I gently eased the car window down as the cold misty weather collided with my foggy breath. I tried to attract Lady Mercedes’ attention but no joy, she was still singing along to her little Wailer and Jammin.’…somehow I don’t think Bob had traffic jams in mind when he wrote this! The traffic was at a standstill so I kept looking across trying to attract her attention when suddenly she caught my eye, ‘fuh own’ I mouthed. I said it a couple of times as she started to look more confused and then started to frown, even scowl. …Oh my God !!! I just realized how mouthing ‘fuh’ must have looked. What now??? I panicked and started circling my wrist around my ear giving the impression of an old fashioned dial…either that or I was winded my head up…. I might as well have been. Well I mean how do you mouth asking someone if you can borrow their cell phone to make a call.
All the time I was digging myself a deeper hole. I took the plunge, braved everything and did what I should have done from the beginning…I climbed out of the car praying she didn’t have a gun and shoot me on the assumption I was about to attack her…..Lord knows I deserved it. She was very brave and left the car window open. ‘I’m so sorry do you think I could borrow your phone, I only have a TV remote’ What kind of a dumb ass thing was that to say! Now what? ‘I mean I accidentally picked up my TV remote this morning instead of my phone’ It inadvertently turned in to an icebreaker and she pissed herself laughing. I had regained my throne as a complete wanker!
‘You did what?’ she chuckled. I went in to the explanation of being in a hurry to get out.. blah blah, whatever, she let me use her phone, I was spared further humiliation. I called the hotel and asked them to put me through their room …for those that missed the beginning of the story, go back to the last two blogs and pick it up there…I’m not repeating myself because you couldn’t be bothered to be there sooner. No answer from the room, I asked the receptionist to page them..nothing. Oh shit , I have a live TV to do at 6pm and it was getting desperately close. I didn’t call Granada TV, I didn’t dare, I had to make it on time. Even without an answer from them at the hotel I just prayed I’d get there and they’d be waiting ……and hope and hope that this nightmare would be over.
Fortune prevailed and 10 minutes after I’d called the traffic started to move. I thanked my lady in red (Mercedes) waved and left her in a trail of exhaust fumes. She probably thought I was a posing dickhead, I just knew I was late and sped off to the hotel. I arrived at the Britannia illegally early, parked outside on double yellow lines and prayed they were there… and low and behold there they were in the lobby listening to their Walkmans. I gasped a sigh of relief, I needed a pee but I wasn’t having one….well not voluntarily anyway !
We hadn’t met before but ‘Hi, let’s go’ did the trick as I marched them to the car which was parked outside the front door. The trip to Granada was less than 5 minutes the way I was driving and for the entire journey all I did was prattle on about why I was late and how lousy the weather had been. 8 minutes later we were there, just in time.
Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Granada TV, tony michaelides
Insights From The Engine Room 
‘WHAT A LONG STRNGE TRIP IT’S BEEN’
Introduction
Like Tony, I started working in the media in the mid-seventies when I was a teenager (and probably ‘in love’). I started out writing for music press and other national mags and papers and then got into radio, mainly BBC Radio 1 and 4, but I also did a bit for Capital Radio, although they seemed to think that me demanding to be paid after not being for three months was unprofessional (bit ironic), so we fell out of love very quickly. After that I worked as a TV researcher then as music producer on the first ever five days a week daytime TV magazine ‘Pebble Mill at One’ (If any old colleagues are reading then no I know they never gave me the grade but you and I know that is what I did and they should have given me the grade) . It was there that I first met Mr Michaelides. Until a week ago we had not seen each other for over twenty years, but now we’ve re-established contact, it is like the last twenty years never happened. We speak most days and are busy hatching plans to reclaim what we once turned our backs on, as we feel its current custodians are bland and unimaginative and have created a media beast which anaesthetises rather than entertains and captivates; but more of that farther down the line.
Also like Tony I have a thousand and one tales to tell about life during media and after and before. You will have already appreciated that I talk out of sequence and will not be telling these tales in chronological order as I find that style quite boring when I read it. Rather I will be using the style of one of my all time literary heroes, Damon Runyon. If you are not familiar with his style then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, but to explain; he writes vignettes with common characters running through many and in no particular order. If I can go any way to entertaining you the way he has entertained me over the years then I will be most contented.
1
JOURNEY
Late summer/early autumn 1973 there was an all night gig at the old Queens Hall in Leeds. There was a big line-up featuring a three-ring circus, The Welfare State, Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come and top of the bill was Hawkwind. Yes you are correct in thinking this was an absolute orgy of late UK hippydom and it happened just before the big bland-out of the mid seventies.
Having ingested an awful lot of pharmas and a large amount of Bradford Black, I remember not an awful lot about that particular night, although I do remember feeling extremely loved-up and spaced out at the same time. I do remember a face-painted Hawkwind saxman Nik Turner coming up to me and my buddies and saying that if we had any gear left we ought to stash it as the place was crawling with pigs (yes they really did used to speak like that daddio!). I remember being there with Plug Kaye. It is possible that any of Kirby, Slek, Jacko, Ice and Linda, Spud Wood, spike, Max and Pete Townsend were there as well but I really can’t remember.
Arthur Brown played stuff from his ‘Journey’ album which I still love and was familiar with as I’d seen him in Bradford the previous week and Hawkwind were well…………………just Hawkwind!
The gig ended as dawn was breaking and we shuffled out into the just awakening streets of Leeds. We enjoyed playing all sorts of the silly games you play when you are as high as kites like ‘kick the pair of socks over the moving double decker bus’ and other delights.
We then went into Woollies café and had coke floats, so Ice and Linda must have been there. From there we broke up and made our way to our various homes. I shared a bus with Plug Kaye, who had recently moved to Manchester to do a hairdressing course at the Vidal Sassoon school. He told me all about life in Manc and it seemed far more exciting than my humdrum existence in little old Birstall. It was decided I should flit to Manchester and stay with him in his bedsit (zilch catswinging room!), until I could cobble together the few quid needed for a place of my own. I went home and told my mother what I was doing. She helped me pack (she was that desperate to hang on to me) and I left for Manchester that afternoon with Plug. I had fifty pence in my pocket and thirty pence of that was for the bus fare.