very same thing happened. Right at the crescendo of Living in a Box the cunt fucked his guitar off the stage and ran shrieking to the dressing room for his priceless fluid. We got through the rest of the night ok but this time he had the three of us giving him grief.

“You better get a fucking grip or I’ll shove that guitar up your hole”, said Jimmy.

“Stop being such a fucking fanny”, said Dirty Dave who was revelling in the limelight as the singer in Dublin’s best covers band and didn’t want to lose the little appeal he had.

In retrospect I suppose that did nothing to make him feel less nervous and when we got word on the grapevine that there’d be some VIP guests at our next gig he was an absolute bag of nerves. When he peeked out on stage and saw Mike Murphy, former Miss Ireland Olivia Treacy, Terry Hall from the Fun Boy Three, Martin Fry from ABC and John Craven from John Craven’s Newsround - amongst all the other special guests - I swear you could see the bulge in the seat of his pants as his turtle’s tail emerged.

I knew I had to do something or the gig would be a total shambles but what? Then it came to me in a flash.

“Pete, where do you keep that vial that you need so badly?”

“In my soon to be retro foldover satchel. Why?”

“No time for why, just shut up.”

So I ran off and got the stuff, another small bottle and a ball of twine. I shared out the solution between the two bottles and then all I had to do was attach them to him so if he felt like he needed it during the performance he didn’t have to run off stage. It was devilishly simple in its devilish simplicity. With the gig just moments away I ran up to Pete and lashed the bottles to the insides of his elbows with a double highwayman’s hitch.

“There you go!”, I said.

“What the fuck is this?”, he replied.

I looked at him a moment before speaking.

“Eye juice tied in your arms, tonight.”