Going to Sea in a Sieve: The Autobiography

by Baker, Danny

  Then I started being sick, which, naturally, was the moment my dad decided to find out what all the noise was (I had apparently been wailing ‘Oh no, oh no!’ for several minutes). You will have already read that my dad was pretty good at dishing out faux-bollockings to me, but I can assure you he was even better at the real deal. During the administering of his fury he used the phrase, ‘I never want to fucking see you like this again.’ I am mildly proud to say that nobody ever has. (If we were using footnotes here, I might have to concede the occasion of the Inaugural Smash Hits Poll Winners Concert After Party at which, for the only time in my life, I had my drink spiked, but that will have to wait until Volume Two of these ramblings – Going Off Alarming.)

  The morning after the debacle I awoke full of shame and loathing but with no hangover whatsoever. It was then I first began to realize that I would never truly get these notorious late invoices for a drinker’s pleasure. People say that I must do, but I can honestly attest that, though occasionally a little dyspeptic, I have never worn the full iron hat as described by others. This of course annoys the hell out of shockingly hungover fellow revellers the following day. My dad was equally convinced I would awake after my Night of the Sweet Martini with iron spikes in the eyes and with my skin hanging upon my bones like a second-hand suit. To this end he bounded into the bedroom next morning with a glass of water and a tin of Eno’s. Eno’s was a brand of something called ‘Fruit and Liver Salts’ – the market leader being Andrews – sold in all good chemists, and a fillip that Dad rated right up there with penicillin as one of the Great Medical Leaps Forward. ‘Boy,’ he said, heaping a huge dollop of the bright white powder into the glass, ‘every time I’ve been on the piss, this sorts me right out again. Drink it in one.’ I tried to tell him I didn’t need it, but every inch the gentle counsellor, he brushed this aside. ‘Fuck off and down it,’ he insisted. I did as he said and can honestly say I’ve taken inadvertent sea water into my lungs that was less traumatic. I followed up the gaseous gulp with a prolonged, basso-profundo burp like a stricken whale signalling its distress to the rest of the pod. ‘Better?’ he asked. Feeling as though I had just been forced to imbibe a Dickensian spittoon, I simply nodded with eyes closed and stuck my thumb up. ‘Always have plenty of Eno’s in,’ he said, retreating triumphantly. ‘Sets you up lovely for the next session. Now, hurry up and get dressed – I need you to help me with something . . .’

  The ‘something’ Dad needed me to help with was assistance in ‘pretend burgling’ our neighbours’ house. I promise you, I had not planned to fracture the otherwise perfectly paced narrative of this book quite so spectacularly, but once you involve Dad in a tale, events tend to roll on and on and it’s impossible to close the Sweet Martini story without remembering that the day after that was the day I helped rob the Pinders’ house – at their own request.

  Kim Pinder lived very close by Debnams Road and she was a full-on tall ship of a woman who had six noisy daughters and a husband who was as tired and thin as she was robust and fat. He was an honest, hard-working and timid man, whereas Kim was a powerhouse, a go-getter and very much aware of how things got done around the flats. Short of the necessary monies to take the family for a fortnight’s summer holiday at Ramsgate, Kim fell back on the always popular fund-raiser of having a fake break-in and claiming the insurance. Up until about the age of twelve I genuinely thought that our family simply had terrible luck with burglars. After about the tenth time persons unknown had apparently got in via an open window or the back door, I remember saying in good faith to my dad, ‘Why do they always pick on us?’ to which he replied, ‘Well, if you want to go on the fucking Norfolk Broads every year, then we’ll keep getting turned over.’ I was confused by this remark for about an hour or so until my brother explained its deeper meaning. As it sank in, I did a pretty good impression of the moment in Pinocchio when the Pleasure Island bad boys turn into jackasses. Anyway, Kim Pinder had just such a phantom break-in booked, but the problem she faced was that Ian, her husband, out and out did not approve of any kind of illegal activity. My dad put this down to him being ‘as silly as arseholes’, but I suppose, looking back, there is a certain nobility in such a stand. Therefore, if Kim’s house was to be ‘burgled’, it had to be done in such a way that Ian would be convinced it was totally genuine. So she asked my dad to make it look as real as possible while she and the family were all out for the day. It was for this task that I had been roused with the explosive Eno’s.

