Sunday, April 03, 2011
Billy Idol: White Wedding
Today's choice takes us back to the 1980s and the era when a quiz machine was an exciting new feature for a pub to have. In those days, when I was up to date with the charts and soap operas, I derived a useful second income from those machines.
There was one walking holiday in the West Country when, every evening, I would go out and have a pub meal and a couple of pints and return to my B&B with more money than I had set off with. "I could live like this," I thought, and there were stories in those days that some people did.
I also remember travelling to Liberator paste ups (these were the days when producing a magazine involved Cow Gum and Letraset) by Weekend First on the train, and then pausing in the buffet at St Pancras so I could win back the extra pound it had cost me.
This was the era when I worked at Golden Wonder in Market Harborough. In those days I was part of syndicate (hello Martin and Chezza, if you are reading this) who would go across the road to the Harborough Lounge and play their quiz machine in the lunch hour.
I can recall calculating that I was earning more per minute during that lunch hour than I was during the rest of the day. Perhaps it should not have been a surprise when the machine disappeared.
The Harborough Lounge, which has since returned to its historic name of the King's Head, had a jukebox and two records remind me of playing the quiz machine there. One is Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie, and this is the other.
So enjoy a live version from 2006. Both Billy and the song have lasted surprisingly well.
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3 comments:
You're not another ex quiz machine pro, then?
The Leicester area always used to be pretty good country for quizzers, right down to them appearing on Leicester Forest East services on the M1 for a while. Used to think nothing of embarking on long tours around the country to clean them out; fun and profitable while it lasted. Much too slow to do it now though, and even my thirst for low culture no longer extends to soaps and current chart music.
I saw Billy Idol at the Download Festival last year and it was a cracking set.
Once paid for all 5 days of a test match (vs N. Zealand since you ask) + beer (a lot of beer) thanks to a pub near St Thomas's nurses home in Tooting. A certain R. Hadlee saved the game for N.Z.
The bus fair was thanks to the Royal Standard in Truro.
O thought I had found a profession. Alas
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