Violence as comedy

The archaeological evidence suggests the Vikings did a lot of drinking, and we are similarly inclined. We’re lucky we live in such a backwater because if drugs had been more available we might not have survived. We try smoking nutmeg and grated dried banana skins, and almost get hernias trying to draw on these densely packed roll-ups, but none of the promised effects materialize, so we concentrate on the booze: Newcastle Brown Ale, Watney’s Party Seven, Woodpecker cider, Dubonnet, Advocaat, Babycham, Harvey’s Bristol Cream – we drink anything we can get hold of.

Aged about sixteen, my friend Wilf and I go to see the band Curved Air at the Student Union in Bradford. Sonja Kristina, the lead singer of Curved Air, is our number one hot crush. We can’t believe we’re going to see her sing ‘Back Street Luv’ right in front of us, in the flesh, and we’re already a little giddy.

Besides being in love with her I’m also aware of her Scandinavian heritage, and if by some miracle I should get to talk to her, once she learns that I’m Scandinavian too I’m sure we’re going to hit it off big time.

This is called magical thinking.

Sonja Kristina, my number one hot crush

The beer in the Student Union is incredibly cheap and we drink a lot of it. We’re not very good at it, but practice makes perfect, so we keep practising. We become fairly stocious, fairly quickly.

I am wearing my new light blue denim jacket that I’ve bought from the back pages of Melody Maker. I think Sonja will like it. It’s covered in embroidery – little hummingbirds and flowers – and has a jolly hippy vibe that I’m very pleased with.

At school we buy ALL our clothes from the small ads in the back of Melody Maker, it’s our chief source of groovy clothing, but not all purchases have been this successful. It’s the days before trading standards are a noticeable thing. Most of the stuff is extremely badly made. The green satin loons I buy fall to pieces on the second wearing. They don’t even have a waistband, just a thin strip of cotton webbing. The only positive is that they fall apart before they need washing.

I’m not sure I’d be who I am without Melody Maker. More than any book I read, more than any lesson I’m ever taught, Melody Maker is where I read about a different world that I long to join. It’s full of people experiencing much more freedom than me. People having much more fun. I read it from cover to cover every week. Ian Hunter, the lead singer of Mott the Hoople, who always seems to be having ‘a right lark’, becomes a beacon of insouciance – he’s the flame to my moth. I want to be him.

But at this point I haven’t even got the right trousers.

Clothes are expensive and the only stuff I get free is the stuff my mum buys me from the Grattan catalogue. This stuff is even worse, at least stylistically. I beg her repeatedly for a pair of Levi jeans. Instead she gets me some ‘jeans’ from the catalogue. They’re not even made of denim, they’re made of cotton and are printed with a pattern to look like denim. From across the road I might get away with them, but come one step closer and you’ll see the red stitching. No real jeans have red stitching. It only invites people to inspect them more thoroughly and then they’ll see the true horror of how uncool they really are.

But at the time they’re the only jeans I’ve got and they might impress some girls, at least from a distance. I wear them at every opportunity, even on a geography field trip to Malham Cove. I reckon any girl hikers won’t be able to spot my ersatz jeans from a distance, they’ll just think: ‘Hey, there’s a cool guy in jeans.’

On the trudge over from Malham Cove to Gordale Scar I trip and land knee first in an enormous cow pat. A fresh one. I don’t know whether it’s the acidity of the cow pat or the cheapness of the fabric dye, but this is catastrophic. I scrape the shit off with a dock leaf immediately but some chemical reaction is already taking place. I can see it happening before my very eyes. I wash the knee in a stream but I can see the ‘denim effect’ disappearing. When the reaction finally stops I’m left with a permanent dull brown/purple patch that makes it look like I’ve just fallen knee first in a cow pat. Now the girls will be thinking: ‘Hey, there’s a guy who’s just fallen knee deep in a cow pat. And look – he’s wearing fake jeans!’

I never wear the jeans again.

Grattan catalogues are one of the major success stories of Bradford-based businesses after the wool industry declines, but I take against them from this point. Even the pages of young ladies modelling bras and pants lose their thrall.

And speaking of young ladies not wearing very much, we don’t get to meet Sonja after the gig. We search for the stage door only to find ourselves locked out of the Union building altogether because the tickets don’t allow re-entry. She was brilliant though.

Our passions inflamed, we roam the streets of Bradford looking for girls to chat up. We don’t know how to chat up girls, but we’re hoping to give it a bloody good go if we can find some who’ll let us try. We go into a pub and are immediately thrown out, not because we are obviously underage, but because we are in that kind of loud, young, drunk state that draws unnecessary attention to itself. We are wild-eyed and chewing on our shields. The licensing laws are only ignored as long as you sit quietly in the corner with half a pint of shandy.

We spy a cafe down a back alley and figure we might try our luck there. It’s one of those grim places that stays open for night shift workers and people who’ve missed the last bus home. There’s a group of ‘lads’ in the queue before us at the counter. The last one orders a tea, the proprietor puts it on the counter and passes him the sugar in one of those dispensers with the metal tube inside that’s supposed to limit each tilt to precisely one teaspoon of sugar, but never works. The lad has trouble with it. Each tilt only produces a few grains. It takes him an age to get the requisite amount of sugar into the cup. I sigh exaggeratedly.

‘Where are the spoons?’ he says, finally.