  About half an hour later my dad let himself into the empty Pinder house using Kim’s own key. Once inside he told me to turn it over a bit – empty drawers on to floors, tilt the pictures on the walls, up-end the odd chair – while he went upstairs and trousered the bits and pieces of jewellery that Kim had left out for him. Kim herself would be dealing with the insurance, so later, unknown to Ian, she would swell the claim with various invented heirlooms that had been lifted. In all, it took about ten minutes, leaving about three hours before the family’s return, when Kim would go into her necessary theatrics of shock, outrage and general hysterics – all for Ian’s benefit. However, it would be during this interval that fate would intervene and foil this most concrete of plans.

  What happened was that, roughly an hour later, Kim’s mother decided to call round to pay her daughter a visit. She arrived on the bus, knocked once and, without waiting for further response, simply let herself in. Once inside, her reaction was not, ‘Oh my God, they’ve been burgled!’ but ‘Oh look at the state she’s gone out and left this place in.’ She then proceeded to tidy up everything I had so carefully thrown about, even going so far as to Hoover the whole place and change the water in the goldfish bowl. Finding nothing further to detain her, she made a cup of tea, plonked a ‘Sorry I missed you’ note on the kitchen table and buggered off back home.

  Cut to Kim’s return later that day. As she approaches her own front door, she anticipates the scene that will greet her and begins inwardly rehearsing her lines to impress upon Ian how distressing it all is. Fatally caught up in the moment, she apparently ‘went’ too early and with barely one foot inside the passage found herself screaming, ‘Oh my God! Ian! We’ve been . . . tidied up.’

  When she managed to get round to our house she was pale and aghast. ‘What the fuck went wrong, Spud? I’ve never seen the place so spotless. That’s just cost me sixteen quid to keep everyone out at the pictures! At least give me me fuckin’ jewellery back.’ It was only later, after she found the note from her mum on the kitchen table, that she managed to piece together events. I believe the Pinder family made do with a few days at Southend that summer.

  Final note on burglaries. Around the time I was on the road for the NME, my parents were genuinely robbed. Thieves smashed in their front door with a sledgehammer and made off with whatever they could carry – including the video recorder (yep, they had one now). Looking at the shattered door and splintered frame, Dad knocked to ask the neighbours how come they hadn’t heard anything.

  ‘Well,’ they said, ‘we did hear a lot of banging and crashing about around half past ten, but we thought it was just you and Bet having a row.’

  Despite an increasing presence in the paper, I was still the full-time NME receptionist. The only reason I could get away to interview rock stars at all was because of the good grace of the two women who worked in the reception area, Fiona and Val, who would cover the switchboard for the long hours I was away. The breaking point for this arrangement came when I said I had to be away for two whole days to cover an Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ date in Amsterdam and stayed out on the road with the band for two whole weeks. Now I don’t think this was entirely my fault. Ian Dury and the Blockheads were an extremely good band to be travelling with and had an offstage cast of supporting characters who are still among the most dynamic people I have ever met. One of these was Fred ‘Spider’ Rowe, who acted as both Ian’s valet and minder. Fred was a real-deal hard nut in a world of pretend tough guys. He never swaggered, never bullied
or threatened, but had within him that cast-iron sinewy confidence that needed no further advertising as to his capabilities. In his forties, baldheaded and a ringer for Robert Duvall, Spider also had the best kind of cockney accent. Snappy, sibilant, acrobatic and barbed. In Holland one time, when he could see a particular drunk was outstaying his welcome with Ian, he intervened with the following:

  Spider: Sorry to interrupt, friend, but can I ask your name?

  Drunk: My name is Andreas, what’s it to you?

  Spider: Do you mind if I call you Superman?

  Drunk: Why?

  Spider: Because in about thirty seconds you’ll be flying straight out that fuckin’ window. OK?

  When it came to self-assurance in what you thought and believed, Fred was right up there with my old man. One day as we were travelling the Continent, the conversation on the tour bus centred for some reason on sharks, with various tall tales and horror stories being exchanged by crew and band members as Spider sat up front reading a military biography. Eventually he turned around and brought a typically practical end to the discussion.

