THE ODD GIG

London 1984

I'd done the barely legal, eighteen year-old-girlfriend thing, she had

her fun playing at screwing Dad for a while, and then dumped me. So

it was that I moped off to Burlingtons Hair Salon in the West End.

They’d done her hair once for an Italian Vogue photo shoot and they

did mine for free because I used to be sort-of-almost famous once for

a bit. Besides, I let them set their most experimental stylists loose on

my hair. I well remember the night I’d crawled back to Simon and

Helen’s gaff at 2 AM. I was crashing on their settee and had been

gone a couple of days. Julian at Burlington’s had shaved the sides of

my head to a fuzz and dyed zebra stripes into it, then built a platinum

peroxide Mohawk atop my head capable of picking up Radio

Luxembourg if I faced the right direction. Simon was a bit of a

freelance professional karate fighter, a well-paid, if usually short-lived

and entirely illegal career. So when he saw some unidentified seven

foot punk stumbling down his girlfriend’s front hallway he did what

any semi-drunken martial arts nutcase would do and attacked me. I

managed to identify myself just short of a set of broken ribs.

Anyway, I was sitting sulking at my magnificent reflection in one of

Burlingtons salon mirrors while some busty young thing massaged

both my scalp and her breasts against my shoulder. Surly semi-

erections rose and fell like the pound sterling in my strides. Julian

flitted over.

“Luke, ducky, have you ever considered being a statue?”

“What? No, not as such. Although I fully anticipate that one day they

have that one armed prat down off his pedestal in Trafalgar Square

and replace it with a decent rendition in marble of the Lukeness.”

“I mean, have you ever considered playing the part of a statue?”

“Why, you’re not suggesting I audition for Depeche Mode are you? Or

one of those fucking miserable northern synth bands – Orchestral

Manoeuvers Up Your Arse?”

“No, no dear boy, nothing like that. We’re taking part in a leukemia

fundraiser at The Palladium. We’d like you to be a sort of prop. It

would mean you wearing a loin cloth and being painted grey.”

“You what?”

“Oh and we would be binding one of the model girls to you with

swathes of colored silk.”

“Well alright, go on then, twist my arm.”

A couple of weeks later I was in my loin cloth, crammed into a

dressing room directly under the Palladium stage, with over a dozen

young model girls in various stages of undress. I was having to think

very hard about Margaret Thatcher in her underwear to try and keep

the front of the loin cloth getting all unnecessary. Some apprentice

pouf from the salon was having altogether too much of a good time

painting the Luke slowly grey all over. Julian swanned up dragging a

pouting, elfin beauty whose eyes were somehow almost as big as her

face.

“This is Desiree.”

“Of course it is,” I said, taking her hand and just before I planted my

lips on it, turning her hand over and kissing the back of my own

hand. She almost giggled but caught herself.

“She’s the smallest and the lightest girl so she’s the one we’re going

to tie to your back.”

“Jolly good. But, er, from an artistic point of view don’t you think it

would look altogether more effective if you were to tie her to my

front.”

And to his credit the old queen actually pursed his lips and pressed a

thoughtful digit to his kissing gear.

“Hmmm. No, I think I see what you mean, but we want the audience

to get the full splendor of your front as you come up through the

stage trap door.”

“Yes. Of course you do.”

So poor Desiree was bound to my back with swathes of gaudy colored

silk, back to back, and once affixed I lumbered over and stood on the

trapdoor riser. The plan was that once the ponce up on the stage had

got through telling all those gathered at a hundred and fifty quid a

head how grateful all those poor fuckers dying of leukemia were

going to be that we were all here tonight, swanning about seeing and

being seen, snorting blizzards of coke and drowning in buckets of

Moet Chandon, then the show would start with me and Desiree being

lifted up through center stage. The Burlingrtons model girls would

then swank out and do a bit of a pagan dance round Luke’s totem

pole. And who could blame them? Most of their hairstyles looked like

something from that old pagan god Herne’s nightmares, great multi-

colored explosions of hair with bits of leafy twigs, circuit board and

antlers woven in. I kid you not.

So, this prat up on the stage was making a right meal of his intro and

I’d started sweating, and the lovely Desiree felt as if she’d put on

about 100 pounds in the last five minutes and it wasn’t like I could sit

down or anything could I, not with her strapped to my arse. I was

panting for all the wrong reasons and in danger of becoming a very

streaky statue, again for all the wrong reason.

Finally there was a bray of trumpets not unlike a bunch of donkeys

with bad head colds and the platform started to lurch upwards. I

fumbled in my loin cloth and slipped three fake blood capsules into

my mouth.

Bit of dramatic license for you Julian, sweetie!