‘Don’t worry – I’ll use my finger!’ I say, hoping to speed the process up and be amusing at the same time.

I stick my finger into his tea and stir. It scalds my finger, but Wilf laughs, so it’s worth it.

The lad looks at me like I’m an idiot.

‘I am an idiot,’ I say, reading his mind.

He looks narked, and Wilf, spotting the potential for argy-bargy – which he likes to avoid because he is on the puny side – apologizes for my behaviour and immediately buys him another tea. The potential for unpleasantness is avoided. Wilf is a whizz at maths – he’ll go on to work out the odds for betting companies for a living – and he informs me that if I drink the fingered tea we will be none the worse off.

I know now how annoying sixteen-year-old drunks are, and I apologize if you were there. I imagine I was loud, and obnoxious, and found myself terribly amusing. Luckily there were no girls to disappoint.

The lads leave before us, scowling at us as they go. As we return our empty cups to the counter – see how beautifully well-mannered we are – the proprietor looks at us and says under his breath, ‘I’d be careful when you go outside.’

We’re too drunk to understand what he means – has there been a sudden snowfall? But as we exit it becomes crystal clear. The lads, all five of them, are in a semicircle around the door. Grease hasn’t come out yet, so perhaps they’re channelling West Side Story, but this is definitely the seventies Bradford version of gang warfare. Except that we don’t have a gang. There’s just the two of us. And they’re a lot bigger than us. And there are no songs. And no dancing. And I doubt we’ll be falling in love with beautiful girls and doing the kissing thing.

It’s amazing how quickly you sober up when you’re suddenly confronted with real danger. It’s as if drunkenness is just a pretence that you can switch on and off. The one whose tea I stirred starts to air his grievances . . . but barely gets a word out before I shout ‘Run!’

At least being smaller makes us more slippery to catch. We jink through them, side-stepping and twisting – who knew being forced to play rugby would ever come in useful – we tear ourselves away from their flailing fists and grasping hands, before hightailing it down the alley. They chase after us but the adrenalin rush of fear gives us an advantage. We’ve never run so fast.

As you know, Bradford is built on seven hills – just like Rome – and we run up and down them getting the distinct impression that we are faster than them and that they are dropping behind. We turn the corner into Sunbridge Road and would you believe it – there’s the 16 bus at the bus stop! The very bus that will take us up the Thornton Road to safety!

We quickly climb aboard, clamber up the stairs to the top deck, and crouch low to the ground so we can’t be seen through the windows.

The bus doesn’t go.

We hear the running footsteps of the following pack as they come out into Sunbridge Road. They stop running. They must be looking about.

Why won’t the bus go?

We can hear them walking up and down trying to find our trail.

It’s the terminus! The terminus stop. This is where the 16 waits until its scheduled departure time. It’s late at night. It could be stopped here for ages.

We listen out for our tormentors. The sounds seem to be receding. They must have moved on, or given up.

‘They must have moved on, or given up,’ I say.

‘Let’s just lie low,’ says Wilf. ‘Let’s just keep out of sight until the bus goes.’

We lie low for ages. The bus doesn’t move. Eventually I risk a little sneaky peek – I raise only the top of my head and my eyeballs above the bottom of the window, look out, and find I’m staring straight into the eyes of one of the lads on the other side of the street.

‘They’re on the bus!’ he shouts.

There’s no time to escape. We are doomed. They bundle up the stairs and rush towards us. It’s me they want most. They pull Wilf out of the way so they can get closer to me, and then they start punching. I try to protect my face with my arms, and rather like being smacked by my parents they have to keep going until they feel the right number of blows have connected properly. And they each have to have a go. There are two main punchers but as I’m stuck in a seat and curled up they have to keep swapping positions so that they each feel they’ve made a proper contribution to the beating. Sometimes there’s a gap in the punching and I think they might have stopped, but it’s just a pause while they change places.

When they finally leave I have an eyebrow that is split open and gushing blood, my nose feels like it’s on sideways, and my lips look like I’m a female contestant on Love Island.

I have to say, it hurts getting beaten up, but I take away a piece of comedy gold – the beauty of unexpected repetition. There’s an episode of Bottom called ‘Bottom Gas’ in which we attack the gasman who’s come round to read the meter (that we have bypassed). We try many ruses to prevent him reading the meter but eventually resort to violence.

I hit him once with a frying pan and he falls unconscious to the ground. I then keep hitting him with the frying pan, and when I get tired Rik takes over, punching him with his fist. We swap hitting duties five times, sometimes taking a breath to regain our strength. I hit him a total of seventeen times with the frying pan, Rik punches him twenty times. All with the gasman’s body lying inert on the floor. It takes an unexpected amount of time.

The first hit is conventionally funny, but then the sequence dips into a kind of psychosis where the laughter trails off a bit. However, the longer we keep it up, the longer we keep our nerve, the more berserk it becomes, and hysteria starts to build, and the laughter gradually gets louder and louder.

This is what I learn on the top deck of the number 16 bus. There comes a point in repeatedly punching someone in the face when it’s just ridiculous. And possibly funny.

On the negative side, my lovely light blue denim jacket with the hippy embroidery is covered in bright red blood that will never wash out. Even after repeated washing with miracle powders advertised on the TV it is still mostly a dull, muddy brown. And I can’t afford to get another one sent from the back pages of Melody Maker.