  ‘Look, never mind all that frightening-the-kids bollocks,’ he barked impatiently. ‘Trouble with you lot is you’ve never been up close with a shark. I have. And let me tell you, you don’t fuck about panicking. You look at it. You see if it wants some. And if it does, you smack it straight in the fuckin’ earhole, just like you would anyone else. They soon fuck off after that, I can tell you.’

  And with that dispensed, he turned back to his book again. Naturally, nobody dared argue, although several of us would have liked to know exactly how you accurately locate a shark’s earhole while trying to stay afloat.

  Another time it was all about mad dogs attacking people.

  ‘You make me die, you fuckin’ hippies, straight you do. No such thing as a mad dog. It’s a myth. Thing is with a dog, if it comes at ya, you grab the nearest stick or newspaper or anything you can hold by both ends, even your keys. Then, just as it leaps at ya, you hold it out. A dog will always grab the middle bit of the stick, see. And as he does, you bring your knee up – bang! – on to its mouth and, because it’s open and weak, it’ll shatter its jaw like your old nan’s fuckin’ glass fruit bowl. So don’t talk to me about mad dogs, because it’s not a problem.’

  And once again that was that.

  Fred’s benign, but equally entertaining, counterpart in the Blockhead entourage was Kosmo Vinyl. Kos was sort of Ian’s manager, sort of his PR, sort of his MC, sort of his best mate. A rip-roaring, perpetually ‘on’ turn, Kosmo, though my age, dressed in Hawaiian shirts and zoot suits, brothel creepers and loud wide braces. His hair would change colour a lot but his attitude never wavered. Kos at full tilt could make even my notorious brio seem like a dim bulb.

  ‘You gotta keep things happening, Dan, you gotta keep things happening.’

  In a different era, Kosmo himself would have been a huge star, combining as he did all the zeal, zest and brashness of a Tommy Trinder or Arthur English – stage giants from the pre-rock and roll years. His fizzing, galvanizing stage introductions for Ian – and later The Clash in America – set the tone for the evening. The band – and the audience – would have to live up to him. This particular breed of cockney still sets certain middle-class noses to turn up but, as I may have suggested, they can go fuck themselves. Even Ian Dury’s trademark ‘Oy Oy!’ – brazenly lifted from the Crazy Gang of Flanagan & Allen – is a proud clarion call from the streets of a noisy, rambunctious city where, if you wanted to be noticed, you’d better make a big noise yourself. Being on the road with Ian Dury and the Blockheads was a pounding carnival, a treat, a riot. And it was something I simply wasn’t going to quit after a couple of days – not even for the righteous accusing eyes and steaming silence I could doubtless expect from Val and Fiona.

  ‘Stick around, stick around!’ Kos urged me. ‘It’s just started. Don’t go back. Belgium tomorrow! Paris next week! Kip on my floor! Ask y’self – are you ever gonna be an old man and say to y’self, “Know what, wish I hadn’t stayed them extra days with Durex and the bottle boys?” ’Course not! Everything’s happening – everything!’

  Adding to the mania as the band trundled on through Europe was the fact that their latest single – ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’ – was threatening to become a massive hit back home. Sure enough, as we arrived in Paris, they were told it was the number one record in the UK charts. Boom. That was a pretty good night.

  The next morning we all had to be up and ready very early to get back to London for a celebratory recording of Top of the Pops at the BBC. Kosmo had organized full formal black-tie outIts for the whole band to perform in. At the hotel our singing star was last down. Ian, as is known somewhat notoriously now, could be a mercurial individual (as they say). Playful, silly, spiteful and controlling in equal measure. I saw only glimpses of the Bad Dury – the random belittling of a Belgian journalist being about the limit of it – but one-on-one I got on wonderfully with him. In fact, despite the electric hoopla all around us, my over-riding memory of those dates is sitting in his hotel room listening to an audio-cassette version of the Alastair Sim film Happiest Days of Your Life that Ian had taped off the TV and from which we could recite every line.

  As he emerged from the lift that morning in Paris, wrap-around shades and Spider at his elbow, I called out, ‘Aye aye – make way! It’s Top of the Pops – it’s Donald Peers!’ I knew it was exactly the sort of obscure, mildly camp reference he adored. Wobbling up to me, he looked out over the tops of his Ray-Bans and said in that molten, tarry, trademark growl, ‘Just out the shower, I squoze – and a dirty green bubble arose.’

