CHAPTER 8 - CLUB BEER ON THE THAMES

It seems to be a faintly disturbing tradition that each of these Club Beer news
reports starts with the phrase "well, it was an odd one, even by our standards
..." and, this disclamatory preamble notwithstanding (man), that's exactly what
we're going to do here. One day, everything will go off just fine and no-one
will get injured or fall over or make such outrageous fools of themselves they
decide not to talk to us for months, and the world will be a lovely place.

Until then, however: well...blah de blah de blah de blah...even by our
standards, etc etc etc. To be fair to ourselves, though, having Club Beer DJ ing
on a boat on the Thames was always bound to be a "memorable" endeavour. And it's not as if anybody had a bad time. Everyone seemed to be having fun, drinking and chatting and laughing and taking time to catch up with each other and I think, in the circumstances, it was entirely appropriate there was no music. At all.

WE ARE SAILING, STORMY WATERS

This is what happened, right. The Times Metro hired us to spin some discs for
their boat party on the Thames. We were a bit surprised because when we did
their Christmas party we were harangued by a bald bloke with those trendy square glasses for not playing Hoxton Youth-approved dance "tunes" and told (adopt sneery fashion victim voice now) "you've got the ammunition, you just don't how to use it." Yeah, right, that's the fucking point mate. But, anyway, we were
cheap and everyone else was booked, so we got the gig, on the proviso that we
dropped the cheese and played some Motown and hip hop and stuff like that. Which wouldn't be a problem normally. I love the former, Angus is a world renowned authority and best selling author on the latter, we thought it would make a fun change. Excited? Why, I even cancelled a lucrative TV appearance just to make the sailing time (my fee? exactly half what we would have been paid, ironically, but more of that later).

Anyway, the boat was late, so we didn't get the half hour we needed to set up, and we were ten minutes into our journey when we realised we, well someone, actually...look it wasn't me, alright...Angus had forgotten to bring the mains lead for the decks. It was, he freely admits, a berk's trick. He was the most mortified man I've ever seen in my life, even more mortified than the man who went for a job at a mortuary and was passed over for a man with rigor mortis. Poor Angus. It was a stupid thing to do, but he was sorry, right, and even more sorry once we found out that it would cost us, ooh, somewhere between fifty and a hundred pounds to stop the boat to meet the taxi we'd hurriedly booked to bring us said missing mains lead.

FERRY CROSS THE MISERY

But still: we stopped, we met the taxi driver who passed the lead through a wire
fence, plugged in and kicked off with "Night Boat To Cairo", to massed cheers, a
mere hour or so after our allotted start time. And the rest of the night, such
as it was, was a raging success. I insisted on playing "The Concept" by Teenage
Fanclub and "The Snake" by Al Wilson, both of which were loved by the discerning few, and Angus did his proper DJ bit and spun loads of cool funk records for the delight of the dancing masses. The boat went up and down the Thames, much ale was sunk, and the requisite good time was had by all. The captain bloke even reckoned we'd got away with not being charged for our unscheduled stop at Lambeth Pier and everyone was happy - until we ruined it all by ending with "Sailing" and an angry mob formed around the decks to tell us how we'd brought back psychologically damaging memories and would be sent their therapist's bill first thing in the morning.

He'd been happy for those few hours, had Angus. It was like he'd been blessed
with amnesia by his guardian angel, freed from the guilt and the shame of being
an utter fool and transported to a land of party perfection by our superlative
DJ set. But come the cold, harsh reality of dry land, a dark cloud descended on
our hapless friend. He became a man depressed, disconsolate was his middle name, Angus Disconsolate Batey people were calling him, comforting him through the medium of jeers and laughter. In fact, he was so downhearted, sitting alone on a street corner with his DJ boxes and decks while I went to get a cab, that a kindly homeless fella came up and offered to help him find somewhere to sleep. Angus responded by giving the guy the money we'd been given for the night and thus our moral decency, if not our pride, was restored. And the bloke, more importantly, had somewhere nice and warm to kip.

The moral of this story? Don't hire Club Beer for fun girl, let us be the one
girl, love us for a reason, and let the reason be love.

No really. You're too kind.

See some pics here