Current mood: THE REAL PUNK..
Category: THE REAL PUNK.. Music
The Greek aren’t a brilliant band, who’ve a 3 LP deal with EMI (no questions asked - or greatness expected, just play a few festivals).
No boss, they’re not a band who can boast at least one conquest of Kate Moss in their shoddy faux alternative indie ranks.....
NO!!
The Greek is one of the many colloquial names for The Duke Of Edinburgh AKA The Queen of Englands husband, and here comes the story of the time the young Giovanni attended a flyby of The Greek and in doing so missed a blinding opportunity to be the new punk....
Yes boss, with hindsight, it was a day that signalled both the limitations and the boundless potential of Paul Giovanni £ - which of these two characteristics triumphs in the end remains to be seen..
So here’s the story.
I’ve said before that I played in Brass Bands.
I did this as part of a strange mostly British Christian organisation called The Boys Brigade. This was, and to a degree remains, a pseudo militarily church run organisation that was very similar to the scouts except a little less brown and far less dib dib dib...
Part of this steely youth group education, was a more universally practised achievement scheme for UK young folk called The Duke Of Edinburghs Award.
Bronze (Loads of people got this)
Silver (A portion fewer got this)
Gold (And very much fewer got this)
Each level of The DofE award involved a camping expedition with full gear. There was also a community service aspect, a set of physical tests etc. In short it was training for the empire that was gone - a vain attempt to instill National Pride in the idea that Britain was still great and in charge of things the world over....
Well, at the 1st Eastleigh Boys Brigade Company, we had a rather liberal Captain called Brian Burnage and he didn’t mind the odd bit of fiddling the books to get his boys to the top of most things – and so to the top we went!!!
Of course I deserved my Gold award - in fact, I deserved a platinum one
but most of the others hadn’t done their community service at all.
However thanks to Mr B we all got through and won gold and the prize was to get the award presented by the Duke of Edinburgh at his own private St James Palace (just down the drive from his wifes hefty old Buckingham Palace)
WHAT AN HONOUR!!!!
So, the day came and as you can probably imagine, I’m dreading the whole hoopla...
Yes boss, my problem was that by the time of this presentation, I’d flown the nest, been arrested 4 times, been banned from Wolverhampton, walked around the north of Scotland on a whim, almost saved the world and moved into a shitty, but architecturally beautiful flat in nowheresville London, where I’d spend my days listening to the KLFs The White Room, walking around the neighbourhood, and wondering what the hell might come next...
Whatever their other merits, the collective power of these experiences, had made me fully realise I had no time or respect of either The Windsors or the establishment in general. However, my mother wanted to go and given that my aquisition of the Gold Duke Of Edinburghs Award was about the only thing she felt she could be proud of in 3 or 4 years, I felt obliged to attend...
Yes boss, my Mother was UP FOR IT and she’d bought me a horrible grey Mark & Spencer reduced price suit (the Giovannis have never had money) for £25. She made herself a strangely flowered dress and bought a peculiar Napoleanoic hat and we were all set...
So, on the day of the presentation, I take an early train in from Woolwich and go record shopping. The usual grand shortage of cash means I can only buy one cassette for the now bizarre sum of £4.
Yes boss, when I were a lad, you couldn’t freeload entire discographies at the click of a mouse, or pick up 4 tapes for a quid in the local chairty shop. Records were still expensive, bands still made money and MAJOR RECORD COMPANIES still handed out 5 album deals...
So, after much browsing, the record I bought was Kiss This by The Sex Pistols.
At this point I’d only ever ’heard’ of The Sex Pistols, but what I’d heard I liked. about what they were about...
Of course one of the things that attracted me was their apparent dislike of The Windsors, and it was as I was walking to meet my dolled up parents that it occurred to me that a punk moment could be upon me.
Yes boss, as I understood it, we were each to be presented the award in person by The Greek, I therefore figured that as he handed me my award and went to shake my hand, I could whip my casette copy of The Sex Pistols Kiss This out of my suit pocket and hand it over to him!!
IT WOULD BE A GRAND, THOUGH HARMLESS GESTURE OF REBELLION AIMED RIGHT AT THE SWEATY MUCH SHOOK HAND OF THE GREEK!!!!
HOORAY!!!
We’re coralled into 3 or 4 semi circles of 20 or so boys. I am stuck at the back.
How all this is going to work I don’t know, but I do have the cassette primed and ready...
We wait...
And it’s as we wait, that a bizaare rumour starts to circulate.
The rumour says that instead of being presented with our awards by The Greek himself, the man in charge is to be popular Childrens BBC host Andy Crane?!?
I mean, are we to believe that we slogged ourselves stupid 50 miles up and down a few mountains in the Lake District carrying 50lb rucksacks in the pissing down rain to be awarded our prize by a man who spends his days presenting TV programmes with a cartoon hand puppet called Ed The Duck???
But it’s true!!!
Eventually we’re addressed, and told Crane will be presenting the awards, The Greek will then wander past and say a few words to each group...
Well shit, this makes my plan very hard to execute.
I have 2 boys inbewtween me and where The Greek looks set to pass. To get anywhere near his hand I’ll have to burst through and lunge at him.
He is unlikely to great such a move with an open hand...
We wait....
and wait...
I look over at my mother with all the other dolled up parents. Can I really lunge at a senior Royal infront of my mother?!? Will she ever speak to me again???
And besides I haven’t even listened to the tape yet?!?
Well, you’ve probably guessed the outcome - it was the best stunt I’ve thought of that’s never actually happenned...
What did happen was that after an hour or so of standing around looking neat, there was a trumpet fanfare and The Greek breezed in with his man servants. He said about 10 words to each group, shook no-ones hand and moved on. He was in the room for a grand total of about 4 minutes and about 10 or 11 yards away from me at the closest.
If I’d have lunged forward I would have been easily intercepted, my Mother would have been horrified and I’d have been truly Punk Rock ’N’ Roll...
Oh well...
I guess I’ll have to wait for The Knighthood now...
 | Currently listening : Kiss This: The Best of the Sex Pistols By The Sex Pistols Release date: By 05 September, 1995  |
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