  I have no idea what that meant, then or now, but it remains one of the filthiest things I’ve heard. I can also recall that, at that exact moment, Ian Dury appeared to be the happiest pop star I have ever seen. And why not? The wonderful euphoric atmosphere washed over the whole day like a rare cologne. Calling up the band’s subsequent TOTP performance on YouTube and – ha! – there I am, at one minute thirty-two seconds, hovering bottom left on your screens, as Ian mimes the line ‘Nice to be a lunatic . . .’ If you freeze it, you may note the blank expression on my face is: 40 per cent Nicely Numb from Champagne Bubbles and 60 per cent ‘What on earth am I going to say to Fiona and Val when I go back in tomorrow?’

  Well, what I did eventually concoct remains one of the weaselliest things I have ever done. Pure 100 per cent lush craven weasel.

  I had been calling in to the paper fairly regularly while I’d been away. Every time I heard either Val or Fiona answer I had disguised my voice while I asked to be put through. OK, this is weasel-skin enough, but what I came up with for my reappearance was in a completely different league. God knows how I came up with it. Maybe it was one of Spider Rowe’s theories, but here goes.

  I took a tennis ball, cut it in two with some scissors, and Sellotaped one half around my ankle. Then I put three socks over it. Next I slit the side of an old plimsoll so it would fit. I had previously borrowed from Kosmo one of Ian Dury’s less used and more functional walking sticks. As I arrived in the NME office that morning you’d have thought I had just walked away from a plane crash.

  At first neither woman noticed.

  ‘Well, about bloody time! You’ve really taken advantage of us! We were going to the union today!’ blasted Fiona in her coldest caustic Darlington tone.

  ‘Sorry,’ I gasped, ‘not a lot I could do.’ And I made my way painfully slowly to my chair at the switchboard.

  It was Val who fell for the production first.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asked, wind suddenly gone from her sails and in genuine concern.

  ‘You must have heard,’ I said, almost offended. They replied they didn’t know.

  ‘I went over. Down some stairs – about eight days ago in Belgium. Has no one told you? I’ve been laid up for a week. I’m not even supposed to be back now, but I couldn’t leave you two doing this much longer.’

  N
ot for the first time in this book, you probably think I’m making this up. But I’m not. I really am this weasel.

  ‘Nobody told us, why didn’t anyone tell us?’ soothed Fiona, now coming over to have a look at the damage.

  ‘No?’ I continued like Laurence Harvey. ‘God, you must have thought I’ve been living it up somewhere!’

  ‘We did! We thought you were off with Ian Dury still, didn’t we, Fi? We’ve been calling you all types of names this week.’

  Fiona now looked at the huge swelling the half a tennis ball caused under my three socks.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You can’t get about like this. What are you doing here? Go home, Dan, this is silly.’

  I soldiered on for about another half an hour, answering calls with ever more tortured and strangulated breaths, till I said I was sorry but I was really starting to feel a bit weird. Both girls had already noted I was looking a bit pale and sweaty. Well, you do if you’ve been on the piss for a fortnight. Then I went home. As various writers later showed up at the NME, Val and Fiona asked them why nobody had told them I had been injured in a fall. The writers told them they didn’t know I had been injured in a fall. Val and Fi described my injuries to them, possibly laying it on a bit thicker than even I’d projected, and blaming my writer colleagues for being callous and indifferent. A few of the writers then rang me at home to ask if I’d been very badly injured in some sort of fall. I told them I had been, but it was no big deal, that V&F were over-reacting, and that I’d be back on Monday with the Blockheads piece all written.

  The one thing I gambled on was that nobody would put a date on the incident – and happily, nobody did. Fi and Val believed I’d done it over a week ago, the staff that I must have done it in the last forty-eight hours. You may further note that in the TOTP footage I look as if I’m trying to keep well out of the way and am the only person in the place not dancing. I wasn’t going to be caught out there. When I did come back I used but a fraction of the ball on my ankle and my walking had much improved. I was also excused sandwich runs for Fiona and Valerie during that entire period, with the gals pretty much fetching me all I wanted.